Part 12 (1/2)

is already some knowledge, and genuine knowledge, of substance? No doubt, the information contained in this very indeterminate and generic concept is imperfect; but then it is only a starting point, an all-important starting point, however; for not only is it perfectible but every item of knowledge we gather from experience perfects it, whereas without it the intellect is paralysed in its attempt to interpret experience: indeed so indispensable is this concept of substance to the human mind that, as we have seen, no philosopher has ever been really able to dispense with it.

When phenomenists say that what _we_ call mind is only a bundle of perceptions and ideas; when they speak of the flow of events, which is _ourselves_, of which _we_ are conscious,(234) the very language they themselves make use of cries out against their professed phenomenism. For why speak of ”we,” ”ourselves,” etc., if there be no ”we” or ”ourselves”

other than the perceptions, ideas, events, etc., referred to?

Of course the explanation of this strange att.i.tude on the part of these philosophers is simple enough; they have a wrong conception of substance and of the relation of accidents thereto; they appear to imagine that according to the traditional teaching nothing of all we can discover about accidents-or, as they prefer to term them, ”phenomena”-can possibly throw any light upon the nature of substance: as if the role of phenomena were to cover up and conceal from us some sort of inner core (which they call substance), and not rather to reveal to us the nature of that ”being, existing in itself,” of which these phenomena are the properties and manifestations.

The denial of substance leads inevitably to the substantializing of accidents. It is possible that the manner in which some scholastics have spoken of accidents has facilitated this error.(235) Anyhow the error is one that leads inevitably to contradictions in thought itself. Mill, for instance, following out the arbitrary postulates of subjectivism and phenomenism, finally a.n.a.lysed all reality into present sensations of the individual consciousness, _plus_ permanent possibilities of sensations.

Now, consistently with the idealistic postulate, these ”permanent possibilities” should be nothing more than a certain tone, colouring, quality of the ”present” sensation, due to the fact that this has in it, as part and parcel of itself, feelings of memory and expectation; in which case the ”present sensation,” taken in its concrete fulness, would be the sole reality, and would exist in itself. This ”solipsism” is the ultimate logical issue of subjective idealism, and it is a sufficient _reductio ad absurdum_ of the whole system. Or else, to evade this issue, the ”permanent possibilities” are supposed to be something really other than the ”present sensations”. In which case we must ask what Mill can mean by a ”permanent _possibility_”. Whether it be subjective or objective possibility, it is presumably, according to Mill's thought, some property or appurtenance of the individual consciousness, _i.e._ a quality proper to a subject or substance.(236) But to deny that the conscious subject is a substance, and at the same time to contend that it is a ”permanent _possibility_ of sensation,” _i.e._ that it has properties which can appertain only to a substance, is simply to hold what is self-contradictory.

After these explanations it will be sufficient merely to state formally the proof that substances really exist. It is exceedingly simple, and its force will be appreciated from all that has been said so far: Whatever we become aware of as existing at all must exist either in itself, or by being sustained, supported in existence, in something else in which it inheres. If it exists in itself it is a substance; if not it is an accident, and then the ”something else” which supports it, must in turn either exist in itself or in something else. But since an infinite regress in things existing not in themselves but in other things is impossible, we are forced to admit the reality of a mode of being which exists in itself-_viz._ substance.

Or, again, we are forced to admit the real existence of accidents-or, if you will, ”phenomena” or ”appearances”-_i.e._ of realities or modes of being whose nature is manifestly to modify or qualify in some way or other some subject in which they inhere. Can we conceive a _state_ which is not a state of something? a phenomenon or appearance which is not an appearance of something? a vital act which is not an act of a living thing? a sensation, thought, desire, emotion, unless of some conscious being that feels, thinks, desires, experiences the emotion? No; and therefore since such accidental modes of being really exist, there exists also the substantial mode of being in which they inhere.

And the experienced realities which verify this notion of ”substance” as the ”mode of being which exists in itself,” are manifestly _not one but manifold_. Individual ”persons” and ”things”-men, animals, plants-are all so many really and numerically distinct substances (38). So, too, are the ultimate individual elements in the inorganic universe, whatever these may be (31). Nor does the universal interaction of these individuals on one another, or their manifold forms of interdependence on one another throughout the course of their ever-changing existence and activities, interfere in any way with the substantiality of the mode of being of each.

These mutual relations of all sorts, very real and actual as they undoubtedly are, only const.i.tute the universe a _cosmos_, thus endowing it with _unity of order_, but not with _unity of substance_ (27).

