Chapter 5

How the words 'matter' and 'first matter'
were used equivocally by the greatest philosophers

808. Having unfolded the concept of first matter and seen that it is found in bodies where its perfection and final acts are called form, we can show (although this follows also from what has been said in the first part) that such matter is not found in the soul. However, in order to avoid arguments over words, and at the same time to offer a key to the proper understanding of the greatest philosophers, it will help if we first note the occasional imprecision of these philosophers when they deal with first matter or try to fix its concept accurately (I have tried to be precise myself by using the words matter or first matter to indicate different things). This imprecision has led them into apparent contradictions, and given rise to heated and useless questions.

809. First, almost all confused first matter with subsistent reality (for me, they are distinct). This was the case with Plato who made the quantitative element something dependent or consequent on matter, although it is not in fact included in the concept of matter, but posited through the realisation of matter and determined by the decision of the one who causes it to be realised.

810. Aristotle made matter the principle of individuation. As I have shown, however, this principle must be posited rather in subsistent reality,(36) which is always fully determined.

811. We have seen that the concept of matter expresses nothing whatsoever if we mentally remove from it all thought of extension in general. In this case, we no longer consider such force with thetical, but with hypothetical abstraction. This explains why St. Thomas teaches that by abstracting from all extension we inevitably abstract from all matter. He says:

Let us pause here.

812. We saw that first matter is 'a force that operates in extension'.
This force is in potency to: 1. determined extension or quantity (which may be more or less, and hence still numerable); 2. shape; 3. sensible qualities.
Mathematical species are shapes and their terms, that is, surface, line, point. These species are not, therefore, first matter, but matter already reduced to the act of quantity and shape and therefore, partly informed. We simply prescind from consideration of the sensible qualities to which it is in potency. Precisely because it is in potency, it is still called matter. This is what the Scholastics call 'mathematical matter'. When they say, therefore, that in the concept of mathematical matter abstraction is made from both individual and common sensible matter, they mean that the sensible qualities, considered as real and as ideal, are abstracted from the potency. When they say that abstraction is made from individual, intelligible matter, they mean from determinate quantity and realised shape (and whatever appertains to shape). This, however, is an improper way of speaking. As the Scholastics themselves said, individual is not conceived by the intellect. They were, therefore, out of harmony with their own teaching when they posited matter which was both intelligible and individual .

They called this matter, intelligible, however, because quantity and shape, abstracted from what is sensible, is simply an object of the intellect. They did not see that as such it is never individual unless arbitrarily fixed in some place in space. Nevertheless, because it is possible to encounter in reality that which is in the intellect, the word they used is not completely without meaning. When they go on to say that the concept of mathematical matter does not abstract from common-intelligible matter, they mean that quantity and shape are considered by mathematicians not only in abstraction from sensible qualities, but also without referring them to a real body as something possible to be realised. St. Thomas goes on:

Clearly, these words already take us outside all matter if we prescind from extension and all continuous quantity; the concept of matter slips away from us completely. We are left only with some final, abstract elements that can be realised both in matter and outside it. There is, therefore, something anterior to matter, something proper to act and to active potency.(39) The concept of matter begins in our mind only when we think of 'a sensiferous potency in extension'.

813. However, this concept was not always adhered to, as we said. Consequently, some Scholastics, when speaking about matter, say that 'such potency is not referred to action, but to being'(40) (instead of saying 'to form'). The concept of matter is thus broadened and is now able to be applied to every creature. In fact, every creature, even spiritual creatures, have potency ad esse before they exist, that is, they have the potency to receive subsistence. If the Scholastics' principle is understood literally, matter is converted into 'that which is possible', in other words, into idea. This is incorrect. As we said above, we can have ideas of forms as well as of matter.

814. As a result of this, some Scholastics asserted that all things, visible and invisible, movable and immovable, corporeal and incorporeal, are composed of matter and form. But, as St. Thomas observed, this is to take the word 'matter' in two meanings, not in its true, proper meaning.(41)

815. Those who take matter as a synonym for 'that which is in potency' exclude from its concept every relationship with extension. As a result, they necessarily make it an ens from which matter itself has already been abstracted. This ens, as St. Thomas observes, remains as something indivisible:

where quantity has to be understood about any kind of quantity, not about a particular, determined quantity.

816. The philosophers we have mentioned were unaware that the concept of matter reveals to the intellect something related to extension. Relying too much on abstraction, they eliminated this relationship and destroyed the concept of matter. All that remained for them was the concept of something immaterial and indivisible preceding the concept of matter.

But there were other philosophers who did not entirely abolish the relationship with extension. They granted that matter could be moved in space, but nevertheless stripped it of its faculty for motion and declared it inert. Were they correct?

