Ontology, or the Theory of Being

by P. Coffey

Chapter IX. Nature And Person.

70. Some Divisions of Substances.—In the preceding chapter we discussed the nature of substance and accident in general, and the relation between a substance and its accidents. We must next examine the category of substance more in detail, terminating as it does in the important concept of personality or person. This latter conception is one which must have its origin for all philosophers in the study of the human individual, but which, for scholastic philosophers, is completed and perfected by the light of Christian Revelation. We shall endeavour to show in the first place what can be gathered from the light of reason about the constitution of personality, and also briefly to note how Christian Revelation has increased our insight into the perfections involved in it. As leading up to the concept of person, we must set forth certain divisions or classifications of substance: into first and second substances, and into complete and incomplete substances.[277]

(a) The specific and generic natures of substantial entities do not inhere, like accidents, in individual substances; they constitute the essence of the latter, and hence these universals are called substances. But the universal as such does not really exist; it is realized only in individuals; in the logical order it pre-supposes the individual as a logical subject of which it is affirmed, a subjectum attributionis seu praedicationis. Hence it is called a second substance, while the individual substance is called a first substance. Of course we can predicate attributes of universal substances, and use these as logical subjects, as when we say “Man is mortal”. But such propositions have no real meaning, and give us no information about reality, except in so far as we can refer their predicates (“mortal”), through the medium of their universal subjects (“man”), back ultimately to the individual [pg 253] substances (John, James, etc.) which alone are real, and in which alone the universal (“man”) has its reality. Hence the individual is, in the logical order, the ultimate and fundamental subject of all our predications. And furthermore, the individual substance cannot be used as a logical predicate of anything underlying itself, while the universal substance can be so used in relation to the individual.

In the ontological order, of course, the universal substance is individualized, and, as individual, it is the subject in which all accidents inhere, their subjectum inhaesionis: the only subject of many of them, and the remote or ultimate subject of those of them which inhere immediately in other accidents.

Thus while in the ontological order all substances, whether we think of them as universal or as individual, are the ultimate subjects of inhesion for all real accidents, in the logical order it is only the individual substance that is the ultimate subject of attribution for all logical predicates. Hence it was that the individual substance (τόδε τί ὄν), vindicating for itself more fully the rôle of subject, was called by Aristotle οὐσία πρώτη, substantia prima, while he called the universal, specific or generic substance, οὐσία δεύτερα, substantia secunda.[278] These are, of course, two ways of regarding substance, and not two really distinct species of substance as genus. The distinction between the membra dividentia is logical, not real.

The perfectly intelligible sense in which Aristotle and the scholastics designate the universal a substance, the sense of moderate realism, according to which the universal constitutes, and is identical with, the essence of the individual “person” or “thing,” is entirely different from the sense in which many exponents of modern monistic idealism conceive the universal as the substance par excellence, the ens realissimum, determining, expressing, evolving itself in the individual phenomena of mind and of nature, which would be merely its manifestations.[279]

(b) The divisions of substance into spiritual and corporeal, of the latter into inorganic and organic, of these again into vegetative and animal, and finally of animal substances into brute animals and human beings,—offer no special difficulties. All purely natural or rational knowledge of the possibility and nature of purely spiritual substances is based on the analogy of our knowledge of the human soul, which, though a spiritual substance, is [pg 254] not a pure spirit, but is naturally allied with matter in its mode of existence. The individual human being offers to human experience the sole example of the sufficiently mysterious conjunction and combination of matter and spirit, of the corporeal mode of being and the spiritual mode of being, to form one composite substance, partly corporeal and partly spiritual.

(c) This in turn suggests the division of substances into simple and composite. The latter are those which we understand to be constituted by the natural and substantial union of two really distinct but incomplete substantial principles, a formative, determining, specifying principle, and a material, determinable, indifferent principle: such are all corporeal substances whether inorganic, vegetative, sentient, or rational. The former, or simple substances, are those which we understand to be constituted by a sole and single substantial principle which determines and specifies their essence, without the conjunction of any material, determinable principle. We have no direct and immediate experience of any complete created substance of this kind; but each of us has such direct experience of an incomplete simple substance, viz. his own soul; while we can infer from our experience the existence of other incomplete simple substances, viz. the formative principles of corporeal substances, as also the possibility of such complete simple substances as pure spirits, and the actual existence of the perfectly simple, uncreated substance of the Infinite Being.

(d) If there are such things as composite substances, i.e. substances constituted by the substantial union of two really distinct principles, then it follows that while the composite substance itself is complete, each of its substantial constitutive principles is incomplete. Of course there are many philosophers nowadays who reject as mere mental fictions, as products of mere logical distinctions, and as devoid of objective validity, the notions of composite substance and incomplete substance. Nor is this to be wondered at when we remember what a variety of groundless and gratuitous notions are current in regard to substance itself ([64]). But understanding substance in the traditional sense already explained ([62]), there is nothing whatever inconsistent in the notion of a composite substance, or of an incomplete substance,—provided these notions are understood in the sense to be explained presently. Nay, more, not only are these notions intrinsically possible: we must even hold them to [pg 255] be objectively valid and real, to be truly expressive of the nature of reality, unless we are prepared to hold that there is no such thing as substantial change in the universe, and that man himself is a mere aggregate of material atoms moved according to mechanical laws and inhabited by a conscious soul, or thinking principle, rather than an individual being with one definite substantial nature.

What, then, are we to understand by complete and incomplete substances respectively? A substance is regarded as complete in the fullest sense when it is wanting in no substantial principle without which it would be incapable of existing and discharging all its functions in the actual order as an individual of some definite species. Of course no created substance exists or discharges its functions unless it is endowed with some accidents, e.g. with properties, faculties, forces, etc. But there is no question of these here. We are considering only the essential perfections of the substance. Thus, then, any existing individual of any species—a man, a horse, an oak—is a complete substance in this fullest sense. It is complete in the line of substance, in substantial perfection, “in ordine substantialitatis,” inasmuch as it can exist (and does actually exist) without being conjoined or united substantially with any other substance to form a composite substance other than itself. And it is complete in the line of specific perfection, “in ordine speciei,” because not only can it exist without such conjunction with any other substantial principle, but it can discharge all the functions natural to its species, and thus tend towards its final perfection ([47]) without such conjunction.

But it is conceivable that a substance might be complete in the line of substantial perfections, and thus be capable of existing in the actual order and discharging there some of the functions of its species without conjunction with any other substantial principle, and yet be incapable of discharging all the functions natural to an individual of its species without conjunction with some other substantial principle, in which case it would be incomplete in the line of specific perfection, though complete in everything pertaining to its substantiality. We know of one such substance,—the human soul. Being spiritual and immortal, it can exist apart from the body to which it is united by nature, and in this separated condition retain and exercise its spiritual faculties of intellect and will; it is therefore complete as regards the distinctively substantial perfection whereby it is “capable of [pg 256] existing in itself”. But being of its nature destined for union with a material principle, constituting an individual of the human species only by means of such union, and being capable of discharging some of the functions of this species, viz. the sentient and vegetative functions, only when so united, it has not all the perfections of its species independently of the body; and it is therefore an incomplete substance in the line of specific perfections, though complete in those essential to its substantiality.

