Part 16 (1/2)

A definition proper of any _genus supremum_ is of course out of the question. But it is not easy to give even a description which will convey an accurate notion of the special category of Quality, and mark it off from the other accident-categories. If we say with Aristotle that quality is ”that whereby we are enabled to describe _what sort_ (p????, _quale_) anything is”(323)-_e.g._ that it is white by whiteness, strong by strength, etc.-we are only ill.u.s.trating the abstract by the concrete. But even this serves the purpose of helping us to realize what quality in general means. For we are more familiar with the concrete than with the abstract: and we can see a broad distinction between the question: ”_What sort_ is that thing? _Qualis_ est ista res?” (Quality), and the question: ”_How large_ is that thing? _Quanta_ est ista res?” (Quant.i.ty), or ”_Where_ is that thing?” (Place), or ”What is it _doing_? What is _happening_ to it?” (_Actio et Pa.s.sio_), or ”What does it _resemble_?”

(_Relation_), etc. This will help us to realize that there are accidental modes of being which affect substances in a different way from all the extrinsic denominations of the latter (60), and also in a different way from Quant.i.ty, Relation, and Causality; and these modes of being, whereby the substance is _of such a sort_, or _in such a condition_, we call _qualities_. And if we inquire what special kind of _determination_ of the substance is common to qualities, and marks these off from the other accidents, we shall find it to consist in this, that quality is an accidental mode of being which so affects the substance that it disposes the latter well or ill in regard to the perfections natural to this particular kind of substance: it _alters_ the latter accidentally by increasing or diminis.h.i.+ng its natural perfection. We have seen that no created substance has all the perfection natural to its kind, _tota simul_ or _ab initio_ (46); that it fulfils its role in existence by development, by tending towards its full or final perfection. The accidental realities which supervene on its essence, and thus _alter_ its perfection _within the limits of its kind or species_, are what we call qualities. They diversify the substance accidentally in its perfection, in its concrete mode of existing and behaving: by their appearance and disappearance they do not change the _essential perfection_ of the substance (46), they do not effect a substantial change; but they change its intermediate, accidental perfection; and this qualitative change is technically known and described as _alteration_(324) (11).

Hence we find _Quality_ described by St. Thomas as the sort of accident which modifies or disposes the substance in itself: ”_accidens modificativum sen dispositivum substantiaein seipsa_,” and by Albertus Magnus somewhat more explicitly as ”the sort of accident which completes and perfects substance in its existence and activity: _accidens complens ac perficiens substantiam tarn in existendo quam in operando_”.(325) This notion will be conveyed with sufficient clearness if we describe _Quality_ as _that absolute accident which determines a substance after the manner of an accidental _”differentia,”_ affecting the essential perfection of the substance in regard to its existence or to its activity_.

Hence (1) the Pure Actuality of the Infinitely Perfect Being cannot admit qualities, inasmuch as quality implies only a relative and limited perfection; (2) the qualities of a corporeal substance are grounded in the _formative_ principle which gives that substance its specific nature and is the principle of its tendency and development towards its final perfection, whereas its _quant.i.ty_ is grounded in its determinable or _material_ principle; (3) the _essential_ differentiating principles of substances-being known to us not intuitively, but only abstractively and discursively, _i.e._ by inference from the behaviour of these substances, from the effects of their activities-are often designated not by what const.i.tutes them intrinsically, but by the _accidental perfections_ or _qualities_ which are our only key to a knowledge of them. For instance, we differentiate the nature of man from that of the brute beast by describing the former as _rational_: a term which really designates not the essence or nature itself, but one of its fundamental qualities, _viz._ the faculty of reason.

