Ontology, or the Theory of Being

by P. Coffey

Chapter VIII. The Categories Of Being. Substance And Accident.

59. The Conception of Ultimate Categories.—Having examined so far the notion of real being itself, which is the proper subject-matter of ontology, and those widest or transcendental notions which are coextensive with that of reality, we must next inquire into the various modes in which we find real being expressed, determined, actualized, as it falls within our experience. In other words, we must examine the highest categories of being, the suprema genera entis. Considered from the point of view of the logical arrangement of our concepts, each of these categories reveals itself as a primary and immediate limitation of the extension of the transcendental concept of real being itself. Each is ultimately distinct from the others in the sense that no two of them can be brought under any other as a genus, nor can we discover any intermediate notion between any one of them and the notion of being itself. The latter notion is not properly a genus of which they would be species, nor can it be predicated univocally of any two or more of them ([2]). Each is itself an ultimate genus, a genus supremum.

By using these notions as predicates of our judgments we are enabled to interpret things, to obtain a genuine if inadequate insight into reality; for we assume as established in the Theory of Knowledge that all our universal concepts have real and objective validity, that they give us real knowledge of the nature of those individual things which form the data of our sense experience. Hence the study of the categories, which is for Logic a classification of our widest concepts, become for Metaphysics an inquiry into the modes which characterize real being.[215] By determining what these modes are, by studying their characteristics, by tracing them through the data of experience, we advance in our knowledge of reality.

The most divergent views have prevailed among philosophers [pg 208] both as to what a category is or signifies, and as to what or how many the really ultimate categories are. Is a category, such as substance, or quality, or quantity, a mode of real being revealed to the knowing mind, as most ancient and medieval philosophers thought, with Aristotle and St. Thomas? or is it a mental mode imposed on reality by the knowing mind, as many modern philosophers have thought, with Kant and after him? It is for the Theory of Knowledge to examine this alternative; nor shall we discuss it here except very incidentally: for we shall assume as true the broad affirmative answer to the first alternative. That is to say, we shall hold that the mind is able to see, in the categories generally, modes of reality; rejecting the sceptical conclusions of Kantism in regard to the power of the Speculative Reason, and the principles which lead to such conclusions.

As to the number and classification of the ultimate categories, this is obviously a question which cannot be settled a priori by any such purely deductive analysis of the concept of being as Hegel seems to have attempted; but only a posteriori, i.e. by an analysis of experience in its broadest sense as including Matter and Spirit, Nature and Mind, Object and Subject of Thought, and even the Process of Thought itself. Moreover it is not surprising that with the progress of philosophical reflection, certain categories should have been studied more deeply at certain epochs than ever previously, that they should have been “discovered” so to speak, not of course in the sense that the human mind had not been previously in possession of them, but in the sense that because of closer study they furnished the mind with a richer and fuller power of “explaining” things. It is natural, too, that historians of philosophy, intent on tracing the movement of philosophic thought, should be inclined to over-emphasize the relativity of the categories, as regards their “explaining” value—their relativity to the general mentality of a certain epoch or period.[216] But there is danger here of confounding certain large hypothetical conceptions, which are found to yield valuable results at a certain stage in the progress of the sciences,[217] with the categories proper of real being. If the mind of man is of the same nature in all men, if it contemplates the same universe, if it is capable of reaching truth about this universe—real truth which is immutable,—then the modes of being which it [pg 209] apprehends in the universe, and by conceiving which it interprets the latter, must be in the universe as known, and must be there immutably. Nowhere do we find this more clearly illustrated than in the futility of the numerous attempts of modern philosophers to deny the reality of the category of substance, and to give an intelligible interpretation of experience without the aid of this category. We shall see that as a matter of fact it is impossible to deny in thought the reality of substance, or to think at all without it, however philosophers may have denied it in language,—or thought that they denied it when they only rejected some erroneous or indefensible meaning of the term.

60. The Aristotelian Categories.—The first palpable distinction we observe in the data of experience is that between substance and accident. “We might naturally ask,” writes Aristotle,[218] “whether what is signified by such terms as walking, sitting, feeling well, is a being (or reality).... And we might be inclined to doubt it, for no single one of such acts exists by itself (καθ᾽ αὐτὸ πεφυκός), no one of them is separable from substance (οὐσία); it is rather to him who walks, or sits, or feels well, that we give the name of being. That which is a being in the primary meaning of this term, a being simply and absolutely, and not merely a being in a certain sense, or with a qualification, is substance—ὡστε τὸ πρώτως ὂν καὶ οὐ τὶ ὂν ἀλλ᾽ ὂν ἁπλῶς ἡ οὐσία ἂν εἴν.”[219] But manifestly, though substances, or what in ordinary language we call “persons” and “things”—men, animals, plants, minerals—are real beings in the fullest sense, nevertheless sitting, walking, thinking, willing, and actions generally, are also undoubtedly realities; so too are states and qualities; and shape, size, posture, etc. And yet we do not find any of these latter actually existing in themselves like substances, but only dependently on substances—on “persons” or “things” that think or walk or act, or are large or small, hot or cold, or have some shape or quality. They are all accidents, in contradistinction to substance.

It is far easier to distinguish between accidents and substance than to give an exhaustive list of the ultimate and irreducible classes of the former. Aristotle enumerates nine: Quantity (ποσόν), Quality (ποῖον), Relation (πρὸς τι), Action (ποιέιν), [pg 210] Passion (πάσχειν), Where (ποῦ), When (ποτέ), Posture (κεῖσθαι), External Condition or State (ἔχειν). Much has been said for and against the exhaustive character of this classification. Scholastics generally have defended and adopted it. St. Thomas gives the following reasoned analysis of it:[220] Since accidents may be distinguished by their relations to substance, we see that some affect substances intrinsically, others extrinsically; and in the former case, either absolutely or relatively: if relatively we have the category of relation; if absolutely we have either quantity or quality according as the accident affects the substance by reason of the matter, or the form, of the latter. What affects and denominates a substance extrinsically does so either as a cause, or as a measure, or otherwise. If as a cause, the substance is either suffering action, or acting itself; if as a measure, it denominates the subject as in time, or in place, or in regard to the relative position of its parts, its posture, in the place which it occupies. Finally, if the accident affects the substance extrinsically, though not as cause or as measure, but only as characterizing its external condition and immediate surroundings, as when we describe a man as clothed or armed, we have the category of condition.

It might be said that all this is more ingenious than convincing; but it is easier to criticize Aristotle's list than to suggest a better one. In addition to what we have said of it elsewhere,[221] a few remarks will be sufficient in the present context.

Some of the categories, as being of lesser importance, we may treat incidentally when dealing with the more important ones. Ubi, Quando, and Situs, together with the analysis of our notions of Space and Time, fall naturally into the general doctrine of Quantity. The final category, ἔχειν, however interpreted,[222] may be referred to Quality, Quantity, or Relation.

A more serious point for consideration is the fact, generally admitted by scholastics,[223] that one and the same real accident may belong to different categories if we regard it from different standpoints. Actio and passio are one and the same motus or change, regarded in relation to the agent and to the effect, respectively. Place, in regard to the located body belongs to the category ubi, whereabouts; in regard to the locating body it is an aspect of the latter's quantity. Relation, as we shall see, is probably not an [pg 211] entity really distinct from its foundation—quality, quantity, or causality. The reason alleged for this partial absence of real distinction between the Aristotelian categories is that they were thought out primarily from a logical point of view—that of predication.[224] And the reason is a satisfactory one, for real distinction is not necessary for diversity of predication. Then, where they are not really distinct entities these categories are at least aspects so fundamentally distinct and mutually irreducible that each of them is indeed a summum genus immediately under the concept of being in general.

It seems a bold claim to make for any scheme of categories, that it exhausts all the known modes of reality. We often experience objects of thought which seem at first sight incapable of reduction to any of Aristotle's suprema genera. But more mature reflection will always enable us to find a place for them. In order that any extrinsic denomination of a substance constitute a category distinct from those enumerated, it must affect the substance in some real way distinct from any of those nine; and it must moreover be not a mere complex or aggregate of two or more of the latter. Hence denominations which objects derive from the fact that they are terms of mental activities which are really immanent, actiones “intentionales,”—denominations such as “being known,” “being loved,”—neither belong to the category of “passio” proper, nor do they constitute any distinct category. They are entia rationis, logical relations. Again, while efficient causation resolves itself into the categories of actio and passio, the causation of final, formal and material causes cannot be referred to these categories, but neither does it constitute any new category. The influence of a final cause consists in nothing more than its being a good which is the term of appetite or desire. The causation of the formal cause consists in its formally constituting the effect: it is always either a substantial or an accidental form, and so must be referred to the categories of substance, or quality, or quantity. Similarly material causality consists in this that the matter is a partial constitutive principle of the composite being; and it therefore [pg 212] refers us to the category of substance. It may be noted, too, that the ontological principles of a composite being—such as primal matter and substantial form—since they are themselves not properly “beings,” but only “principles of being,” are said to belong each to its proper category, not formally but only referentially, not formaliter but only reductivé. Finally, the various properties that are assigned to certain accidents themselves are either logical relations (such as “not having a contrary” or “being a measure”), or real relations, or intrinsic modes of the accident itself (as when a quality is said to have a certain “intensity”); but in all cases where they are not mere logical entities they will be found to come under one or other of the Aristotelian categories.

