Chapter X. Some Accident-Modes Of Being: Quality.
76. Ontology and the Accident-Modes of Being.—Under the ultimate category or genus supremum of Substance experience reveals to us two broadly distinct sub-classes: corporeal substances, “bodies” or “material” things, and spiritual substances or “spirits”. Of these latter we have direct experience only of one class, viz. embodied spirits or human souls. The investigation of the nature of these belongs to Psychology, and from the data of that science we may infer, by the light of reason, the possibility of another class of spirits, viz. pure spirits, beings of whose actual existence we know from Divine Revelation. The existence of a Supreme Being, Whom we must conceive analogically as substance and spirit, is demonstrated by the light of reason in Natural Theology. The investigation of the nature of corporeal substances belongs properly to Cosmology. Hence in the present treatise we have no further direct concern with the substance-mode of reality;[322] but only with its accident-modes, and not with all of these.
Not with all of them; for those which belong properly to spiritual substances, or properly to corporeal substances, call for special treatment in Psychology and Cosmology respectively. In the main, only such species of accidents as are common to matter and spirit alike, will form the subject of the remaining portion of the present volume. Only the broader aspects of such categories as Quality, Quantity and Causality—aspects which have a more direct bearing on the Theory of Being and the Theory of Knowledge in general,—call for treatment in General Metaphysics. A more detailed treatment must be sought in other departments of Philosophy.
77. Nature of the Accident Called Quality.—In the widest sense of the term, Quality is synonymous with logical attribute. In this sense whatever can be predicated of a subject, whatever logically determines a subject in any way for our thought is a quality or “attribute” of that subject. In a sense almost equally wide the term is used to designate any real determination, whether substantial or accidental, of a subject. In this sense the differential element, or differentia specifica, determines the generic element, or genus, of a substance: it tells us what kind or species the substance is: e.g. what kind of animal a man is, viz. rational; what kind of living thing an animal is, viz. sentient; what kind of body or corporeal thing a plant is, viz. living. And hence scholastics have said of the predicable “differentia specifica” that it is predicated adjectivally, or as a quality, to tell us in what the thing consists, or what is its nature: differentia specifica praedicatur in quale quid: it gives us the determining principle of the specific nature. Or, again, quality is used synonymously with any accidental determination of a substance. In this sense magnitude, location, action, etc., though they determine a subject in different accidental ways, nevertheless are all indiscriminately said to “qualify” it in the sense of determining it somehow or other, and are therefore called “qualities” in the wide sense of “accidents”. Hence, again, the scholastics have said that inasmuch as all accidents determine or qualify their subjects, they are predicated of these qualitatively, and may be called in a wide sense “qualifications” or “qualities”: omnia genera accidentium qualificant substantiam et praedicantur in quale.
It is in this wide sense that we use the term when we say that the (specific) nature (or “kind”) of a thing is revealed by its “qualities”; for the nature of a thing is revealed by all its accidents. And when we infer the nature of a thing from its activities, in accordance with the maxim Qualis est operatio talis est natura, we must take the term “operatio” or “activity” to include the operation of the thing on our cognitive faculties, the states of cognitive consciousness thus aroused in us, and all the other accidents thus revealed to us in the thing by its “knowledge-eliciting” action on our minds.
But the term Quality has been traditionally restricted, after Aristotle, to designate properly one particular category of accidents distinct from the others and from substance.
A definition proper of any genus supremum is of course out of the question. But it is not easy to give even a description which will convey an accurate notion of the special category of Quality, and mark it off from the other accident-categories. If we say with Aristotle that quality is “that whereby we are enabled to describe what sort (ποιόν, quale) anything is”[323]—e.g. that it is white by whiteness, strong by strength, etc.—we are only illustrating the abstract by the concrete. But even this serves the purpose of helping us to realize what quality in general means. For we are more familiar with the concrete than with the abstract: and we can see a broad distinction between the question: “What sort is that thing? Qualis est ista res?” (Quality), and the question: “How large is that thing? Quanta est ista res?” (Quantity), or “Where is that thing?” (Place), or “What is it doing? What is happening to it?” (Actio et Passio), or “What does it resemble?” (Relation), etc. This will help us to realize that there are accidental modes of being which affect substances in a different way from all the extrinsic denominations of the latter ([60]), and also in a different way from Quantity, Relation, and Causality; and these modes of being, whereby the substance is of such a sort, or in such a condition, we call qualities. And if we inquire what special kind of determination of the substance is common to qualities, and marks these off from the other accidents, we shall find it to consist in this, that quality is an accidental mode of being which so affects the substance that it disposes the latter well or ill in regard to the perfections natural to this particular kind of substance: it alters the latter accidentally by increasing or diminishing its natural perfection. We have seen that no created substance has all the perfection natural to its kind, tota simul or ab initio ([46]); that it fulfils its rôle in existence by development, by tending towards its full or final perfection. The accidental realities which supervene on its essence, and thus alter its perfection within the limits of its kind or species, are what we call qualities. They diversify the substance accidentally in its perfection, in its concrete mode of existing and behaving: by their appearance and disappearance they do not change the essential perfection of the substance ([46]), they do not effect a substantial change; but they change its intermediate, [pg 288] accidental perfection; and this qualitative change is technically known and described as alteration[324] ([11]).
