Part 8 (1/2)

It would appear, therefore, that we cannot reach a true conception of what we are to regard as _really one_, or _really manifold_, by abstract thought alone. It is external and internal sense experience, not abstract thought, which first brings us into direct and immediate mental contact with _actually existing_ reality. What we have therefore to determine is this: Does sense experience, or does it not, reveal reality to us as a _real manifold_, not as _one being_ but as _beings_ coexisting outside one another in s.p.a.ce, succeeding one another in time, interdependent on one another, interacting on one another, and by this interaction causing and undergoing real change, each producing others, or being produced by others, really distinct from itself? In other words, is separateness of existence in time or s.p.a.ce, as revealed in sense experience, a sufficient index of the real manifoldness of corporeal being, and of the really distinct individuality of each such being?-or are we to take it that because those s.p.a.ce and time distinctions have to be apprehended by thought in order that not merely sense but intellect may apprehend corporeal beings as really manifold, therefore these distinctions are not _in the reality_ given to us?

Or, again, is each person's own conscious experience of himself as one being, of his own unity, and of his distinctness from other persons, a sufficient index that the distinction between person and person is a real distinction?-or are we to take it that because his _feeling_ of his individual unity through sense consciousness must be interpreted by the _thought-concepts_ of ”one”-”individual”-”person”-”distinct” from ”others,” these concepts do not truly express what is really given him to interpret? Finally, if we can infer from the actually existing material reality which forms the immediate datum of direct experience, or from the human _Ego_ as given in this experience, the actual existence of a real mode of being which is not material but spiritual, by what tests can we determine whether this spiritual mode of being is really one, or whether there is a real plurality of such beings? The solution of these questions bears directly on the validity of the adequate or ”greater” real distinction, the ”_distinctio realis major seu absoluta_”.

The philosophy which defends the validity of this distinction,-which holds that the distinction between individual human beings, and between individual living things generally, is in the fullest and truest sense a real distinction,-is at all events in conformity with universally prevailing modes of thought and language; while the monism which repudiates these spontaneous interpretations of experience as invalid by denying all real manifoldness to reality, can make itself intelligible only by doing violence to thought and language alike. Not that this alone is a disproof of monism; but at all events it creates a presumption against a system to find it running counter to any of those universal spontaneous beliefs which appear to be rooted in man's rational nature. On the other hand, the philosophy which accords with common belief in proclaiming a real plurality in being has to reconcile intellect with sense, and the universal with the individual, by solving the important problem of _individuation_: What is it that makes real being individual, if, notwithstanding the fact that intellect apprehends reality as abstract and universal, reality nevertheless can exist only as concrete and individual? (29-33).

38. THE REAL DISTINCTION.-In the next place it must be remembered, comparing the virtual distinction with the real, that philosophers have recognized two kinds of real distinction: the _major_ or _absolute_ real distinction, and the _minor_ real, or _modal_ distinction. Before defining these let us see what are the usual signs by which a real distinction in general can be recognized.

The relation of efficient causality, of efficient cause and effect, between two objects of thought, is sometimes set down as a sure sign of a (major) real distinction between them.(157) And the reason alleged is that a thing cannot be the efficient cause of itself: the efficient cause is necessarily extrinsic to the effect and cannot be really identical with the latter. It is to be noted that this test applies to reality as actually existing, as producing or undergoing change, and that it is derived from our sense experience of reality in process of change. But since our concept of efficient causality has its origin in our internal experience of our own _selves_ as active agents, as causing some portion of what enters into our experience, the test seems to a.s.sume that we have already introduced into this experience a real distinction between the self and what is caused by the self. It is not clear that the relation of efficient cause to effect, as applied to created causes, can precede and reveal, in our experience, the relation of what is _really one_ to what is _really other_, in this experience. If the reality revealed to us in our direct experience, the phenomenal universe, has been brought into existence by the creative act of a Supreme Being, this, of course, implies a real distinction between Creator and creature. But it does not seem possible in this case, or indeed in any case, to prove the existence of the causal relation antecedently to that of the real distinction, or to utilize the former as an index to the latter.

