76. ONTOLOGY AND THE ACCIDENT-MODES OF BEING.—Under the ultimate category
or _genus supremum_ of Substance experience reveals to us two broadly
distinct sub-classes: corporeal substances, “bodies” or “material” things,
and spiritual substances or “spirits”. Of these latter we have direct
experience only of one class, _viz._ _embodied_ spirits or human souls.
The investigation of the nature of these belongs to _Psychology_, and from
the data of that science we may infer, by the light of reason, the
_possibility_ of another class of spirits, _viz._ _pure_ spirits, beings
of whose actual existence we know from Divine Revelation. The existence of
a Supreme Being, Whom we must conceive analogically as substance and
spirit, is demonstrated by the light of reason in _Natural Theology_. The
investigation of the nature of corporeal substances belongs properly to
_Cosmology_. Hence in the present treatise we have no further direct
concern with the substance-mode of reality;(322) but only with its
accident-modes, and not with all of these.
Not with all of them; for those which belong properly to spiritual
substances, or properly to corporeal substances, call for special
treatment in Psychology and Cosmology respectively. In the main, only such
species of accidents as are common to matter and spirit alike, will form
the subject of the remaining portion of the present volume. Only the
broader aspects of such categories as Quality, Quantity and
Causality—aspects which have a more direct bearing on the Theory of Being
and the Theory of Knowledge in general,—call for treatment in General
Metaphysics. A more detailed treatment must be sought in other departments
of Philosophy.
77. NATURE OF THE ACCIDENT CALLED QUALITY.—In the widest sense of the
term, _Quality_ is synonymous with _logical attribute_. In this sense
whatever can be predicated of a subject, whatever _logically_ determines a
subject in any way for our thought is a quality or “attribute” of that
subject. In a sense almost equally wide the term is used to designate any
_real_ determination, whether substantial or accidental, of a subject. In
this sense the differential element, or _differentia specifica_,
determines the generic element, or genus, of a substance: it tells us what
_kind_ or _species_ the substance is: _e.g._ what kind of animal a man is,
_viz._ rational; what kind of living thing an animal is, _viz._ sentient;
what kind of body or corporeal thing a plant is, _viz._ living. And hence
scholastics have said of the predicable “_differentia specifica_” that it
is predicated adjectivally, or as a _quality_, to tell us in _what the
thing consists_, or what is its nature: differentia specifica praedicatur
_in quale quid_: it gives us the determining principle of the specific
nature. Or, again, quality is used synonymously with any _accidental_
determination of a substance. In this sense magnitude, location, action,
etc., though they determine a subject in different accidental ways,
nevertheless are all indiscriminately said to “qualify” it in the sense of
determining it somehow or other, and are therefore called “qualities” in
the wide sense of “accidents”. Hence, again, the scholastics have said
that inasmuch as all accidents determine or qualify their subjects, they
are predicated of these _qualitatively_, and may be called in a wide sense
“qualifications” or “qualities”: omnia genera accidentium qualificant
substantiam et praedicantur _in quale_.
It is in this wide sense that we use the term when we say that the
(specific) nature (or “kind”) of a thing is revealed by its “qualities”;
for the nature of a thing is revealed by all its accidents. And when we
infer the nature of a thing from its activities, in accordance with the
maxim _Qualis est operatio talis est natura_, we must take the term
“_operatio_” or “activity” to include the operation of the thing on our
cognitive faculties, the states of cognitive consciousness thus aroused in
us, and all the other accidents thus revealed to us in the thing by its
“knowledge-eliciting” action on our minds.
But the term _Quality_ has been traditionally restricted, after Aristotle,
to designate properly one particular category of accidents distinct from
the others and from substance.
A definition proper of any _genus supremum_ is of course out of the
question. But it is not easy to give even a description which will convey
an accurate notion of the special category of Quality, and mark it off
from the other accident-categories. If we say with Aristotle that quality
is “that whereby we are enabled to describe _what sort_ (ποιόν, _quale_)
anything is”(323)—_e.g._ that it is white by whiteness, strong by
strength, etc.—we are only illustrating the abstract by the concrete. But
even this serves the purpose of helping us to realize what quality in
general means. For we are more familiar with the concrete than with the
abstract: and we can see a broad distinction between the question: “_What
sort_ is that thing? _Qualis_ est ista res?” (Quality), and the question:
“_How large_ is that thing? _Quanta_ est ista res?” (Quantity), or
“_Where_ is that thing?” (Place), or “What is it _doing_? What is
_happening_ to it?” (_Actio et Passio_), or “What does it _resemble_?”
(_Relation_), etc. This will help us to realize that there are accidental
modes of being which affect substances in a different way from all the
extrinsic denominations of the latter (60), and also in a different way
from Quantity, Relation, and Causality; and these modes of being, whereby
the substance is _of such a sort_, or _in such a condition_, we call
_qualities_. And if we inquire what special kind of _determination_ of the
substance is common to qualities, and marks these off from the other
accidents, we shall find it to consist in this, that quality is an
accidental mode of being which so affects the substance that it disposes
the latter well or ill in regard to the perfections natural to this
particular kind of substance: it _alters_ the latter accidentally by
increasing or diminishing its natural perfection. We have seen that no
created substance has all the perfection natural to its kind, _tota simul_
or _ab initio_ (46); that it fulfils its rôle in existence by development,
by tending towards its full or final perfection. The accidental realities
which supervene on its essence, and thus _alter_ its perfection _within
the limits of its kind or species_, are what we call qualities. They
diversify the substance accidentally in its perfection, in its concrete
mode of existing and behaving: by their appearance and disappearance they
do not change the _essential perfection_ of the substance (46), they do
not effect a substantial change; but they change its intermediate,
accidental perfection; and this qualitative change is technically known
and described as _alteration_(324) (11).
