Toward Peace: Truth Is the Agent That Mediates Harmony

By Lyle R. Strathman

Toward Peace proposes that truth is essential in all matters of social intercourse for humanity to progress on any meaningful path toward peace. The manuscript progresses from the notion that there is objective truth to the notion that the enactment of truth in human activity is essential for the establishment of peace, but it admits that human beings tend to wander between knowledge and ignorance and between a beneficent will and a concupiscent will.
The manuscript explores, among other matters, the contemporary subjects of fundamentalism and laissez-faireism, individualism and collectivism, economics, evolution, abortion, education, and government from philosophical, scientific, religious, and artistic points of view. This is accomplished by interweaving philosophical ideas expressed by Plato and Aristotle with parables and aphorisms expressed by ancient Indian and Chinese wise men, with Judaic and Christian scripture, and with contemporary economic data and in vogue political notions. The book is organized into three distinct parts.
Part I, Truth, articles 1 through 5, establishes the notion that there is objective truth, that humanity can, at least, partially know these truths, and that a foundation of truth is essential for the establishment of any meaningful path toward peace. It develops the notion that just as the laws of physics must correctly reflect the physical parameters that an object presents, so too civil laws must correctly reflect the human parameters that a human being presents. In other words, law must reflect that truth which a being presents of itself, itself. The finality of this part suggests that truthful enactments by humanity are acts of love that pave the way toward peace.
Article 1 is a short dissertation on human discord. It denotes that since the age of reason, there has been an emerging notion that majority rule democracy coupled with humanitys technical prowess would lead toward peace, but which history has shown not to be the case.
Article 2 establishes the accepted idea that there is a realitythere is real beingbut also that human beings are limited in their ability to acquire complete knowledge of such reality.
Article 3 establishes the idea that there is truth in every being, in every object: there is objective truth. The article presents the notion that objective truth presents itself as the nature of a thing in complete correspondence with its substance; objective truth is the nature of a thingits actin agreement with its substancethat which it is. It also presents the notion that human beings come to know an object by that nature which the object presents of itself; subjective truth devolves from objective truth.
Article 4 advances the idea that laws are humanly contrived statements derived from the intrinsic truths in the beings to which they refer or relate; true laws may not violate the intrinsic truths in the beings to which they refer or relate.
Article 5 proposes the idea that a love of truth and its compliment, the enactment and application of true laws, are precursors to the path leading toward peace.
Part II, Contentions, articles 6 through 11, offers commentaries on some of the more contentious matters that cause social conflict in the contemporary world. The specific topics were chosen to show that truth is often marginalized or mutilated and even ignored or rejected during the course of humanitys search for answers in matters of social concern.
Article 6 is a dissertation on fundamentalism and laissez-faireism and shows how each leads toward social discord. Fundamentalism rejects those truths that fall outside its pre-ordained dictum while laissez-faireism simply rejects truths not of its choice.
Article 7 is a study of the human social composition, including a logical diagram, which analyses human fortune, intellect, free will, and physical condition. It develops the notion that because of human frailty and finitude, majority opinion and majority-rule a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483622125

Lyle R. Strathman

Lyle Strathman was born in Kansas in 1935, during the decade of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. After the Second World War and during the onset of the Cold War, he graduated from college with a double major—liberal arts and electrical engineering. He worked in an American industry, was married, and raised five children while observing a transition in economic emphasis from the production of wealth to the consumption of wealth, coupled with a regression in moral and ethical standards. In these latter social environs, he mentally observed “something is wrong” and began an intellectual inquiry into what causes and effects might lead toward peace. This manuscript, Toward Peace, is the result of that inquiry.

