Ontology, or the Theory of Being
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Title: Ontology, or the Theory of Being
Author: P. Coffey
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Most recently updated: June 16, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONTOLOGY, OR THE THEORY OF BEING ***
Ontology
Or the
Theory of Being
By
Peter Coffey, Ph.D. (Louvain)
Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, Waynooth College, Ireland
Longmans, Green and Co.
London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras
1918
CONTENTS
Preface.
General Introduction.
Chapter I. Being And Its Primary Determinations.
Chapter II. Becoming And Its Implications.
Chapter III. Existence And Essence.
Chapter IV. Reality As One And Manifold.
Chapter V. Reality And The True.
Chapter VI. Reality And The Good.
Chapter VII. Reality And The Beautiful.
Chapter VIII. The Categories Of Being. Substance And Accident.
Chapter IX. Nature And Person.
Chapter X. Some Accident-Modes Of Being: Quality.
Chapter XI. Quantity, Space And Time.
Chapter XII. Relation; The Relative And The Absolute.
Chapter XIII. Causality; Classification Of Causes.
Chapter XIV. Efficient Causality; Phenomenism And Occasionalism.
Chapter XV. Final Causes; Universal Order.
Index.
Footnotes
To
The Students
Past And Present
Of
Maynooth College
PREFACE.
It is hoped that the present volume will supply a want that is really felt
by students of philosophy in our universities—the want of an English
text-book on General Metaphysics from the Scholastic standpoint. It is the
author’s intention to supplement his _Science of Logic_(1) and the present
treatise on Ontology, by a volume on the Theory of Knowledge. Hence no
disquisitions on the latter subject will be found in these pages: the
Moderate Realism of Aristotle and the Schoolmen is assumed throughout.
In the domain of Ontology there are many scholastic theories and
discussions which are commonly regarded by non-scholastic writers as
possessing nowadays for the student of philosophy an interest that is
merely historical. This mistaken notion is probably due to the fact that
few if any serious attempts have yet been made to transpose these
questions from their medieval setting into the language and context of
contemporary philosophy. Perhaps not a single one of these problems is
really and in substance alien to present-day speculations. The author has
endeavoured, by his treatment of such characteristically “medieval”
discussions as those on _Potentia_ and _Actus_, Essence and Existence,
Individuation, the Theory of Distinctions, Substance and Accident, Nature
and Person, Logical and Real Relations, Efficient and Final Causes, to
show that the issues involved are in every instance as fully and keenly
debated—in an altered setting and a new terminology—by recent and living
philosophers of every school of thought as they were by St. Thomas and his
contemporaries in the golden age of medieval scholasticism. And, as the
purposes of a text-book demanded, attention has been devoted to stating
the problems clearly, to showing the significance and bearings of
discussions and solutions, rather than to detailed analyses of arguments.
At the same time it is hoped that the treatment is sufficiently full to be
helpful even to advanced students and to all who are interested in the
“Metaphysics of the Schools”. For the convenience of the reader the more
advanced portions are printed in smaller type.
The teaching of St. Thomas and the other great Schoolmen of the Middle
Ages forms the groundwork of the book. This _corpus_ of doctrine is
scarcely yet accessible outside its Latin sources. As typical of the
fuller scholastic text-books the excellent treatise of the Spanish author,
Urraburu,(2) has been most frequently consulted. Much assistance has also
been derived from Kleutgen’s _Philosophie der Vorzeit_,(3) a monumental
work which ought to have been long since translated into English. And
finally, the excellent treatise in the Louvain _Cours de Philosophie_, by
the present Cardinal Archbishop of Mechlin,(4) has been consulted with
profit and largely followed in many places. The writer freely and
gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to these and other authors quoted
and referred to in the course of the present volume.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
I. REASON OF INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.—It is desirable that at some stage in
the course of his investigations the student of philosophy should be
invited to take a brief general survey of the work in which he is engaged.
This purpose will be served by a chapter on _the general aim and scope of
philosophy_, its distinctive characteristics as compared with other lines
of human thought, and its relations to these latter. Such considerations
will at the same time help to define _Ontology_, thus introducing the
reader to the subject-matter of the present volume.
II. PHILOSOPHY: THE NAME AND THE THING.—In the fifth book of Cicero’s
_Tusculan Disputations_ we read that the terms _philosophus_ and
_philosophia_ were first employed by Pythagoras who flourished in the
sixth century before Christ, that this ancient sage was modest enough to
call himself not a “wise man” but a “lover of wisdom” (φίλος, σοφία), and
his calling not a profession of wisdom but a search for wisdom. However,
despite the disclaimer, the term _philosophy_ soon came to signify
_wisdom_ simply, meaning by this the highest and most precious kind of
knowledge.
Now human knowledge has for its object everything that falls in any way
within human experience. It has _extensively_ a great variety in its
subject-matter, and _intensively_ a great variety in its degrees of depth
and clearness and perfection. _Individual facts_ of the past, communicated
by human testimony, form the raw materials of _historical_ knowledge. Then
there are all the individual things and events that fall within one’s own
personal experience. Moreover, by the study of human language (or
languages), of works of the human mind and products of human genius and
skill, we gain a knowledge of _literature_, and of the _arts_—the fine
arts and the mechanical arts. But not merely do we use our senses and
memory thus to accumulate an unassorted stock of informations about
isolated facts: a miscellaneous mass of mental furniture which constitutes
the bulk of human knowledge in its _least developed_ form—_cognitio
____vulgaris,___ the knowledge of the comparatively uneducated and
unreflecting classes of mankind. We also use our reasoning faculty to
reflect, compare, classify these informations, to interpret them, to
reason about them, to infer from them _general truths_ that embrace
individual things and events _beyond our personal experience_; we try to
explain them by seeking out their _reasons_ and _causes_. This mental
activity gradually converts our knowledge into _scientific_ knowledge, and
thus gives rise to those great groups of systematized truths called the
_sciences_: as, for example, the physical and mathematical sciences, the
elements of which usually form part of our early education. These sciences
teach us a great deal about ourselves and the universe in which we live.
There is no need to dwell on the precious services conferred upon mankind
by discoveries due to the progress of the various _special_ sciences:
mathematics as applied to engineering of all sorts; astronomy; the
physical sciences of light, heat, sound, electricity, magnetism, etc.;
chemistry in all its branches; physiology and anatomy as applied in
medicine and surgery. All these undoubtedly contribute much to man’s
_bodily_ well-being. But man has a _mind_ as well as a body, and he is
moreover a _social_ being: there are, therefore, other special
sciences—“human” as distinct from “physical” sciences—in which man himself
is studied in his mental activities and social relations with his
fellow-men: the sciences of social and political economy, constitutional
and civil law, government, statesmanship, etc. Furthermore, man is a
_moral_ being, recognizing distinctions of good and bad, right and wrong,
pleasure and happiness, duty and responsibility, in his own conduct; and
finally he is a _religious_ being, face to face with the fact that men
universally entertain views, beliefs, convictions of some sort or other,
regarding man’s subjection to, and dependence on, some higher power or
powers dwelling somehow or somewhere within or above the whole universe of
his direct and immediate experience: there are therefore also sciences
which deal with these domains, morality and religion. Here, however, the
domains are so extensive, and the problems raised by their phenomena are
of such far-reaching importance, that the sciences which deal with them
can hardly be called special sciences, but rather constituent portions of
the one wider and deeper _general_ science which is what men commonly
understand nowadays by philosophy.
The distinction between the special sciences on the one hand and
philosophy, the general science, on the other, will help us to realize
more clearly the nature and scope of the latter. The special sciences are
concerned with discovering the _proximate_ reasons and causes of this,
that, and the other definite department in the whole universe of our
experience. The subject-matter of some of them is totally different from
that of others: physiology studies the functions of living organisms;
geology studies the formation of the earth’s crust. Or if two or more of
them investigate the same subject-matter they do so from different
standpoints, as when the zoologist and the physiologist study the same
type or specimen in the animal kingdom. But the common feature of all is
this, that each seeks only the reasons, causes, and laws which give a
_proximate_ and _partial_ explanation of the facts which it investigates,
leaving untouched and unsolved a number of deeper and wider questions
which may be raised about the _whence_ and _whither_ and _why_, not only
of the facts themselves, but of the reasons, causes and laws assigned by
the particular science in explanation of these facts.
Now it is those deeper and wider questions, which can be answered only by
the discovery of the _more remote_ and _ultimate_ reasons and causes of
things, that philosophy undertakes to investigate, and—as far as lies
within man’s power—to answer. No one has ever disputed the supreme
importance of such inquiries into the ultimate reasons and causes of
things—into such questions as these, for instance: What is the nature of
man himself? Has he in him a principle of life which is spiritual and
immortal? What was his first origin on the earth? Whence did he come? Has
his existence any purpose, and if so, what? Whither does he tend? What is
his destiny? Why does he distinguish between a right and a wrong in human
conduct? What is the ultimate reason or ground of this distinction? Why
have men generally some form or other of religion? Why do men generally
believe in God? Is there really a God? What is the origin of the whole
universe of man’s experience? Of life in all its manifestations? Has the
universe any intelligible or intelligent purpose, and if so, what? Can the
human mind give a certain answer to any of these or similar questions?
What about the nature and value of human _knowledge_ itself? What is its
scope and what are its limitations? And since vast multitudes of men
_believe_ that the human race has been specially enlightened by God
Himself, by Divine Revelation, to know for certain what man’s destiny is,
and is specially aided by God Himself, by Divine Grace, to work out this
destiny—the question immediately arises: What are the real relations
between reason alone on the one hand and reason enlightened by such
Revelation on the other, in other words between natural knowledge and
supernatural faith?
Now it will be admitted that the special sciences take us some distance
along the road towards an answer to such questions, inasmuch as the truths
established by these sciences, and even the wider hypotheses conceived
though not strictly verified in them, furnish us with most valuable data
in our investigation of those questions. Similarly the alleged fact of a
Divine Revelation cannot be ignored by any man desirous of using all the
data available as helps towards their solution. The Revelation embodied in
Christianity claims not merely to enlighten us in regard to many ultimate
questions which mankind would be able to answer without its assistance,
but also to tell us about our destiny some truths of supreme import, which
of ourselves we should never have been able to discover. It is obvious,
then, that whether a man has been brought up from his infancy to believe
in the Christian Revelation or not, his whole outlook on life will be
determined very largely by his belief or disbelief in its authenticity and
its contents. Similarly, if he be a Confucian, or a Buddhist, or a
Mohammedan, his outlook will be in part determined by what he believes of
their teachings. Man’s conduct in life has undoubtedly many determining
influences, but it will hardly be denied that among them the predominant
influence is exerted by the views that he holds, the things he believes to
be true, concerning his own origin, nature and destiny, as well as the
origin, nature and destiny of the universe in which he finds himself. The
Germans have an expressive term for that which, in the absence of a more
appropriate term, we may translate as a man’s _world-outlook_; they call
it his _Weltanschauung_. Now this world-outlook is formed by each
individual for himself from his interpretation of _his experience as a
whole_. It is not unusual to call this world-outlook a man’s _philosophy
of life_. If we use the term _philosophy_ in this wide sense it obviously
includes whatever light a man may gather from the _special sciences_, and
whatever light he may gather from a divinely revealed _religion_ if he
believes in such, as well as the light his own reason may shed upon a
special and direct study of those ultimate questions themselves, to which
we have just referred. But we mention this wide sense of the term
_philosophy_ merely to put it aside; and to state that we use the term in
the sense more commonly accepted nowadays, the sense in which it is
understood to be distinct from the _special sciences_ on the one side and
from _supernatural theology_ or the systematic study of divinely revealed
religion on the other. Philosophy is distinct from the special sciences
because while the latter seek the proximate, the former seeks the ultimate
grounds, reasons and causes of all the facts of human experience.
Philosophy is distinct from supernatural theology because while the former
uses _the unaided power of human reason_ to study the ultimate questions
raised by human experience, the latter uses _reason enlightened by Divine
Revelation_ to study the contents of this Revelation in all their bearings
on man’s life and destiny.
Hence we arrive at this simple and widely accepted definition of
philosophy: _the science of all things through their ultimate reasons and
causes as discovered by the unaided light of human reason_.(5) The first
part of this definition marks off philosophy from the special sciences,
the second part marks it off from supernatural theology.
We must remember, however, that these three departments of
knowledge—scientific, philosophical, and revealed—are not isolated
from one another in any man’s mind; they overlap in their
subject-matter, and though differing in their respective
standpoints they permeate one another through and through. The
separation of the special sciences from philosophy, though
adumbrated in the speculations of ancient times and made more
definite in the middle ages, was completed only in modern times
through the growth and progress of the special sciences
themselves. The line of demarcation between philosophy and
supernatural theology must be determined by the proper relations
between Reason and Faith: and naturally these relations are a
subject of debate between philosophers who believe in the
existence of an authentic Divine Revelation and philosophers who
do not. It is the duty of the philosopher as such to determine by
the light of reason whether a Supreme Being exists and whether a
Divine Revelation to man is possible. If he convinces himself of
the existence of God he will have little difficulty in inferring
the _possibility_ of a Divine Revelation. The _fact_ of a Divine
Revelation is a matter not for philosophical but for historical
research. Now when a man has convinced himself of the existence of
God and the fact of a Divine Revelation—the _preambula fidei_ or
prerequisite conditions of Faith, as they are called—he must see
that it is eminently reasonable for him to believe in the contents
of such Divine Revelation; he must see that the truths revealed by
God cannot possibly trammel the freedom of his own reason in its
philosophical inquiries into ultimate problems concerning man and
the universe; he must see that these truths may possibly act as
beacons which will keep him from going astray in his own
investigations: knowing that truth cannot contradict truth he
knows that if he reaches a conclusion really incompatible with any
certainly revealed truth, such conclusion must be erroneous; and
so he is obliged to reconsider the reasoning processes that led
him to such a conclusion.(6) Thus, the position of the Christian
philosopher, aided in this negative way by the truths of an
authentic Divine Revelation, has a distinct advantage over that of
the philosopher who does not believe in such revelation and who
tries to solve all ultimate questions independently of any light
such revelation may shed upon them. Yet the latter philosopher as
a rule not only regards the “independent” position, which he
himself takes up in the name of “freedom of thought” and “freedom
of research,” as the superior position, but as the only one
consistent with the dignity of human reason; and he commonly
accuses the Christian philosopher of allowing reason to be
“enslaved” in “the shackles of dogma”. We can see at once the
unfairness of such a charge when we remember that the Christian
philosopher has convinced himself _on grounds of reason alone_
that God exists and has made a revelation to man. His belief in a
Divine Revelation is a _reasoned_ belief, a _rationabile
obsequium_ (Rom. XII. 1); and only if it were a blind belief,
unjustifiable on grounds of reason, would the accusation referred
to be a fair one. The Christian philosopher might retort that it
is the unbelieving philosopher himself who really destroys
“freedom of thought and research,” by claiming for the latter what
is really an abuse of freedom, namely _license_ to believe what
reason shows to be erroneous. But this counter-charge would be
equally unfair, for the unbelieving philosopher does not claim any
such undue license to believe what he knows to be false or to
disbelieve what he knows to be true. If he denies the fact or the
possibility of a Divine Revelation, and therefore pursues his
philosophical investigations without any regard to the contents of
such revelation, it is because he has convinced himself on grounds
of reason that such revelation is neither a fact nor a
possibility. He and the Christian philosopher cannot both be
right; one of them must be wrong; but as reasonable men they
should agree to differ rather than hurl unjustifiable charges and
counter-charges at each other.
All philosophers who believe in the Christian Revelation and allow
its authentic teachings to guide and supplement their own rational
investigation into ultimate questions, are keenly conscious of the
consequent superior depth and fulness and certitude of Christian
philosophy as compared with all the other conflicting and
fragmentary philosophies that mark the progress of human
speculation on the ultimate problems of man and the universe down
through the centuries. They feel secure in the possession of a
_philosophia __ perennis_,(7) and none more secure than those of
them who complete and confirm that philosophy by the only full and
authentic deposit of Divinely Revealed Truth, which is to be found
in the teaching of the Catholic Church.
The history of philosophical investigation yields no one universally
received conception of what philosophy is, nor would the definition given
above be unreservedly accepted. Windelband, in his _History of
Philosophy_(8) instances the following predominant conceptions of
philosophy according to the chronological order in which they prevailed:
(_a_) the systematic investigation of the problems raised by man and the
universe (early Grecian philosophy: absence of differentiation of
philosophy from the special sciences); (_b_) the practical art of human
conduct, based on rational speculation (later Grecian philosophy: distrust
in the value of knowledge, and emphasis on practical guidance of conduct);
(_c_) the helper and handmaid of the Science of Revealed Truth, _i.e._
supernatural theology, in the solution of ultimate problems (the Christian
philosophy of the Fathers of the Church and of the Medieval Schools down
to the sixteenth century: universal recognition of the value of the
Christian Revelation as an aid to rational investigation); (_d_) a purely
rational investigation of those problems, going beyond the investigations
of the special sciences, and either abstracting from, or denying the value
of, any light or aid from Revelation (differentiation of the domains of
science, philosophy and theology; modern philosophies from the sixteenth
to the nineteenth century; excessive individualism and rationalism of
these as unnaturally divorced from recognition of, and belief in, Divine
Revelation, and unduly isolated from the progressing positive sciences);
(_e_) a critical analysis of the significance and scope and limitations of
human knowledge itself (recent philosophies, mainly concerned with
theories of knowledge and speculations on the nature of the cognitive
process and the reliability of its products).
These various conceptions are interesting and suggestive; much might be
said about them, but not to any useful purpose in a brief introductory
chapter. Let us rather, adopting the definition already set forth, try
next to map out into its leading departments the whole philosophical
domain.
III. DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY: SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY.—The
general problem of classifying all the sciences built up by human thought
is a logical problem of no little complexity when one tries to work it out
in detail. We refer to this general problem only to mention a widely
accepted principle on which it is usually approached, and because the
division of philosophy itself is a section of the general problem. The
principle in question is that sciences may be distinguished indeed by
partial or total _diversity of subject-matter_, but that such diversity is
not essential, that _diversity of standpoint_ is necessary and sufficient
to constitute distinct sciences even when these deal with one and the same
subject-matter. Now applying this principle to philosophy we see firstly
that it has the same subject-matter as all the special sciences taken
collectively, but that it is distinct from all of them inasmuch as it
studies their data not from the standpoint of the proximate causes, but
from the higher standpoint of the ultimate causes of these data. And we
see secondly that philosophy, having this one higher standpoint throughout
all its departments, is _one_ science; that its divisions are only
material divisions; that there is not a plurality of philosophies as there
is a plurality of sciences, though there is a plurality of departments in
philosophy.(9) Let us now see what these departments are.
