III        -           THE ACCESS TO BEING.

 

A.        The Original Behaviour.

 

            Here, the spirit becomes in itself the question. The astonishment has made the spirit to go back towards itself. It renders itself accountable of its error. It could have perceived a profundity of the substance, which it had not paid attention. The spirit becomes itself a question. It has the power to consign something from itself to that which is not. Meaning it can make up something which is not in reality itself. So, can it enter in alliance with being?

 

1.     Overcoming Astonishment.

 

            The astonishment, originated closely from being, presents the profundity. But the spirit strives to bring back profundity in the tranquillity of a coherent group in such a manner that the question, which arises from the astonishment, would disappear. In other words, the spirit attempts to silence being astonished by providing answers to questions that emerged from the state of astonishment. This is done by scientific investigation. The scientific investigation suppresses the state of astonishment. However, the spirit, as it digs, has seen itself an abyss, which nothing can fill up. The spirit is moved towards a mystery of which the phenomenon cannot completely suffice. Certainly the phenomenon occupies a profundity, but it only reveals the mystery of the reality partially. There, is a profundity of being, fundamentally first, but only discovered at a second moment. Being has to be investigated in terms its profundity, and not only in terms its phenomenon. The astonishment has opened to the spirit the interiority of the phenomenon, but it has not demonstrated it. However, the interiority is the source. How to reach it? In what way does it pass itself from phenomenon to interiority, from appearance to being unified in itself, what does it give itself through its appearances?

 

            Ontology, as seen previously, describes the structure of being which appears, according to the spiritual experience, i.e. as the spirit experiences being. The rhythm of the astonishment determined the diverse stages, which constitute the diverse categories of the ontology. This ontology, supposing its the root in the adhesion of the spirit to the being which appears, is centered on the investigation of the essence of the intelligibility of the substance. The access to the substance, as recognized by the spirit, remains problematic for the spirit. In the essence, the substance makes itself intelligible, presenting itself for the spirit. It is this essence, which explains the substance. But the essence is not the substance. We know the irreducibility of the substance to the essence, of the intelligibility to the being. In other words, what we know of the substance as known through its essence could be reduced to the substance. The essence does not make the substance. The substance is, in fact, that which gives itself intelligibly to the spirit. We know that being is not exhausted itself in its manifestations to the spirit, but which remains in itself departing from its being. It has a proper solidity, and it can present itself to the spirit departing from itself. The objectivity of the phenomenon, or its interiority, is the guarantee for the spirit of its bound in itself; its mystery is for it the guarantee of its alterity.

            The astonishment[1], which manifests the appearance to the interiority and gives space to thinking on the substance in terms of the essence to the convenient categories, is so compenetrated, at the same time, by a more essential behaviour, and radiated by that which astonishes, the indefinable substance. Being is first. If the spirit knows the distance which separates the essence from the substance, it is because there is as connaturality of one with the other. The spirit knows the fullness of being, because it has an immediate knowledge of the substance. This fact is anterior to whatever discursive and analytic knowledge by means of which it assumes being in its intelligible mode. On account of the   the connaturality of the spirit and of being in its profundity, rest the possibility of the discursive knowledge of the reality which is irreducible to the understanding.

 

            The knowledge affirms and respects the reality, which it recognizes in its objectivity. This is guaranteed by the discursivity of knowledge and by its processes of verifying. However, the substance is not reached in its act by the discursive knowledge. If the substance is connatural with spirit - and it must be it otherwise the discursive knowledge would have no sense - it is because the spirit reaches it in a new manner.

 

            It is by departing from being which gives birth to a new behaviour. This behaviour gives space not only to the intelligibility of being, but also to being itself, to the fact that it is. The effort accomplished in the chapter on the astonishment rendered account the intelligibility of this: being is. On account of this, while intelligibility of being astonishes, its existence is not in the same manner assumed as mystery; being could not be purely “to be”; that which appears, properly because it appears, could not appear.

 

            To this absolute transcendence of being corresponds a new behaviour; there is a need to go to being, participating in it and accompanying it. The spirit is not anymore the intelligent analyst, but a friend that communicates with a friend.