The “real being” which is thus “determined” into the supreme modes or categories of substance and accidents is, of course, “being” considered substantially as essential (whether possible or actual), and not merely being that is actually existent, existential being, in the participial sense. Furthermore, it is primarily finite or created being that is so determined. The Infinite Being is above the categories, super-substantial. It is because substance is the most perfect of the categories, and because the Infinite Being verifies in Himself in an incomprehensibly perfect manner all the perfections of substance, that we speak of Him as a substance: remembering always that these essentially finite human concepts are to be predicated of Him only analogically ([2], [5]).

It may be inquired whether “accident” is a genus which should be predicated univocally of the nine Aristotelian categories as species? or is the concept of “accident” only analogical, so that these nine categories would be each a summum genus in the strict sense, i.e. an ultimate and immediate determination of the concept of “being” itself? We have seen already that the concept of “being” as applied to “substance” and “accident” is analogical ([2]). So, too, it is analogical as applied to the various categories of accidents. For the characteristic note of “accident,” that of “affecting, inhering in” a subject, can scarcely be said to be verified “in the same way,” “univocally,” of the various kinds of accidents; it is therefore more probably correct not to regard “accident” as a genus proper, but to conceive each kind of accident as a summum genus coming immediately under the transcendental concept of “being”.

61. The Phenomenist Attack on the Traditional Doctrine of Substance.—Passing now to the question of the existence and nature of substances, and their relation to accidents, we shall find evidences of misunderstandings to which many philosophical errors may be ascribed at least in part. It is a fairly common contention that the distinction between substance and accident is really a groundless distinction; that we have experience merely of transient events or happenings, internal and external, with relations of coexistence or sequence between them; that it is an illusion to suppose, underlying these, an inert, abiding basis called “substance”; that this can be at best but a useless name for each of the collections of external and internal appearances which make up our total experience of the outer world and of our own minds. This is the general position of phenomenists. “What do you know of substance,” they ask us, “except that it is an indeterminate and unknown something underlying phenomena? And even if you could prove its existence, what would it avail you, since in its nature it is, and must remain, unknown? No doubt the mind naturally supposes this ‘something’ underlying phenomena; but it is a mere mental fiction the reality of which cannot be proved, and the nature of which is admitted, even by some who believe in its real existence, to be unknowable.”

Now there can be no doubt about the supreme importance of this question: all parties are pretty generally agreed that on the real or fictitious character of substance the very existence of genuine metaphysics in the traditional sense depends. And at first sight the possibility of such a controversy as the present one seems very strange. “Is it credible,” asks Mercier,[225] “that thinkers of the first order, like Hume, Mill, Spencer, Kant, Wundt, Paulsen, Littré, Taine, should have failed to recognize the substantial character of things, and of the Ego or Self? Must they not have seen that they were placing themselves in open revolt against sound common sense? And on the other hand is it likely that the genius of Aristotle could have been duped by the naïve illusion which phenomenists must logically ascribe to him? Or that all those sincere and earnest teachers who adopted and preserved in scholastic philosophy for centuries the peripatetic distinction between substance and accidents [pg 214] should have been all utterly astray in interpreting an elementary fact of common sense?”

There must have been misunderstandings, possibly on both sides, and much waste of argument in refuting chimeras. Let us endeavour to find out what they are and how they gradually arose.

Phenomenism has had its origin in the Idealism which confines the human mind to a knowledge of its own states, proclaiming the unknowability of any reality other than these; and in the Positivism which admits the reality only of that which falls directly within external and internal sense experience. Descartes did not deny the substantiality of the soul, nor even of bodies; but his idealist theory of knowledge rendered suspect all information derived by his deductive, a priori method of reasoning from supposed innate ideas, regarding the nature and properties of bodies. Locke rejected the innatism of Descartes, ascribing to sense experience a positive rôle in the formation of our ideas, and proving conclusively that we have no such intuitive and deductively derived knowledge of real substances as Descartes contended for.[226] Locke himself did not deny the existence of substances,[227] any more than Descartes. But unfortunately he propounded the mistaken assumption of Idealism, that the mind can know only its own states; and also the error of thinking that because we have not an intuitive insight into the specific nature of individual substances we can know nothing at all through any channel about their nature: and he gathered from this latter error a general notion or definition of substance which is a distinct departure from what Aristotle and the medieval scholastics had traditionally understood by substance. For Locke substance is merely a supposed, but unknown, support for accidents.[228] Setting out [pg 215] with these two notions—that all objects of knowledge must be states or phases of mind, and that material substance is a supposed, but unknown and unknowable, substratum of the qualities revealed to our minds in the process of sense perception—it was easy for Berkeley to support by plausible arguments his denial of the reality of any such things as material substances. And it was just as easy, if somewhat more audacious, on the part of Hume to argue quite logically that if the supposed but unknowable substantial substratum of external sense phenomena is illusory, so likewise is the supposed substantial Ego which is thought to underlie and support the internal phenomena of consciousness.

Hume's rejection of substance is apparently complete and absolute, and is so interpreted by many of his disciples. But a thorough-going phenomenism is in reality impossible; no philosophers have ever succeeded in thinking out an intelligible theory of things without the concepts of “matter,” and “spirit,” and “things,” and the “Ego” or “Self,” however they may have tried to dispense with them; and these are concepts of substances. Hence there are those who doubt that Hume was serious in his elaborate reasoning away of substances. The fact is that Hume “reasoned away” substance only in the sense of an unknowable substratum of phenomena, and not in the sense of a something that exists in itself.[229] So far from denying the existence of entities that exist in themselves, he seems to have multiplied these beyond the wildest dreams of all previous philosophers by substantializing accidents.[230] What he does call into doubt is the capacity of [pg 216] the human mind to attain to a knowledge of the specific natures of such entities; and even here the arguments of phenomenism strike the false Cartesian theory of knowledge, rather than the sober and moderate teachings of scholasticism regarding the nature and limitations of our knowledge of substances.

62. The Scholastic View of our Knowledge in regard to the Existence and Nature of Substances.—What, then, are these latter teachings? That we have a direct, intellectual insight into the specific essence or nature of a corporeal substance such as gold, similar to our insight into the abstract essence of a triangle? By no means; Locke was quite right in rejecting the Cartesian claim to intuitions which were supposed to yield up all knowledge of things by “mathematical,” i.e. deductive, a priori reasoning. The scholastic teaching is briefly as follows:—

First, as regards our knowledge of the existence of substances, and the manner in which we obtain our concept of substance. We get this concept from corporeal substances, and afterwards apply it to spiritual substances; so that our knowledge of the former is “immediate” only in the relative sense of being prior to the latter, not in the sense that it is a direct intuition of the natures of corporeal substances. We have no such direct insight into their natures. But our concept of them as actually existing is also immediate in the sense that at first we spontaneously conceive every object which comes before our consciousness as something existing in itself. The child apprehends each separate stimulant of its sense perception—resistance, colour, sound, etc.—as a “this ”or a “that,” i.e. as a separate something, existing there in itself; in other words it apprehends all realities as substances: not, of course, that the child has yet any reflex knowledge of what a substance is, but unknowingly it applies to all realities at first the concept which it undoubtedly possesses “something existing in itself”. It likewise apprehends each such reality as “one” or “undivided in itself,” and as “distinct from other things”. Such is the child's immediate, direct, and implicit idea of substance. [pg 217] But if we are to believe Hume, what is true of the child remains true of the man: for the latter, too, “every perception is a substance, and every distinct part of a perception a distinct substance”.[231] Nothing, however, could be more manifestly at variance with the facts. For as reason is developed and reflective analysis proceeds, the child most undoubtedly realizes that not everything that falls within its experience has the character of “a something existing in itself and distinct from other things”. “Walking,” “talking,” and “actions” generally, it apprehends as realities,—as realities which, however, do not “exist in themselves,” but in other beings, in the beings that “walk” and “talk” and “act”. And these latter beings it still apprehends as “existing in themselves,” and as thus differing from the former, which “exist not in themselves but in other things”. Thus the child comes into possession of the notion of “accident,” and of the further notion of “substance” as something which not only exists in itself (οὐσία, ens in se subsistens), but which is also a support or subject of accidents (ὑποκείμενον, substans, substare).[232] Nor, indeed, need the child's reason be very highly developed in order to realize that if experience furnishes it with “beings that do not exist in themselves,” there must also be beings which do exist in themselves: that if “accidents” exist at all it would be unintelligible and self-contradictory to deny the existence of “substances”.

Hence, in the order of our experience the first, implicit notion of substance is that of “something existing in itself” (οὐσία); the first explicit notion of it, however, is that by which it is apprehended as “a subject or support of accidents” (ὑποκείμενον, sub-stare, substantia); then by reflection we go back to the explicit notion of it as “something existing in itself”. In the real or ontological order the perfection of “existing in itself” is manifestly more fundamental than that of “supporting accidents”. It is in accordance with a natural law of language that we name things after the properties whereby they reveal themselves to us, rather than by names implying what is more fundamental and essential in them. “To exist in itself” is an absolute perfection, essential to substance; “to support accidents” is only a relative perfection; nor can we know a priori but a substance might perhaps exist without any accidents: we only know that accidents [pg 218] cannot exist without some substance, or subject, or power which will sustain them in existence.

