84. Being is divided, 1. into real and logical; 2. into uncreated or infinite and created or finite; 3. into substance and accident. -- Being exists either in the mere apprehension of the mind, or out of the intellect; in the former case it is logical or ens rationis; in the latter, it is real. Real being is either uncreated or created. Created being is either substance or accident.
85. Real being is that which has existence outside of the intellect. -- Real being has a true existence independently of our thought; it exists in its proper nature; as a "stone."
86. Logical being is that which has no objective existence, which exists only in the intellect.{1} -- This being neither has nor can have any existence in nature; it exists in the intellect only; as "chimeras."
87. Logical being is either founded in reality or not; in the former case it is a negation or a relation. Some negations are properly called privations. -- Logical being founded in reality is that which has a foundation in the very nature of real things; as, "when we judge the idea of animal to be more extensive than that of rational." Logical being not founded in reality combines arbitrarily things which really have no connection; as a "centaur." Logical being founded in reality is a negation when it apprehends through being the absence of being; as "death," "darkness." Logical relations are all those agreements which the reason conceives in things known; as "the agreement of subject and attribute." Negation is the absence in a subject of a quality which it is not required to possess; as "absence of sight in a stone." A privation properly so called is the absence in a subject of a perfection which it can and should possess; as "blindness in man."
88. Only the intellect can produce logical being. -- Logical being is produced when we consider non-being after the manner of being; therefore it can be produced by that faculty only which apprehends the quality of being, that is, by the intellect. The imagination forms images, fictions, but not logical beings. Nor does the divine intellect form them, for their production would imply a knowledge of a thing other than it is in reality. But such cognition is imperfect, and cannot be predicated of God, since He is infinitely perfect.
{1} A thing may be in intellect as subject, effect, or object. It exists in it as subject if it inheres in it as an accident in its subject; it is in intellect as effect if it is produced as a vital action proceeding physically from it it is in intellect as object if it is merely apprehended by it. Of the first mode of existence, "intelligible species, or first intentions," and "intellectual habits" are examples; of the second, "intellection" is an illustration. Both these modes are real. Of the last mode, "second intentions" are an example, and hence logical being (ens rationis) is said to constitute the formal object of Logic. "Darkness" is logical being because it has no existence except that which intellect gives it. "Light" is logical being if it be regarded as abstracted from the luminous body, for an abstraction has only an ideal existence.