25. THE TRANSCENDENTAL ATTRIBUTES OR PROPERTIES OF BEING: UNITY, TRUTH,
AND GOODNESS.—So far, we have analysed the notions of Real Being, of
Becoming or Change, of Being as Possible and as Actual, of Essence and
Existence. Before approaching a study of the Categories or _Suprema Genera
Entis_, the highest and widest modes in which reality manifests itself, we
have next to consider certain attributes or properties of being which
reveal themselves as co-extensive with reality itself. Taking human
experience in its widest sense, as embracing all modes that are cognitive
or allied with consciousness, as including intellect, memory, imagination,
sense perception, will and appetite, as speculative, ethical or moral, and
esthetic or artistic,—we find that the reality which makes up this complex
human experience of ours is universally and necessarily characterized by
certain features which we call the _transcendental attributes or
properties of being_, inasmuch as they transcend all specific and generic
modes of being, pervade all its categories equally, and are inseparable
from any datum of experience. We shall see that they are not really
distinct from the reality which they characterize, but only logically
distinct from it, being aspects under which we apprehend it, negations or
other logical relations which we necessarily annex to it by the mental
processes whereby we seek to render it actually intelligible to our minds.
The first in order of these ontological attributes is _unity_: the concept
of that whereby reality considered in itself becomes a definite object of
thought. The second in order is _truth_: which is the conception of
reality considered in its relation to cognitive experience, to intellect.
The third is _goodness_: the aspect under which reality is related as an
object to appetitive experience, to will.
Now when we predicate of any reality under our consideration that it is
“one,” or “good,” or “true”—in the ontological sense to be explained,—that
which we predicate is not a mere _ens rationis_, but something real,
something which is really identical with the subject, and which is
distinguished from the latter in our judgment only by a logical
distinction. The attribution of any of these properties to the subject
does not, however, add anything real to the latter: it adds merely some
logical aspect involved in, or supposed by, the attribution. At the same
time, this logical aspect gives us real information by making explicit
some real feature of being not explicitly revealed in the concept of being
itself, although involved in, and following as a property from, the
latter.
There do not seem to be any other transcendental properties of being
besides the three enumerated. The terms “reality,” “thing,” “something,”
are synonymous expressions of the concept of being itself, rather than of
properties of being. “Existence” is not a transcendental attribute of
being, for it is not co-extensive with reality or real being. And although
reality _must_ be “_either_ possible _or_ actual,” “_either_ necessary
_or_ contingent,” “_either_ infinite _or_ finite,” etc., this necessity of
verifying in itself one or other member of any such alternatives is not a
property of being, but rather something essentially rooted in the very
concept of reality itself. Some would regard as a distinct transcendental
attribute of being the conception of the latter as an object of esthetic
contemplation, as manifesting order and harmony, as _beautiful_. This
conception of being will be found, however, to flow from the more
fundamental aspects of reality considered as _true_ and as _good_, rather
than directly from the concept of being itself.
26. TRANSCENDENTAL UNITY.—When we think of anything as one we think of it
as undivided in itself. The unity or oneness of being is the undividedness
of being: _Unum est id quod est indivisum in se: Universaliter quaecunque
non habent divisionem, inquantum non habent, sic unum dicuntur_.(133)
When, therefore, we conceive being as undivided into constitutive parts,
and unmultiplied into repetitions of itself, we conceive it as _a_ being,
as _one_. For the concept of being, formally as one, it does not seem
necessary that we conceive being as _divided or distinct from all other
being_. This second negation, of identity with other being, rather follows
the conception of being as one: being is distinct from other being because
it is already itself one: it is a prior negation that formally constitutes
its unity, namely, _the negation of internal division or multiplication of
itself_: God was truly _one_ from all eternity, before there was any
_other_ being, any created being, distinct from Him. The division or
distinction of an object of thought from whatever is not itself is what
constitutes the notion of _otherness_.(134)
It is manifest that being and unity are really identical, that when we
think of being we think of what is really undivided in itself, that once
we introduce dividedness into the object of our concept we are no longer
thinking of being but of _beings_, _i.e._ of a multitude or plurality each
member of which is a _being_ and _one_. For being, as an object of
thought, is either simple or composite. If simple, it is not only
undivided but indivisible. If composite, we cannot think of it as _a_
being, capable of existing, so long as we think its parts as separate or
divided: only when we think of them as actually united and undivided have
we the concept of _a_ being: and _eo ipso_ we have the concept of being as
one, as a unity.(135)
Hence the scholastic formulæ: _Ens et unum convertuntur_, and _Omne ens
est unum_. The truth embodied in these is so self-evident that the
expression of it may seem superfluous; but they are not mere tautologies,
and in the interests of clear and consistent thinking our attention may be
profitably directed to them. The same remark applies to much in the
present and subsequent chapters on the transcendental attributes of being.
27. KINDS OF UNITY.—(_a_) The unity we have been describing has been
called _transcendental_, to distinguish it from _predicamental_ unity—the
unity which is proper to a special category of being, namely, _quantity_,
and which, accordingly, is also called _quantitative_ or _mathematical_
unity. While the former is common to all being, with which it is really
identical, and to which it adds nothing real, the latter belongs and is
applicable, properly speaking, only to the mode of being which is
corporeal, which exists only as affected by quantity, as occupying space,
as capable of measurement; and therefore, also, this latter unity adds
something real to the being which it affects, namely, the attribute of
quantity, of which unity is the measure and the generating principle.(136)
For quantity, as we shall see, is a mode of being really distinct from the
corporeal substance which it affects. The quantity has its own
transcendental unity; so has the substance which it quantifies; so has the
composite whole, the quantified body, but this latter transcendental
unity, like the composite being with which it is identical, is not a _unum
per se_ but only a _unum per accidens_ (_cf._ _b_, _infra_).
We derive our notion of quantitative or mathematical unity, which is the
principle of counting and the standard of measuring, from dividing
mentally the continuous quantity or magnitude which is one of the
immediate data of sense experience. Now the distinction between this unit
and transcendental unity supposes not merely that quantity is really
distinct from the corporeal substance, but also that the human mind is
capable of conceiving as real certain modes of being other than the
corporeal, modes to which quantitative concepts and processes, such as
counting and measuring, are not _properly_ applicable, as they are to
corporeal reality, but only in an _analogical_ or _transferred_ sense (2).
The notion of transcendental unity, therefore, bears the same relation to
that of quantitative unity, as the notion of being in general bears to
that of quantified or corporeal being.
(_b_) Transcendental unity may be either _essential_ (or _substantial_,
“unum _per se_,” “unum _simpliciter_”), or _accidental_ (“unum _per
accidens_,” “unum _secundum quid_”). The former characterizes a being
which has nothing in it beyond what is essential to it as such, _e.g._ the
unity of any substance: and this unity is twofold—(1) _unity of
simplicity_ and (2) _unity of composition_—according as the substance is
essentially simple (such as the human soul or a pure spirit) or
essentially composite (such as man, or any corporeal substance: since
every such substance is composed essentially of a formative and an
indeterminate principle).(137)
Accidental unity is the unity of a being whose constituent factors or
contents are not really united in such a way as to form one essence,
whether simple or composite. It is threefold: (1) _collective_ unity, or
unity _of aggregation_, as of a _heap_ of stones or a _crowd_ of men; (2)
_artificial_ unity, as of a house or a picture; and (3) _natural_ or
_physical_ unity, as of any existing substance with its connatural
accidents, _e.g._ a living organism with its size, shape, qualities, etc.,
or the human soul with its faculties.(138)
(_c_) Transcendental unity may be either individual (singular, numerical,
concrete, real) or universal (specific, generic, abstract, logical). The
former is that which characterizes being or reality considered as actually
existing or as proximately capable of existing: the unity of an
_individual_ nature or essence: the unity whereby a being is not merely
undivided in itself but incapable of repetition or multiplication of
itself. It is only the individual as such that can actually exist: the
abstract and universal is incapable of actually existing as such. We shall
examine presently what it is that _individuates_ reality, and what it is
that renders it capable of existing actually in the form of “things” or of
“persons”—the forms in which it actually presents itself in our
experience.
Abstract or universal unity is the unity which characterizes a reality
conceived as an abstract, universal object by the human intellect. The
object of a specific or generic concept, “man” or “animal,” for example,
is one in this sense, undivided in itself, but capable of indefinite
multiplication or repetition in the only mode in which it can actually
exist—the individual mode. The universal is _unum aptum inesse pluribus_.
Finally, we can conceive any nature or essence without considering it in
either of its alternative states—either as individual or as universal.
Thus conceived it is characterized by a unity which has been commonly
designated as _abstract_, or (by Scotists) as _formal_ unity.
28. MULTITUDE AND NUMBER.—The _one_ has for its correlative the
_manifold_. Units, one of which is not the other, constitute multitude or
plurality. If unity is the negation of actual division in being, multitude
results from a second negation, that, namely, by which the undivided being
or unit is marked off or divided from other units.(139) We have defined
unity by the negation of actual _intrinsic_ dividedness; and we have seen
it to be compatible with _extrinsic_ dividedness, or otherness. Thus the
vague notion of dividedness is anterior to that of unity. Now multitude
involves dividedness; but it also involves and presupposes the intrinsic
undividedness or _unity_ of each constituent of the manifold. In the real
order of things the _one_ is prior to all _dividedness_; but on account of
the sensuous origin of our concepts we can define the former only by
exclusion of the latter. The order in which we obtain these ideas seems,
therefore, to be as follows: “first _being_, then _dividedness_, next
_unity_ which excludes dividedness, and finally _multitude_ which consists
of units”.(140)
The relation of the _one_ to the _manifold_ is that of undivided being to
divided being. The same reality cannot be one and manifold under the same
aspect; though obviously a being may be actually one and potentially
manifold or _vice versa_, or one under a certain aspect and manifold under
another aspect.