Book preview

TOWARD PEACE

Truth Is the Agent That Mediates Harmony

Lyle R. Strathman

Copyright © 2013 by Lyle R. Strathman.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013906363

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4836-2211-8

                Softcover        978-1-4836-2210-1

                eBook             978-1-4836-2212-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 10/16/2014

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I Truth

Article 1 To Begin With

Article 2 There Is Real Being

Article 3 Truth Is Intrinsic to Real Being

Section 3.1 Truth Is an Intellectual Property

Section 3.2 Truth Is an Intellectual Property in Non-intellectual Real Being

Section 3.3 Truth Is a Free-Willed Property

Section 3.4 Degrees of Truth

Article 4 Law Is a Derivative of Truth

Article 5 The Enactment of Truth Is Love

Section 5.1 Justice Is a Derivative of Law

Section 5.2 Mercy Is a Derivative of Justice

Section 5.3 Love Is Intrinsic to Mercy and to Real Being

Section 5.4 Love Is a Property of Free Will

Section 5.5 Love Is a Property of Free Will in Non-willing Real Being

Section 5.6 The Enactment of Truth Is Peace

Part II Contentions

Article 6 Commentary on Fundamentalism and Laissez-faireism

Article 7 Commentary on the Human Spectrum

Section 7.1 Fortune

Section 7.2 The Animate or Physical Characteristic

Section 7.3 The Human Intellect

Section 7.4 The Human Free Will

Section 7.5 The Human Spectrum

Section 7.6 The Human Spectrum under Socialism

Section 7.7 Laissez-faire Democratism

Section 7.8 The Spectrum of Human Intellect and Free Will

Appendix 7.1 Table of the Human Spectrum

Appendix 7.2 Table of the Human Spectrum with Equality of Fortune

Appendix 7.3 Table of the Spectrum of Human Intellect and Free Will

Article 8 Commentary on Economics, Taxes, and the Working Poor

Section 8.1 Wealth and Income Distribution

Section 8.2 Taxation

Section 8.3 Ponzi-Keynesian Economics

Appendix 8.1 U.S. Gross Domestic Product and Federal Debt (1928-2012)

Appendix 8.2 U.S. GDP, Federal Debt, and America’s Total Debt (1990–2012) (in Trillions of Current Year Dollars)

Appendix 8.3 America’s Total Debt (2011, 2007, 2002, and 1992)

Appendix 8.4 Simplified Time Line of Ponzi-Keynesian Economics

Article 9 Commentary on Martin Heidegger’s the Nothing

Article 10 Commentary on Evolution

Article 11 Commentary on Abortion and the Fetus

Part III Peace

Article 12 Liberal Arts Education

Article 13 Panocracy: An Alternative to Majority rule Democracy

Appendix 13.1 Constitution for a Federated Panocratic Republic

Article 14 The Divine Personhood

Section 14.1 The Existence of God

Section 14.2 Act, Intellect, and Free Will of God

Section 14.3 Nonsequency in God

Subsection 14.3.1 God’s Free Will Knows and Acts

Subsection 14.3.2 God’s Act Knows and Free Wills

Subsection 14.3.3 God’s Intellect Acts and Free Wills

Section 14.4 The Divine Personhood

Article 15 Concerning Christianity

Article 16 In Consideration of the Whole: God, Man, and the Universe

Section 16.1 God

Section 16.2 Man

Section 16.3 The Universe

Section 16.4 In Consideration of the Whole

Notes

T HIS BOOK IS dedicated to all who have gone before that attempted, however slightly, in some way to establish patterns of peace in their lives or in the lives of others. Beyond this generalization, acknowledgment is given to those from ancient to contemporary times who have intellectually explored and written on the subjects of truth and peace. And further, this book is dedicated to the hope that future humankind will find the path that leads toward peace.

Introduction

S OMETHING IS WRONG.

Social discord and conflict are the long-standing subjects of human history from the time of Herodotus, the world’s first historian (circa 484-425 BC), to the present day. In defense of this observation, it seems that contemporary humanity has assumed that the incorporation of majority rule democracy into their societies, coupled with the inventions and applications of science and technology, would lessen these conflicts; such has not been the case—to wit, the murderous and destructive wars and social purgations of the twentieth century and the grim worldwide terrorism that is being waged at the onset of the twenty-first century. Taking note of these and other near-term human discords seems appropriate to exemplify that, indeed, something remains amiss in human society; something is wrong.

