Substance

Article 2. Substance

Substance d) Existence of Real Substances

sistence g) The Human Substance

a) Definition of Substance

We have seen that by force of its name (hence, by its nominal definition) substance is the support of accidents. And right here the student is warned not to take the term support in too literal a meaning. For substance is not to be conceived as a kind of nucleus, or core, or kernel, wrapped up in accidents as an ear of corn is wrapped up in its husks, or as the pulp of an orange is wrapped up in its peel. You cannot come at substance in a bodily thing by tearing away an outer wrapping of accidentals. Substance is not handled, in its pure or unaffected form, by the hands, or laid hold of by the senses. No man hath seen substance at any time. Substance is known, it is understood; it is necessarily understood by the mind or intellect in its investigation of the universe. Nor is it a mere postulate of mind, a mere supposition of intellect; it is a known reality. But we shall come to this point again. For the present, we repeat that the nominal definition of substance (from sub “under,” and stans “standing”) describes it as the support of accidents.

The real definition of substance is this: Substance is a reality which is fitted for existence itself (or in itself, or by itself) and does not require some other thing in which it is to have being as a mark, modifier, qualification, or characteristic. The essential point about a substance is that it is existible per se, or by itself. That substance is the reality which makes possible the real existence of accidents is secondary; it is not the fundamental and essential requirement of substance itself; there is nothing in the abstract idea of substance which demands that it have accidents. Hence we see the inadequacy of the nominal definition of substance, and we notice the misconception which that definition may suggest to an unwary mind. Of course, a substance in this universe of finite and bodily realities, is regularly affected by real accidents, and, indeed, it is through the accidents, and their appeal to our senses, that we come to know the existence and the nature of substance. This fact, however, does not touch our contention that substance as such does not involve in its concept or idea the note of actual accidents which affect it.

The formal (i. e., constituting) element about substance, therefore, is this: it is existible per se, existible itself, existible in or by itself. We do not say that a substance is existible of itself; for that would mean that a substance is self-existent, and uncaused. Only God, the Infinite Being, exists of Himself. A finite substance requires its producing cause; it is an effect of its cause or sum of causes. Further, it requires the conserving power of the Creator to keep it in existence, and His concurring power to render it operative according to the capacities and tendencies of its nature. But, given existence, the substance is the thing which exists; it exists itself; it is not the “hanger on” of something else. When we say that a substance is existible by itself we do not mean that a substance exists “alone” and that no other substance can simultaneously exist; we do mean that an existing substance is fundamentally independent of the accidents which happen to inhere in it. Thus the rosy apple which I hold in my hand, is large, sweet, red, hard, smooth, in this place, at rest or moved about by my fingers. Now this size, color, flavor, hardness, smoothness, rest or motion, presence in this place, are accidents of the apple; they exist, not by themselves, but as things which affect this apple; they in-exist in the apple as in their subject. But the apple could be an apple, and even this apple as far as substance goes, if all these accidents were different. This explains what we mean by saying that the substance of the apple exists by itself; we mean that the substance is the fundamentally important thing in this complex existence called “this apple with all its accidents”; we mean that this substance is basically independent of the precise accidents which are here and now found in it, and could “get on” without them by itself.

Substance is, therefore, a reality or essence which is existible per se. Secondarily, it is a reality in which accidents may inhere; that is, it can be the subject of accidents (from Latin subjectum “throw under”; and a substance is, so to speak, thrown under the qualification of the accidents which affect it). A substance is a finite reality. Only by analogy do we ’speak of God as a substance. All that is most perfect in the concept of substance is to be attributed to God eminently, or in a transcendent way, and all that is imperfect in the concept is to be excluded from this attribution. Thus, inasmuch as substance is that which is existible itself, God is the perfect substance. Inasmuch as substance may be the subject of accidents, God is not a substance.

