Certain Accidents

Article 3. Certain Accidents

a) Quality

We often say that any accident qualifies its subject. The word qualify (and its cognate quality) is thus seen to be capable of a wide or loose meaning. In such a meaning, any accident which tells us something about what sort of thing its subject is, is a quality. Strictly, however, a quality is an accident which modifies or influences a substance in itself or in its activities. Even this definition seems somewhat vague; it is necessarily so, since the accident of quality is so widely inclusive. But, in general, it may be said that any quality makes the substance which it affects better or worse in itself, or makes it function more easily or less easily.

Marks of a quality are these: (1) It is a thing which has an opposite, and qualities may be listed in opposed pairs. Thus, virtue, vice; knowledge, ignorance; health, illness; whiteness, blackness, are examples of opposed qualities. (2) It is a thing of degrees, being capable of increase or diminishment. Thus, virtue may be ordinary or superior, knowledge may be greater or lesser, and so on. (3) It is a thing which serves as a basis of comparison. Thus things which are like in quality are called similar, and things which differ in point of quality are, in so far, dissimilar.

Important types of quality are, as we have briefly noticed elsewhere, the following:

1. Dispositions and habits. A habit is a settled and enduring quality, born of repeated acts or of a continued state of being, which influences a substance in itself or its operations. A habit is firmly fixed and not readily removable. Before it becomes so fixed, and while it is still relatively easy to remove, it is called a disposition. Thus a child who has lied a few times to avoid difficulties may be said to have the dispose tion to escape trouble in this unworthy way; continued lying will fix the practice as a habit. Thus a pupil who has, by taste or effort, acquired a liking for serious study, is disposed to do good work, and continued application will make regular study a habit. A habit, in casual or colloquial use of the term, suggests the doing of something as a regular practice, but it need not be limited to this meaning. Continued sickness is a habit; enduring health is a habit; fatness or leanness is a habit. These latter are called habits of being or entitative habits, while the habits of doing are operative habits. The ability to typewrite rapidly is an operative habit; so is the ability to skate, or to play the piano, or to read French; these are things acquired by continued effort and repetition, and they are not easily lost or removed, even though they be not often exercised after they have once become a fixed possession. A habit is distinguished as good or bad, according to the effect it has on action or conduct. Vice is a morally bad habit; virtue is a morally good habit. Chewing tobacco is a socially bad habit, Cleansing one’s teeth twice daily is a hygienically good habit. But usually the terms good and bad have, as descriptive of habit, a mor cd implication. Again, a habit is distinguished as natural or supernatural; a natural habit is one acquired by the unaided powers of nature; a supernatural habit is one that cannot be achieved by natural powers but is bestowed by God. Thus, knowledge gained by study, is a natural habit; sanctifying grace is a supernatural habit. The basic meaning of habit (from Latin habitus the passive past participle of the verb “to have”) is “a thing had, a thing one has got,” a thing that stays. A grasp of this fundamental meaning of the term will clear up all that seems unusual in the distinction of various habits that we have just made.—The cultivation of good (operative) habits is of immense practical importance for the conduct of life. Good habits render “the right thing” prompt and easy in ordinary circumstances, and in moments of great stress of temptation they furnish the most favorable ground for the operation of actual grace. What is called a man’s “character” is largely a matter of acquired natural and supernatural habits.

2. Capacities. A capacity or power is the faculty for doing something. All the activity of a substance comes from its nature (for nature means an essence viewed as the root and source of operations), but nature is not operative immediately, but only through faculties or powers or capacities which inhere in it as qualities. Thus the capacity for thinking (the mind or intellect) and for choosing (the will) and the capacities for sensing (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, imagination, memory, consciousness, instinct) are not the substance of a man, nor the nature of a man, but powers (which in themselves are accidents, and qualities) which serve the man in his connatural activities. The noblest of human faculties are, of course, the soul-faculties of mind and will. When a man uses these well, we say that he is a man of fine qualities. Since capacities or powers are qualities, they must have their respective opposites; for we have seen that this is a requirement of quality. The opposite of power is impotence, debility, weakness. Thus the quality of keen-sightedness has its opposite quality in weak-sightedness.

j. Passive characteristics. The term passion has many meanings in English, and the most common one is that of a strong emotion. But its literal meaning is “an undergoing or an enduring.” Of course, when one is strongly moved (as by anger or by love) one undergoes, one suffers, one endures something; yet here one is apt to think of the passion as the active force which produces the emotion; literally it is not so. When one endures cold, or heat, or when one undergoes a change of color, as of paleness through fright or a flushing of the face because of anger or embarrassment, one experiences passion in the strict and literal sense. Now, the actual undergoing of influences (actions) is the special category called the accident of passion, which is the terminus and the complement of the accident of action. The result in a substance of the enduring or undergoing of influence (action) is the accident of quality, which we here call, somewhat lamely and inadequately, a passive characteristic. Thus the actual undergoing of a sensation of fright is passion, not quality. But the resultant state of the substance affected by passion, the paling of the face, the trembling of the hands, is quality, or “passive characteristic” which is a type of quality. This type of quality is, unfortunately for minds easily muddled, also called by the simple term passion if it is a quickly passing quality, a transitory state or condition of the substance affected. If this quality is an enduring thing, it is called passive quality, or, in the old Latin phrase, qualitas patibilis. Thus the paling of the face, the sinking of the heart, the trembling of the hands, are qualities called passions, for these things are, of their nature, fleeting and transitory. But the ordinary state of the complexion, the regular temperature of the body (which are things produced by normal influences) are not fleeting or transitory, but tend to endure; therefore, these things are called, not passions, but passive qualities.