From the transcendental plurality or multitude which we have just
described we can distinguish _predicamental_ or _quantitative_ plurality:
a distinction which is to be understood in the same way as when applied to
unity. Quantitative multitude is the actually separated or divided
condition of quantified being. _Number_ is a multitude measured or counted
by unity: it is a _counted_, and, therefore, necessarily a _definite_ and
_finite_ multitude. Now it is _mathematical_ unity that is, properly, the
principle of number and the standard or measure of all counting; and
therefore it is only to realities which fall within the category of
quantity—in other words, to material being—that the concept of number is
properly applicable. No doubt we can and do conceive transcendental unity
after the analogy of the quantitative unity which is the principle of
counting and measuring; and no doubt we can use the transcendental concept
of “actually undivided being” as a principle of enumeration, and so
“count” or “enumerate” spiritual beings; but this counting is only
analogical; and many philosophers, following Aristotle and St. Thomas,
hold that the concepts of _numerical_ multiplicity and _numerical_
distinction are not properly applicable to immaterial beings, that these
latter differ individually from one another _not numerically_, but each by
its whole nature or essence, that is, _formally_.(141)
29. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE UNIVERSAL.—We have distinguished transcendental
unity into individual and universal (27, _c_). Reality as endowed with
universal unity is reality as apprehended by abstract thought to be
capable of indefinite repetition or multiplication of itself in actual
existence. Reality as endowed with individual unity is reality apprehended
as actually existing, or as proximately capable of actually existing, and
as therefore incapable of any repetition or multiplication of itself, of
any division of itself into other “selves” or communication of itself to
other “selves”. While, therefore, the universal has its reality only in
the individuals to which it communicates itself, and which thus embody it,
the individual has its reality in itself and of its own right, so to
speak: when it actually exists it is “_sui juris_,” and as such
incommunicable, “_incommunicabilis_”. The actually existing individual is
called in Latin a “_suppositum_”—a term which we shall render by the
English “thing” or “individual thing”. It was called by Aristotle the
οὐσία πρωτή, _substantia prima_, “first substance,” or “first essence,” to
distinguish it from the substance or essence conceived by abstract thought
as universal; the latter being designated as οὐσία δέυτερα, _substantia
secunda_, “second substance” or “second essence”.
Now it is a fundamental assumption in Aristotelian and scholastic
philosophy that whatever actually exists, or whatever is real in the sense
that as such it is proximately capable of actual existence, is and must be
individual: that the universal as such is not real, _i.e._ as such cannot
actually exist. And the manifest reason for this assumption is that
whatever actually exists must be, with entire definiteness and
determinateness, its own self and nothing else: it cannot be capable of
division or repetition of itself, of that which it really is, into “other”
realities which would still be “that individual thing”. But reality
considered as universal _is_ capable of such repetition of itself
indefinitely. Therefore reality cannot actually exist as universal, but
only as individual.
This is merely plain common sense; nor does the idealistic monism
which appears to attribute reality to the universal as such, and
which interprets reality exclusively according to the forms in
which it presents itself to abstract thought, really run counter
to this consideration; for what it really holds is not that
universals as such are real, but that they are phases of the
all-one reality which is itself _one individual being_.
But many modern philosophers hold that individuality, no less than
universality, is a form of thought. No doubt “individuality” _in
the abstract_ is, no less than universality, an object abstracted
from the data of experience by the mind’s analysis of the latter.
But this is not what those philosophers mean. They mean that the
individual as such is not a real datum of experience. From the
Kantian view that individuality is a purely mental form with which
the mind invests the datum, they draw the subjectivist conclusion
that the world, thus interpreted as consisting of “individuals,”
is a phenomenal or mental product for the objective validity of
which there can be to man’s speculative reason no sufficient
guarantee.
To this theory we oppose that of Aristotle and the scholastics,
not merely that the individual alone is actually existent, but
that as actually existent and as individual it is actually given
to us and apprehended by us in internal and external sense
experience; and that although in the inorganic world, and to some
extent in the lower forms of life, we may not be able to determine
for certain what portions of this experience are distinct
individuals, still in the world of living things generally, and
especially of the animal kingdom, there can be no difficulty in
determining this, for the simple reason that here reality is given
to us in sense experience as consisting of distinct individuals.
At the same time it is true that we can understand these individual
realities, interpret them, read the meaning of them, only by the
intellectual function of judgment, _i.e._ by the analytic and synthetic
activity whereby we abstract and universalize certain aspects of them, and
use these aspects as predicates of the individuals. Now, seeing that
intellectual thought, as distinct from sense experience, apprehends its
objects only as abstract and potentially universal, only as static,
self-identical, possible essences, and nevertheless predicates these of
the concrete, individual, contingent, actually existing “things” of sense
experience, identifying them with the latter in affirmative judgments;
seeing moreover, that—since the intellectual knowledge we thus acquire
about the data of sense experience is genuine and not chimerical—those
“objects” of abstract thought must be likewise real, and must be really in
those individual sense data (according to the theory of knowledge which
finds its expression in Moderate Realism),—there arises immediately the
problem, or rather the group of problems, regarding the relations between
reality as revealed to intellect, _i.e._ as abstract and universal, and
reality as revealed to sense, _i.e._ as concrete and individual. In other
words, we have to inquire how we are to interpret intellectually the fact
that reality, which as a possible essence is _universal_ for abstract
thought, is nevertheless, as actually existing, _individualized_ for
sense—and consequently for intellect reflecting on the data of sense.(142)
30. THE “METAPHYSICAL GRADES OF BEING” IN THE INDIVIDUAL.—What, then is
the relation between all that intellect can apprehend in the individual,
_viz._ its lowest class essence or specific nature, and its whole nature
as an individual, its _essentia atoma_ or individual nature? We can best
approach this problem by considering first these various abstract
thought-objects which intellect can apprehend in the individual.
What are called the metaphysical grades of being, those positive moments
of perfection or reality which the mind detects in the individual, as, for
instance, substantiality, materiality, organic life, animality,
rationality, individuality, in the individual man—whether we describe them
as “phases” or “aspects” or “formalities” of being—are undoubtedly
distinct objects for abstract thought. Why does it thus distinguish
between them, and express them by distinct concepts, even when it finds
them embodied in a single individual? Because, reflecting on the manner in
which reality presents itself, through sense experience, as actually
existing, it finds resemblances and differences between individually
distinct data. It finds in some of them grades of reality which it does
not find in others, individual, specific, and generic grades; and
some—transcendental—grades common to all. Now between these various grades
of being as found in one and the same individual it cannot be denied that
there exists a logical distinction with a foundation or ground for it in
the individual reality; because the latter, _being more or less similar_
to other individual realities, causes the mind to apprehend it by a number
of distinct concepts: the individuality whereby it differs really from all
other individuals of the same species; the specific, differential and
generic grades of being whereby it is conceptually identified with wider
and wider classes of things; and the transcendental grades whereby it is
conceptually identified with all others. The _similarity_ of really
distinct individuals, which is the _conceptual identity_ of their
_qualities_, is the ground on which we conceptually identify their
_essences_. Now is there any reason for thinking that these grounds of
similarity, as found in the individual, are _really distinct_ from one
another in the latter? They are certainly conceptually distinct
expressions—each less inadequate than the wider ones—of what is really one
individual essence. But we must take them to be all really identical in
and with this individual essence, unless we are prepared to hold
conceptual plurality as such to be real plurality; in which case we should
also hold conceptual unity as such to be real unity. But this latter view
is precisely the error of extreme realism, of reifying abstract concepts
and holding the “_universale a parte rei_”: a theory which leads logically
to monism.(143)
31. INDIVIDUALITY.—The distinction, therefore, between these grades of
being in the individual, is a virtual distinction, _i.e._ a logical
distinction with a ground for it in the reality. This is the sort of
distinction which exists between the specific nature of the individual,
_i.e._ what is contained in the definition of the lowest class to which it
belongs, and its _individuality_, _i.e._ what constitutes its _nature or
essence as an individual_. No doubt the concrete existing individual
contains, besides its individual nature or essence, a variety of
accidental characteristics which serve as marks or signs whereby its
individuality _is revealed to us_. These are called “individualizing
characteristics,” “_notae individuantes_,” the familiar scholastic list of
them being “_forma_, _figura_, _locus_, _tempus_, _stirps_, _patria_,
_nomen_,” with manifest reference to the individual “man”. But though
these characteristics enable us to mark off the individual in space and
time from other individuals of the same class, thus _revealing_
individuality to us in the concrete, it cannot be held that they
constitute the individuality of the nature or substance in each case. If
the human substance, essence, or nature, as found in Socrates, were held
to differ from the human substance, essence, or nature, as found in Plato,
only by the fact that in each it is affected by a different set of
accidents, _i.e._ of modes accidental to the substance as found in each,
then it would follow that this substance is not merely _conceptually_
identical in both, but that it is _really_ identical in both; which is the
error of extreme realism. As a matter of fact it is the converse that is
true: the sets of accidents are distinct because they affect individual
substances already really and individually distinct.
It is manifest that the accidents which are _separable_ from the
individual substance, _e.g._ name, shape, size, appearance, location,
etc., cannot constitute its individuality. There are, however, other
characteristics which are _inseparable_ from the individual substance, or
which are _properties_ of the latter, _e.g._ the fact that an individual
man was born of certain parents. Perhaps it is such characteristics that
give its individuality to the individual substance?(144) To think so would
be to misunderstand the question under discussion. We are not now
inquiring into the _extrinsic_ causes whereby actually existing reality is
individuated, into the _efficient_ principles of its individuation, but
into the _formal_ and _intrinsic_ principle of the latter. There must
obviously be something intrinsic to the individual reality itself whereby
it is individuated. And it is about this intrinsic something we are
inquiring. The individual man is this individual, human nature is thus
individuated in him, by something that is essential to human nature as
found in him. This something has been called—after the analogy of the
_differentia specifica_ which differentiates species within a genus—the
_differentia individua_ of the individual. It has also been called by some
the _differentia numerica_, and by Scotists the _haecceitas_. However we
are to conceive this something, it is certain at all events that,
considered as it is really found in the individual, it cannot be anything
_really distinct_ from the specific nature of the latter. No doubt, the
_differentia specifica_, considered in the abstract, it is not essential
and intrinsic to the _natura generica_ considered in the abstract: it is
extrinsic and accidental to the abstract content of the latter notion; but
this is because we are conceiving these grades of being in the abstract.
The same is true of the _differentia individua_ as compared with the
_natura specifica_ in the abstract. But we are now considering these
grades of reality as they are actually in the concrete individual being:
and as they are found here, we have seen that a real distinction between
them is inadmissible.
32. THE “PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUATION”.—How, then, are we to conceive this
something which individuates reality? It may be well to point out that for
the erroneous doctrine of extreme realism, which issues in monism, the
problem of individuation, as here understood, does not arise. For the
monist all plurality in being is merely apparent, not real: there can be
no question of a real distinction between individual and individual.(145)
Similarly, the nominalist and the conceptualist evade the problem. For
these the individual alone is not merely formally real: it alone is
fundamentally real: the universal is not even fundamentally real, has no
foundation in reality, and thus all scientific knowledge of reality as
revealed in sense experience is rendered impossible. But for the moderate
realist, while the individual alone is formally real, the universal is
fundamentally real, and hence the problem arises. It may be forcibly
stated in the form of a paradox: That whereby Socrates and Plato are
really distinct from each other as individuals is really identical with
the human nature which is really in both. But what individuates human
nature in Socrates, or in Plato, is logically distinct from the human
nature that is really in Socrates, and really in Plato. We have only to
inquire, therefore, whether the intrinsic principle of individuation is to
be conceived merely as a negation, as something negative added by the mind
to the concept of the specific nature, whereby the latter is apprehended
as incapable of multiplication into “others” each of which would be
formally that same nature, or, in other words, as incommunicable; or is
the intrinsic ground of this incommunicability to be conceived as
something positive, not indeed as something really distinct from, and
superadded to, the specific nature, but as a positive aspect of the
latter, an aspect, moreover, not involved in the concept of the specific
nature considered in the abstract.