 

2.     The Infiniteness of the Face.[2]

 

            That which attracts the spirit, the question of that which it is itself, is the whole other thing of being. It is the alterity or otherness of being that seduces the spirit. And that which tends towards it does not measure this otherness. The spirit depends from that which it interrogates. The spirit is finite, limited, in this sense fundamental; it cannot be the origin of that which it interrogates. On account of this, the being interrogated is not fundamentally finite, but infinite. It is outside the series of numerable beings, it could not be abstracted completely. The idea of such being is without definition. It suggests an interior overcoming of itself. The spirit cannot include it as a concept; the movement of overcoming of the idea is constitutive of the idea itself of the infinite.

 

            We cannot recognize in our life an experience of infinite being. The idea of infinite has this uniqueness, which invites into thinking thereafter of itself. It cannot think, however, of itself other than presenting itself before the spirit. Now, in the encounter with the other, we make this experience of more or less contained. The face of the other makes, in fact, part of my world. It is a being among others, but, at the same time, it offers itself in the unique manner. Nothing is more vulnerable, more exposed than of a face. The face is offered and put to a disposition; it questions the being received; it stirs in liberty that which it provokes. The face rest itself in the world of things; without defense, it wakens a free reply; without potency, it is pure being; transcending whatever manipulation, inviting to responsibility, it gives itself to me because I respond to it freely in dialogue where nobody can reduced to the possession of the other. The other, revealing to me its face, asks me of receiving it as subject, of opening me to him as he opens to me; this makes me subjective. The opening of the face stirs in me a behaviour of openness, without imposing myself to him, freely and liberating. The encounter of the face reveals to the subjectivity that it is responsible of itself, across and through the other.

 

            Our reply to what we call of the other is desire, not need. Need assimilates; it destroys this itself. Desire is never satisfied; on the contrary, the possession of this to which it sees itself revivifies its ardor; it is not assimilation, but respect and gift humbly generous of itself, free response to a request. The possession, through the desire, is privation, goodness. Explaining the infinite with its aspiration, the desire puts itself through that which it is; its infinity is not indefinite; it goes towards the other which awakens it into uniting itself to it, without adding itself to it; desire obeys. The union to the infinite is the measure of the gift of freedom itself. Freedom is so purely awakened itself to departing from that which is not.

 

            The other which gives freedom itself questioning it, does not give it departing from itself. The reality of the other does not substitute me; it does not impose itself as an exteriority; it is immanent to my reality as I am to it. Ontologically, we are one in being. And it is on account of this that the movement of the desire, introduced by means of the opening of the face, follows the trace of an inaccessible transcendence. The face is poverty of transcendence, more the great poverty in the more great fullness. It gives access to the infinite, while it presents the humble offering, the entreaty without rupture, the respectful withdrawal. Towards me as I towards him\her\it, the other is so concrete universal; its reality is coextensive to every reality in its source.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.     The Act is Mine.

 

            We have to free the sense of metaphysics from experience. In as much as it is experience, it is neither necessary nor universal. It implies a notable ethical quality (a sense of responsibility) which man, very often, prefers to ignore. Nevertheless, that which stands in the light of phenomenological reflection can be shown as necessarily present to the act itself of the subject.

 

            My act disposes a double polarity. On the one part, I place it, it is me itself; and on the other part, I place it thanks to the experience in the lived particularity. My act is mine and it is real.

 

            In doing the act, I exercise the possibility that is in me, bringing it to light. It is impossible to doubt of the reality of my act, because even my denial of it only proves its existence. I cannot doubt the role that I am the one exercising. The act detaches itself from the determinism, mediating its interiority. The act imposes the radical spontaneity of its origin. If my action is necessarily entered in the determinism, I adhere to the reality that is irreducible.

 

There is always a sensible presupposed of my actions. The exercise of my activity is mine, but in a determined act. Every act begins outside of me. The subjectivity is not the creation of the objects, of the space and of the time. It is a necessary a datum because to exercise itself. The realized act encounters a resistance; it is not only mine. Nevertheless, this resistance appears to the spirit if it is that reality which the spirit realizes effectively, as a given that realizes its spontaneity.

 

We have to recognize that the act, as act, is an expansion outside of itself. Its expansion has an origin that always flows, but fulfils itself outside itself. I recognize the limitation in which the act fulfils itself as act. There is always a limit, as I constitute myself through my act.

