Ontology or the Theory of Being Part 15

It belongs, moreover, to the order of substance, not to that of accidents: the substantial mode differs from the accidental mode, or modal accident, in this, that it gives to the substance some ultimate determining perfection which appertains to the substance as such, and whereby the substance is completed in the order of "existing in itself". Subsistence is not an accident, even though it supervenes on the complete nature, for it determines the substance of the latter, not in relation to any line of accidental activity, as a power or faculty, nor as something modifying it accidentally, but as a mode which ultimately determines and perfects it in the order of substantial reality itself, in the order of "existing in itself" in such a full and perfect manner as to be _sui juris_ and incommunicable.

The main difficulty against this view is also theological: If subsistence is a positive perfection it either belongs to the complete individual nature or it does not; in the former case the humanity of Christ, a.s.sumed by the Divine Word, was not a complete human nature; in the latter case the individual human nature can exist without it: and both consequences are equally inadmissable.

But it may be replied that, granting the first member of the disjunctive, the consequence inferred from it does not really follow: subsistence belongs to the complete individual nature as an ultimate natural complement; but when it is absent and supplied supernaturally by the Divine Personality the nature is still complete as a nature: it is wanting in no absolute or ent.i.tative perfection, but only in a modality which is supereminently supplied by the Divine Personality. Neither is the consequence from the second member of the disjunctive a valid inference. For though personality as a mode does not belong to the essence of an individual human nature, no such individual nature can exist without _some_ personality, either its own or another: just as extension cannot exist without _some_ shape, though any particular shape is not essential to it.

To sum up, then, the doctrine of the two preceding sections: What are we to understand by a _person_, and by _personality_? Unquestionably our conception of person and personality (concrete and abstract) is mainly determined, and very rightly so, by an a.n.a.lysis of what const.i.tutes the actually existing individual of the human species. Whatever our concept be, it must certainly be realized and verified in all human individuals: these, before all other beings, must be included in the denotation of our concept of person. In fact, for the philosopher, guided by the natural light of reason alone, the term can have hardly any other connotation. He will, no doubt, ascribe personality, as the highest mode of being he knows of, to the Supreme Being; but he will here ascribe it only in an a.n.a.logical and supereminent way; and only from Divine Revelation can he know that this Supreme Being has not a single but a threefold Personality.

Again, his consideration of the nature of the human soul as an embodied substance which is nevertheless spiritual and immortal will enable him to affirm the possibility of _purely spiritual_ created beings; and these he will of course conceive as persons. But, conceiving the human soul itself as a const.i.tuent principle of the human individual, he will not conceive the soul itself as a person.

The philosopher who understands the traditional Aristotelian conceptions of substance, of individual substance (_substantia prima_), of incomplete, complete, and composite substances, of substance considered as _nature_ or principle of action, of substance considered as _hypostasis_, as the actually existing individual being which is the ultimate logical subject of all predications and the ultimate ontological subject of all real determinations: the philosopher who understands these concepts, and who admits them to be validly grounded in experience, and to offer as far as they go a correct interpretation of reality, will have no difficulty in making up his mind about what is requisite to const.i.tute a person.

Wherever he finds an existing individual being of any species, a being which, even if it is really composite, is nevertheless really one, such a being he will p.r.o.nounce to be a "subsisting individual being". He may not be able, in the inorganic world or among the lower forms of life, to distinguish for certain what is the real individual from what may be perhaps only an accidental, if natural, colony or group of real individuals. As a test he will always seek for the manifestation of an internal directive principle whereby all the vital functions of the organized ma.s.s of matter in question are co-ordinated in such a manner as to make for the preservation, growth and development of the whole throughout a definite life cycle from birth to death. This formative and directive principle is evidence of an individual unity of nature and subsistence; and such evidence is abundantly present in "individuals" of all the higher species in botany and zoology. The "individual subsisting being" will therefore be a "complete individual substance or nature, existing and acting in every way distinct from and incommunicable to any other being, so that it exists and acts _sui juris_, autonomously".