Again, if it be true that just as man is composed of two substantial principles, soul and body, so every living thing is composed of a substantial vital principle and a substantial material principle, and that every inorganic individual thing is likewise composed of two really distinct substantial principles, a formative and a passive or material principle; and if, furthermore, it be true that apart from the spiritual principle in man every other vital or formative principle of the composite “things” of our experience is of such a nature that it cannot actually exist except in union with some material principle, and vice versa,—then it follows necessarily that all such substantial principles of these complete composite substances are themselves incomplete substances: and incomplete not only in regard to perfections which would make them subsisting individuals of a species, but (unlike the human soul) incomplete even in the line of substantiality itself, inasmuch as no one of them is capable of actually existing at all except in union with its connatural and correlative principle.

Thus we arrive at the notion of substances that are incomplete in the line of specific perfections, or in that of substantial perfections, or even in both lines. An incomplete substance, therefore, is not one which verifies the definition of substance only in part. The incomplete substance fully verifies the definition of a substance.[280] It is conjoined, no doubt, with another to form a complete substance; but it does not exist in the other, or in the composite substance, as accidents do. It is a substantial principle of the composite substance, not an accidental determination of the latter, or of the other substantial principle with which it is conjoined. It thus verifies the notion of substance as a mode of being which naturally exists in itself; and united with its correlative substantial principle it discharges the function of supporting all accidental determinations which affect the composite substantial [pg 257] essence. Since, however, it does not exist itself independently as an individual of a species, but only forms the complete individual substance by union with its correlative substantial principle, it may be, and has been, accurately described as not belonging to the category of substance formally, but only referentially, “reductivé”.

The concepts of composite substance, of complete and incomplete substances, understood as we have just explained them, are therefore perfectly intelligible in themselves. And this is all we are concerned to show in the present context. This is not the place to establish the theses of psychology and cosmology from which they are borrowed. That the human soul is spiritual and immortal; that its union with a really distinct material principle to form the individual human substance or nature is a substantial union; that all living organisms and all inorganic bodies are really composite substances and subject to substantial change: these various theses of scholastic philosophy we here assume to be true. And if they are true the conception of incomplete substances naturally united to form a complete composite substance is not only intelligible as an hypothesis but is objectively true and valid as a thesis; and thus the notion of an incomplete substance is not only a consistent and legitimate notion, but is also a notion which gives mental expression to an objective reality.

We may add this consideration: The concept of an accident really distinct from its substance involves no intrinsic repugnance. Yet an accident is a mode of being which is so weak and wanting in reality, if we may speak in such terms, that it cannot naturally exist except by inhering, mediately or immediately, in the stronger and more real mode of being which is substance. But an incomplete substance is a higher grade of reality than any accident. Therefore if accidents can be real, a fortiori incomplete substances can be real.

71. Substance and Nature.—We have already pointed out ([13]) that the terms “essence,” “substance,” and “nature” denote what is really the same thing, regarded under different aspects. The term “essence” is somewhat wider than “substance,” inasmuch as it means “what a thing is,” whether the thing be a substance, an accident, or a concrete existing individual including substance and accidents.

The traditional meaning of the term “nature” in Aristotelian [pg 258] and scholastic philosophy is unmistakable. It means the essence or substance of an individual person or thing, regarded as the fundamental principle of the latter's activities. Every finite individual comes into existence incomplete, having no doubt its essential perfections and properties actually, but its intermediate and final perfections only potentially ([47]). These it realizes gradually, through the exercise of its connatural activities. Every being is essentially intended for activity of some sort: “Omne ens est propter suam operationem,” says St. Thomas. And by the constant interplay of their activities these beings realize and sustain the universal order which makes the world a cosmos. There is in all things an immanent purpose or finality which enables us to speak of the whole system which they form as “Universal Nature”.[281]

Therefore what we call a substance or essence from the static point of view we call a nature when we consider it from the dynamic standpoint, or as an agent.[282] No doubt the forces, faculties and powers, the active and passive accidental principles, whereby such an agent exerts and undergoes action, are the proximate principles of all this action and change, but the remote and fundamental principle of the latter is the essence or substance of the agent itself, in other words its nature.

Not all modern scholastics, however, are willing thus to identify nature with substance. We have no intuitive insight into what any real essence or substance is; our knowledge of it is discursive, derived by inference from the phenomena, the operations, the conduct of things, in accordance with the principle, Operari sequitur esse. Moreover, the actually existing, concrete individual—a man, for instance—has a great variety of activities, spiritual, sentient, vegetative, and inorganic; he has, moreover, in the constitution of his body a variety of distinct organs and members; he assimilates into his body a variety of inorganic substances; the tissues of his body appear to be different in kind; the vital functions which subserve nutrition, growth and reproduction are at least analogous to mechanical, physical and chemical changes, if indeed they are not really and simply such; it may be, therefore, that the ultimate material constituents of his body remain substantially unaltered in their passage into, and through, and out of the cycle of his vegetative life; that they retain their elemental substantial forms while they assume a new nature by becoming parts of the one organic whole, whose higher directive principle dominates and co-ordinates all their various [pg 259] energies.[283] If this be so there is in the same individual a multiplicity of really and actually distinct substances; each of these, moreover, has its own existence proportionate to its essence, since the existence of a created reality is not really distinct from its essence; nor is there any reason for saying that any of these substances is incomplete; what we have a right to say is that no one of them separately is a complete nature, that each being an incomplete nature unites with all the others to form one complete nature: inasmuch as no one of them separately is an adequate intrinsic principle of all the functions which it can discharge, and is naturally destined to discharge, by its natural union with the others, whereas there results from their union a new fundamental principle of a co-ordinated and harmonized system of operations—in a word, a new nature.

This line of thought implies among other things (a) the view that whereas there is no ground for admitting the existence of incomplete substances, there is ground for distinguishing between complete and incomplete natures; (b) the view that from the union or conjunction of an actual multiplicity of substances, each remaining unaltered and persisting in its existence actually distinct from the others, there can arise one single complete nature—a nature which will be one being simply and really, unum ens per se et simpliciter, and not merely an aggregate of beings or an accidental unity, unum per accidens,—and there does arise such a nature whenever the component substances not merely co-operate to discharge certain functions which none of them could discharge separately (which indeed is true of an accidental union, as of two horses drawing a load which neither could draw by itself), but when they unite in a more permanent and intimate way according to what we call “natural laws” or “laws of nature,” so as to form a new fundamental principle of such functions.[284] These views undoubtedly owe their origin to the belief that certain facts brought to light by the physical and biological sciences in modern times afford strong evidence that the elementary material constituents of bodies, whether inorganic or living, remain substantially unaltered while combining to form the multitudinous natural kinds or natures of those living or non-living material things. It was to reconcile this supposed plurality of actually distinct and diverse substances in the individual with the indubitable real unity of the latter, that these philosophers distinguished between substance and nature. But it is not clear that the facts alleged afford any such evidence. Of course if the philosopher approaches the consideration of it with what we may call the atomic preconception of material substances as permanent, unchangeable entities, this view will preclude all recognition of substantial change in the universe; it will therefore force him to conclude that each individual, composite agent has a unity which must be less than substantial, and which, because he feels it to be more than a mere accidental or artificial unity, he will describe as natural, as a union to form one nature. But if he approach the evidence in question with the view that substantial change is possible, this view, involving the recognition of incomplete substances as real, will remove all necessity for distinguishing between [pg 260] substance and nature, and will enable him to conclude that however various and manifold be the activities of the individual, their co-ordination and unification, as proceeding from the individual, point to a substantial unity in the latter as their fundamental principle, a unity resulting from the union of incomplete substances.