Hence we find Quality described by St. Thomas as the sort of accident which modifies or disposes the substance in itself: “accidens modificativum sen dispositivum substantiaein seipsa,” and by Albertus Magnus somewhat more explicitly as “the sort of accident which completes and perfects substance in its existence and activity: accidens complens ac perficiens substantiam tarn in existendo quam in operando”.[325] This notion will be conveyed with sufficient clearness if we describe Quality as that absolute accident which determines a substance after the manner of an accidental “differentia,” affecting the essential perfection of the substance in regard to its existence or to its activity.
Hence (1) the Pure Actuality of the Infinitely Perfect Being cannot admit qualities, inasmuch as quality implies only a relative and limited perfection; (2) the qualities of a corporeal substance are grounded in the formative principle which gives that substance its specific nature and is the principle of its tendency and development towards its final perfection, whereas its quantity is grounded in its determinable or material principle; (3) the essential differentiating principles of substances—being known to us not intuitively, but only abstractively and discursively, i.e. by inference from the behaviour of these substances, from the effects of their activities—are often designated not by what constitutes them intrinsically, but by the accidental perfections or qualities which are our only key to a knowledge of them. For instance, we differentiate the nature of man from that of the brute beast by describing the former as rational: a term which really designates not the essence or nature itself, but one of its fundamental qualities, viz. the faculty of reason.
78. Immediate Sub-Classes of Quality as Genus Supremum.—On account of the enormous variety of qualities which characterize the data of our experience, the problem of classifying qualities is not a simple one. Its details belong to the special [pg 289] sciences and to the other departments of philosophy. Here we must confine ourselves to an attempt at indicating the immediate sub-classes of the genus supremum. And in this context it will not be out of place to call attention to a remarkable, and in our view quite erroneous, trend of modern thought. It accompanied the advent of what is known as atomism or the mechanical conception of the universe, a conception much in vogue about half a century ago, but against which there are already abundant evidences of a strong reaction. We refer to the inclination of scientists and philosophers to eliminate Quality altogether as an ultimately distinct category of human experience, by reducing all qualities to quantity, local relations, and mechanical or spatial motions of matter (cf. [11]). In this theory all the sensible qualities of the material universe would be really and objectively nothing more than locations and motions of the ultimate constituents of perceptible matter. All the chemical, physical and mechanical energies or forces of external nature would be purely quantitative dispositions or configurations of matter in motion: realities that could be exhaustively known by mathematical analysis and measurement. And when it was found that qualitative concepts stubbornly resisted all attempts at elimination, or reduction to quantitative concepts, even in the investigation of the material universe or external nature, scientists and philosophers of external nature thought to get rid of them by locating them exclusively in the human mind, and thus pushing them over on psychologists and philosophers of the mind for further and final exorcism. For a time extreme materialists, less wise than daring, endeavoured to reduce even mind and all its conscious states and processes to a mere subjective aspect of what, looked at objectively, would be merely matter in motion.[326] It can be shown in Cosmology, Psychology, and Epistemology that all such attempts to analyse qualities into something other than qualities, are utterly unsatisfactory and unsuccessful. And we may see even from an [pg 290] enumeration of some of the main classes of qualities that such attempts were foredoomed to failure.
Scholastic Philosophy has generally adopted Aristotle's division of qualities into four great groups:[327] (1) ἕξις ἢ διάθεσις, habitus vel dispositio; (2) δύναμις φυσικὴ ἢ ἀδυναμία, potentia naturalis vel impotentia; (3) ποιότητες παθητικαί καὶ πάθη, potentiae passivae et passiones; (4) μορφὴ ἢ σχῆμα, forma vel figura. St. Thomas offers the following ground for this classification. Since quality, he says,[328] is an accidental determination of the substance itself, i.e. of the perfection of its concrete existence and activity, and since we may distinguish four aspects of the substance: its nature itself as perfectible; its intrinsic principles of acting and receiving action, principles springing from the formative, specific constituent of its nature; its receptivity of change effected by such action, a receptivity grounded in the determinable or material principle of its nature; and finally its quantity, if it be a corporeal substance,—we can likewise distinguish between (1) acquired habits or dispositions, such as health, knowledge, virtue, vice, etc., which immediately determine the perfection of the substance, disposing it well or ill in relation to its last end; (2) intrinsic natural forces, faculties, powers of action, aptitudes, capacities, such as intellect, will, imagination, instinct, organic vital forces, physical, chemical, mechanical energies; (3) states resulting in a corporeal being from the action of its milieu upon it: the passions and emotions of sentient living things, such as sensations of pleasure, pain, anger, etc.; the sensible qualities of matter, such as colour, taste, smell, temperature, feel or texture, etc.; and, finally (4) the quality of form or shape which is a mere determination of the quantity of a corporeal substance.