Can substance be apprehended by the senses, or only by intellect? Strictly speaking, only by intellect: it is neither a “proper object” of any one sense, such as taste, or colour, or sound; nor a “common object” of more than one sense, as extension is with regard to sight and touch: it is, in scholastic language, not a “sensibile per se,” not itself an object of sense knowledge, but only “sensibile per accidens,” i.e. it may be said to be “accidentally” an object of sense because of its conjunction with accidents which are the proper objects of sense: so that when the senses perceive accidents what they are really perceiving is the substance affected by the accidents. But strictly and properly it is by intellect we consciously grasp that which in the reality is the substance: while the external and internal sense faculties make us aware of various qualities, activities, or other accidents external to the “self,” or of various states and conditions of the “self,” the intellect—which is a faculty of the same soul as the sense faculties—makes us simultaneously aware of corporeal substances actually existing outside us, or of the concrete substance of the “ego” or “self,” existing and revealing itself to us in and through its conscious activities, as the substantial, abiding, and unifying subject and principle of these conscious activities.

Thus, then, do we attain to the concept of substance in general, to a conviction of the concrete actual existence of that mode of being the essential characteristic of which is “to exist in itself”.

In the next place, how do we reach a knowledge of the specific natures of substances?[233] What is the character, and what are the limitations, of such knowledge? Here, especially, the very cautious and moderate doctrine of scholasticism has been largely misconceived and misrepresented by phenomenists and others. About the specific nature of substances we know just precisely what their accidents reveal to us—that and no more. We have no intuitive insight into their natures; all our knowledge here is abstractive and discursive. As are their properties—their activities, energies, qualities, and all their accidents—so is their nature. [pg 219] We know of the latter just what we can infer from the former. Operari sequitur esse; we have no other key than this to knowledge of their specific natures. We have experience of them only through their properties, their behaviour, their activities; analysis of this experience, a posteriori reasoning from it, inductive generalization based upon it: such are the only channels we possess, the only means at our disposal, for reaching a knowledge of their natures.

63. Phenomenist Difficulties against this View. Its Vindication.—Now the phenomenist will really grant all this. His only objection will be that such knowledge of substance is really no knowledge at all; or that, such as it is, it is useless. But surely the knowledge that this mode of being really exists, that there is a mode of being which “exists in itself,” is already some knowledge, and genuine knowledge, of substance? No doubt, the information contained in this very indeterminate and generic concept is imperfect; but then it is only a starting point, an all-important starting point, however; for not only is it perfectible but every item of knowledge we gather from experience perfects it, whereas without it the intellect is paralysed in its attempt to interpret experience: indeed so indispensable is this concept of substance to the human mind that, as we have seen, no philosopher has ever been really able to dispense with it. When phenomenists say that what we call mind is only a bundle of perceptions and ideas; when they speak of the flow of events, which is ourselves, of which we are conscious,[234] the very language they themselves make use of cries out against their professed phenomenism. For why speak of “we,” “ourselves,” etc., if there be no “we” or “ourselves” other than the perceptions, ideas, events, etc., referred to?

Of course the explanation of this strange attitude on the part of these philosophers is simple enough; they have a wrong conception of substance and of the relation of accidents thereto; they appear to imagine that according to the traditional teaching nothing of all we can discover about accidents—or, as they prefer to term them, “phenomena”—can possibly throw any light upon the nature of substance: as if the rôle of phenomena were to cover up and conceal from us some sort of inner core (which they call substance), and not rather to reveal to us the nature of that [pg 220] “being, existing in itself,” of which these phenomena are the properties and manifestations.

The denial of substance leads inevitably to the substantializing of accidents. It is possible that the manner in which some scholastics have spoken of accidents has facilitated this error.[235] Anyhow the error is one that leads inevitably to contradictions in thought itself. Mill, for instance, following out the arbitrary postulates of subjectivism and phenomenism, finally analysed all reality into present sensations of the individual consciousness, plus permanent possibilities of sensations. Now, consistently with the idealistic postulate, these “permanent possibilities” should be nothing more than a certain tone, colouring, quality of the “present” sensation, due to the fact that this has in it, as part and parcel of itself, feelings of memory and expectation; in which case the “present sensation,” taken in its concrete fulness, would be the sole reality, and would exist in itself. This “solipsism” is the ultimate logical issue of subjective idealism, and it is a sufficient reductio ad absurdum of the whole system. Or else, to evade this issue, the “permanent possibilities” are supposed to be something really other than the “present sensations”. In which case we must ask what Mill can mean by a “permanent possibility”. Whether it be subjective or objective possibility, it is presumably, according to Mill's thought, some property or appurtenance of the individual consciousness, i.e. a quality proper to a subject or substance.[236] But to deny that the conscious subject is a substance, and at the same time to contend that it is a “permanent possibility of sensation,” i.e. that it has properties which can appertain only to a substance, is simply to hold what is self-contradictory.

After these explanations it will be sufficient merely to state formally the proof that substances really exist. It is exceedingly simple, and its force will be appreciated from all that has been said so far: Whatever we become aware of as existing at all [pg 221] must exist either in itself, or by being sustained, supported in existence, in something else in which it inheres. If it exists in itself it is a substance; if not it is an accident, and then the “something else” which supports it, must in turn either exist in itself or in something else. But since an infinite regress in things existing not in themselves but in other things is impossible, we are forced to admit the reality of a mode of being which exists in itself—viz. substance.

Or, again, we are forced to admit the real existence of accidents—or, if you will, “phenomena” or “appearances”—i.e. of realities or modes of being whose nature is manifestly to modify or qualify in some way or other some subject in which they inhere. Can we conceive a state which is not a state of something? a phenomenon or appearance which is not an appearance of something? a vital act which is not an act of a living thing? a sensation, thought, desire, emotion, unless of some conscious being that feels, thinks, desires, experiences the emotion? No; and therefore since such accidental modes of being really exist, there exists also the substantial mode of being in which they inhere.

And the experienced realities which verify this notion of “substance” as the “mode of being which exists in itself,” are manifestly not one but manifold. Individual “persons” and “things”—men, animals, plants—are all so many really and numerically distinct substances ([38]). So, too, are the ultimate individual elements in the inorganic universe, whatever these may be ([31]). Nor does the universal interaction of these individuals on one another, or their manifold forms of interdependence on one another throughout the course of their ever-changing existence and activities, interfere in any way with the substantiality of the mode of being of each. These mutual relations of all sorts, very real and actual as they undoubtedly are, only constitute the universe a cosmos, thus endowing it with unity of order, but not with unity of substance ([27]).

Let us now meet the objection of Hume: that there is no substantial soul distinct from its acts, that it is only the sum-total of the acts, each of these being a substance. The objection has been repeated in the metaphorical language in which Huxley and Taine speak of the soul, the living soul, as nothing more than a republic of conscious states, or the movement of a luminous sheaf etc. And Locke and Berkeley had already contended [pg 222] that an apple or an orange is nothing more than a collection or sum-total of sensible qualities, so that if we conceive these removed there is nothing left, for beyond these there was nothing there.

Now we admit that the substance of the soul is not adequately distinct from its acts, or the substance of the apple or orange from its qualities. As a matter of fact we never experience substance apart from accidents or accidents apart from substance;[237] we do not know whether there exists, or even whether there can exist, a created substance devoid of all accidents; nor can we know, from the light of reason alone, whether any accidents could exist apart from substance.[238] We have, therefore, no ground in natural experience for demonstrating such an adequate real distinction ([38]) between substance and accidents as would involve the separability of the latter from the former. But that the acts of the soul are so many really distinct entities, each “existing in itself,” each therefore a substance, so that the term “soul” is merely a title we give to their sum-total; and similarly the terms “apple” and “orange” merely titles of collections of qualities each of which would be an entity existing in itself and really distinct from the others, each in other words a substance,—this we entirely deny. We regard it as utterly unreasonable of phenomenists thus to multiply substances. Our contention is that the individual soul or mind is one substance, and that it is partially and really, though not adequately, distinct from the various conscious acts, states, processes, functions, which are certainly themselves real entities,—entities, however, the reality of which is dependent on that of the soul, entities which this dependent or “inhering” mode of being marks off as distinct in their nature, and incapable of total identification with that other non-inhering or subsisting mode of being which characterizes the substance of the soul.

We cannot help thinking that this phenomenist denial of [pg 223] substance, with its consequent inevitable substantialization of accidents, is largely due to a mistaken manner of regarding the concrete existing object as a mere mechanical bundle of distinct and independent abstractions. Every aspect of it is mentally isolated from the others and held apart as an “impression,” an “idea,” etc. Then the object is supposed to be constituted by, and to consist of, a sum-total of these separate “elements,” integrated together by some sort of mental chemistry. The attempt is next made to account for our total conscious experience of reality by a number of principles or laws of what is known as “association of ideas”. And phenomenists discourse learnedly about these laws in apparent oblivion of the fact that by denying the reality of any substantial, abiding, self-identical soul, distinct from the transient conscious states of the passing moment, they have left out of account the only reality capable of “associating” any mental states, or making mental life at all intelligible. Once the soul is regarded merely as “a series of conscious states,” or a “stream of consciousness,” or a succession of “pulses of cognitive consciousness,” such elementary facts as memory, unity of consciousness, the feeling of personal identity and personal responsibility, become absolutely inexplicable.[239]

Experience, therefore, does reveal to us the real existence of substances, of “things that exist in themselves,” and likewise the reality of other modes of being which have their actuality only by inhering in the substances which they affect. “A substance,” says St. Thomas, “is a thing whose nature it is to exist not in another, whereas an accident is a thing whose nature it is to exist in another.”[240] Every concrete being that falls within our experience—a man, an oak, an apple—furnishes us with the data of these two concepts: the being existing in itself, the substance; and secondly, its accidents. The former concept comprises only constitutive principles which we see to be essential to that sort of being: the material, the vegetative, the sentient, the rational principle, in a man, or his soul and his body; the material principle and the formal or vital principle in an apple. The latter concept, that of accidents, comprises only those [pg 224] characteristics of the thing which are no doubt real, but which do not constitute the essence of the being, which can change or be absent without involving the destruction of that essence. An intellectual analysis of our experience enables us—and, as we have remarked above, it alone enables us—to distinguish between these two classes of objective concepts, the concept of the principles that are essential to the substance or being that exists in itself, and the concept of the attributes that are accidental to this being; and experience alone enables us, by studying the latter group, the accidents of the being, whether naturally separable or naturally inseparable from the latter, to infer from those accidents whatever we can know about the former group, about the principles that constitute the specific nature of the particular kind of substance that may be under investigation.