This latter is undoubtedly the view of St. Thomas, of practically all the medieval scholastics, and of most scholastics in modern times. Nor do we see any sufficient reason for receding from it, or admitting the modern distinction between substance and nature. And if it be objected that the view which admits the reality of incomplete substances and substantial change is as much a preconception as what we have called the atomic view of substance, our answer is, once more, that since we have no intellectual intuition into the real constitution of the substances which constitute the universe, since we can argue to this only by observing and reasoning from their activities on the principle Operari requitur esse, the evidence alone must decide which view of these substances is the correct one. Does the evidence afforded us by a scientific analysis of all the functions, inorganic, vegetative, sentient and rational, of an individual man, forbid us to conclude that he is one complete substance, resulting from the union of two incomplete substantial principles, a spiritual soul and a material principle? and at the same time compel us to infer that he is one complete nature resulting from the union of a plurality of principles supposed to be complete as substances and incomplete as natures? We believe that it does not; nor can we see that any really useful purpose is served by thus setting up a real distinction between substance and nature. From the evidence to hand it is neither more nor less difficult to infer unity of substance than unity of nature in the individual. The inference in question is an inference from facts in the phenomenal order, in the domain of the senses, to what must be actually there in the noumenal order, in the domain of nature or substance, a domain which cannot be reached by the senses but only by intellect. Nor will any imagination images which picture for us the physical fusion or coalescence of material things in the domain of the senses help us in the least to conceive in any positive way the mode in which incomplete natures or substances unite to form a complete nature or substance. For these latter facts belong to the domain which the senses cannot reach at all, and which intellect can reach only inferentially and not by direct insight.

Hence we consider the view which regards real unity of nature as compatible with real and actual plurality of complete substances in the individual, as improbable. At the same time we do not believe that this view is a necessary corollary from the real identification of essence with existence in created things. We have seen that even if accidents have their own existence in so far as they have their own essence—as they have if essence and existence be really identical—nevertheless the concrete substance as determined by its accidents can have a really unitary existence, unum esse corresponding to and identical with its composite constitution ([67]). Similarly, if the existence of each incomplete substance is identical with its incomplete essence, this is no obstacle to the complete substance—which results from the union of two such incomplete substantial principles—having one complete unitary existence identical with its composite essence. Hence it is useless to argue against the view that [pg 261] a plurality of actually distinct and complete substances can unite to form a complete nature which will be really one being, on the ground that each complete substance has already its own existence and that things which have and preserve their own existence cannot form one being. Such an argument is inconclusive; for although one being has of course only one existence, it has not been proved that this one existence cannot result from the union of many incomplete existences: especially if these existences be identical with the incomplete essences which are admittedly capable of uniting to form one complete essence.

It may, however, be reasonably urged against the opinion under criticism that, since the complete substances are supposed to remain complete and unchanged in their state of combination, it is difficult to see how this combination can be a real union and not merely an extrinsic juxtaposition,—one which remains in reality a merely accidental conjunction, even though we may dignify it with the title of a “natural union”.

And finally it may be pointed out that in this view the operations of the individual have not really one ultimate intrinsic principle at all, since behind the supposed unity of nature there is a more fundamental plurality of actually distinct substances.

72. Subsistence and Personality.—We have already examined the relation between the individual and the universal, between first and second substances, in connexion with the doctrine of Individuation ([31-3]). And we then saw that whatever it be that individuates the universal nature, it is at all events not to be regarded as anything extrinsic and superadded to this nature in the individual, as anything really distinct from this nature: that, for instance, what makes Plato's human nature to be Plato's is not anything really distinct from the human nature that is in Plato. We have now to fix our attention on the nature as individualized. We have to consider the complete individual nature or substance itself in actually existing individual “things” or “persons”.

We must remember that scholastics are not agreed as to whether there is a real distinction or only a virtual distinction between the actual existence and the complete individual essence or substance or nature of created individual beings ([21-4]). Furthermore we have seen that philosophers who study the metaphysics of the inorganic world and of the lower forms of life are unable to say with certainty what is the individual in these domains: whether it is the chemical molecule or the chemical atom or the electron; whether it is the single living cell or the living mass consisting of a plurality of such cells ([31]). But we have also seen that as we ascend the scale of living things all [pg 262] difficulty in designating the genuine individual disappears: that a man, a horse, an oak tree, are undoubtedly individual beings.

Bearing these things in mind we have now to inquire into what has been called the subsistence or personality of the complete individual substance or nature: that perfection which enables us formally to designate the latter a “subsisting thing”[285] or a “person”. By personality we mean the subsistence of a complete individual rational nature. We shall therefore inquire into the meaning of the generic term subsistentia (or suppositalitas), subsistence, in the abstract. But let us look at it first in the concrete.

A complete individual nature or substance, when it exists in the actual order, really distinct and separate in its own complete entity from every other existing being, exercising its powers and discharging its functions of its own right and according to the laws of its own being, is said to subsist, or to have the perfection of subsistence. In this state it not only exists in itself as every substance does; it is not only incommunicable to any other being as every individual is, in contradistinction with second or universal substances which are, as such, indefinitely communicable to individuals; but it is also a complete whole, incommunicable as a mere integral or essential part to some other whole, unlike the incomplete substantial constituents, or integral parts, members or organs of, say, an individual organic body; and finally it is incommunicable in the sense that it is not capable of being assumed into the subsisting unity of some other superior “suppositum” or “person”. All those characteristics we find in the individual “subsisting thing” or “person”. It “exists in itself” and is not communicable to another substance as an accident, because it is itself a substance. It is not communicable to individuals as a universal, because it is itself an individual. It is not communicable as an integral or essential part to a whole, because it is itself a complete substance and nature.[286] Finally it is not communicable to, and cannot be assumed into, the unity of [pg 263] a higher personality so as to subsist by virtue of the latter's subsistence, because it has a perfection incompatible with such assumption, viz. its own proper subsistence, whereby it is already an actually subsisting thing or person in its own right, or sui juris, so to speak.

The mention of this last sort of incommunicability would be superfluous, and indeed unintelligible, did we not know from Divine Revelation that the human nature of our Divine Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, though it is a complete and most perfect individual nature, is nevertheless not a person, because It is assumed into the Personality of the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, and, united hypostatically or personally with this Divine Person, subsists by virtue of the Divine Subsistence of the latter.