4. Outlines and figures. The outline or figure or form or shape of a thing is the limit of its quantity. Every actual body has quantity, and the quantity has ends, terminations, limits, points where it breaks off. These limits determine the shape of the body, or its outline or form or figure. The form or figure is not the substance affected by it, nor the quantity of that substance; a ball of wax that weighs one pound is not changed in substance or in quantity when the wax is reshaped. The form or figure of a bodily substance is a quality of the substance; it is a quality of quantified matter. By an ancient usage, the term form was used only with reference to artificial things, like houses, or paintings, or wagons, or clocks; and the term figure was used with reference to natural substances like trees or horses or men. Later usage, however, has made the terms form and figure practically synonymous and interchangeable, and has added a new synonym, shape.—In passing, the student is warned that the term form (which here means, of course, accidental form, and of a special type) is a most potent and most frequently recurrent word in a philosopher’s vocabulary. In general, a form means any determinateness of being, essential or non-essential, substantial or accidental. In this sense, all accidents are forms (accidental forms), and the essence, the nature, the subsistence of a substance are forms; the substance itself is constituted in its character as an existing thing of definite essence and nature by its substantial f orm.

b) Relation

We have defined accident in general as that reality which is not fitted for existence in itself or by itself, but regularly exists in something other than itself as a mark, qualifier, characteristic, or determinant. In a word, an accident exists in the subject which it affects; it m-exists, rather than exists. But there is one accident of the nine that is not accurately described as an in-existing reality. This exceptional accident is relation. For relation is not something which inheres in a subject, or in-exists; it is rather something that exists between two subjects, or among a plurality of subjects. Relation is the standing, the ordering, the habitude of one thing towards another. The world about us is marked by a most complex tissue of relations or relationships.2

It is possible for us to consider certain realities alone, and in this view they are called absolute realities. Thus we can consider a man, or a man’s appearance, or a tree, or a field of corn. But if we take into account all that can be known about such things, we inevitably see them in relations which they bear to other things. The man is somebody’s son; the man’s appearance makes him similar to others, or dissimilar; the tree is like or unlike other trees; the field of corn suggests somebody who planted the corn. Indeed, everything can be seen in relationships or relations which tie it up with other things. Some things can be regarded as absolute; but some cannot. Thus, for example you cannot conceive of parent absolutely; for parent means a person who bears a relationship to offspring. You cannot think of son or daughter with-

2 The most obvious and the most important of relations is that of causality. To this relationship we devote an entire Chapter, called “Beings in Their Causes.”

out involving in the thought the idea of parent. You cannot think of king without thinking of subjects, for a king is miscalled, and is not a king, unless he holds the place of rule over subjects. Thus, there are some realities which, of necessity, involve a reference to others. Such realities are called relative. We may put the whole matter thus: things that can be known by themselves without reference to anything else are absolute; things which cannot be known alone but are necessarily known as related to other things, are relative. Of course, in a strict sense, only God is truly an absolute Being. Every creature depends upon God, and is related to God, as to its First Cause. But, omitting this fundamental relation which affects all positive reality, we assert that among creatures themselves there are some that can be seen in an absolute light, and some that cannot be seen except as involving reference to other things; and on this basis we classify creatures as absolute and relative.

. Now, is relation all a matter of seeing things, of knowing them? If so, relation is a thing of the mind, a logical entity and not a real entity. That there can be logical relations is manifest; such is the relation between the subject and predicate of a sentence; such is the relation between a red flag and danger; such is the relation between a laurel wreath and triumph. These relationships are unquestionably due to the view of the mind or the invention of men; they are not a necessarily objective state of facts in the world of realities which does not depend on man’s mind or man’s view or man’s customs. They are logical relations. But we assert that there are also real relations in the world, and many of them. A child is related to his parents, as effect to cause, independently of man’s view of the case. The pillars in St. Peter’s Basilica are alike, whether anyone notices the fact or not; they bear to one another the relation of similarity (and that, in each of them, which is the basis of comparison, is the quality of likeness). The first distinction of relations is that of logical relations and real relations. Logical relations are the “tie-ups” that depend on knowledge, or invention, or understood custom. Real relations are the product of things taken independently, and not in a special view of mind, or as a special arrangement or form of symbol invented by man.

Relations are further distinguished as essential and non-essential. An essential relation is the very essence of a thing inasmuch as it involves a reference to something else. Thus the soul is created expressly for union with the body so that, in substantial union therewith, it may constitute man. The soul is essentially directed to, ordinated to, referred to, related to the body. This is an essential relation. Again, between two and four, there is the relation of half to whole; this relation is necessary; it cannot be different; it belongs to the very essence of the two quantities; it is an essential relation. An essential relation holds everywhere and always between or among the essences concerned. It transcends times, occasions, conditions, circumstances. Therefore an essential relation is often called a transcendental relation.—A nonessential relation (or an accidental or a predicamental relation) is one that happens to be there, but need not be, by any necessity based on the nature or essence of the things related.3 That John looks like Joe may be an actual fact and a real relation; but it is manifest that this resemblance is an accidental thing, not an essential one. It may be that John is later disfigured by disease or accident, and no longer looks like Joe. And still John and Joe are the same essences they were before the change occurred. For a predicamental or non-essential relation we find a basis in quantity, in quality, or in action-passion; quantity is the basis of the relations of equality and inequality; quality is the basis of the relations of likeness and unlikeness, similarity or dissimilarity; action-passion is the basis of the relation of origin or causality.

A relation is mutual when it works two ways, when it is truly reciprocal. Thus the relation between parent and offspring is mutual. Parent means a person who has a child; offspring means a person who has a parent. From the standpoint of the parent, this relation is paternity or maternity; from the standpoint of the child, this relation is filiation. Thus, aS is evident,

3 It is of predicamental relation that we speak in the present study.

the relation between parent and offspring is mutual or reciprocal, but it is not the same from the respective standpoints of the things related. It is a mutual but unequal relationship. Between John and Joe who look alike there is a mutual relationship of similarity which is the same from the standpoints of both things related: John looks like Joe; Joe looks like John. This is a mutual and equal relationship.—A relation is non-mutual or non-reciprocal when it does not work two ways. Thus, there is a relation between the mind of a man and a reality known to that mind, between knowledge and a real object of knowledge. But this relation is non-mutual. The man’s knowledge depends on the object, for the object must be there before it can be known. But the object does not depend on the man’s knowledge, and would be there, and be the same, whether the man knew it or not. Again, the relation between God and creatures is a real but non-mutual relation. Creatures depend on God, and necessarily stand in the relation of dependency upon Him; God must be there, or the creatures cannot be there. But the relation does not work the other way. God does not depend on creatures; and God would be there whether creatures were there or not there.

