DEFINITION AND DIVISION OF GENERAL METAPHYSICS.
4. General Metaphysics is a science which treats of being in general, and the common properties of being.
5. General Metaphysics treats: 1, of being and its common properties; 2, of the principles of being; 3, of the divisions of being.
ART. I. -- IDEA OF BEING.
6. Being, as the object of general metaphysics, is that which is, or at least can be. -- Being{1} as the object of general metaphysics, cannot properly be defined, for there is no more general idea than that of being. Whatever is, whatever can be conceived, comes under the name of being. Therefore every attempt to define being presupposes the knowledge of its meaning. Yet being may be described as Whatever in any way is known in itself (per se) and positively, or, Whatever is in itself intelligible.
7. Being is an essential predicate of everything to which we attribute it. -- For that which we first perceive as belonging to the essence of any thing is that it is a being.
8. Being is not one of the distinct formalities composing a thing, but it is inherent in all that goes to make up the thing. -- Man, for example, is composed of "animality and rationality;" but being is inherent in these two formalities; "animality" is being, "rationality" is being. There is nothing that may not be called being.
ART. II. -- ANALOGY OF BEING.
9. Being is predicated of God and of creatures not univocally but analogically. -- A term is predicated of several things univocally, when it has the same meaning with respect to each of them; as, the word animal relatively to "dog and horse." A term is predicated of several things analogically when these things have only a certain proportion to one another; as, when healthy is predicated of "man," of his "pulse," and of the "food" which he eats. From this it is evident that ens rationis, or logical being, and real being are not univocal; since the one exists solely in the apprehension of the intellect, the other is independent of our cognition. It is also evident that created being and uncreated being are not univocal, for God is pure being, infinite and eternal, while the creature has only participated being, is finite and has a beginning of existence.
10. Being is predicated analogically of substance and accident. -- Substance is being to which it belongs not to be in another in which it inheres; accident, on the contrary, is being to which it belongs to be in another as subject.{2}
11. Being is predicated analogically of the different things to which it is applied -- Since the term being may be predicated, under a certain respect, of everything, of logical being and real being, of God and creatures, of substance and accident, the term is analogous.
{1} The term Being may be used as a participle or as a noun. The former use implies existence, the latter need suppose only fitness to exist. In the text Being is used as a noun. As the term Being, therefore, means sometimes Essence only, sometimes Existence, so the term Nothing, the negation of Being, may be used to signify Nothing of essence, i.e., absolute nothing, or to signify nothing of existence though the existence of the object be possible. Of a square triangle we must predicate nothing of essence, for it is an absolute impossibility of the men of the twenty-first century, we predicate nothing of existence.
{2} See § III.