Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Philosophiae Naturalis

Almost everyone agrees that an increase in a quality either requires or entails some greater rooting in the subject, insofar as an intensified quality is firmer and more tenacious in the subject; this is what rooting means.

The difficulty, however, is whether this firmness, which is also an increase of the quality, requires the addition of a new entity or form in the way that increase in quantity occurs by adding a new quantity; or whether this greater rooting occurs without the addition of a new entity, through the addition of a new mode. There is also a difficulty about the mode itself: is it a new mode that adds a new informative power, or formal character of informing, to the form itself, or is there added only a new mode that is a new expression or application of the same form, without the addition of a new formal character? We use the word “degree” in common to both views, since “degree” signifies not only a diverse entity superadded but also a diverse mode. Thus we designate the perfection of intensification generally by the name “degree,” whether it occurs by adding an entity and form or by adding a mode, since a different mode can also confer a degree something. Hence Cajetan, who banished addition from intensification in ST I-II, q. 52, a. 2,¹ nevertheless did not reject the expression “degrees,” as is clear in the same place, § “For clarification.”

The principal opinions on this question therefore reduce to two. The first is that intensification occurs by adding one quality to another. Since this addition does not corrupt the preceding quality but is joined to it and composes with it, it functions as a partial quality; thus this opinion conceives the intensification of a quality on the model of increase in quantity.

The second opinion teaches that intensification occurs without the addition of a new quality or form, but through a greater communication of the same form in the subject, which introduces a new termination or mode in the quality.

Scotus follows the first opinion in Sentences I, dist. 17, q. 5,² and among more recent authors Fonseca,³ Suárez,⁴ Vazquez,⁵ Rubius,⁶ Granado,⁷ and others cited by the Carmelites here, disp. 4, q. 8, § 1. St. Thomas follows the second in Sentences I, dist. 17, q. 2, a. 2,⁸ De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 11,⁹ ST I-II, q. 52, a. 2, and II-II, q. 24, a. 5; all Thomists commonly follow him.

There are, however, several further opinions divided within the explanation of each view. With regard to the first, some think that the partial entities or degrees constituting an intensified form are of the same nature and equal, and that the second or third degree has no more than the first; it is called second because it presupposes the first, to which it is added, and likewise for the rest. Others think that the degrees are of different natures and that the second degree is not of the same perfection and equality as the first. So holds Father Suárez, disp. 46, sect. 1, from no. 29. To these are added indivisibles that unite the degrees as parts; within the degrees as well there is a range of finite aliquot parts and infinitely many proportional parts. In a word, everything is considered on the model of an increase in quantity. There are, however, some who admit a subordination among these degrees, such that the second presupposes the first and the third the second, by a certain natural subordination and dependence, as on a material disposition; in this way they have individual inequality. See Murzia, disp. 2, De alteratione, q. 5. I omit the opinion older than Scotus mentioned by St. Thomas in the cited place, Sentences, a. 1,¹⁰ and later followed by Durandus, Sentences I, dist. 17, q. 7, no. 25, and others: that intensification produces a new total quality by destroying the old one. For this opinion does not posit that the same quality is intensified and diminished, but that a different quality is generated and corrupted.

In explaining St. Thomas’s opinion, there is also considerable labor over what is meant by rooting or greater communication. It is commonly understood to be some new mode, but the authors are much divided in explaining which mode. Some posit a new mode that gives the quality a new power to inform the subject, as it were, a formal character of communicating itself. Others posit only a mode of new termination or expression of the form in the subject, pertaining as it were to the union and application of the form itself. Hence some have said it is a new union or inherence of the quality; others, a new existence; others, a new reduction of the subject from potency to act, a mode distinct from inherence and union. Others think this mode consists in more of the contrary form being cast off, so that the form itself remains purer and less mixed. The same difficulty then recurs concerning the preceding opinions: do these new modes have some subordination among themselves and differ in nature and equality, or are they all equal, the second or third being so called only because it presupposes the prior one?

I say, first: Intensification does not occur through the addition of any new form or quality, whether one that corrupts the prior form and produces a new one, or one that produces a new form by presupposing the prior form, as a partial quality joined to it and making it greater.

This conclusion is explicit in St. Thomas’s places cited just now, where he treats and resolves this question directly. Indeed, all commonly admit the first part, that a form which corrupts its predecessor is not produced, because the preceding quality cannot be destroyed by what supervenes: it is not contrary to it, but of the same species. Nor is the quality destroyed through a defect in the subject or in the conserving cause, since, as we presuppose, these remain. Otherwise, as we said, this would not be an increase and perfection of the same quality, but the generation of a new one; likewise, one could not say that a quantity had increased if the preceding quantity were corrupted and another newly produced.

