Part 15 (2/2)

The definition of person in this pa.s.sage as ”a thinking, intelligent being,” etc., is not far removed from our own definition; but surely conscious thought is not ”that which _makes_ every one to be what he calls self,” seeing that conscious thought is only an _activity_ or _function_ of the ”rational being”. It is conscious thought, of course, including memory, that _reveals_ the ”rational being” to himself as a self, and as the same or identical self throughout time; but unless the ”rational being,” or the ”thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection,” etc.-which is Locke's own definition of ”person”-were there all the time identical with itself, exercising those distinct and successive acts of consciousness and memory, and unifying them, how could these acts _even reveal_ the ”person” or his ”personal ident.i.ty” to himself, not to speak of their _const.i.tuting_ personality or personal ident.i.ty? It is perfectly plain that these acts _presuppose_ the ”person,”

the ”thinking, intelligent being,” or, as we have expressed it, the ”subsisting, rational, individual nature” _already const.i.tuted_; and it is equally plain that the ”personal ident.i.ty” which they _reveal_ is _const.i.tuted by_, and _consists simply in_, the duration or continued existence of this same subsisting individual rational nature; nor could these acts reveal any ident.i.ty, personal or otherwise, unless they were the acts of one and the same actually subsisting, existing and persisting substance.

Yet Locke thinks he can divorce personal ident.i.ty from ident.i.ty of substance, and account for the former independently of the latter. In face of the obvious difficulty that actual consciousness is not continuous but intermittent, he tries to maintain that the consciousness which links together present states with remembered states is sufficient to const.i.tute personal ident.i.ty even although there may have intervened between the present and the past states a complete change of substance, so that it is really a different substance which experiences the present states from that which experienced the past states. The question

Whether we are the same thinking thing, _i.e._ the same substance or no ... concerns not personal ident.i.ty at all: the question being, what makes the same person, and not whether it be the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same person: different substances, by the same consciousness (where they do partake in it), being united into one person, as well as different bodies by the same life are united into one animal, whose ident.i.ty is preserved, in that change of substances, by the unity of one continued life ... [for] animal ident.i.ty is preserved in ident.i.ty of life, and not of substance.(316)

Here the contention is that we can have ”the same person” and yet not necessarily ”the same identical substance,” because _consciousness_ may give a personal unity to distinct and successive substances in the individual man just as _animal life_ gives an a.n.a.logous unity to distinct and successive substances in the individual animal. This is very superficial; for it only subst.i.tutes for the problem of human personality the similar problem of explaining the unity and sameness of subsistence in the individual living thing: a problem which involves the fact of _memory_ in animals. For scholastic philosophers unity of life in the living thing, involving the fact of memory in animals, is explained by the perfectly intelligible and will-grounded teaching that there is in each individual living thing a _formative and vital principle_ which is _substantial_, a _forma substantialis_, which unites, in the _abiding self-identical unity of a complete individual composite substance_, the material principle of the corporeal substances which thus go, in the incessant process of substantial change known as metabolism, to form partially, and to support the substantial continuity of, the living individual. While the latter is thus in constant process of material, or partial, substantial change, it remains, as long as it lives, the same complete individual substance, and this in virtue of the abiding _substantial_ formative and vital principle which actuates and animates it. The abiding permanence or self-ident.i.ty of the _subsisting individual substance_ which feels or thinks, and remembers, is an intelligible, and indeed the only intelligible, ground and explanation of memory, and of our consciousness of personal ident.i.ty.

But if we leave out of account this abiding continuity and self-ident.i.ty of the subsisting individual substance or nature, which is the subject, cause and agent of these acts of memory and consciousness, how can these latter, in and by themselves, possibly form, or even indeed reveal to us, our personal ident.i.ty? Locke felt this difficulty; and he tried in vain to meet it: in vain, for it is insuperable. He merely suggests that ”the same consciousness ... can be transferred from one thinking substance to another,” in which case ”it will be possible that two thinking substances may make [successively] one person”.(317) This is practically his last word on the question,-and it is worthy of note, for it virtually _substantializes consciousness_. It makes consciousness, which is really only an act or a series of acts, a _something substantial and subsisting_.

We have seen already how modern phenomenists, once they reject the notion of substance as invalid or superfluous, must by that very fact equivalently _substantialize accidents_ (61); for substance, being a necessary category of human thought as exercised on reality, cannot really be dispensed with. And we see in the present context an ill.u.s.tration of this fact. The abiding self-ident.i.ty of the human person cannot be explained otherwise than by the abiding self-identical subsistence of the individual human substance.

If personal ident.i.ty were const.i.tuted and determined by consciousness, by the series of conscious states connected and unified by memory, then it would appear that the human being in infancy, in sleep, in unconsciousness, or in a state of insanity, is not a human person!