 

My act is limited. Willing itself is real, it limits itself. I place therefore necessarily in act a limit to the exercise of my act. This limit is established another subjective interiority, in relation to which I place myself as “I”. If it is not so, the “I” would be perfectly indefinite. And it is on account of this fact that I am not really being-in-myself but a being-there as given by a “you”.

 

The limit-willed is the condition of the reality of my act. It is in relation to another subjectivity, which promotes my being and provokes my spontaneity. Thus, me willing is really me willing limited through the mediation of the other. This other is a subject that I will, as other. Therefore, the other as other, who limits me, is paradoxically present in my interiority.

 

 

 

Every personal act, every truly human act, is therefore always a co-exercise, a collaboration. For me really in act is to discover myself united with one or with other subjects. The dynamism of my act is oriented towards the other. The subject is interrogative; to be is towards and through the other.

 

4.     The Act and the Real.

 

            I coincide necessarily with the origin of this dynamism which is mine, without able to assist the gushing or springing of the act. I do not become the other and other becoming me in the infinite game of mirrors. It is not a case of me mirroring the other and the other mirroring me. The other and myself would be engaged in a reality which precedes both. The act manifests its dynamism, drawing its reality from a foundation from which it emanates. The reality imposes itself to us without which we succeed to identify totally with it.

 

            However, all is mine in my act: I am that whom I make myself to be. Now, the act is not mine to the same title, which is real. I am constituted in my reality; but it is not the reality, which appropriates itself of me, I am what I make of myself. My act reveals itself as the exercise of spontaneity which realizes itself in the act in which I the subjective, engaging myself thus to participate dynamically to the reality; it is therefore under the motion of this reality which I recognize me as real. For the fact itself, occurring to affirm the primate of the real on my spontaneity. My act is founded on being: I the real exercise in the measure in which first of my being, it is. I cannot adhere and refute it than willing first of all that the real is that which is; from that moment I will the act as mine because I will a will more radical which it is real. I am not to being the first, it is the real that puts me and founds in my proper reality.

 

            This reality remains for me elusive: I do not coincide with it because it precedes my acts giving them their being. Because there is need to recognize that I participate to the real. I am fully being as whatever other subjectivity. Making this reality mine which founds me, I the act necessarily participates there.

 

            Being overcomes me. The subjective dynamism and the intersubjective is an answer to the motion of the reality to which I adhere, which I recognize, which I make. The desire specifies the spiritual dynamism of my act and the real, natural love, which is adhesion to the real. This natural love belongs to me rightly making it mine. The real is in me anteriorly to the “I”, love also is more profound of the desire, which expresses it. The movement more radical of my being is total adhesion to the reality, consensus to being.

 

B.    The Ontology of the Act of Being.

 

            Utilizing the category of the act, we understand being diversely which as a simply thing placed in front of the spirit. Being becomes perceived grace to a reflexive experience, which knows to relate the seen to its surging spiritual. The ontological categories of the act of being receive thus their exact sense . We will first of all talk of potency and of the act, we will see in the following how to distinguish the essence from existence.

 

1.     Act, Substance and Essence.

 

            Distinguishing the substance and the essence, we have distinguished being and its immanent intelligibility; now, the intelligibility of a being is conceivable outside of its existence, in fact, it is constituted by form and matter; neither the form nor the matter can exist separately; of their composition, in as much as necessary, neither one nor the other is the principle; it does not see itself because their union could generate the actual existence of this or that essence; it can think itself that which is composed without properly at the same time affirming the existence. The existence is not analytically contained in the rational essence, because from the possible it does not derive the real. In effect, that the essence is not all the substance it elevates this hereafter to the modes of gathering of the concepts. Because that which is, it is not justified by its only essence. To leave itself involving from this problematic is not evident; it requires a infinite respect of that which is, an ethical recovery which gives birth to the question: Why is this and not rather nothing?”. That which is is not in function of its essence but of its existence; that which exist exists “by cause” of its existence.

 

            However, the real is not accessible which through my act, the substance across the essence. The substance is not therefore that which transcends the possible without producing the relation with this; it needs that the essence would be impregnated of the substance, that this would be immanent, without to exist grace to an anterior essence.

