Neither is it profitable to discuss the controversy which arose over the resting-place of the martyred child; for even in his grave he was pursued by malignant disputations. Enough for us to hear and to believe that the son of the kings of France was accompanied to the grave by a few humane municipals and by his faithful friend Lasne; and that his dust still reposes in an obscure spot of the Cemetery of S. Margaret, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, undisturbed and undistinguished under its grassy mound beneath the shadow of the church close by.
SUBSTANTIAL GENERATIONS.
II.
It is customary with most of the peripatetic writers to assume that the Aristotelic hypothesis of substantial generations, as understood by S. Thomas and by his school, cannot be rejected without upsetting the whole scholastic philosophy. Nothing is more false. Suarez, than whom no modern writer has labored more successfully in defending and developing the scholastic philosophy, rejects the fundamental principle of the Aristotelic theory, and maintains that no generation of new compound substances is possible, unless the matter which is destined to receive a new form possess an entity of its own, and be intrinsically constituted of act and potency, contrary to the universal opinion of the peripatetic school. “The first matter,” says he, “has of itself, and not through its form, its actual entity of essence, though it has it not without an intrinsic leaning towards the form.”[58] And again: “The first matter has also of itself and by itself its actual entity of existence distinct from the existence of the form, though it has it not independently of the form.”[59] That these two propositions clash with the Aristotelic and Thomistic doctrine we need not prove, as we have already shown that neither S. Thomas nor Aristotle admitted in their first matter anything but the mere potency of being; and although Aristotle sometimes calls the first matter “a substance” and “a subject,” he expressly warns us that such a substance is in potency, and such a subject is destitute of all intrinsic act.[60] Hence it is plain that the first matter of Suarez is not the first matter of the peripatetics; whence it follows that the form which is received in such a matter is not a strictly substantial form, since it cannot give the first being to a matter having a first initial being of its own. Hence the Suarezian theory, though full of peripatetic spirit, and formulated in the common language of the peripatetic school, is radically opposed to the rigid peripatetic doctrine, and destroys its foundation. “If the first matter,” says S. Thomas, “had any form of its own, it would be something in act; and consequently such a matter would not, at the supervening of any other form, acquire its first being, but it would only become such or such a being; and thus there would be no true substantial generation, but mere alteration. Hence all those who assumed that the first subject of generation is some kind of body, as air or water, taught that generation is nothing but alteration.”[61] This remark of the holy doctor may be well applied to the Suarezian theory; for in such a theory the first matter is “something in act” and has “a form of its own.” And, therefore, whoever adopts the Suarezian theory must give up all idea of truly substantial generations. Yet no one who has a grain of judgment will pretend that Suarez, by framing his new theory, upset the scholastic philosophy.
The truth is that, as there are two definitions of the substantial form (quæ dat primum esse materiæ: quæ dat primum esse rei), so also there are two manners of understanding the so-called “substantial” generation; and, whilst Aristotle and his followers assumed without any good proof[62] that the specific form of a generated compound gives the first being to the matter of the compound, and is, therefore, a strictly substantial form, the modern school demonstrates from the principles of the scholastic philosophy, no less than from positive science, that the specific form of a physical compound does not give the first being to the matter of the compound, but only to the compound nature itself; and, therefore, is to be called an essential rather than a truly and strictly substantial form.[63]
The primitive material substance, which is constituted of matter and substantial form, cannot but be physically simple—that is, free from all composition of parts—though it is metaphysically compounded, or (as we would prefer to say) constituted of act and potency. This being the case, it evidently follows that all substance physically compounded must involve in its essential constitution something else besides the matter and the substantial form; for it must contain in itself both that which gives the first being to the physical components, and that which gives the first being to the resulting physical compound.
Hence in all substance which is physically compounded of material parts there are always two kinds of formal constituents. The first kind belongs to the components, the second to the compound. The first consists of the substantial forms by which the components are constituted in their substantial being; which forms must actually remain in the compound; for the substantial being of the components is the material cause of the physical compound, and is the sole reason why the physical compound receives the name of substance. The second is the principle by which the first components, or elements, are formed into a compound specific nature. In other terms, the specific compound is “a substance,” because it is made up of substances, or primitive elements, constituted of matter and substantial form; whilst the same specific compound is “a compound” and is “of such a specific nature,” owing to the composition, and to such a composition, of the primitive elements. This composition is the essential form of the material compound.
We may here remark that the substantial forms of the component elements, taken together, constitute what may be called the remote formal principle of the compound essence (principium formale quod, seu remotum), whilst the specific composition constitutes the proximate formal principle of the same compound essence (principium formale quo, seu proximum). For, as each primitive element is immediately constituted by its substantial form, so is the physically compound essence immediately constituted by its specific composition.
It is hardly necessary to add that the matter which is the subject of the specific composition is not the first matter of Aristotle, but a number of primitive substances, and that these substances are endowed with real activity no less than with real passivity, and therefore contain in themselves such powers as are calculated to bind together the parts of the compound system, in this or in that manner, according to the geometric disposition and the respective distances of the same. For, as the power of matter is limited to local action, it is the local disposition and co-ordination of the primitive elements that determines the mode of exertion of the elementary powers, inasmuch as it determines the special conditions under which the Newtonian law has to be carried into execution. On such a determination the specific composition and the specific properties of the compound nature proximately depend.
The composition of matter with matter is confessedly an accidental entity, and arises from accidental action. It would, however, be a manifest error to pretend that such a composition is an accidental form of the compound nature. For nothing is accidental to a subject but what supervenes to it; whereas the composition does not supervene to the compound, but enters into its very constitution. On the other hand, the composition does not deserve the name of substantial form in the strict sense of the word, since it does not give the first being to the matter it compounds. We might, indeed, call it a substantial form in a wider sense; for in the same manner as a compound of many substances is called “a substance,” so can the form of the substantial compound be called “substantial.” But to avoid the danger of equivocation, we shall not use this epithet; and we prefer to say that the specific composition is the natural or the essential form of the material compound, so far at least as there is question of compounds purely material. This essential or natural form may be properly defined as the act by which a number of physical parts or terms are formed into one compound essence, or, more concisely, the act which gives the first being to the specific compound; which latter definition is admitted by the schoolmen, though, as interpreted by them, it leads to no satisfactory results, as we shall see presently.