78. IMMEDIATE SUB-CLa.s.sES OF QUALITY AS _Genus Supremum_.-On account of the enormous variety of qualities which characterize the data of our experience, the problem of cla.s.sifying qualities is not a simple one. Its details belong to the special sciences and to the other departments of philosophy. Here we must confine ourselves to an attempt at indicating the immediate sub-cla.s.ses of the _genus supremum_. And in this context it will not be out of place to call attention to a remarkable, and in our view quite erroneous, trend of modern thought. It accompanied the advent of what is known as _atomism_ or _the mechanical conception of the universe_, a conception much in vogue about half a century ago, but against which there are already abundant evidences of a strong reaction. We refer to the inclination of scientists and philosophers to eliminate Quality altogether as an ultimately distinct category of human experience, by reducing all qualities to _quant.i.ty_, _local relations_, and _mechanical_ or _spatial motions_ of matter (_cf._ 11). In this theory all the sensible qualities of the material universe would be really and objectively nothing more than locations and motions of the ultimate const.i.tuents of perceptible matter.

All the chemical, physical and mechanical energies or forces of external nature would be purely quant.i.tative dispositions or configurations of matter in motion: realities that could be _exhaustively_ known by mathematical a.n.a.lysis and measurement. And when it was found that _qualitative_ concepts stubbornly resisted all attempts at elimination, or reduction to _quant.i.tative_ concepts, even in the investigation of the material universe or external nature, scientists and philosophers of external nature thought to get rid of them by locating them exclusively in the human mind, and thus pus.h.i.+ng them over on psychologists and philosophers of the mind for further and final exorcism. For a time extreme materialists, less wise than daring, endeavoured to reduce even mind and all its conscious states and processes to a mere subjective aspect of what, looked at objectively, would be merely matter in motion.(326) It can be shown in Cosmology, Psychology, and Epistemology that all such attempts to a.n.a.lyse qualities into something other than qualities, are utterly unsatisfactory and unsuccessful. And we may see even from an enumeration of some of the main cla.s.ses of qualities that such attempts were foredoomed to failure.

Scholastic Philosophy has generally adopted Aristotle's division of qualities into four great groups:(327) (1) ???? ? d???es??, _habitus vel dispositio_; (2) d??a?? f?s??? ? ?d??a?a, potentia _naturalis vel impotentia_; (3) p???t?te? pa??t??a? ?a? p???, _potentiae pa.s.sivae et pa.s.siones_; (4) ??f? ? s??a, _forma vel figura_. St. Thomas offers the following ground for this cla.s.sification. Since quality, he says,(328) is an accidental determination of the substance itself, _i.e._ of the perfection of its concrete existence and activity, and since we may distinguish four aspects of the substance: its nature itself as perfectible; its intrinsic principles of acting and receiving action, principles springing from the _formative_, specific const.i.tuent of its nature; its receptivity of change effected by such action, a receptivity grounded in the determinable or _material_ principle of its nature; and finally its quant.i.ty, if it be a corporeal substance,-we can likewise distinguish between (1) _acquired habits or dispositions_, such as health, knowledge, virtue, vice, etc., which immediately determine the perfection of the substance, disposing it well or ill in relation to its last end; (2) intrinsic _natural forces_, _faculties_, _powers of action_, _apt.i.tudes_, _capacities_, such as intellect, will, imagination, instinct, organic vital forces, physical, chemical, mechanical energies; (3) states resulting in a corporeal being from the action of its _milieu_ upon it: the _pa.s.sions_ and emotions of sentient living things, such as sensations of pleasure, pain, anger, etc.; the _sensible qualities_ of matter, such as colour, taste, smell, temperature, feel or texture, etc.; and, finally (4) the quality of _form or shape_ which is a mere determination of the quant.i.ty of a corporeal substance.

This cla.s.sification is not indeed perfect, for the same individual quality can be placed in different cla.s.ses when looked at from different standpoints: heat, for instance, may be regarded as a _natural operative power_ of a substance in a state of combustion, or as a _sensible quality_ produced in that substance by the operation of other agencies. But it has the merit of being an exhaustive cla.s.sification; and philosophers have not succeeded in improving on it.

Qualities of the third and fourth cla.s.s do not call for special treatment.

In the third cla.s.s, Aristotle's distinction between p???t?te? pa??t??a?

