In De ente et essentia D. Thomae Aquinatis commentaria

Whether the same accidents numerically exist in what is generated and what is corrupted. The opinion of certain Averroists. In De substantia orbis, ch. 1, and Physics I, text 66.

Concerning what is said here, a doubt arose: whether the blackness of the skin in a living and a dead Ethiopian is one and the same numerically; and universally, whether the accident in what is generated and what is corrupted is the same numerically. Three things must be done in this doubt: first, the opinion of certain men will be recited; second, the opinion of St. Thomas will be set forth; third, the objections will be answered.

Regarding the first, some think that accidents common to what is generated and what is corrupted are numerically the same in both. Among them are certain men who, relying on some words of Averroes, express their view with this distinction: accidents common to what is generated and corrupted have two modes of being, namely, determinate and indeterminate. They call indeterminate accidents the essences of accidents without limitation to this or that degree. They call determinate accidents the essences of accidents limited to this or that degree. They hold that indeterminate accidents are numerically the same in what is generated and corrupted, but not determinate ones. Thus, just as the indeterminate quantity common to things is explicitly held by the Commentator to be the same in all, so too the common indeterminate color; the same applies in air and fire.

This opinion is confirmed by authorities and arguments. Aristotle, in Generation I, text 23, saying, “But if any things remain in what is generated and what is corrupted, for example in air and water, if both are transparent or moist, etc.,” shows that it is not unreasonable for some identical accident to be in what is generated and what is corrupted. In Generation II, text 25, he expressly holds that transition is easier in things having a common element, because it is easier to corrupt one than two. Averroes too, in his book On the Substance of the Orb, near the beginning, says that not only indeterminate dimensions, which he calls simple, remain the same in what is generated, but universally all qualities common to what is generated and corrupted.

The first argument for this is: if the qualities disposing the matter of the thing to be corrupted for a new form are corrupted, what draws out the form to be generated? It cannot be said that this is an external agent, because it can do this only through intermediate qualities introduced into matter. But the opponent says that those qualities are corrupted before the induction of the form. Therefore nothing remains to draw out the form, which is impossible.

Moreover, with what are the common qualities corrupted, since no contrary appears? And it is pointless to judge that things are corrupted at an instant at which the same thing must be generated.

Moreover, if the figure of a corpse, the arrangement of its organs, the scar, and whatever is of this kind do not remain the same, with what are they generated? Since it cannot be said that they are generated by way of consequence, there must be no generator. That they are not generated by way of consequence is proved as follows. Some accidents are generated consecutively because what gives the form gives what follows upon the form. But these accidents oppose the form more than they follow it; a sign is that, under the form of a corpse, they tend toward corruption. And so much for the first point.

CONCLUSION

The accidents in what is generated and what is corrupted are not numerically the same.

Regarding the second, one must know that the Thomists’ opinion is that no accident is numerically the same in what is generated and what is corrupted. This follows necessarily from our principles. For if no accident is subjectively in matter, and there is only one substantial form in a composite, it is impossible for the same accident to remain numerically the same. It would migrate from subject to subject and would be both the same and not the same. I will not now bring forward arguments for this conclusion, since effective proof requires proving that principle, namely, that there is only one substantial form in a composite. But I will explain how this is possible and how our position is to be defended against its opponents.

An accident is corrupted in four ways. First, through an alteration opposed to it by its contrary, as cold is corrupted by heat. Second, through the absence of a preserving agent, as light in air ceases when the sun withdraws. Third, through the corruption of its subject, as risibility is corrupted when a man dies. Fourth, through the corruption of its terminus, as likeness ceases when the like thing is destroyed. And since one of a pair of opposites is spoken of in as many ways as the other, an accident is generated in four ways as well. First, by an agent like itself through transmutation, as water is heated by hot fire. Second, through the presence of an agent in becoming and in being, as light in air comes from the sun when present. Third, through the generation of the subject, as the laughable is generated when a man is generated. Fourth, through the generation of the terminus, as, when only Socrates exists as white, likeness immediately arises in Socrates upon the generation of another white thing.