In every relation we distinguish three elements: the subject, the term, and the basis. The subject is that which is referred to something else. The term is that to which the subject is referred. And the basis is the reason by which the subject is referred to the term. Thus, in the relation called paternity or fatherhood, which exists between father and son (from the standpoint of the father), the subject is the father; the father is the reality referred to or related to the son. The term is the son. The basis is the process of generation, the physical having of offspring (the action-passion) which makes the father the progenitor of the son. Take the same relation from the standpoint of the son; it is now the relation of filiation or sonship, not of paternity. The subject is the son; the term is the father; the basis is the process of generation (action-passion, with the emphasis now on passion) which makes the son the offspring of the father. Take another example: John looks like Joe. Here the subject is John; the term is Joe; the basis is the quality of appearance in John and in Joe. Turn the relation around (since it is mutual and equal), and say: Joe looks like John. Here the subject is Joe; the term is John; the basis is the quality of appearance in Joe and John.

There are real relations in the world about us, but the world does not consist of relations. And in the truths that we can acquire about reality, whether in the material world, or in the metaphysical world (the world of understood essences), or in the moral world (the realm of right and wrong, of duty, of conscience), there is an absolute value, not a relative one. As philosophers, we have no direct concern with physical essences and their material characteristics and processes; we leave the question of physical relativity to the discussion of physicists and mathematicians. But we must, in the name of truth, and on the basis of reality in being, take a definite stand against the intellectually and morally ruinous theories of relative truth and relative morality which are much in fashion today. The question of such relativity has full discussion in Criteriology and in Ethics. But we must make passing mention of it here. On the intellectual side, the relativist holds that what is true here and now is not necessarily or absolutely true, so that it must be true for all men of all times; but it might have been false in the past, or may turn false in future, or may be false now in other places than this world we know. In a word, the relativist holds to the dictum truth changes. Against him we might marshal a list of crushing arguments, and it is the duty of the criteriologist to do so. Here it will suffice to answer him quite simply, to condemn him out of his own mouth, to show that he proposes a self-contradictory doctrine, and so stultifies himself, and is unworthy of a serious hearing. When he says, “Truth changes,” we may upset him completely by asking, “Is that true?” For, if his statement be true, then his doctrine is itself an unstable, unreliable, changing theory, and is therefore inadmissible.—The relativist in moral matters says that nothing is absolutely right or wrong, good or bad, but that the moral quality (goodness or badness) of any human activity is determined by its relation to the times, or to the current needs of industrial or social groups, or to the existing stage of civilization and of human “progress.” Our own American philosopher, William James (1842- 1910), held such a relativist theory in regard to both truth and morality. He taught that the test of truth and goodness is the “workableness” of a thing; a thing is true and good if “it works,” if it meets the needs of the moment or of the circumstances. From the Greek word pragma (an act, a deed, a thing that works or is worked) the theory of James takes the name Pragmatism. We may say to the pragmatist, intellectual or moral, “How can you speak of a thing as true or good if you have no understanding of what truth and goodness mean in themselves and apart from all special circumstances? How do you know a thing is good now, or that it actually works for human weal, unless you know what good means itself?” Chesterton says that the relativist is a man engaged in looking for the comparative of a word of which he has forgotten the positive. He believes in things being made better, but he does not know what good means; he believes in progress, but he has no idea of a starting-point, or a direction, or a goal; he believes in change, but he does not admit the stable existence even of a thing that can be changed.

c) Quantity

Quantity is the accident which affects a bodily substance with extension of parts. It is called “an accident which spreads out a bodily substance so that it is part here part there” (accidens extensivum substantiae corporeae in partes). Quantity is not the bodily substance itself, but an accident which affects the bodily substance. It is a proper accident of actual bodies, and, in the order of nature, an actual body is never found without some quantity; but quantity is not the essential constituent of the body itself. We have seen that a bodily substance has essential parts or elements, viz., prime matter and substantial form. It is not of these parts that we speak when we say that quantity extends the parts of a body. We speak of integral parts; the parts that make up the body in its mensurable character, and not the parts that make it up in its essence. When, for instance, we speak of the quantity of a block of stone, we do not refer to the substantial elements which make this substance stone, but to the parts or elements which make it this much, this amount, this bulk of stone.

There are five notable properties or attributes of quantity: (z) It extends the body in a manner that may be called internal, without reference to the space which the body occupies, or the place in which it moves or reposes. It is this property which is the formal property, or even the constituent property and the essence, of the accident called quantity. (<?) It extends the body in an external manner so that its parts occupy space or place. (5) It makes the bodily parts incompenetrable, so that one is not precisely where another is. (4) It makes the bodily substance divisible because the extended parts, not compenetrating, are conceivably and really separable, one from another. (5) It renders the bodily substance mensurable or measurable, because parts that are divisible can be numbered and can be seen in relation to one another as equal or unequal.

Quantity properly so-called is referable only to bodies. By an extension of meaning it may be, and is, applied also to material things which are not substances. And, by analogy, it is predicable of even nonmaterial or spiritual substances and accidents. Thus we speak of a number of apples, a quantity of time, an amount of virtue of learning, a number of angels. But quantity in the strict and proper meaning of the word is always corporeal quantity, bodily quantity, mensurable quantity, the quantity of a thing that has dimensions.