It may, perhaps, be urged against all this, that experience does not warrant our placing a real distinction between the entities we describe as “accidents” and those which we claim to be constitutive of the “substance,” or “thing which exists in itself”; that all the entities without exception, which we apprehend by distinct concepts in any concrete existing being such as a man, an oak, or an apple, are only one and the same individual reality looked at under different aspects; that the distinction between them is only a logical or mental distinction; that we separate in thought what is one in reality because we regard each aspect in the abstract and apart from the others; that to suppose in any such concrete being the existence of two distinct modes of reality—viz. a reality that exists in itself, and other realities inhering in this latter—is simply to make the mistake of transferring to the real order of concrete things what we find in the logical order of conceptual abstractions.

This objection, which calls for serious consideration, leads to a different conclusion from the previous objection. It suggests the conclusion, not that substances are unreal, but that accidents are unreal. Even if it were valid it would leave untouched the existence of substances. We hope to meet it satisfactorily by establishing presently the existence of accidents really distinct from the substances in which they inhere. While the objection draws attention to the important truth that distinctions recognized in the conceptual order are not always real, it certainly does not prove that all accidents are only mentally distinct aspects of substance. [pg 225] For surely a man's thoughts, volitions, feelings, emotions, his conscious states generally, changing as they do from moment to moment, are not really identical with the man himself who continues to exist throughout this incessant change; yet they are realities, appearing and disappearing and having all their actuality in him, while he persists as an actual being “existing in himself”.

64. Erroneous Views on the Nature of Substance.—If we fail to remember that the notion of substance, as “a being existing in itself and supporting the accidents which affect it,” is a most abstract and generic notion; if we transfer it in this abstract condition to the real order; if we imagine that the concrete individual substances which actually exist in the real order merely verify this widest notion and are devoid of all further content; that they possess in themselves no further richness of reality; if we forget that actual substances, in all the variety of their natures, as material, or living, or sentient, or rational and spiritual, are indeed full, vibrant, palpitating with manifold and diversified reality; if we rob them of all this perfection or locate it in their accidents as considered apart from themselves,—we are likely to form very erroneous notions both of substances and of accidents, and of their real relations to one another. It will help us to form accurate concepts of them, concepts really warranted by experience, if we examine briefly some of the more remarkable misconceptions of substance that have at one time or other gained currency.

(a) Substance is not a concrete core on which concrete accidents are superimposed, or a sort of kernel of which they form the rind. Such a way of conceiving them is as misleading as it is crude and material. No doubt the language which, for want of better, we have to employ in regard to substance and accidents, suggests fancies of that kind: we speak of substance “supporting,” “sustaining” accidents, and of these as “supported by,” and “inhering in” the former. But this does not really signify any juxtaposition or superposition of concrete entities. The substance is a subject determinable by its various accidents; these are actualizations of its potentiality; its relation to them is the relation of the potential to the actual, of a “material” or “determinable” subject to “formal” or “determining” principles. But the appearance or disappearance of accidents never takes place in the same concrete subject: by their variations the [pg 226] concrete subject is changed: at any instant the substance affected by its accidents is one individual concrete being ([27]), and the inevitable result of any modification in them is that this individual, concrete being is changed, is no longer the same. No doubt, it preserves its substantial identity throughout accidental change, but not its concrete identity,—that is to say, not wholly. This is the characteristic of every finite being, subject to change and existing in time: it has the actuality of its being, not tota simul, but only gradually, successively ([10]). From this, too, we see that although substance is a more perfect mode of being than accident—because the former exists in itself while the latter has its actuality only in something else,—nevertheless, created, finite substance is a mode of being which is itself imperfect, and perfectible by accidents: another illustration of the truth that all created perfection is only relative, not absolute. To the notion of “inherence” we shall return in connexion with our treatment of accidents ([65]).

(b) Again, substance is wrongly conceived as an inert substratum underlying accidents. This false notion appears to have originated with Descartes: he conceived the two great classes of created substances, matter and spirit, as essentially inert. For him, matter is simply a res extensa; extension in three dimensions constitutes its essence, and extension is of course inert: all motion is given to matter and conserved in it by God. Spirit or soul is simply a res cogitans, a being whose essence is thought; but in thinking spirit too is passive, for it simply receives ideas as wax does the impress of a seal. Nay, even when soul or spirit wills it is really inert or passive, for God puts all its volitions into it.[241] From these erroneous conceptions the earlier disciples of Descartes took the obvious step forward into Occasionalism; and to them likewise may be traced the conviction of many contemporary philosophers that the human soul—a being that is so eminently vital and active—cannot possibly be a substance: neither indeed could it be, if substance were anything like what Descartes conceived it to be. The German philosophers, Wundt and Paulsen, for example, argue that the soul cannot be a substance. But when we inquire what they mean by substance, what do we find? That with them the concept of substance applies only to the corporeal [pg 227] universe, where it properly signifies the atoms which are “the absolutely permanent substratum, qualitatively and quantitatively unchangeable, of all corporeal reality”.[242] No wonder they would argue that the soul is not a substance!

No actually existing substance is inert. What is true, however, is this, that when we conceive a being as a substance, when we think of it under the abstract concept of substance, we of course abstract from its concrete existence as an active agent; in other words we consider it not from the dynamic, but from the static aspect, not as it is in the concrete, but as constituting an object of abstract thought: and so the error of Descartes seems to have been that already referred to,—the mistake of transferring to the real order conditions that obtain only in the logical order.

(c) To the Cartesian conception of substances as inert entities endowed only with motions communicated to them ab extra, the mechanical or atomist conception of reality, as it is called, Leibniz opposed the other extreme conception of substances as essentially active entities. For him substance is an ens præditum vi agendi: activity is the fundamental note in the concept of substance. These essentially active entities he conceived as being all simple and unextended, the corporeal no less than the spiritual ones. And he gave them the title of monads. It is unnecessary for our present purpose to go into any details of his ingenious dynamic theory of the universe as a vast system of these monads. We need only remark that while combating the theory of inert substances he himself erred in the opposite extreme. He conceived every monad as endowed essentially with active tendency or effort which is never without its effect,—an exclusively immanent effect, however, which is the constant result of constant immanent action: for he denied the possibility of transitive activity, actio transiens; and he conceived the immanent activity of the monad as being in its nature perceptive,[243] that is to say, cognitive or representative, in the sense that each monad, though “wrapt up in itself, doorless and windowless,” if we may so describe it, nevertheless [pg 228] mirrors more or less inchoatively, vaguely, or clearly, all other monads, and is thus itself a miniature of the whole universe, a microcosm of the macrocosm. Apart from the fancifulness of his whole system, a fancifulness which is, however, perhaps more apparent than real, his conception of substance is much less objectionable than that of Descartes. For as a matter of fact every individual, actually existing substance is endowed with an internal directive tendency towards some term to be realized or attained by its activities. Every substance has a transcendental relation to the operations which are natural to it, and whereby it tends to realize the purpose of its being. But nevertheless substance should not be defined by action, for all action of created substances is an accident, not a substance; nor even by its transcendental relation to action, for when we conceive it under this aspect we conceive it as an agent or cause, not as a substance simply. The latter concept abstracts from action and reveals its object simply as “a reality existing in itself”. When we think of a substance as a principle of action we describe it by the term nature.

(d) A very widespread notion of substance is the conception of it as a “permanent,” “stable,” “persisting” subject of “transient,” “ephemeral” realities called accidents or phenomena. This view of substance is mainly due to the influence of Kant's philosophy. According to his teaching we can think the succession of phenomena which appear to our sense consciousness only by the aid of a pure intuition in which our sensibility apprehends them, viz. time. Now the application of the category of substance to this pure intuition of our sensibility engenders a schema of the imagination, viz. the persistence of the object in time. Persistence, therefore, is for him the essential note of substance.

Herbert Spencer, too, has given apt expression to this widely prevalent notion: “Existence means nothing more than persistence; and hence in Mind that which persists in spite of all changes, and maintains the unity of the aggregate in defiance of all attempts to divide it, is that of which existence in the full sense of the word must be predicated—that which we must postulate as the substance of Mind in contradistinction to the varying forms it assumes. But if so, the impossibility of knowing the substance of Mind is manifest.”[244]

Thus, substance is conceived as the unique but hidden and [pg 229] unknowable basis of all the phenomena which constitute the totality of human experience.