Although an accident can be corrupted in its whole range in all these ways, only the third applies to all accidents. It is common to all accidents that they are corrupted when their subject is corrupted, since the being of an accident is to be in something. Therefore the corruption of the subject is a sufficient cause of the corruption of accidents. Thus, when fire is made from air, although the heat of the air need not be corrupted but rather intensified, because the air that is its subject is corrupted, the heat too must be corrupted without a contrary, solely through the failure of its subject. Hence it is evident how the arguments commit the fallacy of consequent when they infer that common qualities and dispositions made for introducing a form remain because they lack a contrary that corrupts them.

It should be noted that when an accident is generated through the generation of its subject, or corrupted through the corruption of its subject, then, since the same action terminates both in the subject per se and in the accident consecutively, no other generator or corrupter need be sought besides the generator or corrupter of the subject. The agent is the same, making both simultaneously and by the same operation. Thus, when fire generates fire from air by altering the air, at the end of the alteration it corrupts the air per se and, consecutively, the introduced heat and all the accidents subjectively in the air with that necessary consequence; for an accident cannot remain without its proper subject. In the same instant it generates fire per se and, consecutively and without another intermediate alteration, heat like the heat existing before that instant. The same judgment applies to quantity, figure, and other dispositions and similar accidents in what is generated and corrupted: all these are produced concomitantly, and therefore no generator need be sought except the generator of the subject. Having considered the foregoing, you will see that what is like is sometimes concomitantly and accidentally corrupted by what is like, and conversely the accident itself can be concomitantly and accidentally generated by what is unlike. Therefore, whenever Aristotle says that the same things remain in what is generated and corrupted, he means the same in species, not numerically, and accidentally. Numerical unity varies not through the power of generation but through the corruption of the subject. The easier transition in things having a common element arises not from numerical identity of the common accident, but from its non-repugnance in acting or undergoing, and from the greater similarity of the substantial forms from which similar qualities flow; for nature is known through its effects. Averroes, if he is to be preserved, should be glossed in the same way.

The arguments for the contrary opinion are answered as follows. To the first: what draws out the form in the final instant is an external generator, not through an action elicited in that instant, but at the term of the action, touching the bare essence of matter. Thus, when it is said that an external agent cannot draw out the form except through intermediate qualities introduced, this is true while it is acting, but not when it is at the term of its action. It is enough, and is required, that it have altered matter for its stripping and disposition.

To the second: common qualities and the like are corrupted accidentally through the corruption of the subject by the corrupter that corrupts the subject per se. Nor is their first non-being and the first being of similar qualities in the same instant pointless; it occurs necessarily, by the necessity of matter.

To the third: figure, scar, and the like are produced consecutively and accidentally by the generator of their subject, namely, the corpse. It is not true that only those accidents are generated consecutively which follow the form. Many accidents follow the composite by the necessity of matter; although not incompatible, they are in some way opposed to the form itself, as is clear in itself. Thus I say that figure and the like follow the corpse by the necessity of matter: a natural agent cannot so quickly and through so many transmutations completely corrupt deeply rooted dispositions, and therefore similar dispositions follow. Because they do not serve the form of what is generated, corruption is hastened.

Since each thing is individuated by matter and placed in a genus or species by its form, the accidents that follow matter are accidents of the individual, according to which individuals of the same species also differ from one another. Accidents that follow form are proper passions of a genus or species, and so are found in all participants in the nature of that genus or species. Thus risibility follows form in man, because laughter arises from some apprehension of the human soul.

Here a second division of accidents is set down: some are accidents of the individual, others accidents of the genus or species.

Two differences between these are given. First, individual accidents follow the composite principally by reason of matter, whereas species or genus accidents follow the composite by reason of form. Second, individual accidents are those according to which particulars of the same species differ; species or genus accidents are necessarily common to all individuals of that species or genus. Male and female, for example, are individual accidents: they follow matter, and Socrates and Bertha differ according to them. Risibility is a specific accident: it follows intellectual apprehension and necessarily belongs to all human beings. The root of the first difference is also assigned: matter is the principle of individuation, while form places a thing in a genus or species. Since matter causes individual being as such, it is also the root of accidents following individual being; hence individual accidents follow matter. Since form is the principle of generic and specific being, it must also cause the properties and accidents following species or genus; thus these follow form. The reason for the second difference is that, since all things contained under a specific or generic form agree in it, its properties must also be common to all. Since individuals differ according to matter, material accidents must be those according to which the particulars themselves differ, so that effects correspond proportionately to their proper causes.

