First, then, all being that has existence in nature is something complete, not only materially—that is, by having its term—but also formally, by having its own complete constitution or actuality. The difference between material and formal completion will be easily understood by an example. The sculptor carves the marble and makes a statue. The marble is the material term, and the figure resulting in the marble is the formal term, of his work. Hence the work of carving is materially complete in the marble and formally complete in the figure,[284] which is the actuality of the statue as such. And it is evident that, in speaking of a statue, such a figure is as worth mentioning as the marble and the carving. And therefore, as in the analysis of being we give a prominent place to the term which completes the act, we should do the same with regard to the actuality, which completes the essence. A writer in the Dublin Review, who has cleverly treated this subject, makes the following remark: "The constituents actus and terminus, or forma and materia, are recognized in the schools. The third constituent is not expressly mentioned there. But you hear of essentia and esse; and esse is the complementum. I have a fancy that the much-canvassed distinction between the ἐνέργεια and the ἐντελέχεια of Aristotle is really this, that ἐνέργεια is the actus, and ἐντελέχεια the complementum."[285] This remark is very judicious; for it is as certain that the complete being consists of essence and existence as it is certain that the essence consists of act and term; and, moreover, there is no less a distinction between the essence and its existence than between the act and its term. Hence the same reasons that led metaphysicians to give a conspicuous place to the act and its term in the analysis of the essence, show that a similar place should also be given to essence and its actuality in the analysis of the being.
In the second place, the formal complement of being is the only ground on which many different and opposite things can be predicated of one and the same being; as, for instance, activity and passivity, action and passion, to be, to be one, to be good, etc. It is, therefore, important not to leave in the shade that principle, without which no unity of being can be conceived.
Thirdly, an explicit knowledge and mention of such a complement is indispensable, in a great number of cases, when we have to explain how accidental modes not received in a substance can intrinsically belong to that substance—a thing which will never be radically explained without an explicit reference to the formal complement of the being in which those modes are to be found.
Fourthly, in the intellectual as well as in the sensitive nature the appetitive faculty cannot be accounted for, nor distinguished from the cognoscitive, unless we have recourse to this same formal complement, which constitutes the affectibility of the same natures—a truth which we must here simply state, as its demonstration belongs to special metaphysics.
Fifthly, it is unwise to expose the reader to the danger of confounding things having a metaphysical opposition to one another; for instance, the uniting with the union accomplished, the constituting with the complete constitution, the actuation with the actuality. But if the actuality is kept out of view when we give the principles of beings, such confusion will be almost unavoidable. I believe that it is owing to the omission of this third principle that even great philosophers have not unfrequently mistaken attitudes for acts, and actualities for forms.
Sixthly, after we have analyzed a primitive complete being, and found it to consist of three intrinsic principles, it is nothing but reasonable to keep them all equally in sight, and to make them all serve in their turn for the simplification of metaphysical investigations; especially as the distinct recollection of the act, of its term, and of the actuality of both will also draw the student's attention to the corresponding extrinsic principles—viz., to the creative power from which that act proceeds, to the nothingness out of which that term was educed, and to the last end for which that actuality obtained a place in the real order of things.
Lastly, by the consideration that these three intrinsic and relatively opposite principles constitute one primitive complete being, it becomes possible to account philosophically for the known fact that every creature bears in itself, in vestigio at least, as S. Thomas puts it, a more or less imperfect image of God's unity and trinity—a topic on which much might be said, were this the place for discussing the analogy between beings of different orders.
A few corollaries. From the resolution of complete beings into their intrinsic principles, and from the different character of these principles and of their principiation, a number of useful corollaries can be drawn, among which the following deserve a special attention:
1. It is a great mistake, and one which leads straight to pantheism, to assert, as Gioberti did, that creatures are not beings, but only existences. For if creatures have their own actual essence, they are not mere existences, but complete beings; and, if they have no essence, they cannot exist; as all existence is the actuality of some essence. Hence to assert that creatures are not beings, but only existences, amounts to saying that creatures have no essence, and that their existence is the existence of nothing—that is, non-existence. Moreover, mere existence is a simple actuality, and does not exhibit an intelligible ratio; hence, if creatures were mere existences, they would be intrinsically unintelligible, not only to us, as Gioberti pretends, but to God himself, who certainly does not understand what is intrinsically unintelligible. There is no need of insisting on such an unavoidable conclusion.
That the same assertion leads straight to pantheism is likewise evident. In fact, the absurdity of admitting existences which would be existences of nothing could not be escaped but by trying to pin them on the substance of God himself, and by saying, with the pantheist, that all such existences are nothing but divers actualities, or attitudes, or forms assumed by the divine substance. Thus, to escape one absurdity, we would fall into another.