Of the many views that have been put forward on this question two or three
call for some attention. In the opinion of Thomists generally, the
principle which individuates _material_ things, thus multiplying
numerically the same specific nature, is to be conceived as a positive
mode affecting the latter and revealing it in a new aspect, whereas the
specific nature of the _spiritual_ individual is itself formally an
individual. The principle of the latter’s individuation is already
involved in the very concept of its specific nature, and therefore is not
to be conceived as a distinct positive aspect of the latter but simply as
the absence of plurality and communicability in the latter. In material
things, moreover, the positive mode or aspect whereby the specific nature
is found numerically multiplied, and incommunicable as it exists in each,
consists in the fact that such a specific nature involves in its very
constitution a _material_ principle which is actually allied with certain
_quantitative dimensions_. Hence the principle which individuates material
substances is not to be conceived—after the manner in which Scotists
conceive it—as an ultimate _differentia_ affecting the _formal_ factor of
the nature, determining the specific nature just as the _differentia
specifica_ determines the generic nature, but as a _material_
differentiating principle. What individuates the material individual, what
marks it off as one in itself, distinct or divided from other individuals
of the same specific nature, and incommunicable in that condition, is the
material factor of that individual’s nature—not, indeed, the material
factor, _materia prima_, considered in the abstract, but the material
factor as proximately capable of actual existence by being allied to
certain more or less definite spatial or quantitative dimensions: “matter
affected with quantity”: “_materia quantitate signata_”.(146)
In regard to material substances this doctrine embraces two separate
contentions: (_a_) that the principle which individuates such a substance
must be conceived as something positive, not really distinct from, but yet
not contained in, the specific nature considered in the abstract; (_b_)
that this positive aspect is to be found not in the formal but in the
material principle of the composite corporeal substance.
To the former contention it might be objected that what individuates the
specific nature cannot be conceived as anything _positive_, superadded to
this nature: it cannot be anything _accidental_ to the latter, for if it
were, the individual would be only an accidental unity, a “_unum per
accidens_” and would be constituted by an accident, which we have seen to
be inadmissible; nor, on the other hand, can it be anything _essential_ to
the specific nature, for if it were, then individuals should be capable of
adequate essential definition, and furthermore the definition of the
specific nature would not really give the whole essence or _quidditas_ of
the individuals—two consequences which are commonly rejected by all
scholastics. To this, however, it is replied that the principle of
individuation is something essential to the specific nature in the sense
that it _is_ something intrinsic to, and really identical with, the whole
real substance or entity of this nature, though not involved in the
abstract concept by the analysis of which we reach the definition or
_quidditas_ of this nature. What individuates Socrates is certainly
essential to Socrates, and is therefore really identical with his human
nature; it is intrinsic to the human nature in him, a mode or aspect of
his human substance; yet it does not enter into the definition of his
nature—“_animal rationale_”—for such definition abstracts from
individuality. When, therefore, we say that definition of the specific
nature gives the whole _essence_ of an individual, we mean that it gives
explicitly the abstract (specific) essence, not the individuality which is
really identical with this, nor, therefore, the whole substantial reality
of the individual. We give different answers to the questions, “What is
Socrates?” and “Who is Socrates?” The answer to the former question—a
“man,” or a “rational animal”—gives the “essence,” but not explicitly the
whole substantial reality of the individual, this remaining incapable of
adequate conceptual analysis. The latter question we answer by giving the
notes that _reveal_ individuality. These, of course, are “accidental” in
the strict sense. But even the principles which constitute the
individuality of separate individuals of the same species, and which
differentiate these individuals numerically from one another, we do not
describe as _essential_ differences, whereas we do describe specific and
generic differences as _essential_. The reason of this is that the latter
are abstract, universal, conceptual, amenable to intellectual analysis,
scientifically important, while the former are just the reverse; the
universal differences alone are principles about which we can have
scientific knowledge, for “all science is of the abstract and
universal”;(147) and this is what we have in mind when we describe them as
“essential” or “formal,” and individual differences as “entitative” or
“material”.
The second point in the Thomistic doctrine is that corporeal substances
are individuated by reason of their _materiality_. The formative,
specific, determining principle of the corporeal substance is rendered
_incommunicable_ by its union with the material, determinable principle;
and it becomes individually _distinct_ or separate by the fact that this
latter principle, in order to be capable of union with the given specific
form, has in its very essence an exigence for certain more or less
determinate dimensions in space. Corporeal things have their natural size
within certain limits. The individual of a given corporeal species can
exist only because the material principle, receptive of this specific
form, has a natural relation to the fundamental property of corporeal
things, _viz._ quantity, within certain more or less determinate limits.
The form is rendered incommunicable by its reception in the matter. This
concrete realization of the form in the matter is individually distinct
and separate from other realizations of the same specific form, by the
fact that the matter of this realization demands certain dimensions of
quantity: this latter property being the root-principle of numerical
multiplication of corporeal individuals within the same species.
On the other hand, incorporeal substances such as angels or pure spirits,
being “pure” forms, “_formæ subsistentes_,” wholly and essentially
unallied with any determinable material principle, are _of themselves_ not
only specific but individual; they are themselves essentially
incommunicable, superior to all multiplication or repeated realization of
themselves: they are such that each can be actualized only “once and for
all”: each is a species in itself: it is the full, exhaustive, and
adequate expression of a divine type, of an exemplar in the Divine Mind:
its realization is not, like that of a material form, the actuation of an
indefinitely determinable material principle: it sums up and exhausts the
imitable perfection of the specific type in its single individuality,
whereas the perfection of the specific type of a corporeal thing cannot be
adequately expressed in any single individual realization, but only by
repeated realizations; nor indeed can it ever be adequately, exhaustively
expressed, by any finite multitude of these.
It follows that in regard to pure spirits the individuating principle and
the specific principle are not only really but also logically,
conceptually identical; that the distinction between individual and
individual is here properly a specific distinction; that it can be
described as numerical only in an analogical sense, if by numerical we
mean material or quantitative, _i.e._ the distinction between corporeal
individuals of the same species (28).
But the distinction between individual human souls is not a specific or
formal distinction. These, though spiritual, are not _pure_ spirits. They
are spiritual substances which, of their very nature, are essentially
ordained for union with matter. They all belong to the same species—the
human species. But they do not constitute individuals of this species
unless as existing actually united with matter. Each human soul has a
transcendental relation to its own body, to the “_materia signata_” for
which, and in which, it was created. For each human soul this relation is
unique. Just as it is the material principle of each human being, the
matter as allied to quantitative dimensions, that individuates the man, so
it is the unique relation of his soul to the material principle thus
spatially determined, that individuates his soul. Now the soul, even when
disembodied and existing after death, necessarily retains in its very
constitution this essential relation to its own body; and thus it is that
disembodied souls, though not actually allied with matter, remain
numerically distinct and individuated in virtue of their essential
relation, each to its own body. We see, therefore, that human souls,
though spiritual, are an entirely different order of beings, and must be
conceived quite differently, from pure spirits.
We must be content with this brief exposition of the Thomistic
doctrine on individuation. A discussion of the arguments for and
against it would carry us too far.(148) There is no doubt that
what _reveals_ the individuality of the corporeal substance to us
is its material principle, in virtue of which its existence is
circumscribed within certain limits of time and space and affected
with individual characteristics, “_notae individuantes_”. But the
Thomistic doctrine, which finds in “_materia signata_” the formal,
intrinsic, constitutive principle of individuation, goes much
deeper. It is intimately connected with the Aristotelian theory of
knowledge and reality. According to this philosophy the formative
principle or ἔιδος, the _forma subtantialis_, is our sole key to
the intelligibility of corporeal things: these are intelligible in
so far forth as they are actual, and they are actual in virtue of
their “forms”. Hence the tendency of the scholastic commentators
of Aristotle to use the term “form” as synonymous with the term
“nature,” though the whole nature of the corporeal substance
embraces the material as well as the formal principle: for even
though it does, we can understand nothing about this “nature”
beyond what is intelligible in it in virtue of its “form.” The
material principle, on the other hand, is the potential,
indeterminate principle, in itself unintelligible. We know that in
ancient Greek philosophy it was regarded as the ἄλογον, the surd
and contingent principle in things, the element which resisted
rational analysis and fell outside the scope of “science,” or
“knowledge of the necessary and universal”. While it revealed the
forms or natures of things to sense, it remained itself impervious
to intellect, which grasped these natures and rendered them
intelligible only by divesting them of matter, by abstracting them
from matter. Reality is intelligible only in so far forth as it is
immaterial, either in fact or by abstraction. The human intellect,
being itself spiritual, is “receptive of forms without matter”.
But being itself allied with matter, its proper object is none
other than the natures or essences of corporeal things,
abstracted, however, from the matter in which they are actually
“immersed”. The only reason, therefore, why any intelligible form
or essence which, as abstract and universal, is “one” for
intellect, is nevertheless actually or potentially “manifold” in
its reality, is because it is allied with a material principle. It
is the latter that accounts for the numerical multiplication, in
actual reality, of any intelligible form or essence. If the latter
is material it can be actualized only by indefinitely repeated,
numerically or materially distinct, alliances with matter. It
cannot be actualized “_tota simul_,” or “once for all,” as it
were. It is, therefore, the material principle that not merely
reveals, but also constitutes, the individuation of such corporeal
forms or essences. Hence, too, the individual as such cannot be
adequately apprehended by intellect; for all intelligible
principles of reality are formal, whereas the individuating
principle is material.
On the other hand, if an intelligible essence or form be purely
spiritual, wholly unrelated to any indeterminate, material
principle, it must be “one” not alone conceptually or logically
but also really: it can exist only as “one”: it is of itself
individual: it can be differentiated from other spiritual essences
not materially but only formally, or, in other words, not
numerically but by a distinction which is at once individual and
specific. Two pure spirits cannot be “two” numerically and “one”
specifically, two for sense and one for intellect, as two men are:
if they are distinct at all they must be distinct for intellect,
_i.e._ they cannot be properly conceived as two members of the
same species.
In this solution of the question it is not easy to see how the
material principle, which, by its alliance with quantity,
individuates the form, is itself individuated so as to be the
source and principle of a multiplicity of numerically distinct and
incommunicable realizations of this form. Perhaps the most that
can be said on this point is that we must conceive quantity, which
is the fundamental property of corporeal reality, as being itself
essentially divisible, and the material principle as deriving from
its essential relation to quantity its function of multiplying the
same specific nature numerically.