Philosophers who have not the hardihood to deny human personality to the individual of the human species in these states, and who on the other hand will not recognize the possession of a _rational nature_ or substance by the subsisting individual as the ground of the latter's personality and personal ident.i.ty, have recourse to the hypothesis of a _sub-conscious_, or ”_sub-liminal_” _consciousness_ in the individual, as a subst.i.tute. If by this they merely meant an abiding _substantial_ rational principle of all mental activities, even of those which may be semi-conscious or sub-conscious, they would be merely calling by another name what we call the _rational nature_ of man. And the fact that they refer to this principle as the sub-conscious ”self” or ”Ego” shows how insistent is the rational need for rooting personality and personal ident.i.ty in something which is a _substance_. But they do not and will not conceive it as a substance; whereas if it is not this, if it is only a ”process,” or a ”function,” or a ”series” or ”stream” of processes or functions, it can no more const.i.tute or explain, or even reveal, personal ident.i.ty, than a series or stream of _conscious_ states can.(318)

Unable as he was to explain how the same consciousness could persist throughout a succession of really and adequately distinct substances (except by virtually substantializing consciousness), Locke nevertheless persisted in holding that consciousness and consciousness alone (including memory, which, however, is inexplicable on any other theory than that of a subsisting and persisting substance or nature which remembers), const.i.tutes personality and personal ident.i.ty. We have dwelt upon his teaching mainly because all modern phenomenists try to explain personality on the same principles-_i.e._ independently of the doctrine of substance.

As a corollary from his doctrine he inferred that if a man completely and irrevocably loses consciousness [or rather memory]

of his past life, though he remains the same ”man” he is no longer the same ”person”: ”if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at different times make different persons”;(319) and he goes on in this sense to give a literal interpretation to the modes of speech we have referred to above.(320) He likewise admitted that two or more ”persons,”

_i.e._ consciousnesses, can be linked with the same individual human being, or the same individual human soul, alternately appearing and disappearing, giving place successively to one another. When any one of these ”personalities” or consciousnesses ceases to be actual, it must in Locke's view cease to be in any sense real: so that there could not be two or more personalities at the same time in the same individual human being. Modern psychologists, however, of the phenomenist school, convinced that sub-conscious mental activities are not only possible, but that the fact of such activities is well established by a variety of experiences, have extended Locke's conception of personality (as actual consciousness) to embrace groups of mental activities which may emerge only intermittently ”above the threshold of consciousness”. Hence they explain the abnormal cases of double or multiple consciousness already referred to, as being manifestations of really distinct ”personalities” in one and the same human individual. In normal human beings there is, they say, only one normally ”conscious personality”. The sub-conscious mental activities of such an individual they bulk together as forming this individual's ”sub-liminal” or ”sub-conscious” _Ego_ or ”self”: presumably a distinct personality from the conscious one. In the abnormal cases of ”double-consciousness” the subliminal self struggles for mastery over the conscious self and is for a time successful: the two personalities thus for a time changing places as it were. In the rarer or more abnormal cases of treble or multiple consciousness, there are presumably three or more ”personalities” engaged in the struggle, each coming to the surface in turn and submerging the others.

It is not the fancifulness of this theory that one might object to so much as its utter inadequacy to explain the facts, nay, its utter unintelligibility _on the principles of those who propound it_. For we must not lose sight of the fact that it is propounded by philosophers who purport to explain mental life and human personality without recourse to a _substantial soul_, to any _substantial_ basis of mental life, or indeed to the concept of _substance_ at all: by philosophers who will talk of a mental process without admitting mind or soul as a _substance_ or _subject_ of that process, of a ”series” or ”stream” of mental functions or activities without allowing any _agent_ that would exercise those functions, or any _substantial abiding principle_ that would unify the series or stream and know it as such; philosophers who regard the _Ego_, ”self,” or ”person,” as _nothing other than_ the group or series or stream of mental states, and not as anything of which these are the states; and, finally, who speak of these groups of functions or activities as ”personalities”-which they describe as ”struggling” with one another-apparently oblivious of the fact that by using such language they are _in their thought at least_ transforming these _activities_ into _agents_, these _states_ into _subjects of states_, in a word, these _accidents_ into _substances_; or else they are making their language and their thought alike unintelligible.(321)

Of course those numerous modern philosophers who, like James, try to ”find a place for all the experiential facts unenc.u.mbered by any hypothesis [like that of an individual substantial soul, presumably] save that of pa.s.sing states of mind” [_ibid._, p.