Let us now meet the objection of Hume: that there is no substantial soul distinct from its acts, that it is only the sum-total of the acts, each of these being a substance. The objection has been repeated in the metaphorical language in which Huxley and Taine speak of the soul, the living soul, as nothing more than a _republic_ of conscious states, or the movement of a _luminous sheaf_ etc. And Locke and Berkeley had already contended that an apple or an orange is nothing more than a collection or sum-total of sensible qualities, so that if we conceive these removed there is nothing left, for beyond these there was nothing there.

Now we admit that the substance of the soul is not _adequately_ distinct from its acts, or the substance of the apple or orange from its qualities.

As a matter of fact we never experience substance apart from accidents or accidents apart from substance;(237) we do not know whether there exists, or even whether there can exist, a created substance devoid of all accidents; nor can we know, from the light of reason alone, whether any accidents could exist apart from substance.(238) We have, therefore, no ground in natural experience for demonstrating such an _adequate_ real distinction (38) between substance and accidents as would involve the separability of the latter from the former. But that the acts of the soul are so many really distinct ent.i.ties, each ”existing in itself,” each therefore a substance, so that the term ”soul” is merely a t.i.tle we give to their sum-total; and similarly the terms ”apple” and ”orange” merely t.i.tles of collections of qualities each of which would be an ent.i.ty existing in itself and really distinct from the others, each in other words a substance,-this we entirely deny. We regard it as utterly unreasonable of phenomenists thus to multiply substances. Our contention is that the individual soul or mind is one substance, and that it is _partially_ and _really_, though _not adequately_, distinct from the various conscious acts, states, processes, functions, which are certainly themselves real ent.i.ties,-ent.i.ties, however, the reality of which is dependent on that of the soul, ent.i.ties which this dependent or ”inhering”

mode of being marks off as distinct in their nature, and incapable of total identification with that other non-inhering or subsisting mode of being which characterizes the substance of the soul.

We cannot help thinking that this phenomenist denial of substance, with its consequent inevitable substantialization of accidents, is largely due to a mistaken manner of regarding the concrete existing object as a mere mechanical bundle of distinct and independent abstractions. Every aspect of it is mentally isolated from the others and held apart as an ”impression,” an ”idea,” etc. Then the object is supposed to be const.i.tuted by, and to consist of, a sum-total of these separate ”elements,” integrated together by some sort of mental chemistry. The attempt is next made to account for our total conscious experience of reality by a number of principles or laws of what is known as ”a.s.sociation of ideas”. And phenomenists discourse learnedly about these laws in apparent oblivion of the fact that by denying the reality of any substantial, abiding, self-identical soul, distinct from the transient conscious states of the pa.s.sing moment, they have left out of account the only reality capable of ”a.s.sociating” any mental states, or making mental life at all intelligible. Once the soul is regarded merely as ”a series of conscious states,” or a ”stream of consciousness,” or a succession of ”pulses of cognitive consciousness,” such elementary facts as memory, unity of consciousness, the feeling of personal ident.i.ty and personal responsibility, become absolutely inexplicable.(239)

Experience, therefore, does reveal to us the real existence of substances, of ”things that exist in themselves,” and likewise the reality of other modes of being which have their actuality only by inhering in the substances which they affect. ”A substance,” says St. Thomas, ”is a thing whose nature it is to exist not in another, whereas an accident is a thing whose nature it is to exist in another.”(240) Every concrete being that falls within our experience-a man, an oak, an apple-furnishes us with the data of these two concepts: the being existing in itself, the substance; and secondly, its accidents. The former concept comprises only const.i.tutive principles which we see to be _essential_ to that sort of being: the material, the vegetative, the sentient, the rational principle, in a man, or his soul and his body; the material principle and the formal or vital principle in an apple. The latter concept, that of accidents, comprises only those characteristics of the thing which are no doubt real, but which do not const.i.tute the essence of the being, which can change or be absent without involving the destruction of that essence. An intellectual a.n.a.lysis of our experience enables us-and, as we have remarked above, it alone enables us-to distinguish between these two cla.s.ses of objective concepts, the concept of the principles that are essential to the substance or being that exists in itself, and the concept of the attributes that are accidental to this being; and experience alone enables us, by studying the latter group, the accidents of the being, whether naturally separable or naturally inseparable from the latter, to infer from those accidents whatever we can know about the former group, about the principles that const.i.tute the specific nature of the particular kind of substance that may be under investigation.

