Chapter 32

Continuation — The law of subjective synthesis

1619. Different sensories break up an ens. Strictly speaking, this is cosmological analysis, which the term (the world) supplies to the rational principle. Analysis becomes psychological when the rational principle divides what is not divided, either in sense or by passive and active feelings (sensible needs).

1620. There is also a cosmological synthesis, corresponding to cosmological analysis. It consists in the rational principle's unification of different, sensible representations of the same ens supplied by the different sensories. The principle is aware that it is dealing with only one ens, an ens represented in different ways by various effects of its action in the different sensories. I call this synthesis 'cosmological' because it is the world, the term of feeling, which furnishes the bond between all the different sensations and perceptions of a body. The bond is the identity of the space occupied by a body acting in different ways.(337)

Consequently the difference between sensations is due to their different feel, not to the different space they occupy. Different parts of space, considered in isolation, are indiscernible; one part resembles another when the limits and situation of each part in total space are indistinguishable. No sensory can distinguish the situation and limits of its own space; as I said, they are not sensible to the sensory itself. Hence the rational principle does not receive from any single sensory its knowledge of the situation or limits of the sensory's total space. Each sensory supplies the rational principle with the situation and parts relative to the totality of its own space alone, not with the situation and limits of this totality. But because the situation, the limits and the proportional distribution of these parts in the different sensories are identical, the space itself also seems identical, as we saw relative to the space occupied by the sensations of touch and sight, the two senses which present space with a more accurate outline of its various parts. This explains why we do not multiply bodies according to the number of our sensories. Rather we multiply the representations of bodies, and refer all these representations to a single ens which we say is tactile, coloured, saporific, sonorous, etc. This is cosmological synthesis.

1621. This fact gave rise to the distinction between substance and accidents. We call 'substance' the single ens to which we relate all the effects received in our sensories. We consider these effects as accidents of that ens. But because the effects represent the ens to us, we do not separate the representation from what is represented. If we were to divest what is represented totally from its representation, it would disappear. It is true, of course, that the effects produced by a body in our sensories differ according to the variety of our sensories. Hence an acting body produces one action only on the sensitive principle and another, nothing more, on the principle's term (the animate body). Indeed the only difference between these two actions results perhaps solely from the different nature of the sensitive principle, and of its term in which the operation takes place.

1622. This explanation of the origin of the concept of substance also explains the origin of both full and abstract species. Full species is the species or concept of an ens invested with all its accidents. Abstract species is the species of the ens stripped of its accidents, and left simply with the bond and unity to which all representative accidents are related. Abstract species, as I said, is the concept enabling us to know 'the act through which an ens subsists'.(338) However, I did not determine the nature of this act. I can now do so.

We know entia positively through the effects produced by their actions in our sensories, and more generally in our feeling. Feeling itself sometimes supplies a basis by means of which the rational principle becomes aware that a group of effects must be attributed to one ens alone, as in the case of the concept of bodies. This concept is formed through feeling, which gives the perception of a force diffused in a single space, although in the same space there are sensations of a different 'feel'.(339)

We conclude that a single force or agent, which becomes the abstract species, produces the multiple effects. Abstraction of this species is the task of the rational principle because the sensories supply only the force or agent invested with effects of varying nature, but always effects. If, in the case of bodies, we experience another group of effects which do not have the same bond, do not possess the unity provided by feeling, and do not relate to the same identical space, we immediately form another ens from this second group and have another species. This is the origin of the multiplicity of entia.

1623. But a group of sensible effects can differ only in reality. In this case, and because of their similarity in every other respect, these effects are known through the same idea or species. Their multiplicity therefore is a multiplicity of individuals; it is not a multiplicity of species, nor diversity of abstract or full species. Many individuals can correspond to the full species in the order of reality, while each individual can contain substance and accidents, both of which are multiplied by different reality.
When I said therefore that abstract species divide according to the different act of being, I meant according to the act of ideal, not real being. The diversity of acts of real being multiply only real individuals, to which only one abstract species corresponds. In other words, the act of being in the order of ideality remains one and identical. Consequently the abstract species is purely one, just as the ideal substance of many, equal individuals is also purely one.

1624. I said that the abstract species remains the same when the different groups of sensible effects which make an ens known differ relative to their reality alone. But would there not be a contradiction if, in different groups of sensible effects corresponding to one and the same species, we saw some variations, over and above the difference in reality, without a change in the abstract species? A pear, for example, can differ from other pears in size, colour, etc., and from itself at different times. Nevertheless all pears are known through the same abstract species of pear. The explanation is that the group of sensible effects representing a single ens must be taken in its totality. Thus, if the same pear has different aspects and is perceived at different times, these aspects or sensible effects, although successive, pertain to the same group and can be said to belong to the variations found in various individual pears.