The second part, namely that in intensification no new part of a form or quality is made to be added to the preexisting form, is plainly St. Thomas’s opinion. In particular, see the cited place in ST I-II, q. 52, a. 2, ad 2,¹¹ where he says: “The cause that increases a habit always does something in the subject, but not a new form; rather, it makes the subject participate more perfectly in the preexisting form.” And in ad 3 he says: “What is less hot or white is not in potency to the form, since it already has the form in act; rather, it is in potency to a perfect mode of participation, and this follows from the agent’s action.” In ST II-II, q. 24, a. 5, he says: “For a form to be greater is for it to be more present in what receives it, not for another form to arrive; this would be the case if the form had some quantity of its own, rather than in relation to the subject.” Therefore, according to St. Thomas, greater rooting in the subject is not grounded in a new entity of the form, but in a new mode of participation in the form. Thomas does not merely deny that intensification occurs by addition, lest he seem to posit a distinction between forms, since intensification requires the same form to remain; he further explains that intensification does not occur by addition because no new form is acquired, but a new mode or participation in the form. He therefore holds absolutely that intensification occurs not through a new entity but through a mode.

Nor does this objection stand: some say that St. Thomas claimed to be unaware of the proper term when he said that a quality is intensified according to greater rooting in the subject, and not according to its essence. They infer from this that the holy Doctor thought intensification cannot occur without the addition of an entity. But St. Thomas’s meaning is perfectly clear. He rebukes those who wanted a quality to be intensified in the subject without being intrinsically perfected in itself, but only because the subject would relate differently to its participation in the form, while the form itself remained altogether unchanged. This is incompatible, and is to be unaware of the proper term. For a form cannot be communicated to the subject through an extrinsic denomination alone, but through an intrinsic change, since the form is perfected by the subject’s very communication with it; its essence is intrinsically ordered to informing the subject. Hence in the cited place from ST II-II, q. 24, a. 5, ad 3, after St. Thomas says that those who claim charity is not increased according to essence but according to rooting or fervor are unaware of the proper term, he adds: “For its being increased according to essence is nothing other than its being more present in the subject, which is to be more rooted in the subject.” Therefore, for St. Thomas, being increased according to essence does not mean being increased by addition; it means the same as being more rooted and more present in the subject. This is found in the form not without an intrinsic change of the entity itself, by way of a mode added to it.

Once we have established, then, that this is St. Thomas’s opinion, we must give the basis for this truth. To do so, St. Thomas presupposes as most certain that if an increase in intensity occurs by adding form to form, it is impossible to understand this without some distinction and numerical plurality of one form from another. For the same thing cannot be added to itself, and the separation of degrees when a quality is diminished and loses them clearly shows some distinction between what is lost and what remains.

Given this, two things in St. Thomas’s opinion make intensification by adding one quality to another impossible.

The first is that, according to St. Thomas himself, two accidents that differ only numerically and are of the same species cannot be received in the same indivisible part of a subject, as we will show below, q. 9,¹² If intensification occurred by adding a new quality of the same species, the same subject would necessarily receive accidents numerically distinct from one another, because each of those qualities, taken alone and apart from the other, suffices to make one individual accident. This is clear since, before the addition, the quality remained individuated in the subject without that new part being added. What is later superadded therefore also requires individuation by that subject, just as the prior quality did. Thus two accidents can already be individuated sufficiently by the same part of a subject, and their being joined into one is accidental. This grounds what St. Thomas, ST I-II, q. 52, a. 2,¹³ cites from the Philosopher in Physics IV, text 84,¹⁴ that intensification cannot occur by addition “because the hot becomes hotter without anything being added to the hot subject.” St. Thomas considers adding heat and adding something hot to be the same, because heat cannot be added without adding a distinct subject by which it is individuated; thus adding heat is equivalent to adding something hot. But this must be treated below, in q. 9,¹⁵ so it need not be examined here.

The second principle in St. Thomas’s teaching is that no form can have quantity and parts except by its order to a subject and accidentally, not per se. Otherwise it would be composed of several parts and thus would not be a pure form, but something constituted and composed, contrary to the nature of form, which must be something simple and a composing part, not a composite thing. If the arriving form does not compose with its predecessor or constitute one per se, the intensified quality will only be one accidentally, that is, several diminished qualities constituted in the same subject. An intensified quality would therefore not be as truly one quality as a diminished one, nor would the motion of intensification concern the same quality becoming more or less such, but rather different qualities. Furthermore, an operative quality, such as heat, when intensified could not operate by one operation but would have to perform several operations, because it would not proceed from one quality but from several. Thus, in producing an intense act of a quality, it would produce several acts, not one, because it would proceed from several diminished forms, each of which would have its own operation. All this is very absurd and unsuitable.

