Part 7 (2/2)

Of course if we try to conceive two individuals so absolutely alike both in essence and accidents, both in the abstract and in the concrete, as to be indiscernible either by our senses or by our intellect, or by any intellect-even the Divine Intellect-we are simply conceiving _the same thing_ twice over. But is there anything impossible or contradictory in thinking that G.o.d could create two perfectly similar beings, distinct from each other only individually, so similar, however, that neither human sense nor human intellect could apprehend them as two, but only as one? The impossibility is not apparent. Were they two material individuals they should, of course, occupy the same s.p.a.ce in order to have similar spatial relations, but impenetrability is not essential to corporeal substances. And even in the view that each is individuated by its ”_materia signata_” it is not impossible to conceive numerically distinct quantified matters allied at the same time to the same dimensions of s.p.a.ce. If, on the other hand, there be question of two pure spirits, absolutely similar specifically, even in the Thomistic view that here the individual distinction is at the same time specific there seems to be no sufficient ground for denying that the Divine Omnipotence could create two or more such individually (and therefore specifically) distinct spirits:(150) such distinction remaining, of course, indiscernible for the finite human intellect.

The argument of Leibniz, that there would be _no sufficient reason_ for the creation of two such indiscernible beings, and that it would therefore be repugnant to the Divine Wisdom, is extrinsic to the question of their intrinsic possibility: if they be intrinsically possible they cannot be repugnant to any attribute of the Divinity, either to the Divine Omnipotence or to the Divine Wisdom.

34. IDENt.i.tY.-Considering the order in which we acquire our ideas we are easily convinced that the notion of finite being is antecedent to that of infinite being. Moreover, it is from reflection on finite beings that we arrive at the most abstract notion of being in general. We make the object of this latter notion definite only by dividing it off mentally from nothingness, conceived _per modum entis_, or as an _ens rationis_. Thus the natural way of making our concepts definite is by _limiting_ them; it is only when we come to reflect on the necessary implications of our concept of ”infinite being” that we realize the possibility of conceiving a being which is _definite_ without being really _limited_, which is definite by the very fact of its infinity, by its possession of unlimited perfection; and even then our imperfect human mode of conceiving ”infinite being” is helped by distinguis.h.i.+ng or dividing it off from all finite being and contrasting it with the latter. All this goes to prove the truth of the teaching of St. Thomas, that the mental function of _dividing_ or _distinguis.h.i.+ng_ precedes our concepts of unity and mult.i.tude. Now the concepts of _ident.i.ty_ and _distinction_ are closely allied with those of unity and mult.i.tude; but they add something to these latter. When we think of a being as one we must a.n.a.lyse it further, look at it under different aspects, and _compare it with itself_, before we can regard it as _the same_ or _identical_ with itself. Or, at least, we must think of it twice and compare it with itself in the affirmative judgment ”This is itself,”

”A is A,” thus formulating the logical _Principle of Ident.i.ty_, in order to come into possession of the concept of _ident.i.ty_.(151) Every affirmative categorical judgment a.s.serts _ident.i.ty_ of the predicate with the subject (”_S is P_”): a.s.serts, in other words, that what we apprehend under the notion of the predicate (_P_) is _really identical_ with what we have apprehended under the _distinct_ notion of the subject (_S_). The synthetic function of the affirmative categorical judgment _identifies_ in the real order what the a.n.a.lytic function of mental abstraction had _separated_ in the logical order. By saying that the affirmative categorical judgment a.s.serts ident.i.ty we mean that by a.s.serting that ”this is that,” ”man is rational” we identify ”this” with ”that,” ”man” with ”rational,” thus _denying_ that they are _two_, that they are _distinct_, that they _differ_. Ident.i.ty is one of those elementary concepts which cannot be defined; but perhaps we may describe it as _the logical relation through which the mind a.s.serts the objects of two or more of its thoughts to be really one_.