If we ask why people seek knowledge at all, in any department, we shall
detect two main impelling motives. The first of these is simply the desire
to know: _trahimur omnes cupiditate sciendi_. The natural feeling of
wonder, astonishment, “_admiratio_,” which accompanies our perception of
things and events, prompts us to seek their causes, to discover the
reasons which will make them _intelligible_ to us and enable us to
_understand_ them. But while the possession of knowledge for its own sake
is thus a motive of research it is not the only motive. We seek knowledge
_in order to use it_ for the guidance of our conduct in life, for the
orientation of our activities, for the improvement of our condition;
knowing that knowledge is power, we seek it in order to make it minister
to our needs. Now in the degree in which it fulfils such ulterior
purposes, or is sought for these purposes, knowledge may be described as
_practical_; in the degree in which it serves no ulterior end, or is
sought for no ulterior end, other than that of perfecting our minds, it
may be described as _speculative_. Of course this latter purpose is in
itself a highly practical purpose; nor indeed is there any knowledge,
however speculative, but has, or at least is capable of having, some
influence or bearing on the actual tenor and conduct of our lives; and in
this sense all knowledge is practical. Still we can distinguish broadly
between knowledge which has no direct, immediate bearing on our acts, and
knowledge that has.(10) Hence the possibility of distinguishing between
two great domains of philosophical knowledge—_Theoretical_ or _Speculative
Philosophy_, and _Practical Philosophy_. There are, in fact, two great
domains into which the data of all human experience may be divided; and
for each distinct domain submitted to philosophical investigation there
will be a distinct department of philosophy. A first domain is the order
_realized_ in the universe independently of man; a second is the order
which man himself _realizes_: _things_, therefore, and _acts_. The order
of the external universe, the order of nature as it is called, exists
independently of us: we merely study it (_speculari_, θεωρέω), we do not
create it. The other or _practical_ order is established by our acts of
_intelligence_ and _will_, and by our _bodily action_ on external things
under the direction of those faculties in the arts. Hence we have a
_speculative_ or _theoretical_ philosophy and a _practical_
philosophy.(11)
IV. DEPARTMENTS OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY: LOGIC, ETHICS AND ESTHETICS.—In
the domain of human activities, to the right regulation of which practical
philosophy is directed, we may distinguish two departments of mental
activity, namely _intellectual_ and _volitional_, and besides these the
whole department of _external_, executive or bodily activity. In general
the right regulation of acts may be said to consist in directing them to
the realization of some ideal; for all cognitive acts this ideal is the
_true_, for all appetitive or volitional acts it is the _good_, while for
all external operations it may be either the _beautiful_ or the
_useful_—the respective objects of the fine arts and the mechanical arts
or crafts.
_Logic_, as a practical science, studies the mental acts and processes
involved in discovering and proving truths and systematizing these into
sciences, with a view to directing these acts and processes aright in the
accomplishment of this complex task. Hence it has for its subject-matter,
in a certain sense, _all_ the data of human experience, or whatever can be
an object of human thought. But it studies these data not directly or in
themselves or for their own sake, but only in so far as our acts of
reason, which form its direct object, are brought to bear upon them. In
all the other sciences we employ thought to study the various objects of
thought as things, events, realities; and hence these may be called “real”
sciences, _scientiae reales_; while in Logic we study thought itself, and
even here not speculatively for its own sake or as a reality (as we study
it for instance in Psychology), but practically, as a process capable of
being directed towards the discovery and proof of truth; and hence in
contradistinction to the other sciences as “real,” we call Logic _the_
“rational” science, _scientia rationalis_. Scholastic philosophers express
this distinction by saying that while Speculative Philosophy studies
_real_ being (_Ens Reale_), or the objects of direct thought (_objecta
primae intentionis mentis_), Logic studies the being which is the _product
of thought_ (_Ens Rationis_), or objects of reflex thought (_objecta
secundae intentionis mentis_).(12) The mental processes involved in the
attainment of scientific truth are conception, judgment and inference;
moreover these processes have to be exercised methodically by the combined
application of analysis and synthesis, or induction and deduction, to the
various domains of human experience. All these processes, therefore, and
the methods of their application, constitute the proper subject-matter of
Logic. It has been more or less a matter of debate since the days of
Aristotle whether Logic should be regarded as a department of
philosophical science proper, or rather as a preparatory discipline, an
instrument or _organon_ of reasoning—as the collection of Aristotle’s own
logical treatises was called,—and so as a vestibule or introduction to
philosophy. And there is a similar difference of opinion as to whether or
not it is advisable to set down Logic as the first department to be
studied in the philosophical curriculum. Such doubts arise from
differences of view as to the questions to be investigated in Logic, and
the point to which such investigations should be carried therein. It is
possible to distinguish between a more elementary treatment of
thought-processes with the avowedly practical aim of setting forth canons
of inference and method which would help and train the mind to reason and
investigate correctly; and a more philosophical treatment of those
processes with the speculative aim of determining their ultimate
significance and validity as factors of knowledge, as attaining to truth,
as productive of science and certitude. It is only the former field of
investigation that is usually accorded to Logic nowadays; and thus
understood Logic ought to come first in the curriculum as a preparatory
training for philosophical studies, accompanied, however, by certain
elementary truths from Psychology regarding the nature and functions of
the human mind. The other domain of deeper and more speculative
investigation was formerly explored in what was regarded as a second
portion of logical science, under the title of “Critical” Logic—_Logica
Critica_. In modern times this is regarded as a distinct department of
Speculative Philosophy, under the various titles of _Epistemology_,
_Criteriology_, or the _Theory of Knowledge_.
_Ethics or Moral Philosophy_ (ἤθος, _mos_, _mores_, morals, conduct) is
that department of practical philosophy which has for its subject-matter
all human acts, _i.e._ all acts elicited or commanded by the will of man
considered as a free, rational and responsible agent. And it studies human
conduct with the practical purpose of discovering the ultimate end or
object of this conduct, and the principles whereby it must be regulated in
order to attain to this end. Ethics must therefore analyse and account for
the distinction of _right_ and _wrong_ or _good_ and _bad_ in human
conduct, for its feature of _morality_. It must examine the motives that
influence conduct: pleasure, well-being, happiness, duty, obligation,
moral law, etc. The supreme determining factor in all such considerations
will obviously be _the ultimate end of man_, whatever this may be: his
destiny as revealed by a study of his nature and place in the universe.
Now the nature of man is studied in Psychology, as are also the nature,
conditions and effects of his free acts, and the facilities, dispositions
and forms of character consequent on these. Furthermore, not only from the
study of man in Psychology, but from the study of the external universe in
Cosmology, we amass data from which in Natural Theology we establish the
existence of a Supreme Being. We then prove in Ethics that the last end of
man, his highest perfection, consists in knowing, loving, serving, and
thus glorifying God, both in this life and in the next. Hence we can see
how these branches of speculative philosophy subserve the practical
science of morals. And since a man’s interpretation of the moral
distinctions—as of right or wrong, meritorious or blameworthy, autonomous
or of obligation—which he recognizes as pertaining to his own
actions—since his interpretation of these distinctions is so intimately
bound up with his religious outlook and beliefs, it is at once apparent
that the science of Ethics will be largely influenced and determined by
the system of speculative philosophy which inspires it, whether this be
Theism, Monism, Agnosticism, etc. No doubt the science of Ethics must take
as its data all sorts of moral beliefs, customs and practices prevalent at
any time among men; but it is not a speculative science which would merely
aim at _a posteriori_ inferences or inductive generalizations from these
data; it is a practical, _normative_ science which aims at discovering the
truth as to what is the right and the wrong in human conduct, and at
pointing out the right application of the principles arising out of this
truth. Hence it is of supreme importance for the philosopher of morals to
determine whether the human race has really been vouchsafed a Divine
Revelation, and, convincing himself that Christianity contains such a
revelation, to recognize the possibility of supplementing and perfecting
what his own natural reason can discover by what the Christian religion
teaches about the end of man as the supreme determining principle of human
conduct. Not that he is to take the revealed truths of Christianity as
principles of moral _philosophy_; for these are the principles of the
_supernatural __ Christian Theology_ of human morals; but that as a
Christian philosopher, _i.e._ a philosopher who recognizes the truth of
the Christian Revelation, he should reason out philosophically a science
of Ethics which, so far as it goes, will be in harmony with the moral
teachings of the Christian Religion, and will admit of being perfected by
these. This recognition, as already remarked, will not be a hindrance but
a help to him in exploring the wide domains of the individual, domestic,
social and religious conduct of man; in determining, on the basis of
theism established by natural reason, the right moral conditions and
relations of man’s conduct as an individual, as a member of the family, as
a member of the state, and as a creature of God. The nature, source and
sanction of authority, domestic, social and religious; of the dictate of
conscience; of the natural moral law and of all positive law; of the moral
virtues and vices—these are all questions which the philosopher of Ethics
has to explore by the use of natural reason, and for the investigation of
which the Christian philosopher of Ethics is incomparably better equipped
than the philosopher who, though possessing the compass of natural reason,
ignores the beacon lights of Divinely Revealed Truths.
_Esthetics_, or the _Philosophy of the Fine Arts_, is that department of
philosophy which studies the conception of the _beautiful_ and its
external expression in the works of nature and of man. The arts
themselves, of course, whether concerned with the realization of the
useful or of the beautiful, are distinct from sciences, even from
practical sciences.(13) The _technique_ itself consists in a skill
acquired by practice—by practice guided, however, by a set of practical
canons or rules which are the ripe fruit of experience.(14) But behind
every art there is always some background of more or less speculative
truth. The conception of the _useful_, however which underlies the
mechanical arts and crafts, is not an ultimate conception calling for any
further analysis than it receives in the various special sciences and in
metaphysics. But the conception of the _beautiful_ does seem to demand a
special philosophical consideration. On the subjective or mental side the
esthetic sense, artistic taste, the sentiment of the beautiful, the
complex emotions accompanying such experience; on the objective side the
elements or factors requisite to produce this experience; the relation of
the esthetic to the moral, of the beautiful to the good and the true—these
are all distinctly philosophical questions. Up to the present time,
however, their treatment has been divided between the other departments of
philosophy—psychology, cosmology, natural theology, general metaphysics,
ethics—rather than grouped together to form an additional distinct
department.
V. DEPARTMENTS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY: METAPHYSICS.—The philosophy
which studies the order realized in things apart from our activity,
speculative philosophy, has been variously divided up into separate
departments from the first origins of philosophical speculation.
When we remember that all intellectual knowledge of things involves the
apprehension of _general_ truths or laws about these things, and that this
apprehension of intelligible aspects common to a more or less extensive
group of things involves the exercise of _abstraction_, we can understand
how the whole domain of speculative knowledge, whether scientific or
philosophical, can be differentiated into certain layers or levels, so to
speak, according to various degrees of abstractness and universality in
the intelligible aspects under which the data of our experience may be
considered. On this principle Aristotle and the scholastics divided all
speculative knowledge into three great domains, _Physics_, _Mathematics_
and _Metaphysics_, with their respective proper objects, _Change_,
_Quantity_ and _Being_, objects which are successively apprehended in
three great stages of abstraction traversed by the human mind in its
effort to understand and explain the Universal Order of things.
And as a matter of fact perhaps the first great common and most obvious
feature which strikes the mind reflecting on the visible universe is the
feature of all-pervading change (κίνησις), movement, evolution, progress
and regress, growth and decay; we see it everywhere in a variety of forms,
mechanical or local change, quantitative change, qualitative change, vital
change. Now the knowledge acquired by the study of things under this
common aspect is called _Physics_. Here the mind abstracts merely from the
individualizing differences of this change in individual things, and fixes
its attention on the great, common, sensible aspect itself of visible
change.
But the mind can abstract even from the sensible changes that take place
in the physical universe and fix its attention on a _static_ feature in
the changing things. This static element (τὸ ἀκίνητον), which the
intellect apprehends in _material_ things as naturally inseparable from
them (ἀκίνητον ἀλλ᾽ οὐ χωριστόν), is their _quantity_, their extension in
space. When the mind strips a material object of all its visible, sensible
properties—on which its mechanical, physical and chemical changes
depend—there still remains as an object of thought a something formed of
parts outside parts in three dimensions of space. This _abstract_
quantity, _quantitas intelligibilis_—whether as continuous or
discontinuous, as _magnitude_ or _multitude_—is the proper object of
_Mathematics_.
But the mind can penetrate farther still into the reality of the material
data which it finds endowed with the attributes of change and quantity: it
can eliminate from the object of its thought even this latter or
mathematical attribute, and seize on something still more fundamental. The
very essence, substance, nature, being itself, of the thing, the
underlying subject and root principle of all the thing’s operations and
attributes, is something deeper than any of these attributes, something at
least mentally distinct from these latter (τὸ ἀκίνητον και χωριστόν): and
this something is the proper object of man’s highest speculative
knowledge, which Aristotle called ἡ πρώτη φιλοσοφία, _philosophia prima_,
the _first_ or _fundamental_ or _deepest_ philosophy.(15)
But he gave this latter order of knowledge another very significant title:
he called it _theology_ or _theological science_, ἐπιστήμη θεολογίκή, by a
denomination derived _a potiori parte_, from its nobler part, its
culmination in the knowledge of God. Let us see how. For Aristotle _first
philosophy_ is the science of _being and its essential attributes_.(16)
Here the mind apprehends its object as _static_ or abstracted from change,
and as _immaterial_ or abstracted from quantity, the fundamental attribute
of material reality—as ἀκίνητον καὶ χωριστόν. Now it is the substance,
nature, or essence of _the things of our direct and immediate experience_,
that forms the proper object of this highest science. But in these things
the substance, nature, or essence, is not found in _real and actual_
separation from the material attributes of change and quantity; it is
_considered_ separately from these only by an effort of mental
abstraction. Even the nature of man himself is not wholly immaterial; nor
is the spiritual principle in man, his soul, entirely exempt from material
conditions. Hence in so far as first philosophy studies the being of the
things of our direct experience, its object is immaterial only
_negatively_ or _by mental abstraction_. But does this study bring within
the scope of our experience any being or reality that is _positively and
actually_ exempt from all change and all material conditions? If so the
study of this being, the Divine Being, will be the highest effort, the
crowning perfection, of _first philosophy_; which we may therefore call
the _theological_ science. “If,” writes Aristotle,(17) “there really
exists a substance absolutely immutable and immaterial, in a word, a
Divine Being—as we hope to prove—then such Being must be the absolutely
first and supreme principle, and the science that attains to such Being
will be theological.”
In this triple division of speculative philosophy into Physics,
Mathematics, and Metaphysics, it will naturally occur to one to ask: Did
Aristotle distinguish between what he called Physics and what we nowadays
call the special physical sciences? He did. These special _analytic_
studies of the various departments of the physical universe, animate and
inanimate, Aristotle described indiscriminately as “partial” sciences: αἱ
ἐν μέρει ἐπιστημάι—ἐπιστημαὶ ἐν μέρει λεγόμεναι. These descriptive,
inductive, comparative studies, proceeding _a posteriori_ from effects to
causes, he conceived rather as a preparation for scientific knowledge
proper; this latter he conceived to be a _synthetic_, deductive
explanation of things, in the light of some common aspect detected in them
as principle or cause of all their concrete characteristics.(18) Such
synthetic knowledge of things, in the light of some such common aspect as
change, is what he regarded as scientific knowledge, meaning thereby what
we mean by philosophical knowledge.(19) What he called _Physics_,
therefore, is what we nowadays understand as _Cosmology_ and
_Psychology_.(20)
Mathematical science Aristotle likewise regarded as science in the full
and perfect sense, _i.e._ as philosophical. But just as we distinguish
nowadays between the special physical and human sciences on the one hand,
and the philosophy of external nature and man on the other, so we may
distinguish between the special mathematical sciences and a Philosophy of
Mathematics: with this difference, that while the former groups of special
sciences are mainly inductive the mathematical group is mainly deductive.
Furthermore, the Philosophy of Mathematics—which investigates questions
regarding the ultimate significance of mathematical concepts, axioms and
assumptions: unity, multitude, magnitude, quantity, space, time, etc.—does
not usually form a separate department in the philosophical curriculum:
its problems are dealt with as they arise in the other departments of
Metaphysics.
Before outlining the modern divisions of Metaphysics we may note that this
latter term was not used by Aristotle. We owe it probably to Andronicus of
Rhodes († 40 B.C.), who, when arranging a complete edition of Aristotle’s
works, placed next in order after the _Physics_, or physical treatises,
all the parts and fragments of the master’s works bearing upon the
immutable and immaterial object of the _philosophia prima_; these he
labelled τὰ μετὰ τὰ (βιβλία) φυσικα, _post physica_, the books _after the
physics_: hence the name _metaphysics_,(21) applied to this highest
section of speculative philosophy. It was soon noticed that the term, thus
fortuitously applied to such investigations, conveyed a very appropriate
description of their scope and character if interpreted in the sense of
“_supra_-physica,” or “_trans_-physica”: inasmuch as the object of these
investigations is a _hyperphysical_ object, an object that is either
positively and really, or negatively and by abstraction, beyond the
material conditions of quantity and change. St. Thomas combines both
meanings of the term when he says that the study of its subject-matter
comes naturally _after_ the study of physics, and that we naturally pass
from the study of the sensible to that of the suprasensible.(22)
The term _philosophia prima_ has now only an historical interest; and the
term _theology_, used without qualification, is now generally understood
to signify _supernatural_ theology.
VI. DEPARTMENTS OF METAPHYSICS: COSMOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND NATURAL
THEOLOGY.—Nowadays the term _Metaphysics_ is understood as synonymous with
speculative philosophy: the investigation of the being, nature, or
essence, and essential attributes of the realities which are also studied
in the various special sciences: the search for the _ultimate_ grounds,
reasons and causes of these realities, of which the proximate explanations
are sought in the special sciences. We have seen that it has for its
special object that most abstract aspect of reality whereby the latter is
conceived as changeless and immaterial; and we have seen that a being may
have these attributes either by mental abstraction merely, or in actual
reality. In other words the philosophical study of things that are really
material not only suggests the possibility, but establishes the actual
existence, of a Being that is really changeless and immaterial: so that
metaphysics in all its amplitude would be _the philosophical science of
things that are negatively_ (by abstraction) _or positively_ (in reality)
_immaterial_. This distinction suggests a division of metaphysics into
_general_ and _special_ metaphysics. The former would be the philosophical
study of _all_ being, considered by mental abstraction as immaterial; the
latter would be the philosophical study of the really and positively
changeless and immaterial Being,—God. The former would naturally fall into
two great branches: the study of _inanimate_ nature and the study of
_living_ things, _Cosmology_ and _Psychology_; while special metaphysics,
the philosophical study of the _Divine_ Being, would constitute _Natural
Theology_. These three departments, one of special metaphysics and two of
general metaphysics, would not be three distinct philosophical sciences,
but three departments of the one speculative philosophical science. The
standpoint would be the same in all three sections, _viz._ _being_
considered as _static and immaterial_ by _mental abstraction_: for
whatever _positive_ knowledge we can reach about being that is really
immaterial can be reached only through concepts derived from material
being and applied analogically to immaterial being.