Of those who reject the Thomistic doctrine some few contend that it is the
_actual existence_ of any specific nature that should be conceived as
individuating the latter. No doubt the universal as such cannot exist;
reality in order to exist actually must be individual. Yet it cannot be
actual existence that individuates it. We must conceive it as individual
before conceiving it as actually existent; and we can conceive it as
individual while abstracting from its existence. We can think, for
instance, of purely possible individual men, or angels, as numerically or
individually distinct from one another. Moreover, what individuates the
nature must be essential to the latter, but actual existence is not
essential to any finite nature. Hence actual existence cannot be the
principle of individuation.(149) Can it be contended that _possible_
existence is what individuates reality? No; for possible existence is
nothing more than intrinsic capacity to exist actually, and this is
essential to all reality: it is the criterion whereby we distinguish real
being from logical being; but real being, as such, is indifferent to
universality or individuality; as far as the simple concept of real being
is concerned the latter may be either universal or individual; the concept
abstracts equally from either condition of being.
The vast majority, therefore, of those who reject the Thomistic doctrine
on individuation, support the view that what individuates any nature or
substance is simply the whole reality, the total entity, of the
individual. This total entity of the individual, though really identical
with the specific nature, must be conceived as something positive,
superadded to the latter, for it involves a something which is logically
or mentally distinct from the latter. This something is what we conceive
as a _differentia individua_, after the analogy of the _differentia
specifica_ which contracts the concept of the genus to that of the
species; and by Scotists it has been termed “_haecceitas_” or “thisness”.
Without using the Scotist terminology, most of those scholastics who
reject the Thomist doctrine on this point advocate the present view. The
individuality or “thisness” of the individual substance is regarded as
having no special principle in the individual, other than the whole
substantial entity of the latter. If the nature is simple it is of itself
individual; if composite, the intrinsic principles from which it
results—_i.e._ matter and form essentially united—suffice to individuate
it.
In this view, therefore, the material principle of any individual man, for
example, is numerically and individually distinct from that of any other
individual, _of itself_ and independently of its relation either to the
formative principle or to quantity. The formative principle, too, is
individuated _of itself_, and not by the material principle which is
really distinct from it, or by its relation to this material principle.
Likewise the union of both principles, which is a substantial mode of the
composite substance, is individuated and rendered numerically distinct
from all other unions of these two individual principles, not by either or
both these, but by itself. And finally, the individual composite substance
has its individuation from these two intrinsic principles thus
individually united.
It may be doubted, perhaps, whether this attempt at explaining the
real, individual “manifoldness” of what is “one” for intellect,
_i.e._ the universal, throws any real light upon the problem. No
doubt, every element or factor which is grasped by intellect in
its analysis of reality—matter, form, substance, accident,
quantity, nay, even “individuality” itself—is apprehended as
abstract and universal; and if we hold the doctrine of Moderate
Realism, that the intellect in apprehending the universal attains
to reality, and not merely to a logical figment of its own
creation, the problem of relating intelligibly the reality which
is “one” for intellect with the same reality as manifestly
“manifold” in its concrete realizations for sense, is a genuine
philosophical problem. To say that what individuates any real
essence or nature, what deprives it of the “oneness” and
“universality” which it has for intellect, what makes it “this,”
“that,” or “the other” incommunicable individual, must be
conceived to be simply the whole essential reality of that nature
itself—leaves us still in ignorance as to why such a nature, which
is really “one” for intellect, can be really “manifold” in its
actualizations for sense experience. The reason why the nature
which is one and universal for abstract thought, and which is
undoubtedly not a logical entity but a reality capable of actual
existence, can be actualized as a manifold of distinct
individuals, must be sought, we are inclined to think, in the
relation of this nature to a material principle in alliance with
quantity which is the source of all purely numerical, “space and
time” distinctions.
33. INDIVIDUATION OF ACCIDENTS.—The rôle of quantity in the Thomistic
theory of individuation suggests the question: How are accidents
themselves individuated? We have referred already (29, _n._) to the view
that they are individuated by the individual subjects or substances in
which they inhere. If we distinguish again between what _reveals_
individuality and what _constitutes it_, there can be no doubt that when
accidents of the same kind are found in individually distinct subjects
what reveals the numerical distinction between the former is the fact that
they are found inhering in the latter. So, also, distinction of individual
substances is the _extrinsic_, _genetic_, or _causal_ principle of the
numerical distinction between similar accidents arising in these
substances. But when the same kind of accident recurs successively in the
same individual substance—as, for example, when a man performs repeated
acts of the same kind—what reveals the numerical or individual distinction
between these latter cannot be the individual substance, for it is one and
the same, but rather the _time_ distinction between the accidents
themselves.
The intrinsic constitutive principle which formally individuates the
accidents of individually distinct substances is, according to Thomists
generally, their essential relation to the individual substances in which
they appear. It is not clear how this theory can be applied to the
fundamental accident of corporeal substances. If the function of formally
individuating the corporeal substance itself is to be ascribed in any
measure to _quantity_, it would seem to follow that this latter must be
regarded as individuated by itself, by its own total entity or reality.
And this is the view held by most other scholastics in regard to the
individuation of accidents generally: that these, like substances, are
individuated by their own total positive reality.
When there is question of the same kind of accident recurring in the same
individual subject, the “time” distinction between such successive
individual accidents of the same kind would appear not merely to _reveal_
their individuality but also to indicate a different relation of each to
its subject as existing at that particular point of space and time: so
that the relation of the accident to its individual subject, as here and
now existing in the concrete, would be the individuating principle of the
accident.
Whether a number of accidents of the same _species infima_, and distinct
merely numerically, could exist simultaneously in the same individual
subject, is a question on which scholastic philosophers are not agreed:
the negative opinion, which has the authority of St. Thomas, being the
more probable. Those various questions on the individuation of accidents
will be better understood from a subsequent exposition of the scholastic
doctrine on accidents (Ch. viii.).
It may be well to remark that in inquiring about the individuation
of substances and accidents we have been considering reality from
a static standpoint, seeking how we are to conceive and interpret
intellectually, or for abstract thought, the relation of the
universal to the individual. If, however, we ascribe to “time”
distinctions any function in individuating accidents of the same
kind in the same individual substance, we are introducing into our
analysis the kinetic aspect of reality, or its subjection to
processes of change.
We may call attention here to a few other questions of minor
import discussed by scholastics. First, have all individuals of
the same species the same _substantial_ perfection, or can
individuals have different grades of substantial perfection within
the same species? All admit the obvious fact that individual
differs from individual within the same species in the number,
variety, extent and intensity of their accidental properties and
qualities. But, having the human soul mainly in view, they
disagree as to whether the substantial perfection of the specific
nature can be actualized in different grades in different
individuals. According to the more common opinion there cannot be
different _substantial_ grades of the same specific nature, for
the simple reason that every such grade of substantial perfection
should be regarded as specific, as changing the species: hence,
_e.g._ all human souls are substantially equal in perfection. This
view is obviously based upon the conception of specific types or
essences as being, after the analogy of numbers, immutable when
considered in the abstract. And it seems to be confirmed by the
consideration that the intrinsic principle of individuation is
nothing, or adds nothing, _really distinct_ from the specific
essence itself.
Another question in connexion with individuation has derived at
least an historical interest from the notable controversy to which
it gave rise in the seventeenth century between Clarke and
Leibniz. The latter, in accordance with the principles of his
system of philosophy,—the _Law of Sufficient Reason_ and the _Law
of Continuity_ among the _monads_ or ultimate principles of
being,—contended that two individual beings so absolutely alike as
to be _indiscernible_ would be _eo ipso identical_, in other
words, that the reality of two such beings is impossible.
Of course if we try to conceive two individuals so absolutely
alike both in essence and accidents, both in the abstract and in
the concrete, as to be indiscernible either by our senses or by
our intellect, or by any intellect—even the Divine Intellect—we
are simply conceiving _the same thing_ twice over. But is there
anything impossible or contradictory in thinking that God could
create two perfectly similar beings, distinct from each other only
individually, so similar, however, that neither human sense nor
human intellect could apprehend them as two, but only as one? The
impossibility is not apparent. Were they two material individuals
they should, of course, occupy the same space in order to have
similar spatial relations, but impenetrability is not essential to
corporeal substances. And even in the view that each is
individuated by its “_materia signata_” it is not impossible to
conceive numerically distinct quantified matters allied at the
same time to the same dimensions of space. If, on the other hand,
there be question of two pure spirits, absolutely similar
specifically, even in the Thomistic view that here the individual
distinction is at the same time specific there seems to be no
sufficient ground for denying that the Divine Omnipotence could
create two or more such individually (and therefore specifically)
distinct spirits:(150) such distinction remaining, of course,
indiscernible for the finite human intellect.
The argument of Leibniz, that there would be _no sufficient
reason_ for the creation of two such indiscernible beings, and
that it would therefore be repugnant to the Divine Wisdom, is
extrinsic to the question of their intrinsic possibility: if they
be intrinsically possible they cannot be repugnant to any
attribute of the Divinity, either to the Divine Omnipotence or to
the Divine Wisdom.
34. IDENTITY.—Considering the order in which we acquire our ideas we are
easily convinced that the notion of finite being is antecedent to that of
infinite being. Moreover, it is from reflection on finite beings that we
arrive at the most abstract notion of being in general. We make the object
of this latter notion definite only by dividing it off mentally from
nothingness, conceived _per modum entis_, or as an _ens rationis_. Thus
the natural way of making our concepts definite is by _limiting_ them; it
is only when we come to reflect on the necessary implications of our
concept of “infinite being” that we realize the possibility of conceiving
a being which is _definite_ without being really _limited_, which is
definite by the very fact of its infinity, by its possession of unlimited
perfection; and even then our imperfect human mode of conceiving “infinite
being” is helped by distinguishing or dividing it off from all finite
being and contrasting it with the latter. All this goes to prove the truth
of the teaching of St. Thomas, that the mental function of _dividing_ or
_distinguishing_ precedes our concepts of unity and multitude. Now the
concepts of _identity_ and _distinction_ are closely allied with those of
unity and multitude; but they add something to these latter. When we think
of a being as one we must analyse it further, look at it under different
aspects, and _compare it with itself_, before we can regard it as _the
same_ or _identical_ with itself. Or, at least, we must think of it twice
and compare it with itself in the affirmative judgment “This is itself,”
“A is A,” thus formulating the logical _Principle of Identity_, in order
to come into possession of the concept of _identity_.(151) Every
affirmative categorical judgment asserts _identity_ of the predicate with
the subject (“_S is P_”): asserts, in other words, that what we apprehend
under the notion of the predicate (_P_) is _really identical_ with what we
have apprehended under the _distinct_ notion of the subject (_S_). The
synthetic function of the affirmative categorical judgment _identifies_ in
the real order what the analytic function of mental abstraction had
_separated_ in the logical order. By saying that the affirmative
categorical judgment asserts identity we mean that by asserting that “this
is that,” “man is rational” we identify “this” with “that,” “man” with
“rational,” thus _denying_ that they are _two_, that they are _distinct_,
that they _differ_. Identity is one of those elementary concepts which
cannot be defined; but perhaps we may describe it as _the logical relation
through which the mind asserts the objects of two or more of its thoughts
to be really one_.
