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
1
Astonishment names the original wonder. It is the preferred term because contemporary usage of the word
“wonder” easily slides into the sentimental. We are struck into astonishment. We do not think our way into
astonishment; we are overcome by astonishment. There is a certain shock or bite of otherness in
astonishment. There is also a certain receptivity, indeed patience. The givenness of being is offered for our
beholding. ( cf. William Desmond, “Being, Determination, and Dialectic: On the Sources of Metaphysical
Thinking”, The Review on Metaphysics, vol. XLVIII, no. 4, issue no. 192, June 1995, p. 736.)
2
Levinas gives an ethical dimension, rather than a phenomenological and epistemological, to the face. The
relation with the face can surely be dominated by perception, but what is specifically the face is what
cannot be reduced to that. There is first the very uprightness of the face, its upright exposure, without
defense. There is essential poverty in the face. It is what cannot become a content, which your thought
would embrace. It is uncontainable, it leads you beyond. Face and discourse are tied. The face speaks. It
speaks, it is in this that it renders possible and begins all discourse. [ cf. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and
Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), pp. 85-87.]
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.