If the object formally represented by each of the concepts is one and the same-as, _e.g._ when we compare ”_A_” with ”_A_,” or ”man” with ”rational animal,” or, in general, any object with its definition-the ident.i.ty is both _real and logical_ (or _conceptual_, _formal_). If the concepts differ in their formal objects while representing _one and the same reality_-as when we compare ”St. Peter” with ”head of the apostles,” or ”man” with ”rational”-the ident.i.ty is _real, but not logical_ or formal.

Finally, if we represent two or more realities, ”John, James, Thomas,” by the same formal concept, ”man,” the ident.i.ty is _merely logical_ or formal, _not real_. Of these three kinds of ident.i.ty the first is sometimes called _adequate_, the second and third _inadequate_.

Logical ident.i.ty may be _specific_ or _generic_, according as we identify really distinct individuals under one specific concept, or really distinct species or cla.s.ses under one generic concept. Again, it may be _essential_ or _accidental_, according as the abstract and universal cla.s.s-concept under which really distinct members are cla.s.sified represents a common part of the essence of these members or only a common property or accident. Thus John, James and Thomas are essentially identical in their _human nature_; they are accidentally identical in being all three _fair-haired_ and _six feet in height_. Logical ident.i.ty under the concept of _quality_ is based on the real relation of _similarity_; logical ident.i.ty under the concept of _quant.i.ty_ is based on the real relation of _equality_. When we say that _essential_ (logical) _ident.i.ty_ (_e.g._ the ident.i.ty of John, James and Thomas under the concept of ”man”) is based on the fact that the really distinct individuals have really _similar_ natures, we merely mean that _our_ knowledge of natures or essences is derived from our knowledge of qualities, taking ”qualities” in the wide sense of ”accidents” generally: that the properties and activities of things are our only key to the nature of these things: _Operari sequitur esse._ It is not implied, nor is it true, that real _similarity_ is a partial _real ident.i.ty_: it is but the ground of a partial _logical_ ident.i.ty,-ident.i.ty under the common concept of some quality (in the wide sense of this term). For example, the height of John is as really distinct from that of James as the humanity of John is from that of James. If, then, individual things are _really_ distinct, how is it that we can represent (even inadequately) _a mult.i.tude_ of them by _one_ concept? To say that we can do so because they reveal themselves to us as _similar_ to one another is to say what is undoubtedly true; but this does not solve the problem of the relation between the universal and the individual in human experience: rather it places us face to face with this problem.

Reverting now to _real_ ident.i.ty: whatever we can predicate affirmatively about a being considered as _one_, and as subject of a judgment, we regard as really identical with that being. We cannot predicate a real part of its real whole, or _vice versa_. But our concepts, when compared together in judgment, bear _logical_ relations of extension and intension to each other, that is, relations of logical part to logical whole. Thus, the _logical_ ident.i.ty of subject and predicate in the affirmative judgment may be only _inadequate_.(152) But the real ident.i.ty underlying the affirmative judgment is an adequate real ident.i.ty. When we say, for example, that ”Socrates is wise,” we mean that the object of our concept of ”wisdom” is in this case really and adequately identical with the object of our concept of ”Socrates”: in other words that we are conceiving one and the same real being under two distinct concepts, each of which represents, more or less adequately, the whole real being, and one of them in this case less adequately than the other.

We have to bear in mind that while considering being as one or manifold, identical or distinct, we are thinking of it in its _static_ mode, as an object of abstract thought, not in its _dynamic and kinetic_ mode as actually existing in s.p.a.ce and time, and subject to change. It is the ident.i.ty of being with itself when considered in this static, unchanging condition, that is embodied in the logical _Principle of Ident.i.ty_. In order, therefore, that this principle may find its application to being or reality _as subject to actual change_-and this is the state in which _de facto_ reality is presented to us as an immediate datum of experience-we must seize upon the changing reality and think of it in an indivisible instant apart from the change to which it is actually subject; only thus does the Principle of Ident.i.ty apply to it-as _being_, not as _becoming_, not _in fieri_, but _in facto esse_. The Principle of Ident.i.ty, which applies to all real being, whether possible or actual, tells us simply that ”a thing is what it is”. But for the understanding of actual being as subject to real change we must supplement the Principle of Ident.i.ty by another principle which tells us that such an actual being not only is actually what it is (Principle of Ident.i.ty), but also that it _is potentially something other than what it actually is, that it is potentially what it can become actually_ (Ch. ii.).