If the object formally represented by each of the concepts is one and the
same—as, _e.g._ when we compare “_A_” with “_A_,” or “man” with “rational
animal,” or, in general, any object with its definition—the identity is
both _real and logical_ (or _conceptual_, _formal_). If the concepts
differ in their formal objects while representing _one and the same
reality_—as when we compare “St. Peter” with “head of the apostles,” or
“man” with “rational”—the identity is _real, but not logical_ or formal.
Finally, if we represent two or more realities, “John, James, Thomas,” by
the same formal concept, “man,” the identity is _merely logical_ or
formal, _not real_. Of these three kinds of identity the first is
sometimes called _adequate_, the second and third _inadequate_.
Logical identity may be _specific_ or _generic_, according as we identify
really distinct individuals under one specific concept, or really distinct
species or classes under one generic concept. Again, it may be _essential_
or _accidental_, according as the abstract and universal class-concept
under which really distinct members are classified represents a common
part of the essence of these members or only a common property or
accident. Thus John, James and Thomas are essentially identical in their
_human nature_; they are accidentally identical in being all three
_fair-haired_ and _six feet in height_. Logical identity under the concept
of _quality_ is based on the real relation of _similarity_; logical
identity under the concept of _quantity_ is based on the real relation of
_equality_. When we say that _essential_ (logical) _identity_ (_e.g._ the
identity of John, James and Thomas under the concept of “man”) is based on
the fact that the really distinct individuals have really _similar_
natures, we merely mean that _our_ knowledge of natures or essences is
derived from our knowledge of qualities, taking “qualities” in the wide
sense of “accidents” generally: that the properties and activities of
things are our only key to the nature of these things: _Operari sequitur
esse._ It is not implied, nor is it true, that real _similarity_ is a
partial _real identity_: it is but the ground of a partial _logical_
identity,—identity under the common concept of some quality (in the wide
sense of this term). For example, the height of John is as really distinct
from that of James as the humanity of John is from that of James. If,
then, individual things are _really_ distinct, how is it that we can
represent (even inadequately) _a multitude_ of them by _one_ concept? To
say that we can do so because they reveal themselves to us as _similar_ to
one another is to say what is undoubtedly true; but this does not solve
the problem of the relation between the universal and the individual in
human experience: rather it places us face to face with this problem.
Reverting now to _real_ identity: whatever we can predicate affirmatively
about a being considered as _one_, and as subject of a judgment, we regard
as really identical with that being. We cannot predicate a real part of
its real whole, or _vice versa_. But our concepts, when compared together
in judgment, bear _logical_ relations of extension and intension to each
other, that is, relations of logical part to logical whole. Thus, the
_logical_ identity of subject and predicate in the affirmative judgment
may be only _inadequate_.(152) But the real identity underlying the
affirmative judgment is an adequate real identity. When we say, for
example, that “Socrates is wise,” we mean that the object of our concept
of “wisdom” is in this case really and adequately identical with the
object of our concept of “Socrates”: in other words that we are conceiving
one and the same real being under two distinct concepts, each of which
represents, more or less adequately, the whole real being, and one of them
in this case less adequately than the other.
We have to bear in mind that while considering being as one or manifold,
identical or distinct, we are thinking of it in its _static_ mode, as an
object of abstract thought, not in its _dynamic and kinetic_ mode as
actually existing in space and time, and subject to change. It is the
identity of being with itself when considered in this static, unchanging
condition, that is embodied in the logical _Principle of Identity_. In
order, therefore, that this principle may find its application to being or
reality _as subject to actual change_—and this is the state in which _de
facto_ reality is presented to us as an immediate datum of experience—we
must seize upon the changing reality and think of it in an indivisible
instant apart from the change to which it is actually subject; only thus
does the Principle of Identity apply to it—as _being_, not as _becoming_,
not _in fieri_, but _in facto esse_. The Principle of Identity, which
applies to all real being, whether possible or actual, tells us simply
that “a thing is what it is”. But for the understanding of actual being as
subject to real change we must supplement the Principle of Identity by
another principle which tells us that such an actual being not only is
actually what it is (Principle of Identity), but also that it _is
potentially something other than what it actually is, that it is
potentially what it can become actually_ (Ch. ii.).
We have seen that, since change is not continuous annihilation and
creation, the changing being must in some real and true sense _persist_
throughout the process of change. It is from experience of change we
derive our notion of time-duration; and the concept of permanence or
stability throughout change gives us the notion of a real sameness or
abiding self-identity which is compatible with real change. But a being
which persists in existence is identical with itself throughout its
duration only in so far forth as it has not changed. Only the Necessary
Being, whose duration is absolutely exempt from all change, is
_absolutely_ or _metaphysically_ identical with Himself: His duration is
eternity—which is one perpetual, unchanging _now_. A being which persists
unchanged in its essence or nature, which is exempt from substantial
change, but which is subject to accidental change, to a succession of
accidental qualities such as vital actions—such a being is said to retain
its _physical_ identity with itself throughout those changes. Such, for
instance, is the identity of the human soul with itself, or of any
individual living thing during its life, or even of an inorganic material
substance as long as it escapes substantial change. Finally, the
persisting identity of a collection of beings, united by some moral bond
so as to form a moral unit, is spoken of as _moral_ identity as long as
the bond remains, even though the constituent members may be constantly
disappearing to be replaced by others: as in a nation, a religious
society, a legal corporation, etc.
35. DISTINCTION.—Distinction is the correlative of identity; it is the
absence or negation of the latter. We express the relation called
distinction by the negative judgment, “this is not that”; it is the
relation of a being to whatever is not itself, the relation of _one_ to
_other_.
Distinction may be either _adequate_ or _inadequate_, according as we
distinguish one total object of thought from another total object, or only
from a part of itself. For example, the distinction between John and James
is an adequate real distinction, while that between John and his body is
an inadequate real distinction; the distinction between John’s rationality
and his animality is an adequate logical distinction, while the
distinction between either of these and his humanity is an inadequate
logical distinction.
We have already (23) briefly explained and illustrated the most important
classification of distinctions: that into real and logical; the
sub-division of the latter into purely logical and virtual; and of the
latter again into perfect (complete, adequate) and imperfect (incomplete,
inadequate). But the theory there briefly outlined calls for some further
analysis and amplification.
36. LOGICAL DISTINCTIONS AND THEIR GROUNDS.—The purely logical distinction
must not be confounded with a mere _verbal_ distinction, _e.g._ that
between an “edifice” and a “building,” or between “truthfulness” and
“veracity”. A logical distinction is a distinction _in the concepts_:
these must represent one and the same reality but in different ways: the
one may be more explicit, more fully analysed than the other, as a
definition is in comparison with the thought-object defined; or the one
may represent the object less adequately than the other, as when we
compare (in intension) the concepts “man” and “animal”; or the one may be
predicated of the other in an affirmative judgment; or the one may
represent the object as concrete and individual, the other the same object
as abstract and universal.(153)
Comparing, in the next place, the purely logical with the virtual
distinction, we see that the grounds for making these distinctions are
different. Every distinction made by the mind must have an intelligible
ground or reason of some sort—a _fundamentum distinctionis_. Now in the
case of the purely logical distinction the ground is understood to consist
exclusively in the needs of the mind itself—needs which spring from the
mind’s own limitations when confronted with the task of understanding or
interpreting reality, of making reality intelligible. Purely logical
distinctions are therefore seen to be a class of purely logical relations,
_i.e._ of those _entia rationis_ which the mind must construct for itself
in its effort to understand the real. They have no other reality as
objects of thought than the reality they derive from the constitutive or
constructive activity of the mind. They are modes, or forms, or terms, of
the cognitive activity itself, not of the reality which is the object
apprehended and contemplated by means of this cognitive activity.
The virtual distinction, on the other hand, although it also, as an object
of thought, is only an _ens rationis_—inasmuch as there is no real duality
or plurality corresponding to it in the reality into which the mind
introduces it, this reality being a real _unity_—the virtual distinction
is considered, nevertheless, to have a ground, or reason, or foundation
(for making and introducing it) in the nature of this one reality; that
is, it is regarded as having a _real_ foundation, a _fundamentum in re_.
In so far, therefore, as our knowledge is permeated by virtual
distinctions, reality cannot be said to be _formally_, but only
_fundamentally_ what this knowledge represents it to be. Does this fact
interfere with the objective validity of our knowledge? Not in the least;
for we do not ascribe to the reality the distinctions, and other such
modes or forms, which we know by reflection to be formally characteristic
_not of things_ but _of our thought or cognition of things_. Our
knowledge, therefore, so far as it goes, may be a faithful apprehension of
reality, even though it be itself affected by modes not found in the
reality.
But what is this _real_ foundation of the virtual distinction? What _is_
the _fundamentum in re_? It is not a real or objective duality in virtue
of which we could say that there are, in the object of our thought, two
beings or realities one of which is not the other. Such duality would
cause a _real_ distinction. But just here the difficulties of our analysis
begin to arise: for we have to fix our attention on actually existing
realities; and, assuming that each and every one of these is an
individual, we have to bear in mind the relation of the real to the
actual, of reality as abstract and universal to reality as concrete and
individual, of the simple to the composite, of the stable to the changing,
of essential to accidental unity—in any and every attempt to discriminate
in detail between a real and a virtual distinction. Nor is it easy to lay
down any general test which will serve even theoretically to discriminate
between them. Let us see what grounds have been mainly suggested as real
foundations for the virtual distinction.
If a being which is not only one but simple, manifests, in the superior
grade of being to which it belongs, a perfection which is equivalent to
many lesser perfections found really distinct and separate elsewhere, in
separate beings of an inferior order, this is considered a sufficient real
ground for considering the former being, though really one and simple, as
virtually manifold.(154) The human soul, as being virtually
threefold—rational, sentient and vegetative—is a case in point: but only
on the assumption that the soul of the individual man can be proved to be
one and simple. This, of course, all scholastics regard as capable of
proof: even those of them who hold that the powers or faculties whereby it
immediately manifests these three grades of perfection are _accidental_
realities, _really distinct_ from one another and from the _substance_ of
the soul itself.
