Part 3 (2/2)

We are now in a position to state and explain the important scholastic aphorism embodying what has been called the Principle of Change (”_Principium Motus_”): _Quidquid movetur, ab alio movetur_: ”Whatever undergoes change is changed by something else”. The term _motus_ is here taken in the wide sense of any real transition from potentiality to actuality, as is evident from the alternative statements of the same principle: _Nihil potest seipsum reducere e potentia in actum_: ”Nothing can reduce itself from potentiality to actuality,” or, again, _Potentia, qua talis, nequit per semetipsam ad actum reduci, sed reducitur ab alio principio in actu_: ”The potential as such cannot be reduced by itself to the actual, but only by some other already actual principle”.(77) This a.s.sertion, rightly understood, is self-evidently true; for the state of pa.s.sive potentiality, as such, involves the absence of the correlative actuality in the potential subject; and since the actual, as such, involves a perfection which is not in the potential, the latter cannot confer upon itself this perfection: nothing can be the adequate principle or source of a perfection which is not in this principle or source: _nemo dat quod non habet_.

We have already antic.i.p.ated the objection arising from the consideration that the state resulting from a change is sometimes in its totality less perfect than the state which existed prior to the change. Even in such cases there results from the change a new actuality which was not in the prior state, and which cannot be conceived as a mere part or residue of the latter, or regarded as equivalently contained in the latter. Even granting, as we must, that the net result of such a change is a loss of actuality or perfection in the subject of change, still there is always a gain which is not accounted for by the loss; there is always a new actual state which, as such, was not in the original state.

A more obvious objection to the principle arises from the consideration of vital action; but it is based on a misunderstanding of the principle under discussion. Living things, it is objected, move themselves: their _vital_ action is spontaneous and immanent: originating within themselves, it has its term too within themselves, resulting in their gradual development, growth, increase of actuality and perfection. Therefore it would appear that they move and perfect themselves; and hence the so-called ”principle of change” is not true universally.

In reply to all this we admit that vital action is immanent, remaining within the agent to perfect the latter; also that it is spontaneous, inasmuch as when the agent is actually exercising vital functions it need not be actually undergoing the causal influence of any other created agent, or actually dependent on any such agent. But it must, nevertheless, in such action, be dependent on, and influenced by, _some actual being other than itself_. And the reason is obvious: If by such action it increases its own actual perfection, and becomes actually other than it was before such action, then it cannot have given itself the actuality of this perfection, which it possessed before only potentially. No doubt, it is not merely pa.s.sively potential in regard to such actual perfections, as is the case in non-vital change which results in the subject from the transitive action of some outside cause upon the latter. The living thing has the active power of causing or producing in itself these actual perfections: there is interaction between its vital parts: through one organ or faculty it acts upon another, thus educing an actuality, a new perfection, in this other, and thus developing and perfecting its own being. But even considered as active it cannot be the adequate cause of the actuality acquired through the change. If this actuality is something _really_ over and above the reality of its active and pa.s.sive potential principles, then it remains true that change implies the influence of an actual being other than the subject changed: _Quid quid movetur, ab alio movetur_.

The question here arises, not only in reference to vital agents, but to _all finite, created causes_: Does the active cause of change (together with the pa.s.sive potentiality of the subject of change, whether this subject be the agent itself as in immanent activity, or something other than the agent as in transitive activity),-does this active power account _adequately_ for the new actuality educed in the change? It obviously does not; for the actuality acquired in the change is, as such, a new ent.i.ty, a new perfection, in some degree positively surpa.s.sing the total reality of the combined active powers and pa.s.sive potentialities which it replaces. In other words, if the actuality resulting from the change is not to be found in the immediate active and pa.s.sive antecedents of the change, then we are inevitably referred, for an adequate explanation of this actuality, to some actual being above and beyond these antecedents. And to what sort of actual being are we referred? To a being in which the actuality of the effect resides only in the same way as it resides in the immediate active and pa.s.sive antecedents of the change, that is _potentially_? No; for this would be useless, merely pus.h.i.+ng the difficulty one step farther back. We are obliged rather to infer the existence of an Actual Being in whom the actuality of the said effect resides _actually_: not formally, of course, as it exists in itself when it is produced through the change; but eminently, _eminenter_, in such a way that its actualization outside Himself and under His influence does not involve in Him any loss of perfection, any increase of perfection, or any manner of change whatsoever. We are compelled in this way to infer, from the existence of change in the universe of our direct experience, the existence of a transcendent Immovable Prime Mover, a _Primum Movens Immobile_.

