Disputationes metaphysicae

1. The difficulty of the question.—This is the chief difficulty on account of which Scotus, Cajetan and others declined into extremely opposed opinions; some by denying a prescinded and abstracted concept of being, so that no contraction or determination of it is necessary, because this cannot be understood in any fitting way; because it can neither be made through non-being, as was shown in the preceding section, nor through some being, otherwise in that being the determination would be supposed already made, and one would proceed to infinity. But this opinion, if it is understood of abstraction according to the thing, or founded in some distinction from the nature of the thing, is true, and as regards this satisfies; but if it is understood of abstraction according to reason only, it is not true, as we have shown, and therefore it is necessary to explain also according to reason how this contraction or determination is made. Others, then, so prescind and abstract the concept of being that they think it is contracted and determined through something which is not intrinsically being, as Scotus philosophizes, who devised a prescission of this kind not only according to reason but also from the nature of the thing; yet he was deceived in two things, as I have proved: first, in positing such a mode of real abstraction and prescission; second, that being supposed, in feigning real positive modes or differences which are not beings.

2. A prescinded concept of being not being admitted, no contraction of it is necessary.—Soncinas, however, favours this part otherwise, Metaphysics IV, q. 1, ad 2, and q. 19, ad 7, and Book V, q. 14, when he says that the mode constituting substance, and consequently determining being to it, is only a negation or a being of reason. Whence (he says), although being is included quidditatively in substance, it is not included in that by which it is contracted to the concept of substance, because that is only a certain negation which we circumscribe by this word per se. But I do not see what induced Soncinas into this opinion, since he himself does not posit an objective concept of being prescinded from this disjunct, substance or accident; because, if it does not abstract from these, it needs no contracting mode, but by the mere removal of the other member the one member is left determined; but what is left cannot be intrinsically constituted by the mere removal of the other member, but by that which it intrinsically is. For by what reason can it be understood that substance, which is most perfect, is constituted in the notion of substance by a mere negation or by a being of reason? Whence almost all the arguments by which we proved against Scotus that the mode of being includes being proceed against this opinion, namely because substance cannot coalesce or be constituted except from substances. Likewise, because otherwise the mode by which being is determined to uncreated being too would be a negation. Moreover the concept of substance would formally be privative or feigned by reason, and not real; because that by which it is formally constituted is said to be negative or a being of reason. Finally, otherwise accident too would a fortiori be constituted by a negation, since it is less perfect than substance; there will therefore be a certain circle, because substance will be constituted by the negation of inherence, but accident by the negation of perseity, which is scarcely intelligible. Wherefore, although these simple things are sometimes explained by us through negations, the mind nevertheless rightly¹ conceives that real things themselves are not constituted by negations; thus we explain the difference of the brute through irrational, which we do not therefore conceive to be constituted by a negation; similarly we declare the infinity of God by a negation, which we rightly conceive to consist in a certain supreme and positive perfection; so, then, although we sometimes explain that substance is per se through the negation of inhering in another, we nevertheless conceive with the mind that it is not formally constituted by that negation, but by a positive perfection, by which it is understood to have the formal power of being per se without a subject in which it inheres; just as conversely in accident we understand that there is such a positive nature which demands adhesion to another in order to be able to be.

3. Substance and accident are constituted by positive perfections.—The third opinion, then, admits the contraction or determination of being to its inferiors through positive and real modes; but this determination can be explained in two ways. First, that it be after the manner of a composition from being and some mode, from which, as from metaphysical parts, the concept of substance, for example, is composed, and into which it is resolvable; which composition is not from genus and difference, only because being is included in the mode itself; for in these compositions, which are only through reason, it is not reputed unfitting that the determinable, when it is transcendent, be included in the concept of the determining. And by this reason they say that the concepts of substance and of the other supreme genera or differences are called simply simple, not because they are not resolvable into two concepts, for this is proper to being alone, but because they are not resolvable into two concepts mutually prescinding, because one must necessarily be included in the other, namely being in the mode, although conversely the mode is not actually included in being.

4. How some think being is determined.—But if you object that it is repugnant for such a resolution into two concepts to be made and for one to be included in the other, for if in the concept of the mode per se being is included, and the per se itself, then there is included in it all that is in the concept of substance; therefore no resolution has been made. It can be answered that being is indeed included in the mode per se, but otherwise than in substance; for in substance it is included as in a complete and perfect being, but in the mode only as in an incomplete one. Likewise substance includes the mode per se as a metaphysical part formally constituting it, and it is the whole constituted from being and the mode; but the mode per se includes itself, or rather is itself, not as a part of itself, but as that by which substance is constituted; and by this reason a true resolution of substance into being and per se is made; nor is altogether the same included in the mode as was conceived in substance.