(_qualitates pa.s.sibiles_) and p??? (_pa.s.siones_) is based upon the relatively permanent or transient character of the quality in question.

The transient quality, such as the blush produced by shame or the pallor produced by fear, would be a _pa.s.sio_;(329) whereas the more permanent quality, such as the natural colour of the countenance, would be a _pa.s.sibilis qualitas._ The ”pa.s.sions” or sensible changes which result from certain conscious states, and affect the organism of the sentient living being, are included in this cla.s.s as _pa.s.siones_; while the visible manifestations of more permanent mental derangement or insanity would be included in it as _pa.s.sibiles qualitates_. We may, perhaps, get a fairly clear and comprehensive notion of all that is contained in this cla.s.s as ”sensible qualities” by realizing that these embrace whatever is the immediate _cause_ or the immediate _result_ of the _sense modification involved in any act or process of sense consciousness_. Such ”sensible qualities,” therefore, belong in part to the objects which provoke sense perception, and in part to the sentient subject which elicits the conscious act. One of the most important problems in the Theory of Knowledge, and one which ramifies into Cosmology and Psychology, is that of determining the precise significance of these ”sensible qualities,”-and especially in determining whether they are qualities of an extramental reality, or merely states of the individual mind or consciousness itself.

_Form_ or _figure_, which const.i.tutes the fourth cla.s.s of quality, is a mode of the quant.i.ty of a body, being merely the particular surface termination of its extension or volume. Considered as a mode of abstract or mathematical quant.i.ty, it belongs to the domain of mathematics.

Considered in the concrete body, it is the physical, sensible form, shape, or figure, of the latter; and here it may be either natural or artificial, according as it results from the unimpeded action of natural forces or from these forces as manipulated and directed by intelligent agents. It is worthy of special note that while extension or volume is indicative of the _material_ principle of corporeal substances, the figure or shape naturally a.s.sumed by this volume is determined by their _formative_ principle, and is thus indicative of their specific nature. This is already noticeable in the inorganic world, where many of the chemically different substances a.s.sume each its own distinctive crystalline form. But it is particularly in the domains of botany and zoology that the natural external form of the living individual organism is recognized as one of the most important grounds of its cla.s.sification and one of the surest tests of its specific nature.(330)

79. HABITS AND DISPOSITIONS.-Every created being is subject to change, capable of development or retrogression, endowed with a natural tendency towards some end which it can reach by a natural process of activity, and which const.i.tutes for it, when attained, its full and final perfection (66). Through this process of change it acquires accidental modes of being which help it or hinder it, dispose it or indispose it, in the exercise of its natural activities, and therefore also in the concrete perfection of its nature as tending towards its natural end. Such an accidental mode of being is acquired by a series of transient actions and experiences, _actiones et pa.s.siones_: after these have pa.s.sed away it remains, and not merely as a state or condition resulting from the changes wrought in the subject by these experiences, but as a _disposition_ towards easier repet.i.tion of such experiences. Moreover, it may be not a mere transient disposition, but something stable and permanent, not easily removed or annulled, a _dispositio difficile mobilis_. And just as it is essentially indicative of past actions whereby it was acquired, so, too, the very _raison d'etre_ of its actuality is to dispose its subject for further and future changes, for operations and effects which are not yet actual but only potential in this subject. Such an accidental mode of being is what Aristotle called ????, and the scholastics _habitus_. With Aristotle, they define _habit_ as a _more or less stable disposition whereby a subject is well or ill disposed in itself or in relation to other things_: _Habitus dicitur dispositio difficile mobilis secundum quam bene vel male disponitur subjectum aut secundum se aut in ordine ad aliud_.(331)

The difference between a _habit_ (????) and a simple _disposition_ (d???es??) is that the former is by nature a more or less _stable_ quality while the latter is unstable and transient. Moreover, the facilities acquired by repeated action of the organs or members of men or animals, and the particular ”set” acquired by certain tools or instruments from continued use, are more properly called _dispositions_ than _habits_: they are not habits in the strict sense, though they are often called habits in the ordinary and looser usage of common speech. A little reflection will show that _the only proper subjects of natural habits in the strict sense are the spiritual faculties of an intelligent and free agent_.