This classification is not indeed perfect, for the same individual quality can be placed in different classes when looked at from different standpoints: heat, for instance, may be regarded as a natural operative power of a substance in a state of combustion, or as a sensible quality produced in that substance by the operation of other agencies. But it has the merit of being an exhaustive classification; and philosophers have not succeeded in improving on it.
Qualities of the third and fourth class do not call for special [pg 291] treatment. In the third class, Aristotle's distinction between ποιότητες παθητικαί (qualitates passibiles) and πάθη (passiones) is based upon the relatively permanent or transient character of the quality in question. The transient quality, such as the blush produced by shame or the pallor produced by fear, would be a passio;[329] whereas the more permanent quality, such as the natural colour of the countenance, would be a passibilis qualitas. The “passions” or sensible changes which result from certain conscious states, and affect the organism of the sentient living being, are included in this class as passiones; while the visible manifestations of more permanent mental derangement or insanity would be included in it as passibiles qualitates. We may, perhaps, get a fairly clear and comprehensive notion of all that is contained in this class as “sensible qualities” by realizing that these embrace whatever is the immediate cause or the immediate result of the sense modification involved in any act or process of sense consciousness. Such “sensible qualities,” therefore, belong in part to the objects which provoke sense perception, and in part to the sentient subject which elicits the conscious act. One of the most important problems in the Theory of Knowledge, and one which ramifies into Cosmology and Psychology, is that of determining the precise significance of these “sensible qualities,”—and especially in determining whether they are qualities of an extramental reality, or merely states of the individual mind or consciousness itself.
Form or figure, which constitutes the fourth class of quality, is a mode of the quantity of a body, being merely the particular surface termination of its extension or volume. Considered as a mode of abstract or mathematical quantity, it belongs to the domain of mathematics. Considered in the concrete body, it is the physical, sensible form, shape, or figure, of the latter; and here it may be either natural or artificial, according as it results from the unimpeded action of natural forces or from these forces as manipulated and directed by intelligent agents. It is worthy of special note that while extension or volume is indicative of the material principle of corporeal substances, the figure or shape naturally assumed by this volume is determined by their formative principle, and is thus indicative of their specific nature. This [pg 292] is already noticeable in the inorganic world, where many of the chemically different substances assume each its own distinctive crystalline form. But it is particularly in the domains of botany and zoology that the natural external form of the living individual organism is recognized as one of the most important grounds of its classification and one of the surest tests of its specific nature.[330]
79. Habits and Dispositions.—Every created being is subject to change, capable of development or retrogression, endowed with a natural tendency towards some end which it can reach by a natural process of activity, and which constitutes for it, when attained, its full and final perfection ([66]). Through this process of change it acquires accidental modes of being which help it or hinder it, dispose it or indispose it, in the exercise of its natural activities, and therefore also in the concrete perfection of its nature as tending towards its natural end. Such an accidental mode of being is acquired by a series of transient actions and experiences, actiones et passiones: after these have passed away it remains, and not merely as a state or condition resulting from the changes wrought in the subject by these experiences, but as a disposition towards easier repetition of such experiences. Moreover, it may be not a mere transient disposition, but something stable and permanent, not easily removed or annulled, a dispositio difficile mobilis. And just as it is essentially indicative of past actions whereby it was acquired, so, too, the very raison d'être of its actuality is to dispose its subject for further and future changes, for operations and effects which are not yet actual but only potential in this subject. Such an accidental mode of being is what Aristotle called ἕξις, and the scholastics habitus. With Aristotle, they define habit as a more or less stable disposition whereby a subject is well or ill disposed in itself or in relation to other things: Habitus dicitur dispositio difficile mobilis secundum quam bene vel male disponitur subjectum aut secundum se aut in ordine ad aliud.[331]
The difference between a habit (ἕξις) and a simple disposition (διάθεσις) is that the former is by nature a more or less stable quality while the latter is unstable and transient. Moreover, the facilities acquired by repeated action of the organs or members of men or animals, and the particular “set” acquired by certain tools or instruments from continued use, are more properly called dispositions than habits: they are not habits in the strict sense, though they are often called habits in the ordinary and looser usage of common speech. A little reflection will show that the only proper subjects of natural habits in the strict sense are the spiritual faculties of an intelligent and free agent.