Quantity as corporeal is either a matter of size or a matter of number. Quantity of size is called continuous quantity; its parts are united; the line which marks the end of one part is the same identical line which marks the beginning of the next neighboring part. By reason of this quantity a body is said to have magnitude, size, bulk. Quantity of number is called discrete quantity; its parts are severed, discrete, separated. These parts may be, indeed, more or less perfectly contiguous (one lying close to another, so that the line which marks the end of one part is right against the line which marks the beginning of the next neighboring part), but they are not continuous. The quantity of a grain of sugar is quantity of size, continuous quantity; but the quantity of a pound of sugar in a sack (the whole being regarded as one quantity) is discrete quantity; it is the quantity of a number of grains taken together. Other examples of continuous quantity: an apple, a horse, a man, a tree, a stone. Examples of discrete quantity: a peck of apples, a herd of horses, a group of men, a clump of trees, a pile of stones. Of the first examples we say that they are of such and such size; of the others, we say that they exist in such and such number (or multitude).

Continuous quantity is called permanent or simultaneous if its parts are all in existence together; if it is “all there” at once. Such is the quantity of a horse, a house, or a stone. Continuous quantity is called successive if its parts come into existence one after another, and are not all there together. Such is the quantity (so-called by extension of the literal meaning of the term) of time, or of movement, or of a speech. Time is a flowing thing; minute follows minute; and, as the harassed hero of the comic opera sings, “The months in succession come round, and you don’t find two Mondays together.” So with movement; it is a thing which goes through a course, makes a transit, proceeds from point of beginning to point of ending, and one element or “part” exists at a time, to be followed by others in turn, until the motion or movement is complete. So also with a speech; it would doubtless be a convenience if we could have the multitudinous words of some orators thrown upon us in one instantaneous and shocking blast, but the rigorous rule of reality forbids that this kindly thing should be.

Some philosophers, like Rene Descartes (1596- 1650), have thought that the essence of bodily substance is its quantity. This is untrue. Quantity, as we have already said, is an accident of bodily substance; it is not the bodily substance itself. A drop of water is as truly the substance waler as is the ocean; which manifestly could not be if quantity or extension or amount were identified with the substance quantified.

In abstract thought and language we deal with corporeal quantity as lines (or distances), surfaces (or areas), or volumes (cubic content, extension, mass). But in the concrete, a corporeal quantity is always a cubic quantity; it has always length, width, and thickness. The finest “line,” drawn with the finest instrument, on the hardest surface, has manifest length; but it has width also, though it be the millionth of an inch; and the ink or graphite with which it is drawn lies upon the surface as a layer of bodily matter with its thickness or depth, even though this be but the billionth of an inch in measurement.

d) Action, Passion, Motion

1. Action is an accident (or non-substantial reality) by virtue of which a cause produces an effect. It is not an ability or capacity to do something; this, as we have elsewhere seen, is a quality. It is the actual “getting to work,” the “going into action” that we call the accident of action or predicamental action.

The action whereby God produces things out of nothing (creation) is not, strictly speaking, predicamental action, for God is not affected by anything accidental. Yet such are the limitations of speech, that we speak of the creative action of the Almighty. An action of creatures is always an effecting, a producing (not out of nothing, but out of something already existent), an operating, a functioning. This, inasmuch as it is the actual doing (and not the equipment or capacity for doing), is the predicamental action of which we here speak.

An action which produces a new substance is generation. And, since the production of a new substance is always the reduction or removal of another (or others), generation of one substance is the corruption of another (or others). Thus, the generation of water is the corruption of hydrogen and oxygen; the generation of living cells is the corruption of food. Generation and corruption are instantaneous, not successive. When the action is not productive (and corruptive) of substance, but of accidental form or forms, it is called change or alteration. Thus the action of fire upon a pail of water turns the water from cold to hot; this is alteration. Alteration is usually successive, that is, it proceeds by steps or stages. Thus, the water passes successively through the stages of cold, less cold, lukewarm, warm, hot.

Action which remains, in itself and in its main effect, within the being which produces it is immanent action (from Latin in and manere “to remain in”). All vital action (that is, life action: nutrition, growth, generation, sensation, appetition, locomotion, intellection, volition) is immanent, and all immanent action is vital. The growth of a plant has, indeed, outer effects; it is larger as it grows, and stands in different spatial relations to surrounding bodies. But this is a secondary effect of growth; growth in itself and in its main effect is in the plant, and stays in the plant, and perfects the plant. Non-immanent action is transient (from Latin transiens “going over”); that is, it is action which goes over from the being which produces it and has its main effect on something else. The action of sawing wood or hitting a ball is transient,

2, Passion is an accident (or non-substantial reality) by which a being is constituted in the actual receiving of action, the actual undergoing of action in its effect. Action is actual doing; passion is actual undergoing. Passion is thus the complement of action; it is its opposite, indeed, but in the sense of a related opposite; an opposite which is also a term or goal.

5. Motion is a kind of composite view of action and passion. St. Thomas says that “inasmuch as motion proceeds from a doer, it is action; inasmuch as it affects what undergoes the doing, it is passion.” Motion is any transit from potentiality to actuality; it is any going over from non-action to action, from non-undergoing to undergoing. Motion is a term which suggests to the ordinary mind a moving about of a body or of parts of a body. This is indeed motion, but it is not the only type of motion; this is merely local motion or local movement. But there is motion in generation, and in corruption, and in alteration. There is movement or motion from the state of being hydrogen and oxygen to the state of being water, and conversely, from the state of being water to the state of being hydrogen and oxygen. There is motion in the transit from hot to cold, from cold to hot; from virtuous to vile, from sinful to sinless. There is motion in quantitative growth (enlargement) or diminishment.

e) Place and Space

I. Place is an accident which determines “where” a thing is. It is an accident of a body which is immediately, contiguously, surrounded by another bodily substance; and it is determined by the whole outer surface of the body in its contact with the surrounding substance.