Two distinct thought-objects are regarded as _really_ distinct (1) when they are found to exist separately and apart from each other in time or s.p.a.ce, as is the case with any two individuals such as John and James, or a man and a horse; (2) when, although they are found in the same individual, one of them at least is separable from the other, in the sense that it can actually exist without that other: for example, the soul of any individual man can exist apart from the material principle with which it is actually united to form this living human individual; the individual himself can exist without the particular accidental modes, such as sitting, thinking, speaking, which actually affect his being at any particular instant of his existence.

From this we can gather in the first place that the distinction between two ”individuals,”-individual ”persons” or individual ”things”-is a real distinction in the fullest and plainest sense of this expression, a major or absolute real distinction. It is, moreover, not merely real but actual.

Two existing ”individuals” are always actually divided and separate from each other, while each is actually one or actually undivided in itself.

And they are so ”independently of the consideration of the mind”.

In the second place, a.s.suming that the mind can apprehend, in the individuals of its experience, a unity resulting from the union or composition of separable factors or principles, whether essential or accidental [27 (_b_)]; and a.s.suming that it can know these factors to be really separable (though actually one and undivided), that is, separable in the sense that each of any two such factors, or at least one of them, could actually exist without the other,-it regards the distinction between such factors as real. They are really distinct because though _actually_ one and undivided they are _potentially_ manifold. If each has a positive ent.i.ty of its own, so that absolutely speaking each could exist without the other, the distinction is still regarded as an absolute or major real distinction. For example, the human soul can exist without the body; the body can exist without the soul, being actualized by the new formative principle or principles which replace the soul at death; therefore there is an absolute real distinction between the soul and the body of the living human individual: although both factors form _one actual being_, still, independently of the consideration of the mind _the one factor is not the other_: each is really, though only potentially, other than the factor with which it is united: the relation of ”one” to ”other” though not _actually_ verified of either factor (since there is only _one actual_ being: the existing individual man), is potentially and really verified, _i.e._ _verifiable_ of each. Again, the individual corporeal substance can, absolutely speaking, exist without its connatural accident of external or local extension; this latter can, absolutely speaking, exist without its connatural substance;(158) therefore these are absolutely and really distinct.

If only one of the factors is seen to be capable of existing without the other, and the latter to be such that it could not actually exist except as united with the former, so that the separability is not mutual, the distinction is regarded still as real, but only as a _minor_ or _modal_ distinction. Such, for instance, is the distinction between a body and its location, or its state of rest or motion: and, in general, the distinction between a substance and what are called its accidental modes or modal accidents. The distinction is regarded as real because reflection is held to a.s.sure us that it is in the reality itself independently of the mind, and not merely imposed by the mind on the reality because of some ground or reason in the reality. It is called a modal distinction rather than an absolute real distinction because those accidental modes of a substance do not seem to have of themselves sufficient reality to warrant our calling them ”things” or ”realities,” but rather merely ”modes” or ”determinations” of things or realities. It is significant, as throwing light on the relation of the virtual to the real distinction, that some authors call the modal distinction not a real distinction but a ”distinctio _media_,” _i.e._ intermediate between a real and a logical distinction; and that the question whether it should be called simply a real distinction, or ”intermediate” between a real and a logical distinction is regarded by some as ”a purely verbal question.”(159) We shall recur to the modal distinction later (68).

In the third place it must be noted that separability _in the sense explained_, even non-mutual, is not regarded as the _only_ index to a real distinction. In other words, certain distinctions are held by some to be real even though this test of separability does not apply. For instance, it is commonly held that not merely in man but in _all_ corporeal individuals the formative and the determinable principle of the nature or substance, the _forma substantialis_ and the _materia prima_, are really distinct, although it is admitted that, apart from the case of the human soul, _neither_ can actually exist except in union with the other. What is held in regard to _accidental_ modes is also applied to these essential principles of the corporeal substance: _viz._ that there is here a special reason why such principles cannot actually exist in isolation. Of their very nature they are held to be such that they cannot be _actualized_ or _actually exist_ in isolation, but only in union. But this fact, it is contended, does not prove that the principles in question are merely mentally distinct aspects of one reality: the fact that they cannot actually exist as such separately does not prove that they are not really separable; and it is contended that they are really and actually separated whenever an individual corporeal substance undergoes substantial change.