If several parts compose one quality, then, they are either integral parts or essential parts of it. They cannot be essential parts. First, because the essence of the quality is preserved without any one of them, as is clear in a diminished quality. Second, if essential parts compose one per se, one must be related as matter and the other as form, or as potency and act. But those parts, or degrees, function as forms, because they inform the subject. One cannot function as matter and the other as form, or as potency and act; otherwise a quality would inform another quality as form informs matter, and the part functioning as matter would not be active and operative per se, but only when it had its act by which it informed. Yet we see that both the diminished part of heat, which seems to be the matter, and the intensified part, which seems to be the form, are operative and actual. Nor can they be integral parts. First, because a form cannot be composed of such parts: it belongs to the nature of form to be a principle of a composite, not something principled and composite, but a simple principle. Also, composition of integral parts especially conflicts with a form or quality. Integral parts are material and belong to a thing by reason of its matter, as we will say below in q. 9,¹⁶ since integral parts agree in form and differ according to quantity: the quiddity and substance of a thing are preserved without any one of them, and thus the addition of an integral part does not add a form. But since form is that by which something is constituted as a principle, the addition of form in the mode of an integral part does not add the character of form; rather, it materializes the form itself and multiplies it according to something material, not formal. In this way it does not make the form more perfect and more such in its character as form, which belongs to intensification; it multiplies it materially, which belongs to extension. Nor can one say that these are integral parts by likeness, in the way that St. Thomas and theologians assign integral parts to virtues in ST II-II, qq. 48, 128, and 143. For these integral parts do not intensify virtues, but signify certain conditions or dispositions, or habits joined to a more principal virtue, giving rise to diverse operations. These can also be found in a diminished virtue: temperance has honesty and modesty, fortitude confidence and magnificence, and prudence memory and teachableness, even when the virtues are diminished. But an intensified and diminished quality do not differ in this way: both have the same character of activity or operation, though not the same mode of perfection; neither is one a condition or disposition for the other.

Finally, the conclusion is proved because the smaller the multiplication of entities, the more suitable it is to nature. Therefore, if intensification without the addition of a new form and entity is neither impossible nor unsuitable, such an addition is not to be posited. That it is neither impossible nor unsuitable will be further proved in the next conclusion, where we will show that a form can have a more perfect union without the addition of a new entity. This also better explains the form’s unity and simplicity: the less is added, the simpler it is in entity, though multiple in power. It belongs to the nature of intensification that the same form, while remaining the same, becomes more perfect and more powerful. Therefore, if this can occur through a greater communication of itself to the subject without adding a new entity, this will be more suitable to the nature of intensification.

I say, second: Intensification does not occur by adding some new mode that gives the form a new informative power or a new formal character of informing. Rather, it occurs through a new expression of the same form in the subject, removing the subject’s confusion and potentiality, reducing it to greater unity, and subjecting the subject more fully to that form. It follows from this that, if the form has a contrary, it expels it; intensification does not formally consist in this expulsion, however.

This is taken from St. Thomas in Sentences I, dist. 17, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3,¹⁷ where he says: “It is not of the nature of an intensified quality that it occur by removing a contrary; this happens to the quality only insofar as it is in a subject participating in a contrary. But it is necessary for intensification that the quality be brought from the imperfect to the perfect, as is clear in the transparent medium, in which there is nothing contrary to light, yet the light can be intensified according to an increase in the power that dominates. This imperfection arises from the potentiality of the nature itself, which is subjected to perfection and act. For since every receptive potency is open to many things, insofar as it is such it is dissimilar to the acting principle, which is determined to one act. As this conjunction of potentiality is more subjected to act, the act is perfected more perfectly, and what is perfected itself becomes more one and more assimilated to the acting principle.” Thus St. Thomas. In ST II-II, q. 24, a. 5, body and ad 3, he likewise explains that this intensification occurs by the subject being reduced more to act, and by the form being more present in the subject; for the form itself to become greater is for it to be more present in what receives it, not for another form to arrive.

To give and explain the basis of this conclusion, two things must be done. First, show that there is no incompatibility in the union and communication of a form to a subject having a range and varying without the addition of a new entity of the form. Second, show that this mode ought not add a new informative power, but only a new mode of communication and union.