Consider a glass of wine. Where is the wine, the continuous quantity or volume in this amount called a glassful? There are several answers. The wine is in the glass; it is on the table, it is in the room, it is in the house, it is in this county, and so on. The surface of the inside of the glass is its immediate external place or its proper place. The other places (table, room, house, county, etc.) are the mediate external places or the common places, for other things than the glassful of wine are localized in these places. But the outer surface of the volume of wine itself may be regarded as a kind of container, a kind of film or skin which holds the volume of wine; and this is the internal place of the wine. Internal place is immovable. No matter where the glassful, the amount, of wine may be, its internal place remains the same; for considered as “self-contained,” its content or cubic bulk is ever the same as long as it continues to be the identical amount of wine. Take another illustration. Think of a baseball flying through the air from the bat of a muscular athlete. The external place of the baseball is being constantly changed as long as the ball is in motion; but the internal place of the ball is not changed at all. For, as long as the ball remains the same bodily mass or volume, it is held within the same dimensions, or rather, it is the same in cubic content; its mass, considered as contained or enclosed by its own surfaces, is its internal place. Thus, internal place is immovable in the sense of changeless. The external place of the ball, that is, the proper external place, is determined at any given moment by the concave surface of the air which immediately surrounds the ball and touches its surface at every point. For, at any given moment of its flight (such moment being statically considered), the ball is completely enclosed by the concave surface of the immediately surrounding air; there is, so to speak, a hole in the air into which the ball fits perfectly; indeed it is the actual extension of the ball which displaces the air and causes this perfectly fitting envelope to exist. The hole, envelope, or concavity into which the ball perfectly fits,—no other substance coming between the ball and this concave surface,—is the proper external place of the ball. The common external place of the ball is, of course, the air (in general), the park, the neighborhood in which the park is located, the section of county, state, or territory in which the neighborhood is located, and so on. In most of our expressions of localization, that is, expressions concerning the place occupied by bodies, we indicate common external place. Such is the meaning of the following phrases: “In this room”; “On the desk”; “In our part of the country”; “In America”; “Right here on this spot”; “On the campus”; “In chapel.”

How may a thing be in a place? How may it be localized? How may it be said to be present? There are four chief ways in which a reality may be localized:

z. If the thing localized is a bodily substance with quantity it has presence in a place, or is localized, in the literal and proper sense of these expressions. A body is in a place (external and proper place) when its own dimensions are immediately circumscribed by the dimensions of surrounding surface. Just so the baseball of which we were speaking is literally and properly localized by the immediately surrounding air, the exactly-fitting pocket of air, the inner surface of which is co-dimensional with the outer surface of the baseball. Lay a coin on a sheet of paper and, with a finely sharpened pencil, draw a close-fitting circle around it. You have thus “written around” the coin, and the circle you have written or drawn indicates the location of the coin in so far as it has place on the paper. Now, the Latin circumscriptum means “written around.” This term gives us the English phrase circumscription, or circumscriptive location. Circumscriptive location is what we call location in its literal and proper sense. And we say that all bodily substances are located, or are in their proper external places, circumscriptively. Only bodies can be present in a place circumscriptively. Yet, by figure of speech, by metaphor or analogy, we use the language of circumscription very frequently when we speak of non-bodily things. Thus we speak of the places of the angels in heaven, and of the places left vacant by the rebel angels. Thus again we speak of a man’s knowledge as something that is in him; our language seems to suggest that it is in him in somewhat the same manner as his heart or his liver is in him. But, of course, our language is metaphorical. Non-material things have no dimensions which can be co-dimensional with a containing surface, and hence they cannot literally be in a place circumscriptively.

2. If the thing localized is a form which gives actuality (existence) to a substance or accident, it is said to in-form such substance or accident, and to be in that substance or accident (i. e., to be located or placed there) informatively. Thus the substantial form of any material substance is said to be in that substance, or to be located in that substance, informatively. Thus the soul is said to be located in the body. Thus the character or quality of beauty is said to be in a beautiful face or scene.

3. If the thing localized is a working force, an acting power, it is said to be present where it works in a manner that is called operative; it is said to be present or to be placed operatively. There are two types of operative presence: (a) A creatural power, a finite power (substantial,—like the soul; or accidental,—like the power of seeing) can be present only in one subject at a time, and is definitely limited to that subject, and can function only there. It is thus said to be definitively present in the subject in which it operates. Thus the human soul is said to be present in the body operatively and definitively; we have already seen that the soul is in the body informatively. (b) The Infinite Power (that is, the Divine Essence Itself) is unlimited in itself, and therefore is unlimited in the field of its exercise. And so it is present everywhere; it is ubiquitously present (the term is from the Latin ubique, “everywhere”). Thus God (and God’s power) is present everywhere operatively and ubiquitously; and, since God’s power is identified with His Essence, His very Being, He is present everywhere in full essence or essentially.

4. The fourth mode of localization or presence (or ubication, as it is sometimes called; a term from the Latin ubicatio or “whereness”) does not lie within the proper scope of a purely philosophical discussion, but we add it here for reasons of completeness. It is the mode of presence exampled by Christ in the Holy Eucharist. This mode of presence is called sacramental, and it is defined as a presence wherein a located substance has place through the mediation of the dimensions of another substance, but without making these dimensions its own. Thus the substance of Christ is present under the appearances (and dimensions) of bread and wine, but the dimensions of the transubstantiated bread and wine are not the dimensions of Christ. Christ is present in a tiny host, not in miniature, not partially, but whole and entire in the fulness of His mature humanity as well as in the fulness of His divinity. And, while the host we look upon is really Christ Himself, we cannot transfer the dimensions and other accidents of the host to Christ and say that Christ is small, or Christ is round, or Christ is white, or Christ is brittle. For Our Lord uses the extension and other accidents of the host as the “veil,” so to speak, of His presence, but He does not make this extension and these other accidents His own extension and accidents. He is present in the Holy Eucharist sacramentally.

It may be asked whether one body can conceivably be present in two or more places at the same time, and also whether a plurality of bodies can conceivably be present simultaneously in one and the same place. The first question asks about the possibility of multilocation; the second inquires about the possibility of compenetration.