All the active causes or principles of change which fall under our notice in the universe of direct experience are themselves subject to change. None of them causes change in any other thing without itself undergoing change. The active power of finite causes is itself finite. By educing the potentiality of other things into actuality they gradually use up their own energy; they diminish and lose their active power of producing effects: this belongs to the very nature of finite causes as such. Moreover, they are themselves pa.s.sive as well as active; interaction is universal among the finite causes which const.i.tute the universe of our direct experience: they all alike have pa.s.sive potentiality and undergo change. Now, if any one finite cause in this system cannot adequately account for the new actuality evolved from the potential in any single process of change, neither can the whole system adequately account for it. What is true of them distributively is true of them taken all together when there is question of what belongs to their nature; and the fact that their active powers and pa.s.sive potentialities _fall short_ of the actuality of the effects we attribute to them is a fact that appertains to their very nature as finite things. The phenomenon of continuous change in the universe involves the continuous appearance of _new actual being_. To account for this constant stream of actuality we are of necessity carried beyond the system of finite, changing being itself; we are forced to infer the existence of a source and principle which must itself be purely actual and exempt from all change-a Being who can cause all the actuality that results from change without losing or gaining or changing in any way Himself, because He possesses all finite actuality in Himself in a supereminent manner which transcends all the efforts of finite human intelligence to comprehend or characterize in any adequate or positive manner. The scholastics expressed this in the simple aphorism: _Omne novum ens est a Deo_.

And it is the realization of this profound truth that underlies their teaching on the necessity of the Divine _Concursus_, _i.e._ the influence of the Infinite First Cause or Prime Mover permeating the efficiency of all finite or created causes. Here, for example, is a brief recent statement of that doctrine:-

”If we must admit a causal influence of these things [of direct experience] on one another, then a closer examination will convince us that a finite thing can never be the adequate cause of any effect, but is always, metaphysically regarded, only a part-cause, ever needing to be completed by another cause. Every effect is-at least under one aspect, at least as an effect-something new, something that was not there before. Even were the effect contained, whether formally or virtually, in the cause, it is certainly not identical with this latter, for if it were there would be no causality, nothing would 'happen'. In all causing and happening, something which was heretofore only possible, becomes real and actual. But things cannot determine themselves to influence others, or to receive the influence of others, since they are not dependent in their being on one another. Hence the necessary inference that all being, all happening, all change, requires the concurrence of an Absolute Principle of being. When two things act on each other the Absolute Being must work in and with them, the same Absolute Being in both-to relate them to each other, and supplement their natural insufficiency.”

”Such is the profound teaching about the Divine Concursus with every creature.... G.o.d works in all and with all. He permeates all reality, everywhere; there is no being beyond Him or independent of His conserving and concurring power. Just as creatures are brought into being only through G.o.d's omnipotence, and of themselves have no independent reality, so do they need the self-same ever-present, all-sustaining power to continue in this being and develop it by their activity. Every event in Nature is a transitory, pa.s.sing phenomenon, so bound up with conditions and circ.u.mstances that it must disappear to give place to some other.

How could a mode of being so incomplete discharge its function in existence without the concurrence of the First Cause?”(78)

We have seen now that _in the real order_ the potential presupposes the actual; for the potential cannot actualize itself, but can be actualized only by the action of some already actual being. Nor can we avoid this consequence by supposing the potential being to have had no actual beginning in time, but to be eternally in process of actualization; for even so, it must be eternally actualized _by some other actual being_-a position which Aristotle and some scholastics admit to be possible.

Whether, then, we conceive the actualization as beginning in time or as proceeding from all eternity, it is self-contradictory to suppose the potential as capable of actualizing itself.

It is likewise true that the actual precedes the possible _in the order of our knowledge_. The concept of a thing as possible presupposes the concept of that thing as actual; for the possible is understood to be possible only by its intelligible relation to actual existence. This is evidently true of extrinsic possibility; but our knowledge even of the intrinsic possibility of a thing cannot be the first knowledge we possess in the order of time. Our first knowledge is of the actual; for the mind's first cognitive act must have for object either itself or something not itself.

But it knows itself as a consciously acting and therefore actual being.

And it comes to know things other than itself only by the fact that such other things act upon it either immediately or mediately through sense-consciousness; so that in every hypothesis its first known object is something actual.(79)

The priority of the actual as compared with the potential in the real order, suggests a proof of the existence of G.o.d in the manner indicated above. It also affords a refutation of Hegelian monism.

The conception of the world, including all the phenomena of mind and matter, as the gradual self-manifestation or evolution of a potential being eternally actualizing itself, is a self-contradictory conception. Scholastics rightly maintain that the realities from which we derive our first most abstract and transcendental notion of being in general, are actual realities.

Hegelians seize on the object of this notion, identify it with pure thought, proclaim it the sole reality, and endow it with the power of becoming actually everything. It is manifest, therefore, that they endow purely potential being with the power of actualizing itself.