It may, perhaps, be urged against all this, that experience does _not_ warrant our placing a _real_ distinction between the ent.i.ties we describe as ”accidents” and those which we claim to be const.i.tutive of the ”substance,” or ”thing which exists in itself”; that all the ent.i.ties without exception, which we apprehend by distinct concepts in any concrete existing being such as a man, an oak, or an apple, are only one and the same individual reality looked at under different aspects; that the distinction between them is only a logical or mental distinction; that we separate in thought what is one in reality because we regard each aspect in the abstract and apart from the others; that to suppose in any such concrete being the existence of two distinct modes of reality-_viz._ a reality that exists in itself, and other realities inhering in this latter-is simply to make the mistake of transferring to the real order of concrete things what we find in the logical order of conceptual abstractions.

This objection, which calls for serious consideration, leads to a different conclusion from the previous objection. It suggests the conclusion, not that substances are unreal, but that accidents are unreal.

Even if it were valid it would leave untouched the existence of substances. We hope to meet it satisfactorily by establis.h.i.+ng presently the existence of accidents really distinct from the substances in which they inhere. While the objection draws attention to the important truth that distinctions recognized in the conceptual order are not always real, it certainly does not prove that all accidents are only mentally distinct aspects of substance. For surely a man's thoughts, volitions, feelings, emotions, his conscious states generally, changing as they do from moment to moment, are not really identical with the man himself who continues to exist throughout this incessant change; yet they are realities, appearing and disappearing and having all their actuality in him, while he persists as an actual being ”existing in himself”.

64. ERRONEOUS VIEWS ON THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE.-If we fail to remember that the notion of substance, as ”a being existing in itself and supporting the accidents which affect it,” is a most abstract and generic notion; if we transfer it in this abstract condition to the real order; if we imagine that the concrete individual substances which actually exist in the real order merely verify this widest notion and are devoid of all further content; that they possess in themselves no further richness of reality; if we forget that actual substances, in all the variety of their natures, as material, or living, or sentient, or rational and spiritual, are indeed full, vibrant, palpitating with manifold and diversified reality; if we rob them of all this perfection or locate it in their accidents as considered apart from themselves,-we are likely to form very erroneous notions both of substances and of accidents, and of their real relations to one another. It will help us to form accurate concepts of them, concepts really warranted by experience, if we examine briefly some of the more remarkable misconceptions of substance that have at one time or other gained currency.

(_a_) Substance is not a concrete core on which concrete accidents are superimposed, or a sort of kernel of which they form the rind. Such a way of conceiving them is as misleading as it is crude and material. No doubt the language which, for want of better, we have to employ in regard to substance and accidents, suggests fancies of that kind: we speak of substance ”supporting,” ”sustaining” accidents, and of these as ”supported by,” and ”inhering in” the former. But this does not really signify any juxtaposition or superposition of concrete ent.i.ties. The substance is a subject determinable by its various accidents; these are actualizations of its potentiality; its relation to them is the relation of the potential to the actual, of a ”material” or ”determinable” subject to ”formal” or ”determining” principles. But the appearance or disappearance of accidents never takes place in the same concrete subject: by their variations the concrete subject is changed: at any instant the substance affected by its accidents is one individual concrete being (27), and the inevitable result of any modification in them is that this individual, concrete being is changed, is no longer the same. No doubt, it preserves its substantial ident.i.ty throughout accidental change, but not its concrete ident.i.ty,-that is to say, not wholly. This is the characteristic of every finite being, subject to change and existing in time: it has the actuality of its being, not _tota simul_, but only gradually, successively (10). From this, too, we see that although substance is a more perfect mode of being than accident-because the former exists in itself while the latter has its actuality only in something else,-nevertheless, created, finite substance is a mode of being which is itself imperfect, and perfectible by accidents: another ill.u.s.tration of the truth that all created perfection is only relative, not absolute. To the notion of ”inherence” we shall return in connexion with our treatment of accidents (65).

