ABSTRACT
Metaphysics is an intensive rather than extensive performance. Metaphysical judgments terminate in the "being-true" of propositions bearing upon the act of existing. True metaphysical transcendence is one with the mind's judgment that existence transcends essence. The absolute novelty of being is answered by the relative novelty of metaphysical knowledge. The creativity of metaphysical doctrine is illustrated further and radicalized by both its negative and "separative" structures. Typical metaphysical method involves an exercise of reason which constantly separates the act of being from the order of nature and which subsequently denies that being is the way in which the human mind is constrained to conceive being. Metaphysics lodges itself as a nascent habit in the mind when a man compares the diverse modes of existing of a common essence or the relative unity and absolute diversity of everything in being. Metaphysics is the only human science which is defined by its future.