If such an individual nature is not merely corporeal but organic or animate, not merely animate but sentient, and not merely sentient but _rational_ or _intelligent_, _i.e._ const.i.tuted at least in part by a _spiritual substantial principle_ whereby the individual is _intelligent_ and _free_, then that individual is a person. Every individual of the human species is such. And all that is essential to his complete individual human nature enters into and const.i.tutes his person in the concrete. Not merely, therefore, his intellect and will; not merely his soul considered as "mind," _i.e._ as the basis and principle of his whole conscious and subconscious psychic life; or also as the principle of his merely organic life; or also as the actualizing principle of his corporeal nature; but no less also the corporeal principle itself of his composite being, the body itself with all its parts and members and organs: all these without exception belong equally to the human person; all of them without exception go to const.i.tute the _Ego_.(304) This, which is the Aristotelian and scholastic view of the human person, is in perfect accord with the common-sense view of the matter as evidenced by the ordinary usages of language. We speak intelligibly no less than correctly when we say that a man's body is part of his person as well as his soul or mind.

And we make a no less accurate, intelligible, and necessary distinction, when we distinguish between all that which _const.i.tutes_ the human person and that _whereby we know_ ourselves and other human individuals to be persons. Yet this distinction is not kept clearly in mind by many modern philosophers, who, approaching the study of personality exclusively from the side of what the individual consciousness testifies as to the unity and continuity (or otherwise) of mental life in the individual, are scandalized at the a.s.sertion that the human body can have anything to do with human personality.

74. CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PERSONAL SELF.-In order to form the concept of person, and to find that concept verified in the data of our experience, it is absolutely essential that we be endowed with the _faculty of intelligence_, the spiritual power of forming abstract concepts; and secondly, that having formed the concept of person as a "rational or intelligent subsisting being," we be capable, by the exercise of _reflex consciousness_, to find in our own mental life the data from which we can conclude that this concept of person is verified in each and every one of ourselves. It is because we are endowed with intelligence that we can form all the abstract notions-of substance, individual, subsistence, existence, etc.,-which enter into and const.i.tute our concept of person. And it is because we can, by means of this faculty, reflect on our own mental operations, and infer from them that each of us is a complete individual rational nature subsisting independently and incommunicably, that we can know ourselves to be persons.

How the human individual forms these concepts and finds them verified in his own "self," how he gradually comes into conscious possession of the knowledge of his own individual being as an _Ego_, self, or person, are problems for Psychology.(305) It will be sufficient here to point out that there are grounds for distinguis.h.i.+ng between the individual's implicit subjective awareness of his subsistence or "selfhood"-an awareness which accompanies all his conscious mental functions, and which becomes more explicit and definite as the power of introspection and reflex consciousness develops-and the "_abstract quasi-objective notion_ of his own _personality_ habitually possessed by every human being".(306)

The individual human being _immediately_ apprehends his own existence, and his abiding unity or sameness throughout incessantly changing states, in the temporal series of his conscious activities; but his knowledge of the _nature_ of his own being can be the result only of a long and carefully conducted a.n.a.lysis of his own activities, and of inferences based on the character of these activities. The former or implicit knowledge of the self in the concrete is direct and intuitive. The individual _Ego_ apprehends _itself_ in _its states_. This knowledge comes mainly from within, and is subject to gradual development. Father Maher thus describes how the child comes gradually into possession of it:-