_Cosmology_ and _Psychology_ divide between them the whole domain of man’s
immediate experience. Cosmology, utilizing not only the data of direct
experience, but also the conclusions established by the analytic study of
these data in the physical sciences, explores the origin, nature, and
destiny of the material universe. Some philosophers include among the data
of Cosmology all the phenomena of vegetative life, reserving sentient and
rational life for Psychology; others include even sentient life in
Cosmology, reserving the study of human life for Psychology, or, as they
would call it, Anthropology.(23) The mere matter of location is of
secondary importance. Seeing, however, that man embodies in himself all
three forms of life, vegetative, sentient, and rational, all three would
perhaps more naturally belong to Psychology, which would be the
philosophical study of life in all its manifestations (ψυχή, the vital
principle, the soul). Just as the conclusions of the physical sciences are
the data of Cosmology, so the conclusions of the natural or biological
sciences—Zoology, Botany, Physiology, Morphology, Cellular Biology,
etc.—are the data of Psychology. Indeed in Psychology itself—especially in
more recent years—it is possible to distinguish a positive, analytic,
empirical study of the phenomena of consciousness, a study which would
rank rather as a special than as an ultimate or philosophical science; and
a synthetic, rational study of the results of this analysis, a study which
would be strictly philosophical in character. This would have for its
object to determine the origin, nature and destiny of living things in
general and of man himself in particular. It would inquire into the nature
and essential properties of living matter, into the nature of the subject
of conscious states, into the operations and faculties of the human mind,
into the nature of the human soul and its mode of union with the body,
into the rationality of the human intellect and the freedom of the human
will, the spirituality and immortality of the human soul, etc.
But since the human mind itself is the natural instrument whereby man
acquires _all_ his knowledge, it will be at once apparent that the study
of the phenomenon of _knowledge_ itself, of the _cognitive_ activity of
the mind, can be studied, and must be studied, not merely as a natural
phenomenon of the mind, but from the point of view of _its special
significance as representative_ of objects other than itself, from the
point of view of _its validity or invalidity_, _its truth or falsity_, and
with the special aim of determining the scope and limitations and
conditions of its objective validity. We have already referred to the
study of human knowledge from this standpoint, in connexion with what was
said above concerning Logic. It has a close kinship with Logic on the one
hand, and with Psychology on the other; and nowadays it forms a distinct
branch of speculative Philosophy under the title of _Criteriology_,
_Epistemology_, or the _Theory of Knowledge_.
Arising out of the data of our direct experience, external and internal,
as studied in the philosophical departments just outlined, we find a
variety of evidences all pointing beyond the domain of this direct
experience to the supreme conclusion that there exists of necessity,
distinct from this directly experienced universe, as its Creator,
Conserver, and Ruler, its First Beginning and its Last End, its _Alpha_
and _Omega_, One Divine and Infinite Being, the Deity. The existence and
attributes of the Deity, and the relations of man and the universe to the
Deity, form the subject-matter of _Natural Theology_.
VII. DEPARTMENTS OF METAPHYSICS: ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY.—According to
the Aristotelian and scholastic conception speculative philosophy would
utilize as data the conclusions of the special sciences—physical,
biological, and human. It would try to reach a deeper explanation of their
data by synthesizing these under the wider aspects of change, quantity,
and being, thus bringing to light the ultimate causes, reasons, and
explanatory principles of things. This whole study would naturally fall
into two great branches: General Metaphysics (_Cosmology_ and
_Psychology_), which would study things exempt from quantity and change
not really but only by mental abstraction; and Special Metaphysics
(_Natural Theology_), which would study the positively immaterial and
immutable Being of the Deity.
This division of Metaphysics, thoroughly sound in principle, and based on
a sane and rational view of the relation between the special sciences and
philosophy, has been almost entirely(24) supplanted in modern times by a
division which, abstracting from the erroneous attitude that prompted it
in the first instance, has much to recommend it from the standpoint of
practical convenience of treatment. The modern division was introduced by
Wolff (1679-1755), a German philosopher,—a disciple of Leibniz (1646-1716)
and forerunner of Kant (1724-1804).(25) Influenced by the excessively
deductive method of Leibniz’ philosophy, which he sought to systematize
and to popularize, he wrongly conceived the metaphysical study of reality
as something wholly apart and separate from the inductive investigation of
this same reality in the positive sciences. It comprised the study of the
most fundamental and essential principles of being, considered in
themselves; and the deductive application of these principles to the three
great domains of actual reality, the corporeal universe, the human soul,
and God. The study of the first principles of being in themselves would
constitute _General Metaphysics_, or _Ontology_ (ὄντος-λόγος). Their
applications would constitute three great departments of _Special
Metaphysics_: _Cosmology_, which he described as “transcendental” in
opposition to the experimental physical sciences; _Psychology_, which he
termed “rational” in opposition to the empirical biological sciences; and
finally Natural Theology, which he entitled _Theodicy_
(Θεός-δίκη-δικαιόω), using a term invented by Leibniz for his essays in
vindication of the wisdom and justice of Divine Providence notwithstanding
the evils of the universe.
“The spirit that animated this arrangement of the departments of
metaphysics,” writes Mercier, “was unsound in theory and
unfortunate in tendency. It stereotyped for centuries a disastrous
divorce between philosophy and the sciences, a divorce that had
its origin in circumstances peculiar to the intellectual
atmosphere of the early eighteenth century. As a result of it
there was soon no common language or understanding between
scientists and philosophers. The terms which expressed the most
fundamental ideas—matter, substance, movement, cause, force,
energy, and such like—were taken in different senses in science
and in philosophy. Hence misunderstandings, aggravated by a
growing mutual distrust and hostility, until finally people came
to believe that scientific and metaphysical preoccupations were
incompatible if not positively opposed to each other.”(26)
How very different from the disintegrating conception here
criticized is the traditional Aristotelian and scholastic
conception of the complementary functions of philosophy and the
sciences in unifying human knowledge: a conception thus eloquently
expressed by NEWMAN in his _Idea of a University_:—(27)
“All that exists, as contemplated by the human mind, forms one
large system or complex fact.... Now, it is not wonderful that,
with all its capabilities, the human mind cannot take in this
whole vast fact at a single glance, or gain possession of it at
once. Like a short-sighted reader, its eye pores closely, and
travels slowly, over the awful volume which lies open for its
inspection. Or again, as we deal with some huge structure of many
parts and sides, the mind goes round about it, noting down, first
one thing, then another, as best it may, and viewing it under
different aspects, by way of making progress towards mastering the
whole.... These various partial views or abstractions ... are
called sciences ... they proceed on the principle of a division of
labour.... As they all belong to one and the same circle of
objects, they are one and all connected together; as they are but
aspects of things, they are severally incomplete in their relation
to the things themselves, though complete in their own idea and
for their own respective purposes; on both accounts they at once
need and subserve each other. And further, the comprehension of
the bearings of one science on another, and the use of each to
each, and the location and limitation and adjustment and due
appreciation of them all, one with another, this belongs, I
conceive, to a sort of science distinct from all of them, and in
some sense, a science of sciences, which is my own conception of
what is meant by Philosophy....”
Without in any way countenancing such an isolation of metaphysics from the
positive sciences, we may, nevertheless, adopt the modern division in
substance and in practice. While recognizing the intimate connexion
between the special sciences and metaphysics in all its branches, we may
regard as _General Metaphysics_ all inquiries into the fundamental
principles of _being_ and of _knowing_, of _reality_ and of _knowledge_;
and as _Special Metaphysics_ the philosophical study of physical nature,
of human nature, and of God, the Author and Supreme Cause of all finite
reality. Thus, while special metaphysics would embrace Cosmology,
Psychology, and Natural Theology, general metaphysics would embrace
Ontology and Epistemology. These two latter disciplines must no doubt
investigate what is in a certain sense one and the same subject-matter,
inasmuch as _knowledge_ is knowledge of reality, nor can the _knowing
mind_ (the _subjectum cognoscens_) and the known reality (the _objectum
cognitum_) be wholly separated or studied in complete isolation from each
other. Yet the whole content of human experience, which forms their common
subject-matter, can be regarded by mental abstraction from the two
distinct standpoints of the knowing mind and the known reality, and can
thus give rise to two distinct sets of problems. Epistemology is thus
concerned with the truth and certitude of human knowledge; with the
subjective conditions and the scope and limits of its validity; with the
subjective or mental factors involved in knowing.(28) Ontology is
concerned with the objects of knowledge, with reality considered in the
widest, deepest, and most fundamental aspects under which it is conceived
by the human mind: with the being and becoming of reality, its possibility
and its actuality, its essence and its existence, its unity and plurality;
with the aspects of truth, goodness, perfection, beauty, which it assumes
in relation with our minds; with the contingency of finite reality and the
grounds and implications both of its actual existence and of its
intelligibility; with the modes of its concrete existence and behaviour,
the supreme categories of reality as they are called: substance,
individual nature, and personality; quantity, space and time, quality and
relation, causality and purpose. These are the principal topics
investigated in the present volume. The investigation is confined to
fundamental concepts and principles, leaving their applications to be
followed out in special metaphysics. Furthermore, the theory of knowledge
known as _Moderate Realism_,(29) the Realism of Aristotle and the
Scholastics, in regard to the validity of knowledge both sensual and
intellectual, is assumed throughout: because not alone is this the true
theory, but—as a natural consequence—it is the only theory which renders
the individual things and events of human experience really intelligible,
and at the same time keeps the highest and most abstract intellectual
speculations of metaphysics in constant and wholesome contact with the
concrete, actual world in which we live, move, and have our being.
VIII. REMARKS ON SOME MISGIVINGS AND PREJUDICES.—The student, especially
the beginner, will find the investigations in this volume rather abstract;
but if he remembers that the content of our intellectual concepts, be they
ever so abstract and universal, is really embodied in the individual
things and events of his daily experience, he will not be disposed to
denounce all ultimate analysis of these concepts as “unprofitable” or
“unreal”. He will recognize that the reproach of “talking in the air,”
which was levelled by an eminent medieval scholastic(30) at certain
philosophers of his time, tells against the metaphysical speculations of
Conceptualism, but not against those of Moderate Realism. The reproach is
commonly cast at _all_ systematic metaphysics nowadays—from prejudices too
numerous and varied to admit of investigation here.(31) The modern
prejudice which denies the very possibility of metaphysics, a prejudice
arising from Phenomenism, Positivism, and Agnosticism—systems which are
themselves no less metaphysical than erroneous—will be examined in due
course.(32)
But really in order to dispel all such misgivings one has only to remember
that metaphysics, systematic or otherwise, is nothing more than a man’s
reasoned outlook on the world and life. Whatever his conscious opinions
and convictions may be regarding the nature and purpose of himself, and
other men, and the world at large—and if he use his reason at all he must
have some sort of opinions and convictions, whether positive or negative,
on these matters—those opinions and convictions are precisely that man’s
metaphysics. “Breaking free for the moment from all historical and
technical definition, let us affirm: _To get at reality_—this is the aim
of metaphysics.” So writes Professor Ladd in the opening chapter of his
_Theory of Reality_.(33) But if this is so, surely a systematic attempt to
“get at reality,” no matter how deep and wide, no matter how abstract and
universal be the conceptions and speculations to which it leads us, cannot
nevertheless always and of necessity have the effect of involving us in a
mirage of illusion and unreality.
Systematic metaphysics—to quote again the author just referred
to—(34) is ... the necessary result of a patient, orderly,
well-informed, and prolonged study of those ultimate problems
which are proposed to every reflective mind by the real existences
and actual transactions of selves and of things. Thus considered
it appears as the least abstract and foreign to concrete realities
of all the higher pursuits of reason. Mathematics is abstract;
logic is abstract; mathematical and so-called “pure” physics are
abstract. But metaphysics is bound by its very nature and calling
always to keep near to the actual and to the concrete. Dive into
the depths of speculation indeed it may; and its ocean is
boundless in expanse and deep beyond all reach of human plummets.
But it finds its place of standing, for every new turn of daring
explanation, on some bit of solid ground. For it is actuality
which it wishes to understand—although in reflective and
interpretative way. To quote from Professor Royce: “The basis of
our whole theory is the bare, brute fact of experience which you
have always with you, namely, the fact: _Something is real._ Our
question is: What is this reality? or, again, What is the
ultimately real?”(35)
The wonderful progress of the positive sciences during the last few
centuries has been the occasion of prejudice against metaphysics in a
variety of ways. It is objected, for instance, that metaphysics has no
corresponding progress to boast of; and from this there is but a small
step to the conclusion that all metaphysical speculation is sterile. The
comparison is unfair for many reasons. Research into the ultimate grounds
and causes of things is manifestly more difficult than research into their
proximate grounds and causes. Again, while the positive sciences have
increased our knowledge mainly in extent rather than in depth, it is
metaphysics and only metaphysics that can increase this knowledge in its
unity, comprehensiveness, and significance.
A positive increase in our knowledge of the manifold data of human
experience is not the aim of metaphysics; its aim is to give an ultimate
meaning and interpretation to this knowledge. It is not utilitarian in the
narrower sense in which the positive and special sciences are utilitarian
by ministering to our material needs; but in the higher and nobler sense
of pointing out to us the bearing of all human knowledge and achievement
on our real nature and destiny. True, indeed, individual leaders and
schools of metaphysics have strayed from the truth and spoken with
conflicting and uncertain voices, especially when they have failed to
avail themselves of Truth Divinely Revealed. This, however, is not a
failure of metaphysics but of individual metaphysicians. And furthermore,
it is undeniable withal, that the metaphysical labours of the great
philosophers in all ages have contributed richly to the enlightenment and
civilization of mankind—particularly when these labours have been in
concord and co-operation with the elevating and purifying influences of
the Christian religion. Of no metaphysical system is this so entirely true
as of that embodied in Scholastic Philosophy. The greatest intellect of
the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas, gave to this philosophy an expression
which is rightly regarded by the modern scholastic as his intellectual
charter and the most worthy starting-point of his philosophical
investigations. The following passage from an eminent representative of
modern scholastic thought(36) is sufficiently suggestive to admit of
quotation:—
Amid the almost uninterrupted disintegration of systems during the
last three centuries, the philosophy of St. Thomas has alone been
able to stand the shock of criticism; it alone has proved
sufficiently solid and comprehensive to serve as an intellectual
basis and unifying principle for all the new facts and phenomena
brought to light by the modern sciences. And unless we are much
mistaken, those who take up and follow this philosophy will come
to think, as we do, that on the analysis of mental acts and
processes, on the inner nature of corporeal things, of living
things, and of man, on the existence and nature of God, on the
foundations of speculative and moral science, none have thought or
written more wisely than St. Thomas Aquinas. But though we place
our programme and teaching under the patronage of the illustrious
name of this prince of scholastics, we do not regard the Thomistic
philosophy as an ideal beyond possibility of amelioration, or as a
boundary to the activity of the human mind. We do think, however,
on mature reflection, that we are acting no less wisely than
modestly in taking it as our starting-point and constant standard
of reference. This we say in answer to those of our friends and
enemies who are occasionally pleased to ask us if we really do
mean to lead back the modern mind into the Middle Ages, and to
identify philosophy _simply_ with the thought of any _one_
philosopher. Manifestly, we mean nothing of the kind. Has not Leo
XIII., the great initiator of the new scholastic movement,
expressly warned us(37) to be mindful of the present: “Edicimus
libenti gratoque animo recipiendum esse quidquid sapienter dictum,
quidquid utiliter fuerit a quopiam inventum atque excogitatum”?
St. Thomas himself would be the first to rebuke those who would
follow his own philosophical opinions in all things against their
own better judgment, and to remind them of what he wrote at the
head of his _Summa_: that in philosophy, of all arguments that
based on human authority is the weakest, “locus ab auctoritate quæ
fundatur super ratione humana, est infirmissimus.”(38)
Again, therefore, let us assert that respect for tradition is not
servility but mere elementary prudence. Respect for a doctrine of
whose soundness and worth we are personally convinced is not
fetishism; it is but a rational and rightful tribute to the
dominion of Truth over Mind.
Modern scholastics will know how to take to heart and profit by
the lessons of the seventeenth and eighteenth century
controversies; they will avoid the mistakes of their predecessors;
they will keep in close contact with the special sciences
subsidiary to philosophy and with the views and teachings of
modern and contemporary thinkers.(39)
An overweening confidence in the power of the special sciences to solve
ultimate questions, or at least to tell us all that can be known for
certain about these problems, a confidence based on the astonishing
progress of those sciences in modern times, is the source of yet another
prejudice against metaphysics. It is a prejudice of the half-educated
mind, of the camp-followers of science, not of its leaders. These latter
are keenly conscious that the solution of ultimate questions lies entirely
beyond the methods of the special sciences. Not that even the most eminent
scientists do not indulge in speculations about ultimate problems—as they
have a perfect right to do. But though they may be themselves quite aware
that such speculations are distinctly metaphysical, there are multitudes
who seem to think that a theory ceases to be metaphysical and becomes
scientific provided only it is broached by a scientific expert as distinct
from a metaphysician.(40) But all sincere thinkers will recognize that no
ultimate question about the totality of human experience can be solved by
any science which explores merely a portion of this experience. Nay, the
more rapid and extensive is the progress of the various special sciences,
the more imperative and insistent becomes the need to collect and collate
their separate findings, to interrogate them one and all as to whether and
how far these findings fit in with the facts and conditions of human life
and existence, to determine what light and aid they contribute to the
solution of the great and ever recurring questions of the _whence_? and
_whither_? and _why_? of man and the universe. One who is a sincere
scientist as well as an earnest philosopher has written _à propos_ of this
necessity in the following terms:—
The farther science has pushed back the limits of the discernible
universe, the more insistently do we feel the demand within us for
some satisfactory explanation of the whole. The old, eternal
problems rise up before us and clamour loudly and ever more loudly
for some newer and better solution. The solution offered by a
bygone age was soothing at least, if it was not final. In the
present age, however, the problems reappear with an acuteness that
is almost painful: the deep secret of our own human nature, the
questions of our origin and destiny, the intermeddling of blind
necessity and chance and pain in the strange, tangled drama of our
existence, the foibles and oddities of the human soul, and all the
mystifying problems of social relations: are not these all so many
enigmas which torment and trouble us whithersoever we turn? And
all seem to circle around the one essential question: Has human
nature a real meaning and value, or is it so utterly amiss that
truth and peace will never be its portion?(41)
A final difficulty against philosophical research is suggested by the
thought that if the philosopher has to take cognizance of all the
conclusions of all the special sciences his task is an impossible one,
inasmuch as nowadays at all events it would take a lifetime to become
proficient in a few of these sciences not to speak of all of them.
There is no question, however, of becoming proficient in them; the
philosopher need not be a specialist in any positive science; his
acquaintance with the contents of these sciences need extend no farther
than such established conclusions and such current though unverified
hypotheses as have an immediate bearing on ultimate or philosophical
problems.
Moreover, while it would be injurious both to philosophy and to science,
as is proved by the history of both alike, to separate synthetic from
analytic speculation by a divorce between philosophy and science; while it
would be unwise to ignore the conclusions of the special sciences and to
base philosophical research _exclusively_ on the data of the plain man’s
common and unanalysed experience, it must be remembered on the other hand
that the most fundamental truths of speculative and practical philosophy,
the truths that are most important for the right and proper orientation of
human life, can be established and defended independently of the special
researches of the positive sciences. The human mind had not to await the
discovery of radium in order to prove the existence of God. Such supreme
truths as the existence of God, the immortality of the human soul, the
freedom of the human will, the existence of a moral law, the distinction
between right and wrong, etc., have been _always_ in possession of the
human race. It has been, moreover, confirmed in its possession of them by
Divine Revelation. And it has not needed either the rise or the progress
of modern science to defend them. These fundamental rational truths
constitute a _philosophia perennis_: a fund of truth which is, like all
truth, _immutable_, though our human insight into it may develop in depth
and clearness.