Nor can they fairly avoid this charge by pointing out that although their starting-point is not actual being (with which the scholastic philosophy of being commences), yet neither is it possible or potential being, but being which has neither of these determinations, being which abstracts from both, like the real being of the scholastics (7, 13). For though real being can be _an object of abstract human thought_ without either of the predicates ”existent” or ”non-existent,” yet it cannot be anything _in the real order_ without either of them. There it must be either actually existent or else merely potential. But Hegelians claim absolutely indeterminate being to be _as such_ something in the real order; and though they try to distinguish it from potential being they nevertheless think of it as potential being, for they distinctly and repeatedly declare that it can become all things, and does become all things, and is constantly, eternally transforming itself by an internal dialectic process into the phenomena which const.i.tute the worlds of mind and matter.

Contrasting it with the abstract ”inert” being which they conceive to be the object of the traditional metaphysics, they endow ”indeterminate being” with the active power of producing, and the pa.s.sive potentiality of becoming, actually everything. Thus, in order to show _a priori_ how this indeterminate being must evolve itself by internal logical necessity into the world of our direct and immediate experience, they suppose it to be subject to change and to be at the same time self-actualizing, in direct opposition to the axiom that potential reality, reality which is subject to change, cannot actualize itself: _Quidquid movetur ab alio moveatur oportet_.

11. KINDS OF CHANGE.-Following Aristotle,(80) we may recognize a broad and clear distinction between four great cla.s.ses of change (eta???, _mutatio_) in the phenomena of our sense experience: local change (????s??

?at? t?p??, f???, _latio_); quant.i.tative change (?at? t? p?s??, ????s?? ?

f??s??, _augmentatio vel diminutio_); qualitative change (?at? t? p????, ??????s??, _alteratio_); and substantial change (?at? ??s?a?, ???es?? ?

f????). The three former are accidental, _i.e._ do not reach or affect the essence or substance of the thing that is changed; the fourth is substantial, a change of essence. Substantial change is regarded as taking place instantaneously, as soon as the condition brought about by the accidental changes leading up to it becomes naturally incompatible with the essence or nature of the subject. The accidental changes, on the other hand, are regarded as taking place gradually, as realizing and involving a succession of states or conditions in the subject. These changes, especially when they take place in corporeal things, are properly described as movement or motion (_motus_, _motio_). By movement or motion in the strict sense we therefore mean any change which takes place gradually or successively in a corporeal thing. It is only in a wider and improper sense that these terms are sometimes applied to activity of whatsoever kind, even of spiritual beings. In this sense we speak of thoughts, volitions, etc., as movements of the soul, _motus animae_; or of G.o.d as the Prime Mover ever in motion, the _Primum Movens semper in motu_.

With local change in material things, as also with quant.i.tative change, growth and diminution of quant.i.ty (ma.s.s and volume), everyone is perfectly familiar. From the earliest times, moreover, we find both in science and philosophy the conception of matter as composed of, and divisible into, ultimate particles, themselves supposed to admit of no further real division, and hence called _atoms_ (?-t???, t???). From the days of Grecian atomism men have attempted to show that all change in the Universe is ultimately reducible to changes of place, order, spatial arrangement and collocation, of those hypothetical atomic factors. It has likewise been commonly a.s.sumed that change in ma.s.s is solely due to change in the number of those atoms, and change in volume (of the same ma.s.s) to the relative density or closeness with which the atoms aggregate together; though some have held-and it is certainly not inconceivable-that exactly the same material ent.i.ty, an atom let us say, may be capable of _real_ contraction and expansion, and so of _real_ change of volume: as distinct from the _apparent_ contraction and expansion of bodies, a change which is supposed to be due to change of density, _i.e._ to decrease or increase in the dimensions of the pores or interstices between the smaller const.i.tuent parts or molecules. However this may be, the attempts to reduce all change in physical nature to mere _mechanical_ change _i.e._ to spatial motions of the ma.s.ses (_molar_ motions), the molecules (_molecular_ motions), and the atoms or other ultimate components of matter (whether vibratory, undulatory, rotatory or translational motions), have never been satisfactory.