We have seen that, since change is not continuous annihilation and creation, the changing being must in some real and true sense _persist_ throughout the process of change. It is from experience of change we derive our notion of time-duration; and the concept of permanence or stability throughout change gives us the notion of a real sameness or abiding self-ident.i.ty which is compatible with real change. But a being which persists in existence is identical with itself throughout its duration only in so far forth as it has not changed. Only the Necessary Being, whose duration is absolutely exempt from all change, is _absolutely_ or _metaphysically_ identical with Himself: His duration is eternity-which is one perpetual, unchanging _now_. A being which persists unchanged in its essence or nature, which is exempt from substantial change, but which is subject to accidental change, to a succession of accidental qualities such as vital actions-such a being is said to retain its _physical_ ident.i.ty with itself throughout those changes. Such, for instance, is the ident.i.ty of the human soul with itself, or of any individual living thing during its life, or even of an inorganic material substance as long as it escapes substantial change. Finally, the persisting ident.i.ty of a collection of beings, united by some moral bond so as to form a moral unit, is spoken of as _moral_ ident.i.ty as long as the bond remains, even though the const.i.tuent members may be constantly disappearing to be replaced by others: as in a nation, a religious society, a legal corporation, etc.

35. DISTINCTION.-Distinction is the correlative of ident.i.ty; it is the absence or negation of the latter. We express the relation called distinction by the negative judgment, ”this is not that”; it is the relation of a being to whatever is not itself, the relation of _one_ to _other_.

Distinction may be either _adequate_ or _inadequate_, according as we distinguish one total object of thought from another total object, or only from a part of itself. For example, the distinction between John and James is an adequate real distinction, while that between John and his body is an inadequate real distinction; the distinction between John's rationality and his animality is an adequate logical distinction, while the distinction between either of these and his humanity is an inadequate logical distinction.

We have already (23) briefly explained and ill.u.s.trated the most important cla.s.sification of distinctions: that into real and logical; the sub-division of the latter into purely logical and virtual; and of the latter again into perfect (complete, adequate) and imperfect (incomplete, inadequate). But the theory there briefly outlined calls for some further a.n.a.lysis and amplification.

36. LOGICAL DISTINCTIONS AND THEIR GROUNDS.-The purely logical distinction must not be confounded with a mere _verbal_ distinction, _e.g._ that between an ”edifice” and a ”building,” or between ”truthfulness” and ”veracity”. A logical distinction is a distinction _in the concepts_: these must represent one and the same reality but in different ways: the one may be more explicit, more fully a.n.a.lysed than the other, as a definition is in comparison with the thought-object defined; or the one may represent the object less adequately than the other, as when we compare (in intension) the concepts ”man” and ”animal”; or the one may be predicated of the other in an affirmative judgment; or the one may represent the object as concrete and individual, the other the same object as abstract and universal.(153)

Comparing, in the next place, the purely logical with the virtual distinction, we see that the grounds for making these distinctions are different. Every distinction made by the mind must have an intelligible ground or reason of some sort-a _fundamentum distinctionis_. Now in the case of the purely logical distinction the ground is understood to consist exclusively in the needs of the mind itself-needs which spring from the mind's own limitations when confronted with the task of understanding or interpreting reality, of making reality intelligible. Purely logical distinctions are therefore seen to be a cla.s.s of purely logical relations, _i.e._ of those _entia rationis_ which the mind must construct for itself in its effort to understand the real. They have no other reality as objects of thought than the reality they derive from the const.i.tutive or constructive activity of the mind. They are modes, or forms, or terms, of the cognitive activity itself, not of the reality which is the object apprehended and contemplated by means of this cognitive activity.