This, then, raises once more the question: What sort of ”separation” or ”separability” is the test of a real distinction?

Is it separateness in and for sense perception, or separateness in and for intellectual thought? The former is certainly the fundamental index of the real distinction; for all our knowledge of reality originates in sense experience, and separateness in time and s.p.a.ce, which marks its data, is the key to our knowledge of reality as a manifold of really distinct individual beings; and when we infer from sense-experience the actual existence of a _spiritual_ domain of reality we can conceive _its_ ”individuals”

only after the a.n.a.logy of the corporeal individuals of our immediate sense experience. Scholastic philosophers, following Aristotle, have always taken the manifoldness of reality, _i.e._ its presentation in sense experience in the form of ”individuals,”

of ”this” and ”that,” ”t?d? t?,” ”_hoc aliquid_,” as an unquestioned and unquestionable _real datum_. Not that they navely a.s.sumed everything _perceived by the senses_ as an individual, in time and s.p.a.ce, to be really an individual: they realized that what is perceived by sense as _one_ limited continuum, occupying a definite portion of s.p.a.ce, may be in reality an aggregate of many individuals; and they recognized the need of scrutinizing and a.n.a.lysing those apparent individuals in order to test their real individuality; but they held, and rightly, that sense experience does present to us some data that are unmistakably real individuals-individual men, for instance.

Next, they saw that intellectual thought, by a.n.a.lysing sense experience, ama.s.ses an ever-growing mult.i.tude of abstract and conceptually distinct thought-objects, which it utilizes as predicates for the interpretation of this sense experience. These thought-objects intellect can unite or separate; can in some cases positively see to be mutually compatible or incompatible; can form into ideal or possible complexes. But whether or not the _conceptually_ distinct, though mutually compatible, thought-objects forming any such complex, will be also _really distinct_ from one another, is a question which evidently cannot arise until such a complex is considered as an actual or possible _individual being_: for it is the individual only that exists or can exist. They will be _really_ distinct when found actualized in _distinct individuals_. Even the _conceptually_ one and self-identical abstract thought-object will be _really distinct from itself_ when embodied in distinct individuals; the one single abstract thought-object, ”humanity,” ”human nature,” is really distinct from itself in John and in James; the humanity of John is _really other_ than the humanity of James.

Of course, if conceptually distinct thought-objects are seen to be mutually incompatible they cannot be found realized except in really distinct individuals: the union of them is only an _ens rationis_. Again it may be that the intellect is unable to p.r.o.nounce positively as to whether they are compatible or not (18): as to whether the complex forms a possible being or not. But when the intellect positively sees such thought-objects to be mutually compatible-by interpretation of, and inference from, its actual sense experience of them as embodied in individuals (18)-and when, furthermore, it now finds a number of them co-existing in some one actual individual, the question recurs: How can it know whether they are _really distinct_ from each other, though actually united to form one (essentially or accidentally composite) individual, or only conceptually distinct aspects of one (simple) individual [27 (_b_)]?

This, as we have seen already, is the case for which it is really difficult to find a satisfactory test: and hence the different views to be found among scholastic philosophers as to the nature of the distinctions which the mind makes or discovers _within the individual_. The difficulty is this. The conceptual distinction between compatible thought-objects is not a proof of real distinction when these thought-objects are found united in _one individual_ of sense experience, as _e.g._ animality and rationality in man; and the only distinction given to us by sense experience, at least directly and immediately, as undoubtedly real, is the distinction _between_ corporeal _individuals_ existing apart in s.p.a.ce or time, as _e.g._ between man and man.

How then, can we show that any distinctions _within the individual_ are real?