1625. What therefore is the principle which multiplies individuals? — Their different reality.

1626. What is the principle that multiplies entia? — A finite ens is constituted by the unity of the group of its sensible effects. This unity binds these effects together in such way that they show all the effects of the same agent. Relative to a body, this unity is rooted in the identity of space; relative to the soul, in the identity of feeling, etc. Hence the multiplicity of entia is given in the feeling we have of them when a single principle or cause of a certain number of sensible effects is felt in the feeling. We feel we cannot in any way attribute to this principle or cause other sensible effects arising from some other principle or single cause which is also felt. I call this principle or cause of a given group of effects 'the sensible basis of an ens', and maintain that entia multiply in keeping with the multiplication of their sensible bases.

1627. What is the principle that multiplies full species? — Because species lack the reality of an ens, the multiplicity arising from difference of reality is also lacking. A different, real, sensible basis multiplies entia, but if this multiplication takes place by means of reality, a single species corresponds to many sensible bases whose difference arises solely from their different reality. But the sensible bases, clothed with the group of their effects, are given by feeling, and the full species corresponds to such sensible bases. Not all sensible effects, however, attributed to the same basis, can be contemporary; one excludes the other; for example a red body cannot be a yellow body. What the full species makes known to our spirit is the sensible basis clothed with all its contemporary or co-possible, sensible effects. Granted therefore the same sensible basis clothed with various sensible effects, full species multiply.

1628. What is the principle that multiplies abstract species? — The abstract species makes known the sensible basis of an ens. These species differ when they make known different bases, prescinding of course from their reality and from consideration of any sensible, accidental effects.

1629. Diversity of species therefore proceeds from the ontological relationship between real and ideal modes of being, whose interaction is determined by no other higher principle than the intrinsic order of being.

1630. I have posited different sensible bases as the principle of multiplication of entia. But the human spirit, with its faculty of invention, presupposes these bases, even when they do not exist, and so creates for itself mental beings. The careful classification of the different kinds of these beings pertains to dialectics.
The spirit sometimes does this when it takes an accident, a sensible effect, and considers it as if it were the sensible basis of an ens. It does this easily, particularly when the sensible effects are so ordered that one effect necessarily precedes another. Let us suppose that our spirit changes the colour (a purely sensible effect) of an ens. It will indicate the size, form and movement, etc. of the colour, considering the colour as an ens, as the subject of all these qualities. Similarly our spirit changes every abstract into an ens whose species can be multiplied without multiplication of the ens to which they relate. It does this in virtue of its power to limit its mental gaze and concentrate its attention.

1631. There is one creation or invention of the human mind which is so spontaneous and necessary to human nature, and hence common to the human race, that it certainly deserves the philosopher's attention. I refer to the concept of matter. The relationship of matter with the sensitive principle, whose term it is, is so essential to matter that it cannot be conceived for what it is without the principle. Nevertheless, the spirit does detach it, and in this detached state arbitrarily considers it as a being per se. But matter separated from feeling can no longer be conceived as an ens; it is simply the rudiment of an ens, of an ens in via which has not yet attained its full being. What kind of species, therefore, is this concept of matter? Full or abstract, or something else?

Clearly it cannot be a full species because we prescind from its sensible effects. Nor can it be an abstract species, which also relates to a sensible basis. Its concept therefore can be classified only in the class of (ideal) genera, that is, ideas which do not represent an ens but something pertaining to an ens. The word 'matter' therefore signifies no species of entia but only that of which many species of entia are composed. It can be considered under two aspects: 1. as the matter of which corporeal entia are composed relative to form (in this case it is something entirely passive to or receptive of form and, as synthesism demands, cannot be without form); or 2. as relative to our concept, that is, as present in the act in which our concept is formed (in this case it is what I have called 'the sensiferous element'). If, in conformity with the teaching given above about the origin of the multiplicity of beings, we now wish to define the sensiferous element or matter under this aspect, we would do so as follows. The abstract species in the ideal order corresponds to the sensible basis; whenever many abstract species correspond to many sensible bases, we say that the sensible bases differ from each other specifically as well as individually. If then I take many sensible bases of different species and form an abstract of them, prescinding from their specific differences, I have formed their genus which is precisely the concept of sensiferous matter. The concept of matter is therefore generic (ideal).

1632. However, when abstraction has removed the species determined by the group of sensible effects from the generic, sensible basis, we are left with a sensible, formless basis. It is clear, therefore

1. that the abstract species makes known the form of entia,(340) taking the word 'form' in the ancient sense of 'that which makes an ens be what it is';

2. that the concept of matter excludes that of form and therefore of species.

1633. We can now ask whether the individual is comprised in the abstract species or the full species. I have already deduced the multiplicity of individuals from reality. But to say that the multiplicity of individuals (real individuals) is not comprised in the species is one thing; it is another to say that the individual (specific individual) is not comprised in it. In my opinion, therefore two things have to be said. First, the multiplicity of individuals is contained neither in the full nor the abstract species. Consequently, we could never know the number of real individuals of this species (at least in the case of the species of contingent beings known to us), if the species alone were present to our mind. Second, I also maintain that the specific individual is contained in the species. In other words, every species makes known an individual ens whose realisation can be repeated many times without any change in the species. In fact the form of entia, their complete form, is simply their individuality as known in the species. I call this specific individuality.

