Part 11 (2/2)
It is far easier to distinguish between accidents and substance than to give an exhaustive list of the ultimate and irreducible cla.s.ses of the former. Aristotle enumerates _nine_: Quant.i.ty (p?s??), Quality (p????), Relation (p??? t?), Action (p?????), Pa.s.sion (p?s?e??), Where (p??), When (p?t?), Posture (?e?s?a?), External Condition or State (??e??). Much has been said for and against the exhaustive character of this cla.s.sification.
Scholastics generally have defended and adopted it. St. Thomas gives the following reasoned a.n.a.lysis of it:(220) Since accidents may be distinguished by their relations to substance, we see that some affect substances intrinsically, others extrinsically; and in the former case, either absolutely or relatively: if relatively we have the category of _relation_; if absolutely we have either _quant.i.ty_ or _quality_ according as the accident affects the substance by reason of the matter, or the form, of the latter. What affects and denominates a substance extrinsically does so either as a cause, or as a measure, or otherwise. If as a cause, the substance is either _suffering_ action, or _acting_ itself; if as a measure, it denominates the subject as in _time_, or in _place_, or in regard to the relative position of its parts, its _posture_, in the place which it occupies. Finally, if the accident affects the substance extrinsically, though not as cause or as measure, but only as characterizing its external condition and immediate surroundings, as when we describe a man as clothed or armed, we have the category of _condition_.
It might be said that all this is more ingenious than convincing; but it is easier to criticize Aristotle's list than to suggest a better one. In addition to what we have said of it elsewhere,(221) a few remarks will be sufficient in the present context.
Some of the categories, as being of lesser importance, we may treat incidentally when dealing with the more important ones. _Ubi_, _Quando_, and _Situs_, together with the a.n.a.lysis of our notions of s.p.a.ce and Time, fall naturally into the general doctrine of _Quant.i.ty_. The final category, ??e??, however interpreted,(222) may be referred to _Quality_, _Quant.i.ty_, or _Relation_.
A more serious point for consideration is the fact, generally admitted by scholastics,(223) that one and the same real accident may belong to different categories if we regard it from different standpoints. _Actio_ and _pa.s.sio_ are one and the same _motus_ or change, regarded in relation to the agent and to the effect, respectively. _Place_, in regard to the located body belongs to the category _ubi_, whereabouts; in regard to the locating body it is an aspect of the latter's _quant.i.ty_. _Relation_, as we shall see, is probably not an ent.i.ty really distinct from its foundation-quality, quant.i.ty, or causality. The reason alleged for this partial absence of real distinction between the Aristotelian categories is that they were thought out primarily from a logical point of view-that of predication.(224) And the reason is a satisfactory one, for real distinction is not necessary for diversity of predication. Then, where they are not really distinct ent.i.ties these categories are at least aspects so fundamentally distinct and mutually irreducible that each of them is indeed a _summum genus_ immediately under the concept of being in general.
It seems a bold claim to make for any scheme of categories, that it exhausts all the known modes of reality. We often experience objects of thought which seem at first sight incapable of reduction to any of Aristotle's _suprema genera_. But more mature reflection will always enable us to find a place for them. In order that any extrinsic denomination of a substance const.i.tute a category distinct from those enumerated, it must affect the substance _in some real_ way distinct from any of those nine; and it must moreover _be not a mere complex or aggregate_ of two or more of the latter. Hence denominations which objects derive from the fact that they are terms of mental activities which are really immanent, _actiones_ ”_intentionales_,”-denominations such as ”being known,” ”being loved,”-neither belong to the category of ”_pa.s.sio_”
proper, nor do they const.i.tute any distinct category. They are _entia rationis_, logical relations. Again, while efficient causation resolves itself into the categories of _actio_ and _pa.s.sio_, the causation of final, formal and material causes cannot be referred to these categories, but neither does it const.i.tute any new category. The influence of a final cause consists in nothing more than its being a good which is the term of appet.i.te or desire. The causation of the formal cause consists in its formally const.i.tuting the effect: it is always either a substantial or an accidental form, and so must be referred to the categories of substance, or quality, or quant.i.ty. Similarly material causality consists in this that the matter is a partial const.i.tutive principle of the composite being; and it therefore refers us to the category of substance. It may be noted, too, that the ontological principles of a composite being-such as primal matter and substantial form-since they are themselves not properly ”beings,” but only ”principles of being,” are said to belong each to its proper category, not formally but only referentially, not _formaliter_ but only _reductive_. Finally, the various properties that are a.s.signed to certain accidents themselves are either logical relations (such as ”not having a contrary” or ”being a measure”), or real relations, or intrinsic modes of the accident itself (as when a quality is said to have a certain ”intensity”); but in all cases where they are not mere logical ent.i.ties they will be found to come under one or other of the Aristotelian categories.