1. Multilocation of bodies is an absolute impossibility if the plural localization is conceived of as circumscriptive in all cases. For it is a contradiction in terms and in concepts to say that the same body can be circumscriptively present in two or more places at the same time. It is to say that a body is in one place, and measures its actual dimensions with the actual dimensions of that place, and, at the same time, does not measure its actual dimensions with that place since it is in another place simultaneously, measuring up its dimensions with that place.4 Now, a self-contradiction cannot be actualized; what is self-contradictory is absolutely or metaphysically impossible; not even a miracle can bring it to actual being. However, it is conceivably possible (because it involves no self-contradiction) for a single body to be in one place in one manner, and in other places in re~ spectively distinct manners. Thus, as we know by revelation and faith, Christ is present in each consecrated host, and in each part of each host, in a real and true and factual manner. His body, risen and ascended, is circumscriptively present only in heaven whither it has ascended; but it is sacramentally present in each consecrated particle of bread and of wine. A multiplied sacramental presence is not inconceivable, and hence, by a miracle, is a possibility. In a manner analogous to the sacramental presence, —without, however, involving the existence of a sacrament in the theological sense,—the loaves and fishes were multiplied for the comfort of the multi-

4 Certain notable scholastic philosophers do not agree that circumscriptive multilocatipn (that is, the presence of the one body circumscriptively in a plurality of places) is a self-contradiction and therefore a metaphysical impossibility. These say that the circumscriptive presence of a body in its place is a secondary effect of quantity, and depends upon external extension; therefore, just as external extension can be impeded or blocked out by a miracle, so equally it might be multiplied without involving a multiplication of the quantity of which it is the secondary effect. Such is the opinion of Scotus, Suarez, Franzelin, and others.

tudes who heard Our Lord’s discourse in the desert The loaves were not multiplied in the sense that new ones were made and added to the original store; no, the crowds were fed with the original few loaves. But the presence of these loaves was multiplied. Now, it was not their circumscriptive presence or location which was multiplied; that would have been, as we have just seen, an impossibility because a self-contradiction; it would have been the presence and the simultaneous non-presence of each loaf in each place of its use. Yet the measurements or dimensions which determine circumscriptive presence are not the substance of the body which has such presence, nor are these dimensions the essence of the accident called quantity; for circumscriptive presence is a matter of external location and of external extension, whereas the essence of quantity lies in the internal extension of the quantified bodily substance. Hence there is no intrinsic impossibility in the fact of each loaf being present circumscriptively in one place and, at the same time, being present in other places in a non-circumscriptive manner. Our examples of multilocation are instances of the miraculous and the supernatural; necessarily so, since, in the order of unaided nature, multilocation is unknown. But our doctrine is not dependent on the examples which illustrate its meaning. Nor is it any part of our purpose to prove the actuality of the miracles mentioned. Our only legitimate purpose in the present discussion is to show that multilocation, according to different modes of presence, is not a manifest absurdity and a self-contradiction. The most that philosophy can prove is that such multilocation is not an intrinsic or absolute impossibility.

2. We have already seen that one of the natural properties of actual quantity is incompenetrability. This is a property by force of which the existence of one bodily substance in a place blocks out any other body from that place at that time. Since this is a natural property, or physical property, of quantity, there is no such thing as compenetration of bodies (that is, two or more bodies occupying the same place at the same time) in the order of nature. Therefore the natural order affords us no examples of compenetration. Water in a sponge is not compenetration; the water merely occupies the spaces between and among the sponge-fibers which are drawn apart by its action. Anything porous which admits another substance, merely draws aside its own parts to allow the admitted substance to occupy their former place. Still, though nature gives us no examples of true compenetration, there is no self-contradiction in the very idea of compenetration as a fact. Though we have no physical possibility of compenetration in bodies, we have metaphysical possibility, or intrinsic possibility of such compenetration. For a body blocks out another body from its place by reason of its external extension, its extension in the place, not by reason of its internal extension, its extension in itself. And it is internal extension that is the essence of quantity. Hence there is nothing in the essence of quantity itself which requires that “blocking out” which makes compenetration naturally impossible. Therefore, a miracle could give us actual instances of compenetration. And, indeed, miracles have done so. Consider the entrance of Our Risen Lord into the upper chamber through the door that was closed and locked. Consider also His rising from the sealed tomb, and recall the fact that the great stone which closed the entrance of The sepulchre was not rolled back until after Our Lord had risen and was not there. Nor is it an objection to our point to say that the Lord’s body was, after the Resurrection, a glorified body; for it was still a true body, despite the wondrous qualities that came to it with its glory. For two bodies to compenetrate, it would be, of course, requisite that at least one of them should have no external, but only internal extension at the moment of compenetration.

II. Space is usually thought of as a kind of container in which bodies are located and in which their movements take place. Space is not the same as place; rather, place is a portion of space, a definite part of space occupied by a bodily substance. The moment one thinks of a body, one thinks of its surroundings, its place; and the moment one thinks of two or more bodies, one thinks of the relation of distance between and among them, and this is a thought of space.

Real space is the relation of distance among actually existing bodies. It is coterminous or coextensive with the extension of such bodies. For in the “distance” which intervenes between and among actual bodies in the existing universe, there is a bodily medium. Nature abhors a vacuum, and no true vacuum (that is, no true interval of absolute nothingness) exists within the limits of the visible world. What we call a vacuum in our physical laboratories is not the absence of all bodily reality, but the absence of atmospheric air. We have all seen the experiment in which a ringing alarm-clock is placed under a glass bell from which the air is then pumped out. The sound of the alarm-gong ceases to be heard, although we still see the little hammer pounding busily away. We say that the alarm cannot be heard because it is ringing in a vacuum. But the fact is that under the glass bell is a mere absence of air which is required for the transmission of sound. But there is no absence of what used to be called “ether” under the bell; there is no complete vacuum or absence of all material media, else we should not even see the clock. Light is a material entity and needs a material medium to carry it; the ether through which the light-waves come to us is as bodily as air, as bodily as water, as bodily as steel. And therefore between our earth and the most distant star that sends its light to us there is a material medium which is continuous, and has no intervals of nothingness, no breaks of absolute vacuum. Hence the whole of our known universe is a continuous series of bodies without breaks or vacuums. Now, conceive of this universe as enclosed in a vast container, like a gigantic sack or an immense balloon. The sack or balloon will represent the outside limits of our bodily universe; it will mark also the limits of real space. What is outside the sack? Nothingness. Yet we are forced by the limits of experience and of imagination to fancy this outer nothingness as though it were a continuation of real space. This fancied image of space is called imaginary space. If the mind reflects upon the fact that real space may actually extend on and on, beyond the limits of the known or visible universe; if one thinks, that is to say, of th_e possible_ extension of real space (not merely picturing it in fancy, but reflecting on the intellectual concept or idea of space) one is dealing with ideal space. These are the three types of space usually listed: real space, imaginary space, ideal space.