The first point is clear from several examples. We see that the same quantity, without the addition of parts or a new quantity, can change its termination and mode of existence in a subject, as we will say below in q. 7,¹⁸ as happens in rarefaction and condensation. Likewise, the substantial form of the soul, without the addition of a new entity, can express and unite itself in different ways to matter arriving through nutrition, and provide one effect in one part and another effect in another. In the eye it gives the power of seeing; in the hand, of touching. It can be deprived of one effect but not another, and then provide again the effect it lost if the matter is suitably disposed. Thus it is also not incompatible for the same quality to actualize a subject in different ways through its communication of itself and to express its effects in matter in different ways, according to the range it has. A sign of this is that the contrariety of forms can be removed more or less perfectly. Therefore it is not incompatible for the whole form to be communicated to a subject, but not totally and according to every mode or effect it can provide it; in this way it can assimilate the subject to itself more or less and reduce the subject’s potentiality to the unity of actuality. Likewise, God seems to be seen in his entirety by each blessed person, but not totally; therefore he can be united and communicate himself in different ways, without adding an entity, through a greater expression of the same one. Similarly, we see in grace that, when united to one subject, it expresses an effect—for example, making someone an adopted son—that it cannot produce in another subject, such as Christ, because of the person’s incapacity. A visible species in the air informs its subject representatively and intentionally not at all, but only entitatively; in the eye it also informs intentionally, without any addition of an entity. Many similar examples are available, which clearly show that the same form, without an entitative addition, can express diverse formal effects, or the same effect in different ways, because of the subject’s diverse disposition, by which it is subjected to the form in different ways. Indeed, I add that even if intensification occurred by adding one form to another, union would still have to vary. When one part is added to another and one form is made from both, the union that previously united and only modified the antecedent form cannot modify and affect the new form made from both. Therefore a new union must be given, just as a new form is compounded, unless perhaps one says that several partial unions of different parts of the same form remain. Yet that does not remove the need for one total union, compounded from all of them, just as there is one form made from all those parts. Union corresponds to form; therefore, just as the total form is different, the corresponding union must be varied.

The second point is explained as follows. In defending St. Thomas’s opinion, there are two ways of speaking. Some posit that through intensification a new mode is produced that belongs not only to the side of union but also to the form itself or the informing principle, so that it adds to the form a new actuality and power to inform more perfectly than before the mode. They distinguish this mode from the union itself, from existence, and from inherence, and call it the mode of rooting. Their basis is that no form can provide a more perfect formal effect unless it is more perfect and actual in itself as the “that by which” principle, either entitatively or modally. Therefore, besides the union, the form itself must be made more perfect and actual through a mode that gives it the power and actuality to inform.

Others say that the mode newly produced or resulting through intensification adds nothing of actuality or informative character to the form itself, but belongs only to the side of the form’s union and expression in the subject.

The first way of speaking is not so suitable and does not seem to preserve St. Thomas’s meaning perfectly; rather, it seems partly to fall back into the opinion under attack, that an entity is added to the form being intensified in order to make it more intense. For if the form itself, when made more intense, receives a greater informative power as a formal character, then it receives an addition of form, since the informative power is not something superadded to the form, but is the form’s very entity and actuality. A form does not inform or cause its formal effect by something superadded, as an efficient cause acts through an added power; it does so by communicating its own actuality and entity. Therefore to receive a greater power of informing is the same as receiving a new actuality or entity of the form. This is what the opposing opinion says: intensification occurs by adding a form or entity.

This is confirmed because that mode cannot perfect the power to inform that was in the diminished quality by adding an accidental informative virtue distinct from the form’s entity. A form causes only by communicating itself, not by an added power as an efficient cause. Therefore, if that mode functions as a form or formal character giving the formal effect of intensification, even though the diminished form gives its real effect through some reality, this cannot stand: the intensified form as a whole is a simple quality, not partly a quality and partly a mode, and its corresponding effects are real, not merely modal—for example, being a disposition for a substantial form or producing greater effects. Therefore these effects correspond to a real, not a modal, principle.

Finally, if the mode is a degree in the form’s intensification, since there is no greater reason for one degree than another, as all degrees increase through intensification, it follows that every degree—especially a definite aliquot degree—will be the formal effect of some mode, and what remains beyond all the degrees will be the effect of the form’s entity. But what is left in a quality beyond all its degrees? Certainly nothing.