Since all natural habits are acquired by the past activities, and dispose for the future activities, of a being not absolutely perfect, but partly potential and partly actual, and subject to change, it follows that only finite beings can have habits. But, furthermore, beings that are not free, that have not control or dominion of their own actions, that have not freedom of choice, are determined by their nature, by a necessary law of their activity, to elicit the actions which they do actually elicit: such beings are by their nature determinata ad unumn; they are confined necessarily to the particular lines of action whereby they fulfil their rôle in the actual order of things. As Aristotle remarks, you may throw the same stone repeatedly in the same direction and with the same velocity: it will never acquire a habit of moving in that direction with that velocity.[332] The same is true of plants and animals; for a habit in the strict sense implies not merely a certain mutability in its subject; it implies, and consists in, a stable modification of some power or faculty which can have its activities directed indifferently in one or other of a variety of channels or lines: the power or faculty which is the proper subject of a habit must be a potentia dirigibilis vel determinabilis ad diversa. Hence merely material powers of action—such as the mechanical, physical and chemical forces of inorganic nature, or the organic powers of living bodies, whether vegetative or merely sentient,—since they are all of themselves, of their nature, determined to certain lines of action, and to these only,—such powers cannot become the subjects of habits, of stable dispositions towards one line of action rather than another. “The [pg 294] powers of material nature,” says St. Thomas, “do not elicit their operations by means of habits, for they are of themselves [already adequately] determined to their particular lines of action.”[333]
Only the spiritual faculties of free agents are, then, the proper seat of real habits. Only of free agents can we say strictly that “habit is second nature”. Only these can direct the operations of their intellect and will, and through these latter the operations of their sense faculties, both cognitive and appetitive, in a way conducive to their last end or in a way that deviates therefrom, by attaching their intellects to truth or to error, their wills to virtue or to vice, and thus forming in these faculties stable dispositions or habits.[334]
Is there any sense, then, in which we can speak of the sentient (cognitive and appetitive) and executive powers of man as the seat of habits? The activities of those faculties are under the control of intellect and will; the acts elicited by the former are commanded by the latter; they are acts that issue primarily from the latter faculties; and hence the dispositions that result from repetition of these acts and give a facility for further repetition of them—acts of talking, walking, singing, playing musical instruments, exercising any handicraft—are partly, though only secondarily, dispositions formed in these sentient faculties (the “trained” eye, the “trained” ear, the “discriminating” sense of taste, the “alert” sense of touch in the deaf, dumb, or blind), or in these executive powers, whereby the latter more promptly and easily obey the “command” of the higher faculties; but they are primarily and principally habits of these higher faculties themselves rendering the latter permanently “apt” to “command” and utilize the subordinate powers in the repetition of such acts.[335]
Unquestionably the bodily organs acquire by exercise a definite “set” which facilitates their further exercise. But this “set” is not something that they can use themselves; nor is it something that removes or lessens a natural indeterminateness or indifference of these powers; for they are not indifferent: they must act, at any instant, in the one way which their concrete nature in all its surroundings actually demands. They themselves are only instruments of the higher faculties; these alone have freedom of choice between lines of action; it is only the stable modifications which these acquire, which they themselves can use, and which dispose them by lessening their indeterminateness, that are properly called habits. There are, therefore, in the organic faculties of man dispositions which give facility of action. There are, moreover, organic dispositions which dispose the organism not for action but for its union with the formative principle or soul: habituales dispositiones materiae ad formam.[336] Aristotle gives as instances bodily health or beauty.[337] But these dispositiones materiales ad formam he does not call habits, any more than the organic dispositiones ad operationem just referred to: and for this reason, that although all these dispositions have a certain degree of stability in the organism—a stability which they derive, moreover, from the soul which is the formative principle that secures the continuity and individual identity of the organism,—yet they are not of themselves, of their own nature, stable; whereas the acquired dispositions of the spiritual faculties, intellect and will, rooted as they are in a subject that is spiritual and substantially immutable, are of their own nature stable and permanent. Nor are all dispositions of these latter faculties to be deemed habits, but only those which arise from acts which give them the special character of stability. Hence mere opinion in the intellectual order, as distinct from science, or a mere inclination [pg 296] resulting from a few isolated acts, as distinct from a virtue or a vice in the moral order, are not habits.[338] Habits, therefore, belong properly to the faculties of a spiritual substance; indirectly, however, they extend their influence to the lower or organic powers dependent on, and controlled by, the spiritual faculties.
To the various dispositions and facilities of action acquired by animals through “training,” “adaptation,” “acclimatization,” etc., we may apply what has been said in regard to the sense faculties and executive powers of the human body. Just as we may regard the internal sense faculties (memory, imagination, sense appetite) in man as in a secondary and subordinate way subjects of habits, in so far as these faculties act under the direction and control of human reason and will,[339] so also the organic dispositions induced in irrational animals by the direction and guidance of human reason may indeed be regarded as extensions or effects of the habits that dispose the rational human faculties, but not as themselves in the strict sense habits.[340]
If, then, habits belong properly to intellect and will, and if their function is to dispose or indispose the human agent for the attainment of the perfection in which his last end consists, we must naturally look to Psychology and Ethics for a detailed analysis of [pg 297] them. Here we must be content with a word on their origin, their effects, and their importance.
Habits are produced by acts. The act modifies the faculty. If, for instance, nothing remained in our cognitive faculties after each transient cognitive act had passed, memory would be inexplicable and knowledge impossible; nor could the repetition of any act ever become easier than its first performance. This something that remains is a habit, or the beginning of a habit A habit may be produced by a single act: the mind's first intuition of an axiom or principle produces a habit or habitual knowledge of that principle. But as a rule it requires a repetition of any act, and that for a long time at comparatively short intervals, to produce a habit of that act, a stable disposition whereby it can be readily repeated; and to strengthen and perfect the habit the acts must be formed with a growing degree of intensity and energy. Progress in virtue demands sustained and increasingly earnest efforts.