We see, therefore, what subsistence does for a complete individual nature in the static order. It makes this nature sui juris, incommunicable, and entirely independent in the mode of its actual being: leaving untouched, of course, the essential dependence of the created “subsisting thing” or “person” on the Creator. In the dynamic order, the order of activity and development, subsistence makes the complete individual nature not only the ultimate principle by which all the functions of the individual are discharged, but also the ultimate principle or agent which exercises these functions: while the nature as such is the ultimate principium quo, the nature as subsisting is the ultimate principium quod, in regard to all actions emanating from this nature. Hence the scholastic aphorism: Actiones sunt suppositorum. That is, all actions emanating from a complete individual nature are always ascribed and attributed to the latter as subsisting, to the “subsisting thing” or “person”. In regard to an individual human person, for instance, whether his intellect thinks, or his will resolves, or his imagination pictures things, or his eyes see, or his hand writes, or his stomach digests, or his lungs breathe, or his head aches, it is the man, the person, properly, that discharges or suffers all these functions, though by means of different faculties, organs and members; and it is to him properly that we ascribe all of them.[287]

Now the individual human person is neither his soul, nor his body, nor even both conceived as two; he is one being, one complete substance or nature composed partly of a spiritual principle or soul and partly of a material principle which the soul “informs” and so constitutes a living human body. Hence the human soul itself, whether we consider it as united to the material principle in the living human person, or as disembodied and separate from its connatural material principle, is not a complete substance, is not capable of subsisting and having its human activities referred ultimately to itself as the subsisting, personal principle which elicits these activities. No doubt the disembodied soul has actual existence, but it has not the perfection of subsistence or personality: it is not a complete individual of the human species to which it belongs, and therefore it cannot be properly called a human person, a complete subsisting individual of the human species.[288]

Furthermore, even though an individual nature be complete as a nature, endowed with all the substantial and specific perfections which constitute it a complete individual of the species to which it belongs, nevertheless if it is assumed into the personality of another and higher nature, and subsists in personal union with the latter and by virtue of the latter's subsistence, then that nature, not having its own proper and connatural subsistence, is not itself a person. Nor can the actions which are elicited by means of it be ascribed ultimately to it; they must be ascribed to the person by whose subsistence it subsists and into whose personality it has been assumed. If an individual human nature be thus hypostatically or personally assumed into, and united with, a higher Divine Personality, and subsists only by this Personality, such a human nature will be really and truly an individual nature of the human species; the actions elicited through it and performed by means of it will be really and truly human actions; but it will not be a human person; while its actions will be really and truly the actions of the Divine Person, and will therefore be also really and truly divine: they will be the actions of the God-Man, divine and human, theandric. All this we know only from Divine Revelation concerning the hypostatic union of the human nature of Christ with the Person of the Divine Word; nor could we know it otherwise. But all this does not modify, it only supplements and completes, what the light of reason discloses to us regarding the subsistence or personality of any complete individual nature.

We are now in a position to give nominal definitions of subsistence and personality both in the abstract and in the concrete, i.e. definitions which will indicate to us what exactly it is that these terms denote,[289] and which will thus enable us to inquire into their connotation, or in other words to ask what is it precisely that constitutes subsistence or personality.

By “subsistence” (“subsistentia,” “suppositalitas”) we mean that perfection whereby a fully complete individual nature is rendered in every way, in its being and in its actions, distinct from and incommunicable to any and every other being, so that it exists and acts sui juris, autonomously, independently of every other being save the Creator.[290]

By a “subsisting being” in the concrete (ὑπόστασις, “suppositum,” hypostasis), we mean a being endowed with this perfection of subsistence; in other words, a being that is a complete individual nature existing and acting in every way distinct from and incommunicable to any other being, so that it exists and acts sui juris, autonomously.

“Personality” is simply the subsistence of a complete individual nature that is rational, intelligent.

A “person” is simply a subsisting nature that is rational, intelligent: Persona est suppositum rationale. The definition given by Boëtius is classic: “Persona est substantia individua Rationalis naturae”: “the individual substance of a rational nature,”—where the term individual is understood to imply actually existing and subsisting.

The special name which has thus been traditionally applied to rational or intelligent subsisting beings (as distinct from animals, plants, and material “things”)—the term “person” (“persona,” a mask: per-sonus; cf. Gr. προσωπέιον, from προσώπον, the face, countenance)—originally meaning a rôle or character in a drama, came to be applied to the subsisting human individual, and to connote a certain dignity of the latter as compared with the lower or non-rational beings of the universe. And in fact the ascription of its actions to the subsisting being is more deeply grounded in the subsistence of rational, intelligent [pg 266] beings, who, as free agents, can more properly direct and control these actions.[291]

73. Distinction between the Individual Nature and its Subsistence. What constitutes Personality?—Knowing now what we mean by the terms “subsistence,” “suppositum,” “person,” and “personality,” we have next to inquire in what precisely does subsistence consist. What is it that constitutes a complete individual nature a “subsisting being,” or if the nature be rational, a “person”? Subsistence connotes, over and above the mode of “existing in itself” which characterizes all substance, the notion that the substance or nature is individual, that it is complete, that it is in every way incommunicable, that it is sui juris or autonomous in its existence and activities. These notions are all positive; they imply positive perfections: even incommunicability is really a positive perfection though the term is negative. But is any one of the positive perfections, thus contained in the notion of subsistence, a positive something over and above, and really distinct from, the perfection already implied in the concept of a complete individual nature as such?

Some of those philosophers who regard the distinction between essence and existence in creatures as a real distinction, identify the subsistence of the complete individual nature with its actual existence, thus placing a real distinction between nature and subsistence or personality.[292] Apart from these, however, it is not likely that any philosophers, guided by the light of reason alone, would ever have held, or even suspected, that the subsistence of an actually existing individual nature is a positive perfection really distinct from, and superadded to, the latter. For we never, in our natural experience, encounter an existing individual substance, or nature, or agent, that is not distinct, autonomous, independent, sui juris, and incommunicable in its mode of being and acting.

Rigorously, however, this would only prove that subsistence is a perfection naturally inseparable from the complete individual nature; conceivably [pg 267] it might still be really distinct from the latter. But whether or not such real distinction could be suspected by the unaided light of reason working on natural experience, at all events what we know from Divine Revelation concerning the hypostatic union of the human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ with the Person of the Divine Word, enables us to realize that there can be, in the actual order of things, a complete individual nature which is not a “subsisting being” or “person”; for the human nature of our Lord is de facto such a nature,—and ab actu ad posse valet consecutio. This information, however, is not decisive in determining the character of the distinction between the individual substance or nature and its subsistence.

It may be that the complete individual nature is eo ipso and identically a “subsisting being” or “person,” that it is always independent, autonomous, sui juris, by the very fact that it is a complete individual nature, unless it is de facto assumed into the personality of a higher nature, so that in this intercommunication with the latter, in the unity of the latter's personality, it is not independent, autonomous, sui juris, but dependent, subordinate, and alterius juris. In this condition, it loses nothing positive by the fact that it is not now a person and has not its own subsistence; nor does it gain any natural perfection, for it was ex hypothesi complete and perfect as a nature; but it gains something supernatural inasmuch as it now subsists in a manner wholly undue to it.[293] According to this view, therefore, subsistence would not be a perfection really distinct from the complete individual nature; it would be a mentally distinct aspect of the latter, a positive aspect, however, consisting in this nature's completeness, its self-sufficing, autonomous character, and consequent incommunicability.[294]

The principal difficulty against this view is a theological difficulty. As formulated by Urraburu,[295] it appears to involve an ambiguity in the expression “substantial union”. It is briefly this: If the subsistence proper to a complete individual nature adds no positive perfection to the latter, so that the latter necessarily subsists and is a person unless it is actually assumed into a higher personality, and by the very fact that it is not actually so assumed, then the human nature of Christ “is as complete in every way and in every line of substantial perfection, by virtue of its own proper entity, when actually united with the Divine Person, as it would be were it not so united, or as [pg 268] the person of Peter, or Paul, or any other human person is”. But this implies that there are in Christ “two substances complete in every respect”. Now between two such substances “there cannot be a substantial union,” a union which would constitute “one being,” “unum per se ens”. Hence the view in question would appear to be inadmissible.