Hence we find _Quality_ described by St. Thomas as the sort of accident
which modifies or disposes the substance in itself: “_accidens
modificativum sen dispositivum substantiaein seipsa_,” and by Albertus
Magnus somewhat more explicitly as “the sort of accident which completes
and perfects substance in its existence and activity: _accidens complens
ac perficiens substantiam tarn in existendo quam in operando_”.(325) This
notion will be conveyed with sufficient clearness if we describe _Quality_
as _that absolute accident which determines a substance after the manner
of an accidental _“differentia,”_ affecting the essential perfection of
the substance in regard to its existence or to its activity_.
Hence (1) the Pure Actuality of the Infinitely Perfect Being cannot admit
qualities, inasmuch as quality implies only a relative and limited
perfection; (2) the qualities of a corporeal substance are grounded in the
_formative_ principle which gives that substance its specific nature and
is the principle of its tendency and development towards its final
perfection, whereas its _quantity_ is grounded in its determinable or
_material_ principle; (3) the _essential_ differentiating principles of
substances—being known to us not intuitively, but only abstractively and
discursively, _i.e._ by inference from the behaviour of these substances,
from the effects of their activities—are often designated not by what
constitutes them intrinsically, but by the _accidental perfections_ or
_qualities_ which are our only key to a knowledge of them. For instance,
we differentiate the nature of man from that of the brute beast by
describing the former as _rational_: a term which really designates not
the essence or nature itself, but one of its fundamental qualities, _viz._
the faculty of reason.
78. IMMEDIATE SUB-CLASSES OF QUALITY AS _Genus Supremum_.—On account of
the enormous variety of qualities which characterize the data of our
experience, the problem of classifying qualities is not a simple one. Its
details belong to the special sciences and to the other departments of
philosophy. Here we must confine ourselves to an attempt at indicating the
immediate sub-classes of the _genus supremum_. And in this context it will
not be out of place to call attention to a remarkable, and in our view
quite erroneous, trend of modern thought. It accompanied the advent of
what is known as _atomism_ or _the mechanical conception of the universe_,
a conception much in vogue about half a century ago, but against which
there are already abundant evidences of a strong reaction. We refer to the
inclination of scientists and philosophers to eliminate Quality altogether
as an ultimately distinct category of human experience, by reducing all
qualities to _quantity_, _local relations_, and _mechanical_ or _spatial
motions_ of matter (_cf._ 11). In this theory all the sensible qualities
of the material universe would be really and objectively nothing more than
locations and motions of the ultimate constituents of perceptible matter.
All the chemical, physical and mechanical energies or forces of external
nature would be purely quantitative dispositions or configurations of
matter in motion: realities that could be _exhaustively_ known by
mathematical analysis and measurement. And when it was found that
_qualitative_ concepts stubbornly resisted all attempts at elimination, or
reduction to _quantitative_ concepts, even in the investigation of the
material universe or external nature, scientists and philosophers of
external nature thought to get rid of them by locating them exclusively in
the human mind, and thus pushing them over on psychologists and
philosophers of the mind for further and final exorcism. For a time
extreme materialists, less wise than daring, endeavoured to reduce even
mind and all its conscious states and processes to a mere subjective
aspect of what, looked at objectively, would be merely matter in
motion.(326) It can be shown in Cosmology, Psychology, and Epistemology
that all such attempts to analyse qualities into something other than
qualities, are utterly unsatisfactory and unsuccessful. And we may see
even from an enumeration of some of the main classes of qualities that
such attempts were foredoomed to failure.
Scholastic Philosophy has generally adopted Aristotle’s division of
qualities into four great groups:(327) (1) ἕξις ἢ διάθεσις, _habitus vel
dispositio_; (2) δύναμις φυσικὴ ἢ ἀδυναμία, potentia _naturalis vel
impotentia_; (3) ποιότητες παθητικαί καὶ πάθη, _potentiae passivae et
passiones_; (4) μορφὴ ἢ σχῆμα, _forma vel figura_. St. Thomas offers the
following ground for this classification. Since quality, he says,(328) is
an accidental determination of the substance itself, _i.e._ of the
perfection of its concrete existence and activity, and since we may
distinguish four aspects of the substance: its nature itself as
perfectible; its intrinsic principles of acting and receiving action,
principles springing from the _formative_, specific constituent of its
nature; its receptivity of change effected by such action, a receptivity
grounded in the determinable or _material_ principle of its nature; and
finally its quantity, if it be a corporeal substance,—we can likewise
distinguish between (1) _acquired habits or dispositions_, such as health,
knowledge, virtue, vice, etc., which immediately determine the perfection
of the substance, disposing it well or ill in relation to its last end;
(2) intrinsic _natural forces_, _faculties_, _powers of action_,
_aptitudes_, _capacities_, such as intellect, will, imagination, instinct,
organic vital forces, physical, chemical, mechanical energies; (3) states
resulting in a corporeal being from the action of its _milieu_ upon it:
the _passions_ and emotions of sentient living things, such as sensations
of pleasure, pain, anger, etc.; the _sensible qualities_ of matter, such
as colour, taste, smell, temperature, feel or texture, etc.; and, finally
(4) the quality of _form or shape_ which is a mere determination of the
quantity of a corporeal substance.
