The true and complete understanding of an idea goes far beyond the first apprehension of the idea by the intelligence, although more often than not this apprehension is taken for understanding itself. While it is true that the immediate evidence conveyed to us by any particular idea is, on its own level, a real understanding, there can be no question of its embracing the whole extent of the idea since it is primarily the sign of an aptitude to understand that idea in its completeness.

Any truth can in fact be understood at different levels and according to different ‘conceptual dimensions’, that is to say according to an indefinite number of modalities which correspond to all the possible aspects, likewise indefinite in number, of the truth in question.

This way of regarding ideas accordingly leads to the question of spiritual realization, the doctrinal expressions of which clearly illustrate the ‘dimensional indefinity’ of theoretical conceptions. Philosophy, considered from the standpoint of its limitations—and it is the limitations of philosophy which confer upon it its specific character—is based on the systematic ignoring of what has been stated above.

In other words, philosophy ignores what would be its own negation; moreover, it concerns itself solely with mental ‘schemes’ which, with its claim to universality, it likes to regard as absolute, although from the point of view of spiritual realization these schemes are merely so many virtual or potential and unused objects, in so far at least as they refer to true ideas; when, however, this is not the case, as practically always occurs in modern philosophy, these schemes are reduced to the condition of mere devices that are unusable from a speculative point of view and are therefore without any real value.

As for true ideas, those, that is to say, which more or less implicitly suggest aspects of the total Truth, and hence this Truth itself, they become by that very fact intellectual ‘keys’ and indeed have no other function; this is something that metaphysical thought alone is capable of grasping. So far as philosophical or ordinary theological thought is concerned, there is on the contrary an ignorance affecting not only the nature of the ideas which are believed to be completely understood, but also and above all the scope of theory as such; theoretical understanding is in fact transitory and limited by definition, though its limits can only be more or less approximately defined.

 

To return to what was said above about the understanding of ideas, a theoretical notion may be compared to the view of an object. Just as this view does not reveal all possible aspects, or in other words the integral nature of the object, the perfect knowledge of which would be nothing less than identity with it, so a theoretical notion does not itself correspond to the integral truth, of which it necessarily suggests only one aspect, essential or otherwise.(1) In the example just given error corresponds to an inadequate view of the object whereas a dogmatic conception is comparable to the exclusive view of one aspect of the object, a view which supposes the immobility of the seeing subject.

As for a speculative and therefore intellectually unlimited conception, this may be compared to the sum of all possible views of the object in question, views which presuppose in the subject a power of displacement or an ability to alter his viewpoint, hence a certain mode of identity with the dimensions of space, which themselves effectually reveal the integral nature of the object, at least with respect to its form which is all that is in question in the example given. Movement in space is in fact an active participation in the possibilities of space, whereas static extension in space, the form of our bodies for example, is a passive participation in these same possibilities.

This may be transposed without difficulty to a higher plane and one may then speak of an ‘intellectual space', namely the cognitive all—possibility which is fundamentally the same as the divine Omniscience, and consequently of ‘intellectual dimensions’ which are the ‘internal’ modalities of this Omniscience; Knowledge through the Intellect is none other than the perfect participation of the subject in these modalities, and in the physical world this participation is effectively represented by movement.

When speaking, therefore, of the understanding of ideas, we may distinguish between a ‘dogmatic’ understanding, comparable to the view of an object from a single viewpoint, and an integral or speculative understanding, comparable to the indefinite series of possible views of the object, views which are realized through indefinitely multiple changes of point of view. Just as, when the eye changes its position, the different views of an object are connected by a perfect continuity, which represents, so to speak, the determining reality of the object, so the different aspects of a truth, however contradictory they may appear and notwithstanding their indefinite multiplicity, describe the integral Truth which surpasses and determines them.

We would again refer here to an illustration we have already used; a dogmatic affirmation corresponds to a point which, as such, contradicts by definition every other point, whereas a speculative formulation is always conceived as an element of a circle which by its very form indicates principially its own continuity, and hence the entire circle and the Truth in its entirety.

It follows from the above that in speculative doctrines it is the ‘point of view’ on the one hand and the ‘aspect’ on the other hand which determine the form of the affirmation, whereas in dogmatism the affirmation is confused with a determinate point of view and aspect, thus excluding all others.(2)