Qualitative change is wider than material change, for it includes changes in spiritual beings, _i.e._ in beings which are outside the category of quant.i.ty and have a mode of existence altogether different from the extensional, spatial existence which characterizes matter. When, for instance, the human mind acquires knowledge, it undergoes qualitative change. But matter, too, has qualities, and is subject to qualitative change. It is endowed with _active_ qualities, _i.e._ with powers, forces, energies, whereby it can not merely perform mechanical work by producing local changes in the distribution of its ma.s.s throughout s.p.a.ce, but also produce physical and chemical changes which seem at least to be different in their nature from mere mechanical changes. It is likewise endowed with _pa.s.sive_ qualities which appear to the senses to be of various kinds, differing from one another and from the mechanical or quant.i.tative characteristics of size, shape, motion, rest, etc. While these latter are called ”primary qualities” of bodies-because conceived to be more fundamental and more closely inherent in the real and objective nature of matter-or ”common sensibles” (_sensibilia communia_), because perceptible by more than one of our external senses-the former are called ”secondary qualities,” because conceived to be less characteristic of the real and objective nature of matter, and more largely subjective products of our own sentient cognitive activity-or ”proper sensibles” (_sensibilia propria_), because each of them is apprehended by only one of our external senses: colour, sound, taste, odour, temperature, material state or texture (_e.g._ roughness, liquidity, softness, etc.). Now about all these perceived qualities and their changes the question has been raised: Are they, as such, _i.e._ as perceived by us, really in the material things or bodies which make up the physical universe, and really different in these bodies from the quant.i.tative factors and motions of the latter? Or, as such, are they not rather partially or wholly subjective phenomena-products, at least in part, of our own sense perception, states of our own consciousness, having nothing really corresponding to them in the external matter of the universe beyond the quant.i.tative, mechanical factors and motions whereby matter acts upon our faculties of sense cognition and produces these states of consciousness in us? This is a question of the first importance, the solution of which belongs to Epistemology. Aristotle would not allow that the objective material universe can be denuded, in the way just suggested, of qualities and qualitative change; and scholastic philosophers have always held the same general view. What we have to note here, however, in regard to the question is simply this, that even if the world of matter were thus simplified by transferring all qualitative change to the subjective domain of consciousness, the reality of qualitative change and all the problems arising from it would still persist. To transfer qualitative change from object to subject, from matter to mind, is certainly something very different from explaining it as reducible to quant.i.tative or mechanical change. The simplification thus effected would be more apparent than real: it would be simplifying the world of matter by transferring its complexity to the world of mind. This consideration is one which is sometimes lost sight of by scientists who advance mechanical hypotheses as ultimate explanations of the nature and activities of the physical universe.

If all material things and processes could be ultimately a.n.a.lysed into configurations and local motions of s.p.a.ce-occupying atoms, h.o.m.ogeneous in nature and differing only in size and shape, then each of these ultimate atomic factors would be itself exempt from intrinsic change as to its own essence and individuality. In this hypothesis there would be really no such thing as _substantial_ change. The collection of atoms would form an immutable core of material reality, wholly simple and ever actual. Such an hypothesis, however, is utterly inadequate as an explanation of the facts of life and consciousness. And even as an account of the processes of the inorganic universe it encounters insuperable difficulties. The common belief of men has always been that even in this domain of reality there are fundamentally different _kinds_ of matter, kinds which differ from one another not merely in the shape and size and configuration and arrangement of their ultimate _actual_ const.i.tuents, but even in the very substance or nature of these const.i.tuents; and that there are some material changes which affect the actual substance itself of the matter which undergoes them. This belief scholastics, again following Aristotle, hold to be a correct belief, and one which is well grounded in reason. And this belief in turn involves the view that every type of actual material ent.i.ty-whether merely inorganic, or endowed with life, or even allied with a higher, spiritual mode of being as in the case of man himself-is _essentially composite_, essentially a synthesis of _potential_ and _actual_ principles of being, and therefore capable of _substantial_ change. The actually existing material being scholastics describe as _materia secunda_, the ??? ?s??t? of Aristotle; the purely potential factor, which is actualized in this or that particular kind of matter, they describe as _materia prima_, the ??? p??t? of Aristotle; the actualizing, specifying, formative principle, they designate as _forma substantialis_ (e?d??). And since the purely potential principle cannot actually exist except as actualized by some formative principle, all substantial change or transition from one substantial type to another is necessarily both a _corruptio_ and a _generatio_. That is, it involves the actual disappearance of one substantial form and the actual appearance of another. Hence the scholastic aphorism regarding substantial change: _Corruptio unius est generatio alterius_: the corruption or destruction of one kind of material thing involves the generation of another kind.

The concepts of _materia prima_ and _forma substantialis_ are concepts not of phenomenal ent.i.ties directly accessible to the senses or the imagination, but of principles which can be reached only mediately and by intellect proper. They cannot be pictured in the imagination, which can only attain to the sensible. We may help ourselves to grasp them intellectually by the a.n.a.logy of the shapeless block of marble and the figure educed therefrom by the sculptor, but this is only an a.n.a.logy: just as the statue results from the union of an _accidental_ form with an existing matter, so this matter itself, the substance _marble_, is composed of a _substantial_ form and a primordial, _potential_ matter. But there the a.n.a.logy ceases.

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