This classification is not indeed perfect, for the same individual quality
can be placed in different classes when looked at from different
standpoints: heat, for instance, may be regarded as a _natural operative
power_ of a substance in a state of combustion, or as a _sensible quality_
produced in that substance by the operation of other agencies. But it has
the merit of being an exhaustive classification; and philosophers have not
succeeded in improving on it.
Qualities of the third and fourth class do not call for special treatment.
In the third class, Aristotle’s distinction between ποιότητες παθητικαί
(_qualitates passibiles_) and πάθη (_passiones_) is based upon the
relatively permanent or transient character of the quality in question.
The transient quality, such as the blush produced by shame or the pallor
produced by fear, would be a _passio_;(329) whereas the more permanent
quality, such as the natural colour of the countenance, would be a
_passibilis qualitas._ The “passions” or sensible changes which result
from certain conscious states, and affect the organism of the sentient
living being, are included in this class as _passiones_; while the visible
manifestations of more permanent mental derangement or insanity would be
included in it as _passibiles qualitates_. We may, perhaps, get a fairly
clear and comprehensive notion of all that is contained in this class as
“sensible qualities” by realizing that these embrace whatever is the
immediate _cause_ or the immediate _result_ of the _sense modification
involved in any act or process of sense consciousness_. Such “sensible
qualities,” therefore, belong in part to the objects which provoke sense
perception, and in part to the sentient subject which elicits the
conscious act. One of the most important problems in the Theory of
Knowledge, and one which ramifies into Cosmology and Psychology, is that
of determining the precise significance of these “sensible qualities,”—and
especially in determining whether they are qualities of an extramental
reality, or merely states of the individual mind or consciousness itself.
_Form_ or _figure_, which constitutes the fourth class of quality, is a
mode of the quantity of a body, being merely the particular surface
termination of its extension or volume. Considered as a mode of abstract
or mathematical quantity, it belongs to the domain of mathematics.
Considered in the concrete body, it is the physical, sensible form, shape,
or figure, of the latter; and here it may be either natural or artificial,
according as it results from the unimpeded action of natural forces or
from these forces as manipulated and directed by intelligent agents. It is
worthy of special note that while extension or volume is indicative of the
_material_ principle of corporeal substances, the figure or shape
naturally assumed by this volume is determined by their _formative_
principle, and is thus indicative of their specific nature. This is
already noticeable in the inorganic world, where many of the chemically
different substances assume each its own distinctive crystalline form. But
it is particularly in the domains of botany and zoology that the natural
external form of the living individual organism is recognized as one of
the most important grounds of its classification and one of the surest
tests of its specific nature.(330)
79. HABITS AND DISPOSITIONS.—Every created being is subject to change,
capable of development or retrogression, endowed with a natural tendency
towards some end which it can reach by a natural process of activity, and
which constitutes for it, when attained, its full and final perfection
(66). Through this process of change it acquires accidental modes of being
which help it or hinder it, dispose it or indispose it, in the exercise of
its natural activities, and therefore also in the concrete perfection of
its nature as tending towards its natural end. Such an accidental mode of
being is acquired by a series of transient actions and experiences,
_actiones et passiones_: after these have passed away it remains, and not
merely as a state or condition resulting from the changes wrought in the
subject by these experiences, but as a _disposition_ towards easier
repetition of such experiences. Moreover, it may be not a mere transient
disposition, but something stable and permanent, not easily removed or
annulled, a _dispositio difficile mobilis_. And just as it is essentially
indicative of past actions whereby it was acquired, so, too, the very
_raison d’être_ of its actuality is to dispose its subject for further and
future changes, for operations and effects which are not yet actual but
only potential in this subject. Such an accidental mode of being is what
Aristotle called ἕξις, and the scholastics _habitus_. With Aristotle, they
define _habit_ as a _more or less stable disposition whereby a subject is
well or ill disposed in itself or in relation to other things_: _Habitus
dicitur dispositio difficile mobilis secundum quam bene vel male
disponitur subjectum aut secundum se aut in ordine ad aliud_.(331)
The difference between a _habit_ (ἕξις) and a simple _disposition_
(διάθεσις) is that the former is by nature a more or less _stable_ quality
while the latter is unstable and transient. Moreover, the facilities
acquired by repeated action of the organs or members of men or animals,
and the particular “set” acquired by certain tools or instruments from
continued use, are more properly called _dispositions_ than _habits_: they
are not habits in the strict sense, though they are often called habits in
the ordinary and looser usage of common speech. A little reflection will
show that _the only proper subjects of natural habits in the strict sense
are the spiritual faculties of an intelligent and free agent_.