The natural effect of habit is to perfect the faculty,[341] to increase its energy, to make it more prompt to act, and thus to facilitate the performance of the act for which the habit disposes it. It also engenders and develops a natural need or tendency or desire to repeat the act, and a natural aversion from the acts opposed to the habit. Finally, according as the habit grows, the performance of the act demands less effort, calls for less actual attention; thus the habit diminishes the feeling of effort and tends to bring about a quasi-automatic and semi-conscious form of activity.
Good habits are those which perfect the nature of the agent, which advance it towards the realization of its end; bad habits are those which retard and prevent the realization of this end. Hence the ethical importance, to the human person, of forming, fostering and confirming good habits, as also of avoiding, resisting and eradicating bad habits, can scarcely be exaggerated.
The profound and all-pervading influence of habit in the mental and moral life of man is unfortunately far from being adequately appreciated even by those responsible for the secular, moral and religious education of the young. This is perhaps mainly due to the fact that the influence of habit on the conduct of life, enormous as it is in fact, is so secret, so largely unconscious, that it easily escapes notice. Careful reflection on our actions, diligent study of the springs of action in our everyday life, are needed to reveal this influence. But the more we analyse human conduct in ourselves and others, the more firmly convinced we become that human character and conduct are mainly dependent on the formation of habits. Habits are the grand conserving and perfecting—or the terrible undermining and destroying—force of life. They are the fruit of our past and the seed of our future. In them the words of Leibniz find their fullest verification: “the present is laden with the past and pregnant with the future”. By forming good habits we escape the disheartening difficulties of perpetual beginnings; and thus the labour we devote to the acquisition of wisdom and virtue has its first rich recompense in the facility it gives us to advance on the path of progress.
It has been truly and rightly said that all genuine education consists in the formation of good habits.
80. Powers, Faculties and Forces.—A natural operative power, faculty, or force (δύναμις, potentia, facultas, virtus agendi) is a quality which renders the nature of the individual agent apt to elicit certain actions. By impotence or incapacity (ἀδυναμία, impotentia, incapacitas) Aristotle meant not an opposite kind of quality, in contradistinction to power or faculty, but only a power of a weaker order, differing in degree, not in kind, from the real power which renders an agent proximately capable of acting; such weaker capacities, for instance, as the infant's power to walk, or the defective eyesight of the aged.
It is to the individual subsisting person or thing that all the actions proceeding from the latter are ascribed: actiones sunt suppositorum: the “suppositum” or person is the principium quod agit. And it acts in accordance with its nature; this latter is the principium quo agens agit: the nature is the substance or essence as a principle of the actions whereby the individual tends to realize its end. But is a created, finite nature the immediate or proximate principle of its activities, so that it is operative per se? [pg 299] Or is it only their remote principle, eliciting them not by itself but only by means of powers, faculties, forces, which are themselves accidental perfections of the substance and really distinct from it, qualities intermediate between the latter and its actions, being the proximate principles of the latter?
No doubt when any individual nature is acted upon by other agencies, when it undergoes real change under the influence of its environment, its passive potentiality is being so far forth actualized. Moreover when the nature itself acts immanently, the term of such action remaining within the agent itself to actualize or perfect it, some passive potentiality of the agent is being actualized. In these cases the nature before being thus actualized was really capable of such actualization. This passive potentiality, however, is itself nothing actual, it implies no actual perfection in the nature. But we must distinguish carefully from this passive or receptive potentiality of a nature its active or operative powers—potentiae operativae. These may be themselves actual perfections in the nature, accidental perfections actually in the nature, and perhaps really distinct from it.
That they are indeed actual perfections of the nature is fairly obvious: it is an actual perfection of a nature to be proximately and immediately, and without any further complement or addition to its reality, capable of acting; and this is true whether the action in question be immanent or transitive: if it be immanent, the perfection resulting from the action, the term of the latter, will be a perfection of the agent itself, and in this case the agent by virtue of its operative power will have had the capacity of perfecting itself; while if the action be transitive the agent will have had, in virtue of its operative power, the capacity of producing perfections in other things. In either case such capacity is undoubtedly an actual perfection of the agent that possesses it. Hence the truth of the scholastic formula: Omne agens agit in quantum est in actu, patiatur vero inquantum est in potentia.
Furthermore, all such operative powers are really distinct from the actions which immediately proceed from them: this, too, is obvious, for while the operative power is a stable, abiding characteristic of the agent, the actions elicited by means of it are transient.