But it is not proved that the union of “two substances complete in every respect” cannot result in the constitution of a being that is really and genuinely one—“unum per se ens”—in the case in which the union is a personal union. The hypostatic union of the human nature of Christ with the Divine Person is primarily a personal union whereby the former nature subsists by and in the Divine Personality. It has the effect of constituting the united terms “one subsisting being,” and therefore has supereminently, if not formally, the effect of a “substantial union”. Nay, it is a “substantial” union in the sense that it is a union of two substances, not of a substance and accidents; and also in the sense that it is not a mere accidental aggregation or artificial juxtaposition of substances, resulting merely in the constitution of collective or artificial unity, a unum per accidens. But is it a “substantial” union in the sense that it is such a union of substances as results in one “nature”? Most certainly not; for this was the heresy of the Monophysites: that in Christ there is only one nature resulting from the union of the human nature with the Divine. If then, with Urraburu, we mean by “nature” simply “substance regarded as a principle of action” ([71]), and if, furthermore, the hypostatic union does not result in one “nature,” neither does it result in one “substance,” nor can it be a “substantial” or “natural” union in this sense.[296] He does not say, of course, that the hypostatic union is a “substantial union” which results in “one nature,” or even explicitly that it results in “one substance,” but he says that the two substances are “substantially conjoined,” “substantialiter conjunguntur”; and he continues, “a substantial union is such a conjunction of two substantial realities that there results from it one substantial something, which is truly and properly one”—“unio enim substantialis, est talis duarum rerum substantialium conjunctio, per quam resultat unum aliquid substantiale quod vere et proprie sit unum,”[297]—and he concludes that “there is something substantial wanting in the human nature of Christ, viz. personality, which, of course, is most abundantly supplied in the hypostatic union by the Divine Person”—“reliquum est, ut naturae humanae in Christo aliquid desit substantiale, nempe personalitas, quod per unionem hypostaticam cumulatissime suppleatur a Verbo.”[298] Now, this “aliquid substantiale” cannot be “aliquid naturale” in the sense that it is something constitutive of the human [pg 269] substance or nature; for the human substance or nature of Christ is certainly complete and perfect as a substance or nature. It must be some complement or mode, that is naturally due to it, but supernaturally supplied by the Person of the Divine Word.[299] This brings us to the view that subsistence is a something positive, distinct in some real way, and not merely in our concepts, from the complete individual substance.

According to the more common view of catholic philosophers (and theologians) subsistence is some positive perfection really distinct from the complete individual nature. But the supporters of this general view explain it in different ways. We have already referred to the view of certain Thomists who, identifying subsistence with the actual existence of the complete substance or nature, place a real distinction between the existence and the substance or nature. Other Thomists, while defending the latter distinction, point out that actual existence confers no real perfection, but only actualizes the real; they hold, therefore, that subsistence is not existence, but is rather a perfection of the real, essential, or substantial order, as distinct from the existential order—a perfection presupposed by actual existence, and whose proper function is to unify all the substantial constituents and accidental determinations of the individual substance or nature, thus making it a really unitary being—“unum ens per se”—proximately capable of being actualized by the simple existential act: which latter is the ultimate actuality of the real being: esse est ultimus actus.[300]

The concrete individual nature, containing as it does a plurality of really distinct principles, substantial and accidental, needs some unifying principle to make these one incommunicable reality, proximately capable of receiving a corresponding unitary existential act: without such a principle, they say, each of the substantial and accidental principles in the concrete individual nature would have its own existence: so that the result would be not really one being, but a being really manifold and only accidentally one—“unum per accidens”. This principle is subsistence.

The human nature of our Divine Lord has not its own connatural subsistence; this is supplied by the subsistence of the Divine Person. Moreover, since the human nature in question has not its own subsistence, neither has it its own existence; existence is the actuality of the subsisting [pg 270] being; therefore there is in Christ but one existence, that of the Divine Person, whereby also the human nature of Christ exists.[301]

Of those who deny that the distinction between the existence and the essence of any created nature is a real distinction, some hold in the present matter the Scotist view that subsistence is not a positive perfection really distinct from the complete individual nature. Others, however, hold what we have ventured to regard as the more common view: that personality is something positive and really distinct from nature. But they explain what they conceive subsistence to be without any reference to existence, and without distinguishing between the essential and the existential order of reality.

The most common explanation seems to be that subsistence is a unifying principle of the concrete individual nature, as stated above. Thus conceived, it is not an absolute reality; nor is the distinction between it and the nature a major real distinction. It is a substantial mode ([68]), naturally superadded to the substance and modally distinct from the latter. It so completes and determines the substance or nature that the latter not only exists in itself but is also, by virtue of this mode, incommunicable in every way and sui juris.[302] It gives to the substance that ultimate determinateness which an accidental mode such as a definite shape or location gives to the accident of quantity.[303]

This mode is absent (supernaturally) from the human nature of our Divine Lord; this nature is therefore communicable; and the Personality of the Divine Word supernaturally supplies the function of this absent natural mode.

It must be confessed that it is not easy to understand how this or any other substantial mode can be really distinct from the substance it modifies. And in truth the distinction is not real in the full sense: it is not between thing and thing, inter rem et rem. All that is claimed for it is that it is not merely mental; that it is not merely an ens rationis which the mind projects into the reality; [pg 271] that it is a positive perfection of the nature or substance, a perfection which, though naturally inseparable from the latter, is not absolutely inseparable, and which, therefore, is de facto supernaturally absent from the human nature and replaced by the Divine Personality in the case of the hypostatic union.

It belongs, moreover, to the order of substance, not to that of accidents: the substantial mode differs from the accidental mode, or modal accident, in this, that it gives to the substance some ultimate determining perfection which appertains to the substance as such, and whereby the substance is completed in the order of “existing in itself”. Subsistence is not an accident, even though it supervenes on the complete nature, for it determines the substance of the latter, not in relation to any line of accidental activity, as a power or faculty, nor as something modifying it accidentally, but as a mode which ultimately determines and perfects it in the order of substantial reality itself, in the order of “existing in itself” in such a full and perfect manner as to be sui juris and incommunicable.

The main difficulty against this view is also theological: If subsistence is a positive perfection it either belongs to the complete individual nature or it does not; in the former case the humanity of Christ, assumed by the Divine Word, was not a complete human nature; in the latter case the individual human nature can exist without it: and both consequences are equally inadmissable. But it may be replied that, granting the first member of the disjunctive, the consequence inferred from it does not really follow: subsistence belongs to the complete individual nature as an ultimate natural complement; but when it is absent and supplied supernaturally by the Divine Personality the nature is still complete as a nature: it is wanting in no absolute or entitative perfection, but only in a modality which is supereminently supplied by the Divine Personality. Neither is the consequence from the second member of the disjunctive a valid inference. For though personality as a mode does not belong to the essence of an individual human nature, no such individual nature can exist without some personality, either its own or another: just as extension cannot exist without some shape, though any particular shape is not essential to it.