b) Classification of Substance

I. Primary—secondary. A primary substance (usually called by its Latin name, substantia prima) is an existing individual substance. Thus, Tom, Mary, this tree, my guardian angel, are primary substances. A primary substance is neither an accidental, nor is it something pre die able of things other than itself. Tom is Tom; he is not an accidental reality but a substantial one; nor is Tom predicable of others (as “this stick is Tom,” or “that stone is Tom”); Tom is this one human being, singular, concrete, not referable to something else as its essence. A primary substance is called also a physical substance.—A secondary substance (Latin, substantia secunda) is a substance conceived abstractly and universally by the mind. Thus the idea man is the idea of a substantial reality, not an accidental one like whiteness, for instance. It means a substance. Its object (i. e., the universal “man”; the human essence objectively conceived) is something existible only in individually existing substances. Now, the universal (the objective essence conceived abstractly in the mind) is not itself a substance in a primary way, but it is called a secondary substance. A secondary substance is defined as a reality which is not an accidental, but is predicable of things other than itself. Thus the universal man (i. e., the essence man conceived in the idea or concept of man) is predicable of all individual human beings, for each of these is a man, a human being. Thus we rightly say, “Tom is a man, Mary is a man, the baby is a man,” and so on. The secondary substance is referable to things other than itself (its inferiors) as their essence. In a word, a primary substance is a concrete, individual, actually existing substance; a secondary substance is the essence of a substantial reality conceived universally in the mind. A primary substance is an actual individual; a secondary substance is a universal. A secondary substance is sometimes called a metaphysical substance.

2. Complete—incomplete. A primary substance is complete when it is a finished nature, fitted for existence with all its connatural functions; it is not ordinated towards another substance for substantial union therewith. A man or a tree or an angel is a complete substance.—A primary substance is incomplete when it is ordinated towards another substance for substantial union therewith, so that the resultant compound substance will be a finished nature with all its connatural functions. Prime matter and substantial form are incomplete substances; they come together in substantial union to constitute a body, which is the resultant complete substance. A substance may be incomplete in one of two ways: (a) It may be incomplete in substantiality and in species, that is, it may be incapable of existence either as a substance or as the complete essence towards which it is ordinated as a constituting factor. Thus, the life-principle of a plant is a substance incomplete both in substantiality and in species. It is incomplete in substantiality, for it cannot exist without its cosubstance which is the organic body of the plant; it is incomplete in species, for it is manifestly not the complete essence called plant, but is only a substantial element of that essence. (b) A substance may be incomplete in species, and complete in substantiality or incomplete in species only. Thus the human life-principle or soul is a complete soul; it is a substance which can exist without its co-substance, the organic body. But the human soul is not the complete species (or complete essence) towards which it is ordinated as a substantial element; it is not the complete human being. In other words, the soul is complete inasmuch as it is an existible substance (i. e., complete in substantiality), but it is not complete as the substance of which it is an essential part; it is not complete man (i. e., it is incomplete in species).—Substances that are incomplete both in substantiality and in species are true substances, not accidents; they cannot indeed exist without their respective co-substances, but they are not things which inhere in co-substances; they co-exist in substantial union, they do not inhere.

5. Simple—compound. A simple substance is not made up of parts; that is; it is not made up of two or more incomplete substances. A plant-soul, a human soul, or any substantial form is a simple substance, even though incomplete. An angel is a simple and complete substance.—A compound or composed substance is made up of two or more incomplete substances. A body (made of matter and form), a man (made of body and soul), are examples of compound or composed substance.

4. Material—non-material. A material substance is either composed of matter (and is therefore a body) or it is dependent

upon matter. A tree or a man is a material substance. So is the life-principle Or soul of a tree. This life-principle is not, indeed, made up of matter, but it depends upon matter; it cannot exist or function without the material organism which it vivifies or makes alive.—A non-material or spiritual substance is neither composed of matter, in whole or in part (and, indeed, a non-material substance is simple and has no parts), nor is it dependent upon matter for its existence and proper operations. The human soul is a spiritual or non-material substance; so is an angel.—In passing, it must be noted that while a spiritual (or non-material) substance is always a simple substance, it does not follow that every simple substance is spiritual. The substantial form of any body, as, for instance, the life-principle which is the substantial form of a plant, is simple, for it is not made up of bodily parts; but it is material, and not spiritual, because it depends upon matter, i. e., upon that which is made up of bodily parts. We do not call such a substance bodily; we do call it material. For a bodily substance is composed of material elements or parts; a material substance is either composed of parts (and hence is bodily) or depends upon that which is composed of parts, although it has no constituting parts of its own.