But what is the nature of this operative power in relation to the nature itself of the agent? It is an actual perfection of this nature. It is, moreover, unlike acquired habits, native to this [pg 300] nature, born with it so to speak, naturally inseparable from it. Further still, operative powers would seem to be all properties ([69]) of their respective natures: inasmuch as it is only in virtue of the operative power that the nature can act, and there can be no nature without connatural operations whereby it tends to realize the full and final perfection of its being, the perfection which is the very raison d'être of its presence in the actual order of things. The question therefore narrows itself down to this: Are operative powers, which perfect the nature of which they are properties, really distinct from this nature, or are they only virtually distinct aspects under which we view the nature itself? For example, when we speak of intellect and will as being faculties of the human soul, do we merely mean that intellect is the soul itself regarded as capable of reasoning, and will the soul itself regarded as capable of willing? Or do we mean that the soul is not by itself and in virtue of its own essence capable of reasoning and willing; that it can reason and will only through the instrumentality of two realities of the accidental order, really distinct from, though at the same time necessarily rooted in and springing from, the substance of the soul itself: realities which we call powers or faculties? Or again, when we speak of a man or an animal as having various sense faculties—internal and external, cognitive, appetitive, executive—do we merely mean that the living, sentient organism is itself directly capable of eliciting acts of various kinds: of imagining, desiring, seeing, hearing, etc.? Or do we mean that the organism can elicit these various acts only by means of several accidental realities, really distinct from, and inhering in, itself?
If such operative powers or faculties are naturally inseparable from the substance in which they inhere, if they are so necessarily consequent on the nature of the latter that it cannot exist without them, are they anything more than virtually distinct aspects of the substance itself? On this question, as we have already seen ([69]), scholastics are not agreed. St. Thomas, and Thomists generally, maintain that intellect and will are really distinct from the substance of the soul, and likewise that the sense faculties are really distinct from the substance of the animated organism in which they inhere.[342] In this view the distinction is not merely a virtual distinction between different aspects of the soul (or the organism) [pg 301] itself, grounded in the variety and complexity of the acts which emanate from the latter: the faculties are real entities of the accidental order, mediating between the substance and its actions, and involving in the concrete being a plurality which, however, is not incompatible with the real unity of the latter ([69]).
The following are some of the arguments urged in proof of a real distinction:—
(a) Existence and action are two really distinct actualities; therefore the potentialities which they actualize must be really distinct: for such is the transcendental relation between the potential and the actual that any potential subject and the corresponding perfection which actualizes it must belong to the same genus supremum: the one cannot be a substance and the other an accident.[343] Now existence is the actuality of essence and action is the actuality of operative power or faculty. But action is certainly an accident; therefore the operative power which it actualizes must also be an accident, and must therefore be really distinct from the substance of which it is a power, and of which existence is the actuality. This line of argument applies with equal force to all created natures.[344]
In the Infinite Being alone are operation and substance identical. No creature is operative in virtue of its substance. The actions of a creature cannot be actualizations of its substance: existence is the actualization of its substance; therefore its actions must be actualizations of potentialities which are accidents distinct from its substance; in other words, of operative powers which belong indeed necessarily to its substance but are really distinct from the latter.
This argument rests on very ultimate metaphysical conceptions. But not all scholastics will admit the assumptions it involves. How, for instance, does it appear that the created or [pg 302] finite substance as such cannot be immediately operative? Even were it immediately operative its actions would still be accidents, and the distinction between Creator and creature would stand untouched. The operative power must be an accident because the action which actualizes it, the “actus secundus,” is an accident. But the consequentia has not been proved, and it is not self-evident. On the theory of the real distinction, is not the operative power itself an actual perfection of the substance, and therefore in some sort an actualization of the latter? And yet they are not in the same ultimate category, in eodem genere supremo. The nature which is the potential subject, perfected by the operative power, is a substance, while the operative power which perfects the substance by actualizing this potentiality is an accident. Of course there is not exactly the same correlation between substance and operative power as between the latter and action. But anyhow the action is in some true sense an actualization of the substance, at least through the medium of the power, unless we are prepared to break up the concrete unity of the agent by referring the action solely to the power of the agent, and isolating the substance of the latter as a sort of immutable core which merely “exists”: a mode of conceiving the matter, which looks very like the mistake of reifying abstract concepts. And if the action is in any true sense an actualization of the substance, we have, after all, a potentia and actus which are not in the same ultimate category.
