Ontology, or the Theory of Being

by P. Coffey

88. Analysis of the Concept of Relation.—Relation is one of those ultimate concepts which does not admit of definition proper. And like other ultimate concepts it is familiar to all. Two lines, each measuring a yard, are equal to each other in length: equality is a quantitative relation. The number 2 is half of 4, and 4 is twice 2: half and double express each a quantitative relation of inequality. If two twin brothers are like each other we have the qualitative relation of resemblance or similarity; if a negro and a European are unlike each other we have the qualitative relation of dissimilarity. The steam of the locomotive moves the train: a relation of efficient causality, of efficient cause to effect. The human eye is adapted to the [pg 337] function of seeing: a relation of purpose or finality, of means to end. And so on.

The objective concept of relation thus establishes a conceptual unity between a pair of things in the domain of some other category. Like quantity, quality, actio and passio, etc., it is an ultimate mode of reality as apprehended through human experience. But while the reality of the other accident-categories appertains to substances considered absolutely or in isolation from one another, the reality of this category which we call relation appertains indivisibly to two (or more) together, so that when one of these is taken or considered apart from the other (or others) the relation formally disappears. Each of the other (absolute) accidents is formally “something” (“aliquid”; “τι”), whereas the formal function of relation is to refer something “to something” else (“ad aliquid”; “πρός τι”). The other accidents formally inhere in a subject, “habent esse in subjecto”; relation, considered formally as such, does not inhere in a subject, but gives the latter a respect, or bearing, or reference, or ordination, to or towards something else: “relatio dat subjecto respectum vel esse ad aliquid aliud”. The length of each of two lines is an absolute accident of that line, but the relation of equality or inequality is intelligible only of both together. Destroy one line and the relation is destroyed, though the other line retains its length absolutely and unaltered. And so of the other examples just given. Relation, then, considered formally as such, is not an absolute accident inhering in a subject, but is a reference of this subject to some other thing, this latter being called the term of the relation. Hence relation is described by the scholastics as the ordination or respect or reference of one thing to another: ordo vel respectus vel habitudo unius ad aliud. The relation of a subject to something else as term is formally not anything absolute, “aliquid” in that subject, but merely refers this subject to something else as term, “ad aliquid”. Hence Aristotle's designation of relation as “πρός τι,” “ad aliquid,” “to or towards something”. “We conceive as relations [πρός τι],” he says, “those things whose very entity itself we regard as being somehow of other things or to another thing.”[399]

To constitute a relation of whatsoever kind, three elements or factors are essential: the two extremes of the relation, viz. the [pg 338] subject of the relation and the term to which the subject is referred, and what is called the foundation, or basis, or ground, or reason, of the relation (fundamentum relationis). This latter is the cause or reason on account of which the subject bears the relation to its term. It is always something absolute, in the extremes of the relation. Hence it follows that we may regard any relation in two ways, either formally as the actual bond or link of connexion between the extremes, or fundamentally, i.e. as in its cause or foundation in these extremes. This is expressed technically by distinguishing between the relation secundum esse in and secundum esse ad, i.e. between the absolute entity of its foundation in the subject and the purely relative entity in which the relation itself formally consists. Needless to say, the latter, whatever it is, does not add any absolute entity to that of either extreme. But in what does this relative entity itself consist? Before attempting an answer to this question we must endeavour to distinguish, in the next section ([89]), between purely logical relations and relations which are in some true sense real. Here we may note certain corollaries from the concept of relation as just analysed.

Realities of which the objective concept of relation is verified derive from this latter certain properties or special characteristics. The first of these is reciprocity: two related extremes are as such intelligible only in reference to each other: father to son, half to double, like to like, etc., and vice versa: Correlativa se invicem connotant. The second is that things related to one another are collateral or concomitant in nature: Correlativa sunt simul natura: neither related extreme is as such naturally prior to the other. This is to be understood of the relation only in its formal aspect, not fundamentally. Fundamentally or materialiter, the cause for instance is naturally prior to its effect. The third is that related things are concomitant logically, or in the order of knowledge: Correlativa sunt simul cognitione: a reality can be known and defined as relative to another reality only by the simultaneous cognition of both extremes of the relation.

89. Logical Relations.—Logical relations are those which are created by our own thought, and which can have no being other than the being which they have in and for our thought. That there are such relations, which are the exclusive product of our thought-activity, is universally admitted. The mind can reflect on its own [pg 339] direct concepts; it can compare and co-ordinate and subordinate them among themselves; it thus forms ideas of relations between those concepts, ideas which the scholastics call reflex or logical ideas, or “secundæ intentiones mentis”. These relations are entia rationis, purely logical relations. Such, for instance, are the relations of genus to species, of predicate to subject, the relations described in Logic as the prædicabilia. Moreover we can compare our direct universal concepts with the individual realities they represent, and see that this feature or mode of universality in the concept, its “intentio universalitatis” is a logical relation of the concept to the reality which it represents: a logical relation, inasmuch as its subject (the concept) and its foundation (the abstractness of the concept) are in themselves pure products of our thought-activity. Furthermore, we are forced by the imperfection of the thought-processes whereby we apprehend reality—conception of abstract ideas, limitation of concepts in extension and intension, affirmation and negation, etc.—to apprehend conceptual limitations, negations, comparisons, etc., in a word, all logical entities, as if they were realities, or after the manner of realities, i.e. to conceive what is really “nothing” as if it were really “something,” to conceive the non-ens as if it were an ens, to conceive it per modum entis ([3]). And when we compare these logical entities with one another, or with real entities, the relations thus established by our thought are all logical relations. Finally, it follows from this same imperfection in our human modes of thought that we sometimes understand things only by attributing to these certain logical relations, i.e. relations which affect not the reality of these things, their esse reale, but only the mode of their presence in our minds, their esse ideale ([4]).