Real space is fundamentally a real entity. It is not a projection of mind. It is not an “innate form” which conditions our sentient knowledge, as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) thought it was. Kant denied the real existence of both space and time, and made them into something that may be called the “shape” of the sensing-power. And just as a bottle will conform to its shape whatever is poured into it, so the sensing-power, taking in its findings (phenomena, Kant calls them), makes these conform to its “shape,” and sq perceives them as occupying space and occurring in time. But, we repeat, space is fundamentally real. It is the real extension of existing bodies in our universe, without break or interval; it is “the unbroken series of coexisting bodies.” And as this series is real, so space is real. Yet space means something more than a series of bodies with their extension. We think of this extended series of bodies as a container of bodily substances and of bodily movements. And so our mind makes its contribution to the concept of space. Thus space is fundamentally real, and formally logical. As the extension of real bodies, it is real; as the container of bodies and their movements, it is rational or logical. So we declare space to be an ens rationis cum fundament0 in re, that is, a logical entity with a foundation in reality, Kant made space a purely logical entity. Isaac Newton made it a purely real entity. He said that, since God is eternal and infinite by His essence, He exists everywhere and endures always, and so constitutes space and time. Thus Newton made space so real that he turned it into Reality Itself, and fell into a kind of pantheism.5

6 Newton is not to be declared an out-and-out pantheist for this statement, since the statement is capable of interpretation that expresses truth. If he means that space may be used to express some explanation of God’s immensity, that is, if God’s immensity is to have some sort of expression in terms of space, he is not obviously wrong. Our minds are limited and cannot grasp the unlimited simply and adequately; we find it helpful in forming our true concept of God’s immensity to envision Him as present in endless reaches of imaginary space; and, indeed,

Imaginary space is described by the philosopher Lepidi in a just (and priceless!) sentence: “Imaginary space is that measureless void and spacious nothingness which lies beyond the limits of this world, and is depicted in our fancy as though it were real space endlessly extended and wholly motionless.” Now, even this imaginary space is more than a figment of fancy, for there is ground and justification for the imagination of such space in the possibility of space being indefinitely extended; in a word, imaginary space is grounded on ideal space.

You may say, “Beyond the limits of this universe we know, there may be countless other worlds, and they may be severed from this universe by a true vacuum on all sides. How then can you define real space as fundamentally identified with the uninterrupted series of coexisting bodies?” It is true that there may be other worlds not included in this unbroken series of bodies that we call our universe. There may be; the thing is possible. But the realm of possible extension is the realm of ideal space. Our definition of real space remains what it was.

Modern physicists are much concerned with the

He is present throughout the unlimited reach of all possible space. But if Newton identifies space with God’s immensity (and his words seem to suggest this), then he is entirely wrong and pantheistic. For God’s immensity, like all His attributes, is one and the same thing as His Divine Essence which is spiritual and indivisible and infinite. Space, on the contrary, is material and divisible, and consequently finite.

character of real space. Some of them have declared that our old conception of space is all wrong. We conceive of it as a thing of extension by three dimensions, length, width, thickness, or, as the physicists like to say, “up-down, right-left, forward-backward.” But there are really four dimensions, and the fourth is time or “before-after.” The world is a kind of series of situations, in which events take place, and stand related to other events, and the relations differ according to different points of view or “points of reference,” and in the convergence of events in a “point of reference regarded as ultimate” we find the phenomenon called matter. This vague doctrine takes the reality, not only out of space, but out of bodily substance itself. It makes things consist in their relation to the viewpoint of an observer. Some such relativity is taught by Dr. Albert Einstein in our day.

f) Time

Time is an accident (or non-substantial reality) which affects bodily things inasmuch as these have motion or movement which presents to the mind phases of duration, and of before and of afterwards. Aristotle called time “the number or enumeration of motion looked at from the standpoint of before and afterwards.” The “number of motion” means “the measure of movements” or of the concrete items or moments of a continuous thing, in which the end of one moment is the beginning of the next following.

Space and time have this in common that they deal with quantities and parts, and that they are thought of as containers. Space, however, deals with permanent quantities, for its parts are all present at once, whereas time deals with successive quantity, for its parts are not all present at once but follow one another into being in a continuous series of moments. Further, space is thought of as a receptacle or container in a simple sense, whereas time is thought of as a measuring container which, so to speak, marks and measures the time-quantity as it successively moves through its scale.

In time we distinguish three elements, the present or the now which is an indivisible instant, the past, and the future. The now is indivisible, for if it be thought of as divided, it falls into three parts itself, one of which is not now, but past; another of which is not now, but future; and still the indivisible point (the now) lies between. The fundamental concept of time lies in motion, in movement from the past through the present to the future.

To define time is not easy, nay, strict definition is impossible. We are all like the great philosopher, St. Augustine, who said, “If nobody asks me (what time is), I know well enough; but if somebody asks me to explaih. it, I know not.” But time may be described, if not essentially defined, in these terms: Time is an extending or spreading-out which consists of an unbroken series of movements which succeed one another, and it is thought of as the container and measurer of these successions. Time therefore measures movements; and these are local movements, that is, movements from place to place, movements in space, and such movements affect bodies. Hence time, objectively considered, is an accident which has to do with moving bodies. More: the mind makes its contribution to the concept of time, and conceives it as a container and a measure of local movements. Therefore, time, inasmuch as it is based upon real movements in unbroken succession, is real; but inasmuch as it is conceived as a measure, it is logical or rational or mental. Time, therefore, is an ens rationis cum fundamento in re, that is, a logical entity with a foundation in reality.

