Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of Mankind

The Arguments of the Chapters

59 the arguments of the chapters Part I. On Being and the Common Attributes of Things chapter 1. On Being 65 What metaphysics is 65 Ontology and pneumatology 65 1. How beings are known 66 2. Being, essence, and existence are related 67 What essence and existence are 68 Four indications of existence 68 What are the essences of things 69 3. Actuality and potentiality 69 4. No idea more general than being 70 Relations. Possibles. Impossibles. External denominations. Negations and privations. Beings of reason. The root of possibility. 70 5. Only the idea of being is absolute 73 chapter 2. On the Axioms of Metaphysics 74 1. What an axiom is. In what sense it is innate 74 2. No principle is the first of all 75 3. Axioms indubitable 76 They are not viewed in God 76 Axioms of little use 76 Two which are quite useful 77 60 a synopsis of metaphysics chapter 3. On the Properties of Being 78 1. Unity, identity, difference 78 Of minds, ideas 79 The principle of individuation 79 Of physical bodies 80 2. Logical and ethical truth 80 Metaphysical [truth] 80 3. Goodness or perfection 81 Physical and moral 81 Absolute and qualified perfections 82 4. May space and time be predicated of all things? 82 Various opinions 84 Permanent and successive time 85 chapter 4. On the Principal Divisions of Being 87 1. Independent and dependent 87 The sign of dependence 88 2. Necessary and contingent being 88 Internal and external necessity 88 3. Simple and multiple being 90 4. Finite and infinite [being] 90 Questions about infinite things 91 5. Cause and thing caused 91 Logical causes, moral causes, etc. 93 Material, formal, final causes 93 Axioms about efficient causes 94 Concerning effects 95 No infinite series of causes 95 6. Rational, necessary, and contingent causes 96 What liberty is 97 7. Substances and accidents 99 What are the true modes 99 Corporeal and thinking substances 99 arguments of the chapters 61 chapter 5. On the Categories and the General Properties of Being 101 1. Substance 101 2. The kinds of quantity: magnitude (which is threefold) 102 Time 102 True quantities uncertain 103 Number 103 3. Qualities: motion and thought 104 Rest and figure 105 Gravity and cohesion 105 Every quality is appropriate to the subject 106 4. Relation: it is not an external thing 106 Ideas of relation not useless 107 The clearest relations are those of numbers 108 5. Action and passion 109 What a law of nature is 109 6. The remaining categories 109 Part II. On the Human Mind chapter 1. On the Powers of the Mind, and First on the Understanding 111 1. Spirit is thinking substance 111 2. The understanding and the will 112 Sensations and their causes 113 3. Direct and reflexive sensations 113 External sensations, and primary and secondary qualities 114 Pleasing, painful, and neutral 114 Duration and number are concomitant ideas 115 Others perceptible by sight and by touch 115 The cause of all is God 116 The mind is active in them 116 The first acquaintance with good and evil 116 62 a synopsis of metaphysics 4. Internal senses or consciousness 117 Ideas of these are abstract 117 5. The reflexive sense enjoys novelty, grandeur, similarity, harmony of sounds, and all imitation and knowledge of things 117 The common sense, and sympathy of feeling 119 The sense of the fitting and the good 119 It is an innate power 119 The sense of praise and blame 120 The sense of humor 120 6. Memory, reason, and imagination 121 Associations of ideas 122 7. Good is judged by sense 122 The principal pleasures 123 8. Habit 123 9. Abstract and absolute judgments 124 How they are in our power 124 chapter 2. On the Will 126 1. The two meanings of desiring, sensual desire 126 2. Rational desire 127 How mixed things are desired 128 3. What liberty is 129 What control we have over desire 131 Joys and sorrows 131 4. Sensual desire and the passions 132 The cause of vices 133 5. Benevolent motives, calm or violent 134 Natural instincts 135 6. Painful sensations either antecedent or subsequent 136 Control of the passions 136 7. The passions not useless 137 arguments of the chapters 63 chapter 3...