The ”real being” which is thus ”determined” into the supreme modes or categories of substance and accidents is, of course, ”being” considered _substantially_ as _essential_ (whether possible or actual), and not merely being that is actually existent, _existential_ being, in the _participial_ sense. Furthermore, it is primarily finite or created being that is so determined. The Infinite Being is above the categories, _super_-substantial. It is because substance is the most perfect of the categories, and because the Infinite Being verifies in Himself in an incomprehensibly perfect manner all the perfections of substance, that we speak of Him as a substance: remembering always that these essentially finite human concepts are to be predicated of Him only _a.n.a.logically_ (2, 5).
It may be inquired whether ”accident” is a genus which should be predicated _univocally_ of the nine Aristotelian categories as species? or is the concept of ”accident” only _a.n.a.logical_, so that these nine categories would be each a _summum genus_ in the strict sense, _i.e._ an ultimate and immediate determination of the concept of ”being” itself? We have seen already that the concept of ”being” as applied to ”substance”
and ”accident” is a.n.a.logical (2). So, too, it is a.n.a.logical as applied to the various categories of accidents. For the characteristic note of ”accident,” that of ”affecting, inhering in” a subject, can scarcely be said to be verified ”in the same way,” ”univocally,” of the various kinds of accidents; it is therefore more probably correct not to regard ”accident” as a genus proper, but to conceive each kind of accident as a _summum genus_ coming immediately under the transcendental concept of ”being”.
61. THE PHENOMENIST ATTACK ON THE TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF SUBSTANCE.-Pa.s.sing now to the question of the existence and nature of substances, and their relation to accidents, we shall find evidences of misunderstandings to which many philosophical errors may be ascribed at least in part. It is a fairly common contention that the distinction between substance and accident is really a groundless distinction; that we have experience merely of transient events or happenings, internal and external, with relations of coexistence or sequence between them; that it is an illusion to suppose, underlying these, an inert, abiding basis called ”substance”; that this can be at best but a useless name for each of the collections of external and internal appearances which make up our total experience of the outer world and of our own minds. This is the general position of _phenomenists_. ”What do you know of substance,” they ask us, ”except that it is an indeterminate and unknown something underlying phenomena? And even if you could prove its existence, what would it avail you, since in its nature it is, and must remain, unknown?
No doubt the mind naturally supposes this 'something' underlying phenomena; but it is a mere mental fiction the reality of which cannot be proved, and the nature of which is admitted, even by some who believe in its real existence, to be unknowable.”
Now there can be no doubt about the supreme importance of this question: all parties are pretty generally agreed that on the real or fict.i.tious character of substance the very existence of genuine metaphysics in the traditional sense depends. And at first sight the possibility of such a controversy as the present one seems very strange. ”Is it credible,” asks Mercier,(225) ”that thinkers of the first order, like Hume, Mill, Spencer, Kant, Wundt, Paulsen, Littre, Taine, should have failed to recognize the substantial character of things, and of the _Ego_ or Self? Must they not have seen that they were placing themselves in open revolt against sound common sense? And on the other hand is it likely that the genius of Aristotle could have been duped by the nave illusion which phenomenists must logically ascribe to him? Or that all those sincere and earnest teachers who adopted and preserved in scholastic philosophy for centuries the peripatetic distinction between substance and accidents should have been all utterly astray in interpreting an elementary fact of common sense?”
There must have been misunderstandings, possibly on both sides, and much waste of argument in refuting chimeras. Let us endeavour to find out what they are and how they gradually arose.
Phenomenism has had its origin in the _Idealism_ which confines the human mind to a knowledge of its own states, proclaiming the unknowability of any reality other than these; and in the _Positivism_ which admits the reality only of that which falls directly within external and internal sense experience. Descartes did not deny the substantiality of the soul, nor even of bodies; but his idealist theory of knowledge rendered suspect all information derived by his deductive, _a priori_ method of reasoning from supposed innate ideas, regarding the nature and properties of bodies.