Since all natural habits are acquired by the past activities, and dispose for the future activities, of a being not absolutely perfect, but partly potential and partly actual, and subject to change, it follows that only finite beings can have habits. But, furthermore, beings that are not free, that have not control or dominion of their own actions, that have not freedom of choice, are determined by their nature, by a necessary law of their activity, to elicit the actions which they do actually elicit: such beings are by their nature _determinata ad unumn_; they are confined necessarily to the particular lines of action whereby they fulfil their role in the actual order of things. As Aristotle remarks, you may throw the same stone repeatedly in the same direction and with the same velocity: it will never acquire a _habit_ of moving in that direction with that velocity.(332) The same is true of plants and animals; for a habit in the strict sense implies not merely a certain mutability in its subject; it implies, and consists in, a stable modification of some power or faculty _which can have its activities directed indifferently in one or other of a variety of channels or lines_: the power or faculty which is the proper subject of a habit must be a _potentia dirigibilis vel determinabilis ad diversa_. Hence merely material powers of action-such as the mechanical, physical and chemical forces of inorganic nature, or the organic powers of living bodies, whether vegetative or merely sentient,-since they are all _of themselves_, of _their nature_, determined to certain lines of action, and to these only,-such powers cannot become the subjects of habits, of stable dispositions towards one line of action rather than another. ”The powers of material nature,” says St. Thomas, ”do not elicit their operations by means of habits, for they are of themselves [already adequately] determined to their particular lines of action.”(333)

Only the spiritual faculties of free agents are, then, the proper seat of real habits. Only of free agents can we say strictly that ”habit is second nature”. Only these can direct the operations of their intellect and will, and through these latter the operations of their sense faculties, both cognitive and appet.i.tive, in a way conducive to their last end or in a way that deviates therefrom, by attaching their intellects to truth or to error, their wills to virtue or to vice, and thus forming in these faculties stable dispositions or _habits_.(334)

Is there any sense, then, in which we can speak of the sentient (cognitive and appet.i.tive) and executive powers of man as the seat of habits? The activities of those faculties are under the control of intellect and will; the acts _elicited_ by the former are _commanded_ by the latter; they are acts that issue primarily from the latter faculties; and hence the dispositions that result from repet.i.tion of these acts and give a facility for further repet.i.tion of them-acts of talking, walking, singing, playing musical instruments, exercising any handicraft-are partly, though only secondarily, _dispositions_ formed in these sentient faculties (the ”trained” eye, the ”trained” ear, the ”discriminating” sense of taste, the ”alert” sense of touch in the deaf, dumb, or blind), or in these executive powers, whereby the latter more promptly and easily obey the ”command” of the higher faculties; but they are primarily and princ.i.p.ally _habits_ of these higher faculties themselves rendering the latter permanently ”apt”

to ”command” and utilize the subordinate powers in the repet.i.tion of such acts.(335)

Unquestionably the bodily organs acquire by exercise a definite ”set”