(_b_) Again, substance is wrongly conceived as an _inert_ substratum underlying accidents. This false notion appears to have originated with Descartes: he conceived the two great cla.s.ses of created substances, matter and spirit, as essentially inert. For him, matter is simply a _res extensa_; extension in three dimensions const.i.tutes its essence, and extension is of course inert: all motion is given to matter and conserved in it by G.o.d. Spirit or soul is simply a _res cogitans_, a being whose essence is thought; but in thinking spirit too is pa.s.sive, for it simply receives ideas as wax does the impress of a seal. Nay, even when soul or spirit wills it is really inert or pa.s.sive, for G.o.d puts all its volitions into it.(241) From these erroneous conceptions the earlier disciples of Descartes took the obvious step forward into Occasionalism; and to them likewise may be traced the conviction of many contemporary philosophers that the human soul-a being that is so eminently vital and active-cannot possibly be a substance: neither indeed could it be, if substance were anything like what Descartes conceived it to be. The German philosophers, Wundt and Paulsen, for example, argue that the soul cannot be a substance.

But when we inquire what they mean by substance, what do we find? That with them the concept of substance applies only to the _corporeal_ universe, where it properly signifies the atoms which are ”the absolutely permanent substratum, qualitatively and quant.i.tatively unchangeable, of all corporeal reality”.(242) No wonder they would argue that the soul is not a substance!

No actually existing substance is inert. What is true, however, is this, that when we conceive a being as a substance, when we think of it under the abstract concept of substance, we of course abstract from its concrete existence as an active agent; in other words we consider it not from the _dynamic_, but from the _static_ aspect, not as it is in the concrete, but as const.i.tuting an object of abstract thought: and so the error of Descartes seems to have been that already referred to,-the mistake of transferring to the real order conditions that obtain only in the logical order.

(_c_) To the Cartesian conception of substances as inert ent.i.ties endowed only with motions communicated to them _ab extra_, the mechanical or atomist conception of reality, as it is called, Leibniz opposed the other extreme conception of substances as _essentially active ent.i.ties_. For him substance is an _ens praeditum vi agendi_: activity is the fundamental note in the concept of substance. These essentially active ent.i.ties he conceived as being all _simple_ and _unextended_, the corporeal no less than the spiritual ones. And he gave them the t.i.tle of _monads_. It is unnecessary for our present purpose to go into any details of his ingenious dynamic theory of the universe as a vast system of these monads.

We need only remark that while combating the theory of inert substances he himself erred in the opposite extreme. He conceived every monad as endowed essentially with active tendency or effort which is never without its effect,-an exclusively _immanent_ effect, however, which is the constant result of constant immanent action: for he denied the possibility of transitive activity, _actio transiens_; and he conceived the immanent activity of the monad as being in its nature _perceptive_,(243) that is to say, _cognitive_ or _representative_, in the sense that each monad, though ”wrapt up in itself, doorless and windowless,” if we may so describe it, nevertheless mirrors more or less inchoatively, vaguely, or clearly, all other monads, and is thus itself a miniature of the whole universe, a microcosm of the macrocosm. Apart from the fancifulness of his whole system, a fancifulness which is, however, perhaps more apparent than real, his conception of substance is much less objectionable than that of Descartes. For as a matter of fact every individual, actually existing substance is endowed with an internal directive tendency towards some term to be realized or attained by its activities. Every substance has a transcendental relation to the operations which are natural to it, and whereby it tends to realize the purpose of its being. But nevertheless substance should not be defined by action, for all action of created substances is an accident, not a substance; nor even by its transcendental relation to action, for when we conceive it under this aspect we conceive it as an _agent_ or _cause_, not as a _substance_ simply. The latter concept abstracts from action and reveals its object simply as ”a reality existing in itself”. When we think of a substance as a principle of action we describe it by the term _nature_.

(_d_) A very widespread notion of substance is the conception of it as a ”_permanent_,” ”_stable_,” ”_persisting_” subject of ”_transient_,”

”_ephemeral_” realities called accidents or phenomena. This view of substance is mainly due to the influence of Kant's philosophy. According to his teaching we can think the succession of phenomena which appear to our sense consciousness only by the aid of a pure intuition in which our sensibility apprehends them, _viz._ _time_. Now the application of the category of substance to this pure intuition of our sensibility engenders a _schema_ of the imagination, _viz._ the _persistence_ of the object in time. Persistence, therefore, is for him the essential note of substance.

Herbert Spencer, too, has given apt expression to this widely prevalent notion: ”Existence means nothing more than persistence; and hence in Mind that which persists in spite of all changes, and maintains the unity of the aggregate in defiance of all attempts to divide it, is that of which existence in the full sense of the word must be predicated-that which we must postulate as the substance of Mind in contradistinction to the varying forms it a.s.sumes. But if so, the impossibility of knowing the substance of Mind is manifest.”(244)