These considerations carry us, of course, right into what is perhaps the most fundamental of all metaphysical problems: that of the mode in which finite reality is actual. In its concrete actuality every finite real being is essentially subject to change: its actuality is not tota simul: at every instant it not only is but is becoming: it is a mixture of potentiality and actuality: it is ever really changing, and yet the “it” which changes can in some real degree and for some real space of time persist or endure identical with itself as a “subsisting thing” or “person”. How, then, are we to conceive aright the mode of its actuality? Take the concrete existing being at any instant of its actuality: suppose that it is not merely undergoing change through the influence of other beings in its environment, or through its own immanent action, but that it is itself “acting,” whether immanently or transitively. If we consider that at this instant its existence is “really distinct” from its action we cannot mean by this that there is in it an unchanging substantial core, which is actually merely “existing,” and a vesture of active and passive accidental principles, which is just now actual (though always in a state of flux or change) by “acting” or “being acted on”.[345] Such a conception would conflict with the truth that the [pg 303] existing substance is ever being really and actually, though accidentally, determined, changed, modified, improved or disimproved, in its total concrete existing reality. Even when these changes are not so profound as to destroy its substantial identity and thus terminate its actuality as an individual being, even when, in other words, they are not substantial, they are none the less real and really affect the substance. Since they are real they necessarily involve the recognition of really distinct principles in the concrete being and preclude the view that the distinctions which we recognize in the ever-changing modes of its actuality, as revealed to us in time and space, are all merely conceptual or logical distinctions projected by the mind into what would therefore be in fact a simple and immutable reality. The denial of any real distinction between successive actual states, or between co-existing principles of those states, in any finite being, would lead logically to the Eleatic doctrine, i.e. to denial of the reality of change. On the other hand, while recognizing that change is a reality and not a subjective mental illusion, and that real change can be grounded only in a plurality of really distinct principles in the finite individual being, we must at the same time hold that this plurality of really distinct principles in the individual does not destroy a real unity, stability, and self-identical continuity of the individual being in the mode of its actuality throughout time. Not, of course, that this stability or sameness of the individual throughout time is complete and adequate to the exclusion of all real change, but it is certainly a real continuity of one and the same individual being: to deny this would be to remove all permanence from reality and to reduce all real being to flux or change, i.e. to the πάντα ρέι of the Ionian philosopher, Heraclitus.
We cannot get a true conception of any finite reality by considering it merely from the static point of view, which is the natural standpoint of abstract thought; we must view it also from the dynamic-kinetic standpoint, i.e. not merely as an essence or principle of existence, but as a power or principle of action, and of consequent change, evolution, or decay. And the philosophy which is the latest fashion among contemporary systems, that of the brilliant French thinker and writer, Bergson, has at all events the merit of emphasizing this important truth, that if our philosophical analysis of experience is to be fruitful we must try to grasp reality not merely as it presents itself to abstract thought at any section drawn by the latter through the incessant process of its fieri or continuous actualization in time, but also to grasp and analyse as far as possible the fieri or process itself, and bring to light whatever we find that this process implies.
These considerations may help the student to estimate for himself the value and the limitations of the argument which has suggested them.
(b) A thing cannot be really identical with a variety of things that are really distinct from one another; but the faculties of the soul are really distinct from one another; therefore they must be really distinct from the substance of the soul. The minor premiss is supported by these considerations: The vegetative and sentient operations of the human individual are operations of the living organism, while the higher operations of rational thought and volition are operations of the soul alone, the spiritual or immaterial principle in the individual. But the immaterial principle cannot be really and adequately identical with the animated organism. Therefore the powers or immediate principles of these two classes of functions, belonging as they do to two really (though not adequately) distinct substantial principles, cannot be really identical with one of them, viz. with the soul itself, the spiritual principle. Again: The exercise of certain functions by the human individual is subordinate to, and dependent on the previous exercise of other functions. For example, actual volition is necessarily dependent and consequent on actual thought: we cannot will or desire any good without first knowing it as a good. But the immediate principle of any function or activity cannot be dependent on or subordinate to itself. Therefore the immediate principles of such controlling and controlled activities—intellect and will, for example—must be really distinct faculties.[346]
(c) Suppose the substance or nature of an agent—the human individual, for instance—were really identical with all its powers or faculties, that these were merely the nature itself viewed under different aspects, so that there would be in reality only one operative power in the individual, then there would be no reason why the individual could not or should not at any instant elicit one single action or operation which would be simultaneously an act of thinking, willing, seeing, hearing, etc., i.e. which would have at once in itself the modalities of all human activities. But universal experience testifies, on the contrary, that the operations of the individual are each of some particular mode only, that he cannot elicit every mode of human activity simultaneously, that he never elicits one single act having a variety of modes. But why could he not, if his substance or nature itself were the one and only proximate principle [pg 305] of all his modes of activity? Because the conditions for the full and adequate exercise of this one single or proximate principle (at once substance and power) are never realized! But it is arbitrary to assume the existence of a power which could never pass fully into the act connatural to it. And moreover, even if these conditions are partially realized we should see as a consequence of this some human activity which would manifest in some degree at least all the modalities of the various human actions of which we have experience. But we have no experience of a single human activity manifesting in any degree the modalities of the numerous and really distinct human activities which experience reveals to us. Hence the variety of these really distinct modes of activity can be explained only by the fact that the human individual elicits them through proximate operative principles or powers which are really distinct from one another and from the nature itself of the individual.[347]
The problem of analysing and classifying the forces, faculties, or powers of the subsisting things and persons in the universe of our experience, belongs partly to Cosmology and partly to Psychology. In the latter it becomes mainly a problem of classifying our mental acts, functions, or processes—our states of consciousness. Apart from the question whether or not our mental faculties are really distinct from one another and from the human nature or substance itself of the individual, the problem of their proper classification is important from the point of view of method and of accurate psychological analysis. We have seen already ([69]) that the greatest scholastic philosophers are not unanimous in declaring the distinction to be real. But it is at least a virtual distinction; and even as such it gives rise to the problem of classification. It will be sufficient here to indicate the general principle on which the classification proceeds: Wherever the acts are adequately distinct they proceed from distinct powers; and the acts are adequately distinct when they have adequately distinct formal objects.[348] Potentiae specificantur per actus et objecta. The operation or act is the correlative of the power or faculty; and the formal object or term of the operation is the final cause of the latter, the end for which it is elicited. On this basis Aristotle and the scholastics distinguish two mental faculties of the higher or spiritual order, intellect and will; and in the lower or sense order of mental life they distinguish one appetitive faculty, sense appetite, and several cognitive sense faculties. These latter comprise the internal sense faculties, viz. the sensus communis or unifying and associating sense, the imagination, sense memory, and instinct; and the external sense faculties comprise sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.