What is to be said of such a conception? There is just this much truth in it: that substance is relatively stable or permanent, i.e. in comparison with accidents; the latter cannot survive the destruction or disappearance of the substance in which they inhere, while a substance can persist through incessant change of its accidents. But accidents are not absolutely ephemeral, nor is substance absolutely permanent: were an accident to exist for ever it would not cease to be an accident, nor would a substance be any less a substance were it created and then instantaneously annihilated. But in the latter case the human mind could not apprehend the substance; for since all human cognitive experience takes place in time, which involves duration, the mind can apprehend a substance only on condition that the latter has some permanence, some appreciable duration in existence. This fact, too, explains in some measure the error of conceiving permanence as essential to a substance. But the error has another source also: Under the influence of subjective idealism philosophers have come to regard the individual's consciousness of his own self, the consciousness of the Ego, as the sole and unique source of our concept of substance. The passage we have just quoted from Spencer is an illustration. And since the spiritual principle of our conscious acts is a permanent principle which abides throughout all of them, thus explaining the unity of the individual human consciousness, those who conceive substance in general after the model of the Ego, naturally conceive it as an essentially stable subject of incessant and evanescent processes.

But it is quite arbitrary thus to conceive the Ego as the sole type of substance. Bodies are substances as well as spirits, matter as well as mind. And the permanence of corporeal substances is merely relative. Nevertheless they are really substances. The relative stability of spirit which is immortal, and the relative instability of matter which is corruptible, have nothing to do with the substantiality of either. Both alike are substances, for both alike have that mode of being which consists in their existing in themselves, and not by inhering in other things as accidents do.

(e) Spencer's conception of substance as the permanent, unknowable ground of phenomena, implies that substance is one, not manifold, and thus suggests the view of reality known as [pg 230] Monism. There is yet another mistaken notion of substance, the notion in which the well known pantheistic philosophy of Spinoza has had its origin. Spinoza appears to have given the ambiguous definition of Descartes—“Substantia est res quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum”—an interpretation which narrowed its application down to the Necessary Being; for he defined substance in the following terms: “Per substantiam intelligo id quod est in se et per se concipitur: hoc est, id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei a quo formari debeat”. By the ambiguous phrase, that substance “requires no other thing for existing,” Descartes certainly meant to convey what has always been understood by the scholastic expression that substance “exists in itself”. He certainly did not mean that substance is a reality which “exists of itself,” i.e. that it is what scholastics mean by Ens a se, the Being that has its actuality from its own essence, by virtue of its very nature, and in absolute independence of all other being; for such Being is One alone, the Necessary Being, God Himself, whereas Descartes clearly held and taught the real existence of finite, created substances.[245] Yet Spinoza's definition of substance is applicable only to such a being that our concept of this being shows forth the actual existence of the latter as absolutely explained and accounted for by reference to the essence of this being itself, and independently of any reference to other being. In other words, it applies only to the Necessary Being. This conception of substance is the starting-point of Spinoza's pantheistic philosophy.

Now, the scholastic definition of substance and Spinoza's definition embody two entirely distinct notions. Spinoza's definition conveys what scholastics mean by the Self-Existent [pg 231] Being, Ens a se; and this the scholastics distinguish from caused or created being, ens ab alio. Both phrases refer formally and primarily, not to the mode of a being's existence when it does exist, but to the origin of this existence in relation to the being's essence; and specifically it marks the distinction between the Essence that is self-explaining, self-existent, essentially actual (“a se”), the Necessary Being, and essences that do not themselves explain or account for their own actual existence, essences that have not their actual existence from themselves or of themselves, essences that are in regard to their actual existence contingent or dependent, essences which, therefore, if they actually exist, can do so only dependently on some other being whence they have derived this existence (“ab alio”) and on which they essentially depend for its continuance.

Not the least evil of Spinoza's definition is the confusion caused by gratuitously wresting an important philosophical term like substance from its traditional sense and using it with quite a different meaning; and the same is true in its measure of the other mistaken notions of substance which we have been examining. By defining substance as an ens in se, or per se stans, scholastic philosophers mean simply that substance does not depend intrinsically on any subjective or material cause in which its actuality would be supported; they do not mean to imply that it does not depend extrinsically on an efficient cause from which it has its actuality and by which it is conserved in being. They assert that all created substances, no less than all accidents, have their being “ab alio” from God; that they exist only by the Divine creation and conservation, and act only by the Divine concursus or concurrence; but while substances and accidents are both alike dependent on this extrinsic conserving and concurring influence of a Divine, Transcendent Being, substances are exempt from this other and distinct mode of dependence which characterizes accidents: intrinsic dependence on a subject in which they have their actuality.[246]

When we say that substance exists “in itself,” obviously we do not attach to the preposition “in” any local signification, as a part existing “in” the whole. Nor do we mean that they exist “in” themselves in the same sense as they have their being “in” God. In a certain true sense all creatures exist “in” God: In ipso enim vivimus, et movemur, et sumus (Acts xxii., [pg 232] 28), in the sense that they are kept in being by His omnipresent conserving power. But He does not sustain them as a subject in which they inhere, as substance sustains the accidents which determine it, thereby giving expression to its concrete actuality.[247] By saying that substance exists “in itself” we mean to exclude the notion of its existing “in another” thing, as an accident does. And this we shall understand better by examining a little more closely this peculiar mode of being which characterizes accidents.

65. The Nature of Accident. Its Relation to Substance. Its Causes.—From all that has preceded we will have gathered the general notion of accident as that mode of real being which is found to have its reality, not by existing in itself, but by affecting, determining, some substance in which it inheres as in a subject. What do we mean by saying that accidents inhere in substances as their subjects? Here we must at once lay aside as erroneous the crude conception of something as located spatially within something else, as contained in container, as e.g. water in a vessel; and the equally crude conception of something being in something else as a part is in the whole, as e.g. an arm is in the body. Such imaginations are wholly misleading.

The actually existing substance has its being or reality; it is an actual essence. Each real accident of it is likewise a reality, and has an essence, distinct from that of the substance, yet not wholly independent of the latter: it is a determination of the determinable being of the substance, affecting or modifying the latter in some way or other, and having no other raison d'être than this rôle of actualizing in some specific way some receptive potentiality of the concrete substance. And since its reality is thus dependent on that of the substance which it affects, we cannot ascribe to it actual essence or being in the same sense as we ascribe this to substance, but only analogically[248] ([2]). Hence scholastics commonly teach that we ought to conceive an accident rather as an “entity of an entity,” “ens entis,” than as an entity simply; rather as inhering, indwelling, affecting (in-esse) some subject, than simply as existing itself (esse); as something whose essence is rather the determination, affection, modification of an essence than itself an essence proper, the term “essence” designating properly only a substance: accidentis esse est inesse.[249] This [pg 233] conception might, no doubt, if pressed too far, be inapplicable to absolute accidents, like quantity, which are something more than mere modifications of substance; but it rightly emphasizes the dependence of the reality of accident on that of substance, the non-substantial and “diminished” character of the “accident”-mode of being; it also helps to show that the “inherence” of accident in substance is a relation—of determining to determinable being—which is sui generis; and finally it puts us on our guard against the errors that may be, and have been, committed by conceiving accidents in the abstract and reasoning about them apart from their substances, as if they themselves were substances.

This “inherence” of accident in substance, this mode of being whereby it affects, determines or modifies the substance, differs from accident to accident; these, in fact, are classified into suprema genera by reason of their different ways of affecting substance ([60]). To this we shall return later. Here we may inquire, about this general relation of accident to substance, whether it is essential to an accident actually to inhere in a substance, if not immediately, then at least through the medium of some other accident. We suggest this latter alternative because as we shall see presently there are some accidents, such as colour, taste, shape, which immediately affect the extension of a body, and only through this the substance of the body itself. Now the ordinary course of nature never presents us with accidents except as inhering, mediately or immediately, in a substance. Nor is it probable that the natural light of our reason would ever suggest to us the possibility of an exception to this general law. But the Christian philosopher knows, from Divine Revelation, that in the Blessed Eucharist the quantity or extension of bread and wine, together with the taste, colour, form, etc., which affect this extension, remain in existence after their connatural substance of bread and wine has disappeared by transubstantiation. In the [pg 234] supernatural order of His providence God preserves these accidents in existence without a subject; but in this state, though they do not actually inhere in any substance, they retain their natural aptitude and exigence for such inherence. The Christian philosopher, therefore, will not define accident as “the mode of being which inheres in a subject,” but as “the mode of being which in the ordinary course of nature inheres in a subject,” or as “the mode of being which has a natural exigence to inhere in a subject”. It is not actual inherence, but the natural exigence to inhere, that is essential to an accident as such.[250]

Furthermore, an accident needs a substance not formally qua substance, or as a mode of being naturally existing in itself; it needs a substance as a subject in which to inhere, which it will in some way affect, determine, qualify; but the subject in which it immediately inheres need not always be a substance: it may be some other accident, in which case both of course will naturally require some substance as their ultimate basis.

Comparing now the concept of accident with that of substance, we find that the latter is presupposed by the former; that the latter is prior in thought to the former; that we conceive accident as something over and above, something superadded to substance as subject. For instance, we can define matter and form without the prior concept of body, or animality and rationality without the prior concept of man; but we cannot define colour without the prior concept of body, or the faculty of speech without the prior concept of man.[251]

Substance, therefore, is prior in thought to accident; but is the substance itself also prior temporally (prior tempore) to its accidents? It is prior in time to some of them, no doubt; the individual human being is thus prior, for instance, to the knowledge he may acquire during life. But there is no reason for saying that a substance must be prior in time to all its accidents;[252] so far as we can discover, no created substance comes into existence devoid of all accidents: corporeal substance devoid of internal quantity, or spiritual substance devoid of intellect and will.