To sum up, then, the doctrine of the two preceding sections: What are we to understand by a person, and by personality? Unquestionably our conception of person and personality (concrete and abstract) is mainly determined, and very rightly so, by an analysis of what constitutes the actually existing individual of the human species. Whatever our concept be, it must certainly be realized and verified in all human individuals: these, before all other beings, must be included in the denotation of our concept [pg 272] of person. In fact, for the philosopher, guided by the natural light of reason alone, the term can have hardly any other connotation. He will, no doubt, ascribe personality, as the highest mode of being he knows of, to the Supreme Being; but he will here ascribe it only in an analogical and supereminent way; and only from Divine Revelation can he know that this Supreme Being has not a single but a threefold Personality. Again, his consideration of the nature of the human soul as an embodied substance which is nevertheless spiritual and immortal will enable him to affirm the possibility of purely spiritual created beings; and these he will of course conceive as persons. But, conceiving the human soul itself as a constituent principle of the human individual, he will not conceive the soul itself as a person.

The philosopher who understands the traditional Aristotelian conceptions of substance, of individual substance (substantia prima), of incomplete, complete, and composite substances, of substance considered as nature or principle of action, of substance considered as hypostasis, as the actually existing individual being which is the ultimate logical subject of all predications and the ultimate ontological subject of all real determinations: the philosopher who understands these concepts, and who admits them to be validly grounded in experience, and to offer as far as they go a correct interpretation of reality, will have no difficulty in making up his mind about what is requisite to constitute a person.

Wherever he finds an existing individual being of any species, a being which, even if it is really composite, is nevertheless really one, such a being he will pronounce to be a “subsisting individual being”. He may not be able, in the inorganic world or among the lower forms of life, to distinguish for certain what is the real individual from what may be perhaps only an accidental, if natural, colony or group of real individuals. As a test he will always seek for the manifestation of an internal directive principle whereby all the vital functions of the organized mass of matter in question are co-ordinated in such a manner as to make for the preservation, growth and development of the whole throughout a definite life cycle from birth to death. This formative and directive principle is evidence of an individual unity of nature and subsistence; and such evidence is abundantly present in “individuals” of all the higher species in botany and zoology. The “individual subsisting being” will therefore be a “complete [pg 273] individual substance or nature, existing and acting in every way distinct from and incommunicable to any other being, so that it exists and acts sui juris, autonomously”.

If such an individual nature is not merely corporeal but organic or animate, not merely animate but sentient, and not merely sentient but rational or intelligent, i.e. constituted at least in part by a spiritual substantial principle whereby the individual is intelligent and free, then that individual is a person. Every individual of the human species is such. And all that is essential to his complete individual human nature enters into and constitutes his person in the concrete. Not merely, therefore, his intellect and will; not merely his soul considered as “mind,” i.e. as the basis and principle of his whole conscious and subconscious psychic life; or also as the principle of his merely organic life; or also as the actualizing principle of his corporeal nature; but no less also the corporeal principle itself of his composite being, the body itself with all its parts and members and organs: all these without exception belong equally to the human person; all of them without exception go to constitute the Ego.[304] This, which is the Aristotelian and scholastic view of the human person, is in perfect accord with the common-sense view of the matter as evidenced by the ordinary usages of language. We speak intelligibly no less than correctly when we say that a man's body is part of his person as well as his soul or mind. And we make a no less accurate, intelligible, and necessary distinction, when we distinguish between all that which constitutes the human person and that whereby we know ourselves and other human individuals to be persons. Yet this distinction is not kept clearly in mind by many modern philosophers, who, approaching the study of personality exclusively from the side of what the individual consciousness testifies as to the unity and continuity (or otherwise) of mental life in the individual, are scandalized at the assertion that the human body can have anything to do with human personality.

74. Consciousness of the Personal Self.—In order to form the concept of person, and to find that concept verified in the data of our experience, it is absolutely essential that we be endowed with the faculty of intelligence, the spiritual power of forming abstract concepts; and secondly, that having formed [pg 274] the concept of person as a “rational or intelligent subsisting being,” we be capable, by the exercise of reflex consciousness, to find in our own mental life the data from which we can conclude that this concept of person is verified in each and every one of ourselves. It is because we are endowed with intelligence that we can form all the abstract notions—of substance, individual, subsistence, existence, etc.,—which enter into and constitute our concept of person. And it is because we can, by means of this faculty, reflect on our own mental operations, and infer from them that each of us is a complete individual rational nature subsisting independently and incommunicably, that we can know ourselves to be persons.

How the human individual forms these concepts and finds them verified in his own “self,” how he gradually comes into conscious possession of the knowledge of his own individual being as an Ego, self, or person, are problems for Psychology.[305] It will be sufficient here to point out that there are grounds for distinguishing between the individual's implicit subjective awareness of his subsistence or “selfhood”—an awareness which accompanies all his conscious mental functions, and which becomes more explicit and definite as the power of introspection and reflex consciousness develops—and the “abstract quasi-objective notion of his own personality habitually possessed by every human being”.[306]

The individual human being immediately apprehends his own existence, and his abiding unity or sameness throughout incessantly changing states, in the temporal series of his conscious activities; but his knowledge of the nature of his own being can be the result only of a long and carefully conducted analysis of his own activities, and of inferences based on the character of these activities. The former or implicit knowledge of the self in the concrete is direct and intuitive. The individual Ego apprehends itself in its states. This knowledge comes mainly from within, and is subject to gradual development. Father Maher thus describes how the child comes gradually into possession of it:—

As thoughts of pleasures and pains repeated in the past and expected in the future grow more distinct, the dissimilarity between these and the permanent abiding self comes to be more fully realized. Passing emotions of fear, anger, vanity, pride, or sympathy, accentuate the difference. But [pg 275] most probably it is the dawning sense of power to resist and overcome rising impulse, and the dim nascent consciousness of responsibility, which lead up to the final revelation, until at last, in some reflective act of memory or choice, or in some vague effort to understand the oft-heard “I,” the great truth is manifested to him: the child enters, as it were, into possession of his personality, and knows himself as a Self-conscious Being. The Ego does not create but discovers itself. In Jouffroy's felicitous phrase, it “breaks its shell,” and finds that it is a Personal Agent with an existence and individuality of its own, standing henceforward alone in opposition to the universe.[307]

After this stage is reached, the human individual easily distinguishes between the “self” as the cause or subject of the states, and the states as modifications of the self. This distinction is implicit in the concomitant awareness of self which accompanies all exercise of direct cognitive consciousness. It is explicit in all deliberate acts of reflex, introspective self-consciousness. The data from which we form the abstract concepts of substance, nature, individual, person, self, etc., and from which we arrive by reasoning at a philosophical knowledge of the nature and personality of the human individual, are furnished mainly by introspection; but also in part by external observation of the universe around us.

Concomitantly, however, with the process by which we become implicitly but immediately aware of the Ego or self as an abiding self-identical person in and through our own mental activity, we gradually form a quasi-objective and historical view of our own personality as one of a number of similar personalities around us in the universe. This view, says Father Maher,

gathers into itself the history of my past life—the actions of my childhood, boyhood, youth, and later years. Interwoven with them all is the image of my bodily organism, and clustering around are a fringe of recollections of my dispositions, habits, and character, of my hopes and regrets, of my resolutions and failures, along with a dim consciousness of my position in the minds of other selves.

