Ontology or the Theory of Being Part 16

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_ (p????, _quale_) anything is"(323)-_e.g._ that it is white by whiteness, strong by strength, etc.-we are only ill.u.s.trating 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?" (Quant.i.ty), or "_Where_ is that thing?" (Place), or "What is it _doing_? What is _happening_ to it?" (_Actio et Pa.s.sio_), 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 Quant.i.ty, 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 role 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 _quant.i.ty_ 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 const.i.tutes 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-CLa.s.sES OF QUALITY AS _Genus Supremum_.-On account of the enormous variety of qualities which characterize the data of our experience, the problem of cla.s.sifying 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-cla.s.ses 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 _quant.i.ty_, _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 const.i.tuents of perceptible matter.

All the chemical, physical and mechanical energies or forces of external nature would be purely quant.i.tative dispositions or configurations of matter in motion: realities that could be _exhaustively_ known by mathematical a.n.a.lysis and measurement. And when it was found that _qualitative_ concepts stubbornly resisted all attempts at elimination, or reduction to _quant.i.tative_ 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 a.n.a.lyse qualities into something other than qualities, are utterly unsatisfactory and unsuccessful. And we may see even from an enumeration of some of the main cla.s.ses 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) ???? ? d???es??, _habitus vel dispositio_; (2) d??a?? f?s??? ? ?d??a?a, potentia _naturalis vel impotentia_; (3) p???t?te? pa??t??a? ?a? p???, _potentiae pa.s.sivae et pa.s.siones_; (4) ??f? ? s??a, _forma vel figura_. St. Thomas offers the following ground for this cla.s.sification. 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 const.i.tuent 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 quant.i.ty, 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_, _apt.i.tudes_, _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 _pa.s.sions_ 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 quant.i.ty of a corporeal substance.

This cla.s.sification is not indeed perfect, for the same individual quality can be placed in different cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.sification; and philosophers have not succeeded in improving on it.

Qualities of the third and fourth cla.s.s do not call for special treatment.

In the third cla.s.s, Aristotle's distinction between p???t?te? pa??t??a?

(_qualitates pa.s.sibiles_) and p??? (_pa.s.siones_) 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 _pa.s.sio_;(329) whereas the more permanent quality, such as the natural colour of the countenance, would be a _pa.s.sibilis qualitas._ The "pa.s.sions" or sensible changes which result from certain conscious states, and affect the organism of the sentient living being, are included in this cla.s.s as _pa.s.siones_; while the visible manifestations of more permanent mental derangement or insanity would be included in it as _pa.s.sibiles qualitates_. We may, perhaps, get a fairly clear and comprehensive notion of all that is contained in this cla.s.s 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 const.i.tutes the fourth cla.s.s of quality, is a mode of the quant.i.ty of a body, being merely the particular surface termination of its extension or volume. Considered as a mode of abstract or mathematical quant.i.ty, 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sume 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 cla.s.sification 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 const.i.tutes 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 pa.s.siones_: after these have pa.s.sed 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 repet.i.tion 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'etre_ 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 ????, 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_ (????) and a simple _disposition_ (d???es??) 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 role 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 appet.i.tive, 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 appet.i.tive) 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 repet.i.tion of these acts and give a facility for further repet.i.tion 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 princ.i.p.ally _habits_ of these higher faculties themselves rendering the latter permanently "apt"

to "command" and utilize the subordinate powers in the repet.i.tion 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 ident.i.ty 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 appet.i.te) 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 pa.s.sed, memory would be inexplicable and knowledge impossible; nor could the repet.i.tion 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 repet.i.tion 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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 a.n.a.lyse 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 (d??a??, _potentia_, _facultas_, _virtus agendi_) is a quality which renders the nature of the individual agent apt to elicit certain actions. By _impotence_ or _incapacity_ (?d??a?a, _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 _pa.s.sive 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 _pa.s.sive potentiality_ of the agent is being actualized. In these cases the nature before being thus actualized was really capable of such actualization. This _pa.s.sive potentiality_, however, is itself nothing actual, it implies no actual perfection in the nature. But we must distinguish carefully from this _pa.s.sive 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'etre_ 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, appet.i.tive, 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 ent.i.ties 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 a.s.sumptions 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sive 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 ident.i.ty 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 p??ta ??? of the Ionian philosopher, Herac.l.i.tus.

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 a.n.a.lysis 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 a.n.a.lyse 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sume the existence of a power which could never pa.s.s 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 a.n.a.lysing and cla.s.sifying 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 cla.s.sifying 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 cla.s.sification is important from the point of view of _method_ and of _accurate psychological a.n.a.lysis_. 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 cla.s.sification. It will be sufficient here to indicate the general principle on which the cla.s.sification 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 appet.i.tive faculty, sense appet.i.te, and several cognitive sense faculties. These latter comprise the internal sense faculties, _viz._ the _sensus communis_ or unifying and a.s.sociating 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 _pa.s.sio_.

(_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 _ident.i.ty 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 cla.s.ses of things are very similar to one another. Nor, on the other hand, is full and complete similarity a necessary consequence of ident.i.ty 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," "pa.s.sions" 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"