If prior in thought, though not necessarily in time, to its accidents, is a substance prior to its accidents really, ontologically (prior natura)? Yes; it is the real or ontological principle of its accidents; it sustains them, and they depend on it. It is a passive or material cause (using the term “material” in the wide sense, as applicable even to spiritual substances), or a receptive subject, determined in some way by them as formal principles. It is at the same time an efficient and passive cause of some of its own accidents: the soul is an efficient cause of its own immanent processes of thought and volition, and at the same time a passive principle of them, undergoing real change by their occurrence. Of others it is merely a receptive, determinable subject, of those, namely, which have an adequate and necessary foundation in its own essence, and which are called properties in the strict sense: without these it cannot exist, though they do not constitute its essence, or enter into the concept of the latter; but it is not prior to them in time, nor is it the efficient cause of them; it is, however, a real principle of them, an essence from the reality of which they necessarily result, and on which their own reality depends. Such, for instance, is the faculty of thought, or volition, or speech in regard to man.

The accident-mode of being is, therefore, a mode of being which determines a substance in some real way. Its formal effect is to give the substance some real and definite determination: not esse simpliciter but esse tale. With the substance it constitutes a concrete real being which is unum per accidens, not unum per se.

The accident has no formal cause: it is itself a “form” and its causality is that of a formal cause, which consists in its communicating itself to a subject, and, by its union therewith, constituting some new reality—in this case a concrete being endowed with “accidental” unity.

Accidents have of course, a material cause; not, however, in the sense of a materia ex qua, a material from which they are constituted, inasmuch as they are simple “forms”; but in the sense of a subject in which they are received and in which they inhere; and this “material cause” is, proximately or remotely, substance.

Substance also is the final cause, the raison d'être, of the reality of the accidental mode of being. Accidents exist for the [pg 236] perfecting of substances: accidentia sunt propter substantiam. As we have seen already, and as will appear more clearly later on, the fundamental reason for the reality of an accidental mode of being, really distinct from the created or finite substance (for the Infinite Substance has no accidents), is that the created substance is imperfect, limited in its actual perfection, does not exist tota simul, but develops, through a process of change in time, from its first or essential perfection, through intermediate perfections, till it reaches the final perfection ([46]) of its being.

Have all accidents efficient causes? Those which are called common accidents as distinct from proper accidents or properties ([66]) have undoubtedly efficient causes: the various agencies which produce real but accidental changes in the individual substances of the universe. Proper accidents, however, inasmuch as they of necessity exist simultaneously with the substances to which they belong, and flow from these substances by a necessity of the very essence of these latter, cannot be said to have any efficient causes other than those which contribute by their efficiency to the substantial changes by which these substances are brought into actual existence; nor can they be said to be caused efficiently by these substances themselves, but only to “flow” or “result” necessarily from the latter, inasmuch as they come into existence simultaneously with, but dependently on, these substances. Hence, while substances are universally regarded as real principles of their properties—as, for instance, the soul in regard to intellect and will, or corporeal substance in regard to quantity—they are not really efficient causes of their properties, i.e. they do not produce these properties by action. For these properties are antecedent to all action of the substance; nor can a created substance act by its essence, but only through active powers, or faculties, or forces, which meditate between the essence of a created substance and its actions, and which are the proximate principles of these actions, while the substance or nature is their remote principle. Hence the “properties” which necessarily result from a substance or nature, have as their efficient causes the agencies productive of the substance itself.[253]

66. Main Divisions of Accidents.—These considerations will help us to understand the significance of a few important divisions of accidents: into proper and common, inseparable and separable. We shall then be in a position to examine the nature [pg 237] of the distinction between accidents and substance, and to establish the existence of accidents really distinct from substance.

(a) The attributes which we affirm of substance, other than the notes constitutive of its essence, are divided into proper accidents, or properties in the strict sense (ἴδιον, proprium), and common accidents, or accidents in the more ordinary sense (συμβεβηκός, ac-cidens). A property is an accident which belongs exclusively to a certain class or kind of substance, and is found always in all members of that class, inasmuch as it has an adequate foundation in the nature of that substance and a necessary connexion therewith. Such, for instance, are the faculties of intellect and will in all spiritual beings; the faculties of speaking, laughing, weeping in man; the temporal and spatial mode of being which characterizes all created substances.[254] When regarded from the logical point of view, as attributes predicable of their substances considered as logical subjects, they are distinguished on the one hand from what constitutes the essence of this subject (as genus, differentia, species), but also on the other hand from those attributes which cannot be seen to have any absolutely necessary connexion with this subject. The latter attributes alone are called logical accidents, the test being the absence of a necessary connexion in thought with the logical subject.[255] But the former class, which are distinguished from “logical” accidents and called logical properties (“propria”) are none the less real accidents when considered from the ontological standpoint; for they do not constitute the essence of the substance; they are outside the concept of the latter, and super-added—though necessarily—to it. Whether, however, all or any of these “properties,” which philosophers thus classify as real or ontological accidents, “proper” accidents, of certain substances, are really distinct from the concrete, individual substances to which they belong, or are only aspects of the latter, “substantial modes,” only virtually distinct in each case from the individual substance itself,—is another and more difficult question ([69]). Such a property is certainly not really separable from [pg 238] its substance; we cannot conceive either to exist really without the other; though we can by abstraction think, and reason, and speak, about either apart from the other.[256] Real inseparability is, however, regarded by scholastic philosophers as quite compatible with what they understand by a real distinction ([38]).

A common accident is one which has no such absolutely necessary connexion with its substance as a “property” has; one which, therefore, can be conceived as absent from the substance without thereby entailing the destruction of the latter's essence, or of anything bound up by a necessity of thought with this essence. And such common accidents are of two kinds.

They may be such that in the ordinary course of nature, and so far as its forces and laws are concerned, they are never found to be absent from their connatural substances—inseparable accidents. Thus the colour of the Ethiopian is an inseparable accident of his human nature as an Ethiopian; he is naturally black; but if born of Ethiopian parents he would still be an Ethiopian even if he happened to grow up white instead of black. We could not, however, conceive an Ethiopian, or any other human being, existing without the faculties (not the use) of intellect and will, or the faculty (not the organs, or the actual exercise of the faculty) of human speech.

Or common accidents may be such that they are sometimes present in their substances, and sometimes absent—separable accidents. These are by far the most numerous class of accidents: thinking, willing, talking, and actions generally; health or illness; virtues, vices, acquired habits; rest or motion, temperature, colour, form, location, etc.

(b) The next important division of accidents is that into mere extrinsic denominations and intrinsic accidents; the latter being subdivided into modal and absolute accidents, respectively.

An absolute accident is one which not merely affects its substance intrinsically, giving the latter an actual determination or mode of being, of some sort or other, but which has moreover some entity or reality proper to itself whereby it thus affects the substance, an entity really distinct from the essence of the substance thus determined by it. Such, for instance, are all vital activities of living things;[257] knowledge, and other acquired habits; quantity, the fundamental accident whereby corporeal [pg 239] substances are all capable of existing extended in space; and such sensible qualities and energies of matter as heat, colour, mechanical force, electrical energy, etc. Such, too, according to many, are intellect, will, and sense faculties in man.

There are, however, other intrinsic determinations of substance, other modifications of the latter, which do not seem to involve any new or additional reality in the substance, over and above the modification itself. Such, for instance, are motion, rest, external form or figure, in bodies. These are called modal accidents. They often affect not the substance itself immediately, but some absolute accident of the latter, and are hence called “accidental modes”. Those enumerated are obviously modes of the quantity of bodies. Now the appearance or disappearance of such an accident in a substance undoubtedly involves a real change in the latter, and not merely in our thought; when a body moves, or comes to rest, or alters its form, there is a change in the reality as well as in our thought; and in this sense these accidents are real and intrinsic to their substances. Yet, though we cannot say that motion, rest, shape, etc., are really identical with the body and only mentally distinct aspects of it, at the same time neither can we say that by their appearance or disappearance the body gains or loses any reality other than an accidental determination of itself; whereas it does gain something more than this when it is heated, or electrified, or increased in quantity; just as a man who acquires knowledge, or virtue, is not only really modified, but is modified by real entities which he has acquired, not having actually possessed them before.

Finally, there are accidents which do not affect the substance intrinsically at all, which do not determine any real change in it, but merely give it an extrinsic denomination in relation to something outside it ([60]). Thus, while the quality of heat is an absolute accident in a body, the action whereby the latter heats neighbouring bodies is no new reality in the body itself, and produces no real change in the latter, but only gives it the extrinsic denomination of heating in reference to these other bodies in which the effect really takes place. Similarly the location of any corporeal substance in space or in time relatively to others in the space or time series—its external place (ubi) or time (quando), as they are called—or the relative position of its parts (situs) in the place occupied by it: these do not intrinsically determine it or confer upon it any intrinsic modification of its substance. Not, [pg 240] indeed, that they are mere entia rationis, mere logical fictions of our thought. They are realities, but not realities which affect the substances denominated from them; they are accidental modes of other substances, or of the absolute accidents of other substances. Finally, the accident which we call a “real relation” presupposes in its subject some absolute accident such as quantity or quality, or some real and intrinsic change determining these, or affecting the substance itself; but whether relation is itself a reality over and above such foundation, is a disputed question.