which facilitates their further exercise. But this ”set” is not something that they can use themselves; nor is it something that removes or lessens a natural indeterminateness or indifference of these powers; for they are not indifferent: they _must_ act, at any instant, in the _one_ way which their concrete nature in all its surroundings actually demands. They themselves are only instruments of the higher faculties; these alone have freedom of choice between lines of action; it is only the stable modifications which these acquire, which they themselves can use, and which _dispose_ them by lessening their indeterminateness, that are properly called habits. There are, therefore, in the organic faculties of man _dispositions_ which give facility of action. There are, moreover, organic dispositions which dispose the organism not for _action_ but for its union with the _formative principle_ or soul: _habituales dispositiones materiae ad formam_.(336) Aristotle gives as instances bodily health or beauty.(337) But these _dispositiones materiales ad formam_ he does not call _habits_, any more than the organic _dispositiones ad operationem_ just referred to: and for this reason, that although all these dispositions have a certain degree of stability in the organism-a stability which they derive, moreover, from the soul which is the formative principle that secures the continuity and individual ident.i.ty of the organism,-yet they are not of themselves, of their own nature, stable; whereas the acquired dispositions of the spiritual faculties, intellect and will, rooted as they are in a subject that is spiritual and substantially immutable, are of their own nature stable and permanent. Nor are all dispositions of these latter faculties to be deemed habits, but only those which arise from acts which give them the special character of stability. Hence mere _opinion_ in the intellectual order, as distinct from _science_, or a mere _inclination_ resulting from a few isolated acts, as distinct from a _virtue_ or a _vice_ in the moral order, are not habits.(338) Habits, therefore, belong properly to the faculties of a spiritual substance; indirectly, however, they extend their influence to the lower or organic powers dependent on, and controlled by, the spiritual faculties.

To the various dispositions and facilities of action acquired by animals through ”training,” ”adaptation,” ”acclimatization,” etc., we may apply what has been said in regard to the sense faculties and executive powers of the human body. Just as we may regard the internal sense faculties (memory, imagination, sense appet.i.te) in man as in a secondary and subordinate way subjects of habits, in so far as these faculties act under the direction and control of human reason and will,(339) so also the organic dispositions induced in irrational animals by the direction and guidance of human reason may indeed be regarded as extensions or effects of the habits that dispose the rational human faculties, but not as themselves in the strict sense habits.(340)

If, then, habits belong properly to intellect and will, and if their function is to dispose or indispose the human agent for the attainment of the perfection in which his last end consists, we must naturally look to _Psychology_ and _Ethics_ for a detailed a.n.a.lysis of them. Here we must be content with a word on their origin, their effects, and their importance.

Habits are produced by acts. The act modifies the faculty. If, for instance, nothing remained in our cognitive faculties after each transient cognitive act had pa.s.sed, memory would be inexplicable and knowledge impossible; nor could the repet.i.tion of any act ever become easier than its first performance. This something that remains is a habit, or the beginning of a habit A habit may be produced by a single act: the mind's first intuition of an axiom or principle produces a _habit or habitual knowledge_ of that principle. But as a rule it requires a repet.i.tion of any act, and that for a long time at comparatively short intervals, to produce a _habit_ of that act, a stable disposition whereby it can be readily repeated; and to strengthen and perfect the habit the acts must be formed with a growing degree of intensity and energy. Progress in virtue demands sustained and increasingly earnest efforts.

The natural effect of habit is to perfect the faculty,(341) to increase its energy, to make it more prompt to act, and thus to _facilitate_ the performance of the act for which the habit disposes it. It also engenders and develops a natural _need_ or _tendency_ or _desire_ to repeat the act, and a natural aversion from the acts opposed to the habit. Finally, according as the habit grows, the performance of the act demands less effort, calls for less actual attention; thus the habit diminishes the feeling of effort and tends to bring about a quasi-automatic and semi-conscious form of activity.

Good habits are those which _perfect_ the nature of the agent, which advance it towards the realization of its end; bad habits are those which r.e.t.a.r.d and prevent the realization of this end. Hence the _ethical_ importance, to the human person, of forming, fostering and confirming good habits, as also of avoiding, resisting and eradicating bad habits, can scarcely be exaggerated.

The profound and all-pervading influence of habit in the mental and moral life of man is unfortunately far from being adequately appreciated even by those responsible for the secular, moral and religious education of the young. This is perhaps mainly due to the fact that the influence of habit on the conduct of life, enormous as it is in fact, is so secret, so largely unconscious, that it easily escapes notice. Careful reflection on our actions, diligent study of the springs of action in our everyday life, are needed to reveal this influence. But the more we a.n.a.lyse human conduct in ourselves and others, the more firmly convinced we become that human character and conduct are _mainly_ dependent on _the formation of habits_.