Since all natural habits are acquired by the past activities, and dispose
for the future activities, of a being not absolutely perfect, but partly
potential and partly actual, and subject to change, it follows that only
finite beings can have habits. But, furthermore, beings that are not free,
that have not control or dominion of their own actions, that have not
freedom of choice, are determined by their nature, by a necessary law of
their activity, to elicit the actions which they do actually elicit: such
beings are by their nature _determinata ad unumn_; they are confined
necessarily to the particular lines of action whereby they fulfil their
rôle in the actual order of things. As Aristotle remarks, you may throw
the same stone repeatedly in the same direction and with the same
velocity: it will never acquire a _habit_ of moving in that direction with
that velocity.(332) The same is true of plants and animals; for a habit in
the strict sense implies not merely a certain mutability in its subject;
it implies, and consists in, a stable modification of some power or
faculty _which can have its activities directed indifferently in one or
other of a variety of channels or lines_: the power or faculty which is
the proper subject of a habit must be a _potentia dirigibilis vel
determinabilis ad diversa_. Hence merely material powers of action—such as
the mechanical, physical and chemical forces of inorganic nature, or the
organic powers of living bodies, whether vegetative or merely
sentient,—since they are all _of themselves_, of _their nature_,
determined to certain lines of action, and to these only,—such powers
cannot become the subjects of habits, of stable dispositions towards one
line of action rather than another. “The powers of material nature,” says
St. Thomas, “do not elicit their operations by means of habits, for they
are of themselves [already adequately] determined to their particular
lines of action.”(333)
Only the spiritual faculties of free agents are, then, the proper seat of
real habits. Only of free agents can we say strictly that “habit is second
nature”. Only these can direct the operations of their intellect and will,
and through these latter the operations of their sense faculties, both
cognitive and appetitive, in a way conducive to their last end or in a way
that deviates therefrom, by attaching their intellects to truth or to
error, their wills to virtue or to vice, and thus forming in these
faculties stable dispositions or _habits_.(334)
Is there any sense, then, in which we can speak of the sentient (cognitive
and appetitive) and executive powers of man as the seat of habits? The
activities of those faculties are under the control of intellect and will;
the acts _elicited_ by the former are _commanded_ by the latter; they are
acts that issue primarily from the latter faculties; and hence the
dispositions that result from repetition of these acts and give a facility
for further repetition of them—acts of talking, walking, singing, playing
musical instruments, exercising any handicraft—are partly, though only
secondarily, _dispositions_ formed in these sentient faculties (the
“trained” eye, the “trained” ear, the “discriminating” sense of taste, the
“alert” sense of touch in the deaf, dumb, or blind), or in these executive
powers, whereby the latter more promptly and easily obey the “command” of
the higher faculties; but they are primarily and principally _habits_ of
these higher faculties themselves rendering the latter permanently “apt”
to “command” and utilize the subordinate powers in the repetition of such
acts.(335)
Unquestionably the bodily organs acquire by exercise a definite “set”
which facilitates their further exercise. But this “set” is not something
that they can use themselves; nor is it something that removes or lessens
a natural indeterminateness or indifference of these powers; for they are
not indifferent: they _must_ act, at any instant, in the _one_ way which
their concrete nature in all its surroundings actually demands. They
themselves are only instruments of the higher faculties; these alone have
freedom of choice between lines of action; it is only the stable
modifications which these acquire, which they themselves can use, and
which _dispose_ them by lessening their indeterminateness, that are
properly called habits. There are, therefore, in the organic faculties of
man _dispositions_ which give facility of action. There are, moreover,
organic dispositions which dispose the organism not for _action_ but for
its union with the _formative principle_ or soul: _habituales
dispositiones materiae ad formam_.(336) Aristotle gives as instances
bodily health or beauty.(337) But these _dispositiones materiales ad
formam_ he does not call _habits_, any more than the organic
_dispositiones ad operationem_ just referred to: and for this reason, that
although all these dispositions have a certain degree of stability in the
organism—a stability which they derive, moreover, from the soul which is
the formative principle that secures the continuity and individual
identity of the organism,—yet they are not of themselves, of their own
nature, stable; whereas the acquired dispositions of the spiritual
faculties, intellect and will, rooted as they are in a subject that is
spiritual and substantially immutable, are of their own nature stable and
permanent. Nor are all dispositions of these latter faculties to be deemed
habits, but only those which arise from acts which give them the special
character of stability. Hence mere _opinion_ in the intellectual order, as
distinct from _science_, or a mere _inclination_ resulting from a few
isolated acts, as distinct from a _virtue_ or a _vice_ in the moral order,
are not habits.(338) Habits, therefore, belong properly to the faculties
of a spiritual substance; indirectly, however, they extend their influence
to the lower or organic powers dependent on, and controlled by, the
spiritual faculties.
To the various dispositions and facilities of action acquired by animals
through “training,” “adaptation,” “acclimatization,” etc., we may apply
what has been said in regard to the sense faculties and executive powers
of the human body. Just as we may regard the internal sense faculties
(memory, imagination, sense appetite) in man as in a secondary and
subordinate way subjects of habits, in so far as these faculties act under
the direction and control of human reason and will,(339) so also the
organic dispositions induced in irrational animals by the direction and
guidance of human reason may indeed be regarded as extensions or effects
of the habits that dispose the rational human faculties, but not as
themselves in the strict sense habits.(340)
If, then, habits belong properly to intellect and will, and if their
function is to dispose or indispose the human agent for the attainment of
the perfection in which his last end consists, we must naturally look to
_Psychology_ and _Ethics_ for a detailed analysis of them. Here we must be
content with a word on their origin, their effects, and their importance.
Habits are produced by acts. The act modifies the faculty. If, for
instance, nothing remained in our cognitive faculties after each transient
cognitive act had passed, memory would be inexplicable and knowledge
impossible; nor could the repetition of any act ever become easier than
its first performance. This something that remains is a habit, or the
beginning of a habit A habit may be produced by a single act: the mind’s
first intuition of an axiom or principle produces a _habit or habitual
knowledge_ of that principle. But as a rule it requires a repetition of
any act, and that for a long time at comparatively short intervals, to
produce a _habit_ of that act, a stable disposition whereby it can be
readily repeated; and to strengthen and perfect the habit the acts must be
formed with a growing degree of intensity and energy. Progress in virtue
demands sustained and increasingly earnest efforts.
