Page "Being" Paragraph 33

As nothing cannot be known by any means or method it must mean, in the context of the question, that a specific named object is present or not present in the observer's experience of a set of objects, conditions for which English uses " is " or " is not.

" The object therefore cannot be the same, at least in language, as its being present, as it may or may not be present.

French Academy member Étienne Gilson summarized this long-known characteristic of the experienced world as follows :"... the word being is a noun ... it signifies either a being ( that is, the substance, nature, and essence of anything existent ), or being itself, a property common to all that which can rightly be said to be.

... the same word is the present participle of the verb ' to be.

' As a verb, it no longer signifies something that is, nor even existence in general, but rather the very act whereby any given reality actually is, or exists.

Let us call this act a ' to be ,' in contradistinction to what is commonly called ' a being.

' It appears at once that, at least to the mind, the relation of ' to be ' to ' being ' is not a reciprocal one.

' Being ' is conceivable, ' to be ' is not.

We cannot possibly conceive an ' is ' except as belonging to some thing that is, or exists.

But the reverse is not true.

Being is quite conceivable apart from actual existence ; so much so that the very first and the most universal of all the distinctions in the realm of being is that which divides it into two classes, that of the real and that of the possible.