From these classifications of accidents it will be at once apparent that the general notion of accident, as a dependent mode of being, superadded to the essence of a substance and in some way determining the latter, is realized in widely different and merely analogical ways in the different ultimate classes of accidents.

67. Real Existence of Accidents. Nature of the Distinction between Accidents and Substance.—It would be superfluous to prove the general proposition that accidents really exist. In establishing the real existence of substances we have seen that the real existence of some accidents at least has never been seriously denied. These are often called nowadays phenomena; and philosophers who have denied or doubted the real existence of substances have been called “phenomenists” simply because they have admitted the real existence only of these phenomena; though, if they were as logical as Hume they might have seen with him that such denial, so far from abolishing substance, could only lead to the substantializing of accidents ([63]).

But while undoubtedly there are realities which “exist in themselves,” such as individual men, animals and plants, there is no reason for attributing this same mode of existence to entities such as the thoughts, volitions, emotions, virtues or vices, of the individual man; or the instinct, hunger, or illness of the dog; or the colour, perfume, or form of the rose. The concrete individual man, or dog, or rose, reveals itself to our minds as a substantial entity, affected with these various accidental entities which are really distinct from the substantial entity itself and from one another. Nay, in most of the instances just cited, they are physically separable from the substantial entity in which they inhere; not of course in the sense that they could actually exist without it, but in the sense that it can and does continue to exist [pg 241] actually without them ([38]); for it continues to exist while they come and go, appear and disappear.[258] Of course the concrete individual man, or dog, or rose, does not continue to exist actually unchanged, and totally identical with itself throughout the change of accidents ([64]), for the accidents are part of the concrete individual reality; nay, even the substance itself of the concrete individual does not remain totally unaffected by the change of the accidents; because if they really affect it, as they do, their change cannot leave it totally unaffected; substance is not at all a changeless, concrete core, surrounded by an ever-changing rind or vesture of accidents; or a dark, hidden, immutable and inscrutable background of a panorama of phenomena ([64]). But though it is beyond all doubt really affected by the change of its accidents, it is also beyond all doubt independent of them in regard to the essential mode of its being, in as much as it exists and continues to exist in itself throughout all fluctuation of its accidents; while these on the other hand have only that essentially dependent mode of being whereby they are actual only by affecting and determining some subject in which they inhere and which supports their actuality.

The existence, therefore, of some accidents, which are not only really distinct but even physically separable from their substances, cannot reasonably be called into question. To deny the existence of such accidents, or, what comes to the same thing, their real distinction from substance, is to take up some one of these three equally untenable positions: that all the changes which take place within and around us are substantial changes; or, that there is no such thing as real change, all change being a mental illusion; or, that contradictory states can be affirmed of the same reality.[259]

But the nature of the real distinction between accidents and substance is not in all cases so easy to determine. Nor can we discuss the question here in reference to each summum genus of accident separately. Deferring to the chapter on Relation the question of the distinction of this particular accident from substance [pg 242] and the other categories, we may confine our attention here to the distinction between substance and the three classes of accidents we have called extrinsic denominations, modal accidents, and absolute accidents respectively. “There are accidents,” writes Kleutgen,[260] “which place nothing and change nothing in the subject itself, but are ascribed to it by reason of some extrinsic thing; others, again, produce indeed in the subject itself some new mode of being, but without their existing in it as a new reality, distinct from its reality; others, finally, are themselves a new reality, and have thus a being which is proper to themselves, though this being is of course dependent on the substance. These latter alone can be really distinct from the substance, in the full sense in which a real distinction is that between thing and thing. Now Cartesian philosophers have denied that there are any such accidents as those of the latter class; rejecting the division of accidents into absolute and modal, they teach that all accidents are mere modifications or determinations of substance, that they consist solely of various locations and combinations of the ultimate parts of a substance, or relations of the latter to other substances.”

Now all extrinsic denominations of a substance do seem on analysis ultimately to resolve themselves partly into relations of the latter to other substances, and partly into modal or absolute accidents of other substances. Hence we may confine our attention here to the distinction between these two classes of accident and their connatural substances.

And, approaching this question, it will be well for us to bear two things in mind. In the first place, our definitions both of substance and of accident are abstract and generic or universal. But the abstract and universal does not exist as such. The concrete, individual, actually existing substance is never merely “a being that naturally exists in itself,” nor is the accident of such a substance merely a verification of its definition as “a being that naturally inheres in something else”. In every case what really and actually exists is the individual, a being concreted of substance and accidents, a being which is ever and always a real unity, composite no doubt, but really one; and this no matter what sort of distinction we hold to obtain between the substance and its accidents. This is important; its significance will be better appreciated according as we examine the distinctions in question. Secondly, as scholastics understand a real distinction, this can obtain not merely between different “persons” or “things” which are separate from one another in time or space, but also between different constitutive principles of any one single concrete, composite, individual being ([38]). We have seen that they are not agreed as [pg 243] to whether the essence and the existence of any actual creature are really distinct or not ([24]). And it may help us to clear up our notion of “accident” if we advert here to their discussion of the question whether or not an accident ought to be regarded as having an existence of its own, an existence proper to itself.

Those who think that the distinction between essence and existence in created things is a real distinction, hold that accidents as such have no existence of their own, that they are actualized by the existence of the substance, or rather of the concrete, composite individual; that since the latter is a real unity—not a mere artificial aggregation of entities, but a being naturally one—it can have only one existence: Impossibile est quod unius rei non sit unum esse;[261] that by this one existence the concrete, composite essence of the substance, as affected and determined by its accidents, is actualized. They contend that if each of the principles, whether substantial or accidental, of a concrete individual being had its own existence, their union, no matter how intimate, could not form a natural unitary being, an individual, but only an aggregate of such beings. It is neither the matter, nor the form, nor the corporeal substance apart from its accidents, that exists: it is the substance completely determined by all its accidents and modes that is the proper subject of existence.[262] It alone is actualized, and that by one existence, which is the “ultimate actuality” of the concrete, composite, individual essence: esse est ultimus actus. Hence it is too, they urge, that an accident should be conceived not properly as “a being,” but only as that whereby a being is such or such: Accidens non est ens, sed ens entis. But it cannot be so conceived if we attribute to it an existence of its own; for then it would be “a being” in the full and proper sense of the word.

This is the view of St. Thomas, and of Thomists generally. The arguments in support of it are serious, but not convincing. And the same may be said of the reasons adduced for the opposite view: that existence not being really distinct from essence, accidents in so far as they can be said to have an essence of their own have likewise an existence of their own.

Supporters of this view not only admit but maintain that the entity of a real, existing accident is a “diminished” entity, inasmuch as it is dependent in a sense in which a really existing substance is not dependent. They simply deny the Thomist assertion that substantial and accidental principles cannot combine to form a real and natural unit, an individual being, if each be accorded an existence appropriate and proportionate to its partial essence; nor indeed can Thomists prove this assertion. Moreover, if existence be not really distinct from essence, there is no more inconvenience in the claim that [pg 244] partial existences can combine to form one complete existence, unum esse, than in the Thomist claim that partial essences, such as substantial and accidental constitutive principles, can combine to form one complete essence, one individual subject of existence. Then, furthermore, it is urged that the substance exists prior in time to some of its accidents; that it is prior in nature to its properties, which are understood to proceed or flow from it; and that therefore its existence cannot be theirs, any more than its essence can be theirs. Finally, it is pointed out that since existence is the actuality of essence, the existence which actualizes a substance cannot be identical with that which actualizes an accident. At all events, whether the one existence of the concrete individual substance as determined by its accidents be as it were a simple and indivisible existential act, which actualizes the composite individual subject, as Thomists hold, or whether it be a composite existential act, really identical with the composite individual subject, as in the other view,[263] this concrete existence of the individual is constantly varying with the variation of the accidents of the individual. This is equally true on either view.

Inquiring into the distinction between substance and its intrinsic accidents, whether modal or absolute, we have first to remark that all accidents cannot possibly be reduced to relations; for if relation itself is something extrinsic to the things related, it must at least presuppose a real and intrinsic foundation or basis for itself in the things related. Local motion, for instance, is a change in the spatial relations of a body to other bodies. But it cannot be merely this. For if spatial relations are not mere subjective or mental fabrications, if they are in any intelligible sense real, then a change in them must involve a change of something intrinsic to the bodies concerned. Now Descartes, in denying the existence of absolute accidents, in reducing all accidents to modes of substances, understood by modes not any intrinsic determinations of substance, but only extrinsic determinations of the latter. All accidents of material substance were for him mere locations, arrangements, dispositions of its extended parts: extension being its essence. Similarly, all accidents of spiritual substance were for him mere modalities and mutual relations of its “thought” or “consciousness”: this latter being for him the essence of spirit. We have here not only the error of identifying or confounding accidents such as thought and extension with their connatural substances, spirit and matter, but also the error of supposing that extrinsic relations and modes of a [pg 245] substance, and changes in these, can be real, without there being in the substances themselves any intrinsic, real, changeable accidents, which would account for the extrinsic relations and their changes. If there are no intrinsic accidents, really affecting and determining substances, and yet really distinct from the latter, then we must admit either that all change is an illusion or else that all change is substantial; and this is the dilemma that really confronts the Cartesian philosophy.