817. The logical cause leading them to this conclusion was the attention they gave to the phenomena of material mass which presents itself to us as something mobile, as an entity very different from the sensiferous element. Because this mass is sometimes in motion, sometimes at rest, they correctly deduced that motion is not essential to it, that motion does not form part of the concept of this mass, and that matter receives motion from some other active principle different from itself. It is indubitable that no body moves itself, and that the principle of motion must be sought elsewhere.

818. Nevertheless, the extrasubjective phenomena of motion are not the first to present themselves to us in the concept of body. As we saw, the first phenomenon is the felt element in which we have the intellective perception of the sensiferous element whose concept is that of an activity on our soul — an activity which extends throughout the extension of the felt element. We can have no doubt, therefore, about such activity which produces the felt element and, as first in the concept of body, constitutes the knowable and nameable essence of body. The same activity is also the subject of motion, which is simply 'the manifestation of the sensiferous element in a felt entity which successively occupies different extension.' From this point of view, it is therefore true that the sensiferous element is passive, that is, apt to receive and transmit motion, but not to give it.

819. Where, then, shall we find this principle of motion? First, in the soul, which changes the place of the sensiferous element.
We also understand that outside the soul there must be some other principle which produces motion. This is shown by the phenomenon of attraction. Third, we understand that this principle of motion outside the human soul can be neither the mass nor the foreign force which, if it has not received motion, cannot transmit it to another force. It must, therefore, receive motion. It does not produce it; it is not its principle.

820. Is the principle of motion the same as that which we have called corporeal principle? We cannot answer this question without examining the concept of corporeal principle. We deduced this concept from our realisation that the felt element, and the sensiferous force, too, that we have perceived in this element, is simply the term of an action done in our soul. The agent is unknown in itself, that is, in its principle, because we know it only from its living action in its term. It is our ignorance of the principle of this action which led us to call it corporeal principle. According to this concept, we know that the corporeal principle is the principle of the action we call sensiferous. The action has to be given a name as an ens because of our need to conceive it intellectually. However, this action on the soul is still not motion, whose nature consists in relocating the sensiferous element. We cannot, therefore, affirm that it is the corporeal principle.

821. I do not want to speak here of the faculty of transmitting motion which, properly speaking, constitutes foreign force and mass. This faculty must undoubtedly be attributed to the corporeal principle, which serves as its subject. My aim here is simply to discover the principle of movement.

822. In the first part of this work, I explained how every material element is the term of a feeling principle. This opinion posits a principle of movement in nature. It explains the natural movements of bodies without need to call on the Almighty as some kind of second cause. It also reconciles the great, everlasting question about the inertia and activity of matter.

Some philosophers, in considering the concept of matter, thought that matter as the cause of motion was repugnant. As far as I can see, they are entirely correct. Others saw that everything in nature moves, and that the phenomena of attraction, expansion, elasticity, and so on, together with the phenomena of the mechanical clash of bodies, are visible in nature. These philosophers, who were unwilling to turn to God's immediate action to explain these phenomena, but were unable to posit some other cause, made matter active. They did not notice that the attribution of such activity clashes with the concept of matter given to us through perception. Nevertheless, they were correct in so far as they recognised a principle of spontaneous motion dispersed through the whole of nature. This confirms the opinion I have offered about the animation of matter as a very easy and logically coherent explanation of all natural phenomena.(43)

Notes

(36) AMS , 782-788 [App ., no. 3].

(37) S.T ., I, q. 85, art. 1.

(38) S.T ., I, q. 85, art. 1.

(39) This proof of the thesis that there is some other principle prior to matter, is drawn from the order of ideas, from the very notion of matter, which cannot be conceived without our thinking some preceding actuality. St. Thomas comes to the same conclusion from another argument, that is, from the necessity of an active principle which can draw matter, which is in potency, to its act. 'The material principle, which in our experience is imperfect, cannot simply be first, but must be preceded by something perfect. Semen, for example, although the principle of animals generated from seed, is preceded by an animal or plant from which it comes forth. There must, therefore, be something in act prior to that which is in potency. Ens in potency is not reduced to act except through some ens in act, (S.T ., I, q. 4, art. 1, ad 2).

(40) St. Thomas Aquinas, Quodl ., 10, q. 3, ad 5.

(41) 'Matter is used equivocally (in two senses) of movable and immovable things' (In II Sent ., d. 2, q. 2, art. 2, ad 4. Cf. also, Quodl ., III, q. 8, art. 1).

(42) S.T ., I, q. 50, art. 2.

(43) Cf. Cudworth, c. 1, §1.