As often
as we have accidental knowledge that the thing exists, we must be in a
wholly negative state as regards awareness of its essential nature;
for we have not got genuine knowledge even of its existence, and to
search for a thing's essential nature when we are unaware that it
exists is to search for nothing. On the other hand, whenever we
apprehend an element in the thing's character there is less
difficulty. Thus it follows that the degree of our knowledge of a
thing's essential nature is determined by the sense in which we are
aware that it exists. Let us then take the following as our first
instance of being aware of an element in the essential nature. Let A
be eclipse, C the moon, B the earth's acting as a screen. Now to ask
whether the moon is eclipsed or not is to ask whether or not B has
occurred. But that is precisely the same as asking whether A has a
defining condition; and if this condition actually exists, we assert
that A also actually exists. Or again we may ask which side of a
contradiction the defining condition necessitates: does it make the
angles of a triangle equal or not equal to two right angles? When we
have found the answer, if the premisses are immediate, we know fact
and reason together; if they are not immediate, we know the fact
without the reason, as in the following example: let C be the moon,
A eclipse, B the fact that the moon fails to produce shadows though
she is full and though no visible body intervenes between us and
her.
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