The virtual distinction, on the other hand, although it also, as an object of thought, is only an _ens rationis_-inasmuch as there is no real duality or plurality corresponding to it in the reality into which the mind introduces it, this reality being a real _unity_-the virtual distinction is considered, nevertheless, to have a ground, or reason, or foundation (for making and introducing it) in the nature of this one reality; that is, it is regarded as having a _real_ foundation, a _fundamentum in re_.

In so far, therefore, as our knowledge is permeated by virtual distinctions, reality cannot be said to be _formally_, but only _fundamentally_ what this knowledge represents it to be. Does this fact interfere with the objective validity of our knowledge? Not in the least; for we do not ascribe to the reality the distinctions, and other such modes or forms, which we know by reflection to be formally characteristic _not of things_ but _of our thought or cognition of things_. Our knowledge, therefore, so far as it goes, may be a faithful apprehension of reality, even though it be itself affected by modes not found in the reality.

But what is this _real_ foundation of the virtual distinction? What _is_ the _fundamentum in re_? It is not a real or objective duality in virtue of which we could say that there are, in the object of our thought, two beings or realities one of which is not the other. Such duality would cause a _real_ distinction. But just here the difficulties of our a.n.a.lysis begin to arise: for we have to fix our attention on actually existing realities; and, a.s.suming that each and every one of these is an individual, we have to bear in mind the relation of the real to the actual, of reality as abstract and universal to reality as concrete and individual, of the simple to the composite, of the stable to the changing, of essential to accidental unity-in any and every attempt to discriminate in detail between a real and a virtual distinction. Nor is it easy to lay down any general test which will serve even theoretically to discriminate between them. Let us see what grounds have been mainly suggested as real foundations for the virtual distinction.

If a being which is not only one but simple, manifests, in the superior grade of being to which it belongs, a perfection which is equivalent to many lesser perfections found really distinct and separate elsewhere, in separate beings of an inferior order, this is considered a sufficient real ground for considering the former being, though really one and simple, as virtually manifold.(154) The human soul, as being virtually threefold-rational, sentient and vegetative-is a case in point: but only on the a.s.sumption that the soul of the individual man can be proved to be one and simple. This, of course, all scholastics regard as capable of proof: even those of them who hold that the powers or faculties whereby it immediately manifests these three grades of perfection are _accidental_ realities, _really distinct_ from one another and from the _substance_ of the soul itself.

Again, the being which is the object of our thought may be so rich in reality or perfection that our finite minds cannot adequately grasp it by any one mental intuition, but must proceed discursively, by a.n.a.lysis and abstraction, taking in partial aspects of it successively through inadequate concepts; while realizing that these aspects, these objects of our distinct concepts, are only partial aspects of one and the same real being. This, in fact, is our common experience. But the theory a.s.sumes that we are able to determine when these objects of our concepts are only mental aspects of _one_ reality, and when they are several separate realities; nay, even, that we can determine whether or not they are really distinct ent.i.ties united together to form one _composite_ individual being, or only mentally distinct views of one _simple_ individual being.

For example, it is a.s.sumed that while the distinction between the sentient and the rational grades of being in a human individual can be shown to be only a virtual distinction, that between the body and the soul of the same individual can be shown to be a real distinction; or, again, that while the distinction between essence, intellect, and will in G.o.d, can be shown to be only a virtual distinction, that between essence, intellect, and will in man, can be shown to be a real distinction.