In the spring of 1945, as the Second World War was coming to an end, humanity became acutely aware of the atrocities committed by one of the defeated nations: Nazi Germany and its political leader, Chancellor Adolf Hitler. At the time, there were popular expressions in the United States that such atrocities, dubbed crimes against humanity by the people of the victorious allied nations, could not occur in the United States because we are a democratic nation. This societal and governmental view was and continues to be particularly puzzling given that the ascension of the tyrant Adolf Hitler and his Nazi politics into German governmental power occurred within the framework of Germany’s democratic society and its democratic government: the so-called Weimar Republic.

It would be remiss to ignore that the ancient Republic of Rome carried out endless military campaigns of offensive war in its conquest of the Mediterranean World and Europe, and which produced the murderous and supposedly insane Caesars. In addition, democratic Athens launched wars against its neighbors in failed attempts to unify Greece under its authority. It exiled the philosopher Anaxagoras because his ideas disagreed with those of their prevailing religion, and it summarily condemned to death the renowned philosopher Socrates because of his theosophy and because he mistrusted public opinion, majority opinion, and democratic opinion. It even seems the United States has expunged unalienable rights and self-evident truth from its pioneered social teachings, replacing them with a supremacy of democratic majority opinion or popular opinion as the determining criteria for delineating right from wrong and true from false. Moreover, there seems to be a presumption that technological progression built upon inexpensive energy and government economic stimulation will perpetually sustain majority rule democratic social development and provide the cure-alls for those social ills that emanate from an anarchic lifestyle.

However, it should not be out of hand asserted that all aspects of democratic philosophy are to be distrusted and therefore repudiated and denounced any more than it should be asserted that all aspects of any other form of any human organizational system or endeavor should be wholly distrusted. Indeed, the original Constitution of the United States established a governmental framework that might be characterized as a federated-democratic-republic. It incorporated aspects of each governmental form: a monarchic judiciary, a federated democratic executive, and a two-tiered legislature—a federated oligarchic Senate and a democratic House of Representatives. It further assured its citizenry and each of the individual states within the federation that

the powers not delegated to the United States (the national government) by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.¹

It also guaranteed to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government² to ensure that governmental power would not be singularly ruled monarchic, wealth-ruled oligarchic, or majority ruled democratic.

The intent of this composition is not to lecture or sermonize but to form some manner of understanding of the nature of peace, what might be some of the obstacles to its accomplishment, and how it might be attained. It should be noted that everything written herein is in some form, manner, or other pre-existent to this composition. With this in mind, it attempts to address a path toward peace and to describe man’s difficulties in achieving it. From a historical perspective, it seems that the essence of man’s movement toward peace must be something greater than the mere absence of war because societies and nations seem always to have labored during the lulls between wars to wallow in euphoric affluence and indifference, to engage in domestic social squabbles, and to set agendas and establish military preparedness for the next war.

In 1945, then, the accepted idea that majority rule democracy could provide humanity with the agents necessary to establish a path toward the eventual achievement of peace began to come into question. This inquisition was reinforced with the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle, particularly those pertaining to their political dissertations that outlined why societies and their governments fail. However, it remained to determine what ideological concepts might direct humankind toward peace.

Within the published works of Plato and Aristotle, there seems to be a single underlying theme or argument in all of their philosophical dissertations—the search for truth. This observation seems well founded, given the extent to which Plato and Aristotle went in their attempts to discover and promulgate truth. Socrates must be included in this philosophical consortium since he introduced the idea of questioning every answer until what seemed the most truthful was acquired. Aristotle added the formal principles of reasoning, that is, logic, to Socrates’s teaching methodology—a stepped progression of intellectual inquiry that eventually leads toward truth. It seems, then, that the acquisition and acceptance of truth might offer, at least, a starting point from which to build a path toward peace. The addition of brotherly love as derived from the teachings of Christianity and its ancestral heritage, Judaism, to this foundation of truth seems to reinforce this path toward peace.