The natural effect of habit is to perfect the faculty,(341) to increase
its energy, to make it more prompt to act, and thus to _facilitate_ the
performance of the act for which the habit disposes it. It also engenders
and develops a natural _need_ or _tendency_ or _desire_ to repeat the act,
and a natural aversion from the acts opposed to the habit. Finally,
according as the habit grows, the performance of the act demands less
effort, calls for less actual attention; thus the habit diminishes the
feeling of effort and tends to bring about a quasi-automatic and
semi-conscious form of activity.
Good habits are those which _perfect_ the nature of the agent, which
advance it towards the realization of its end; bad habits are those which
retard and prevent the realization of this end. Hence the _ethical_
importance, to the human person, of forming, fostering and confirming good
habits, as also of avoiding, resisting and eradicating bad habits, can
scarcely be exaggerated.
The profound and all-pervading influence of habit in the mental and moral
life of man is unfortunately far from being adequately appreciated even by
those responsible for the secular, moral and religious education of the
young. This is perhaps mainly due to the fact that the influence of habit
on the conduct of life, enormous as it is in fact, is so secret, so
largely unconscious, that it easily escapes notice. Careful reflection on
our actions, diligent study of the springs of action in our everyday life,
are needed to reveal this influence. But the more we analyse human conduct
in ourselves and others, the more firmly convinced we become that human
character and conduct are _mainly_ dependent on _the formation of habits_.
Habits are the grand conserving and perfecting—or the terrible undermining
and destroying—force of life. They are the fruit of our past and the seed
of our future. In them the words of Leibniz find their fullest
verification: “the present is laden with the past and pregnant with the
future”. By forming good habits we escape the disheartening difficulties
of perpetual beginnings; and thus the labour we devote to the acquisition
of wisdom and virtue has its first rich recompense in the facility it
gives us to advance on the path of progress.
It has been truly and rightly said that all genuine education consists in
the formation of good habits.
80. POWERS, FACULTIES AND FORCES.—A natural operative power, faculty, or
force (δύναμις, _potentia_, _facultas_, _virtus agendi_) is a quality
which renders the nature of the individual agent apt to elicit certain
actions. By _impotence_ or _incapacity_ (ἀδυναμία, _impotentia_,
_incapacitas_) Aristotle meant not an opposite kind of quality, in
contradistinction to power or faculty, but only a _power of a weaker
order_, differing _in degree_, not _in kind_, from the real power which
renders an agent proximately capable of acting; such weaker capacities,
for instance, as the infant’s power to walk, or the defective eyesight of
the aged.
It is to the individual subsisting person or thing that all the actions
proceeding from the latter are ascribed: _actiones sunt suppositorum_: the
“_suppositum_” or person is the _principium_ QUOD _agit_. And it acts in
accordance with its nature; this latter is the _principium_ QUO _agens
agit_: the nature is the substance or essence as a principle of the
actions whereby the individual tends to realize its end. But is a created,
finite nature the _immediate_ or _proximate_ principle of its activities,
so that it is operative _per se_? Or is it only their _remote principle_,
eliciting them not by itself but _only_ by means of _powers_, _faculties_,
_forces_, which are themselves accidental perfections of the substance and
_really distinct_ from it, qualities intermediate between the latter and
its actions, being the _proximate_ principles of the latter?
No doubt when any individual nature is acted upon by other agencies, when
it undergoes real change under the influence of its environment, its
_passive potentiality_ is being so far forth actualized. Moreover when the
nature itself acts _immanently_, the term of such action remaining within
the agent itself to actualize or perfect it, some _passive potentiality_
of the agent is being actualized. In these cases the nature before being
thus actualized was really capable of such actualization. This _passive
potentiality_, however, is itself nothing actual, it implies no actual
perfection in the nature. But we must distinguish carefully from this
_passive or receptive potentiality_ of a nature its _active or operative
powers_—_potentiae operativae_. These may be themselves _actual
perfections_ in the nature, _accidental_ perfections actually in the
nature, and perhaps really distinct from it.
That they are indeed _actual_ perfections of the nature is fairly obvious:
it is an actual perfection of a nature to be _proximately_ and
_immediately_, and without any further complement or addition to its
reality, _capable of acting_; and this is true whether the action in
question be immanent or transitive: if it be immanent, the perfection
resulting from the action, the term of the latter, will be a perfection of
the agent itself, and in this case the agent by virtue of its operative
power will have had _the capacity of perfecting itself_; while if the
action be transitive the agent will have had, in virtue of its operative
power, _the capacity of producing perfections in other things_. In either
case such capacity is undoubtedly an actual perfection of the agent that
possesses it. Hence the truth of the scholastic formula: _Omne agens agit
in quantum est in_ ACTU, _patiatur vero inquantum est in_ POTENTIA.
Furthermore, all such operative powers are _really distinct from the
actions_ which immediately proceed from them: this, too, is obvious, for
while the operative power is a stable, abiding characteristic of the
agent, the actions elicited by means of it are transient.