Under the form of a representation of this composite art, bound together by the thread of memory, each of us ordinarily conceives his complete abiding personality. This idea is necessarily undergoing constant modification; and it is in comparing the present form of the representation with the past, whilst adverting to considerable alterations in my character, bodily appearance, and the like, that I sometimes say: “I am completely changed,” “I am quite another person,” though I am, of course, convinced that it is the same “I” who am changed in accidental qualities. It is because this complex notion of my personality is an abstraction from my remembered experiences [pg 276] that a perversion of imagination and a rupture of memory can sometimes induce the so-called “illusions or alterations of personality”.[308]

When we remember that this objective conception of the self is so dependent on the function of memory, and that the normal exercise of this faculty is in turn so dependent on the normal functioning of the brain and the nervous system,[309] we can hazard an intelligible explanation of the abnormal facts recorded by most modern psychologists concerning hypnotism, somnambulism and “double” or “multiple” consciousness.[310] Father Maher, ascribing these phenomena partly to dislocations of memory, partly to unusual groupings of mental states according to the laws of mental association—groupings that arise from peculiar physiological connexions between the various neural functionings of the brain centres,—and partly to semi-conscious or reflex nerve processes, emphasizes an important fact that is sometimes lost sight of: the fact that some section at least of the individual's conscious mental life is common to, and present throughout, the two or more “states” or “conditions” between which any such abnormal individual is found to alternate. This consideration is itself sufficient to disprove the theory—to which we shall presently refer—that there is or may be in the individual human being a double, or even a multiple “human personality”.

75. False Theories of Personality.—It is plain that conscious mental activity cannot constitute human personality, or subconscious mental activity either, for all activity is of the accidental mode of being, is an accident, whereas a person must be a substance. Of course it is the self-conscious cognitive activity of the human individual that reveals to the latter his own self as a person: it is the exercise of reflex consciousness combined with memory that gives us the feeling of personal identity with ourselves throughout the changing events of our mental and bodily life. Furthermore, this self-consciousness has its root in the rational nature of the human individual; and rationality of nature is the differentiating principle which makes the subsisting individual a “person” as distinct from a (subsisting) “thing”. But then, it is not the feeling of personal identity that constitutes the person. Actual consciousness is neither the essence, nor the [pg 277] source, nor even the index of personality; for it is only an activity, and an activity which reveals immediately not the person as such, but the nature as rational;[311] nor does the rational (substantial) principle of a composite nature constitute the latter a person; but only the subsistence of the complete (composite) individual nature itself.

These considerations are sufficiently obvious; they presuppose, however, the truth of the traditional doctrine already explained in regard to the existence, nature and cognoscibility of substance. Philosophers who have misunderstood and rejected and lost this traditional doctrine of substance have propounded many varieties of unsatisfactory and inconsistent theories in regard to what constitutes “person” and “personality”. The main feature of all such theories is their identification of personality with the habitual consciousness of self, or habitual feeling of personal identity: a feeling which, however, must be admitted to include memory in some form, while the function of memory in any shape or form cannot be satisfactorily explained on any theory of the human Ego which denies that there is a human substance persisting permanently as a unifying principle of successive mental states ([63-4]).

So far as English philosophy is concerned such theories appear to have had their origin in Locke's teaching on person and personal identity. Discussing the notions of identity and diversity,[312] he distinguishes between the identity of an individual substance with itself in its duration throughout time, and what he terms personal identity; while by identity in general he means not abstract identity but the concrete permanence of a thing throughout time ([34]). On this we have to call attention to the fact that just as duration is not essential to the constitution of a substance, so neither is it essential to the constitution of a complete subsisting individual substance or person ([64]); though it is, of course, an essential condition for all human apprehension whether of substance or of person. Locke was wrong, therefore, in confounding what reveals to us the abiding permanence, identity or sameness of a subsisting thing or person (whether the “self” or any other subsisting thing or person) throughout [pg 278] its duration in time, with what constitutes the subsisting thing or person.

Furthermore, his distinction between substantial identity, i.e. the sameness of an individual substance with itself throughout time, and personal identity or sameness, was also an error. For as long as there is substantial unity, continuity, or identity of the subsisting individual substance, so long is there unity, continuity, or identity of its subsistence, or of its personality if it be a rational substance. The subsistence of a complete individual inorganic substance is changed as soon as the individual undergoes substantial change: we have them no longer the same subsisting individual being. So, too, the subsistence of the organic individual is changed as soon as the latter undergoes substantial change by the dissolution of life, by the separation of its formative and vital substantial principle from its material substantial principle: after such dissolution we have no longer the same subsisting plant or animal. And, finally, the subsistence of an individual man is changed, or interrupted, or ceases by death, which separates his soul, his vital principle, from his body. We say, moreover, that in the latter case the human person ceases to exist when the identity or permanence of his subsisting substance or nature terminates at death; for personal identity we hold to be the identity of the complete subsisting substance or nature with itself. But Locke, who practically agrees with what we have said regarding the abiding identity of the subsisting individual being with itself—whether this individual be an inorganic individual, a plant, a brute beast, or a man[313]—distinguishes at this point between identity of the subsisting individual substance and personal identity.

Of identity in general he says that “to conceive and judge of it aright, we must consider what idea the word it is applied to stands for; it being one thing to be the same substance, another the same man, and a third the same person, if person, man, and substance, are three names standing for three different ideas”.[314] And, struggling to dissociate “person” from “substance,” he continues thus:—

To find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will any thing, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions, and by this every one is to himself what he calls self; it not being considered in this case whether the same self be continued in the same or divers substances. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.[315]

The definition of person in this passage as “a thinking, intelligent being,” etc., is not far removed from our own definition; but surely conscious thought is not “that which makes every one to be what he calls self,” seeing that conscious thought is only an activity or function of the “rational being”. It is conscious thought, of course, including memory, that reveals the “rational being” to himself as a self, and as the same or identical self throughout time; but unless the “rational being,” or the “thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection,” etc.—which is Locke's own definition of “person”—were there all the time identical with itself, exercising those distinct and successive acts of consciousness and memory, and unifying them, how could these acts even reveal the “person” or his “personal identity” to himself, not to speak of their constituting personality or personal identity? It is perfectly plain that these acts [pg 280] presuppose the “person,” the “thinking, intelligent being,” or, as we have expressed it, the “subsisting, rational, individual nature” already constituted; and it is equally plain that the “personal identity” which they reveal is constituted by, and consists simply in, the duration or continued existence of this same subsisting individual rational nature; nor could these acts reveal any identity, personal or otherwise, unless they were the acts of one and the same actually subsisting, existing and persisting substance.

Yet Locke thinks he can divorce personal identity from identity of substance, and account for the former independently of the latter. In face of the obvious difficulty that actual consciousness is not continuous but intermittent, he tries to maintain that the consciousness which links together present states with remembered states is sufficient to constitute personal identity even although there may have intervened between the present and the past states a complete change of substance, so that it is really a different substance which experiences the present states from that which experienced the past states. The question

Whether we are the same thinking thing, i.e. the same substance or no ... concerns not personal identity at all: the question being, what makes the same person, and not whether it be the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same person: different substances, by the same consciousness (where they do partake in it), being united into one person, as well as different bodies by the same life are united into one animal, whose identity is preserved, in that change of substances, by the unity of one continued life ... [for] animal identity is preserved in identity of life, and not of substance.[316]

Here the contention is that we can have “the same person” and yet not necessarily “the same identical substance,” because consciousness may give a personal unity to distinct and successive substances in the individual man just as animal life gives an analogous unity to distinct and successive substances in the individual animal. This is very superficial; for it only substitutes for the problem of human personality the similar problem of explaining the unity and sameness of subsistence in the individual living thing: a problem which involves the fact of memory in animals. For scholastic philosophers unity of life in the living thing, involving the fact of memory in animals, is explained by the perfectly intelligible and will-grounded teaching [pg 281] that there is in each individual living thing a formative and vital principle which is substantial, a forma substantialis, which unites, in the abiding self-identical unity of a complete individual composite substance, the material principle of the corporeal substances which thus go, in the incessant process of substantial change known as metabolism, to form partially, and to support the substantial continuity of, the living individual. While the latter is thus in constant process of material, or partial, substantial change, it remains, as long as it lives, the same complete individual substance, and this in virtue of the abiding substantial formative and vital principle which actuates and animates it. The abiding permanence or self-identity of the subsisting individual substance which feels or thinks, and remembers, is an intelligible, and indeed the only intelligible, ground and explanation of memory, and of our consciousness of personal identity.