 

            The reflexive experience has shown that the act is mine and it is real. The act is mine; it is its determination, its essence. It is mine in as much as it is real, meaning to say in as much as its essence is not closed in itself, but exercise of the real; its essence is not such that by means of being which there gives itself. “Act” evokes the origin of that which enters in the effective, which receives the real being; to say that the act is mine in as much as real is therefore to say that I am effectively departing from an origin that I am not, which is higher of me. Now the essence cannot be; I do not ascend from essence to existence, from mine to the real, according to the order of abstract rationality. But the act is real to the condition of my being; the reality of the act is placed, as reality, to condition that I recognize it as such, surging always fertile, which radiates all my acts. The real would not truly be real if it does not overflow to actualizing that which I am and the recognition that I have. In this sense, my act is the essence of a real that it gives of existence; the essence is that in which the existence gives itself its face, meaning to say its limit, its determination and its accessibility.

 

            If I am not place in being, it cannot know itself of taking reflectively. And I do not take myself reflectively than in being. Logically and ontologically I am deferred one to the other, in the manner that the reason is the ontological condition of the possible or of the logical essence, while the possible is the logical condition of the ontological real. We distinguish here two points of view, which invert the priority of the substance or of the essence, according to the case. “In as much as to the thing”, the substance is first; we  can adapt ourselves to this priority in the exercise of the real and assuming it as it gives itself  to being exercised. The point of view of “ as to us” is determined by the apparition of the substance, meaning to say from its essence, or from the act in as much as it is mine. The essence renders therefore the possible spiritual access to the substance, which, of the rest, gives itself there. The “as to us” fulfils itself so in “as to the thing”. 

 

2.     Act and Potency.

 

            The priority of the respective essence to the substance concerns the intelligible presentation of the substance. The spirit goes from more known to the less known, from my act to the exercised real; it can make it because the essence is essence of the substance, because my act is the exercise of the act of being which gives of being act.

 

            The binomial act-potency assumes here all the broadness of its sense. This binomial originates itself from the observation of a change in time, but immanent to a being; it establishes the categories of intelligibility. The experience of this immanence deepens the astonishment; it implies the sense of permanence of being, nevertheless the diversity of its apparitions; it requires that it would be known an inadequacy between being and its manifestations, between substance and accidents. This experience is common; it would contradict that which we have already established if it resolves itself the opposition substance-accident sustaining accidents and imagining a substance lacking whatever accident. But as sustaining the thesis opposed if the appearances of being go and become, they diversify themselves? If the substance is its accidents, it is identical to them, it comes and goes according to an identical rhythm, and it is never true. The  identity of the substance and of its accidents does not lead to pure phenomenalism of knowledge? Certainly, the substances of this world come and go; the power of death extends itself to all that is born and becomes; moreover, while the substance remains as presence, it modifies itself and more than in an accessory manner. The experience of the becoming of being implies the recognition of a substance which is permanent, which, without ceasing to be itself, is first this then that, identifying itself and distinguishing from its appearances; that which becomes without nevertheless ceasing to be, at least, as long as it remains in being.

 

            How is substantial change possible? It is not sufficient to allege the exterior causes of being, because the problem concerns being itself, in its identical being towards its diversity. An exterior cause explains nothing, at least that being can under go it, receiving the determination, making it proper. To recognize this disponibility of being is equivalent to engage the understanding of the binomial act-potency.

 

            A becoming ‘A’ because it has the potency to becoming ‘A’. It is therefore in potency that which is not accomplished, fullness of a desirable state, but to which it tends; the potency is therefore privation of the act. It is not pure indetermination, because it is opened to act, but not complete determination. Moreover, in the measure in which it is determined, it is already in act, and not pure potency. Potency, as potency, is not; it has all its being of its correlative act.

 

            In the logical order, the form is determination, the principle of unity of an indeterminate matter. Matter is thus in potency in relation to the form which is its act; it in fact exist intelligibly in act, receiving the form which reunites its elements and individualizes them; the form perfects therefore matter which is in potency to being formed, it is disponible to a diversity of possible forms. The intelligibility is a perfection; a matter without form would be pure potency, meaning to say absence of act, no limit; “prime matter” cannot be a possitivity; it is intelligible in itself; however, it is the potency more indeterminate which the act puts in form; the prime matter is therefore inconceivable according to the proper nature, but it is necessarily thought, therefore thinkable, in as much as correlative to the act of the beings that become.