But what is the nature of this operative power in relation to the nature
itself of the agent? It is an actual perfection of this nature. It is,
moreover, unlike acquired habits, native to this nature, born with it so
to speak, naturally inseparable from it. Further still, operative powers
would seem to be all _properties_ (69) of their respective natures:
inasmuch as it is only in virtue of the operative power that the nature
can act, and there can be no nature without connatural operations whereby
it tends to realize the full and _final_ perfection of its being, the
perfection which is the very _raison d’être_ of its presence in the actual
order of things. The question therefore narrows itself down to this: Are
operative powers, which perfect the nature of which they are properties,
really distinct from this nature, or are they only virtually distinct
aspects under which we view the nature itself? For example, when we speak
of intellect and will as being faculties of the human soul, do we merely
mean that intellect is the soul itself regarded as capable of reasoning,
and will the soul itself regarded as capable of willing? Or do we mean
that the soul is not _by itself_ and _in virtue of its own essence_
capable of reasoning and willing; that it can reason and will only through
the instrumentality of two realities of the accidental order, really
distinct from, though at the same time _necessarily_ rooted in and
springing from, the substance of the soul itself: realities which we call
_powers_ or _faculties_? Or again, when we speak of a man or an animal as
having various _sense faculties_—internal and external, cognitive,
appetitive, executive—do we merely mean that the living, sentient organism
is itself directly capable of eliciting acts of various kinds: of
imagining, desiring, seeing, hearing, etc.? Or do we mean that the
organism can elicit these various acts only by means of several accidental
realities, really distinct from, and inhering in, itself?
If such operative powers or faculties are naturally inseparable from the
substance in which they inhere, if they are so necessarily consequent on
the nature of the latter that it cannot exist without them, are they
anything more than virtually distinct aspects of the substance itself? On
this question, as we have already seen (69), scholastics are not agreed.
St. Thomas, and Thomists generally, maintain that intellect and will are
really distinct from the substance of the soul, and likewise that the
sense faculties are really distinct from the substance of the animated
organism in which they inhere.(342) In this view the distinction is not
merely a virtual distinction between different aspects of the soul (or the
organism) itself, grounded in the variety and complexity of the acts which
emanate from the latter: the faculties are real entities of the accidental
order, mediating between the substance and its actions, and involving in
the concrete being a plurality which, however, is not incompatible with
the real unity of the latter (69).
The following are some of the arguments urged in proof of a real
distinction:—
(_a_) Existence and action are two really distinct actualities; therefore
the potentialities which they actualize must be really distinct: for such
is the transcendental relation between the potential and the actual that
any potential subject and the corresponding perfection which actualizes it
must belong to the same _genus supremum_: the one cannot be a substance
and the other an accident.(343) Now existence is the actuality of
_essence_ and action is the actuality of _operative power_ or _faculty_.
But action is certainly an accident; therefore the operative power which
it actualizes must also be an accident, and must therefore be really
distinct from the substance of which it is a power, and of which existence
is the actuality. This line of argument applies with equal force to all
created natures.(344)
In the Infinite Being alone are operation and substance identical. No
creature is operative in virtue of its substance. The actions of a
creature cannot be actualizations _of its substance_: _existence_ is the
actualization of its substance; therefore its actions must be
actualizations of potentialities which are _accidents_ distinct from its
substance; in other words, of operative powers which belong indeed
necessarily to its substance but are really distinct from the latter.
This argument rests on very ultimate metaphysical conceptions. But not all
scholastics will admit the assumptions it involves. How, for instance,
does it appear that the created or finite substance as such cannot be
_immediately_ operative? Even were it immediately operative its actions
would still be accidents, and the distinction between Creator and creature
would stand untouched. The operative power must be an accident because the
action which actualizes it, the “_actus secundus_,” is an accident. But
the _consequentia_ has not been proved, and it is not self-evident. On the
theory of the real distinction, is not the operative power itself an
_actual perfection_ of the substance, and therefore in some sort an
actualization of the latter? And yet they are not in the same ultimate
category, _in eodem genere supremo_. The nature which is the potential
subject, perfected by the operative power, is a substance, while the
operative power which perfects the substance by actualizing this
potentiality is an accident. Of course there is not exactly the same
correlation between substance and operative power as between the latter
and action. But anyhow the action is in some true sense an actualization
of the substance, at least through the medium of the power, unless we are
prepared to break up the concrete unity of the agent by referring the
action solely to the power of the agent, and isolating the substance of
the latter as a sort of immutable core which merely “exists”: a mode of
conceiving the matter, which looks very like the mistake of reifying
abstract concepts. And if the action is in any true sense an actualization
of the substance, we have, after all, a _potentia_ and _actus_ which are
not in the same ultimate category.