c) Our Knowledge of Substance

We have no intuitive knowledge of substance. That is, we have no immediate and direct mental grasp of substance as such. Our knowledge begins with the action of the senses; and the senses do not have substance as their object. The senses lay hold of accidents. But the intellect, taking the findings of the senses, discerns the underlying reality which we call substance. Nor is this a mere supposed foundation for accidents. It is not, as John Locke (1632-1704) declared, “an unknown something” which the mind posits as the support for accidents. Substance is far from unknown. We may know much about it, gathering justified data by the intellectual investigation of sense-findings. But, we repeat, we have no immediate and intuitive knowledge of substance as such; we have a justifiably derived knowledge of it

We can know the existence of real substances, and we can know the specific nature of substance. These points are discoverable by the mind in its study of accidental reality, and especially in its study of those accidents that are called proper accidents or properties. Such accidents are revealing things. The old sayings, “Handsome is as handsome does,” and “Actions speak louder than words,” may be adapted to express the truth that “A substance is as a substance reveals itself in proper accidents and activities.” For the proper activities and the proper determinants of a thing follow upon and express what the thing is in itself. Agere sequitur esse, that is, “Function follows essence.” Therefore, a careful study of sense-findings, a reflecting upon and an analysis of observed properties, activities, functions, behavior, must lead us to a knowledge of the existence and nature of the fundamental reality which is marked by such properties, and which so acts, so functions, so behaves. And this knowledge is clarified and fortified by what may be called the “check-up of mediate experience.” That is, this knowledge meets the requirements of daily life and hourly experience; it squares with facts; it fits into our inevitable interpretation of the universe. And the theories which doubt or deny the possibility of knowledge about substance do not so check with the actual facts and experiences of our life. Indeed, every such theory is self-contradictory. It begins by denying substance (flatly or equivalently) and ends by asserting that accidents are all substantial; at least, this assertion is implicitly made in the manner in which the theorists think of accidents and speak of them.

To deny or doubt the trustworthiness of our intellect in deriving the concept of substance from sense-findings of accidents, is to deny the truth of all knowledge and to lapse into the self-contradiction of skepticism. For all our knowledge, of things concrete and of things abstract, of things most evident and of things most abstruse, begins with the action of the senses. Therefore, if the senses do not avail to furnish the mind with the reality from which it works out its true and reliable concept of substance, these senses do not avail to furnish the mind with reality from which to form any true concepts at all. What evidence, what grounds, what criterion can be suggested, according to which the senses are to be known as reliable in the one case and not reliable in the other? Therefore, to deny the power of the mind to know substance, is to deny it power for true knowledge altogether. And this is skepticism, which, as is proved in Criteriology, is a self-contradictory and impossible doctrine.

Our first knowledge of substance is doubtless an 2ZO

implicit concept. That is, it is “infolded” in the earlL est cognitions of life. When we began to know things, we took the world around us at face value and the things that we experienced we considered as existing in their own right. In a word, we took all bodily objects, especially those perceived by touch and sight, as substantial. But soon we noticed differences in these sense-objects. The cry of a baby was soon recognized as a different sort of thing from the baby itself; it was quickly understood as something that depends upon the baby and proceeds from the baby, and does not have existence in or by itself. So too we noticed that the lad scampering home from school was more manifestly an existing thing (that is, a thing existing itself, or in its own right) than the movement of his flying feet. Thus early in childhood the concept of substance and of accident (as yet implicit) emerged to the forefront of the mind’s view of reality. The movement and the hum of a spinning top were known as belonging to some other category of things than that to which the top itself belongs; the color of a toy was seen to mark and qualify the toy. Substance and accident are inevitable classifications forced upon the mind, not by its bent or bias, not by some mysterious outer force, but by recognised reality. And all human experience checks with this classification, establishing it clearly and solidly as fundamental in all knowledge.