Two doubts arise here concerning the text. The first is how it is true that accidents following matter are those according to which individuals in the same species differ, since quantity follows matter and nevertheless is common to all individuals of body and lower things.

The second doubt is how it is verified that accidents following matter are not passions of a genus or species, since male and female follow matter and yet are passions of animal; hence animal is placed in their definition as the subject is in the definition of a passion, as is held in Metaphysics X, text 15. Similarly, quantity seems to be a passion of body in the category of substance, and yet follows matter.

For the first point, know that the words “accidents following matter are those according to which individuals differ” are not to be understood uniformly but disformly. Individuals differ according to material accidents in two ways: either one has one accident and the other another, or both have the same accident but in different ways. Thus Socrates and Bertha differ according to male and female because he has masculinity and she femininity. They also differ according to their quantities, not because he is quantified and she is not, but because they are not quantified in the same way; two quantities wholly alike are never found, since they must differ in their proper positions. Therefore, although quantity is common to all individuals, because it belongs to them non-uniformly it is that according to which they differ in the second way, and this suffices.

For the second, note that passions of genera are of two kinds. Some belong to them by reason of their generic form, others by reason of their matter. Those following form are here called passions of genera, not those following their matter, because generic nature is such through its form, not its matter. Animal is animal through its form, not its matter. Thus, in the case at hand, sensibility is a passion of animal by reason of form, while masculinity or femininity is one by reason of matter. Aristotle in the Metaphysics and St. Thomas here, moved by different considerations, spoke differently: because it is a passion of animal by reason of matter, it is called a passion there; because it is not so by reason of form, it is not called a passion here.

The same must be said of quantity, since it follows body by reason of matter. It follows body according to its being potentially divisible, which is nothing but matter, as the indivisibility of immaterial things shows. Note that this second division of accidents does not differ from the first in its dividing members: the members of both are the same, but according to a different account. The first division is taken according to their first roots, matter and form; this one according to the subjects to which they are appropriated, namely genus, species, and individual.

It must also be known that sometimes accidents are caused by essential principles according to perfect act, as heat in fire, which is always actually hot. Sometimes they are caused only according to aptitude, but receive completion from an external agent, as transparency in air, which is completed by an externally lucid body. In such cases the aptitude is an inseparable accident, but the completion that comes from a principle outside the essence of the thing, or that does not enter into its constitution, is separable, as motion and the like.

Here a third division of accidents is set down: some are caused from the essential principles of the subject according to perfect act, others according to aptitude alone. He calls those caused according to perfect act from essential principles the accidents that flow in the subject according to their actualities from its intrinsic principles, as heat in fire. He says those are caused according to imperfect act, or aptitude alone, which flow from the essential principles of the subject not according to their actualities but according to certain beginnings, as upward motion in fire is caused from its principles according to its beginning, namely lightness. They differ because the first are inseparable from their subjects both according to their aptitudes and according to themselves, whereas the second are separable in themselves but inseparable according to their aptitudes. Neither the aptitude for heat nor heat itself can be separated from fire while fire remains; upward motion, however, is not always in fire, while the aptitude for upward motion, namely lightness, is inseparable from it. The cause is that in the first cases the actuality of the accident itself flows solely from essential principles; in the second only the aptitude flows from them. The actuality is awaited from something else extrinsically concurrent, either by acting or by not preventing, as in upward motion, which is present in fire only when an external concurrence removes what prevents it. Transparency is not actually in air without an external illuminator; for light is the act of the transparent in act, as is said in On the Soul II, text 69.