Likewise, on this opinion the form is not intensified according to the same formal character. One of its formal effects will be real and, as it were, essential, proceeding from the form’s real entity; another will be modal and non-entitative, namely, the effect that belongs to increase. Thus the formal effects are not altogether of the same nature, and the form will not properly be said to be intensified, since it is not perfected in the same prior formal character insofar as it is real, but receives a new one that is modal. This opinion therefore does not differ much from the one that posits entitative parts through addition of degree to degree. It admits that the form giving a diminished formal effect is not sufficient in itself with respect to its very power or formal character of providing an intense effect, but requires the addition of a new formal character. It places this addition in a new mode, not in a new entity of the form.

If, however, that mode is posited as a condition, not as a formal character of informing, it cannot be distinguished from the inherence or communication of the form. A required condition can be nothing other than the application or conjunction to the patient, by which the form expresses and communicates itself to the subject in a more perfect way. Previously the whole form and formal principle were in the subject, but not totally. Therefore the mode subsequently acquired does not belong to the informative power or a new formal character of the form itself, but to a new mode that is a condition, namely, a new communication or application of that form. The form is then not only wholly in the subject, but totally and in a more perfect mode. Without this condition or application of the form it does not give that more perfect effect, which is indeed entitative, just as the form’s diminished formal effect is; it was already possessed in the form, because the whole form was there, but it was not expressed totally in the subject.

St. Thomas’s meaning is understood in this way: he constantly explains the form’s intensification through a new expression of the form itself in the subject, not through the addition of a new informative power. He says that intensification occurs by the subject being more and more terminated by the form and “participating in it more and acquiring a perfect mode of participation,” as in ST I-II, q. 52, a. 2; “by the subject being made more actual by the quality itself,” as in De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 11;¹⁹ “by the form being brought from the imperfect to the perfect,” as in the cited place in Sentences I, dist. 17;²⁰ and “by the quality being more present in and rooted in the subject,” in ST II-II, q. 24, a. 4, ad 3. These expressions indicate some mode that applies the form to the subject in different ways, not one that gives a new informative power and changes the form’s formal character.

If you ask: How is this union changed through intensification, without adding a new informative formal character, so that the mode is a new union, existence, and inherence of the form in the subject? We reply that union of a form with a subject is required for two things. First, so that one thing is constituted from form and subject. Second, so that through such union and conjunction the form has being in the subject, since it depends on the subject for existing.

As to this second point, no new existence is added to the quality, because no new entity is added; the whole entity of the form was already present in the subject, and consequently its whole existence was present, since existence follows the entity itself as produced outside its causes. Thus, since on our opinion the whole entity of the form is in the subject, even if it is not there totally, then even when it increases through intensification, its existence does not change, since its entity does not change. In this respect, then, the union or inherence does not change in its character as the medium giving existence to the entity of the form.

As to the unity that the form makes with the subject, the union itself increases or is perfected—or rather, the form, which is changed by a new action so that it affects the subject. The subject is in a certain potentiality and indetermination, and according to this it can be subjected to diverse forms, or to the same form, not in only one indivisible mode but either more confusedly and potentially or more actually and determinately, through reduction to greater unity and likeness with the form. St. Thomas explains this rooting in the cited distinction 17 as a greater reduction to unity and a diverse mode of terminating the subject’s dissimilarity, confusion, and potentiality in relation to the actuality and unity of the form. This is sufficiently accomplished by the union or inherence itself, since making unity and removing confusion or potentiality toward many things—which is opposed to unity—belong to union. Therefore the form is communicated perfectly to the subject when this unity is perfected through the union itself. This is to be more rooted: to subject the subject’s potentiality more fully to the form and reduce its indetermination or confusion to greater unity, like the root of a tree, which makes the tree firmer the further it penetrates into the ground.

But you will say: Union, as we said in Physics q. 6,²¹ is not a mode mediating between form and subject. Therefore, if greater intensification consists in greater union and union is not a mode, intensification will not occur by adding a mode, although St. Thomas expressly admits a mode in intensification, as is clear in ST I-II, q. 52, a. 2, ad 2.

We reply that in our opinion union is not a mode functioning as the formal character and medium of uniting, because form, which in itself is act, in itself has the formal character of making unity, whether accidental or substantial, according to the kind of form. Since the resulting unity is not modal but substantial or accidental, neither the formal character nor the medium of uniting is a mode; it is the form itself. We do not deny, however, that some mode can be found in the union, antecedent or subsequent, insofar as the extremes must be changed, or at least one extreme, so that it is united and made dependent and changed toward unity with the subject. The change itself, remaining passively in the united extreme, is also a mode subsequent to union. This belongs more to the dependence or state that the form acquires by the force of union than to the formal character or medium of uniting; it nevertheless belongs to intensification, because intensification provides more a state of the form in communicating itself than a formal power of informing.