37. THE VIRTUAL DISTINCTION AND THE REAL DISTINCTION.-Now scholastics differ considerably in cla.s.sifying this, that, or the other distinction, as logical or as real; but this does not prove that it is impossible ever to determine with cert.i.tude whether any particular distinction is logical or real. What we are looking for just now is a general test for discriminating, if such can be found. And this brings us to a consideration of the test suggested in the very definitions themselves. At first sight it would appear to be an impracticable, if not even an unintelligible test: ”The distinction is real if it exists in the reality-_i.e._ if the reality is _two_ (or more) _beings_, not _one being_-antecedently to, or independently of, the consideration of the mind; otherwise the distinction is logical”. But-it might be objected-how can we possibly know whether or not any object of perception or thought is _one_ or _more than one_ antecedently to, or independently of, the consideration of the mind? It is certainly impossible for us to know what, or what kind, reality is, or whether it is one or manifold, apart from and prior to, the exercise of our own cognitive activity. This, therefore, cannot be what the test means: to interpret it in such a sense would be absurd. But when we have perceived reality in our actual sense experience, when we have interpreted it, got the meaning of it, made it intelligible, and actually understood it, by the spontaneous exercise of intellect, the judging and reasoning faculty: then, obviously, we are at liberty to reflect critically on those antecedent spontaneous processes, on the knowledge which is the result of them, and the reality which is known through them; and by such critical reflection on those processes, their objects and their products, on the ”reality as perceived and known” and on the ”perceiving” and ”knowing” of it, we may be able to distinguish between two cla.s.ses of contributions to the total result which is the ”known reality”: those which we must regard as purely mental, as modes or forms or subjectively constructed terms of the mental function of cognition itself (whether perceptual or conceptual), and those which we must regard as given or presented to the mind as objects, which are not in any sense constructed or contributed by the mind, which, therefore, are what they are independently of our mental activity, and which would be and remain what they are, and what we have apprehended them to be, even if we had never perceived or thought of them. This, according to the scholastics, is the sense-and it is a perfectly intelligible sense-in which we are called on to decide whether the related terms of any given distinction have been merely rendered distinct by the a.n.a.lytic activity of the cognitive process, or are themselves distinct realities irrespective of this process. That it is possible to carry on successfully, at least to some extent, this work of discrimination between the subjective and the objective factors of our cognitive experience, can scarcely be denied. It is what philosophers in every age have been attempting. There are, however, some distinctions about the nature of which philosophers have never been able to agree, some holding them to be real, others to be only virtual: the former view being indicative of the tendency to emphasize the role of cognition as a pa.s.sive representation of objectively given reality; the latter view being an expression of the opposite tendency to emphasize the active or const.i.tutive or constructive factors whereby cognition a.s.similates to the mind's own mode of being the reality given to it in experience. In all cognition there is an a.s.similation of reality and mind, of object and subject. When certain distinctions are held to be real this consideration is emphasized: that in the cognitive process, as such, it is the mind that is a.s.similated to the objective reality.(155) When these same distinctions are held to be logical this other consideration is emphasized: that in the cognitive process reality must also be a.s.similated to mind, must be mentalized so to speak: _Cognitum est in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis_: that in this process the mind must often regard what is _one_ reality under _distinct aspects_: and that if we regard these distinct aspects as distinct realities we are violating the principle, _Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_.

Now those philosophers who hold certain distinctions to be virtual, and not real, thereby ascribe to cognitive experience a larger sphere of const.i.tutive or constructive influence than would be allowed to it by advocates of the reality of such distinctions.

But by doing so are they to be regarded as calling into question the objective validity of human knowledge? By no means: the fact that the human mind can understand reality only by processes of abstracting, generalizing, comparing, relating, a.n.a.lysing and synthesizing-processes which involve the production of logical ent.i.ties-in no way vitiates the value of these modes of understanding: it merely indicates that they are less perfect than intuitive modes of understanding which would dispense with such logical ent.i.ties,-the modes characteristic of pure, angelic intelligences, or the knowledge of the Deity. The objective validity of human cognition is not interfered with either by enlarging or by restricting the domain of the mind's const.i.tutive activity in forming such logical ent.i.ties; nor, therefore, by claiming that certain distinctions are real rather than virtual, or _vice versa_. It must be remembered, moreover, that the virtual distinction is not purely logical: it has a foundation in the reality, a ”_fundamentum in re_”; and in so far as it has it gives us an insight into the nature of reality.