 

 

            The intelligible form is the act of quantified matter, but it is not the ultimate act. The form does not make the existence of matter because, as we have already said, the form and matter, they do not exist one without the other, neither one by means of the other. And it is because that the logical order through which the form is act must overturn into an ontological order where the intelligible form receives its reality. It cannot receive it from matter, because this is the act and it cannot be in potency its proper act; it comes therefore that the form which actuates matter would itself be actuated.

 

            The ultimate act is the act of being. Philosophy can cease to the consideration of the formal act; it is then essentialist; its horizon is determined by the essence; the substance is not accessible than by means of intelligibility, which it gives itself. If philosophy ascends again to the act of being, it is existential, because it investigates the first principle of that which is in as much as it is. The reflection explains then the judgement in as much as the concrete synthesis is more than predicative; if the form is predicable, this comes in as much as its subject is the matter from which it is abstracted; but because the predication would be possible, it happens that the subject could give its predicate the mode of affirming it in reality. Essentialist philosophy considers the form the ultimate act of the subject; the existentialist philosophy applies itself demonstrating in the way that the form is act, not departing from the abstracted intelligibility, but departing from the concrete subject to which judgement, as concrete synthesis, refers it.

 

            The metaphysical sense of the binomial act-potency has a place departing from the reflective experience. The substance is towards its essence as the act in comparisons of potency. The act receives then the precise meaning; it is completeness and fullness; it is not through the essence a estrange substance. In as much as my act is mine, I exercised and me really appropriate of an origin departing from which I become real.

 

            My act is act because the real there put itself in the indefinite fecundity of its primordial energy; my act appears from that moment as participation to the act, which is being. The relation of my act to its reality is the relation of potency and act. My act, in as much as it is limited, is potency; it receives in fact of being; it is not the origin of its efficacy; it acts through participation to the real, to the original act of being that gives of being act. The original act inscribes itself in my act, it sustains it, sustaining rather the attraction, the active potency that I am.

 

            Reflective analysis in a way shows the distinction between act and potency. The distinction of act and of potency is operated first of all according to the necessity of the intelligence of that which exists without having in itself the principle of its being. In an essentialist perspective, the potency is determinable and the act determined; and it is on account of this that the potency must be of the same genus as of the act; however, the determinable is not identical to the determined and rather it is really distinct. The existential perspective, assumed by the reflective analysis, goes more to the basis. The recognition of the limits of my act is the recognition of its reality at the same time that the recognition of an act that measures it. My reality is so originated in a higher level than itself, although that which measures me renders itself present in my act proper and real. I cannot be real in act if I would not have the potency; I am not in act than receiving the being; nevertheless, the act which operates is mine, and not only the transcendent act of which I do not have responsibility. Thus, my act and real is act, because it is in potency to being acted; however, this potency is paradoxically in act, but with out having in itself the origin of its effectivity. The real distinction between act and potency is based on the recognition of the act that I am, of which I am not the origin, that I am therefore also in potency, really. 

 

3.     Essence and Existence.

 

            The distinction of essence and existence, finally, clarifies itself in the light of the binomial potency-act. My act is in potency in reference to the real which gives it existence; this real is mine, but it transcends me in that which my existence comes from it; I am not the origin of my existence; but this origin realizes itself in me as in its essence, in as much as my act is real.

 

            The act is the perfection of the potency; the existence is the perfection of the essence. From the point of view of knowledge, the perfection comes after that which is known; I know first of all the essence, and the substance is hereafter that of which understanding makes use of, hereafter the concepts. Through understanding, existence does not join to the essence; it cannot itself be than an essence logically determinable; the act, reduced to concept, does not join to the potency which would not be to its face in the order of its intelligible essence; it arrives to such point so than the existence, placed by means of the understanding, it appears as an accident of the intelligible essence; the existence in itself does not add precise intelligibility. The legitimacy of this position comes from the fact that the existent is known in its essence. It is true that an act without potency would be a substance without essence, a form without matter, in such mode that it could not itself, in any case, know it as act, because it would not be proportionate to the understanding. The potency, in this perspective, perfects the act; in it the act renders itself to knowing; without this the act of being is nothing for understanding.