Our knowledge of substance is, therefore, a derived knowledge; it is derived by the mind as a legitimate and indeed an inevitable consequence of the reality of things. It bears the check and proof of experience; it squares with all the facts that we observe. We learn of bodily substances first, and, by justified abstraction of mind, we rise to the knowledge of substances that are non-bodily. We behold around us a.manifold universe of bodies; we unify this manifold in the universal concept of substance (secondary substance), and we recognize actual inferiors of this concept in the distinct and various substances that exist as individuals about us {primary substances).

d) The Existence of Real Substances

That substances exist in reality, and that the concept of substance is no mere figment or fiction of mind, is a fact made evident by three things: (1) consciousness; (2) sentient experience; (5) reason.

I. Consciousness makes us aware that each of us is a reality which remains permanent under a continuous succession of changes and variations. Each of us expresses this consciousness in such phrases as, “I think,” “I used to feel,” “I wish,” “I was near death some years ago, but today I am in the best of health.” Each of us is aware of his thoughts and feelings, his states of conviction and of health, as something distinct from and different from himself. The thoughts come and go, the feelings are altered, the convictions may falter, the state of health may deteriorate or improve, but the self stays the same, the self endures, the self is known as a reality which exists itself or in its own right, and it is merely affected by, qualified by, influenced by, the things that make up the succession of experiences which it undergoes. In a word, the self is known by the inevitable awareness of consciousness (upon which is based the worth and truth of all knowledge) as something substantial, as a substance, which is accidentally affected by thoughts, feelings, wishes, states of health, etc. Therefore, it is a fact within the experience of all that the self (or the ego) is known by consciousness as substantial, and is contrasted with the accidental character of the things which merely affect but do not constitute it. Certain modern psychologists, especially those engaged in the study of “psychology of education,” are prone to deny what they call “the substantive mind,” or, in other words, the substantiality of the human soul and of the human self. These mistaken scientists cut the ground from beneath their own feet; they deal in manifest self-contradictions. For they are forced to assume in fact what they deny in theory. They must take up a substantial soul even for the sake of smashing it. They have neither terms nor concepts to deal with human personalities regarded as non-substantial. They make of life, as they make of mind, a chain of experiences that do not happen to anybody, and a stream of events that has no channel in which to flow.1

2. Sentient experience of the bodily world around us gives us inevitable knowledge of things that are not, so to speak, standing on their own feet; things which exist by reason of something else. Thus we see that the color of an apple, the heat of a fire, the size of a house, the complexion and the disposition of ac man, the speed of a horse, are things which do not, and normally cannot, exist independently of other things which they mark or qualify or affect. Now the apple may turn from green to red and still be an apple, and indeed the same apple; the man may turn from taciturn to gay, and be the same man; the fire may die down and emit less and less heat, and still be true fire. Hence, our sentient experience of the bodily world obtrudes upon us the fact that there are accidental things here existing; and that there are other things in which these accidental things exist, and which these accidental things qualify and affect. In

1 Father Coffey (Ontology or The Theory of Being, ed. 1918, p. 223) writes: “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 identity and personal responsibility, become absolutely inexplicable.” Coffey refers the student to Maher (Psychology, ch. xxii) for an analysis and refutation of theories that would deny the sub” stantiality of the human person.

a word, sentient experience (considered in mind) shows us the existence of substances as well as of accidents.

F. Reason accepts from nature, from science, from philosophy, the fact of the real existence of the world. Reason says: if things exist in the world, as they do, they must exist in themselves or in other things. If they exist in themselves, they are substances. If they exist in other things, they are accidents. But accidents cannot exist in other accidents, and these in other accidents, and so on forever. One must come finally to a reality which exists in itself; that is, one must come to substance. Hence, whether we take up the study of reality from the standpoint of that which exists in itself, or from the standpoint of that which exists in something other than itself, we come at the last to the same conclusion: that reality, to be reality, demands the existence of real substances.

e) Faulty Doctrines about Substance

We have set forth our doctrine of substance as a reality which, independently of the mind, exists or can exist itself. This doctrine is _realistic_and it stands opposed to doctrines on the point which are idealistic, that is, to doctrines which would make substance a mere figment of the mind, a baseless idea or ideal of the mind. Idealism of this type is already refuted in our study of the existence of real substances.

