Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

“Ultimated” and “non-ultimated” are said relatively, like end and means. In general, therefore, any concept that is the terminus and end of another may be called ultimated, so that one is ordered to the other. In this way one operation of the intellect is ordered to another, principles to conclusions, and reasoning to a perfect judgment. In all these cases there is something at which cognition comes to rest, called the ultimate, and something by which it tends toward that terminus, called a means or non-ultimate.

As for dialecticians, who treat names and significant words, the ultimated and non-ultimated concept are distinguished by this: the ultimated concerns the things signified, while the non-ultimated concerns the words that signify them. This helps discern Logic’s object: Logic does not treat things themselves insofar as they are things, as physics does, but the instruments by which things are known, which are for the most part significant words, when rightly disposed and ordered.

From this it follows that the ultimated and non-ultimated are not per se and formally essential differences of concepts, since they do not belong to the object insofar as it constitutes the knowable nature; rather they belong to the ordering of one concept or cognition to another. They therefore add to a concept only relations or dispositions toward objects, not insofar as these are knowable and specifying, but as ordered like a means and a terminus. The essential difference of cognition is taken from the object as motive, specifying, and knowable; everything else consists in consequent relations or connotations. Yet these relations sometimes presuppose a distinction of objects, although they do not formally constitute it. Thus the ultimated and non-ultimated concepts at issue here occur between distinct concepts: one concerns the thing signified and another the word signifying it. Since they concern different objects, they are distinct concepts by presupposition, not formally by virtue of being ultimated and non-ultimated.

One cannot say, as some authors teach, that the concept of a significant word signifies by convention the object of an ultimated concept—not because the concept itself has been imposed to signify, but because its object, namely the word, signifies a thing by imposition. This is impossible, however, because a concept is such a natural likeness of its object that it in no way derives conventional signification from the object. Rather, the concept naturally signifies that very conventional signification of the word, as its image. The conventional signification of the word is therefore not an exercise of the concept’s signifying, but the object signified by the concept.

THE QUESTION THAT REMAINS HERE, THEN, is whether a non-ultimated concept of a word represents only the word itself and not its signification, or represents both.

Almost everyone agrees that some ordering toward signification is required for a concept to be non-ultimated. For if a word is considered without qualification merely as a sound produced by an animal, it clearly belongs to an ultimated concept, since it is considered as a thing, as Philosophy treats it.

Some say that the signification of a word need not be represented in a non-ultimated concept; it is enough that the signification be exercised or presupposed as habitually known.

It is truer, however, that the signification itself must also be represented in the non-ultimated concept. It is called non-ultimated precisely insofar as something is conceived at which one does not finally rest, but which is taken as a means to a further terminus. Only the word’s signification constitutes it as a means relative to the thing signified. Therefore, if the signification is not conceived, neither is that by which the word is constituted as a means or non-ultimate conceived. Nor is it enough to say that the signification is exercised, since the word as represented there does not exercise its conventional signification¹. All that is exercised in that concept is natural signification; therefore the conventional signification of the conceived word is not exercised but represented. It is not necessary to attain the very essence of conventional signification and the relation of imposition; it suffices to know that there is signification. Still less is habitual knowledge of the signification or imposition sufficient: habitual knowledge is cognition only in first act, and unless it passes into second act, the concept cannot be called actually non-ultimated, since a concept is an actual representation. Habitual knowledge of signification, then, cannot denominate an actual concept as non-ultimated.

BUT YOU WILL OBJECT: A countryman who hears the Latin word “animal,” whose meaning he does not know, forms a non-ultimated concept of that word, since he does not pass on to the thing signified, and yet he does not know its meaning. Therefore representation of the meaning is not required for a non-ultimated concept.

It is confirmed because concepts signify the same thing for everyone, as Aristotle says in On Interpretation I, ch. 1². But word meanings are not the same for everyone. Therefore non-ultimated concepts do not represent word meanings; otherwise they would not signify the same thing for everyone.

