De Piscibus Libri V et De Cetis Liber Unus

the common source of the subject with the object, should exist and be called as such. But indeed, this entire unity of the subject with the object is not necessarily of this kind, except precisely when the subject is thinking. Furthermore, every deduction of derived or special reasons from one principle or absolute and inherently true reason does not take place except in the realm, so to speak, of reason or formal truth. Finally, that necessary identification of diverse things, without which there would be neither affirmation nor negation, likewise pertains to the form of thinking. But whether two objects, which are present in the mind and are held by the thinker at a given moment in a certain respect as one—that is, are conceived under the form of unity—are truly one by their very nature, which we are compelled to attribute to those things that we cannot think of without the notion of existence, or whether they merely seem to be one to the thinker at that moment, that thinker truly cannot determine and decide while judging so formally, however much he may be a subject-object himself, that is, thinking from his own subjective unity with the object. This, of course, depends on the matter, as everyone either proclaims or feels; but the matter (I refer to the internal matter of thinking) does not depend on that mode by which it is now thought by this or that person, that is, reduced from diversity to unity. Rather, the ideal object, that is, that which is in the mind and because of which the mind can rightly be called a subject-object—whenever it confronts the mind to be thought of along with existence—is subject to necessity or the reality of its own nature, so much so that the ideal object is identified formally with another in vain and erroneously, unless it is necessarily and