The Principles Of Real Being. VI. Principles of Nominal Realities.
There are beings which are called real, not because they have any special reality of their own, but only on account of their objective connection with real beings. Thus possibilities are called “real,” although the things possible have no formal existence and no actual essence; relations are called “real” when they have real terms and a real foundation, although they are not found to possess (unless they be transcendental) any new and special reality; distinction, too, is called “real” from the reality of those things that are distinct, although distinction in itself is neither a new thing nor aught of any real thing. Hence possibility, relation, and distinction are to be looked upon as entities having only a conventional reality, from which their denomination of “real” has been desumed. Let us therefore inquire what are the principles on which these nominal realities depend.
Principles of possible being.
It has been proved, in one of our preceding articles, that every created being is constituted of an act, of a potential term, and of their formal complement. It is now to be observed that an act, when conceived as ready to be produced and to actuate its term, is called a “first act”—actus primus; whilst the same act, when already produced and existing in its term, is called a “second act”—actus secundus. In the same manner, the potential term, or the potency, when conceived as ready to be first actuated by an act and to complete it, is called a “first potency”—potentia prima; whilst the same term, when already actuated and completing its act, receives the [pg 290] name of “second potency”—potentia secunda.[85]
When treating of being as possible, it is evident that we cannot consider its act as really actuating a term; for such a real actuation would immediately be followed by the real actuality of the being. Yet the quiddity of a possible being is always conceived through the same principles and the same ratios through which the quiddity of the actual being is conceivable. For a being is adequately possible when an act is terminable or can give existence, when a term is actuable or can receive existence, and when, from the concurrence of the two, one complete actuality can result. The act, the term, and the complement are therefore implied in the possible no less than in the actual being; with this difference, however: that in the actual being the act and the term are actually existing in one another, whereas in the possible being the act and the term are not really existing in one another, but only mentally conceived as ready to conspire into one common existence. In other words, in the actual being the act is a second act, the term is a second potency, and the complement is a real and formal result; whilst in the possible being the act is a first act, the term is a first potency, and the complement is a mere resultability.
Hence the intrinsic possibility of a being may be regarded under two correlative aspects—that is either as the terminability of a first act, or as the actuability of a first potency. Under the first aspect, possibility involves a positive reality, because it implies a real entity which is eminently (that is, in a more perfect manner) pre-contained in the entity and power of its cause. Under the second aspect, possibility does not involve anything positive—unless we speak of the possibility of accidents, which require a positive subject—but only connotes something positive, to wit, the first act by which the term is to be formally actuated. Possibility, under this second aspect, and with reference to primitive beings, is nothing else than the potentiality with which we clothe nothingness when we conceive it as a term out of which beings are educed by creation; for nothingness thus conceived connotes the act by which the non-existing term can be brought into being.
Every possible being has, therefore, a twofold incomplete possibility—the formal and the material. The formal consists in the terminability of a first act; the material in the actuability of its term; while the complete and adequate intrinsic possibility of the being is a simple result of the concurrence of the two.
It must be manifest, as a consequence from the preceding remarks, that a possible being is not truly, but only nominally, real. For its material possibility, or its possible term, is only an entity of reason, since it means nothing more than a non-entity conceived as liable to actuation; and its formal possibility, or its possible act, although involving, as we have said, the notion of a positive reality [pg 291] eminently contained in the entity of the Creator, is still nothing formally in that line of reality to which we refer when we speak of its possibility. Thus the possibility of man, so far as it is eminently contained in the entity of the Creator, is no human entity at all, but simply God's entity and power; just as the possibility of velocity, so far as it is eminently contained in the entity of its cause, is no formal velocity at all, but simply the entity and power of the agent by which the velocity can be brought into being. Certainly, the velocity with which a drop of rain falls to the ground has no formal existence in the earth which produces it, but only in the drop itself; it being evident that the attractive power of the earth is not velocity, but the principle of its production. And the same is to be said of any other effect inasmuch as it is eminently contained in its efficient cause. Nothing, therefore, that is merely possible has any formal being in its cause; whence it follows that whatever is merely possible is nothing more than an entity of reason—that is, an unreality—whether we consider its material or its formal possibility. All entities, in fact, of which the act and the term are beings of reason, can have no actuality but an actuality of reason. Hence possible beings are themselves only beings of reason, and have no reality, either physical or metaphysical. Why, then, are they called real? Certainly not for what they are, but simply because their possibility is the possibility of real beings. Many philosophers are wont to style them metaphysical realities; but this is a mistake, for all metaphysical reality implies existence.