THE ANSWER IS that the countryman who hears that word either knows that the word is significant—at least, that it signifies something—because he sees people speaking with it, although he does not know what it signifies; or he does not know at all that it is significant. In the first case, he forms a non-ultimated concept because he truly knows the word as significant. In the second, it will be an ultimated concept, since it represents the word only as a sound, not as a sign and means leading to something else. When he perceives that it signifies, without yet knowing what the signification was imposed to signify, his concept is called non-ultimated: although in fact it does not lead to the particular thing signified as an ultimate, it at least leads in general and confusedly, owing to the subject’s ignorance of the signification.³

To the confirmation, concepts signify the same thing for everyone when they concern the same object and are formed in the same way, for they are natural likenesses. Thus all non-ultimated concepts representing words insofar as significant represent the same thing for everyone in whom they are so formed. If they are not formed in the same way for everyone, because not everyone knows the word’s signification, they are not the same concepts and do not signify the same thing for everyone.

Second, it is argued: If a non-ultimated concept represents the word’s signification, then when it represents an equivocal term either several concepts of that word are formed, or only one. If only one, there will be equivocation in the mind, since it signifies a word with several unconnected meanings. If several concepts, it follows that no concept of an equivocal word exists in the mind, because a single word is never presented with several meanings; consequently, it cannot be uttered orally, since only what is conceived in the mind is uttered. But no equivocal term is then conceived, because several concepts of the word are formed, each having only one meaning, and so each will be univocal.

THE ANSWER IS that there is only one non-ultimated concept of an equivocal term, for example, “dog,” because it represents one word having several meanings, just as a concept representing a man represents a man having several accidents. This does not entail equivocation in that concept, because the several meanings are not formally in the concept but objectively. The concept represents an object having several meanings, namely that word, through a single natural likeness representing one word affected by several impositions. Equivocation in the mind would follow only if one concept had several formal meanings, which are natural likenesses; these cannot be multiplied in one concept. But there is no difficulty in one concept representing several meanings of a word or sign as the thing represented, since this occurs by a single formal representation.

You will insist: That non-ultimated concept of an equivocal term is ordered to several ultimated concepts, because it is ordered to several things signified, and not by one ordering but several, which belong to the concept’s representation. Therefore, just as a word is equivocal because several signifying relations are directed to several things signified, the concept should be called equivocal because of its several relations to several ultimated concepts.

The answer is that the non-ultimated concept is ordered to several ultimated concepts by one ordering on the side of formal representation, but by several on the side of the object represented. For by one natural signification it represents a word ordered, through several impositions, to several things signified. Thus on the side of the object it represents several relations belonging to the word toward several things and several ultimated concepts, and so that concept represents several relations; formally, however, it has one representation of that word affected by several relations.

Finally, it is argued: The same concept of a word that is non-ultimated will become ultimated merely if the word is stripped of its signification, because it will signify that word as a thing at which one finally rests. Therefore it does not differ essentially from an ultimated concept, since it can become ultimated without any intrinsic change. Nor can one say that the word will take the place of a terminus relative to itself because it represents itself; otherwise any thing representing itself would have a non-ultimated concept insofar as it represents itself.

THE ANSWER IS that those concepts do not differ essentially precisely because one is ultimated and the other non-ultimated, as was shown; rather, they differ because they are presupposed to concern different objects, from which essential diversity is taken. Thus, if a word were stripped of its signification and the intellect knew this and formed a concept of the word as non-signifying, that concept would already be distinct from the non-ultimated concept previously formed of it as significant. It would be an ultimated concept of the word as a thing, not as a sign. But if the intellect did not know that it had been stripped of signification and continued the prior concept of it as significant, that concept would remain non-ultimated as before, though false; its falsity would change, not its essential representation.

Observe that although the relations of ultimated and non-ultimated concepts differ in species as different modes of concepts, they do not formally function as specifications of the concepts themselves. They make the modes specifically distinct, but not the intrinsic nature of the concepts themselves, except insofar as the latter have objects distinct in species.