Well, we have seen that certain ent.i.ties, which are objects of sense or of thought, or of both, can disappear from the individual without the residue thereby peris.h.i.+ng or ceasing to exist actually as an individual: the human soul survives, as an actual individual reality, after its separation from the material principle with which it formed the individual man; the individual man persists while the accidental modes that affect him disappear. In such cases as these, intellect, interpreting sense experience and reasoning from it, places a real distinction, in the composite individual, between the factors that can continue to exist without others, and these latter. In doing so it is apparently applying the a.n.a.logy of the typical real distinction-that between one individual and another. The factor, or group of factors, which can continue to exist actually after the separation of the others, is an individual: and what were separated from it were apparently real ent.i.ties, though they may have perished by the actual separation. But on what ground is the distinction between the material principle and the vital principle of a plant or an animal, for example, regarded as real? Again on the ground furnished by the a.n.a.logy of the distinction between individuals of sense experience. Note that it is not between the material and the vital principles _as objects of abstract thought_, _i.e._ between the _materiality_ and the _vitality_ of the plant or the animal, that a real distinction is claimed: these are regarded only as conceptually distinct aspects of the plant or the animal; nor is it admitted that because one of these thought-objects is found embodied elsewhere in nature without the other-materiality without vitality in the inorganic universe-we can therefore conclude that they are really distinct in the plant or the animal. No; it is between the two principles conceived as coexisting and united in the concrete individual that the real distinction is claimed. And it is held to be a real distinction because substantial change in corporeal things, _i.e._ corruption and generation of individual corporeal substances, is held to be real. If it is real there is a real separation of essential factors when the individual perishes.

And the factors continue to be real, as _potential_ principles of other individuals, when any individual corporeal substance perishes. Each principle may not continue to exist actually as such in isolation from the other-though some scholastics hold that, absolutely speaking, they could be conserved apart, as actual ent.i.ties, by the Author of Nature. But they _can_ actually exist _as essential principles of other actual individuals_: they are real _potentialities_, which _become actual_ in other individuals. Thus we see that they are conceived throughout _after the a.n.a.logy of the individual_. Those who hold that, absolutely speaking, the material principle as such, _materia prima_, could actually exist in isolation from any formative principle, should apparently admit that in such a case it would be _an individual reality_.

39. SOME QUESTIONABLE DISTINCTIONS. THE SCOTIST DISTINCTION.-The difficulty of discriminating between the virtual and the real distinction in an individual has given rise to the conception of distinctions which some maintain to be real, others to be less than real. The virtual distinction, as we have hitherto understood it, may be described as _extrinsic_ inasmuch as it arises in the individual only when we consider the latter under different aspects, or in different relations to things extrinsic to it. By regarding an individual under different aspects-_e.g._ a man under the aspects of animality and rationality-we can predicate contradictory attributes of the individual, _e.g._ of a man that ”he is similar to a horse,” and that ”he is not similar to a horse”. Now it is maintained by some that although independently of the consideration of the mind the grounds of these contradictory predications are not _actually_ distinct in the individual, nevertheless even before such consideration the individual has a real _intrinsic capacity_ to have these contradictory predicates affirmed of him: they can be affirmed of him not merely when he is regarded, and because he is regarded, under conceptually different aspects, but because these principles, ”animality” and ”rationality,” are already really in him not merely as aspects but as distinct capacities, as potentially distinct principles of contradictory predications.

The virtual distinction, understood in this way, is described as _intrinsic_. It is rejected by some on the ground that, at least in its application to finite realities, it involves a violation of the principle of contradiction: it seems to imply that one and the same individual has in itself absolutely (and not merely as considered under different aspects and relations) the capacity to verify of itself contradictory predicates.

Scotus and his followers go even farther than the advocates of this intrinsic virtual distinction by maintaining the existence of a distinction which on the one hand they hold to be less than real because it is not between ”thing and thing,” and on the other hand to be more than logical or virtual, because it _actually_ exists between the various thought-objects or ”_formalitates_” (such, _e.g._ as animality and rationality) in the individual, independently of the a.n.a.lytic activity whereby the mind detects these in the latter. This distinction Scotists call a ”formal distinction, actual on the part of the thing”-”_distinctio formalis_, _actualis ex natura rei_.” Hence the name ”formalists” applied to Scotists, from their advocacy of this ”Scotistic” distinction. It is, they explain, a distinction not between ”things” (”_res_”) but between ”formalities” (”_formalitates_”). By ”thing” as opposed to ”formality”