Locke rejected the innatism of Descartes, ascribing to sense experience a positive role in the formation of our ideas, and proving conclusively that we have no such intuitive and deductively derived knowledge of real substances as Descartes contended for.(226) Locke himself did not deny the existence of substances,(227) any more than Descartes. But unfortunately he propounded the mistaken a.s.sumption of Idealism, that the mind can know only its own states; and also the error of thinking that because we have not an intuitive insight into the specific nature of individual substances we can know nothing at all through any channel about their nature: and he gathered from this latter error a general notion or definition of substance which is a distinct departure from what Aristotle and the medieval scholastics had traditionally understood by substance. For Locke substance is merely a supposed, but unknown, support for accidents.(228) Setting out with these two notions-that all objects of knowledge must be states or phases of mind, and that material substance is a supposed, but unknown and unknowable, substratum of the qualities revealed to our minds in the process of sense perception-it was easy for Berkeley to support by plausible arguments his denial of the reality of any such things as material substances. And it was just as easy, if somewhat more audacious, on the part of Hume to argue quite logically that if the supposed but unknowable substantial substratum of external sense phenomena is illusory, so likewise is the supposed substantial _Ego_ which is thought to underlie and support the internal phenomena of consciousness.
Hume's rejection of substance is apparently complete and absolute, and is so interpreted by many of his disciples. But a thorough-going phenomenism is in reality impossible; no philosophers have ever succeeded in thinking out an intelligible theory of things without the concepts of ”matter,” and ”spirit,” and ”things,” and the ”Ego” or ”Self,” however they may have tried to dispense with them; and these are concepts of substances. Hence there are those who doubt that Hume was serious in his elaborate reasoning away of substances. The fact is that Hume ”reasoned away” substance only in the sense of an unknowable substratum of phenomena, and not in the sense of a something that exists in itself.(229) So far from denying the existence of ent.i.ties that exist in themselves, he seems to have multiplied these beyond the wildest dreams of all previous philosophers _by substantializing accidents_.(230) What he does call into doubt is the capacity of the human mind to attain to a knowledge of the specific natures of such ent.i.ties; and even here the arguments of phenomenism strike the false Cartesian theory of knowledge, rather than the sober and moderate teachings of scholasticism regarding the nature and limitations of our knowledge of substances.
62. THE SCHOLASTIC VIEW OF OUR KNOWLEDGE IN REGARD TO THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF SUBSTANCES.-What, then, are these latter teachings? That we have a direct, intellectual insight into the specific essence or nature of a corporeal substance such as gold, similar to our insight into the abstract essence of a triangle? By no means; Locke was quite right in rejecting the Cartesian claim to intuitions which were supposed to yield up all knowledge of things by ”mathematical,” _i.e._ deductive, _a priori_ reasoning. The scholastic teaching is briefly as follows:-
First, as regards our knowledge of the _existence_ of substances, and the manner in which we obtain our concept of substance. We get this concept from corporeal substances, and afterwards apply it to spiritual substances; so that our knowledge of the former is ”immediate” only in the relative sense of being prior to the latter, not in the sense that it is a direct intuition of the natures of corporeal substances. We have no such direct insight into their natures. But our concept of them as actually existing is also immediate in the sense that _at first_ we _spontaneously_ conceive _every_ object which comes before our consciousness _as something existing in itself_. The child apprehends each separate stimulant of its sense perception-resistance, colour, sound, etc.-as a ”this ”or a ”that,”
_i.e._ as a separate something, existing there in itself; in other words it apprehends all realities as substances: not, of course, that the child has yet any reflex knowledge of what a substance is, but unknowingly it applies to all realities at first the concept which it undoubtedly possesses ”something existing in itself”. It likewise apprehends each such reality as ”one” or ”undivided in itself,” and as ”distinct from other things”. Such is the child's immediate, direct, and implicit idea of substance. But if we are to believe Hume, what is true of the child remains true of the man: for the latter, too, ”every perception is a substance, and every distinct part of a perception a distinct substance”.(231) Nothing, however, could be more manifestly at variance with the facts. For as reason is developed and reflective a.n.a.lysis proceeds, the child most undoubtedly realizes that not everything that falls within its experience has the character of ”a something existing in itself and distinct from other things”. ”Walking,” ”talking,” and ”actions” generally, it apprehends as realities,-as realities which, however, do _not_ ”exist in themselves,” but in other beings, in the beings that ”walk” and ”talk” and ”act”. And these latter beings it still apprehends as ”existing in themselves,” and as thus differing from the former, which ”exist not in themselves but in other things”. Thus the child comes into possession of the notion of ”accident,” and of the further notion of ”substance” as something which not only exists in itself (??s?a, _ens in se subsistens_), but which is also a support or subject of accidents (?p??e?e???, _substans_, _substare_).(232) Nor, indeed, need the child's reason be very highly developed in order to realize that if experience furnishes it with ”beings that do not exist in themselves,”
there must also be beings which do exist in themselves: that if ”accidents” exist at all it would be unintelligible and self-contradictory to deny the existence of ”substances”.
