Ontology, or the Theory of Being

by P. Coffey

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]