As thoughts of pleasures and pains repeated in the past and expected in the future grow more distinct, the dissimilarity between these and the permanent abiding self comes to be more fully realized. Pa.s.sing emotions of fear, anger, vanity, pride, or sympathy, accentuate the difference. But most probably it is the dawning sense of power to resist and overcome rising impulse, and the dim nascent consciousness of responsibility, which lead up to the final revelation, until at last, in some reflective act of memory or choice, or in some vague effort to understand the oft-heard "I," the great truth is manifested to him: the child enters, as it were, into possession of his personality, and knows himself as a _Self-conscious Being_. The _Ego_ does not _create_ but _discovers_ itself. In Jouffroy's felicitous phrase, it "breaks its sh.e.l.l," and finds that it is _a Personal Agent with an existence and individuality of its own_, standing henceforward alone in opposition to the universe.(307)

After this stage is reached, the human individual easily distinguishes between the "self" as the _cause_ or _subject_ of the states, and the states as _modifications_ of the self. This distinction is implicit in the concomitant awareness of self which accompanies all exercise of direct cognitive consciousness. It is explicit in all deliberate acts of reflex, introspective self-consciousness. The data from which we form the abstract concepts of substance, nature, individual, person, self, etc., and from which we arrive by reasoning at a philosophical knowledge of the nature and personality of the human individual, are furnished mainly by introspection; but also in part by external observation of the universe around us.

Concomitantly, however, with the process by which we become implicitly but immediately aware of the _Ego_ or self as an abiding self-identical person in and through our own mental activity, we gradually form a quasi-objective and historical view of our own personality as one of a number of similar personalities around us in the universe. This view, says Father Maher,

gathers into itself the history of my past life-the actions of my childhood, boyhood, youth, and later years. Interwoven with them all is the image of my bodily organism, and cl.u.s.tering around are a fringe of recollections of my dispositions, habits, and character, of my hopes and regrets, of my resolutions and failures, along with a dim consciousness of my position in the minds of other selves.

Under the form of a representation of this composite art, bound together by the thread of memory, each of us ordinarily conceives his complete abiding _personality_. This idea is necessarily undergoing constant modification; and it is in comparing the present form of the representation with the past, whilst adverting to considerable alterations in my character, bodily appearance, and the like, that I sometimes say: "I am completely changed," "I am quite another person," though I am, of course, convinced that it is the same "I" who am changed in accidental qualities. _It is because this complex notion of my personality is an abstraction from my remembered experiences __ that a perversion of imagination and a rupture of memory can sometimes induce the so-called _"illusions or alterations of personality"_._(308)

When we remember that this objective conception of the self is so dependent on the function of memory, and that the normal exercise of this faculty is in turn so dependent on the normal functioning of the brain and the nervous system,(309) we can hazard an intelligible explanation of the abnormal facts recorded by most modern psychologists concerning hypnotism, somnambulism and "double" or "multiple" consciousness.(310) Father Maher, ascribing these phenomena partly to dislocations of memory, partly to unusual groupings of mental states according to the laws of mental a.s.sociation-groupings that arise from peculiar physiological connexions between the various neural functionings of the brain centres,-and partly to semi-conscious or reflex nerve processes, emphasizes an important fact that is sometimes lost sight of: the fact that some section at least of the individual's conscious mental life is common to, and present throughout, the two or more "states" or "conditions" between which any such abnormal individual is found to alternate. This consideration is itself sufficient to disprove the theory-to which we shall presently refer-that there is or may be in the individual human being a double, or even a multiple "human personality".

75. FALSE THEORIES OF PERSONALITY.-It is plain that conscious _mental activity_ cannot _const.i.tute_ human personality, or subconscious mental activity either, for all activity is of the accidental mode of being, is an _accident_, whereas a person must be a _substance_. Of course it is the self-conscious cognitive activity of the human individual that _reveals_ to the latter his own self as a person: it is the exercise of reflex consciousness combined with memory that gives us the feeling of personal ident.i.ty with ourselves throughout the changing events of our mental and bodily life. Furthermore, this self-consciousness has its root in the _rational_ nature of the human individual; and rationality of nature is the differentiating principle which makes the subsisting individual a "person" as distinct from a (subsisting) "thing". But then, it is not the feeling of personal ident.i.ty that _const.i.tutes_ the person. Actual consciousness is neither the essence, nor the source, nor even the index of personality; for it is only an activity, and an activity which reveals immediately not the _person_ as such, but the _nature_ as rational;(311) nor does the rational (substantial) principle of a composite nature const.i.tute the latter a person; but only the subsistence of the complete (composite) individual nature itself.