Hence, _in the order of our experience_ the first, _implicit_ notion of substance is that of ”something existing in itself” (??s?a); the first _explicit_ notion of it, however, is that by which it is apprehended as ”a subject or support of accidents” (?p??e?e???, _sub-stare_, _substantia_); then by reflection we go back to the _explicit_ notion of it as ”something existing in itself”. In the _real_ or _ontological_ order the perfection of ”existing in itself” is manifestly more fundamental than that of ”supporting accidents”. It is in accordance with a natural law of language that we name things after the properties whereby they reveal themselves to us, rather than by names implying what is more fundamental and essential in them. ”To exist in itself” is an absolute perfection, essential to substance; ”to support accidents” is only a relative perfection; nor can we know _a priori_ but a substance might perhaps exist without any accidents: we only know that accidents cannot exist without some substance, or subject, or power which will sustain them in existence.
Can substance be apprehended by the senses, or only by intellect? Strictly speaking, only by intellect: it is neither a ”proper object” of any one sense, such as taste, or colour, or sound; nor a ”common object” of more than one sense, as extension is with regard to sight and touch: it is, in scholastic language, not a ”_sensibile per se_,” not itself an object of sense knowledge, but only ”_sensibile per accidens_,” _i.e._ it may be said to be ”accidentally” an object of sense because of its conjunction with accidents which are the proper objects of sense: so that when the senses perceive accidents what they are really perceiving is the substance affected by the accidents. But strictly and properly it is by intellect we consciously grasp that which in the reality is the substance: while the external and internal sense faculties make us aware of various qualities, activities, or other accidents external to the ”self,” or of various states and conditions of the ”self,” the intellect-which is a faculty of the same soul as the sense faculties-makes us simultaneously aware of corporeal substances actually existing outside us, or of the concrete substance of the ”ego” or ”self,” existing and revealing itself to us in and through its conscious activities, as the substantial, abiding, and unifying subject and principle of these conscious activities.
Thus, then, do we attain to the concept of substance in general, to a conviction of the concrete actual existence of that mode of being the essential characteristic of which is ”to exist in itself”.
In the next place, how do we reach a knowledge of the _specific natures_ of substances?(233) What is the character, and what are the limitations, of such knowledge? Here, especially, the very cautious and moderate doctrine of scholasticism has been largely misconceived and misrepresented by phenomenists and others. About the specific nature of substances we know just precisely what their accidents reveal to us-that and no more. We have no intuitive insight into their natures; all our knowledge here is abstractive and discursive. As are their properties-their activities, energies, qualities, and all their accidents-so is their nature. We know of the latter just what we can infer from the former. _Operari sequitur esse_; we have no other key than this to knowledge of their specific natures. We have experience of them only through their properties, their behaviour, their activities; a.n.a.lysis of this experience, _a posteriori_ reasoning from it, inductive generalization based upon it: such are the only channels we possess, the only means at our disposal, for reaching a knowledge of their natures.
63. PHENOMENIST DIFFICULTIES AGAINST THIS VIEW. ITS VINDICATION.-Now the phenomenist will really grant all this. His only objection will be that such knowledge of substance is really no knowledge at all; or that, such as it is, it is useless. But surely the knowledge that this mode of being _really exists_, that there _is_ a mode of being which ”exists in itself,”
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