Again, the being which is the object of our thought may be so rich in
reality or perfection that our finite minds cannot adequately grasp it by
any one mental intuition, but must proceed discursively, by analysis and
abstraction, taking in partial aspects of it successively through
inadequate concepts; while realizing that these aspects, these objects of
our distinct concepts, are only partial aspects of one and the same real
being. This, in fact, is our common experience. But the theory assumes
that we are able to determine when these objects of our concepts are only
mental aspects of _one_ reality, and when they are several separate
realities; nay, even, that we can determine whether or not they are really
distinct entities united together to form one _composite_ individual
being, or only mentally distinct views of one _simple_ individual being.
For example, it is assumed that while the distinction between the sentient
and the rational grades of being in a human individual can be shown to be
only a virtual distinction, that between the body and the soul of the same
individual can be shown to be a real distinction; or, again, that while
the distinction between essence, intellect, and will in God, can be shown
to be only a virtual distinction, that between essence, intellect, and
will in man, can be shown to be a real distinction.
37. THE VIRTUAL DISTINCTION AND THE REAL DISTINCTION.—Now scholastics
differ considerably in classifying this, that, or the other distinction,
as logical or as real; but this does not prove that it is impossible ever
to determine with certitude whether any particular distinction is logical
or real. What we are looking for just now is a general test for
discriminating, if such can be found. And this brings us to a
consideration of the test suggested in the very definitions themselves. At
first sight it would appear to be an impracticable, if not even an
unintelligible test: “The distinction is real if it exists in the
reality—_i.e._ if the reality is _two_ (or more) _beings_, not _one
being_—antecedently to, or independently of, the consideration of the
mind; otherwise the distinction is logical”. But—it might be objected—how
can we possibly know whether or not any object of perception or thought is
_one_ or _more than one_ antecedently to, or independently of, the
consideration of the mind? It is certainly impossible for us to know what,
or what kind, reality is, or whether it is one or manifold, apart from and
prior to, the exercise of our own cognitive activity. This, therefore,
cannot be what the test means: to interpret it in such a sense would be
absurd. But when we have perceived reality in our actual sense experience,
when we have interpreted it, got the meaning of it, made it intelligible,
and actually understood it, by the spontaneous exercise of intellect, the
judging and reasoning faculty: then, obviously, we are at liberty to
reflect critically on those antecedent spontaneous processes, on the
knowledge which is the result of them, and the reality which is known
through them; and by such critical reflection on those processes, their
objects and their products, on the “reality as perceived and known” and on
the “perceiving” and “knowing” of it, we may be able to distinguish
between two classes of contributions to the total result which is the
“known reality”: those which we must regard as purely mental, as modes or
forms or subjectively constructed terms of the mental function of
cognition itself (whether perceptual or conceptual), and those which we
must regard as given or presented to the mind as objects, which are not in
any sense constructed or contributed by the mind, which, therefore, are
what they are independently of our mental activity, and which would be and
remain what they are, and what we have apprehended them to be, even if we
had never perceived or thought of them. This, according to the
scholastics, is the sense—and it is a perfectly intelligible sense—in
which we are called on to decide whether the related terms of any given
distinction have been merely rendered distinct by the analytic activity of
the cognitive process, or are themselves distinct realities irrespective
of this process. That it is possible to carry on successfully, at least to
some extent, this work of discrimination between the subjective and the
objective factors of our cognitive experience, can scarcely be denied. It
is what philosophers in every age have been attempting. There are,
however, some distinctions about the nature of which philosophers have
never been able to agree, some holding them to be real, others to be only
virtual: the former view being indicative of the tendency to emphasize the
rôle of cognition as a passive representation of objectively given
reality; the latter view being an expression of the opposite tendency to
emphasize the active or constitutive or constructive factors whereby
cognition assimilates to the mind’s own mode of being the reality given to
it in experience. In all cognition there is an assimilation of reality and
mind, of object and subject. When certain distinctions are held to be real
this consideration is emphasized: that in the cognitive process, as such,
it is the mind that is assimilated to the objective reality.(155) When
these same distinctions are held to be logical this other consideration is
emphasized: that in the cognitive process reality must also be assimilated
to mind, must be mentalized so to speak: _Cognitum est in cognoscente
secundum modum cognoscentis_: that in this process the mind must often
regard what is _one_ reality under _distinct aspects_: and that if we
regard these distinct aspects as distinct realities we are violating the
principle, _Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_.
Now those philosophers who hold certain distinctions to be
virtual, and not real, thereby ascribe to cognitive experience a
larger sphere of constitutive or constructive influence than would
be allowed to it by advocates of the reality of such distinctions.
But by doing so are they to be regarded as calling into question
the objective validity of human knowledge? By no means: the fact
that the human mind can understand reality only by processes of
abstracting, generalizing, comparing, relating, analysing and
synthesizing—processes which involve the production of logical
entities—in no way vitiates the value of these modes of
understanding: it merely indicates that they are less perfect than
intuitive modes of understanding which would dispense with such
logical entities,—the modes characteristic of pure, angelic
intelligences, or the knowledge of the Deity. The objective
validity of human cognition is not interfered with either by
enlarging or by restricting the domain of the mind’s constitutive
activity in forming such logical entities; nor, therefore, by
claiming that certain distinctions are real rather than virtual,
or _vice versa_. It must be remembered, moreover, that the virtual
distinction is not purely logical: it has a foundation in the
reality, a “_fundamentum in re_”; and in so far as it has it gives
us an insight into the nature of reality.
No doubt, any particular distinction cannot be virtual and at the
same time simply real: either view of it must be erroneous: and
possibly both, if it happen to be _de facto_ a _purely_ logical
distinction. But the error of confounding a virtual distinction
with a real is not so great as that of regarding either as a
purely logical distinction. Now the tendency of much modern
philosophy, under the influence of Kant, has been to regard all
the categories in which the mind apprehends reality as being
wholly and exclusively forms of cognition, as being in the reality
neither formally nor even fundamentally; and to infer from this an
essential, constitutional inability of the mind to attain to a
valid knowledge of reality. But if, as a matter of fact, these
categories are in the reality formally, nay, even if they are in
it only fundamentally, the inference that issues in Kantian
subjectivism is unwarranted. And those categories we hold to be in
the reality at least fundamentally; we therefore reject the
Kantian phenomenism of the speculative reason. Moreover, we can
see no valid ground for admitting the Kantian division of the
human mind into two totally separate cognitive compartments, the
speculative and the practical reason, and ascribing to each
compartment cognitive principles and capacities entirely alien to
the other. To arrive at a right theory of knowledge human
cognitive experience as a whole must be analysed; but provided the
analysis is really an analysis of this experience it may be
legitimately directed towards discovering what the mental
conditions must be—_i.e._ the conditions on the side of the
knowing subject, the subject having the experience—which are
_necessarily prerequisite_ for having such experience. And if it
be found by such analysis that cognitive experience presupposes in
the knowing subject not merely a sentient and intelligent mind,
but a mind which perceives, imagines, remembers reality in certain
definite ways; which thinks reality in certain modes and through
certain forms which by its own constitutive activity it constructs
for itself, and which it recognizes by reflection to be its own
constructions (_e.g._ distinctions, relations, affirmations and
negations, abstractions, generalizations, etc.: _intentiones
logicae_, logical entities),—there is no reason whatever in all
this for inferring that because the mind is so constituted,
because it has these modes of cognition, it must necessarily fail
to reach, by means of them, a true, valid, and genuine knowledge
of reality. From the fact that human modes of cognition are human,
and not angelic or divine; from the fact that reality can be known
_to man_ only through these modes, these finite modes of finite
human faculties,—we may indeed infer that even our highest
knowledge of reality is inadequate, that it does not _comprehend_
all that is in the reality, but surely not that it is essentially
illusory and of its very nature incapable of giving us any true
and valid insight into the nature of reality.
Fixing our attention on the virtual distinction we see that the mind is
supposed by means of it to apprehend, through a plurality of distinct
concepts, what it knows somehow or other to be _one_ being. Now if it
knows the reality to be _really one_, it knows that the formal object of
every distinct concept of this reality is really identical with the
objects of all the other concepts of the latter. This condition of things
is certainly verified when the mind can see that each of the distinct
concepts, though not _explicitly_ presenting the objects of the others,
nevertheless _implicitly and necessarily_ involves all these other
objects:(156) for by seeing that the distinct concepts necessarily involve
one another objectively it sees that the reality apprehended through all
of them must necessarily be _one reality_. This is what takes place in the
_imperfect_ virtual distinction: the concepts prescind from one another
formally, not objectively. But suppose that the distinct concepts prescind
from one another _objectively_, so that they cannot be seen by any
analysis to involve one another even implicitly, but present to the mind,
so far as they themselves are concerned, adequately distinct modes of
being—as happens in the _perfect_ virtual distinction, _e.g._ between
organic life, sentient life, and intellectual life (in man), or between
animality and rationality (in man),—then the all-important question
arises: How do we know, in any given case of this kind, whether or not
these adequately distinct thought-objects are _identical with one another
in the reality_? What is the test for determining whether or not, in a
given case, these objects, which are _many_ for abstract intellectual
thought, are _one being_ in the real order? The answer seems to be that
_internal and external sense experience_ can and does furnish us with
embodiments of these intellectual manifolds,—embodiments each of which we
apprehend as _a being that is really one_, as an _individual subject_ of
which they are conceptually distinct predicates.
It would appear, therefore, that we cannot reach a true conception
of what we are to regard as _really one_, or _really manifold_, by
abstract thought alone. It is external and internal sense
experience, not abstract thought, which first brings us into
direct and immediate mental contact with _actually existing_
reality. What we have therefore to determine is this: Does sense
experience, or does it not, reveal reality to us as a _real
manifold_, not as _one being_ but as _beings_ coexisting outside
one another in space, succeeding one another in time,
interdependent on one another, interacting on one another, and by
this interaction causing and undergoing real change, each
producing others, or being produced by others, really distinct
from itself? In other words, is separateness of existence in time
or space, as revealed in sense experience, a sufficient index of
the real manifoldness of corporeal being, and of the really
distinct individuality of each such being?—or are we to take it
that because those space and time distinctions have to be
apprehended by thought in order that not merely sense but
intellect may apprehend corporeal beings as really manifold,
therefore these distinctions are not _in the reality_ given to us?