No doubt, any particular distinction cannot be virtual and at the same time simply real: either view of it must be erroneous: and possibly both, if it happen to be _de facto_ a _purely_ logical distinction. But the error of confounding a virtual distinction with a real is not so great as that of regarding either as a purely logical distinction. Now the tendency of much modern philosophy, under the influence of Kant, has been to regard all the categories in which the mind apprehends reality as being wholly and exclusively forms of cognition, as being in the reality neither formally nor even fundamentally; and to infer from this an essential, const.i.tutional inability of the mind to attain to a valid knowledge of reality. But if, as a matter of fact, these categories are in the reality formally, nay, even if they are in it only fundamentally, the inference that issues in Kantian subjectivism is unwarranted. And those categories we hold to be in the reality at least fundamentally; we therefore reject the Kantian phenomenism of the speculative reason. Moreover, we can see no valid ground for admitting the Kantian division of the human mind into two totally separate cognitive compartments, the speculative and the practical reason, and ascribing to each compartment cognitive principles and capacities entirely alien to the other. To arrive at a right theory of knowledge human cognitive experience as a whole must be a.n.a.lysed; but provided the a.n.a.lysis is really an a.n.a.lysis of this experience it may be legitimately directed towards discovering what the mental conditions must be-_i.e._ the conditions on the side of the knowing subject, the subject having the experience-which are _necessarily prerequisite_ for having such experience. And if it be found by such a.n.a.lysis that cognitive experience presupposes in the knowing subject not merely a sentient and intelligent mind, but a mind which perceives, imagines, remembers reality in certain definite ways; which thinks reality in certain modes and through certain forms which by its own const.i.tutive activity it constructs for itself, and which it recognizes by reflection to be its own constructions (_e.g._ distinctions, relations, affirmations and negations, abstractions, generalizations, etc.: _intentiones logicae_, logical ent.i.ties),-there is no reason whatever in all this for inferring that because the mind is so const.i.tuted, because it has these modes of cognition, it must necessarily fail to reach, by means of them, a true, valid, and genuine knowledge of reality. From the fact that human modes of cognition are human, and not angelic or divine; from the fact that reality can be known _to man_ only through these modes, these finite modes of finite human faculties,-we may indeed infer that even our highest knowledge of reality is inadequate, that it does not _comprehend_ all that is in the reality, but surely not that it is essentially illusory and of its very nature incapable of giving us any true and valid insight into the nature of reality.

Fixing our attention on the virtual distinction we see that the mind is supposed by means of it to apprehend, through a plurality of distinct concepts, what it knows somehow or other to be _one_ being. Now if it knows the reality to be _really one_, it knows that the formal object of every distinct concept of this reality is really identical with the objects of all the other concepts of the latter. This condition of things is certainly verified when the mind can see that each of the distinct concepts, though not _explicitly_ presenting the objects of the others, nevertheless _implicitly and necessarily_ involves all these other objects:(156) for by seeing that the distinct concepts necessarily involve one another objectively it sees that the reality apprehended through all of them must necessarily be _one reality_. This is what takes place in the _imperfect_ virtual distinction: the concepts prescind from one another formally, not objectively. But suppose that the distinct concepts prescind from one another _objectively_, so that they cannot be seen by any a.n.a.lysis to involve one another even implicitly, but present to the mind, so far as they themselves are concerned, adequately distinct modes of being-as happens in the _perfect_ virtual distinction, _e.g._ between organic life, sentient life, and intellectual life (in man), or between animality and rationality (in man),-then the all-important question arises: How do we know, in any given case of this kind, whether or not these adequately distinct thought-objects are _identical with one another in the reality_? What is the test for determining whether or not, in a given case, these objects, which are _many_ for abstract intellectual thought, are _one being_ in the real order? The answer seems to be that _internal and external sense experience_ can and does furnish us with embodiments of these intellectual manifolds,-embodiments each of which we apprehend as _a being that is really one_, as an _individual subject_ of which they are conceptually distinct predicates.

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