These considerations carry us, of course, right into what is
perhaps the most fundamental of all metaphysical problems: that of
the mode in which finite reality is actual. In its concrete
actuality every finite real being is essentially subject to
change: its actuality is not _tota simul_: at every instant it not
only _is_ but is _becoming_: it is a mixture of potentiality and
actuality: it is ever really changing, and yet the “it” which
changes can in some real degree and for some real space of time
persist or endure identical with itself as a “subsisting thing” or
“person”. How, then, are we to conceive aright the mode of its
actuality? Take the concrete existing being at any instant of its
actuality: suppose that it is not merely undergoing change through
the influence of other beings in its environment, or through its
own immanent action, but that it is itself “acting,” whether
immanently or transitively. If we consider that at this instant
its _existence_ is “really distinct” from its _action_ we cannot
mean by this that there is in it an unchanging substantial core,
which is actually merely “existing,” and a vesture of active and
passive accidental principles, which is just now actual (though
always in a state of flux or change) by “acting” or “being acted
on”.(345) Such a conception would conflict with the truth that the
existing substance is ever being really and actually, though
accidentally, determined, changed, modified, improved or
disimproved, in its total concrete existing reality. Even when
these changes are not so profound as to destroy its substantial
identity and thus terminate its actuality as an individual being,
even when, in other words, they are not substantial, they are none
the less real and really affect the substance. Since they are real
they necessarily involve the recognition of really distinct
principles in the concrete being and preclude the view that the
distinctions which we recognize in the ever-changing modes of its
actuality, as revealed to us in time and space, are all _merely_
conceptual or logical distinctions projected by the mind into what
would therefore be in fact a simple and immutable reality. The
denial of any real distinction between successive actual states,
or between co-existing principles of those states, in any finite
being, would lead logically to the Eleatic doctrine, _i.e._ to
denial of the reality of change. On the other hand, while
recognizing that change is a reality and not a subjective mental
illusion, and that real change can be grounded only in a plurality
of really distinct principles in the finite individual being, we
must at the same time hold that this plurality of really distinct
principles in the individual does not destroy a real unity,
stability, and self-identical continuity of the individual being
in the mode of its actuality throughout time. Not, of course, that
this stability or sameness of the individual throughout time is
complete and adequate to the exclusion of all real change, but it
is certainly a _real_ continuity of one and the same individual
being: to deny this would be to remove all permanence from reality
and to reduce all real being to flux or change, _i.e._ to the
πάντα ρέι of the Ionian philosopher, Heraclitus.
We cannot get a true conception of any finite reality by
considering it merely from the _static_ point of view, which is
the natural standpoint of abstract thought; we must view it also
from the _dynamic-kinetic_ standpoint, _i.e._ not merely as an
essence or principle of existence, but as a power or principle of
action, and of consequent change, evolution, or decay. And the
philosophy which is the latest fashion among contemporary systems,
that of the brilliant French thinker and writer, Bergson, has at
all events the merit of emphasizing this important truth, that if
our philosophical analysis of experience is to be fruitful we must
try to grasp reality not merely as it presents itself to abstract
thought at any section drawn by the latter through the incessant
process of its _fieri_ or continuous actualization in time, but
also to grasp and analyse as far as possible the _fieri_ or
process itself, and bring to light whatever we find that this
process implies.
These considerations may help the student to estimate for himself
the value and the limitations of the argument which has suggested
them.
(_b_) A thing cannot be really identical with a variety of things that are
really distinct from one another; but the faculties of the soul are really
distinct from one another; therefore they must be really distinct from the
substance of the soul. The minor premiss is supported by these
considerations: The vegetative and sentient operations of the human
individual are operations of the living _organism_, while the higher
operations of rational thought and volition are operations of the _soul
alone_, the spiritual or immaterial principle in the individual. But the
immaterial principle cannot be really and adequately identical with the
animated organism. Therefore the _powers_ or _immediate principles_ of
these two classes of functions, belonging as they do to two really (though
not adequately) distinct substantial principles, cannot be really
identical with one of them, _viz._ with the soul itself, the spiritual
principle. Again: The exercise of certain functions by the human
individual is subordinate to, and dependent on the previous exercise of
other functions. For example, actual volition is necessarily dependent and
consequent on actual thought: we cannot will or desire any good without
first knowing it as a good. But the immediate principle of any function or
activity cannot be dependent on or subordinate to itself. Therefore the
immediate principles of such controlling and controlled
activities—intellect and will, for example—must be really distinct
faculties.(346)
(_c_) Suppose the substance or nature of an agent—the human individual,
for instance—were really identical with all its powers or faculties, that
these were merely the nature itself viewed under different aspects, so
that there would be in reality only one operative power in the individual,
then there would be no reason why the individual could not or should not
at any instant elicit one single action or operation which would be
simultaneously an act of thinking, willing, seeing, hearing, etc., _i.e._
which would have at once in itself the modalities of all human activities.
But universal experience testifies, on the contrary, that the operations
of the individual are each of some particular mode only, that he cannot
elicit every mode of human activity simultaneously, that he never elicits
one single act having a variety of modes. But why could he not, if his
substance or nature itself were the one and only _proximate principle_ of
all his modes of activity? Because the conditions for the _full and
adequate_ exercise of this one single or proximate principle (at once
substance and power) are never realized! But it is arbitrary to assume the
existence of a power which could never pass fully into the act connatural
to it. And moreover, even if these conditions are partially realized we
should see as a consequence of this some human activity which would
manifest _in some degree at least_ all the modalities of the various human
actions of which we have experience. But we have no experience of a single
human activity manifesting _in any degree_ the modalities of the numerous
and really distinct human activities which experience reveals to us. Hence
the variety of these really distinct modes of activity can be explained
only by the fact that the human individual elicits them through proximate
operative principles or powers which are really distinct from one another
and from the nature itself of the individual.(347)
The problem of analysing and classifying the forces, faculties, or
powers of the subsisting things and persons in the universe of our
experience, belongs partly to Cosmology and partly to Psychology.
In the latter it becomes mainly a problem of classifying our
mental acts, functions, or processes—our states of consciousness.