We have already seen that substance is not to be thought of as a core of reality wrapped in the folds of accidentals. We do not conceive of substance and accidents merely as two concrete and separable entities tightly bound together. The substance is affected by its accidents; it is determinable by them; they are actualizations of its potentialities. A change of accidents means a change in the concrete being of the substance, although not in its essential being. The red apple which became red after it was green is, indeed, the same apple, but it is not the same in its whole concrete substantiality. Created substance is a limited and an imperfect mode of existence; it is bound up with its accidents, and is not adequately distinct from them. Hence there is no simple and direct and concrete way of coming at substance itself; one must take the path of abstraction and derivation; one must come at substance by way of mind working on the findings of sense. But this fact must not make one childishly impatient over the whole question; it must not lead one into over-simplifications; it must not lure one into the silly position of the “nothing else” philosopher who says that substance is “nothing else” or “nothing other” than a collection of accidents; which is like saying that the ocean doesn’t exist but that the waves are marvellous; or like saying that the Cheshire cat is non-existent but its grin remains. These misconceptions come from the faulty first notion that substance is a core or kernel wrapped about with the husks of accidents.

Substance is not an inert substratum underlying accidental features and activities. That is apparently what Rene Descartes (1596-1650) thought of it, or father, what he thought of what we call substance in this finite world; he himself defined substance as self-existent reality, and thus made God the only true substance. Substance is not inert, though we do study it under static aspects. On the other hand, substance is not defined by its activity, for a substance as active is called a nature. Leibnitz (1646-1716) made the mistake of identifying substance and nature. Spinoza (1632-1677) made substance an uncaused being (“that which, for its idea, requires the ‘”idea of no other thing“), thus identifying substance J and God. Cousin (1792-1867) comes close to Spinoza’s position by defining substance as that which has in itself no reference or relation to anything else (even to its cause!).

Against all these mistaken views of substance we allege the clear doctrine which we have already set forth and evidenced. And we repeat the declaration that, while we can and must know of the existence of real substances, and while we can and must know much of the nature of substance, we have here a deep and complex subject of study, one that defies simple statement and exhaustive treatment. We can and do know much about substance, but we do not and cannot know all about substance.

f) Subsistence

The crowning perfection by which an individual and actual substance stands, so to speak, on its own feet, ready to function as a rounded nature, is called subsistence. A substance that is a complete individual (i. e., primary substance), not merely a portion or element of a larger substance; which has its own autonomy or its own way of acting, is a subsistent substance or, as it is called, a suppositum or supposit. A man or a tree is a supposit. A man’s hand is a substantial thing; it is a substance; but it is not a supposit; it has substantiality but not subsistence. For the man’s hand has not its own completeness and autonomy; it is a part of the man; its actions are the man’s actions. An old axiom says, Actiones sunt suppositorum, that is, the actions of a substance are the actions of the supposit. Thus, though a murder is committed by the stroke of an arm or the pressing of a finger against a trigger, the courts of law do not consign the arm or finger to gallows or electric chair; the courts condemn the man who used the arm or finger; these substantial things are but parts of the man, and their action is his action; he is the supposit, and “actions are of the supposit.”

For a reality to have subsistence, it must be: (1) a substance; an accident cannot be subsistent; (<?) an individual substance, not a secondary substance, that is, a universal, an essence conceived objectively but abstractly and universally in the mind; (5) a complete substance, not the substantial part (essential or integral) of a compound substance; (4) an autonomous substance, that is, a substance that is a finished nature with its own laws and ways of acting (sui juris is the ancient Latin phrase for this requirement).

g) The Human Substance

When we speak of the human substance, we do not mean to say that there is a general or universal human mass of which individual men are the sharers or participants. We should more properly speak of human substances, for the only human substance that exists is that which is found in individual human beings. Things can actually exist (as we have learned elsewhere in our study) only in individual, although they be unified in our knowledge, and mentally conceived in universal. Therefore, we speak here of the individual human substance, the human substance as it is found in actual human beings.