This composition begins by establishing that there is a reality—there is real being. It then proceeds to deduce that truth is intrinsic to all real beings; there is objective truth in every real being that is independent of humanity’s knowledge of it. The objective truths that exist in beings precede the subjective truths that exist in men’s minds. Now once truth is acquired and accepted, it needs to be promulgated and put into action for it to have any human value: it must be enacted. The enactment of law and its implementation, justice, provides the means by which truth is given human value: natural law, physical law, civil law, theological law, and so forth.

Coupled with the search, acquisition, acceptance, and promulgation of truth, however, are the unlearned and concupiscent sides of humanity, where concupiscence is herein regarded as humanity’s selfish desire for objects, persons, or experiences other than those that are best or most good; a concupiscent will is a covetous will. It seems ignorance and concupiscence can incite dubious theorems, opinions, prejudices, and false judgments that are contentious and even counter to truth-in-being and which then become exploited by the leadership of a vulnerable humanity, a leadership that panders to the wanton side of a majority ruled democracy. Therefore, law, justice, and their application become muddled in confusion between truth and falsehood, and the question then must be asked not only whether peace is humanly attainable but also whether humanity even desires peace.

This manuscript attempts to address some of humanity’s social problems in attaining peace and then to establish an approach by which humanity can intellectually, willfully, and actually begin a movement toward peace. Part I, Truth—articles 1 through 5—establishes the notions of real existence and objective truth. It then goes on to establish that subjective truth based on objective truth is the only foundation of true law and that the love of truth and the enactment of true law is essential for any advancement toward peace. Part II, Contentions—articles 6 through 11—are commentaries on some of the more contentious matters that hinder contemporary humanity’s advancement toward peace: fundamentalism and laissez-faireism, majority rule, economic inequity, nihilism, evolution, and abortion. Part III, Peace—articles 12 through 16—provides and demonstrates concepts that establish a path toward peace, concepts that include liberal arts education and panocracy, that is, pan all + kratein rule, and a consideration for the whole of existence: God, man, and the universe.

The selected articles are meant to be insightful, to enkindle into the reader’s mind notions of truth, to awaken the reader’s mind to some of the more pronounced social discords in the emerging world of the twenty-first century, and then to present the argument that the enactment of truth is the only agent that leads toward peace.

PART I

Truth

ARTICLE 1

To Begin With

I T SEEMS THERE has always been discord between man and man, between man and nature, and even between man and God. Man’s selfish disregard for his fellow man has repeatedly nourished hypocrisy, poverty, theft, murder, rape, and war. When nature is wronged or erroneously set upon by man, it responds to man’s ignorance and disrespect of earth, sea, and sky by subjecting the environment to disease, barren soil, and infested waters, even by the extinction of vulnerable plant and animal life and the depletion of natural resources. Not all of humankind disbelieves in God, but because of self-centered pride, most simply ignore him. And man’s reliance and trust on his own political and technical prowess for solutions to all social problems, instead of searching and trusting in those truths grounded in God and/or in God’s nature, leaves humanity engulfed in ever-deepening ignorance and social pestilence. In particular, since the Age of Reason (circa AD 1600 to 1800), humanity and its leadership has embarked on and subscribed to a combination of two notions that it believes will deliver peace: the supremacy of majority rule democratism coupled with an infinity of technological progression. At the same time, humanity has not experienced less war and human denigration in these past centuries than before.