Apart from the question whether or not our mental faculties are
really distinct from one another and from the human nature or
substance itself of the individual, the problem of their proper
classification is important from the point of view of _method_ and
of _accurate psychological analysis_. We have seen already (69)
that the greatest scholastic philosophers are not unanimous in
declaring the distinction to be real. But it is at least a virtual
distinction; and even as such it gives rise to the problem of
classification. It will be sufficient here to indicate the general
principle on which the classification proceeds: Wherever the
_acts_ are _adequately distinct_ they proceed from distinct
powers; and the acts are adequately distinct when they have
adequately distinct _formal objects_.(348) _Potentiae
specificantur per actus et objecta._ The operation or act is the
correlative of the power or faculty; and the _formal object_ or
_term_ of the operation is the _final cause_ of the latter, the
end for which it is elicited. On this basis Aristotle and the
scholastics distinguish two mental faculties of the higher or
spiritual order, intellect and will; and in the lower or sense
order of mental life they distinguish one appetitive faculty,
sense appetite, and several cognitive sense faculties. These
latter comprise the internal sense faculties, _viz._ the _sensus
communis_ or unifying and associating sense, the imagination,
sense memory, and instinct; and the external sense faculties
comprise sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.
81. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF QUALITIES.—(_a_) _Qualities __ have
contraries_. Health and illness, virtue and vice, science and error, etc.,
are opposed as contraries. This, however, is not a _property_ of
qualities; it is not verified in powers, or in forms and figures; and it
is verified in accidents which are not qualities, _e.g._ in _actio_ and
_passio_.
(_b_) _Quality is the basis or _“fundamentum”_ of all relations of
similarity and dissimilarity._ This attribute seems to be in the strict
sense a _property_ of all qualities. Substances are _similar_ in so far as
they have the same kind of qualities, _dissimilar_ in so far as they have
different kinds. _Similarity_ of substances is the main index to _identity
of nature or kind_; but it must not be confounded with the latter. The
latter cannot always be inferred even from a high degree of similarity:
some specifically distinct classes of things are very similar to one
another. Nor, on the other hand, is full and complete similarity a
necessary consequence of identity of nature: individuals of the same
species are often very dissimilar, very unlike one another.
(_c_) _Qualities admit of varying degrees of intensity._ They can increase
or diminish in the same substance, while numerically (and specifically)
distinct substances can have the same kind of quality in different
degrees. This is manifest in regard to “habits,” “passions” and “sensible
qualities”. On the other hand, it is clearly not true of “form” or
“figure”. Different individuals can have the same kind of “natural power”
in different degrees. One man may be naturally of keener intellect and
stronger will than another: the _weak_ power was what Aristotle called
ἀδυναμία (_impotentia_). But whether the natural powers of the same
individual can _themselves_ increase or decrease in strength or
intensity—and not merely the _habits_ that affect these powers—is not so
clear. Operative powers are certainly perfected (or injured) by the
acquisition of good (or bad) habits. In the view of those who deny a real
distinction between natural operative power or faculty and substance, it
is, of course, the substance itself that is so perfected (or injured).
This attribute, therefore, is _not_ found in _all_ qualities; but it is
found in qualities _alone_, and not in any other category or mode of
being.
How are we to conceive this variation in intensity, this growth or
diminution of any quality, in a substance in which such change takes
places? On this point philosophers are not agreed. By “degree of
intensity”—“_intensio vel remissio __ qualitatis_”—we understand the
degree (or change of degree) in which the same numerical quality affects
_the same part_ or _the same power_ of its subject, thus rendering this
part or power formally more or less “qualified” in some particular way.
This is clearly something quite different from the _extension_ of the same
quality to different parts (or its withdrawal from different parts) of the
same extended subject. In a corporeal, extended substance, there can
accordingly be question of both kinds of change, _intensive_ and
_extensive_; while in a simple, spiritual substance there can obviously be
question only of _intensive_ change of qualities. And the fact of
intensive change of qualities is an undeniable fact of experience. In what
manner does it take place? Some authors conceive it as an addition or
subtraction of _grades_ or _degrees_ of the same quality. Others,
conceiving qualities as simple, indivisible entities or “forms,” and
thence denying the possibility of distinct grades of any quality, conceive
such change to take place by this simple entity affecting its subject
_more or less intimately_, becoming _more or less firmly rooted_, as it
were, in its subject.(349) And they explain this more or less perfect mode
of inherence in a variety of ways, all of which are grounded on certain
texts of St. Thomas:(350) the quality receives a new accidental mode
whereby it “communicates itself to” the subject, and “informs” the latter,
more or less perfectly; or, it is educed more or less fully from the
potentiality of its subject, thus qualifying the latter in the degree in
which it is educed from, and rooted in, the latter.
These explanations are instructive, as illustrating the view that
the actual reality of the accidental mode of being consists in its
affecting, determining, the subject in which it inheres. St.
Thomas, professing that he can attach no intelligible meaning to
addition or substraction of grades,(351) teaches that the habit of
charity, for example, can be increased “secundum essentiam” by
“inhering more perfectly,” “being more firmly rooted” in its
subject; for, he says, since it is an accident, “ejus esse est
inesse. Unde nihil est aliud ipsam secundum essentiam augeri, quam
eam magis inesse subjecto, quod est magis eam radicari in
subjecto. Augetur ergo essentialiter... ita quod magis ac magis in
subjecto esse incipiat.”(352) And elsewhere he concludes with the
words: “Ponere igitur quod aliqua qualitas non augeatur secundum
essentiam, sed augeatur secundum radicationem in subjecto vel
secundum intensionem actus, est ponere contradictoria esse
simul”.(353)