But while this is so it is none the less true that philosophy, to be
progressive in its own order, must take account of every new fact and
conclusion brought to light in every department of scientific—and
historical, and artistic, and literary, and every other sort of—research.
And this for the simple reason that every such accession, whether of fact
or of theory, is an enlargement of human experience; as such it clamours
on the one hand for philosophical interpretation, for explanation in the
light of what we know already about the ultimate grounds and causes of
things, for admission into our world-outlook, for adjustment and
co-ordination with the previous contents of the latter; while, on the
other hand, by its very appearance on the horizon of human experience it
may enrich or illumine, rectify or otherwise influence, this outlook or
some aspect of it.(42)
If, then, philosophy has to take account of advances in every other
department of human research, it is clear that its mastery at the present
day is a more laborious task than ever it was in the past. In order to get
an intelligent grasp of its principles in their applications to the
problems raised by the progress of the sciences, to newly discovered facts
and newly propounded hypotheses, the student must be familiar with these
facts and hypotheses; and all the more so because through the medium of a
sensational newspaper press that has more regard for novelty than truth,
these facts and hypotheses are no sooner brought to light by scientists
than what are often garbled and distorted versions of them are circulated
among the masses.(43)
Similarly, in order that a sound system of speculative and practical
philosophy be expounded, developed, and defended at the present time, a
system that will embrace and co-ordinate the achieved results of modern
scientific research, a system that will offer the most satisfactory
solutions of old difficulties in new forms and give the most reasonable
and reliable answers to the ever recurring questionings of man concerning
his own nature and destiny—it is clear that the insufficiency of
individual effort must be supplemented by the co-operation of numbers. It
is the absence of fulness, completeness, adequacy, in most modern systems
of philosophy, their fragmentary character, the unequal development of
their parts, that accounts very largely for the despairing attitude of the
many who nowadays despise and turn away from philosophical speculation.
Add to this the uncertain voice with which these philosophies speak in
consequence of their advocates ignoring the implications of the most
stupendous fact in human experience,—the Christian Revelation. But there
is one philosophy which is free from these defects, a philosophy which is
in complete harmony with Revealed Truth, and which forms with the latter
the only true _Philosophy of Life_; and that one philosophy is the system
which, assimilating the wisdom of Plato, Aristotle and all the other
greatest thinkers of the world, has been traditionally expounded in the
Christian schools—the _Scholastic_ system of philosophy. It has been
elaborated by no one man, and is the original fruit of no one mind. Unlike
the philosophies of Kant or Hegel or Spencer or James or Comte or Bergson,
it is not a “one-man” philosophy. It cannot boast of the novelty or
originality of the many eccentric and ephemeral “systems” which have
succeeded one another so rapidly in recent times in the world of
intellectual fashion; but it has ever possessed the enduring novelty of
the _truth_, which is ever ancient and ever new. Now although this
philosophy may have been mastered in its broad outlines and applications
by specially gifted individuals in past ages, its progressive exposition
and development, and its application to the vastly extended and
ever-growing domains of experience that are being constantly explored by
the special sciences, can never be the work of any individual: it can be
accomplished only by the earnest co-operation of Christian philosophers in
every part of the civilized world.(44)
In carrying on this work we have not to build from the beginning. “It has
sometimes been remarked,” as Newman observes,(45) “when men have boasted
of the knowledge of modern times, that no wonder we see more than the
ancients because we are mounted upon their shoulders.” Yes; the
intellectual toilers of to-day are heirs to the intellectual wealth of
their ancestors. We have tradition: not to despise but to use, critically,
judiciously, reverently, if we are to use it profitably. Thomas Davis has
somewhere said that they who demolish the past do not build up for the
future. And we have the Christian Revelation, as a _lamp_ to our _feet_
and a _light_ to our _paths_(46) in all those rational investigations
which form the appointed task of the philosopher. Hence,
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster.(47)
CHAPTER I. BEING AND ITS PRIMARY DETERMINATIONS.
1. OUR CONCEPT OF BEING: ITS EXPRESSION AND FEATURES.—The term “_Being_”
(Lat. _ens_; Gr. ὤν; Ger. _Seiend_; Fr. _étant_) as present participle of
the verb _to be_ (Lat. _esse_; Gr. ἔιναι; Ger. _Sein_; Fr. _être_) means
_existing_ (_existens_, _existere_). But the participle has come to be
used as a noun; and as such it does not necessarily imply actual existence
_hic et nunc_. It does indeed imply some relation to actual existence; for
we designate as “being” (in the substantive sense) only whatever we
conceive as actually existing or at least as capable of existing; and it
is from the participial sense, which implies actual existence, that the
substantive sense has been derived. Moreover, the intelligible use of the
word “being” as a term implies a reference to some actually existing
sphere of reality.(48) It is in the substantive meaning the term will be
most frequently used in these pages, as the context will show. When we
speak of “a being” in the concrete, the word has the same meaning as
“thing” (_res_) used in the wide sense in which this latter includes
persons, places, events, facts and phenomena of whatsoever kind. In the
same sense we speak of “a reality,” this term having taken on a concrete,
in addition to its original abstract, meaning. “Being” has also this
abstract sense when we speak of “the being or reality of things”. Finally
it may be used in a collective sense to indicate the sum-total of all that
is or can be—all reality.
(_a_) The notion of being, spontaneously reached by the human mind, is
found on reflection to be the _simplest_ of all notions, defying every
attempt at analysis into simpler notions. It is involved in every other
concept which we form of any object of thought whatsoever. Without it we
could have no concept of anything.
(_b_) It is thus the first of all notions _in the logical order_, _i.e._
in the process of rational thought.
(_c_) It is also the _first_ of all notions _in the chronological order_,
the first which the human mind forms in the order of time. Not, of course,
that we remember having formed it before any other more determinate
notions. But the child’s awakening intellectual activity must have
proceeded from the simplest, easiest, most superficial of all concepts, to
fuller, clearer, and more determinate concepts, _i.e._ from the vague and
confused notion of “being” or “thing” to notions of definite modes of
being, or kinds of thing.
(_d_) This direct notion of being is likewise the _most indeterminate_ of
all notions; though not of course entirely indeterminate. An object of
thought, to be conceivable or intelligible at all by our finite minds,
must be rendered definite in some manner and degree; and even this widest
notion of “being” is rendered intelligible only by being conceived as
positive and as contrasting with absolute non-being or nothingness.(49)
According to the Hegelian philosophy “pure thought” can apparently
think “pure being,” _i.e._ being in absolute indeterminateness,
being as not even differentiated from “pure not-being” or absolute
nothingness. And this absolutely indeterminate confusion (we may
not call it a “synthesis” or “unity”) of something and nothing, of
being and not-being, of positive and negative, of affirmation and
denial, would be conceived by our finite minds as the objective
correlative of, and at the same time as absolutely identical with,
its subjective correlative which is “pure thought”. Well, it is
with the human mind and its objects, and how it thinks those
objects, that we are concerned at present; not with speculations
involving the gratuitous assumption of a Being that would
transcend all duality of subject and object, all determinateness
of knowing and being, all distinction of thought and thing. We
believe that the human mind can establish the existence of a
Supreme Being whose mode of Thought and Existence transcends all
human comprehension, but it can do so only as the culminating
achievement of all its speculation; and the transcendent Being it
thus reaches has nothing in common with the monistic ideal-real
being of Hegel’s philosophy. In endeavouring to set out from the
high _a priori_ ground of such an intangible conception, the
Hegelian philosophy starts at the wrong end.
(_e_) Further, the notion of being is the _most abstract_ of all notions,
poorest in intension as it is widest in extension. We derive it from the
data of our experience, and the process by which we reach it is a process
of abstraction. We lay aside all the differences whereby things are
distinguished from one another; we do not consider these differences; we
prescind or abstract from them mentally, and retain for consideration only
what is common to all of them. This common element forms the explicit
content of our notion of being.
It must be noted, however, that we do not _positively exclude_ the
differences from the _object_ of our concept; we cannot do this, for the
simple reason that the differences too are “being,” inasmuch as they too
are modes of being. Our attitude towards them is _negative_; we merely
abstain from considering them explicitly, though they remain in our
concept implicitly. The separation effected is only mental, subjective,
notional, formal, negative; not objective, not real, not positive. Hence
the process by which we narrow down the concept of being to the more
comprehensive concept of this or that generic or specific mode of being,
does not add to the former concept anything really new, or distinct from,
or extraneous to it; but rather brings out explicitly something that was
implicit in the latter. The composition of being with its modes is,
therefore, only _logical_ composition, not real.
On the other hand, it would seem that when we abstract a generic mode of
being from the specific modes subordinate to the former, we _positively
exclude_ the differentiating characteristics of these species; and that,
conversely, when we narrow down the genus to a subordinate species we do
so by _adding on_ a differentiating mode which was not contained even
implicitly in the generic concept. Thus, for example, the differentiating
concept “rational” is not contained even implicitly in the generic concept
“animal”: it is added on _ab extra_ to the latter(50) in order to reach
the specific concept of “rational animal” or “man”; so that in abstracting
the generic from the subordinate specific concept we prescind
_objectively_ and _really_ from the differentiating concept, by positively
excluding this latter. This kind of abstraction is called objective, real,
positive; and the composition of such generic and differentiating modes of
being is technically known as _metaphysical_ composition. The different
modes of being, which the mind can distinguish at different levels of
abstraction in any specific concept—such as “rational,” “sentient,”
“living,” “corporeal,” in the concept of “man”—are likewise known as
“metaphysical grades” of being.
It has been questioned whether this latter kind of abstraction is
always used in relating generic, specific, and differential modes
of being. At first sight it would not appear to be a quite
satisfactory account of the process in cases where the generic
notion exhibits a mode of being which can be embodied only in one
or other of a number of alternative specific modes by means of
_differentiae_ not found in any things lying outside the genus
itself. The generic notion of “plane rectilinear figure” does not,
of course, include explicitly its species “triangle,”
“quadrilateral,” “pentagon,” etc.; nor does it include even
implicitly any definite one of them. But the concept of each of
the differentiating characters, _e.g._ the _differentia_
“three-sidedness,” is unintelligible except as a mode of a “plane
rectilinear figure”.(51) This, however, is only accidental, _i.e._
due to the special objects considered;(52) and even here there
persists this difference that whereas what differentiates the
species of plane rectilinear figures is not explicitly and
formally plane-rectilinearity, that which differentiates finite
from infinite being, or substantial from accidental being, is
itself also formally and explicitly _being_. But there are other
cases in which the abstraction is manifestly objective. Thus, for
example, the differentiating concept “rational” does not even
implicitly include the generic concept “animal,” for the former
concept may be found realized in beings other than animals; and
the differentiating concept “living” does not even implicitly
include the concept “corporeal,” for it may be found realized in
incorporeal beings.
(_f_) Since the notion of being is so simple that it cannot be analysed
into simpler notions which might serve as its _genus_ and _differentia_,
it _cannot_ strictly speaking _be defined_. We can only describe it by
considering it from various points of view and comparing it with the
various modes in which we find it realized. This is what we have been
attempting so far. Considering its fundamental relation to existence we
might say that “Being is that which exists or is at least capable of
existing”: _Ens est id quod existit vel saltem existere potest._ Or,
considering its relation to its opposite we might say that “Being is that
which is not absolute nothingness”: _Ens est id quod non est nihil
absolutum._ Or, considering its relation to our minds, we might say that
“Being is whatever is thinkable, whatever can be an object of thought”.
(_g_) The notion of being is so universal that it transcends all actual
and conceivable determinate modes of being: it embraces infinite being and
all modes of finite being. In other words it is _not itself a generic, but
a transcendental notion_. Wider than all, even the widest and highest
genera, it is not itself a genus. A genus is determinable into its species
by the addition of differences which lie outside the concept of the genus
itself; being, as we have seen, is not in this way determinable into its
modes.
2. IN WHAT SENSE ARE ALL THINGS THAT EXIST OR CAN EXIST SAID TO BE “REAL”
OR TO HAVE “BEING”?—A generic concept can be predicated _univocally_,
_i.e._ in the same sense, of its subordinate species. These latter differ
from one another by characteristics which lie outside the concept of the
genus, while they all agree in realizing the generic concept itself: they
do not of course realize it in the same way,(53) but as such it is really
and truly in each of them and is predicated in the same sense of each. But
the characteristics which differentiate all genera and species from one
another, and from the common notion of being, in which they all agree, are
likewise _being_. That in which they differ is being, as well as that in
which they agree. _Hence we do not predicate _“being”_ univocally of its
various modes._ When we say of the various classes of things which make up
our experience that they are “real” (or “realities,” or “beings”), we do
not apply this predicate in altogether the same sense to the several
classes; for as applied to each class it connotes the whole content of
each, not merely the part in which this agrees with, but also the part in
which it differs from, the others. Nor yet do we apply the concept of
“being” in a totally different sense to each separate determinate mode of
being. When we predicate “being” of its modes _the predication is not
merely equivocal_. The concept expressed by the predicate-term “being” is
not totally different as applied to each subject-mode; for in all cases
alike it implies either actual existence or some relation thereto. It only
remains, therefore, that we must regard the notion of being, when
predicated of its several modes, _as partly the same and partly
different_; and this is what we mean when we say that _the concept of
being is analogical, that being is predicated analogically of its various
modes_.
Analogical predication is of two kinds: a term or concept may be affirmed
of a variety of subjects either by analogy _of attribution_ or by analogy
_of proportion_. We may, for instance, speak not only of a man as
“healthy,” but also of his food, his countenance, his occupation, his
companionship, etc., as “healthy”. Now health is found really only in the
man, but it is _attributed_ to the other things owing to some extrinsic
but real connexion which they have with his health, whether as cause, or
effect, or indication, of the latter. This is analogy of attribution; the
subject of which the predicate is properly and primarily affirmed being
known as the primary analogue or _analogum princeps_, those to which it is
transferred being called the _analogata_. It underlies the figures of
speech known as metynomy and synechdoche. Now on account of the various
relations that exist between the different modes of being, relations of
cause and effect, whole and part, means and end, ground and consequence,
etc.—relations which constitute the _orders_ of existing and possible
things, the _physical_ and the _metaphysical_ orders—being is of course
predicated of its modes by _analogy of attribution_; and in such
predication infinite being is the primary analogue for finite beings, and
the substance-mode of being for all accident-modes of being.
Inasmuch, however, as being is not merely attributed to these modes
extrinsically, but belongs to all of them intrinsically, it is also
predicated of them by _analogy of proportion_. This latter sort of analogy
is based on similarity of relations. For example, the act of understanding
bears a relation to the mind similar to that which the act of seeing bears
to the eye, and hence we say of the mind that it “sees” things when it
understands them. Or, again, we speak of a verdant valley in the sunshine
as “smiling,” because its appearance bears a relation to the valley
similar to that which a smile bears to the human countenance. Or again, we
speak of the parched earth as “thirsting” for the rains, or of the devout
soul as “thirsting” for God, because these relations are recognized as
similar to that of a thirsty person towards the drink for which he
thirsts. In all such cases the analogical concept implies not indeed the
same attribute (differently realized) in all the analogues (as in univocal
predication) but rather a similarity in the relation or proportion in
which each analogue embodies or realizes some attribute or attributes
peculiar to itself. Seeing is to the eye as understanding is to the mind;
smiling is to the countenance as the pleasing appearance of its natural
features is to the valley. Rain is to the parched earth, and God is to the
devout soul, as drink is to the thirsty person. It will be noted that in
all such cases the analogical concept is affirmed primarily and properly
of some one thing (the _analogum princeps_), and of the other only
secondarily, and relatively to the former.
Now, if we reflect on the manner in which being is affirmed of its various
modes (_e.g._ of the infinite and the finite; or of substance and
accident; or of spiritual and corporeal substances; or of quantities, or
qualities, or causes, etc.) we can see _firstly_ that although these
differ from one another _by all that each of them is, by the whole being
of each_, yet there is an all-pervading similarity between the relations
which these modes bear each to its own existence. All have, or can have,
actual existence: each according to the grade of perfection of its own
reality. If we conceive infinite being as the cause of all finite beings,
then the former exists in a manner appropriate to its all-perfect reality,
and finite beings in a manner proportionate to their limited realities;
and so of the various modes of finite being among themselves. Moreover, we
can see _secondly_, as will be explained more fully below,(54) that being
is affirmed of the finite by virtue of its dependence on the infinite, and
of accident by virtue of its dependence on substance.(55) Being or reality
is therefore predicated of its modes by _analogy of proportion_.(56)
Is a concept, when applied in this way, one, or is it really manifold? It
is not simply one, for this would yield univocal predication; nor is it
simply manifold, for this would give equivocal predication. Being,
considered in its vague, imperfect, inadequate sense, as involving some
common or similar proportion or relation to existence in all its
analogues, is one; considered as representing clearly and adequately what
is thus similarly related to each of the analogues, it is manifold.
Analogy of proportion is the basis of the figure of speech known as
metaphor. It would be a mistake, however, to infer from this that what is
thus analogically predicated of a number of things belongs intrinsically
and properly only to one of them, being transferred by a mere extrinsic
denomination to the others; and that therefore it does not express any
genuine knowledge on our part about the nature of these other things. It
does give us real knowledge about them. Metaphor is not equivocation; but
perhaps more usually it is understood not to give us real knowledge
because it is understood to be based on resemblances that are merely
_fanciful_, not real. Still, no matter how slender and remote be the
proportional resemblance on which the analogical use of language is based,
in so far forth as it has such a _real_ basis it gives us real insight
into the nature of the analogues. And if we hesitate to describe such a
use of language as “metaphorical,” this is only because “metaphor” perhaps
too commonly connotes a certain transferred and improper extension of the
meaning of terms, based upon a _purely fanciful_ resemblance.
All our language is primarily and _properly_ expressive of concepts
derived from the sensible appearances of material realities. As applied to
the suprasensible, intelligible aspects of these realities, such as
substance and cause, or to spiritual realities, such as the human soul and
God, it is analogical in another sense; not as opposed to univocal, but as
opposed to _proper_. That is, it expresses concepts which are not formed
directly from the presence of the things which they signify, but are
gathered from other things to which the latter are necessarily related in
a variety of ways.(57) Considering the origin of our knowledge, the
material, the sensible, the phenomenal, comes first in order, and moulds
our concepts and language primarily to its own proper representation and
expression; while the spiritual, the intelligible, the substantial, comes
later, and must make use of the concepts and language thus already
moulded.
If we consider, however, not the order in which we get our knowledge, but
the order of _reality_ in the objects of our knowledge, being or reality
is primarily and more properly predicated of the infinite than of the
finite, of the Creator than of the creature, of the spiritual than of the
material, of substances than of their accidents and sensible
manifestations or phenomena. Yet we do not predicate being or reality of
the finite, or of creatures, in a mere transferred, extrinsic, improper
sense, as if these were mere manifestations of the infinite, or mere
effects of the First Cause, to which alone reality would properly belong.