In this regard are the seemingly discordant social directions of some near-term democratic societies and the many atrocities they have committed against humanity, some of which are delineated as follows:

• The atrocities committed by the French demos, that is, the French people, the mob of the French Revolution, its Reign of Terror, and its subsequent elevation of Napoléon Bonaparte to the status of Emperor of France

• The pro-slavery stance of democratic United States and its solidification into society by that nation’s Supreme Court in its infamous DredScottv.Sandford decision

• The corralling and killing of Native Americans and the corresponding stealthy theft of their lands by immigrant U.S. citizens and their democratic governments, and the assertion by its heroic General Philip Henry Sheridan that the only good Indian is a dead Indian¹

• The starvation and killing of tens of millions of peasants, landowners, and free-enterprise individuals by the former Communist Russia and Communist China, nations governed by dictated singular, secular political party governments purported, at least, to be people’s republics, that is, democratic-republics

• The present world abortion horror, legalized and sustained by the democratic national government of the United States and other democratic nations, the magnitude of which exceeds that of any known violence perpetrated against humanity

No era was ever begun with more hope and momentum toward the prospect of improving the human condition and of achieving eventual peace than the twentieth century, and none has ended with more human doubt, discord, misdirection, and despair. During the twentieth century, humanity experienced greater famine, destructive war, and malevolence against humanity than has been recorded in previous history, while the pharmaceutical and medicinal industries, coupled with majority rule democratic processes, poised themselves to provide numerous paraphernalia and lifestyle antidotes to fulfill the concupiscent wants of the masses. Such is noted by the following:

• Potions to inhibit sleep and potions to induce sleep

• Potions to arouse sexuality and potions to suppress sexuality

• Pharmaceuticals to overcome shyness and pharmaceuticals to tranquilize

• Contrivances to inhibit conception and contrivances to promote conception

• Contrivances to induce abortions and medicines to curtail miscarriages

• Poisons to euthanize and medicines to promote longevity

• Jurisprudence that humanizes and jurisprudence that dehumanizes

• Taxes on the poor coupled with doles and subsidies distributed to the poor

• Taxes on the wealthy coupled with tax deductions for the wealthy

• Prohibitions of private gambling coupled with government promotions and sponsorships of public gambling

• Prohibitions of prostitution coupled with media theatrics that promote sexual promiscuity

Moreover, when individual persons deem these conflicting lifestyle antidotes to be ineffective, numerous hallucinatory or narcotic agents—prescription or non-prescription, legal or illegal—are available to alleviate unwanted intellectual and emotional stress and anxiety caused by society’s artificial and carefree, synthetic, and licentious lifestyle.

No nation was ever begot in a womb of more bountiful natural resources than the United States by the wealthiest, heartiest, most intelligent, most disciplined, and most religious people from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. However, during the course of the twentieth century, the United States, the most privileged society ever known to history, began to exhibit a growing list of expansive social ills as a result of its undisciplined and perhaps misguided populace—a nation in dissipation.

The following excerpts from the epilogue of Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ, wherein the author outlines Why Rome Fell, seem to parallel many of the social conditions now prevalent in the United States and perhaps in the democratic world at large:

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

A serious decline of population appears in the West after Hadrian… What had caused this fall in population? Above all, family planning. Practiced first by the educated classes, it had now seeped down to a proletariat . . . Though branded as a crime, infanticide (abortion) flourished as poverty grew. Sexual excesses may have reduced human fertility; the deferment of marriage had a like effect… the ablest men married latest, bred least, and died soonest.

Rome was not conquered by barbarian invasion from without, but by barbarian multiplication within.

Moral decay contributed to the dissolution… Moral and esthetic standards were lowered by the magnetism of the mass; and sex ran riot in freedom while political liberty decayed.

Rome was not destroyed by Christianity any more than by barbarian invasion; it was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and invasion came.

The economic causes of Rome’s decline (include) the inability of Italian industry to export the equivalent of Italian imports; the rising cost of armies, doles and public works; an expanding bureaucracy and a parasitic court; the depreciation of the currency; and the absorption of investment capital by confiscatory taxation.