A natural extension of the idea and terminology of time (which, as we have seen, deals literally and fundamentally with bodily movements as seen by the mind in terms of measurement) enables us to speak of times and moments with reference to things non-bodily and spiritual. So we time thoughts as well as visible events, and we apply the notion of time even to timelessness or eternity which we inadequately express in terms of duration or of time.

Here in the world movement is an inescapable fact which we notice from earliest childhood. It is inevitable that reasoning man, for his convenience and the seemly conduct of social life, should avail himself of certain obvious and regularly recurrent movements as a standard or fixed scale with which irregular and free movements, and indeed non-bodily activities, are brought into comparison. Of all the major movements, regularly recurrent in the world, that which we incorrectly call the movement of the sun is most obvious. It has come about quite logically therefore that this movement has become the standard, and has been itself marked off into sub-divisions convenient for man’s purposes, and these determined by variously devised and gradually improved mechanical devices from burning candles and hour-glasses to sun-dials, clocks and watches. Yet all this measurement is not the constituent element of time, but is what we call extrinsic time. Intrinsic time is the actual duration of a real movement; extrinsic time is the ratio which this movement bears to a standard movement. Thus the movement of the sun (so-called) is in itself intrinsic; but, as applied to other things, as giving us, for example, a schedule of hours, minutes, and seconds, it is extrinsic; just as the length of a yard-stick which is intrinsic to the stick, is an extrinsic norm or measure of the cloth or other substance that is marked off in yards by its aid. Sometimes we use the terms internal and external time instead of intrinsic and extrinsic time. External or extrinsic time is distinguished into general time (such as solar time, or lunar time, or sidereal time), and particular time (such as the hours and moments marked by chronometer or wrist watch). Thus, “today” or “last year” expresses general time; but “in ten minutes” or “at half-past three” expresses particular time.

In the foregoing paragraph we dealt with what is called real time. But time may also be imaginary and ideal. Ideal time is possible time; the mind, reflecting on the concept or idea of time, envisions it as extending unto indefinite reaches of duration. Imaginary time is based on ideal time inasmuch as imaginary time presupposes the possibility of extended duration; and fancy creates an image of an extended future which is not seen merely as a possibility but as a reality, which however is not actually there, at least as yet. When the poet says, “I looked into the future, far as human eye could see,” he examples imaginary time for us. So does the young collegian who writes the inevitable “class prophecy” and envisions John Jones >38 as a bald and belligerent boss in i960, and Mary Smith ’39 as a wise and wizened dean of something-or-other in 1955. Real time, however, is the actual duration of real events, and of this time (that which has actually been, and that which is actually to be) We have no present possession beyond the invisible instant called now which has become past even as we give it a name.

We reject the theory of Kant who denied real time and made time a form or determination or “shape” of the sensing-power. So too we deny the theory of Newton who made time one with the eternity of God. But in asserting the reality of time, we do not forget that this reality is fundamental; the formal element,—that which gives us time as such or time the measure,—is the concept of the mind. Rightly did Aristotle say, “If there were no such thing as mind, there would be no such thing as time.”

With time we contrast timelessness or eternity. In the strict or absolute sense, eternity is duration without beginning, succession, or ending. Such eternity belongs only to the Infinite Being and is identified with His essence. Eternity in a less strict sense, is duration which had a beginning but which will have no ending; often this is called by the Latin term aeviternum or aeviternitas (and these words seem to have an affinity with our aeon, and with our expression “forever and for crye”). In this less strict sense, we speak of the eternity of the soul, and of the eternity of human happiness in heaven. We have used the term duration many times in our present study; perhaps it was unkind to do so without a definition or at least a description. It may suffice now to declare that duration means continuance in being, A reality which is completely and perfectly and necessarily in being is eternal. Such a being has all perfections boundlessly; certainly, it has the high perfection called life; and it endures no succession, no change or shadow of alteration. And therefore Boethius rightly defined eternity (in strict sense) as “The simultaneous, complete, and perfect possession of boundless life.”

Modern mathematicians and physicists are much muddled about time. Many of them make it a dimension of matter or of space; many of them, viewing it so, call it space-time. With physical theories, vague or definite, we have no direct concern in this philosophical study. But we may say, in passing, that, while most modern science disregards (when it does not deny) the classical concept of time the measure which we have herein explained, it is not consistent, nor is it confidently satisfied, in its own physical interpretation of the fundamental reality called time. The same is true of space in modern science. Dampier-Whetham’s History of Science (lyz i) quotes (indirectly) Sir William Bragg as saying that the classical theory is in use among scientists on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the relativity theory on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The learned treatise might have added that Sundays are reserved for the next theory to appear. But there is a thought in the fact that scientists who have no use for old time the measure are still content to speak his language and do business on “Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays.”

Summary of the Article

In this very lengthy Article on the important accidents we have learned much valuable ontological doctrine. We have defined and classified quality. We have learned the meaning of relation, and have studied its elements, and its varieties. We have noted the fact that truth is never relative in the sense of changing, nor is morality relative in such a sense. We have studied quantity, and have found that its essence consists in internal extension, that is, in extension in the extended substance itself, not in external extension, that is, extension in a place. We have studied action and passion and motion. We have learned the meaning of place, both internal and external, and have found that a thing may be localized, or in a place, in ways that are various according to the variety of placeable reality; the modes of presence or of place discussed are: circumscriptive, informative, operative, and we added a word on the sacramental mode of presence. We have discussed the possibility of multilocation and compenetration of bodies. We have defined space, and have distinguished it as real, imaginary, and ideal. We have discussed time (also distinguished into real, imaginary, and ideal), and have contrasted it with eternity. We have found that both space and time are rational or logical beings with a basis in reality.