Ontology, or the Theory of Being

by P. Coffey

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]