The political causes of decay were rooted in one fact—that increasing despotism destroyed the citizen’s civic sense and dried up statesmanship at its source.

Local governments, overrun by imperial correctores and exactores, no longer attracted first-rate men.² (Which, being interpreted, infers that the Roman Imperial Government—the national or central government—exacted severe impositions upon local governors and local governing bodies.)

It is not, nor should it be assumed, that these observations are singularly ascribed to the United States. They seem, at least at the outset of the twenty-first century, to pertain to the entirety of Western civilization if not the world at large. In this regard, historians teach that there are telltale signs of impending human social upheavals, but also that the signs of such upheavals are generally ignored or pass unnoticed. In his much acclaimed work, A History of Greece, author J. B. Bury writes in the last paragraph of his book, in specific reference to the decline of ancient Greece but more generally in regard to the internal decline of any society, that no people that has ever borne the torch of civilization has been willing, or even able, to recognize that the hour of relinquishing sovereignty has come.³ These historical observations by Will Durant and J. B. Bury indicate that recovery from social decline is not very probable when society degenerates below some, perhaps indefinable, standard of human behavior.

ARTICLE 2

There Is Real Being

I T IS GENERALLY conceded that objects that exist independent of an observer’s mind are real, whereas those that exist only in the mind are imaginary. Further, objects that exist independent of the mind are said to have being and are therefore called real beings, whereas objects that exist only in the mind are said to be images or ideas and are therefore referred to as imaginary beings.

That innate property intrinsic to real beings and which distinguishes them from imaginary beings is called act. For this reason, real beings are also called actual beings or beings that are in-act. The name actor is given to a person who seemingly, but not actually, imparts life or act into an otherwise fictitious or imaginary being. Even so, the imaginary being does not become a real being; the imaginary being does not receive the property of act in itself but only through the actor. Real beings, then, are said to have act and to be in-act, that is, they exist and are capable of acting from their own intrinsic volition and are therefore known as actual beings. Now mental images of real objects are not the objects themselves but only images thereof and are therefore only imaginary objects. Mental images are real as images even though they exist only in the mind, but again they are not really the objects themselves; they are still only mental images of real or imaginary objects.

Works of art are real in themselves, that is, as objects of art, whereas the objects represented in them may be real or imaginary. George Washington is or was a real person, and the monetary coin showing his likeness is real. However, the likeness of George Washington on the coin is not George Washington; it is his image. Charles Dickens’s character Scrooge is fictional or imaginary, but the book in which he is depicted, A Christmas Carol, is a real book. The reader of A Christmas Carol must imagine the character Scrooge, and the reader’s image is that of a fictional or imaginary being. In addition, the actor who plays Scrooge in a dramatic production of the story is real as himself but not as Scrooge. Therefore, there are real beings and imaginary beings, and there are mental images of real beings and mental images of imaginary beings.

Through the five bodily senses, human beings detect emissions and reflections from real objects that are external to their own selves. From these physical sensations, particular and specific objects are rationalized. Moreover, even though particular objects might be thought of as having been sensed, the rationalized perceptions therefrom might not be necessarily correct. Rene Descartes observed, The senses sometimes deceive us.¹ This phrase teaches that persons who live by physical measure alone—those who rely solely on the measure of time, mass, and length—and depend solely upon sensual or physical perceptions to make decisions might be fooled. More succinctly, that which is thought to be sensed might not be real at all, and that which is real might be incapable of sensation by finite bound and error-prone human beings. Indeed, that both light and gravity pass between planets, stars, and galaxies indicate there is no void within the known universe, even though the space between planets and stars is referred to as a void, a void that cannot be sensed. Recently, theories of dark matter and dark energy, theories that attempt to account for all physical matter and energy that are believed to be present in the universe, theories that attempt to account for all physical substance some of which is not humanly sensible, and theories that attempt to fill the void have been proposed.