I derive a deeper cause of this division from the first article of the tenth question of the second book, reply to objection 2: some accidents arise inseparably from essential principles according to complete act, while others arise separably according to complete act and inseparably according to aptitude, because the former follow the actuality of the thing, the latter its potentiality. I understand this as follows: each thing acts according as it is in act, but undergoes according as it is in potency. From sufficient actuality of the thing it follows that it produce the accident complete in itself; conversely, from insufficient actuality, and consequently from potentiality, from which all sufficiency proceeds, it follows that the thing has the accident only according to aptitude in itself and awaits its actuality from another, or that the accident is separable according to actuality, which is the same thing.

Moreover, since being and goodness follow actuality, while non-being and evil follow potency, from the actuality of a thing there must proceed a perfect accident, inseparable according to act and aptitude; conversely, from the potentiality of the thing there must proceed incompletion of the accident and its separability according to act. Separability itself is a kind of non-being, since it is nothing other than the negation that the necessary consequence of its complete being follows upon the being of the subject. Understand that aptitude comes from the actuality of the subject, while separability of the accident according to its actuality comes from potentiality.

It should be observed that St. Thomas did not simply place among the accidents flowing from essential principles the passions that express aptitude, but rather the acts of those passions and aptitudes, which he called aptitudes according to incomplete being. He did this because aptitude in itself does not have the character of something produced or producible per se. No natural producer intends aptitude, but the act of aptitude; risibility is not needed except that one laugh, and so risibility is a certain beginning of laughter. Therefore aptitude is not simply placed among the effects of essential principles, but the act is, because it is not aptitude itself but its act that productive principles intend. Since aptitude is nothing other than a certain beginning, and a beginning is imperfect act, accidents according to incomplete act are called aptitudes.

Before we end the treatment of the diversity of accidents, it is asked whether every accident has some proper subject, or whether some accidents are so common that they belong properly to no one.

The reason for doubting is that, if every accident is proper to something, since what is proper belongs to everything, only that thing, and always, no accident will be separable from what it is in. It would belong only and always to its proper subject.

Moreover, it would follow that the corruption of any accident would always accompany the corruption of substance, as, when the laughable is corrupted, man is corrupted. The consequence is clear: when what is proper is corrupted, that of which it is proper must be corrupted, otherwise it would not belong to it always. Yet we experience this to be false, as is clear with common accidents and second acts.

On the contrary, since every accident is definable and its subject, of which it is predicated per se, enters its definition, as is clear in Posterior Analytics I and Metaphysics II, every accident must have a proper subject and a subject per se; for “per se” presupposes what belongs to all, always, and necessarily.

For clarity concerning this doubt, one must know that, according to St. Thomas, Questions on the Virtues, question 3, article 3, the subject has three relations to its proper accident: that of sustaining to what is sustained, potency to act, and principle to what is principled. Thus heat in fire has no being unless it is sustained in fire, is its accidental form, and arises from it insofar as it participates in these conditions. It can therefore be called the subject of the accident; insofar as it departs from these relations, the subject of the accident can be denied. Because of the defect of the first, which is the principal relation, Posterior Analytics I says that no accident is subjectively in another accident: no accident can sustain another, but only substance, which is being through itself, provides other things with support for being. Since one accident can nevertheless be compared with another as potency to act, and sometimes as proximate principle to what is principled, one accident is also conceded to be the subject of another. Thus surface is called the subject of color because it is in potency with respect to color, and sweetness is said to be in the hot and moist because it is caused by the hot and moist. The doubt raised can therefore have four meanings. First, it can ask whether every accident has a proper subject as sustainer; second, whether it has a proper subject as potency; third, whether it has a proper subject as principle; fourth, whether it has a proper subject as sustainer, potency, and principle together.

If the question is taken in the first sense, the answer is negative: not every accident has a proper subject in the character of a sustainer, as the arguments first introduced prove. Many accidents claim no one proper sustainer for themselves but are commonly in many things, as their separation shows; they are separated from the sustaining substance while it naturally remains. This cannot be said of proper accidents. The same substance sustains contraries without its own change, as is said in the Categories.