68. Modal Accidents and the Modal Distinction.—The real distinction which we claim to exist between a substance and its intrinsic accidents is not the same in all cases: in regard to some accidents, which we have called intrinsic modes of the substance, it is a minor or modal real distinction; in regard to others which we have called absolute accidents, it is a major real distinction ([38]). Let us first consider the former.

The term mode has a variety of meanings, some very wide, some restricted. When one concept determines or limits another in any way we may call it a mode of the latter. If there is no real distinction between the determining and the determined thought-object, the mode is called a metaphysical mode: as rationality is of animality in man. Again, created things are all “modes” of being; and the various aspects of a creature may be called “modes” of the latter: as “finiteness” is a mode of every created being. We do not use the term in those wide senses in the present context. Here we understand by a mode some positive reality which so affects another and distinct reality as to determine the latter proximately to some definite way of existing or acting, to which the latter is itself indifferent; without, however, adding to the latter any new and proper entity other than the said determination.[264] Such modes are called physical modes. And some philosophers maintain that there are not only accidental modes, thus really distinct from the substance, but that there are even some substantial modes really distinct from the essence of the substance which they affect: for instance, that the really distinct constitutive principles of any individual corporeal substance, matter and form, are actually united only in virtue of a substantial mode whereby each is ordained for union with the other; or that subsistence, whereby the individual substance is made a [pg 246] subsistent and incommunicable “person” or “thing,” is a substantial mode of the individual nature.[265] With these latter we are not concerned here, but only with accidental modes, such as external shape or figure, local motion, position, action,[266] etc. Now when a substance is affected by such accidents as these it is impossible on the one hand to maintain that they add any new positive entity of their own to it; they do not seem to have any reality over and above the determination or modification in which their very presence in the substance consists. And on the other hand it cannot be denied that they express some real predicate which can be affirmed of the substance in virtue of their presence in it, and that independently of our thought; in other words it cannot be maintained that they are mere figments or forms of thought, mere entia rationis. If a piece of wax has a certain definite shape, this shape is inseparable from the wax: it is nothing except in the wax, for it cannot exist apart from the wax; but in the wax it is something in some real sense distinct from the wax, inasmuch as the wax would persist even if it disappeared. No doubt it is essential to the wax, as extended in space, to have some shape or other; but it is indifferent to any particular shape, and hence something distinct from it is required to remove this indifference. This something is the particular shape it actually possesses. The shape, therefore, is an accidental mode of the extension of the wax, a mode which is really distinct, by a minor real distinction, from this extension which is its immediate subject.[267] Hence we conclude that there are accidental modes, or modal accidents, really distinct from the subjects in which they inhere.

69. Distinction between Substance and its “Proper” Accidents. Unity of the Concrete Being.—Turning next to the distinction between absolute accidents and substance, we have seen already that separable absolute accidents such as acquired habits of mind and certain sensible qualities and energies of bodies are really distinct from their subjects. Absolute accidents [pg 247] which are naturally inseparable from their subjects—such as external quantity or spatial extension or volume is in regard to the corporeal substance—are also really distinct from their subjects; though we cannot know by reason alone whether or how far such accidents are absolutely separable from these subjects: from Christian Revelation we know that extension at least is separable from the substance of a body, and with extension all the other corporeal accidents which inhere immediately in extension.[268]

But a special difficulty arises in regard to the nature of the distinction between a substance and its proper accidents,[269] i.e. those which have such an adequate and necessary ground in the essence of the substance that the latter cannot exist without them: accidents which are simultaneous with the substance and proceed necessarily from it, such as the internal quantity of a corporeal substance, or the intellectual and appetitive powers or faculties of a spiritual substance. The medieval scholastic philosophers were by no means unanimous as to the nature of this distinction. Their discussion of the question centres mainly around the distinction between the spiritual human soul and its spiritual faculties, intellect and will, and between these faculties themselves. It is instructive—as throwing additional light on what they understood by a real distinction—to find that while Thomists generally have held that the distinction here in question is a real distinction, many other scholastics have held that it is only a virtual distinction, while Scotists have generally taught that it is a formal distinction ([35-39]).

Kleutgen[270] interprets the formal distinction advocated by Scotus in the present context as really equivalent to the virtual distinction. St. Bonaventure, after referring to the latter distinction, and to the real distinction propounded by St. Thomas, adopts himself an intermediate view: that the faculties of the [pg 248] soul are indeed really distinct from one another, but nevertheless are not really distinct, as accidental entities, from the substance of the soul itself. We see how this can be by considering that the material and formal principles which constitute a corporeal substance, though really distinct from each other, are not really distinct from the substance itself. They are not accidents of the latter but constitute its essence, and so are to be referred reductivé to the category of substance. So, by analogy, the faculties of the soul, though really distinct from each other, do not belong to any accidental category really distinct from the substance of the soul, but belong reductivé to the latter category, not indeed as constituting, but as flowing immediately and necessarily from, the substance of the soul itself.[271] And, like St. Thomas, he finds the ultimate source and explanation of this multiplicity of faculties and forces in the finiteness of the created substance as such.[272] But St. Thomas went farther than St. Bonaventure, for he taught—as indeed Thomists generally teach, and many who are not Thomists—that the faculties of the human soul are really distinct from one another, not merely as proximate principles of really distinct vital acts, but as accidental entities or essences; and that as such they are really distinct from the essence or substance itself of the human soul. The arguments in favour of this view [pg 249] will be given in their proper place in connexion with the category of Quality. If they are not demonstrative in their force, they are certainly such that the view for which they make is very highly probable; but we are concerned here to show, in this concluding section, that the recognition of a real distinction in general between substance and its accidents does not in any way compromise the real unity of the concrete individual being. It has been widely accused of doing so by philosophers who try to discredit this view without fully understanding it. This characteristically modern attitude is illustrated by the persistent attempts that have been made in recent times to throw ridicule on what they describe as the “faculty psychology”.[273]

The source of this groundless charge lies partly in the mistaken conception of accident and substance as concrete entities superadded the one to the other; partly in the mistaken notion that the union of substance and accidents cannot result in a real unity, that there cannot be more or less perfect grades of real unity ([27]); and partly in the false assumption that real distinction always implies mutual separability of concrete entities. Of these errors we need only refer to that concerning unity.

Modern philosophers not uncommonly conceive the union of substance and accidents as being necessarily a mere mechanical union or aggregation, and oppose it to “organic” unity which they regard as a real unity involving the richness of an energetic, “living” multiplicity. This involves a misrepresentation of the traditional scholastic view. The union of substance and accident is not a mechanical union. Nothing could be farther from the minds of the scholastic interpreters of Aristotle than the conception of the ultimate principles of the universe of our experience as inert entities moved according to purely mechanical laws; or of the individual concrete being as a mere machine, or a mere aggregate of mechanical elements. They recognized even in the individual inorganic substance an internal, unifying, active and directive principle of all the energies and activities of the thing—its substantial form. And if this is all those philosophers mean by the metaphorical transference of the terms “organic unity,” “internal living principle of development,” etc., to the mineral world, they are so far in accord with the traditional [pg 250] scholastic philosophy;[274] while if they mean that all substances are principles of “vital” energy, or that all reality is one organic unity, in the literal sense of these terms, they are committing themselves either to the palpably false theory of pan-psychism, or to the gratuitous reassertion of a very old and very crude form of monism.

By “organic” unity we understand the unity of any living organism, a unity which is much more perfect than that of the parts of a machine, or than any natural juxtaposition of material parts in an inorganic whole; for the organs, though distinct in number and in nature from one another, are united by an internal principle to form one living individual, so that if any organ were separated from the living organism it would cease to be an organ.[275] But organic unity is not by any means the most perfect kind of unity conceivable.[276] The living organism exists and develops and attains to the perfection of its being only through a multiplicity of integral parts extended in space. The spiritual substance is subject to no such dispersion of its being. From its union with the faculties whereby it attains to its natural development, there results a real unity of a higher order than that of any organism.

And nevertheless, even though the unity of the concrete spiritual substance and its faculties be so far higher than a mechanical or even an organic unity, it is not perfect. Even though the faculties of the soul be determinations of its substance, even though they flow from it as actualities demanded by its essence for the normal and natural development of its [pg 251] being, still it is a complete subsisting essence of its kind without them; it possesses its essential perfection without them, so that however intimate be their union with it they can never form one essence with it; it needs them only for the fuller development of its being by acquiring further intermediate perfections and thus attaining to its final perfection ([46]).

And here we touch on the most fundamental ground of the distinction, in all created things, between their substance and their accidental perfections. Unlike the Necessary, Absolute Being, whose infinite perfection is the eternal actuality of His essence, no creature possesses the actuality of its being tota simul, but only by a progressive development whereby it gradually acquires really new intermediate and final perfections, really distinct from, though naturally due to, its essence. Hence, even though some of its accidents—properties such as the powers and faculties we have been discussing—be not really distinct from the essence wherewith they are necessarily connected, this is not true of its acquired habits and dispositions, or of the activities which proceed from these latter as their proximate principles. At the same time the concrete being is, at every moment of its existence and development, a real unity, but a unity which, involving in itself as it does a real multiplicity of distinct principles, must ever fall infinitely short of the perfect type of real unity—that realized only in the Self-Existent, Necessary Being.

[pg 252]

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