 

            But the experience of being does not reduced itself to the sole proof of conceptual knowledge; there is the hereafter of the essence, a withdrawing of being without which it annuls itself in front of the spirit; the encounter with the other and the reflection on the act testify it. Of the rest, the act is the perfection of the potency. Already according to the logic of the categories the act is first. It cannot itself, in fact, conceive potency that would be ordained to an act which completes it; in itself, it is a privation, waiting and desiring of the act; and it is on account of this that the potency is definite in function of that which perfects it, while the act do not convey any intelligibility to definite being from that which is rather the privation. Potency is by definition possibility of being; it is impossible without that which completes it, while the act is that which is, without including the potency.  This logic of categories puts on guard the understanding against its reductive tendency; it invites it to open itself to an intelligence more elevated of existence.

           

            Existence is the act of essence which is potency. The comprehension of the binomial essence-existence towards the binomial potency-act depends from a decision which passes essentialists philosophy in existentialist philosophy; the rational foundation of this decision shows that knowledge desires to know not the essences, but the substance, meaning to say that which exist actually. This desire of knowledge is deepened in the experience of the encounter of the other, of which the concepts of essentialist philosophy cannot render in to account; the uniqueness, the existent, depends from being, hereafter its formal essence in which it renders itself present intelligibly; this unique, that other, of which I am not the principle, is mark leading to the ontological question: “Why is this so, and not nothing?” to comprehend the unique existent by means of the act which essential determinations are of the potencies put in evidence a decision which preoccupies itself of  restoring them their rights. The priority of the act on potency reverberates itself in the priority of existence on the essence; for to being, it is and it exists as a concrete being. Also if the individuality is determined by the rational form, this identity is not that which is than because it exists; the essential unity symbolises the existential unity; now there is more in existence than what I can say, than in its essence. The existent surprises , without which the astonishment could reabsorb itself in a new knowledge of essences.

 

            No essence can make a substance; only the substance is, and gives itself intelligibly, even in a way inadequate, in the essence.  The distinction between the substance and the essence, being the first real act of the second, it founds the distinction between existence and essence. This distinction does not mean only that the ideal essence is not the actual existing, or that from thought it is not real. It takes its metaphysical weight when it comprehends itself that existence gives itself really in the essence, as the act in the potency, in accordance to its internal dynamism. The essence, in as much as potency already actual, does not have in itself but existence. The real distinction between existence and essence have here its meaning. It is not the distinction between two things of the world; the essence does not exist out side of existence and existence does not have veracity outside of its essence. With real distinction it tells us only that the essence is not the origin of existence of actual being which determines it.

 

            The comprehension of this distinction comes from a reflection on the act, at the same time mine and real. It does not however render only as a “subjective” act. The reflection has in fact recognized the limit of my act; it assumes so in the interior manner the evidence of the multiplicity of being. This multiplicity characterises the finality of every being in its same existence. The real distinction of existence and of the essence values therefore for every finite being, limited by another finite being, which leaves itself illumined by the act of the original being. No finite being is the origin of its own existence.

 

            The distinction of existence and of the essence remains so to the problematic of metaphysical causality, which comes from the profoundness of the distinction between act and potency. The accomplishment of this reflection is operated when it is recognized the being that give itself, when the ascending dialectics, going to the extreme of that which is accessible in our world, leaves itself inverting, recognizing that the spiritual opening does not have the sense that if being gives itself actively, in the manner by creating itself this spiritual opening. Such overturn is no other than that of the analogy.

 

CONCLUSION:

 

            Intelligence perceives the unity of being to which it relates everything its points of view; it considers this unity as intelligible, without however acquiring an exhaustive knowledge. The intelligible unity resides in the horizon of the effort of the intelligence; it is however already accorded the finality of assuring the search of the understanding. Now in itself, the unity of being flees to the understanding than separates, for the fact that it is existential and not only formal. The intelligence, if it cannot surpass the rights of the understanding, it cannot however be all than to see the intelligible unity of existence; but it considers that which is formally, and it accords itself to the existence of being which gives itself to it in its form. For the understanding, the form is in front of matter as the act is in front of potency; but in reality, the substantial unity, at the same time form and matter, is actualized higher of itself. The understanding reaches so its perfection affirming the formal act, but not becoming equally to the true perfection which is the real act, the act of being which is affirmable because it gives itself to the intelligence actualizing it. The attraction of the intelligence for formal act, the intelligible unity, preludes the spiritual attraction towards the real act; the rational search is supported and overcome by a desire which goes as far as to the real act for uniting itself. It is thus that the will accompanies and conquers the understanding, to the same title which the existence surpasses the essence.