81. Some Characteristics of Qualities.—(a) Qualities [pg 306] have contraries. Health and illness, virtue and vice, science and error, etc., are opposed as contraries. This, however, is not a property of qualities; it is not verified in powers, or in forms and figures; and it is verified in accidents which are not qualities, e.g. in actio and passio.
(b) Quality is the basis or “fundamentum” of all relations of similarity and dissimilarity. This attribute seems to be in the strict sense a property of all qualities. Substances are similar in so far as they have the same kind of qualities, dissimilar in so far as they have different kinds. Similarity of substances is the main index to identity of nature or kind; but it must not be confounded with the latter. The latter cannot always be inferred even from a high degree of similarity: some specifically distinct classes of things are very similar to one another. Nor, on the other hand, is full and complete similarity a necessary consequence of identity of nature: individuals of the same species are often very dissimilar, very unlike one another.
(c) Qualities admit of varying degrees of intensity. They can increase or diminish in the same substance, while numerically (and specifically) distinct substances can have the same kind of quality in different degrees. This is manifest in regard to “habits,” “passions” and “sensible qualities”. On the other hand, it is clearly not true of “form” or “figure”. Different individuals can have the same kind of “natural power” in different degrees. One man may be naturally of keener intellect and stronger will than another: the weak power was what Aristotle called ἀδυναμία (impotentia). But whether the natural powers of the same individual can themselves increase or decrease in strength or intensity—and not merely the habits that affect these powers—is not so clear. Operative powers are certainly perfected (or injured) by the acquisition of good (or bad) habits. In the view of those who deny a real distinction between natural operative power or faculty and substance, it is, of course, the substance itself that is so perfected (or injured).
This attribute, therefore, is not found in all qualities; but it is found in qualities alone, and not in any other category or mode of being.
How are we to conceive this variation in intensity, this growth or diminution of any quality, in a substance in which such change takes places? On this point philosophers are not agreed. By “degree of intensity”—“intensio vel remissio [pg 307] qualitatis”—we understand the degree (or change of degree) in which the same numerical quality affects the same part or the same power of its subject, thus rendering this part or power formally more or less “qualified” in some particular way. This is clearly something quite different from the extension of the same quality to different parts (or its withdrawal from different parts) of the same extended subject. In a corporeal, extended substance, there can accordingly be question of both kinds of change, intensive and extensive; while in a simple, spiritual substance there can obviously be question only of intensive change of qualities. And the fact of intensive change of qualities is an undeniable fact of experience. In what manner does it take place? Some authors conceive it as an addition or subtraction of grades or degrees of the same quality. Others, conceiving qualities as simple, indivisible entities or “forms,” and thence denying the possibility of distinct grades of any quality, conceive such change to take place by this simple entity affecting its subject more or less intimately, becoming more or less firmly rooted, as it were, in its subject.[349] And they explain this more or less perfect mode of inherence in a variety of ways, all of which are grounded on certain texts of St. Thomas:[350] the quality receives a new accidental mode whereby it “communicates itself to” the subject, and “informs” the latter, more or less perfectly; or, it is educed more or less fully from the potentiality of its subject, thus qualifying the latter in the degree in which it is educed from, and rooted in, the latter.
These explanations are instructive, as illustrating the view that the actual reality of the accidental mode of being consists in its affecting, determining, the subject in which it inheres. St. Thomas, professing that he can attach [pg 308] no intelligible meaning to addition or substraction of grades,[351] teaches that the habit of charity, for example, can be increased “secundum essentiam” by “inhering more perfectly,” “being more firmly rooted” in its subject; for, he says, since it is an accident, “ejus esse est inesse. Unde nihil est aliud ipsam secundum essentiam augeri, quam eam magis inesse subjecto, quod est magis eam radicari in subjecto. Augetur ergo essentialiter... ita quod magis ac magis in subjecto esse incipiat.”[352] And elsewhere he concludes with the words: “Ponere igitur quod aliqua qualitas non augeatur secundum essentiam, sed augeatur secundum radicationem in subjecto vel secundum intensionem actus, est ponere contradictoria esse simul”.[353]