Or, again, is each person’s own conscious experience of himself as
one being, of his own unity, and of his distinctness from other
persons, a sufficient index that the distinction between person
and person is a real distinction?—or are we to take it that
because his _feeling_ of his individual unity through sense
consciousness must be interpreted by the _thought-concepts_ of
“one”—“individual”—“person”—“distinct” from “others,” these
concepts do not truly express what is really given him to
interpret? Finally, if we can infer from the actually existing
material reality which forms the immediate datum of direct
experience, or from the human _Ego_ as given in this experience,
the actual existence of a real mode of being which is not material
but spiritual, by what tests can we determine whether this
spiritual mode of being is really one, or whether there is a real
plurality of such beings? The solution of these questions bears
directly on the validity of the adequate or “greater” real
distinction, the “_distinctio realis major seu absoluta_”.
The philosophy which defends the validity of this
distinction,—which holds that the distinction between individual
human beings, and between individual living things generally, is
in the fullest and truest sense a real distinction,—is at all
events in conformity with universally prevailing modes of thought
and language; while the monism which repudiates these spontaneous
interpretations of experience as invalid by denying all real
manifoldness to reality, can make itself intelligible only by
doing violence to thought and language alike. Not that this alone
is a disproof of monism; but at all events it creates a
presumption against a system to find it running counter to any of
those universal spontaneous beliefs which appear to be rooted in
man’s rational nature. On the other hand, the philosophy which
accords with common belief in proclaiming a real plurality in
being has to reconcile intellect with sense, and the universal
with the individual, by solving the important problem of
_individuation_: What is it that makes real being individual, if,
notwithstanding the fact that intellect apprehends reality as
abstract and universal, reality nevertheless can exist only as
concrete and individual? (29-33).
38. THE REAL DISTINCTION.—In the next place it must be remembered,
comparing the virtual distinction with the real, that philosophers have
recognized two kinds of real distinction: the _major_ or _absolute_ real
distinction, and the _minor_ real, or _modal_ distinction. Before defining
these let us see what are the usual signs by which a real distinction in
general can be recognized.
The relation of efficient causality, of efficient cause and
effect, between two objects of thought, is sometimes set down as a
sure sign of a (major) real distinction between them.(157) And the
reason alleged is that a thing cannot be the efficient cause of
itself: the efficient cause is necessarily extrinsic to the effect
and cannot be really identical with the latter. It is to be noted
that this test applies to reality as actually existing, as
producing or undergoing change, and that it is derived from our
sense experience of reality in process of change. But since our
concept of efficient causality has its origin in our internal
experience of our own _selves_ as active agents, as causing some
portion of what enters into our experience, the test seems to
assume that we have already introduced into this experience a real
distinction between the self and what is caused by the self. It is
not clear that the relation of efficient cause to effect, as
applied to created causes, can precede and reveal, in our
experience, the relation of what is _really one_ to what is
_really other_, in this experience. If the reality revealed to us
in our direct experience, the phenomenal universe, has been
brought into existence by the creative act of a Supreme Being,
this, of course, implies a real distinction between Creator and
creature. But it does not seem possible in this case, or indeed in
any case, to prove the existence of the causal relation
antecedently to that of the real distinction, or to utilize the
former as an index to the latter.
Two distinct thought-objects are regarded as _really_ distinct (1) when
they are found to exist separately and apart from each other in time or
space, as is the case with any two individuals such as John and James, or
a man and a horse; (2) when, although they are found in the same
individual, one of them at least is separable from the other, in the sense
that it can actually exist without that other: for example, the soul of
any individual man can exist apart from the material principle with which
it is actually united to form this living human individual; the individual
himself can exist without the particular accidental modes, such as
sitting, thinking, speaking, which actually affect his being at any
particular instant of his existence.
From this we can gather in the first place that the distinction between
two “individuals,”—individual “persons” or individual “things”—is a real
distinction in the fullest and plainest sense of this expression, a major
or absolute real distinction. It is, moreover, not merely real but actual.
Two existing “individuals” are always actually divided and separate from
each other, while each is actually one or actually undivided in itself.
And they are so “independently of the consideration of the mind”.
In the second place, assuming that the mind can apprehend, in the
individuals of its experience, a unity resulting from the union or
composition of separable factors or principles, whether essential or
accidental [27 (_b_)]; and assuming that it can know these factors to be
really separable (though actually one and undivided), that is, separable
in the sense that each of any two such factors, or at least one of them,
could actually exist without the other,—it regards the distinction between
such factors as real. They are really distinct because though _actually_
one and undivided they are _potentially_ manifold. If each has a positive
entity of its own, so that absolutely speaking each could exist without
the other, the distinction is still regarded as an absolute or major real
distinction. For example, the human soul can exist without the body; the
body can exist without the soul, being actualized by the new formative
principle or principles which replace the soul at death; therefore there
is an absolute real distinction between the soul and the body of the
living human individual: although both factors form _one actual being_,
still, independently of the consideration of the mind _the one factor is
not the other_: each is really, though only potentially, other than the
factor with which it is united: the relation of “one” to “other” though
not _actually_ verified of either factor (since there is only _one actual_
being: the existing individual man), is potentially and really verified,
_i.e._ _verifiable_ of each. Again, the individual corporeal substance
can, absolutely speaking, exist without its connatural accident of
external or local extension; this latter can, absolutely speaking, exist
without its connatural substance;(158) therefore these are absolutely and
really distinct.
If only one of the factors is seen to be capable of existing without the
other, and the latter to be such that it could not actually exist except
as united with the former, so that the separability is not mutual, the
distinction is regarded still as real, but only as a _minor_ or _modal_
distinction. Such, for instance, is the distinction between a body and its
location, or its state of rest or motion: and, in general, the distinction
between a substance and what are called its accidental modes or modal
accidents. The distinction is regarded as real because reflection is held
to assure us that it is in the reality itself independently of the mind,
and not merely imposed by the mind on the reality because of some ground
or reason in the reality. It is called a modal distinction rather than an
absolute real distinction because those accidental modes of a substance do
not seem to have of themselves sufficient reality to warrant our calling
them “things” or “realities,” but rather merely “modes” or
“determinations” of things or realities. It is significant, as throwing
light on the relation of the virtual to the real distinction, that some
authors call the modal distinction not a real distinction but a
“distinctio _media_,” _i.e._ intermediate between a real and a logical
distinction; and that the question whether it should be called simply a
real distinction, or “intermediate” between a real and a logical
distinction is regarded by some as “a purely verbal question.”(159) We
shall recur to the modal distinction later (68).
In the third place it must be noted that separability _in the sense
explained_, even non-mutual, is not regarded as the _only_ index to a real
distinction. In other words, certain distinctions are held by some to be
real even though this test of separability does not apply. For instance,
it is commonly held that not merely in man but in _all_ corporeal
individuals the formative and the determinable principle of the nature or
substance, the _forma substantialis_ and the _materia prima_, are really
distinct, although it is admitted that, apart from the case of the human
soul, _neither_ can actually exist except in union with the other. What is
held in regard to _accidental_ modes is also applied to these essential
principles of the corporeal substance: _viz._ that there is here a special
reason why such principles cannot actually exist in isolation. Of their
very nature they are held to be such that they cannot be _actualized_ or
_actually exist_ in isolation, but only in union. But this fact, it is
contended, does not prove that the principles in question are merely
mentally distinct aspects of one reality: the fact that they cannot
actually exist as such separately does not prove that they are not really
separable; and it is contended that they are really and actually separated
whenever an individual corporeal substance undergoes substantial change.
This, then, raises once more the question: What sort of
“separation” or “separability” is the test of a real distinction?
Is it separateness in and for sense perception, or separateness in
and for intellectual thought? The former is certainly the
fundamental index of the real distinction; for all our knowledge
of reality originates in sense experience, and separateness in
time and space, which marks its data, is the key to our knowledge
of reality as a manifold of really distinct individual beings; and
when we infer from sense-experience the actual existence of a
_spiritual_ domain of reality we can conceive _its_ “individuals”
only after the analogy of the corporeal individuals of our
immediate sense experience. Scholastic philosophers, following
Aristotle, have always taken the manifoldness of reality, _i.e._
its presentation in sense experience in the form of “individuals,”
of “this” and “that,” “τοδὲ τι,” “_hoc aliquid_,” as an
unquestioned and unquestionable _real datum_. Not that they
naïvely assumed everything _perceived by the senses_ as an
individual, in time and space, to be really an individual: they
realized that what is perceived by sense as _one_ limited
continuum, occupying a definite portion of space, may be in
reality an aggregate of many individuals; and they recognized the
need of scrutinizing and analysing those apparent individuals in
order to test their real individuality; but they held, and
rightly, that sense experience does present to us some data that
are unmistakably real individuals—individual men, for instance.
Next, they saw that intellectual thought, by analysing sense
experience, amasses an ever-growing multitude of abstract and
conceptually distinct thought-objects, which it utilizes as
predicates for the interpretation of this sense experience. These
thought-objects intellect can unite or separate; can in some cases
positively see to be mutually compatible or incompatible; can form
into ideal or possible complexes. But whether or not the
_conceptually_ distinct, though mutually compatible,
thought-objects forming any such complex, will be also _really
distinct_ from one another, is a question which evidently cannot
arise until such a complex is considered as an actual or possible
_individual being_: for it is the individual only that exists or
can exist. They will be _really_ distinct when found actualized in
_distinct individuals_. Even the _conceptually_ one and
self-identical abstract thought-object will be _really distinct
from itself_ when embodied in distinct individuals; the one single
abstract thought-object, “humanity,” “human nature,” is really
distinct from itself in John and in James; the humanity of John is
_really other_ than the humanity of James.
Of course, if conceptually distinct thought-objects are seen to be
mutually incompatible they cannot be found realized except in
really distinct individuals: the union of them is only an _ens
rationis_. Again it may be that the intellect is unable to
pronounce positively as to whether they are compatible or not
(18): as to whether the complex forms a possible being or not. But
when the intellect positively sees such thought-objects to be
mutually compatible—by interpretation of, and inference from, its
actual sense experience of them as embodied in individuals
(18)—and when, furthermore, it now finds a number of them
co-existing in some one actual individual, the question recurs:
How can it know whether they are _really distinct_ from each
other, though actually united to form one (essentially or
accidentally composite) individual, or only conceptually distinct
aspects of one (simple) individual [27 (_b_)]?
This, as we have seen already, is the case for which it is really
difficult to find a satisfactory test: and hence the different
views to be found among scholastic philosophers as to the nature
of the distinctions which the mind makes or discovers _within the
individual_. The difficulty is this. The conceptual distinction
between compatible thought-objects is not a proof of real
distinction when these thought-objects are found united in _one
individual_ of sense experience, as _e.g._ animality and
rationality in man; and the only distinction given to us by sense
experience, at least directly and immediately, as undoubtedly
real, is the distinction _between_ corporeal _individuals_
existing apart in space or time, as _e.g._ between man and man.
How then, can we show that any distinctions _within the
individual_ are real?