Persons who make decisions based wholly upon sensual perceptions then are vulnerable to false conclusions and precepts, and even to false leadership. The same is true of persons who excessively rely upon their emotions and appetites. It seems from this that humanity must proceed further into intellectual endeavors and deliberations than can be ascertained from mere physical sensations or measurements of the natural world.

This brings to mind the old example where one person tells a short tale to another person, who in turn tells it to another, and so on. When the story is finally retold to the originator of the tale, many aspects of the tale, if not the essential plot, might have been dramatically altered. The same is true when a group of several people are subjected to a sudden visual episode. Oftentimes, the several eye witnesses of some account or other describe their perceptions differently. In addition, travelers in a desert sometimes see an oasis in the distance where there is none. When traveling down a highway, an observer might see in the distance what appears to be water on the road, what is really only a reflection of light—a mirage, an imaginary image of what was thought to have been perceived. Nonetheless, even though there are many discrepancies in things sensed, and therefore a potential for error in an observer’s thinking, all of an observer’s senses and understandings assert there is something; there is real being.

Consider an object in the presence of an observer. When an external object is sensed, the observer intellectually and without hesitation asserts that the sensed object exists. In fact, the sensed object might exist as a real being, a mirage, an anomaly, or as an imaginary being; either the object really exists or it does not. If it is a real being, then it is correct to assert that there is real being. On the other hand, if the sensual perception is misinterpreted or if the sensual perception is the result of some physical interference or of some emission from a third object, it is an error to have concluded that the perceived object is a real being. Also, the being thought to be sensually detected might be an imaginary being; that is, it might have been conjured up within the observer’s mind, a dream, or a hallucination. Therefore, when an observer senses an external object, either

• there is the perception of a real being,

• some third real being is the cause of the reflection or emission that the observer perceives to be a real being,

• the mind of a real being conjures within their own self an imaginary being thought to be real,

• a third real being conjures an imaginary perception in the mind of the observer,

• the observer is intrinsic to some third real being, or

• there is some combination thereof.

However, in every perception, the perceived object is a real being; the observer is a real being; there is some third real being, which is a cause in the perception; or there is some combination thereof. Regardless, even though human frailty and error-prone senses and error-prone rationalizations can and do lead observers astray, there is somewhere in every perception a real being; there is real existence even though the observer might be unable to properly identify it. Therefore, before any other self-evident truth or axiom or principle can be asserted, it must first be admitted that there is existence; there is reality; there is actuality; there must be real being. It is imperative for any and for all perceptions and for all mental activity to acknowledge and accept that there is real being.

*     *     *

First principle of observation: There is real being.

ARTICLE 3

Truth Is Intrinsic to Real Being

I T SEEMS THAT knowledge is either true or false. When a person’s thought-to-be knowledge is in correspondence with reality, it is said to be true; when it is not in correspondence with reality, the knowledge is said to be false. Falsehoods are thoughts based upon non-reality or non-events. Now that which does not exist, that is, non-reality and non-events, cannot be known, and because false knowledge is thought based upon the unreal, falsehoods cannot be known; falsehoods are non-knowledge. Therefore, false knowledge is no knowledge at all; false knowledge is ignorance. Knowledge, then, can never be false because knowledge can only be of that which corresponds with real beings and real events—with that which actually exists—whereas falsehoods are of the unreal; falsehoods do not exist; falsehoods are mental images, thoughts, or statements of the unreal. When a person believes in falsehoods, their beliefs are non-real and such persons are said to be lacking in knowledge. Knowledge per se can only be true. To wit, the sun revolves around the earth theory (Claudius Ptolemy, AD 150) versus the earth revolves around the sun theory (Nicolaus Copernicus, AD 1543); this latter was subsequently confirmed by Galileo Galilei. In today’s understanding of astronomy, Copernicus’s theory is true and therefore represents knowledge, whereas Ptolemy’s theory is false and represents non-knowledge or ignorance.