5. But if the difficulty touched upon above is further urged about the contraction or determination of being to the mode per se itself, through what it is made, or how one does not proceed to infinity, there is a twofold way of answering. The former is that being is determined to per se through another mode, so that the mode per se is resolvable into two concepts, namely into the concept of being and of another nameless mode, distinct however by reason from the per se itself and less perfect; for the same reason which proves that substance itself is so resolvable seems also to prove it of the mode per se, for in it there is the notion of being modified, and otherwise than in substance, and otherwise also than in the mode of accident; therefore there can be distinguished there by reason the notion of being which is modified, and the notion modifying it, distinct by reason from that by which it is modified to substance, so that the modification itself is of a diverse notion. But according to this opinion it must consequently be said that that other mode too is resolvable into two other similar concepts, and consequently that one can so proceed to infinity, because there is no greater reason for stopping at one than at another. This, however, would be a great inconvenience if these concepts were posited as distinct from the nature of the thing, because it would be necessary to feign in substance infinite modes distinct from the nature of the thing and unequal in perfection, having a term on the side of the most perfect mode, proximately constitutive of substance itself, but not on the other extreme; so that all those modes would be there at once, and yet among them none infinite in perfection could be assigned; for these and similar things are in truth absurd. But if it is asserted that there is only a distinction of reason between these, and that this whole resolution and composition is through the prescission and denomination of the intellect, it does not seem a great inconvenience to admit all this; for the intellect can compare things among themselves in infinite ways, or prescind and abstract them; just as it can also prescind and abstract between two species into infinite genera, or to infinity, in so far as between two species other intermediate ones can be multiplied to infinity. But nevertheless this answer is not to be approved, even in this opinion; because the mind at once abhors a process to infinity, because otherwise there would be no mode or term of resolution for distinctly conceiving the thing, nor could the mind begin or effect such an abstraction and determination except by always stopping at a concept further resolvable into two other concepts, and beginning from another similar one. Whence all authors have tried to avoid this process; and it seems indeed repugnant to Aristotle, Metaphysics II, c. 2, texts 10 and 11, where he denies that one can proceed to infinity in quidditative predicates; for the opposite openly follows from the aforesaid process; and we shall immediately add other reasons, which are common, also against this answer.

6. The second answer, then, can be that the mode per se is not further resolvable into two concepts, but is distinguished by itself from every other complete or incomplete being; for when we proceed by resolving that which is constituted into that by which it is constituted, one must stop at that by which, lest we proceed to infinity. For what is the reason of constituting or distinguishing another is by this very fact per se distinct from every other; for thus in physical things the form is what distinguishes one composite from another, but it itself is distinct per se; and universally act is what distinguishes, but act itself is distinct per se. So, then, the mode per se (and the same holds of the others) contracts being to substance, which it constitutes and distinguishes from others, and at the same time separates itself too from others, and by itself determines being to itself; and so the process to infinity ceases. This answer is probable, yet it is not said consistently enough, nor does it sufficiently declare the matter, as will be evident from what is to be said in the following opinion.

The true opinion is explained

7. The fourth opinion, then, and the one which meets with my approval, is that this contraction or determination of the objective concept of being to its inferiors is not to be understood after the manner of composition, but only after the manner of a more express conception of some being contained under being; so that each concept, both of being and of, for example, substance, is simple and irresolvable into two concepts, and they differ only in that one is more determinate than the other. Which is rightly explained in order to the formal concepts; for they differ only in that through one the thing is conceived more expressly as it is in itself than through the other, by which it is only conceived confusedly, and precisely according to some agreement with other things; but all this can be done without proper composition, through mere confused or distinct, prescinded or determinate knowledge. So, then, to these formal concepts two objective ones are understood to correspond, simple and irresolvable into several concepts, of which one is said to be superior or more abstract than the other only because it corresponds to a more confused formal concept, through which the thing is not conceived according to the determinate mode in which it is in itself, but confusedly and precisely. That superior concept can also be understood to be included in the inferior without proper composition of the inferior; because all that is confusedly conceived in that prescinded concept is found in the other object more expressly conceived, and in that whole, under whatever notion it is considered. And finally the determination of the superior to the inferior and the addition of the inferior to the superior is understood, not as it were through the addition of part to part, but through the mere greater determination, or expression, or confusion of the same thing in order to the diverse concepts of the mind.

8. St. Thomas indicated such a mode of explaining this matter, De veritate, q. 1, a. 1, saying: What the intellect first conceives as most known, and into which it resolves all conceptions, is being; whence it is necessary that all other conceptions of the intellect be taken by addition to being; but nothing can be added to being as an extraneous nature, in the way in which a difference is added to a genus, because every nature is essentially being; but in this way some things are said to add over being, in so far as they express a mode of it which is not expressed by the name of being itself; and below: Substance does not add over being some difference, but by the name of substance a special mode of being is expressed. He indicates the same, De veritate, q. 21, a. 1. Scotus too indicated the same manner of speaking, In I, dist. 8, q. 3; he differs, however, in the manner of explaining, as is easily evident from what has been said.

