74 The word “matter” ordinarily signifies “material substance”; but
among philosophers material substance is that in which one of the
constituents is _the_ matter, the other being the form. Physicists
also take the word “matter” in the sense of one of the constituents
of material substance, whenever they distinguish _the_ matter from
the active power of matter. We are surprised to find that Father
Tongiorgi denies in his _Cosmology_ (n. 102, 103) that the primitive
atoms are constituted of matter and form. Of what, then, are they
constituted? He replies that those atoms have no constituents.
“Philosophers,” he says, “ask what are the constituents of the
atoms; and we answer that constituents of the atoms there are none,
whether with regard to their essence or to their
quantity”—_Quæstionem proponunt philosophi quœnam sint constitutiva
atomorum. Cui respondemus, constitutiva atomorum nulla esse, nec
quoad essentiam, nec quoad quantitatem_ (n. 119). This is a curious
doctrine indeed; for it admits that a thing may be constituted
without constituents, and not only ignores the metaphysical analysis
of the primitive being, but implicitly declares it to be absurd.
That all created substance essentially consists of act and potency
we have shown in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for March, 1874, p. 824.