The individual human substance is a supposit, for it is a complete, individual, autonomous substance. Thus it has subsistence. More: its subsistence, its crowning perfection which sets it in being as a completely rounded nature functioning in its own connatural way, is subsistence of a special type and makes it a supposit of a special kind. Human subsistence makes the individual man (the individual human substance) a supposit of the rational order, that is, a supposit endowed with rationality, a supposit endowed in actu primo with understanding and free-will. Now, that type of subsistence which makes a substance a complete, individual, autonomous substance of the rational order, is called personality. And the substance which has such subsistence is a person. Of all creatures, only men and angels are persons.

Every human being has personality; every human being is a person. The term personality is used here in its strictly philosophical sense. It does not suggest, as it does in much popular “psychological” writing and discussion, a kind of impressiveness, a power to influence others, a thing composed of such elements as charm of manner, resonance of voice, alertness, self-assurance, and so on. Personality is here understood as the subsistence which makes a substance a supposit of the rational order. Even the unborn child, from the very first moment of conception, is, in the truest and fullest sense, a person and has personality.

Nor do we mean by personality the outer manifestation of character or disposition, of whim and caprice, of moodiness and variability of conduct, of which people speak when they say, “He has an odd personality,” or “He is a reliable personality,” or “He has a dual personality,” or “He has a Jekyll and Hyde personality?’ Manifestly, this ”personality“ is merely a matter of observable qualities. And most of us have our ”moods and tenses”; we have our ups and downs, our hours of vivacity and our hours of depression and languor. Of almost every man or woman it has been said, on some great or some dire occasion, “Why, he seemed a different person altogether,” or “She is a completely changed person.” We repeat: our use of the term person and the term personality has nothing to do with this manifested character or disposition,—“the empirical ego,” as it is sometimes called. Our use of the terms has to do with the substantial ego, the subsistence which makes the human individual a supposit of the rational order. And this personality cannot be “dual,” or “multiple,” or variable; this personality cannot be changed by the most startling or the most momentous of events.

The human substance (in individual) as constituted in its essential structure and ready for its connatural operations is an individual human nature. To this individual nature, subsistence (which, in the case considered, is personality) adds something real and positive and intrinsic, which makes the individual a supposit, and, in our present case, a supposit of th? rational order, that is, a person. There is, therefore, a real distinction between the individual nature and its subsistence, between nature and person in the individual. In the Incarnation, the Eternal Second Person of the Holy Trinity took human nature and became man. But He did not take human personality. The Divine Person of the Son of God subsists henceforth also in human nature. Christ is therefore only one Person; He is the Second Person of the Trinity. And Christ has two natures, the nature of God, which He has from eternity and which is one and undivided among the Three Divine Persons; and the nature of man, which He took in the bosom of His Blessed Mother. Now, as we have seen, the actions or activities of a substance are the actions of the supposit, or, in the case of the human substance, of the person. Hence the actions and activities of Our Lord, in His human as well as in His divine nature, are the actions and activities of the Divine Second Person of the Trinity; they are the actions and activities of God. Once more we have briefly invaded the field of theology, but this little digression from strict philosophical procedure is justified both by the importance of the point mentioned and by its close connection with the philosophical doctrine of personality.

Many items of interest touching the subject of person and personality might be discussed here. Such, for instance, are the nature of man’s physical constitution, the substantial character of the union of soul and body, and the manner in which soul and body interact. Yet these are points properly treated in philosophical psychology and not in ontology.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have learned the meaning of substance, and have studied the implications of both its nominal and its real definition. We have classified substance as primary and secondary; complete and incomplete; simple and compound; material and non-material. We have investigated our knowledge of substance, and have found that, while this is no intuitive and direct knowledge, it is derived knowledge that is true and reliable. We have demonstrated the existence of real substances in the world about us, drawing proofs from consciousness, sentient experience, and reason. We have briefly mentioned and criticized certain faulty notions about substance, and have seen that doctrines developed from such notions are fallacious. We have learned the meaning of subsistence, and have dwelt upon that notable type of subsistence which is called personality. We have defined supposit and person.