ONTOLOGISM The philosophy known as Ontologism had its roots in the teaching of the Platonist Marsilius Ficinus (1433-1499), the author of a work called " Pla tonica Theologia " (1482). But the principles of Ficinus were developed first by Nicole Malebranche (163S-1715), and then by Vincenzo Gioberti (1801-1852). Ontologism means the " doctrine of Being." Malebranche taught that knowledge is not in ourselves; it is possible only in God. " There is in fact only One Reason: as only an infinite reason can grasp the idea of the infinite, and as it is only under this supposition that universal validity can belong to the cognitions of the innumerable individual men. The Universal Reason and the Intelligible Extens ion correspond to each other. God is the Universal Reason, and along with it He is the Intelligible Extens ion; and therefore He is the ground of all individual things. Our clear and distinct knowledge, in contrast to the unclear and indistinct knowledge of sense, is the knowledge which arises from universally valid thinking of reason or from ideas. These ideas a-re in God. and therefore we are also in God, in so far as we have ideas, and know by them; or conversely, we can know things really only in God " (Puenjer). The teaching of Gioberti are summarized in the seven propositions which were censured by the Roman Catholic authorities in a decree of the Inquisition, dated September 18, 1861. (1) An
immediate cognition of God, at least habitual, is essential to the human intellect, so that without this it can have cognition of nothing, inasmuch as it is the intellectual light itself. (2) The being which we perceive by the intellect in all things, and without which we intellectually perceive nothing, is the divine being. (3) Universals, considered a parte rei, are not really distinguished from God. (4) The congenital knowledge of God as being in the simple sense of the term, involves in an eminent mode every other cognition, so that by it we possess an implicit cognition of every being under every respect in which it is cognoscible. (5) All other ideas are nothing but modifications of the idea in which God is intellectually perceived as being, in the simple sense of the term. (6) Created things are in God as a part is in a whole, not indeed in a formal whole, but in one which is infinite and most simple, which places its quasi parts outside of itself, without any division or diminution of itself. (7) Creation can be thus explained : God, in the special act in which He intellectually cognises and wills Himself as distinct from any determinate creature—e.g., man— produces that creature. See B. Puenjer; J. E. Erd mann, vol. IL, 1890; Oath. Diet.