If the doubt is taken in the second sense, the answer is affirmative: every accident has a proper subject in the character of its proper potency, because every act regards a proper potency. Just as act regards potency, so this act regards this potency, and a specific act a specific potency. Every accident is an act; therefore every accident has a proper potency of which it is the act. Hence Physics III, text 10, says that potency for infirmity differs from potency for health because health differs from infirmity; and through a long argument in Metaphysics XII it is proved that the principles of the Categories are proportionately the same, since a proper potency corresponds to every act.

If the inquiry is made in the third sense, the answer is negative: not every accident has some proper subject in the character of its proper principle. For to have a proper subject as principle includes the flowing of that accident from such a subject in the genus of efficient cause, in the way that, among two effects ordered to one another, the prior is the efficient cause of what necessarily follows its production, whether that subject is receptive of the accident as that by which, or as that which. It is clear that not every accident flows effectively from its receptive subject; in many cases the receptive subject is purely passive, as when the species of a sensible thing is received in the medium or in the sense.

If the question is understood in the fourth way, what must be said is clear: one must answer negatively.

It should be noted that what we have said must be understood of accidents—acts and aptitudes taken separately. If we speak of accidents as St. Thomas speaks in the text, without judging the actualities of accidents separately from their aptitudes, I would say that every accident, according to its radical aptitude, has a proper subject in the character of sustainer, potency, and principle, though not according to its actuality. The aptitude for such an accident flows mediately or immediately from such a substantial grade, and consequently is sustained subjectively, mediately or immediately, in such a grade. For example, although light according to its actuality and substance is from outside and is a separable accident, according to its beginning or radical aptitude—namely, transparency—it is inseparable and flows from a certain substantial grade common to higher and lower things. Likewise, although sitting is an accident, according to its aptitude it is properly, though accidentally, the property of a certain being and is not naturally suited to belong except to such an entity, for example such an animal. The aptitude for sitting flows from its principles. Similarly, although seeing is a separable accident, the radical aptitude for seeing cannot be separated from such an animal.

From this it is clear how the arguments brought for both sides conclude truly in different ways. Speaking of accidents according to their essences and actualities, the conclusion of the first arguments is granted, taking subject in the character of sustainer and principle.

In the character of potency, the conclusion is false, as was said. Nor does the proof applied against this interpretation have force. When it is said that what is proper belongs only, to all, and always, this is understood of the proper not according to its actuality but according to its aptitude. Likewise, when it is said that when what is proper is corrupted its subject ceases, this is understood if it is corrupted according to aptitude, not according to act, universally speaking. Or one may say that inseparability and the like do not belong to an accident as it regards a subject in the character of its proper potency, but as sustainer and principle. Speaking of accidents according to their aptitudes, it is clear how the arguments fail. I say that no accident is separable according to at least its radical aptitude, but is necessarily coeval with its subject; and when an accident is corrupted according to such aptitude, the subject must be corrupted. The contrary argument concludes that every accident has a subject of which it is predicated per se, whether in itself or according to its aptitude. Since an act belongs to that to which its potency belongs, as is said in Sleep and Waking, the same subject enters the definition of the accident according to aptitude and act: man must be placed not only in the definition of the laughable but also of laughter. These two therefore stand together: according to its actuality an accident has no proper subject to which it belongs universally, only, and always, yet it has a proper subject through which it must be defined, because for this it suffices that according to its aptitude it be predicated per se of that subject. For the first, it suffices that the accident in itself not be predicated per se of the subject.

It must be known that in accidents genus, difference, and species are taken in another way than in substances. In substances, matter and substantial form produce a per se one, a nature resulting from their conjunction, properly placed in the category of substance. Thus concrete names signifying the composite, such as man or animal, are properly genera or species; form and matter enter only reductively as principles. But accident and subject do not make a per se one, nor does their conjunction yield a nature to which genus or species can belong. Therefore concrete accident-names such as white or musical are placed in a category only reductively; properly, only the abstracts whiteness and music are placed there.

In this third part of the chapter it is determined how accidents relate to logical intentions: first, how they relate to being in a category; then, from where genus and difference are taken in them. Regarding the first, two conclusions are given: accidents in the concrete are not properly in a category, and accidents in the abstract are properly in a category.