These considerations are sufficiently obvious; they presuppose, however, the truth of the traditional doctrine already explained in regard to the existence, nature and cognoscibility of _substance_. Philosophers who have misunderstood and rejected and lost this traditional doctrine of substance have propounded many varieties of unsatisfactory and inconsistent theories in regard to what const.i.tutes "person" and "personality". The main feature of all such theories is their identification of personality with the habitual consciousness of self, or habitual feeling of personal ident.i.ty: a feeling which, however, must be admitted to include _memory_ in some form, while the function of memory in any shape or form cannot be satisfactorily explained on any theory of the human _Ego_ which denies that there is a human _substance_ persisting permanently as a unifying principle of successive mental states (63-4).

So far as English philosophy is concerned such theories appear to have had their origin in Locke's teaching on person and personal ident.i.ty.

Discussing the notions of ident.i.ty and diversity,(312) he distinguishes between the ident.i.ty of an individual substance with itself in its duration throughout time, and what he terms personal ident.i.ty; while by ident.i.ty in general he means not abstract ident.i.ty but the concrete permanence of a thing throughout time (34). On this we have to call attention to the fact that just as _duration_ is not essential to the _const.i.tution_ of a substance, so neither is it essential to the const.i.tution of a complete subsisting individual substance or person (64); though it is, of course, an essential condition for all human apprehension whether of substance or of person. Locke was wrong, therefore, in confounding what reveals to us the abiding permanence, ident.i.ty or sameness of a subsisting thing or person (whether the "self" or any other subsisting thing or person) throughout its duration in time, with what const.i.tutes the subsisting thing or person.

Furthermore, his distinction between substantial ident.i.ty, _i.e._ the sameness of an individual substance with itself throughout time, and personal ident.i.ty or sameness, was also an error. For as long as there is _substantial_ unity, continuity, or ident.i.ty of the subsisting individual substance, so long is there unity, continuity, or ident.i.ty of its subsistence, or of its personality if it be a rational substance. The _subsistence_ of a complete individual inorganic substance is changed as soon as the individual undergoes _substantial_ change: we have them no longer _the same_ subsisting individual being. So, too, the subsistence of the organic individual is changed as soon as the latter undergoes _substantial_ change by the dissolution of life, by the separation of its formative and vital substantial principle from its material substantial principle: after such dissolution we have no longer _the same_ subsisting plant or animal. And, finally, the subsistence of an individual man is changed, or interrupted, or ceases by death, which separates his soul, his vital principle, from his body. We say, moreover, that in the latter case the human _person_ ceases to exist when the ident.i.ty or permanence of his subsisting substance or nature terminates at death; for _personal ident.i.ty_ we hold to be the ident.i.ty of the complete subsisting substance or nature with itself. But Locke, who practically agrees with what we have said regarding the abiding ident.i.ty of the subsisting individual being with itself-whether this individual be an inorganic individual, a plant, a brute beast, or a man(313)-distinguishes at this point between ident.i.ty of the subsisting individual substance and _personal_ ident.i.ty.

Of ident.i.ty in general he says that "to conceive and judge of it aright, we must consider what idea the word it is applied to stands for; it being one thing to be the same substance, another the same man, and a third the same person, if person, man, and substance, are three names standing for three different ideas".(314) And, struggling to dissociate "person" from "substance," he continues thus:-

To find wherein personal ident.i.ty consists, we must consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will any thing, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions, and by this every one is to himself what he calls self; it not being considered in this case whether the same self be continued in the same or divers substances. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal ident.i.ty, _i.e._ the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the ident.i.ty of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.(315)

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.