For creatures, finite things, are in a true and proper sense also real.
Duns Scotus and those who think with him contend that the concept
of being, derived as it is from our experience of finite being, if
applied only analogically to infinite being would give us no
genuine knowledge about the latter. They maintain that whenever a
universal concept is applied to the objects in which it is
_realized intrinsically_, it is affirmed of these objects
_univocally_. The notion of being, in its most imperfect,
inadequate, indeterminate sense, is, they say, _one and the same_
in so far forth as it is applicable to the infinite and the
finite, and to all the modes of the finite; and it is therefore
predicated of all univocally.(58) But although they apply the
concept of being univocally to the infinite and the finite, _i.e._
to God and creatures, they admit that the _reality_ corresponding
to this univocal concept is _totally different_ in God and in
creatures: that God differs by _all that He is_ from creatures,
and they by _all that they are_ from Him. While, however, Scotists
emphasize the formal oneness or identity of the indeterminate
common concept, followers of St. Thomas emphasize the fact that
the various modes of being differ totally, by all that each of
them is, from one another; and, from this radical diversity in the
modes of being, they infer that the common concept should not be
regarded as _simply_ the same, but only as _proportionally_ the
same, as expressive of a _similar relation_ of each intrinsically
different mode of reality to actual existence.
Thomists lay still greater stress, perhaps, upon the second
consideration referred to above, as a reason for regarding being
as an analogical concept when affirmed of Creator and creature, or
of substance and accident: the consideration that the finite is
_dependent_ on the infinite, and accident on substance. If being
is realized in a true and proper sense, and intrinsically, as it
undoubtedly is, in whatever is distinguishable from nothingness,
why not say that we should affirm being or reality of all things
“either as a genus in the strict sense, or else in some sense not
analogical but proper, after the manner in which we predicate a
genus of its species and individuals?... Since the object of our
universal idea of being is admitted to be really in all things, we
can evidently abstract from what is proper to substance and to
accident, just as we abstract from what is proper to plants and to
animals when we affirm of these that they are living things.”(59)
“In reply to this difficulty,” Father Kleutgen continues,(60) “we
say in the first place that the idea of being is in truth less
analogical and more proper than any belonging to the first sort of
analogy [_i.e._ of attribution], and that therefore it approaches
more closely to generic concepts properly so called. At the same
time the difference which separates both from the latter concepts
remains. For a name applied to many things is analogical if what
it signifies is realized _par excellence_ in one, and in the
others only subordinately and dependently on that. Hence it is
that Aristotle regards predication as analogical when something is
affirmed of many things (1) either because these have a certain
relation to some one thing, (2) or because they depend on some one
thing. In the former case the thing signified by the name is
really and properly found only in one single thing, and is
affirmed of all the others only in virtue of some real relation of
these to the former, whether this be (_a_) that these things
merely resemble that single thing [metaphor], or (_b_) bear some
other relation to it, such as that of effect to cause, etc.
[metonymy]. In the latter case the thing signified by the name is
really in each of the things of which it is affirmed; but it is in
one alone _par excellence_, and in the others only by depending,
for its very existence in them, on that one. Now the object of the
term _being_ is found indeed in accidents, _e.g._ in quantity,
colour, shape; but certainly it must be applied primarily to
substance, and to accidents only dependently on the latter: for
quantity, colour, shape can have being only because the corporeal
substance possesses these determinations. But this is not at all
the case with a genus and its species. These differ from the
genus, not by any such dependence, but by the addition of some
special perfection to the constituents of the genus; for example,
in the brute beast sensibility is added to vegetative life, and in
man intelligence is added to sensibility. Here there is no
relation of dependence for existence. Even if we considered human
life as that of which life is principally asserted, we could not
say that plants and brute beasts so depended for their life on the
life of man that we could not affirm life of them except as
dependent on the life of man: as we cannot attribute being to
accidents except by reason of their dependence on substance. Hence
it is that we can consider apart, and in itself, life in general,
and attribute this to all living things without relating it to any
other being.”(61)
“It might still be objected that the one single being of which we
may affirm life primarily and principally, ought to be not human
life, but absolute life. And between this divine life and the life
of all other beings there is a relation of dependence, which
reaches even to the very existence of life in these other beings.
In fact all life depends on the absolute life, not indeed in the
way accident depends on substance, but in a manner no less real
and far more excellent. This is entirely true; but what are we to
conclude from it if not precisely this, which scholasticism
teaches: that the perfections found in the various species of
creatures can be affirmed of these in the same sense (_univocé_),
but that they can be affirmed of God and creatures only
analogically?”
“From all of which we can understand why it is that in regard to
genera and species the analogy is in the things but not in our
thoughts, while in regard to substance and accidents it is both in
the things and in our thoughts: a difference which rests not
solely on our manner of conceiving things, nor _a fortiori_ on
mere caprice or fancy, but which has its basis in the very nature
of the things themselves. For though in the former case there is a
certain analogy in the things themselves, inasmuch as the same
nature, that of the genus, is realized in the species in different
ways, still, as we have seen, that is not sufficient, without the
relation of dependence, to yield a basis for analogy in our
thoughts. For it is precisely because accident, as a determination
of substance, presupposes this latter, that being cannot be
affirmed of accident except as dependent on substance.”
These paragraphs will have shown with sufficient clearness why we
should regard being not as an univocal but as an analogical
concept, when referred to God and creatures, or to substance and
accident. For the rest, the divergence between the Scotist and the
Thomist views is not very important, because Scotists also will
deny that being is a genus of which the infinite and the finite
would be species; finite and infinite are not _differentiae_
superadded to being, inasmuch as each of these differs _by its
whole reality_, and not merely by a determining portion, from the
other; it is owing to the limitations of our abstractive way of
understanding reality that we have to conceive the infinite by
first conceiving being in the abstract, and then mentally
determining this concept by another, namely, by the concept of
“infinite mode of being”(62); the infinite, and whatever
perfections we predicate formally of the infinite, transcend all
_genera_, _species_ and _differentiae_, because the distinction of
being into infinite and finite is prior to the distinction into
genera, species and differentiae; this latter distinction applying
only to finite, not to infinite being.(63)
The observations we have just been making in regard to the analogy of
being are of greater importance than the beginner can be expected to
realize. A proper appreciation of the way in which being or reality is
conceived by the mind to appertain to the data of our experience, is
indispensable to the defence of Theism as against Agnosticism and
Pantheism.
3. REAL BEING AND LOGICAL BEING.—We may next illustrate the notion of
being by approaching it from another standpoint—by examining a fundamental
distinction which may be drawn between _real being_ (_ens reale_) and
_logical being_ (_ens rationis_).
We derive all our knowledge, through external and internal sense
perception, from the domain of actually existing things, these things
including our own selves and our own minds. We form, from the data of
sense-consciousness, by an intellectual process proper, mental
representations of an abstract and universal character, which reveal to us
partial aspects and phases of the natures of things. We have no intuitive
intellectual insight into these natures. It is only by abstracting their
various aspects, by comparing these in judgments, and reaching still
further aspects by inferences, that we progress in our knowledge of
things—gradually, step by step, _discursivé_, _discurrendo_. All this
implies reflection on, and comparison of, our own ideas, our mental views
of things. It involves the processes of defining and classifying,
affirming and denying, abstracting and generalizing, analysing and
synthesizing, comparing and relating in a variety of ways the objects
grasped by our thought. Now in all these complex functions, by which alone
the mind can _interpret rationally_ what is given to it, by which alone,
in other words, it can know reality, the mind necessarily and inevitably
forms for itself (and expresses in intelligible language) a series of
concepts which have for their objects only the _modes_ in which, and the
_relations_ by means of which, it makes such gradual progress in its
interpretation of what is given to it, in its knowledge of the real. These
concepts are called _secundae intentiones mentis_—concepts of the second
order, so to speak. And their objects, the modes and mutual relations of
our _primae intentiones_ or direct concepts, are called _entia
rationis_—logical entities. For example, _abstractness_ is a mode which
affects not the reality which we apprehend intellectually, but the concept
by which we apprehend it. So, too, is the _universality_ of a concept, its
communicability or applicability to an indefinite multitude of similar
realities—the “_intentio universalitatis_,” as it is called—a mode of
concept, not of the realities represented by the latter. So, likewise, is
the _absence_ of other reality than that represented by the concept, the
_relative nothingness or non-being_ by contrast with which the concept is
realized as positive; and the _absolute nothingness or non-being_ which is
the logical correlative of the concept of being; and the static,
unchanging self-identity of the object as conceived in the abstract.(64)
These are not modes of reality _as it is_ but _as it is conceived_. Again,
the manifold logical relations which we establish between our
concepts—relations of (extensive or intensive) identity or distinction,
inclusion or inherence, etc.—are logical entities, _entia rationis_:
relations of genus, species, differentia, proprium, accidens; the
affirmative or negative relation between predicate and subject in
judgment;(65) the mutual relations of antecedent and consequent in
inference. Now all these logical entities, or _objecta secundae
intentionis mentis_, are relations established by the mind itself between
its own thoughts; they have, no doubt, a foundation in the real objects of
those thoughts as well as in the constitution and limitations of the mind
itself; but they have themselves, and can have, no other being than that
which they have as products of thought. Their sole being consists in
_being thought of_. They are necessary creations or products of the
thought-process as this goes on in the human mind. We see that it is only
by means of these relations we can progress in understanding things. In
the thought-process we cannot help bringing them to light—and thinking
them after the manner of realities, _per modum entis_. Whatever we think
we must think through the concept of “being”; whatever we conceive we must
conceive as “being”; but on reflection we easily see that such entities as
“nothingness,” “negation or absence or privation of being,”
“universality,” “predicate”—and, in general, all relations established by
our own thought between our own ideas representative of reality—can have
themselves no reality proper, no actual or possible existence, other than
that which they get from the mind in virtue of its making them objects of
its own thought. Hence the scholastic definition of a logical entity or
_ens rationis_ as “that which has objective being merely in the
intellect”: “_illud quod habet esse objective tantum in intellectu, seu
... id quod a ratione excogitatur ut ens, cum tamen in se entitatem non
habeat_”.(66) Of course the mental process by which we think such
entities, the mental state in which they are held in consciousness, is
just as real as any other mental process or state. But the entity which is
thus held in consciousness has and can have no other reality than what it
has by being an object of thought. And this precisely is what
distinguishes it from _real being_, from _reality_; for the latter,
besides the ideal existence it has in the mind which thinks of it, has, or
at least can have, a real existence of its own, independently altogether
of our thinking about it. We assume here, of course—what is established
elsewhere, as against the subjective idealism of phenomenists and the
objective idealism of Berkeley—that the _reality_ of _actual_ things does
not consist in their being perceived or thought of, that their “_esse_” is
not “_percipi_,” that they have a reality other than and independent of
their actual presence to the thought of any human mind. And even purely
possible things, even the creatures of our own fancy, the fictions of
fable and romance, _could_, absolutely speaking and without any
contradiction, have an existence in the actual order, in addition to the
mental existence they receive from those who fancy them. Such entities,
therefore, differ from _entia rationis_; they, too, are _real_ beings.
What the reality of purely possible things is we shall discuss
later on. Actually existing things at all events we assume to be
_given_ to the knowing mind, not to be _created_ by the latter.
Even in regard to these, however, we must remember that the mind
in knowing them, in interpreting them, in seeking to penetrate the
nature of them, is not purely passive; that reality as known to
us—or, in other words, our knowledge of reality—is the product of
a twofold factor: the subjective which is the mind, and the
objective which is the extramental reality acting on, and thus
revealing itself to, the mind. Hence it is that when we come to
analyse in detail our knowledge of the nature of things—or, in
other words, the natures of things as revealed to our minds—it
will not be always easy to distinguish in each particular case the
properties, aspects, relations, distinctions, etc., which are
_real_ (in the sense of being there in the reality independently
of the consideration of the mind) from those that are merely
_logical_ (in the sense of being produced and superadded to the
reality by the mental process itself).(67) Yet it is obviously a
matter of the very first importance to determine, as far as may be
possible, to what extent our knowledge of reality is not merely a
mental _interpretation_, but a mental _construction_, of the
latter; and whether, if there be a constructive or constitutive
factor in thought, this should be regarded as interfering with the
validity of thought as representative of reality. This problem—of
the relation of the _ens rationis_ to the _ens reale_ in the
process of cognition—has given rise to discussions which, in
modern times, have largely contributed to the formation of that
special branch of philosophical enquiry which is called
Epistemology. But it must not be imagined that this very problem
was not discussed, and very widely discussed, by philosophers long
before the problem of the validity of knowledge assumed the
prominent place it has won for itself in modern philosophy. Even a
moderate familiarity with scholastic philosophy will enable the
student to recognize this problem, in a variety of phases, in the
discussions of the medieval schoolmen concerning the concepts of
matter and form, the simplicity and composition of beings, and the
nature of the various distinctions—whether logical, virtual,
formal, or real—which the mind either invents or detects in the
realities it endeavours to understand and explain.
4. REAL BEING AND IDEAL BEING.—The latter of these expressions has a
multiplicity of kindred meanings. We use it here in the sense of “being
_known_,” _i.e._ to signify the “esse _intentionale_,” the mental
presence, which, in the scholastic theory of knowledge, an entity of
whatsoever kind, whether real or logical, must have in the mind of the
knower in order that he be aware of that entity. A mere logical entity, as
we have seen, has and can have no other mode of being than this which
consists in being an object of the mind’s awareness. All real being, too,
when it becomes an object of any kind of human cognition whatsoever—of
intellectual thought, whether direct or reflex; of sense perception,
whether external or internal—must obtain this sort of mental presence or
mental existence: thereby alone can it become an “objectum _cognitum_”.
Only by such mental mirroring, or reproduction, or reconstruction, can
reality become so related and connected with mind as to reveal itself to
mind. Under this peculiar relation which we call cognition, the mind, as
we know from psychology and epistemology, is not passive: if reality
revealed itself immediately, as it is, to a purely passive mind (were such
conceivable), the existence of error would be unaccountable; but the mind
is not passive: under the influence of the reality it forms the
intellectual concept (the _verbum mentale_), or the sense percept (the
_species sensibilis expressa_), in and through which, and by means of
which, it attains to its knowledge of the real.
But prior (ontologically) to this _mental_ existence, and as partial cause
of the latter, there is the _real_ existence or being, which reality has
independently of its being known by any individual human mind. Real being,
then, as distinguished here from ideal being, is that which exists or can
exist extramentally, whether it is known by the human mind or not, _i.e._
whether it exists also mentally or not.
That there is such real being, apart from the “thought”-being
whereby the mind is constituted formally knowing, is proved
elsewhere; as also that this _esse intentionale_ has modes which
cannot be attributed to the _esse reale_. We merely note these
points here in order to indicate the errors involved in the
opposite contentions. Our concepts are characterized by
abstractness, by a consequent static immutability, by a plurality
often resulting from purely mental distinctions, by a universality
which transcends those distinctions and unifies the variety of all
subordinate concepts in the widest concept of _being_. Now if, for
example, we attribute the unifying mental mode of universality to
real being, we must draw the pantheistic conclusion that all real
being is one: the logical outcome of extreme realism. If, again,
we transfer purely mental distinctions to the unity of the
Absolute or Supreme Being, thus making them real, we thereby deny
infinite perfection to the most perfect being conceivable: an
error of which some catholic philosophers of the later middle ages
have been accused with some foundation. If, finally, we identify
the _esse reale_ with the _esse intentionale_, and this with the
thought-process itself, we find ourselves at the starting-point of
Hegelian monism.(68)
5. FUNDAMENTAL DISTINCTIONS IN REAL BEING.—Leaving logical and ideal being
aside, and fixing our attention exclusively on real being, we may indicate
here a few of the most fundamental distinctions which experience enables
us to recognize in our study of the universal order of things.
(_a_) _Possible or Potential Being and Actual Being._—The first of these
distinctions is that between possibility and actuality, between that which
can be and that which actually is. For a proper understanding of this
distinction, which will be dealt with presently, it is necessary to note
here the following divisions of _actual_ being, which will be studied in
detail later on.
(_b_) _Infinite Being and Finite Beings._—All people have a sufficiently
clear notion of Infinite Being, or Infinitely Perfect Being: though not
all philosophers are agreed as to how precisely we get this notion, or
whether there actually exists such a being, or whether if such being does
exist we can attain to a certain knowledge of such existence. By infinite
being we mean a being possessing all conceivable perfections in the most
perfect conceivable manner; and by finite beings all such beings as have
actually any conceivable limitation to their perfection. About these
nominal definitions there is no dispute; and scholasticism identifies
their respective objects with _God_ and _creatures_.
(_c_) _Necessary Being and Contingent Beings._—Necessary being we conceive
as that being which exists of necessity: being which if conceived at all
cannot be conceived as non-existent: being in the very concept of which is
essentially involved the concept of actual existence: so that the attempt
to conceive such being as non-existent would be an attempt to conceive
what would be self-contradictory. Contingent being, on the other hand, is
being which is conceived not to exist of necessity: being which may be
conceived as not actually existent: being in the concept of which is not
involved the concept of actual existence. The same observations apply to
this distinction as to the preceding one. It is obvious that any being
which we regard as actual we must regard either as necessary or as
contingent; and, secondly, that necessary being must be considered as
absolutely independent, as having its actual existence _from itself_, by
its own nature; while contingent being must be considered as dependent for
its actual existence on some being _other_ than itself. Hence necessary
being is termed _Ens a se_, contingent being _Ens ab alio_.
(_d_) _Absolute Being and Relative Beings._—In modern philosophy the terms
“absolute” and “relative,” as applied to being, correspond roughly with
the terms “God” and “creatures” in the usage of theistic philosophers. But
the former pair of terms is really of wider application than the latter.
The term _absolute_ means, etymologically, that which is loosed,
unfettered, disengaged or free from bonds (_absolutum_, _ab-solvere_,
_solvo_ = _se-luo_, from λύω): that, therefore, which is not bound up with
anything else, which is in some sense self-sufficing, independent; while
the _relative_ is that which is in some way bound up with something else,
and which is so far not self-sufficing or independent. That, therefore, is
_ontologically_ absolute which is in some sense self-sufficing,
independent of other things, _in its existence_; while the ontologically
relative is that which depends in some real way for its existence on
something else. Again, that is _logically_ absolute which _can be
conceived and known by us without reference to anything else_; while the
logically relative is that which we can conceive and know only through our
knowledge of something else. And since we usually name things according to
the way in which we conceive them, we regard as absolute any being which
is _by itself_ and _of itself_ that which we conceive it to be, or that
which its name implies; and as relative any being which is what its name
implies only _in virtue of some relation_ to something else.(69) Thus, a
man is a _man_ absolutely, while he is a _friend_ only relatively to
others.
It is obvious that the primary and general meaning of the terms “absolute”
and “relative” can be applied and extended in a variety of ways. For
instance, _all_ being may be said to be “relative” _to the knowing mind_,
in the sense that all knowledge involves a transcendental relation of the
known object to the knowing subject. In this widest and most improper
sense even God Himself is relative, not however as being, but as known.