In view of the distinction between logical relations and those we shall presently describe as real relations, and especially in view of the prevalent tendency in modern philosophy to regard all relations as merely logical, it would be desirable to classify logical relations and to indicate the ways in which they are created by, or result from, our thought-processes. We know of no more satisfactory analysis than that accomplished by St. Thomas Aquinas in various parts of his many monumental and enduring works. In his Commentaries on the Sentences[400] he enumerates four ways in which logical relations arise from our thought-processes. In his Quaestiones Disputatae[401] [pg 340] he reduces these to two: some logical relations, he says, are invented by the intellect reflecting on its own concepts and are attributed to these concepts; others arise from the fact that the intellect can understand things only by relating, grouping, classifying them, only by introducing among them an arrangement or system of relations through which alone it can understand them, relations which it could only erroneously ascribe to these things as they really exist, since they are only projected, as it were, into these things by the mind. Thus, though it consciously thinks of these things as so related, it deliberately abstains from asserting that these relations really affect the things themselves. Now the mistake of all those philosophers, whether ancient, medieval or modern, who deny that any relations are real, seems to be that they carry this abstention too far. They contend that all relations are simply read into the reality by our thought; that none are in the reality in any true sense independently of our thought. They thus exaggerate the rôle of thought as a constitutive factor of known or experienced reality; and they often do so to such a degree that according to their philosophy human thought not merely discovers or knows reality but practically constitutes or creates it: or at all events to such a degree that cognition would be mainly a process whereby reality is assimilated to mind and not rather a process whereby mind is assimilated to reality. Against all such [pg 341] idealist tendencies in philosophy we assert that not all relations are logical, that there are some relations which are not mere products of thought, but which are themselves real.

90. Real Relations; Their Existence Vindicated.—A real relation is one which is not a mere product of thought, but which obtains between real things independently of our thought. For a real relation there must be (a) a real, individual subject; (b) a real foundation; and (c) a real, individual term, really distinct from the subject. If the subject of the relation, or its foundation, be not real, but a mere ens rationis, obviously the relation cannot be more than logical. If, moreover, the term be not a really distinct entity from the subject, then the relation can be nothing more than a mental comparison of some thing with itself, either under the same aspect or under mentally distinct aspects. A relation is real in the fullest sense when the extremes are mutually related in virtue of a foundation really existing in both. Hence St Thomas' definition of a real relation as a connexion between some two things in virtue of something really found in both: habitudo inter aliqua duo secundum aliquid realiter conveniens utrique.[402]

Now the question: Are there in the real world, among the things which make up the universe of our experience, relations which are not merely logical, which are not a mere product of our thought?—can admit of only one reasonable answer. That there are relations which are in some true sense real and independent of our thought-activity must be apparent to everyone whose mental outlook on things has not been warped by the specious sophistries of some form or other of Subjective Idealism. For ex professo refutations of Idealist theories the student must consult treatises on the Theory of Knowledge. A few considerations on the present point will be sufficiently convincing here.

First, then, let us appeal to the familiar examples mentioned above. Are not two lines, each a yard long, really equal in length, whether we know it or not? Is not a line a yard long really greater than another line a foot in length, whether we know it or not? Surely our thought does not create but discovers [pg 342] the equality or inequality. The twin brothers really resemble each other, even when no one is thinking of this resemblance; the resemblance is there whether anyone adverts to it or not. The motion of the train really depends on the force of the steam; it is not our thought that produces this relation of dependence. The eye is really so constructed as to perceive light, and the light is really such by nature as to arouse the sensation of vision; surely it is not our thought that produces this relation of mutual adaptation in these realities. Such relations are, therefore, in some true sense real and independent of our thought: unless indeed we are prepared to say with idealists that the lines, the brothers, the train, the steam, the eye, and the light—in a word, that not merely relations, but all accidents and substances, all realities—are mere products of thought, ideas, states of consciousness.

Again, order is but a system of relations of co-ordination and subordination between really distinct things. But there is real order in the universe. And therefore there are real relations in the universe. There is real order in the universe: In the physical universe do we not experience a real subordination of effects to causes, a real adaptation of means to ends? And in the moral universe is not this still more apparent? The domestic society, the family, is not merely an aggregate of individuals any one of whom we may designate indiscriminately husband or wife, father or mother, brother or sister. These relations of order are real; they are obviously not the product of our thought, not produced by it, but only discovered, apprehended by it.