Knowledge is a collection of mental concepts that correspond with reality. In this context, intellectual truth is an idea, an idea that corroborates with existing or real beings and their acts. Intellectual truth is the agreement of the mind with reality, and the senses are the intermediary. As an example, it might be asserted that it is raining when indeed it is raining and such a statement would be true. This mental image is not the real act of it is raining, but it is a true mental image of it is raining. Now the rain is real enough and the act of water droplets falling or raining is real. This demonstrates that reality can be perceived, and it can be perceived truly. Every real being is in-act and acts; every real being is actual, and it is their acts that allow observers to perceive them and that allow observers to truly know them. Likewise, it is in the actual existence of the observer that such as an observer can sense or perceive objects external to their self.

Having demonstrated that there are real or actual beings and that there are true mental images of real beings and their acts, human nature is enticed to determine what else real beings can declare or convey. First, many different kinds of real beings are observed; and second, sets of particular beings exhibit characteristics peculiar and particular to themselves.

One of the most basic groups of real beings is called atoms. All of the molecules and all of the more complex objects of our known physical universe are composed from these. Each of these simple or complex objects is described with regard to the very specific physical characteristics that each projects and therefore which each possesses. These descriptions are called their nature. The nature of a thing, then, is that which it expresses or divulges of its self, from within its self, that is, its act; it is by their acts that a thing is known. No object can project from itself that which is not intrinsic to itself, except by reflection from some other extrinsic reality; we come to know a being by its act(s). The nature of a being is that by which it acts as it does; the essence of a being is that by which it is what it is; the substance of a being is that which it is; and being is its existence. The accidents of a being are those attributes that change or can change within a being without affecting its nature, its essence, or its substance. However, because the accidents of a being are promulgated through the act(s) of the being, the accidents of a being must proceed from and must be supported by its nature. In like manner, the nature of a being must proceed from and must be supported by its essence, the essence of a being must proceed from and must be supported by its substance, and the substance of a being must proceed from and must be supported by its being, by its existence. It is necessary, then, that the accidents of a thing be intrinsic to its nature, that the nature of a thing be intrinsic to its essence, that the essence of a thing be intrinsic to its substance, and that the substance of a thing be intrinsic to its being. Thus, truth-in-being—objective truth—is the nature of a thing in correspondence with its substance.

It is in the substance, essence, and nature of each atom or real being to be what it is, and when the nature of an object is described, it is described in accordance with what can be perceived from its act(s). The nature of every inorganic atom is described in terms of the physical properties of time, mass, and length, and the nature of subatomic particles, inanimate molecules, and machines are similarly described. Now the prime substances or the subatomic materials of all atoms are the same, for example, protons, neutrons, electrons, and so forth, but the individual natures and essences of each of the several kinds of atoms are dramatically different. Living beings are described by the aforementioned properties with the addition of life, nutrition, sense, and reproduction so that the substance of organic plants and animals is different from and more complex than that of inorganic atoms. Human beings are described with the aforementioned properties of life with the additional properties of intellect and free will, that is, rationality. Therefore, it seems the substance of inanimate atoms and molecules is different from the substance of plant and animal life; plant and animal life have atoms/molecules and life. Moreover, the substance of human life is different from that of other living beings; human beings have life, intellect, and free will—rationality. The substance of human beings is intellect, free will, and act, where its act is constrained by and is intrinsic to an organic or animated body.

The three commonly accepted dimensions of inorganic beings or of the physical sciences are time, mass, and length; the commonly accepted dimensions of organic being add to these life and, for human beings, rationality. The five dimensions of our physical universe or of all humanly perceivable existence are

• time (change),

• mass (physical beings),

• length (height, width, and depth),

• life (organic beings), and

• rationality (organic beings having intellect and free will).

Another property of every real being is its intrinsic characteristic to retain itself as itself and