Hence we gather that predicamental accidents are of different species, and accordingly demand distinct definitions. The accidental act, or accident strictly, is an act received in the subject and inhering in it; the intrinsic mode is an accidental actuality or modification resulting in the subject; the extrinsic mode is a simple connotation or respect arising between the subject and some correlative term. Accordingly, accidental being in general cannot be defined as “that which inheres in a subject”—quod inhæret alteri tamquam subjecto—for this definition does not embrace all accidentalities, but should be defined as “that which clings to a subject”—quod innititur alteri tamquam subjecto, the phrase “to cling to” being understood in a most general sense. This last definition covers all the ground of predicamental accidentalities; for it is, in fact, applicable to all accidental acts, intrinsic modes of being, and extrinsic connotations.
For the same reason, the subject is not to be defined as “that which receives within itself an accidental entity,” but as “that to which an accidental entity belongs,” and, taking the word “subject” in its most general sense, we may also define it, as Aristotle did, to be “that of which anything is predicated.” It is only by this last definition that we can explain the general practice of predicating of everything, not only its accidentalities, but also its attributes and essential properties. Such predications would be impossible, if the notion of subject were restricted to that which receives on [pg 180] itself accidental entities; for attributes are not accidents, and are not received in their subject, but spring forth from its very essence, as we are going presently to show.
When the thing predicated of any subject is an accidental act, then its subject is a subject of inhesion. When the thing predicated is an intrinsic mode, no matter whether essential, substantial, or accidental, then its subject is a subject of attribution. And when the thing predicated is only a connotation or a respect (modus se habendi ad aliud), then its subject is a subject of mere predication.
As we have stated that natural accidents cannot exist without a subject, the reader may desire to know how we can account for the accidents which, in the Holy Eucharist, exist without their substances. As a lengthy discussion of this philosophico-theological question would be here quite out of place, we will content ourselves with remarking that the Eucharistic species of bread, as described by S. Thomas and by the ancient scholastics, is not a natural and predicamental accident; and that, therefore, many things may be possible with the Eucharistic species which are not possible with natural accidents. It is not true, in fact, what some have maintained, that in the Holy Eucharist each of the accidents of bread exists without any subject. Theologians acknowledge that the quantity of the bread fulfils the duty of subject with regard to all the other accidents, and consequently that all the other accidents, after the consecration as before, cling to quantity. There is no need, therefore, of assuming color without a subject, or figure without a subject, or weight without a subject. This would simply mean color of nothing, figure of nothing, weight of nothing; which is not a miracle, but an absurdity. To account for the sacramental species, theologians need only to show that the quantity of the bread can exist miraculously without the substance of the bread. This is the only accident which remains without any subject whatever; for the Sacred Body, which ad modum substantiæ—that is, substantively, replaces the substance of the bread—is indeed under that quantity, but it is not affected nor modified by it, and therefore cannot be called its subject in the ordinary sense of the word, though some writers have called it a sacramental subject.
To show that quantity without the substance of which it is the quantity is not an impossibility, we must leave aside the idea that such a quantity is a form inherent in the substance. For the quantity of the mass which alone is destined to become the first subject of all the other accidents is made up of a number of material parts, and therefore is not a form, but a certain amount of actual matter, and fulfils the office of matter, as S. Thomas recognizes, and not that of form, as Suarez and others after him have erroneously assumed. Now, it is evident that as no number can be conceived without units, so neither can a quantity of mass be conceived without its parts; and that, if such parts or units are substances, the quantity of the mass will be nothing less than a number of substances. So long, then, as such a quantity remains, it cannot cease to be a number of substances, unless, indeed, each of the units of which it is made up, and which must always remain, be supernaturally deprived of that which places them formally in the rank of substances. [pg 181] This is, therefore, what must be done, and what is really done by transubstantiation. When, in fact, the words of the consecration are pronounced, and the Sacred Body of our Lord is constituted under the sensible symbol ad modum substantiæ (that is, not only substantially, but substantively), then the substantiality of every particle of the bread is superseded, and, so to say, supplanted by the new substance which lies under each of them, but which leaves intact the constituents of concrete quantity; for “the act and the power of substance,” and “whatever belongs to matter,” remains in each of them, as S. Thomas teaches, in accordance with the common doctrine of the ancient scholastics and of the fathers of the church.
Thus the quantity of the bread remains the same as before, and retains its formal and material constitution, notwithstanding the substantial conversion of the bread into the Sacred Body of our Lord. Had the modern scholastics paid more attention to this last point, they would have seen that the species of bread is none of those natural accidents, whether forms or formalities, which found a place in Aristotle's categories, but is a supernatural accident as perfectly constituted, in its own way, as substance itself, and therefore capable of being kept in existence by God without the help of a natural subject. The reader may infer from these remarks that the philosophical questions about natural or predicamental accidents are altogether distinct from, and independent of, those concerning the sacramental species; and that therefore nothing that philosophers may say about natural accidents can have any direct bearing on the explanation of the Eucharistic mystery.
One thing remains to be said regarding the distinction between accidental and substantial compounds. We have defined the first to be a compound “of substance and accident,” or a compound “of essence and something accidentally superadded to it.” The second we defined to be a compound “of substances uniting in one essence or nature.” But, as we noticed, the authors pledged to the theory of substantial generations admitted of no “substantial” compound but that which was believed to consist of matter and substantial form; and accordingly all compounds the form of which was an accidental entity, say composition, were considered by them as accidental. We observe that composition, though an accidental entity, is nevertheless the “essential” form of the compound, and gives it its “first” actuality. If, then, the compound is a distinct essence, and has a distinct name, and is called a distinct “substance,” as water, iron, gold, etc., its form, though an accident, is an essential constituent of the specific substance.
We cannot at present discuss the question of substantial generations; we only remark that, to avoid all useless disputes about words, a physical compound, when it contains nothing but what is needed for the constitution of its specific nature, may be called Unum per se naturale—i.e., a being essentially one; and when it has something accidentally superadded, it may be called Unum per accidens—i.e., a being accidentally one. This distinction of names, which is familiar to all philosophers, expresses the distinction [pg 182] of the things without having recourse to the terms of “substantial compound” and “accidental compound,” taken in the Peripatetic sense of the words. Thus, whilst the Peripatetics based their distinction between these compounds on a presumed difference between their forms, we draw our own from the presence or absence of anything not belonging to the specific nature of the compound. This we do in accordance with the true spirit of scholastic philosophy, not to say compelled by a philosophical necessity; for we know that the constituent form of a purely material compound, though essential with respect to the compound itself, is only an accident received in the substance of the components, as we may hereafter have an occasion to show. And now let us come to the attributes of complete beings.