Again, when we apply the same attribute to a variety of things we may see
that it is found in one of them in the most perfect manner conceivable, or
at least in a fuller and higher degree than it is found in the others; and
that it is found in these others only with some sort of subordination to,
and dependence on, the former: we then say that it belongs to this
_primarily_ or _absolutely_, and to the others only _secondarily_ or
_relatively_. This is a less improper application of the terms than in the
preceding case. What we have especially to remember here is that there are
many different kinds of dependence or subordination, all alike giving rise
to the same usage.
Hence, applying the terms absolute and relative to the predicate “being”
or “real” or “reality,” it is obvious in the first place that the
_potential_ as such can be called “being,” or “reality” only in relation
to the _actual_. It is the actual that is being _simpliciter_, _par
excellence_; the potential is so only in relation to this.(70) Again,
_substances_ may be termed beings absolutely, while _accidents_ are beings
only relatively, because of their dependence on substances; though this
relation is quite different from the relation of potential to actual
being. Finally all finite, contingent realities, actual and possible, are
what they are only because of their dependence on the Infinite and
Necessary Being: and hence the former are relative and the latter
absolute; though here again the relation is different from that of
accident to substance, or of potential to actual.
Since the order of being includes all orders, and since a being is
_absolutely_ such-or-such in any order only when that being realizes in
all its fulness and purity such-or-such reality, it follows that the being
which realizes in all its fulness the reality of _being_ is the Absolute
Being in the highest possible sense of this term. This concept of Absolute
Being is the richest and most comprehensive of all possible concepts: it
is the very antithesis of that other concept of “being in general” which
is common to everything and distinguished only from nothingness. It
includes in itself all actual and possible modes and grades and
perfections of finite things, apart from their limitations, embodying all
of them in the one highest and richest concept of that which makes all of
them real and actual, _viz._ the concept of Actuality or Actual Reality
itself.
Hegel and his followers have involved themselves in a pantheistic
philosophy by neglecting to distinguish between those two totally
different concepts.(71) A similar error has also resulted from
failure to distinguish between the various modes in which being
that is relative may be dependent on being that is absolute. God
is the Absolute Being; creatures are relative. So too is substance
absolute being, compared with accidents as inhering and existing
in substance. But God is not therefore to be conceived as the one
all-pervading substance, of which all finite things, all
phenomena, would be only accidental manifestations.
CHAPTER II. BECOMING AND ITS IMPLICATIONS.
6. THE STATIC AND THE CHANGING.—The things we see around us, the things
which make up the immediate data of our experience, not only _are_ or
_exist_; they also _become_, or _come_ into actual existence; they
_change_; they pass out of actual existence. The abstract notion of being
represents its object to the mind in a static, permanent, changeless,
self-identical condition; but if this condition were an adequate
representation of reality change would be unreal, would be only an
illusion. This is what the Eleatic philosophers of ancient Greece
believed, distinguishing merely between being and nothingness. But they
were mistaken; for change in things is too obviously real to be eliminated
by calling it an illusion: even if it were an illusion, this illusion at
least would have to be accounted for. In order, therefore, to understand
reality we must employ not merely the notion of being (something
_static_), but also the notion of becoming, change, process, appearing and
disappearing (something _kinetic_, and something _dynamic_). In doing so,
however, we must not fall into the error of the opposite extreme from the
Eleatics—by regarding change as the adequate representation of reality.
This is what Heraclitus and the later Ionians did: holding that nothing
_is_, that all _becomes_ (πάντα ρέι), that change is all reality, that the
stable, the permanent, is non-existent, unreal, an illusion. This too is
false; for change would be unintelligible without at least an abiding
_law_ of change, a permanent _principle_ of some sort; which, in turn,
involves the reality of some sort of abiding, stable, permanent being.
We must then—with Aristotle, as against both of those one-sided
conceptions—hold to the reality both of being and of becoming; and proceed
to see how the stable and the changing can both be real.
To convince ourselves that they are both real, very little reflection is
needed. We have actual experience of both those elements of reality in our
consciousness and memory of our own selves. Every human individual in the
enjoyment of his mental faculties knows himself as an abiding,
self-identical being, yet as constantly undergoing real changes; so that
throughout his life he is really the same being, though just as certainly
he really changes. In external nature, too, we observe on the one hand
innumerable processes of growth and decay, of motion and interaction; and
on the other hand a similarly all-pervading element of sameness or
identity amid all this never-ending change.
7. THE POTENTIAL AND THE ACTUAL. (_a_) POSSIBILITY, ABSOLUTE, RELATIVE,
AND ADEQUATE.—It is from our experience of actuality and change that we
derive not only our notion of temporal duration, but also our notion of
_potential being_ or _possibility_, as distinct from that of _actual
being_ or _actuality_. It is from our experience of what actually exists
that we are able to determine what can, and what cannot exist. We know
from experience what gold is, and what a tower is; and that it is
intrinsically possible for a golden tower to exist, that such an object of
thought involves no contradiction, that therefore its existence is not
impossible, even though it may never actually exist as a fact. Similarly,
we know from experience what a square is, and what a circle is; and that
it is intrinsically impossible for a square circle to exist, that such an
object of thought involves a contradiction, that therefore not only is
such an object never actually existent in fact, but that it is in no sense
real, in no way possible.
Thus, _intrinsic_ (or _objective_, _absolute_, _logical_, _metaphysical_)
possibility is the mere non-repugnance of an object of thought to actual
existence. Any being or object of thought that is conceivable in this way,
that can be conceived as capable of actually existing, is called
intrinsically (or objectively, absolutely, logically, metaphysically)
possible being. The absence of such intrinsic capability of actual
existence gives us the notion of the intrinsically (objectively,
absolutely, logically, metaphysically) impossible. We shall return to
these notions again. They are necessary here for the understanding of real
change in the actual universe.
Fixing our attention now upon the real changes which characterize the data
of our experience, let us inquire what conditions are necessary in order
that an intrinsically possible object of thought become here and now an
actual being. It matters not whether we select an example from the domain
of organic nature, of inorganic nature, or of art—whether it be an oak, or
an iceberg, or a statue. In order that there be here and now an actual
oak-tree, it is necessary not only (1) that such an object be
intrinsically possible, but (2) that there have been planted here an
actual acorn, _i.e._ an actual being having in it subjectively and really
the passive potentiality of developing into an actual oak-tree, and (3)
that there be in the actual things around the acorn active powers or
forces capable of so influencing the latent, passive potentiality of the
acorn as gradually to evolve the oak-tree therefrom. So, too, for the (1)
intrinsically possible iceberg, there are needed (2) water capable of
becoming ice, and (3) natural powers or forces capable of forming it into
ice and setting this adrift in the ocean. And for the (1) intrinsically
possible statue there are needed (2) the block of marble or other material
capable of becoming a statue, and (3) the sculptor having the power to
mould this material into an actual statue.
In order, therefore, that a thing which is not now actual, but only
intrinsically or absolutely possible, become actual, there must actually
exist some being or beings endowed with the _active power or potency_ of
making this possible thing actual. The latter is then said to be
_relatively, extrinsically_ possible—in relation to such being or beings.
And obviously a thing may be possible relatively to the power of one
being, and not possible relatively to lesser power of another being: the
statue that is intrinsically possible in the block of marble, may be
extrinsically possible relatively to the skilled sculptor, but not
relatively to the unskilled person who is not a sculptor.
Furthermore, relatively to the same agent or agents, the production of a
given effect, the doing of a given thing, is said to be _physically_
possible if it can be brought about by such agents acting according to the
ordinary course of nature; if, in other words they have the physical power
to do it. Otherwise it is said to be physically impossible, even though
metaphysically or intrinsically possible, _e.g._ it is physically
impossible for a dead person to come to life again. A thing is said to be
_morally_ possible, in reference to free and responsible agents, if they
can do it without unreasonable inconvenience; otherwise it is considered
as morally impossible, even though it be both physically and
metaphysically possible: as often happens in regard to the fulfilment of
one’s obligations.
That which is _both intrinsically and extrinsically possible_ is said to
be _adequately possible_. Whatever is intrinsically possible is also
extrinsically possible in relation to God, who is _Almighty_,
_Omnipotent_.
8. (_b_) SUBJECTIVE “POTENTIA,” ACTIVE AND PASSIVE.—Furthermore, we
conceive the Infinite Being, Almighty God, as capable of _creating_, or
producing actual being _from nothingness_, _i.e._ without any actually
pre-existing material out of whose passive potentiality the actual being
would be developed. Creative power or activity does not need any
pre-existing subject on which to exercise its influence, any subject in
whose _passive potentiality_ the thing to be created is antecedently
implicit.
But all other power, all activity of created causes, does require some
such actually existing subject. If we examine the activities of the
agencies that fall within our direct experience, whether in external
nature or in our own selves, we shall find that in no case does their
operative influence or causality extend beyond the production of changes
in existing being, or attain to the production of new actual being out of
nothingness. The forces of nature cannot produce an oak without an acorn,
or an iceberg without water; nor can the sculptor produce a statue except
from some pre-existing material.
The _natural_ passive potentiality of things is, moreover, limited
in reference to the active powers of the created universe. These,
for example, can educe life from the passive potentiality of
inorganic matter, but only by assimilating this matter into a
living organism: they cannot restore life to a human corpse; yet
the latter has in it the capacity to be restored to life by the
direct influence of the Author of Nature. This special and
supernatural potentiality in created things, under the influence
of Omnipotence, is known as _potentia obedientalis_.(72)
This consideration will help us to realize that all reality which is
produced by change, and subject to change, is essentially a mixture of
_becoming_ and _being_, of _potential_ and _actual_. The reality of such
being is not _tota simul_. Only immutable being, whose duration is
_eternal_, has its reality _tota simul_: it alone is _purely actual_, the
“_Actus Purus_”; and its duration is one eternal “_now_,” without
beginning, end, or succession. But mutable being, whose duration in actual
existence is measured by _time_, is actualized only successively: its
actuality at any particular instant does not embody the whole of its
reality: this latter includes also a “_was_” and “_will be_”; the thing
was _potentially_ what it now is _actually_, and it will become actually
something which it now is only potentially; nor shall we have understood
even moderately the nature or essence of any mutable being—an oak-tree,
for example—until we have grasped the fact that the whole reality of its
nature embraces more than what we find of it actually existing at any
given instant of its existence. In other words, we have to bear in mind
that the reality of such a being is not pure actuality but a mixture of
potential and actual: that it is an _actus non-purus_, or an _actus
mixtus_.
We have to note well that the _potential being_ of a thing is something
_real_—that it is not merely a _modus loquendi_, or a _modus
intelligendi_. The oak is in the acorn in some true and real sense: the
potentiality of the oak is something real in the acorn: if it were not so,
if it were nothing real in the acorn, we could say with equal truth that a
man or a horse or a house is potentially in the acorn; or, again with
equal truth, that the oak is potentially in a mustard-seed, or a grain of
corn, or a pebble, or a drop of water. Therefore the oak is _really_ in
the acorn—not actually but potentially, _potentia passiva_.
The oak-tree is also really in those _active_ forces of nature whose
influence on the acorn develop the latter into an actual oak-tree: it is
in those causes not actually, of course, but _virtually_, for they possess
in themselves the _operative power_—_potentia activa sive operativa_—to
educe the oak-tree out of the acorn. These two potential conditions of a
being—in the active causes which produce it, and in the pre-existing
actual thing or things from which it is produced—are called each a real or
subjective potency, _potentia realis_, or _potentia subjectiva_, in
distinction from the mere logical or objective possibility of such a
being.
And just as the passive potentiality of the statue is something real in
the block of marble, though distinct from the actuality of the statue and
from the process by which this is actualized, so is the active power of
making the statue something real in the sculptor, though distinct from the
operation by which he makes the statue. If an agent’s _power_ to act, to
produce change, were not a reality in the agent, a reality distinct from
the _action_ of the latter; or if a being’s capacity to undergo change,
and thereby to become something other, were not a reality distinct from
the process of change, and from the actual result of this process—it would
follow not only that the actual alone is real, and the merely possible or
potential unreal, but also that no change can be real, that nothing can
really become, and nothing really disappear.(73)
9. (_c_) ACTUALITY: ITS RELATION TO POTENTIALITY.—It is from our
experience of change in the world that we derive our notions of the
potential and the actual, of active power and passive potentiality. The
term “act” has primarily the same meaning as “action,” “operation,” that
process by which a change is wrought. But the Latin word _actus_ (Gr.
ἐνέργεια, ἐντελέχεια) means rather that which is achieved by the _actio_,
that which is the correlative and complement of the passive potentiality,
the actuality of this latter: that by which potential being is rendered
formally actual, and, by way of consequence, this actual being itself.
“_Potentia activa_” and its correlative “_actus_” might, perhaps, be
appropriately rendered by “_power_” (_potestas agendi_) and “_action_” or
“_operation_”; “_potentia passiva_” and its correlative “_actus_,” by
“_potentiality_” and “_actuality_” respectively.
In these correlatives, the notion underlying the term “actual” is
manifestly the notion of something completed, achieved, perfected—as
compared with that of something incomplete, imperfect, determinable, which
is the notion of the potential. Hence the notions of _potentia_ and
_actus_ have been extended widely beyond their primary signification of
power to act and the exercise of this power. Such pairs of correlatives as
the determinable and the determined, the perfectible and the perfected,
the undeveloped or less developed and the more developed, the generic and
the specific, are all conceived under the aspect of this widest relation
of the potential to the actual. And since we can distinguish successive
stages in any process of development, or an order of logical sequence
among the contents of our concept of any concrete reality, it follows that
what will be conceived as an _actus_ in one relation will be conceived as
a _potentia_ in another. Thus, the disposition of any faculty—as, for
example, the scientific habit in the intellect—is an _actus_ or perfection
of the faculty regarded as a _potentia_; but it is itself a _potentia_
which is actualized in the _operation_ of actually studying. This
illustrates the distinction commonly drawn between an “_actus primus_” and
an “_actus secundus_” in any particular order or line of reality: the
_actus primus_ is that which presupposes no prior actuality in the same
order; the _actus secundus_ is that which does presuppose another. The act
of knowing is an _actus secundus_ which presupposes the cognitive faculty
as an _actus primus_: the faculty being the _first_ or fundamental
equipment of the soul in relation to knowledge. Hence the child is said to
have knowledge “_in actu primo_” as having the faculty of reason; and the
student to have knowledge “_in actu secundo_” as exercising this faculty.
The _actus_ or perfecting principles of which we have spoken so far are
all conceived as presupposing an existing subject on which they supervene.
They are therefore _accidents_ as distinct from _substantial constitutive_
principles of this subject; and they are therefore called _accidental_
actualities, _actus_ “_accidentales_”. But the actual existence of a being
is also conceived as the complement and correlative of its essence: as
that which makes the latter actual, thus transferring it from the state of
mere possibility. Hence existence also is called an _actus_ or actuality:
the _actus_ “_existentialis_,” to distinguish it from the existing thing’s
activities and other subsequently acquired characters. In reference to
these existence is a “first actuality”—“_Esse est actus primus_”; “_Prius
est esse quam agere_”: “Existence is the first actuality”; “Action
presupposes existence”—while each of these in reference to existence, is a
“second actuality,” an _actus secundus_.
When, furthermore, we proceed to examine the constitutive principles
essential to any being in the concrete, we may be able to distinguish
between principles which are determinable, passive and persistent
throughout all essential change of that being, and others which are
determining, specifying, differentiating principles. In water, for
example, we may distinguish the passive underlying principle which
persists throughout the decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen,
from the active specifying principle which gives that substratum its
specific nature as water. The former or material principle (ὕλη,
_materia_) is _potential_, compared with the latter or formal principle
(μορφή, εἶδος, ἐντελέχεια, _forma_, _species_, _actus_) as _actual_. The
concept of _actus_ is thus applied to the essence itself: the _actus_
“_essentialis_” or “_formalis_” of a thing is that which we conceive to be
the ultimate, completing and determining principle of the essence or
nature of that thing. In reference to this as well as the other
constitutive principles of the thing, the actual existence of the thing is
a “second actuality,” an _actus secundus_.
In fact all the constitutive principles of the essence of any existing
thing, and all the properties and attributes involved in the essence or
necessarily connected with the essence, must all alike be conceived as
logically antecedent to the existential _actus_ whereby they are
constituted something in the actual order, and not mere possible objects
of our thought. And from this point of view the existence of a thing is
called the ultimate actualization of its essence. Hence the scholastic
aphorism: “_Esse est ultimus actus rei_”.
The term _actus_ may designate that complement of reality by which
potential being is made actual (_actus_ “_actuans_”), or this actual being
itself (_actus_ “_simpliciter dictus_”). In the latter sense we have
already distinguished the Being that is immutable, the Being of God, as
the _Actus Purus_, from the being of all mutable things, which latter
being is necessarily a mixture of potential and actual, an _actus mixtus_.
Now if the essences of corporeal things are composite, if they are
constituted by the union of some determining, formative principle with a
determinable, passive principle—of “form” with “matter,” in scholastic
terminology—we may call these formative principles _actus_
“_informantes_”; and if these cannot actually exist except in union with a
material principle they may be called actus “_non-subsistentes_”: _e.g._,
the formative principle or “_forma substantialis_” of water, or the vital
principle of a plant. If, on the other hand, there exist essences which,
being simple, do not actualize any material, determinable principle, but
subsist independently of any such, they are called _actus_
“_non-informantes_,” or _actus_ “_subsistentes_”. Such, for example, are
God, and pure spirits whose existence is known from revelation. Finally,
there may be a kind of actual essence which, though it naturally
actualizes a material principle _de facto_, can nevertheless continue to
subsist without this latter: such an actual being would be at once an
_actus informans_ and an _actus subsistens_; and such, in fact, is the
human soul.
Throughout all distinctions between the potential and the actual there
runs the conception of _the actual as something more perfect than the
potential_. There is in the actual something positive and real over and
above what is in the potential. This is an ultimate fact in our analysis;
and its importance will be realized when we come to apply the notions we
have been explaining to the study of change.
The notion of grades of perfection in things is one with which everyone is
familiar. We naturally conceive some beings as higher upon the scale of
reality than others; as having “more” reality, so to speak—not
necessarily, of course, in the literal sense of size or quantity—than
others; as being more perfect, nobler, of greater worth, value, dignity,
excellence, than others. Thus we regard the infinite as more perfect than
the finite, spiritual beings as nobler than material beings, man as a
higher order of being than the brute beast, this again as surpassing the
whole vegetable kingdom, the lowest form of life as higher on the scale of
being than inorganic matter, the substance-mode of being as superior to
all accident-modes, the actualized state of a being as more perfect than
its potential state, _i.e._ as existing in its material, efficient and
ideal or exemplar causes. The grounds and significance of this mental
appreciation of relative values in things must be discussed elsewhere. We
refer to it here in order to point out another scholastic aphorism,
according to which the higher a thing is in the scale of actual being, and
the more perfect it is accordingly, the more efficient it will also be as
a principle of action, the more powerful as a cause in the production of
changes in other things, the more operative in actualizing their passive
potentialities; and conversely, the less actual a thing is, and therefore
the more imperfect, the greater its passive capacity will be to undergo
the influence of agencies that are actual and operative around it. “As
passive potentiality,” says St. Thomas,(74) “is the mark of potential
being, so active power is the mark of actual being. For a thing acts, in
so far as it is actual; but is acted on, so far as it is potential.” Our
knowledge of the nature of things is in fact exclusively based on our
knowledge of their activities: we have no other key to the knowledge of
what a thing is than our knowledge of what it does: “_Operari sequitur
esse_”: “_Qualis est operatio talis est natura_”—“Acting follows being”:
“Conduct is the key to nature”.