But if we leave out of account this abiding continuity and self-identity of the subsisting individual substance or nature, which is the subject, cause and agent of these acts of memory and consciousness, how can these latter, in and by themselves, possibly form, or even indeed reveal to us, our personal identity? Locke felt this difficulty; and he tried in vain to meet it: in vain, for it is insuperable. He merely suggests that “the same consciousness ... can be transferred from one thinking substance to another,” in which case “it will be possible that two thinking substances may make [successively] one person”.[317] This is practically his last word on the question,—and it is worthy of note, for it virtually substantializes consciousness. It makes consciousness, which is really only an act or a series of acts, a something substantial and subsisting. We have seen already how modern phenomenists, once they reject the notion of substance as invalid or superfluous, must by that very fact equivalently substantialize accidents ([61]); for substance, being a necessary category of human thought as exercised on reality, cannot really be dispensed with. And we see in the present context an illustration of this fact. The abiding self-identity of the human person cannot be explained otherwise than by the abiding self-identical subsistence of the individual human substance.

If personal identity were constituted and determined by consciousness, by the series of conscious states connected and unified by memory, then it would appear that the human being [pg 282] in infancy, in sleep, in unconsciousness, or in a state of insanity, is not a human person! Philosophers who have not the hardihood to deny human personality to the individual of the human species in these states, and who on the other hand will not recognize the possession of a rational nature or substance by the subsisting individual as the ground of the latter's personality and personal identity, have recourse to the hypothesis of a sub-conscious, or “sub-liminal” consciousness in the individual, as a substitute. If by this they merely meant an abiding substantial rational principle of all mental activities, even of those which may be semi-conscious or sub-conscious, they would be merely calling by another name what we call the rational nature of man. And the fact that they refer to this principle as the sub-conscious “self” or “Ego” shows how insistent is the rational need for rooting personality and personal identity in something which is a substance. But they do not and will not conceive it as a substance; whereas if it is not this, if it is only a “process,” or a “function,” or a “series” or “stream” of processes or functions, it can no more constitute or explain, or even reveal, personal identity, than a series or stream of conscious states can.[318]

Unable as he was to explain how the same consciousness could persist throughout a succession of really and adequately distinct substances (except by virtually substantializing consciousness), Locke nevertheless persisted in holding that consciousness and consciousness alone (including memory, which, however, is inexplicable on any other theory than that of a subsisting and persisting substance or nature which remembers), constitutes personality and personal identity. We have dwelt upon his teaching mainly because all modern phenomenists try to explain personality on the same principles—i.e. independently of the doctrine of substance.

As a corollary from his doctrine he inferred that if a man completely and irrevocably loses consciousness [or rather memory] of his past life, though he remains the same “man” he is no longer the same “person”: “if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at different times make different persons”;[319] and he goes on in this sense to give a literal interpretation to the modes of speech we have referred to above.[320] He likewise [pg 283] admitted that two or more “persons,” i.e. consciousnesses, can be linked with the same individual human being, or the same individual human soul, alternately appearing and disappearing, giving place successively to one another. When any one of these “personalities” or consciousnesses ceases to be actual, it must in Locke's view cease to be in any sense real: so that there could not be two or more personalities at the same time in the same individual human being. Modern psychologists, however, of the phenomenist school, convinced that sub-conscious mental activities are not only possible, but that the fact of such activities is well established by a variety of experiences, have extended Locke's conception of personality (as actual consciousness) to embrace groups of mental activities which may emerge only intermittently “above the threshold of consciousness”. Hence they explain the abnormal cases of double or multiple consciousness already referred to, as being manifestations of really distinct “personalities” in one and the same human individual. In normal human beings there is, they say, only one normally “conscious personality”. The sub-conscious mental activities of such an individual they bulk together as forming this individual's “sub-liminal” or “sub-conscious” Ego or “self”: presumably a distinct personality from the conscious one. In the abnormal cases of “double-consciousness” the subliminal self struggles for mastery over the conscious self and is for a time successful: the two personalities thus for a time changing places as it were. In the rarer or more abnormal cases of treble or multiple consciousness, there are presumably three or more “personalities” engaged in the struggle, each coming to the surface in turn and submerging the others.

It is not the fancifulness of this theory that one might object to so much as its utter inadequacy to explain the facts, nay, its utter unintelligibility on the principles of those who propound it. For we must not lose sight of the fact that it is propounded by philosophers who purport to explain mental life and human personality without recourse to a substantial soul, to any substantial basis of mental life, or indeed to the concept of substance at all: by philosophers who will talk of a mental process without admitting mind or soul as a substance or subject of that process, of a “series” or “stream” of mental functions or activities without allowing any agent that would exercise those functions, or any substantial abiding principle that would unify the series or stream and know it as such; philosophers who regard the Ego, “self,” or “person,” as nothing other than the group or series or stream of mental states, and not as anything of which these are the states; and, finally, who speak of these groups of functions or activities as “personalities”—which they describe as “struggling” with one another—apparently oblivious of the fact that by using such language they are in their thought at least transforming these activities into agents, these states into subjects of states, in a word, these accidents into substances; or else they are making their language and their thought alike unintelligible.[321]

Of course those numerous modern philosophers who, like James, try to “find a place for all the experiential facts unencumbered by any hypothesis [like that of an individual substantial soul, presumably] save that of passing states of mind” [ibid., p. 480], do not really leave these “states” suspended in mid-air as it were. The imperative need for admitting the reality of substance always ultimately asserts itself: as when James recognizes the necessity of admitting something “more than the bare fact of co-existence of a passing thought with a passing brain-state” [Principles of Psychology, i., p. 346—apud Maher, ibid., p. 483]. Only his speculation as to what constitutes this “something ‘more’ which lies behind our mental states” [ibid., p. 485] is not particularly convincing: “For my own part,” he says, “I confess that the moment I become metaphysical and try to define the more, I find the notion of some sort of an anima mundi thinking in all of us to be a more promising hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that of a lot of absolutely individual souls” [ibid., p. 346—apud Maher, ibid.]. This restatement of the medieval pantheistic theory known as Averroïsm, Monopsychism, or the theory of the intellectus separatus [cf. De Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, pp. 381 sqq.], is a somewhat disappointing contribution to Metaphysics from the most brilliant of our modern psychologists. The “difficulties” of this “more promising hypothesis” had discredited it a rather long time before Professor James resurrected it [cf. criticisms—apud Maher, ibid.].

[pg 285]

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