480], do not really leave these ”states” suspended in mid-air as it were. The imperative need for admitting the reality of substance always ultimately a.s.serts itself: as when James recognizes the necessity of admitting something ”more than the bare fact of co-existence of a pa.s.sing thought with a pa.s.sing brain-state” [_Principles of Psychology_, i., p. 346-_apud_ MAHER, _ibid._, p. 483]. Only his speculation as to what const.i.tutes this ”something 'more' which lies behind our mental states” [_ibid._, p. 485] is not particularly convincing: ”For my own part,” he says, ”I confess that the moment I become metaphysical and try to define the _more_, I find the notion of some sort of an _anima mundi_ thinking in all of us to be a more promising hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that of a lot of absolutely individual souls” [_ibid._, p. 346-apud MAHER, _ibid._]. This restatement of the medieval pantheistic theory known as Averrosm, Monopsychism, or the theory of the _intellectus separatus_ [_cf._ DE WULF, _History of Medieval Philosophy_, pp. 381 _sqq._], is a somewhat disappointing contribution to Metaphysics from the most brilliant of our modern psychologists. The ”difficulties” of this ”more promising hypothesis” had discredited it a rather long time before Professor James resurrected it [_cf._ criticisms-_apud_ MAHER, _ibid._].

CHAPTER X. SOME ACCIDENT-MODES OF BEING: QUALITY.

76. ONTOLOGY AND THE ACCIDENT-MODES OF BEING.-Under the ultimate category or _genus supremum_ of Substance experience reveals to us two broadly distinct sub-cla.s.ses: corporeal substances, ”bodies” or ”material” things, and spiritual substances or ”spirits”. Of these latter we have direct experience only of one cla.s.s, _viz._ _embodied_ spirits or human souls.

The investigation of the nature of these belongs to _Psychology_, and from the data of that science we may infer, by the light of reason, the _possibility_ of another cla.s.s of spirits, _viz._ _pure_ spirits, beings of whose actual existence we know from Divine Revelation. The existence of a Supreme Being, Whom we must conceive a.n.a.logically as substance and spirit, is demonstrated by the light of reason in _Natural Theology_. The investigation of the nature of corporeal substances belongs properly to _Cosmology_. Hence in the present treatise we have no further direct concern with the substance-mode of reality;(322) but only with its accident-modes, and not with all of these.

Not with all of them; for those which belong properly to spiritual substances, or properly to corporeal substances, call for special treatment in Psychology and Cosmology respectively. In the main, only such species of accidents as are common to matter and spirit alike, will form the subject of the remaining portion of the present volume. Only the broader aspects of such categories as Quality, Quant.i.ty and Causality-aspects which have a more direct bearing on the Theory of Being and the Theory of Knowledge in general,-call for treatment in General Metaphysics. A more detailed treatment must be sought in other departments of Philosophy.

77. NATURE OF THE ACCIDENT CALLED QUALITY.-In the widest sense of the term, _Quality_ is synonymous with _logical attribute_. In this sense whatever can be predicated of a subject, whatever _logically_ determines a subject in any way for our thought is a quality or ”attribute” of that subject. In a sense almost equally wide the term is used to designate any _real_ determination, whether substantial or accidental, of a subject. In this sense the differential element, or _differentia specifica_, determines the generic element, or genus, of a substance: it tells us what _kind_ or _species_ the substance is: _e.g._ what kind of animal a man is, _viz._ rational; what kind of living thing an animal is, _viz._ sentient; what kind of body or corporeal thing a plant is, _viz._ living. And hence scholastics have said of the predicable ”_differentia specifica_” that it is predicated adjectivally, or as a _quality_, to tell us in _what the thing consists_, or what is its nature: differentia specifica praedicatur _in quale quid_: it gives us the determining principle of the specific nature. Or, again, quality is used synonymously with any _accidental_ determination of a substance. In this sense magnitude, location, action, etc., though they determine a subject in different accidental ways, nevertheless are all indiscriminately said to ”qualify” it in the sense of determining it somehow or other, and are therefore called ”qualities” in the wide sense of ”accidents”. Hence, again, the scholastics have said that inasmuch as all accidents determine or qualify their subjects, they are predicated of these _qualitatively_, and may be called in a wide sense ”qualifications” or ”qualities”: omnia genera accidentium qualificant substantiam et praedicantur _in quale_.

It is in this wide sense that we use the term when we say that the (specific) nature (or ”kind”) of a thing is revealed by its ”qualities”; for the nature of a thing is revealed by all its accidents. And when we infer the nature of a thing from its activities, in accordance with the maxim _Qualis est operatio talis est natura_, we must take the term ”_operatio_” or ”activity” to include the operation of the thing on our cognitive faculties, the states of cognitive consciousness thus aroused in us, and all the other accidents thus revealed to us in the thing by its ”knowledge-eliciting” action on our minds.

But the term _Quality_ has been traditionally restricted, after Aristotle, to designate properly one particular category of accidents distinct from the others and from substance.

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