A being that is active or operative in the production of a change is said
to be the efficient cause of the change, the latter being termed the
effect. Now the greater the change, _i.e._ the higher and more perfect be
the grade of reality that is actualized in the change, the higher too in
the scale of being must be the efficient cause of that change. There must
be a proportion in degree of perfection or reality between effect and
cause. The former cannot exceed in actual perfection the active power, and
therefore the actual being, of the latter. This is so because we conceive
the effect as being produced or actualized _through the operative
influence_ of the cause, and _with real dependence_ on this latter; and it
is inconceivable that a cause should have power to actualize other being,
distinct from itself, which would be of a higher grade of excellence than
itself. The nature of efficient causality, of the influence by which the
cause is related to its effect, is not easy to determine; it will be
discussed at a subsequent stage of our investigations (ch. xi.); but
whatever it be, a little reflection should convince us of the truth of the
principle just stated: that an effect cannot be more perfect than its
cause. The mediæval scholastics embodied this truth in the formula: _Nemo
dat quod non habet_—a formula which we must not interpret in the more
restricted and literal sense of the words _giving_ and _having_, lest we
be met with the obvious objection that it is by no means necessary for a
boy to have a black eye himself in order to give one to his neighbour!
What the formula means is that an agent cannot give to, or produce in, any
potential subject, receptive of its causal influence, an actuality which
it does not itself possess virtually, or in its active power: that no
actuality surpassing in excellence the actual perfection of the cause
itself can be found thus virtually in the active power of the latter.
There is no question of the cause or agent transferring bodily as it were
a part of its own actuality to the subject which is undergoing change(75);
nor will such crude imagination images help us to understand what real
change, under the influence of efficient causality, involves.(76) An
analysis of change will enable us to appreciate more fully the real
difficulty of explaining it, and the futility of any attempt to account
for it without admitting the real, objective validity of the notions of
actual and potential being, of active powers or forces and passive
potentialities in the things that are subject to change.
10. ANALYSIS OF CHANGE.—_Change_ (_Mutatio_, _Motus_, μεταβολή, κίνησις)
is one of those simplest concepts which cannot be defined. We may describe
it, however, as _the transition of a being from one state to another_. If
one thing entirely disappeared and another were substituted for it, we
should not regard the former as having been changed into the latter. When
one thing is put in the place of another, each, no doubt, undergoes a
change of place, but neither is changed into the other. So, also, if we
were to conceive a thing as absolutely ceasing to exist, as lapsing into
nothingness at a given instant, and another as coming into existence out
of nothingness at the same instant (and in the same place), we should not
consider this double event as constituting a real change of the former
thing into the latter. And although our _senses_ cannot testify to
anything beyond _sequence_ in sense phenomena, our _reason_ detects in
real change something other than a total substitution of things for one
another, or continuous total cessations and inceptions of existence in
things. No doubt, if we conceive the whole phenomenal or perceptible
universe and all the beings which constitute this universe as essentially
contingent, and therefore dependent for their reality and their actual
existence on a Supreme, Necessary Being who created and conserves them,
who at any time may cease to conserve any of them, and produce other and
new beings _out of nothingness_, then such absolute cessations and
inceptions of existence in the world would not be impossible. God might
_annihilate_, _i.e._ cease to conserve in existence, this or that
contingent being at any instant, and at any instant _create_ a new
contingent being, _i.e._ produce it in its totality from no pre-existing
material. But there is no reason to suppose that this is what is
constantly taking place in Nature: that all change is simply a series of
annihilations and creations. On the contrary, the modes of being which
appear and disappear in real change, in the transition of anything from
one state to a really different state of being, do not appear _de novo_,
_ex nihilo_, as absolute beginnings out of nothingness; or disappear
_totaliter_, _in nihilum_, as absolute endings or lapses of reality into
nothingness. The real changes which take place in Nature are due to the
operation of natural causes. These causes, being finite in their operative
powers, cannot create, _i.e._ produce new being from nothingness. They
can, however, with the concurrence of the Omnipotent Being, modify
existing modes of being, _i.e._ make actual what was only potential in
these latter. The notion of change is not verified in the conception of
successive annihilations and creations; for there is involved in the
former concept not merely the notion of a real difference between the two
_actual_ states, that before and that after the change, but also the
notion of some _potential_ reality persisting throughout the change,
something capable of being actually so and so before the change and
actually otherwise after the change. For real change, therefore, we
require (1) two positive and really different states of the same being, a
“_terminus a quo_” and a “_terminus ad quem_”; and (2) a real process of
transition whereby something potential becomes actual. In creation there
is no real and positive _terminus a quo_; in annihilation there is no real
and positive _terminus ad quem_; these therefore are not changes in the
proper sense of the term. Sometimes, too, change is affirmed, by purely
extrinsic denomination, of a thing in which there is no real change, but
only a relation to some other really changing thing. In this sense when an
object unknown or unthought of becomes the actual object of somebody’s
thought or cognition, it is said to “change,” though the transition from
“unknown” to “known” involves no real change of state in the object, but
only in the knowing subject. If thought were in any true sense
“constitutive” of reality, as many modern philosophers contend, the change
in the object would of course be real.
Since, therefore, change consists in this, that a thing which is actually
in a given state ceases to be actually such and begins to be actually in
another state, it is obvious that there persists throughout the process
some reality which is in itself potential and indifferent to either actual
state; and that, moreover, something which was actual disappears, while
some new actuality appears, in this persisting potentiality. The abiding
potential principle is called the _matter_ or _subject_ of the change; the
transient actualizing principles are called _forms_. Not all these “forms”
which precede or result from change are necessarily positive entities in
themselves: they may be mere _privations_ of other forms (“_privatio_,”
στέρησις): not all changes result in the acquisition of a new degree of
positive actual being; some result in loss of perfection or actuality.
Still, even in these cases, the state characterized by the less perfect
degree of actuality has a determinate actual grade of being which is
proper to itself, and which, as such, is not found actually, but only
potentially, in the state characterized by the more perfect degree of
actuality. When, then, a being changes from a more perfect to a less
perfect state, the actuality of this less perfect state cannot be
adequately accounted for by seeking it in the antecedent and more perfect
state: it is not in this latter state _actually_, but only _potentially_;
nor do we account for it by saying that it is “equivalently” in the
greater actuality of the latter state: the two actualizing principles are
really distinct, and neither is wholly or even partially the other. The
significance of this consideration will appear presently in connection
with the scholastic axiom: _Quidquid movetur ab alio movetur_.
Meanwhile we must guard against conceiving the potential or material
factor in change as a sort of actual but hidden core of reality which
itself persists unchanged throughout; and the formative or actualizing
factors as superficially adorning this substratum by constantly replacing
one another. Such a substitution of imagination images for intellectual
thought will not help, but rather hinder, all accurate analysis. It is not
the potential or material factor in things that changes, nor yet the
actualizing or formal factors, but the things themselves; and if “things”
are subject to “real change” it is manifest that this fact can be made
intelligible, if at all, only by intellectually analysing the things and
their changes into constitutive principles or factors which are nor
themselves “things” or “changes”. Were we to arrive only at principles of
the latter sort, so far from explaining anything we would really only have
pushed back the problem a step farther. It may be that none of the
attempts yet made by philosophers or scientists to offer an ultimate
explanation of change is entirely satisfactory,—the scholastic explanation
will be gradually outlined in these pages,—but it will be of advantage at
least to recognize the shortcomings of theories that are certainly
inadequate.
We are now in a position to state and explain the important scholastic
aphorism embodying what has been called the Principle of Change
(“_Principium Motus_”): _Quidquid movetur, ab alio movetur_: “Whatever
undergoes change is changed by something else”. The term _motus_ is here
taken in the wide sense of any real transition from potentiality to
actuality, as is evident from the alternative statements of the same
principle: _Nihil potest seipsum reducere e potentia in actum_: “Nothing
can reduce itself from potentiality to actuality,” or, again, _Potentia,
qua talis, nequit per semetipsam ad actum reduci, sed reducitur ab alio
principio in actu_: “The potential as such cannot be reduced by itself to
the actual, but only by some other already actual principle”.(77) This
assertion, rightly understood, is self-evidently true; for the state of
passive potentiality, as such, involves the absence of the correlative
actuality in the potential subject; and since the actual, as such,
involves a perfection which is not in the potential, the latter cannot
confer upon itself this perfection: nothing can be the adequate principle
or source of a perfection which is not in this principle or source: _nemo
dat quod non habet_.
We have already anticipated the objection arising from the consideration
that the state resulting from a change is sometimes in its totality less
perfect than the state which existed prior to the change. Even in such
cases there results from the change a new actuality which was not in the
prior state, and which cannot be conceived as a mere part or residue of
the latter, or regarded as equivalently contained in the latter. Even
granting, as we must, that the net result of such a change is a loss of
actuality or perfection in the subject of change, still there is always a
gain which is not accounted for by the loss; there is always a new actual
state which, as such, was not in the original state.
A more obvious objection to the principle arises from the consideration of
vital action; but it is based on a misunderstanding of the principle under
discussion. Living things, it is objected, move themselves: their _vital_
action is spontaneous and immanent: originating within themselves, it has
its term too within themselves, resulting in their gradual development,
growth, increase of actuality and perfection. Therefore it would appear
that they move and perfect themselves; and hence the so-called “principle
of change” is not true universally.
In reply to all this we admit that vital action is immanent, remaining
within the agent to perfect the latter; also that it is spontaneous,
inasmuch as when the agent is actually exercising vital functions it need
not be actually undergoing the causal influence of any other created
agent, or actually dependent on any such agent. But it must, nevertheless,
in such action, be dependent on, and influenced by, _some actual being
other than itself_. And the reason is obvious: If by such action it
increases its own actual perfection, and becomes actually other than it
was before such action, then it cannot have given itself the actuality of
this perfection, which it possessed before only potentially. No doubt, it
is not merely passively potential in regard to such actual perfections, as
is the case in non-vital change which results in the subject from the
transitive action of some outside cause upon the latter. The living thing
has the active power of causing or producing in itself these actual
perfections: there is interaction between its vital parts: through one
organ or faculty it acts upon another, thus educing an actuality, a new
perfection, in this other, and thus developing and perfecting its own
being. But even considered as active it cannot be the adequate cause of
the actuality acquired through the change. If this actuality is something
_really_ over and above the reality of its active and passive potential
principles, then it remains true that change implies the influence of an
actual being other than the subject changed: _Quid quid movetur, ab alio
movetur_.
The question here arises, not only in reference to vital agents,
but to _all finite, created causes_: Does the active cause of
change (together with the passive potentiality of the subject of
change, whether this subject be the agent itself as in immanent
activity, or something other than the agent as in transitive
activity),—does this active power account _adequately_ for the new
actuality educed in the change? It obviously does not; for the
actuality acquired in the change is, as such, a new entity, a new
perfection, in some degree positively surpassing the total reality
of the combined active powers and passive potentialities which it
replaces. In other words, if the actuality resulting from the
change is not to be found in the immediate active and passive
antecedents of the change, then we are inevitably referred, for an
adequate explanation of this actuality, to some actual being above
and beyond these antecedents. And to what sort of actual being are
we referred? To a being in which the actuality of the effect
resides only in the same way as it resides in the immediate active
and passive antecedents of the change, that is _potentially_? No;
for this would be useless, merely pushing the difficulty one step
farther back. We are obliged rather to infer the existence of an
Actual Being in whom the actuality of the said effect resides
_actually_: not formally, of course, as it exists in itself when
it is produced through the change; but eminently, _eminenter_, in
such a way that its actualization outside Himself and under His
influence does not involve in Him any loss of perfection, any
increase of perfection, or any manner of change whatsoever. We are
compelled in this way to infer, from the existence of change in
the universe of our direct experience, the existence of a
transcendent Immovable Prime Mover, a _Primum Movens Immobile_.
All the active causes or principles of change which fall under our
notice in the universe of direct experience are themselves subject
to change. None of them causes change in any other thing without
itself undergoing change. The active power of finite causes is
itself finite. By educing the potentiality of other things into
actuality they gradually use up their own energy; they diminish
and lose their active power of producing effects: this belongs to
the very nature of finite causes as such. Moreover, they are
themselves passive as well as active; interaction is universal
among the finite causes which constitute the universe of our
direct experience: they all alike have passive potentiality and
undergo change. Now, if any one finite cause in this system cannot
adequately account for the new actuality evolved from the
potential in any single process of change, neither can the whole
system adequately account for it. What is true of them
distributively is true of them taken all together when there is
question of what belongs to their nature; and the fact that their
active powers and passive potentialities _fall short_ of the
actuality of the effects we attribute to them is a fact that
appertains to their very nature as finite things. The phenomenon
of continuous change in the universe involves the continuous
appearance of _new actual being_. To account for this constant
stream of actuality we are of necessity carried beyond the system
of finite, changing being itself; we are forced to infer the
existence of a source and principle which must itself be purely
actual and exempt from all change—a Being who can cause all the
actuality that results from change without losing or gaining or
changing in any way Himself, because He possesses all finite
actuality in Himself in a supereminent manner which transcends all
the efforts of finite human intelligence to comprehend or
characterize in any adequate or positive manner. The scholastics
expressed this in the simple aphorism: _Omne novum ens est a Deo_.
And it is the realization of this profound truth that underlies
their teaching on the necessity of the Divine _Concursus_, _i.e._
the influence of the Infinite First Cause or Prime Mover
permeating the efficiency of all finite or created causes. Here,
for example, is a brief recent statement of that doctrine:—
“If we must admit a causal influence of these things [of direct
experience] on one another, then a closer examination will
convince us that a finite thing can never be the adequate cause of
any effect, but is always, metaphysically regarded, only a
part-cause, ever needing to be completed by another cause. Every
effect is—at least under one aspect, at least as an
effect—something new, something that was not there before. Even
were the effect contained, whether formally or virtually, in the
cause, it is certainly not identical with this latter, for if it
were there would be no causality, nothing would ‘happen’. In all
causing and happening, something which was heretofore only
possible, becomes real and actual. But things cannot determine
themselves to influence others, or to receive the influence of
others, since they are not dependent in their being on one
another. Hence the necessary inference that all being, all
happening, all change, requires the concurrence of an Absolute
Principle of being. When two things act on each other the Absolute
Being must work in and with them, the same Absolute Being in
both—to relate them to each other, and supplement their natural
insufficiency.”
“Such is the profound teaching about the Divine Concursus with
every creature.... God works in all and with all. He permeates all
reality, everywhere; there is no being beyond Him or independent
of His conserving and concurring power. Just as creatures are
brought into being only through God’s omnipotence, and of
themselves have no independent reality, so do they need the
self-same ever-present, all-sustaining power to continue in this
being and develop it by their activity. Every event in Nature is a
transitory, passing phenomenon, so bound up with conditions and
circumstances that it must disappear to give place to some other.
How could a mode of being so incomplete discharge its function in
existence without the concurrence of the First Cause?”(78)
We have seen now that _in the real order_ the potential presupposes the
actual; for the potential cannot actualize itself, but can be actualized
only by the action of some already actual being. Nor can we avoid this
consequence by supposing the potential being to have had no actual
beginning in time, but to be eternally in process of actualization; for
even so, it must be eternally actualized _by some other actual being_—a
position which Aristotle and some scholastics admit to be possible.
Whether, then, we conceive the actualization as beginning in time or as
proceeding from all eternity, it is self-contradictory to suppose the
potential as capable of actualizing itself.
It is likewise true that the actual precedes the possible _in the order of
our knowledge_. The concept of a thing as possible presupposes the concept
of that thing as actual; for the possible is understood to be possible
only by its intelligible relation to actual existence. This is evidently
true of extrinsic possibility; but our knowledge even of the intrinsic
possibility of a thing cannot be the first knowledge we possess in the
order of time. Our first knowledge is of the actual; for the mind’s first
cognitive act must have for object either itself or something not itself.
But it knows itself as a consciously acting and therefore actual being.
And it comes to know things other than itself only by the fact that such
other things act upon it either immediately or mediately through
sense-consciousness; so that in every hypothesis its first known object is
something actual.(79)
The priority of the actual as compared with the potential in the
real order, suggests a proof of the existence of God in the manner
indicated above. It also affords a refutation of Hegelian monism.
The conception of the world, including all the phenomena of mind
and matter, as the gradual self-manifestation or evolution of a
potential being eternally actualizing itself, is a
self-contradictory conception. Scholastics rightly maintain that
the realities from which we derive our first most abstract and
transcendental notion of being in general, are actual realities.
Hegelians seize on the object of this notion, identify it with
pure thought, proclaim it the sole reality, and endow it with the
power of becoming actually everything. It is manifest, therefore,
that they endow purely potential being with the power of
actualizing itself.
Nor can they fairly avoid this charge by pointing out that
although their starting-point is not actual being (with which the
scholastic philosophy of being commences), yet neither is it
possible or potential being, but being which has neither of these
determinations, being which abstracts from both, like the real
being of the scholastics (7, 13). For though real being can be _an
object of abstract human thought_ without either of the predicates
“existent” or “non-existent,” yet it cannot be anything _in the
real order_ without either of them. There it must be either
actually existent or else merely potential. But Hegelians claim
absolutely indeterminate being to be _as such_ something in the
real order; and though they try to distinguish it from potential
being they nevertheless think of it as potential being, for they
distinctly and repeatedly declare that it can become all things,
and does become all things, and is constantly, eternally
transforming itself by an internal dialectic process into the
phenomena which constitute the worlds of mind and matter.
Contrasting it with the abstract “inert” being which they conceive
to be the object of the traditional metaphysics, they endow
“indeterminate being” with the active power of producing, and the
passive potentiality of becoming, actually everything. Thus, in
order to show _a priori_ how this indeterminate being must evolve
itself by internal logical necessity into the world of our direct
and immediate experience, they suppose it to be subject to change
and to be at the same time self-actualizing, in direct opposition
to the axiom that potential reality, reality which is subject to
change, cannot actualize itself: _Quidquid movetur ab alio
moveatur oportet_.