Well, we have seen that certain entities, which are objects of
sense or of thought, or of both, can disappear from the individual
without the residue thereby perishing or ceasing to exist actually
as an individual: the human soul survives, as an actual individual
reality, after its separation from the material principle with
which it formed the individual man; the individual man persists
while the accidental modes that affect him disappear. In such
cases as these, intellect, interpreting sense experience and
reasoning from it, places a real distinction, in the composite
individual, between the factors that can continue to exist without
others, and these latter. In doing so it is apparently applying
the analogy of the typical real distinction—that between one
individual and another. The factor, or group of factors, which can
continue to exist actually after the separation of the others, is
an individual: and what were separated from it were apparently
real entities, though they may have perished by the actual
separation. But on what ground is the distinction between the
material principle and the vital principle of a plant or an
animal, for example, regarded as real? Again on the ground
furnished by the analogy of the distinction between individuals of
sense experience. Note that it is not between the material and the
vital principles _as objects of abstract thought_, _i.e._ between
the _materiality_ and the _vitality_ of the plant or the animal,
that a real distinction is claimed: these are regarded only as
conceptually distinct aspects of the plant or the animal; nor is
it admitted that because one of these thought-objects is found
embodied elsewhere in nature without the other—materiality without
vitality in the inorganic universe—we can therefore conclude that
they are really distinct in the plant or the animal. No; it is
between the two principles conceived as coexisting and united in
the concrete individual that the real distinction is claimed. And
it is held to be a real distinction because substantial change in
corporeal things, _i.e._ corruption and generation of individual
corporeal substances, is held to be real. If it is real there is a
real separation of essential factors when the individual perishes.
And the factors continue to be real, as _potential_ principles of
other individuals, when any individual corporeal substance
perishes. Each principle may not continue to exist actually as
such in isolation from the other—though some scholastics hold
that, absolutely speaking, they could be conserved apart, as
actual entities, by the Author of Nature. But they _can_ actually
exist _as essential principles of other actual individuals_: they
are real _potentialities_, which _become actual_ in other
individuals. Thus we see that they are conceived throughout _after
the analogy of the individual_. Those who hold that, absolutely
speaking, the material principle as such, _materia prima_, could
actually exist in isolation from any formative principle, should
apparently admit that in such a case it would be _an individual
reality_.
39. SOME QUESTIONABLE DISTINCTIONS. THE SCOTIST DISTINCTION.—The
difficulty of discriminating between the virtual and the real distinction
in an individual has given rise to the conception of distinctions which
some maintain to be real, others to be less than real. The virtual
distinction, as we have hitherto understood it, may be described as
_extrinsic_ inasmuch as it arises in the individual only when we consider
the latter under different aspects, or in different relations to things
extrinsic to it. By regarding an individual under different aspects—_e.g._
a man under the aspects of animality and rationality—we can predicate
contradictory attributes of the individual, _e.g._ of a man that “he is
similar to a horse,” and that “he is not similar to a horse”. Now it is
maintained by some that although independently of the consideration of the
mind the grounds of these contradictory predications are not _actually_
distinct in the individual, nevertheless even before such consideration
the individual has a real _intrinsic capacity_ to have these contradictory
predicates affirmed of him: they can be affirmed of him not merely when he
is regarded, and because he is regarded, under conceptually different
aspects, but because these principles, “animality” and “rationality,” are
already really in him not merely as aspects but as distinct capacities, as
potentially distinct principles of contradictory predications.
The virtual distinction, understood in this way, is described as
_intrinsic_. It is rejected by some on the ground that, at least in its
application to finite realities, it involves a violation of the principle
of contradiction: it seems to imply that one and the same individual has
in itself absolutely (and not merely as considered under different aspects
and relations) the capacity to verify of itself contradictory predicates.
Scotus and his followers go even farther than the advocates of this
intrinsic virtual distinction by maintaining the existence of a
distinction which on the one hand they hold to be less than real because
it is not between “thing and thing,” and on the other hand to be more than
logical or virtual, because it _actually_ exists between the various
thought-objects or “_formalitates_” (such, _e.g._ as animality and
rationality) in the individual, independently of the analytic activity
whereby the mind detects these in the latter. This distinction Scotists
call a “formal distinction, actual on the part of the thing”—“_distinctio
formalis_, _actualis ex natura rei_.” Hence the name “formalists” applied
to Scotists, from their advocacy of this “Scotistic” distinction. It is,
they explain, a distinction not between “things” (“_res_”) but between
“formalities” (“_formalitates_”). By “thing” as opposed to “formality”
they mean not merely the individual, but also any positive thought-object
which, though it may not be capable of existing apart, can really appear
in, or disappear from, a thing which can so exist: for instance, the
essential factors of a really composite essence, its accidental modes, and
its real relations. By “formality” they mean a positive thought-object
which is absolutely inseparable from the thing in which it is apprehended,
which cannot exist without the thing, nor the thing without it: for
instance, all the metaphysical grades of being in an individual, such as
substantiality, corporeity, life, animality, rationality, individuality,
in an individual man. The distinction is called “formal” because it is
between such “formalities”—each of which is the positive term of a
separate concept of the individual. It is called “_actual_ on the side of
the thing” because it is claimed to be _actually_ in the latter apart from
our mental apprehension of the individual. What has chiefly influenced
Scotists in claiming this distinction to be thus _actually_ in the
individual, independently of our mental activity, is the consideration
that these metaphysical grades are grounds on which we can predicate
contradictory attributes of the same individual, _e.g._ of an individual
man that “he is similar to a horse” and that “he is not similar to a
horse”: whence they infer that in order to avoid violation of the
principle of contradiction, we must suppose these grounds to be _actually_
distinct in the thing.
To this it is replied, firstly, that if such predications were truly
contradictory we could avoid violation of the principle of contradiction
only by inferring a _real_ distinction—which Scotists deny to
exist—between these grounds; secondly, that such predications are not
truly contradictory inasmuch as “he is similar” really means “he is
partially similar,” and “he is not similar” means “he is not completely
similar”; therefore when we say that a man’s rationality “_is not_ the
principle whereby he resembles a horse,” and his animality “_is_ the
principle whereby he resembles a horse,” we mean (_a_) that his
rationality is not the principle of complete resemblance, though we know
it is the principle of partial resemblance, inasmuch as we see it to be
really identical with that which is the principle of partial resemblance,
_viz._ his animality; and we mean (_b_) that his animality is the
principle of his partial resemblance to a horse, not of total resemblance,
for we know that the animality of a man is not perfectly similar to that
of a horse, the former being really identical with rationality, the latter
with irrationality. When, then, we predicate of one thing that “it is
similar to some other thing,” and that “it is not similar to this other
thing” we are not really predicating contradictories of the same thing; if
we take the predicates as contradictories they are true of the same
reality undoubtedly, but not under the same aspect. Scotists themselves
admit that the _real identity_ of these aspects involves no violation of
the principle of contradiction; why, then, should these be held to be
_actually_ distinct formalities independently of the consideration of the
mind? How can a distinction that is actual independently of the mind’s
analysis of the reality be other than real? Is not predication a work of
the mind? And must not the conditions on which reality verifies the
predication be determined by the mind? If, then, we see that in order to
justify this predication—of “similar” and “not similar”—about any reality,
it is merely necessary that the mind should apprehend this reality to be
in its undivided unity equivalent to manifold grades of being or
perfection which the mind itself can grasp as mentally distinct aspects,
by distinct concepts, how can we be justified in supposing that these
grades of being are not merely _distinguishable_, but _actually distinct_
in the reality itself, _independently of the mind_?
The Scotist doctrine here is indicative of the tendency to
emphasize, perhaps unduly, the assimilation of reality as a datum
with the mind which interprets this datum; to regard the
constitution of reality itself as being what abstract thought,
irrespective of sense experience, would represent it; and
accordingly to place in the reality as being actually there,
independently of thought, distinctions which as a matter of fact
may be merely the product of thought itself.
Scotists, by advocating an _actual_ distinction between these
grades of being, as “formalities” in the individual, have exposed
themselves to the charge of extreme realism. They teach that each
of these “formalities” has, for abstract thought, a _formal_ unity
which is _sui generis_. And this unity is not regarded as a
product of thought, any more than the distinction between such
unities. Thus, the materiality apprehended by thought in all
material things is one, not because it is made one by the
abstracting and universalizing activity of thought, as most if not
all other scholastics teach; it is not merely _conceptually one_
through our thought-activity, it is _formally one_ apart from the
latter; and it thus knits into a “formal” unity all material
things. And so does “life” all living things; and “animality” all
animals; and “rationality” all men. Now, if this “formal unity” of
any such essential or metaphysical grade of being were regarded as
a real unity, monism would be of course the logically inevitable
corollary of the theory.
But the “formal” unity of any such essential grade of being
Scotists will not admit to be a real unity, though they hold it to
be characteristic of reality independently of our thought. They
contend that this unity is quite compatible with the _real
plurality_ conferred upon being by the principles which
individuate the latter; and thus they cannot be fairly accused of
monism. Their reasoning here is characteristically subtle. Just as
any metaphysical grade of being, considered as an object of
thought, is in itself neither manifold individually nor one
universally—so that, as Thomists say, designating it in this
condition as the _universale directum_, or _metaphysicum_, or
_fundamentale_, or _quoad rem conceptam_, we can truly affirm of
it in this condition neither that it is one (logically, as a
universal) nor that it is manifold (really, as multiplied in
actual individuals),(160)—so likewise, Scotists contend, it is in
this condition _ontologically_, as an entity in the real order
independently of thought, and as such has a unity of its own, a
formal unity, which, while uniting in a formal unity all the
individuals that embody it, is itself incapable of fitting this
grade of being for actual existence, and therefore admits those
ultimate individuating principles which make it a real manifold in
the actual order.(161)
Thus, the metaphysical grade of being, which, as considered in
itself, Thomists hold to be an abstraction, having no other unity
than that which thought confers upon it by making it logically
universal, Scotists on the contrary hold to be as such something
positive in the ontological order, having there a “formal” unity
corresponding to the “conceptual” or “logical” unity which thought
confers upon it by universalizing it. The metaphysical grade of
being, thus conceived as something positive in the real order,
Scotists will not admit to be a “reality,” nor the unity which
characterizes it a “real” unity. But after all, if such a
“formality” with its proportionate “unity,” is independent of
thought; and if on the other hand “universality” is the work of
thought, so that the universal as such cannot be real, it is not
easy to see how the Scotist doctrine escapes the error of extreme
realism. The metaphysical grade of being is a “formality” only
because it is _made abstract_ by thought; and it has “unity” only
because it is _made logically universal_ by thought; therefore to
contend that as such it is something positive in the real order,
independently of thought, is to “reify” the abstract and universal
as such: which is extreme realism.