9. The mode of contracting being that has been assigned is proved to be possible.—Moreover, that this mode of intellectual abstraction and determination is possible is proved by examples; for when we divide quantity into two-cubit, three-cubit, etc., it cannot be understood that the concept of two-cubit quantity is resolved into the concept of quantity and of two-cubit, because it is impossible to conceive two-cubit without quantity being conceived; it is therefore a sign that those two concepts are distinguished only as express and confused. Almost the same is the case in the concept of heat and of heat as eight, of which it is also a sign that the common concept of heat is included not only in the whole heat as eight, but also in each of its degrees; when, therefore, heat as eight is said, a distinct mode making a composition with heat as such is not added, but heat is expressed and conceived as it is in the thing. In the present case too this is manifest in the determination of being to infinite being; for infinity cannot be conceived as some mode added to being, or as something less than infinite being itself; there is there, therefore, only a more express and more determinate concept of a certain most simple being; and by this reason being itself is not simpler than God, although in the mode in which it is conceived it is more abstract. So, then, it can rightly be understood in the concept of substance and of accident.

10. Such a mode is most apt for unravelling all the difficulties.—But if this mode is possible, which suffices for the present, it can easily be persuaded that it is to be judged that it comes about in this way. First, because in this way the difficulty often inculcated in the preceding sections is easily dispatched; and it is explained how being can express a concept prescinded according to reason, and nevertheless be determined to its inferiors, and be intimately included in all of them, without a process to infinity and without proper composition. Secondly, because in this way it is excellently preserved how the supreme genera express simply simple concepts, and nevertheless the concept of being can be abstracted from them through the mere prescission of the intellect, which does not consist as it were in the separation of one from another, namely of the formal from the material or of the material from the formal, as happens in the abstraction of the genus from the differences, but which consists in knowledge in some way confused, by which the object is considered not distinctly and determinately as it is in the thing, but according to some likeness or agreement which it has with others; which agreement, in order to the concept of being, is in things according to their whole entities and real modes; and therefore the confusion or prescission of such a concept is not through the prescissive separation of one grade from another, but only through the prescissive knowledge of the confused concept from the distinct and determinate one. Whence, thirdly, this can be proved ostensively, because the concept of being is not prescinded according to the thing, but according to reason, as has been proved; but prescission according to reason can happen in those two ways, as has been shown, and no other can easily be feigned or thought out. Again, the quasi-formal prescission through the exclusion of one grade from another has no place in being, on account of its illimitation and transcendence; and because the containment on which its concept is founded is equally in the whole entity according to its whole self; therefore only the other prescission, through the confusion of the concept, can have place in being; therefore also conversely the modification or determination to the inferior genera can only be through a simple concept more express and determinate, because contraction must correspond proportionately to abstraction, and expression or determination to prescission.

11. Finally, against this opinion so explained no difficulty of any moment occurs; for nothing offers itself by which it could be shown that this mode of abstraction and contraction according to reason is repugnant, or does not suffice for all the things which are wont to be said or conceived of being and its inferiors, and for all the experience which may be taken or perceived from our mode of conceiving. I see only that the testimony of the Philosopher, Metaphysics III, text 3, can be objected, saying that a common predicate cannot be contracted through a difference which per se includes the common predicate itself. But, to omit that the testimonies taken from that book are not of firm authority, because Aristotle in that book teaches nothing by asserting, but by arguing and doubting, it is nevertheless falsely cited, because he is not speaking of any common predicate whatever, but of the genus, of which there is another reason; but being is not a genus; indeed Aristotle wishes to conclude this very thing there. Whence what some extend to every common or univocal predicate is said gratuitously, and beyond the mind of the Philosopher. Of which matter the discussion will return again below, in treating of universals and of the analogy or community of being and accident.

12. For what reason the supreme genera are said to be primarily diverse.—Hence it follows that the concept of substance and the concept of perseity, or of the mode per se, are not distinguished objectively, but only from the mode of conceiving, as that which or as that by which, as God and Deity; because in the thing there is not properly a by which and a which, but only a which; but the mind, because it cannot explain simple things except after the manner of composite ones, uses those modes of conceiving. And therefore I was saying above that it is indeed rightly said that one of these modes is distinguished from another by itself; yet, speaking consistently, that the same must be said of the genera themselves which are apprehended as constituted through such modes; because in truth there is there no constitution after the manner of composition, but through simple and adequate identity (as the theologians say of relation and the divine person), because whatever one includes, the other includes. Nor is there any reason why the mode per se should be distinguished by itself from another mode more than substance, since it too is proximately under being, and intimately and totally includes it. And by this reason the supreme genera are excellently said to be primarily diverse, not because they agree in no common confused concept, but because they do not have determinate differences which are outside the notion of that common one, or of being, but have their diversity by themselves in their proper and determinate natures, although they also have an imperfect likeness in the notion of being; for these two are not repugnant, as has been declared above.