  This view, as stated by Rosmini, depends upon what he sees as a self-evident principle that cannot be denied by any sane person. We are bound, he says, to acknowledge (recognise) what we know for what we know it to be. Granted that knowledge, according to Rosmini, is co-terminus with truth, never with error, it is clear that Rosmini’s affirmation depends upon the self-evident need to affirm what one knows. This, in turn, is an act by which the human subject is elevated, at a reflective level, to the level of the truth which, already known in the essential idea of being, is as sublime as being itself. On the other hand, to deny what one knows is equivalent to stepping into non-being, the antithesis of dignity. In more philosophical terms, Rosmini maintains that the principle he enunciates, in which every other moral dictate is implicitly included, may be characterised as follows: it expresses moral essence because it calls for agreement between the intellective act of the will and the ideal and real entities of things known; it is simple and as such able to be participated by every moral activity; it is evident because it is nothing more than an expression of the principle of contradiction; it is universal because all moral effects, denoted through external actions, depend upon it; it is supreme because it offers no possibility of further investigation; it provides the foundation for the recognition of the human subject as an essentially moral being, that is, one who, through the innate presence of the idea of being and the principle of will, is furnished with the object of morality and essential adherence to it. Finally, Rosmini’s distinction between the subject and object of morality opens a way, according to him, between the extremes of ethical theory. On the one hand, the limitation of the human subject provides for the possibility of moral error; on the other, the necessity and immutability of the object, the idea of being, furnish morality with its undeniable sense of obligation. It is a fatal but all too frequent mistake, Rosmini contends, to attribute characteristics proper to the subject (fallibility, error, and so on) to the object, and characteristics of the object (necessity, immutability and so on) to the subject.