For clarity, accidents have one mode of being, namely, being in another; they exist only insofar as they are in something. They have two modes of being understood, because the intellect is naturally able to divide things united in reality. Sometimes they are understood together with their subject, in which they inhere, and are understood in the mode of an accident, because an accident’s being is being in another. Sometimes they are understood alone, without understanding with them the subject in which they really inhere; then they are understood in the mode of substance, because being through itself, that is, alone, belongs only to substance, while accidents always need a companion. Since the mode of signifying is founded not on the mode of being but on the mode of understanding, they consequently have two modes of signifying. Sometimes they are signified by consignifying the subject, and then in the mode of an accident; these are signified in the concrete, such as white and black. Sometimes they are signified alone, without consignifying the subject; then in the mode of substance, such as whiteness and blackness. In accidents, abstract and concrete differ in mode of signifying—consignifying the subject or not—yet agree in signifying the accidental form itself. White signifies pure quality, as Aristotle says in the Categories, just as whiteness does; but white signifies whiteness in a subject, whereas whiteness signifies it without the subject. Since concrete accidents signify the whole joined thing, such as white signifying whiteness in a subject, and this joined thing is not one per se but one and being accidentally, while what is placed in a category must signify one and being per se, since the categories divide being per se, concrete accidents are not properly placed in a category. This is the argument by which the first conclusion is proved in the text: no name signifying being and unity accidentally is properly in a category; an accidental concrete signifies one and being accidentally; therefore an accidental concrete name is not properly and per se placed in a category. The difference between accidental and substantial concrete is added to clarify the minor: substantial concrete signifies a composite of matter and form, which is one per se and is therefore placed in a category as genus or species; accidental concrete signifies a composite of subject and accident, which is one accidentally. From accident and subject there is only one accidentally, as is said in Metaphysics VII, and therefore it should be placed in a category only reductively, in the way an impure thing is reduced to the purity of its nature.

Thus the second conclusion remains true: accidents in the abstract receive the predication of species and genus in a category; otherwise accidents would be wholly excluded from the categories.

When you hear that the abstract signifies only the form, do not think this means that the abstract wholly excludes the subject of the form. That is false. It means that, through its mode of signifying—the only respect in which it differs from the concrete—it does not include the subject principally, but secondarily and consequently. This can be shown from the agreement and difference between them in their mode of signifying. Both abstract and concrete signify two things: the that which and the whereby, or subject and form. A definition and what is defined signify the same thing, though in different ways. Thus we call snubness the curvature of the nose, and snub a curved nose. That this belongs to the mode of signifying is clear because both abstract and concrete signify pure form, as Aristotle testifies in the Categories. They differ in that the concrete, by its mode of signifying, principally signifies the subject and secondarily the form; the abstract principally signifies the form and consequently the subject.

Observe that subject and form stand in the opposite order in the signification of a concrete name and in its mode of signifying. In signification the concrete first imports the form, and the subject only consequently through the copula. In its mode of signifying it first imports the subject and consequently the form. A sign is that in the definition of the concrete the subject is expressed first as genus, the first part of the defined thing, and the form is placed second as difference: snub is a curved nose. The abstract imports the form first both in signification and in mode of signifying, while the subject is secondary and consequent. In its definition the form is first expressed as genus and the subject second as difference: snubness is the curvature of the nose. This difference arises because the concrete signifies a relation between subject and form beginning from the subject and terminating in the form. The abstract signifies a relation between form and subject beginning from the form and terminating in the subject, as the examples show. The cause is that concrete names were invented to signify composites, and composition arises from the subject. Abstract names were invented to signify forms that are simple as found by us but from which denomination is derived to subjects. Hence concretes sound like composites, while abstracts sound like forms nevertheless falling upon subjects. It was not therefore said that the abstract signifies only the form because it in no way joins the subject, but because, by its mode of signifying, it does not sound as a composite or principally import the subject as the concrete does; it signifies the subject only extrinsically, as the terminus of the relation of the signified form.