11. KINDS OF CHANGE.—Following Aristotle,(80) we may recognize a broad and
clear distinction between four great classes of change (μεταβολή,
_mutatio_) in the phenomena of our sense experience: local change (κίνησις
κατὰ τόπον, φορά, _latio_); quantitative change (κατὰ τὸ πόσον, ἀύζησις ἤ
φθίσις, _augmentatio vel diminutio_); qualitative change (κατὰ τὸ ποίον,
ἀλλοίωσις, _alteratio_); and substantial change (κατ᾽ οὐσίαν, γένεσις ἤ
φθορά). The three former are accidental, _i.e._ do not reach or affect the
essence or substance of the thing that is changed; the fourth is
substantial, a change of essence. Substantial change is regarded as taking
place instantaneously, as soon as the condition brought about by the
accidental changes leading up to it becomes naturally incompatible with
the essence or nature of the subject. The accidental changes, on the other
hand, are regarded as taking place gradually, as realizing and involving a
succession of states or conditions in the subject. These changes,
especially when they take place in corporeal things, are properly
described as movement or motion (_motus_, _motio_). By movement or motion
in the strict sense we therefore mean any change which takes place
gradually or successively in a corporeal thing. It is only in a wider and
improper sense that these terms are sometimes applied to activity of
whatsoever kind, even of spiritual beings. In this sense we speak of
thoughts, volitions, etc., as movements of the soul, _motus animae_; or of
God as the Prime Mover ever in motion, the _Primum Movens semper in motu_.
With local change in material things, as also with quantitative change,
growth and diminution of quantity (mass and volume), everyone is perfectly
familiar. From the earliest times, moreover, we find both in science and
philosophy the conception of matter as composed of, and divisible into,
ultimate particles, themselves supposed to admit of no further real
division, and hence called _atoms_ (ἄ-τομος, τέμνω). From the days of
Grecian atomism men have attempted to show that all change in the Universe
is ultimately reducible to changes of place, order, spatial arrangement
and collocation, of those hypothetical atomic factors. It has likewise
been commonly assumed that change in mass is solely due to change in the
number of those atoms, and change in volume (of the same mass) to the
relative density or closeness with which the atoms aggregate together;
though some have held—and it is certainly not inconceivable—that exactly
the same material entity, an atom let us say, may be capable of _real_
contraction and expansion, and so of _real_ change of volume: as distinct
from the _apparent_ contraction and expansion of bodies, a change which is
supposed to be due to change of density, _i.e._ to decrease or increase in
the dimensions of the pores or interstices between the smaller constituent
parts or molecules. However this may be, the attempts to reduce all change
in physical nature to mere _mechanical_ change _i.e._ to spatial motions
of the masses (_molar_ motions), the molecules (_molecular_ motions), and
the atoms or other ultimate components of matter (whether vibratory,
undulatory, rotatory or translational motions), have never been
satisfactory.
Qualitative change is wider than material change, for it includes changes
in spiritual beings, _i.e._ in beings which are outside the category of
quantity and have a mode of existence altogether different from the
extensional, spatial existence which characterizes matter. When, for
instance, the human mind acquires knowledge, it undergoes qualitative
change. But matter, too, has qualities, and is subject to qualitative
change. It is endowed with _active_ qualities, _i.e._ with powers, forces,
energies, whereby it can not merely perform mechanical work by producing
local changes in the distribution of its mass throughout space, but also
produce physical and chemical changes which seem at least to be different
in their nature from mere mechanical changes. It is likewise endowed with
_passive_ qualities which appear to the senses to be of various kinds,
differing from one another and from the mechanical or quantitative
characteristics of size, shape, motion, rest, etc. While these latter are
called “primary qualities” of bodies—because conceived to be more
fundamental and more closely inherent in the real and objective nature of
matter—or “common sensibles” (_sensibilia communia_), because perceptible
by more than one of our external senses—the former are called “secondary
qualities,” because conceived to be less characteristic of the real and
objective nature of matter, and more largely subjective products of our
own sentient cognitive activity—or “proper sensibles” (_sensibilia
propria_), because each of them is apprehended by only one of our external
senses: colour, sound, taste, odour, temperature, material state or
texture (_e.g._ roughness, liquidity, softness, etc.). Now about all these
perceived qualities and their changes the question has been raised: Are
they, as such, _i.e._ as perceived by us, really in the material things or
bodies which make up the physical universe, and really different in these
bodies from the quantitative factors and motions of the latter? Or, as
such, are they not rather partially or wholly subjective
phenomena—products, at least in part, of our own sense perception, states
of our own consciousness, having nothing really corresponding to them in
the external matter of the universe beyond the quantitative, mechanical
factors and motions whereby matter acts upon our faculties of sense
cognition and produces these states of consciousness in us? This is a
question of the first importance, the solution of which belongs to
Epistemology. Aristotle would not allow that the objective material
universe can be denuded, in the way just suggested, of qualities and
qualitative change; and scholastic philosophers have always held the same
general view. What we have to note here, however, in regard to the
question is simply this, that even if the world of matter were thus
simplified by transferring all qualitative change to the subjective domain
of consciousness, the reality of qualitative change and all the problems
arising from it would still persist. To transfer qualitative change from
object to subject, from matter to mind, is certainly something very
different from explaining it as reducible to quantitative or mechanical
change. The simplification thus effected would be more apparent than real:
it would be simplifying the world of matter by transferring its complexity
to the world of mind. This consideration is one which is sometimes lost
sight of by scientists who advance mechanical hypotheses as ultimate
explanations of the nature and activities of the physical universe.
If all material things and processes could be ultimately analysed into
configurations and local motions of space-occupying atoms, homogeneous in
nature and differing only in size and shape, then each of these ultimate
atomic factors would be itself exempt from intrinsic change as to its own
essence and individuality. In this hypothesis there would be really no
such thing as _substantial_ change. The collection of atoms would form an
immutable core of material reality, wholly simple and ever actual. Such an
hypothesis, however, is utterly inadequate as an explanation of the facts
of life and consciousness. And even as an account of the processes of the
inorganic universe it encounters insuperable difficulties. The common
belief of men has always been that even in this domain of reality there
are fundamentally different _kinds_ of matter, kinds which differ from one
another not merely in the shape and size and configuration and arrangement
of their ultimate _actual_ constituents, but even in the very substance or
nature of these constituents; and that there are some material changes
which affect the actual substance itself of the matter which undergoes
them. This belief scholastics, again following Aristotle, hold to be a
correct belief, and one which is well grounded in reason. And this belief
in turn involves the view that every type of actual material
entity—whether merely inorganic, or endowed with life, or even allied with
a higher, spiritual mode of being as in the case of man himself—is
_essentially composite_, essentially a synthesis of _potential_ and
_actual_ principles of being, and therefore capable of _substantial_
change. The actually existing material being scholastics describe as
_materia secunda_, the ὕλη ἐσχάτη of Aristotle; the purely potential
factor, which is actualized in this or that particular kind of matter,
they describe as _materia prima_, the ὕλη πρώτη of Aristotle; the
actualizing, specifying, formative principle, they designate as _forma
substantialis_ (εἶδος). And since the purely potential principle cannot
actually exist except as actualized by some formative principle, all
substantial change or transition from one substantial type to another is
necessarily both a _corruptio_ and a _generatio_. That is, it involves the
actual disappearance of one substantial form and the actual appearance of
another. Hence the scholastic aphorism regarding substantial change:
_Corruptio unius est generatio alterius_: the corruption or destruction of
one kind of material thing involves the generation of another kind.
The concepts of _materia prima_ and _forma substantialis_ are concepts not
of phenomenal entities directly accessible to the senses or the
imagination, but of principles which can be reached only mediately and by
intellect proper. They cannot be pictured in the imagination, which can
only attain to the sensible. We may help ourselves to grasp them
intellectually by the analogy of the shapeless block of marble and the
figure educed therefrom by the sculptor, but this is only an analogy: just
as the statue results from the union of an _accidental_ form with an
existing matter, so this matter itself, the substance _marble_, is
composed of a _substantial_ form and a primordial, _potential_ matter. But
there the analogy ceases.
Furthermore, when we consider that the proper and primary objects of the
human intellect itself are corporeal things or bodies, and that these
bodies actually exist in nature only as composite substances, subject to
essential or substantial change, we shall realize why it is that the
concept of _materia prima_ especially, being a mediate and negative
concept, is so difficult to grasp; for, as the scholastics describe it,
translating Aristotle’s formula, it is in itself _neque quid, neque
quantum, neque quale, neque aliquid eorum quibus ens determinatur_.(81)
But it is through intellectual concepts alone, and not through imagination
images, that we may hope to analyse the nature and processes even of the
world of corporeal reality; and, as St. Thomas well observes, it was
because the ancient Greek atomists did not rise above the level of
thinking in imagination images that they failed to recognize the
existence, or explain the nature, of substantial change in the material
universe(82): an observation which applies with equal force to those
scientists and philosophers of our own time who would fain reduce all
physical processes to mere mechanical change.
Those, then, are the principal kinds of change, as analysed by Aristotle
and the scholastics. We may note, finally, that the distinction between
_immanent_ and _transitive_ activity is also applied to change—that is, to
change considered as a process, not to the result of the change, to change
_in fieri_, not _in facto esse_. Immanent movement or activity (_motio_,
_actio immanens_) is that of which the term, the educed actuality, remains
within the agent—which latter is therefore at once both _agens_ and
_patiens_. Vital action is of this kind. Transitive movement or activity,
on the other hand (_motio_, _actio transiens_), is that of which the term
is some actuality educed in a being other than the agent. The _patiens_ is
here really distinct from the _agens_; and it is in the former, not in the
latter, that the change takes place: _actio fit in passo_. All change in
the inorganic universe is of this sort (101).
CHAPTER III. EXISTENCE AND ESSENCE.
12. EXISTENCE.—In the preceding chapters we examined reality in itself and
in its relation to change or becoming. We have now to examine it in
relation to its actual existence and to its intrinsic possibility (7,
_a_).
_Existing_ or _being_ (in the participial sense: esse, _existere_, τὸ
εἶναι) is a simple, indefinable notion. A being is said to exist when it
is not merely possible but actual, when it is not merely potential in its
active and passive causes but has become actual through those causes
(_existere_: _ex-sisto_: _ex-stare_: to stand forth, distinct from its
causes); or, if it have no causes, when it simply is (_esse_),—in which
sense God, the Necessary, purely Actual Being, simply _is_. Thus,
existence implies the notion of actuality, and is conceived as that by
which any thing or essence _is, distinct from nothingness, in the actual
order_.(83) Or, again, it is _the actuality of any thing or essence_.
About any conceivable being we may ask two distinct questions: (_a_) What
is it? and (_b_) Does such a being actually exist? The answer to the
former gives us the _essence_, what is presented to the mind through the
concept; the answer to the latter informs us about the actual _existence_
of the being or essence in question.
To the mind of any individual man the real existence (as also the real
essence) of any being whatsoever, not excepting his own, can be known only
through its ideal presence in his mind, through the concept or percept
whereby it becomes for him a “known object,” an _objectum cognitum_. But
this actual presence of known being to the knowing mind must not be
confounded with the real existence of such being (4). Real being does not
get its real existence in our minds or from our minds. Our cognition does
not produce, but only discovers, actually existing reality. The latter, by
acting on the mind, engenders therein the cognition of itself. Now all our
knowledge comes through the senses; and sense cognition is excited in us
by the direct action of material or phenomenal being on our sense
faculties. But through sense cognition the mind is able to attain to a
knowledge both of the possibility and of the actual existence of
suprasensible or spiritual realities. Hence we cannot describe existence
as the power which material realities have to excite in us a knowledge of
themselves. Their existence is prior to this activity: _prius est esse
quam agere_. Nor can we limit existence to material realities; for if
there are spiritual realities these too have existence, though this
existence can be discerned only by intellect, and not by sense.
13. ESSENCE.—In any existing thing we can distinguish _what the thing is_,
its _essence_, from its actual _existence_. If we abstract from the actual
existence of a thing, not considering whether it actually exists or not,
and fix our attention merely on _what the thing is_, we are thinking of
its _real essence_. If we positively exclude the notion of actual
existence from our concept of the essence, and think of the latter as not
actually existing, we are considering it formally as a _possible essence_.
There is no being, even the Necessary Being, whose essence we cannot think
of in the former way, _i.e._ _without including_ in our concept the notion
of actual existence; but we cannot without error _positively exclude_ the
notion of actual existence from our concept of the Necessary Being, or
think of the latter as a _merely possible_ essence.
Taken in its widest sense, the essence of a thing (οὐσία, _essentia_, τὸ
τί ἐστι, _quod quid est_, _quidditas_) means _that by which a thing is
what it is_: _id quo res est id quod est_: that which gives us the answer
to the question, What is this thing? _Quid est haec res?_ τί ἐστι τόδε
τι.(84) Now of course any individual thing is what it is just precisely by
all the reality that is in it; but we have no direct or intuitive
intellectual insight into this reality; we understand it only by degrees;
we explore it from various points of view, abstracting and generalizing
partial aspects of it as we compare it with other things and seek to
classify and define it: _ratio humana essentias rerum quasi venatur_, as
the scholastics say: the human mind hunts, as it were, after the essences
or natures of things. Understanding the individual datum of sense
experience (what Aristotle called τόδε τι, or οὐσία πρώτη, and the
scholastics _hoc aliquid_, or _substantia prima_), _e.g._ this individual,
Socrates, first under the vaguest concept of being, then gradually under
the more and more determinate concepts of substance, corporeal, living,
sentient, rational, it finally forms the complex concept of his _species
infima_, expressed by his lowest class-name, “man,” and explicitly set
forth in the definition of his specific nature as a “rational animal”. Nor
does our reason fail to realize that by reaching this concept of the
_specific_ essence or nature of the individual, Socrates, it has not yet
grasped all the reality whereby the individual is what he is. It has
reached what he has in common with all other individuals of his class,
what is essential to him _as a man_; it has distinguished this from the
unanalysed something which makes him _this particular individual_ of his
class, and which makes his specific essence this _individual essence_
(_essentia_ “_atoma_,” or “_individua_”); and it has also distinguished
his essence from those accidental and ever varying attributes which are
not essential to him as a man, and from those which are not essential to
him as Socrates. It is only the unfathomed individual essence, as existing
_hic et nunc_, that is _concrete_. All the mind’s generic and specific
representations of it—_e.g._ of Socrates as a corporeal substance, a
living being, a sentient being, a rational animal—are _abstract_, and all
more or less inadequate, none of them exhausting its knowable reality. But
it is only in so far as the mind is able to represent concrete individual
things by such abstract concepts, that it can attain to _intellectual_
knowledge of their nature or reality. Hence it is that by the term
“essence,” simply and _sine addito_, we always mean the essence as grasped
by abstract generic or specific concepts (ἔιδος, _species_), and as thus
capable of definition (λόγος, _ratio rei_). “The essence,” says St.
Thomas, “is that by which the thing is constituted in its proper genus or
species, and which we signify by the definition which states what the
thing is”.(85) Thus understood, the essence is abstract, and gives the
specific or generic type to which the individual thing belongs; but we may
also mean by essence, the concrete essence, the individual person or thing
(_persona_, _suppositum_, _res individua_). The relations between the
objects of those two concepts of essence will be examined later.
Since the specific essence is conceived as the most fundamental reality in
the thing, and as the seat and source of all the properties and activities
of the thing, it is sometimes defined or described, in accordance with
this notion of it, as the primary constitutive of the thing and the source
of all the properties of the thing. Conceived as the foundation of all the
properties of the thing it is sometimes called _substance_ (οὐσία,
_substantia_). Regarded as the source of the thing’s activities, and the
principle of its growth or development, it is called the _nature_ of the
thing (φύσις, _natura_, from φύω, _nascor_).(86)
Since what makes a thing that which it is, by the same fact differentiates
this thing from every other thing, the essence is rightly conceived as
that which gives the thing its characteristic being, thereby marking it
off from all other being. In reality, of course, each individual being is
distinct by all that it is from every other. But since we get our
intellectual knowledge of things by abstracting, comparing, generalizing,
and classifying partial aspects of them, we apprehend part of the
imperfectly grasped abstract essence of each individual as common to other
classes (generic), and part as peculiar to that class itself
(differential); and thus we differentiate classes of things by what is
only part of their essence, by what we call the _differentia_ of each
class, _distinguishing mentally_ between it and the generic element: which
two are really _one_, really identical, in every individual of the species
thus defined and classified.
But in the Aristotelian and scholastic view of the constitution of any
_corporeal_ thing, there is a danger of taking what is really only part of
the essence of such a thing for the whole essence. According to this view
all corporeal substance is essentially composite, constituted by two
really distinct, substantial principles, primal matter (πρώτη ὕλη,
_materia prima_) and substantial form (ἔιδος, μορφή) united substantially,
as potential and actual principles, to form one composite nature or
essence. Now the kind, or species, or specific type, to which a body
belongs—_e.g._, a horse, an oak, gold, water, etc.—depends upon the
substantial form which actualizes the matter or potential principle. In so
far as the corporeal essence is known to us at all it is known through the
form, which is the principle of all the characteristic properties and
activities of that particular kind of body. Hence it is quite natural that
the εἲδος, μόρφη, or _forma substantialis_ of a body should often be
referred to as the specific essence of the body, though of course the
essence of the body really includes the material as well as the formal
factor.
We may look at the essence of any being from two points of view. If we
consider it as it is conceived actually to exist in the being, we call it
the _physical essence_. If we consider it after the manner in which it is
apprehended and defined by our intellects through generic and
differentiating concepts, we call it the _metaphysical essence_. Thus, the
essence of man conceived by the two defining concepts, “rational animal,”
is the metaphysical essence; the essence of man as known to be composed of
the two really distinct substantial principles, soul and body, is the
physical essence. Understood in this way both are one and the same essence
considered from different points of view—as existing in the actual order,
and as conceived by the mind.(87)
The physical essence of any being, understood as the constitutive
principle or principles from which all properties spring, is either
_simple_ or _composite_ according as it is understood to consist of one
such constitutive principle, or to result from the substantial union of
two constitutive principles, a material and a formal. Thus, the essence of
God, the essence of a purely spiritual being, the essence of the human
soul, are physically simple; the essence of man, the essences of all
corporeal beings, are physically composite.
According to our mode of conceiving, defining and classifying essences by
means of the abstract generic and differential grades of being which we
apprehend in them, all essences, even physically simple essences, are
conceived as logically and metaphysically composite. Moreover we speak and
think of their generic and differential factors as “material” and “formal”
respectively, after the analogy of the composition of corporeal or
physically composite essences from the union of two really distinct
principles, matter and form; the analogy consisting in this, that as
matter is the indeterminate principle which is determined and actuated by
form, so the _generic_ concept is the indeterminate concept which is made
definite and specific by that of the _differentia_.(88) But when we think
of the _genus_ of any corporeal essence as “material,” and the
_differentia_ as “formal,” we must not consider these “metaphysical parts”
as really distinct; whereas the “physical parts” of a corporeal substance
(such as man) are really distinct. The genus (animal), although a
metaphysical part, expresses the _whole essence_ (man) in an indeterminate
way; whereas the “matter” which is a physical part, does not express the
whole essence of man, nor does the soul which is also a physical part, but
only both together. Not a little error has resulted from the confusion of
thought whereby _genus_ and _differentia_ have been regarded as material
and formal constitutives in the literal sense of those expressions.
14. CHARACTERISTICS OF ABSTRACT ESSENCES.—When we consider the essences of
things not as actually existing, but as intrinsically possible—the
abstract, metaphysical essences, therefore—we find that when as objects of
our thought they are analysed into their simplest constituents and
compared or related with themselves and with one another they present
themselves to our minds in these relations as endowed with certain more or
less remarkable characteristics.
(_a_) In the first place, being abstract, they present themselves to the
mind as
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