1634. We can now see the distinction between the concept of nature and of individual. Nature means both an ens without form (for example, matter) and an ens with form. In this second case, it corresponds to the abstract species and expresses not the multiplicity of real individuals but the individual as found in the abstract species. It applies to each individual, not to all. When we say, 'Human nature subsists in many individuals', we do not mean that human nature is divided into many individuals, but that the whole of human nature subsists in each individual. It would be incorrect to say that human nature is divided into many individuals.

1635. The form of entia therefore constitutes their specific or ideal individuality. If through abstraction we break the individual down into parts and distinguish nature and individuality, we understand nature as an ens without form, and individuality as its form, its completion, the last act that perfects and specifies it.(341)

1636. Natures without individuality are formless; they are incomplete entia. Individuality is therefore an essential characteristic of an ens.

1637. Matter, therefore, is an ens without form and in this sense a non-ens. Consequently the opinion of ancient thinkers that things were produced from non-ens(342) is not without truth if interpreted in reference to material things and a material cause.
Aristotelians maintained that this ens-without-form, an incomplete ens, can receive a form and be individualised. Indeed the whole Aristotelian teaching about forms is drawn from the forms with which matter is considered to be clothed. This may well be the case; I do not wish to oppose the teaching but explain it in a reasonable way. I want to see how much absolute knowledge and how much subjective knowledge is present in these forms conceived by the human mind (that is, how much the rational subject himself contributes when he acquires concepts).

The concept of matter is the 'generic concept of different sensible bases', that is, it is known only by what sense has provided and on which mental abstraction has carried out its operation. But everything that sense presents to the mind is the term of sense. Animal sense, which we are discussing, presents to the mind a (sensiferous) force diffused in extension. Sometimes extension presents it as shapeless, as in the fundamental feeling and in the particular sensories when the extension is understood in its totality. At other times, animal sense presents the force as shaped. This is the case with parts of the extension presented by certain sensories, for example, touch, sight, etc. Nobody claims that the shapeless extension presented by the fundamental feeling or by particular sensories is individuated; this kind of extension is supplied only by the concept of nature or of indefinite space. But in the case of the sensories we say that the parts shaped by their term are individuated. It is to these parts we owe the concept of particular bodies. As we have seen, particular bodies are unified by means of their sensible basis, a determined part of space in which certain sensations become representative of the body itself, of the space itself, through the very unity of the space.

1638. I also said that although the sensible bases clothed with their groups of sensations are many, the abstract species by which they are known is only one. Thus, their multiplication takes place in the order of reality and not in that of ideality; individuals of the human species are many, but the concept of human being is only one. The multiplicity of individuals is known not through the concept of the human being, which is only one, but through the different, real, sensible bases which are many. Their plurality is known therefore with the help of sense (a potency communicating with real being).

In the case of material entia, subsistence or reality is material. In every sensible basis some matter (force diffused in extension) is perceived, clothed and determined by a group of sensations. It is this group which informs us that we are dealing with some particular matter, not another. But this group of sensations can be broken up by abstraction as we reject some and keep others present to our spirit. Now, each group of sensations contains 1. a sensiferous force, 2. a shaped extension, and 3. sensations of different 'feel', or of the same 'feel' but different in quality. Through the virtue of abstraction we can separate these three elements which form a body from every point of view and form many ideal, generic concepts.

1639. In fact we can limit our attention to:

1. The sensiferous force alone, in which case we have the concept of formless matter.

2. Extension, which gives us the concept of mathematical bodies.

3. The sensations of different 'feel', or a genus of sensations. This is the concept of accident, or of a genus of accidents.

4. Two of the elements (force and extension), which give us the concept of body in general.

5. The shaped extension and the 'feel' of the sensations. Here we have a concept, limited by some extension, of shaped accidents.

6. Lastly, the force and the sensations of different quality pertaining to some other sensible basis. This gives us the concept of the different kinds of matter, for example, water, air, fire, wood, etc.

1640. All these concepts are generic, not specific. They do not make an individual known because none of them makes known a complete form. The first excludes any form whatsoever; the others posit imperfect forms, which are parts of some form. We see therefore that there are some genera which make matter known, and others which, while making a part of the form known, do not attain individuality.

1641. Now, because on the one hand the concept of matter excludes the individual and thus has no limit (form alone limits what is limitable), and on the other the subsistence of material things is material, we understand why matter (according to the concept under discussion) can be divided into parts but not multiplied; the concept remains the same under all forms. If matter were multiplied, it would receive limitations and no longer be matter. The multiplication of individuals therefore comes from the form in so far as this makes them subsistent, that is, from the reality of the form, not from matter, as the ancients thought.(343)

1642. What we have said about formless matter must also be said about the genera of matter (the sixth concept given above). Water does not multiply into many drops — the whole substance of water is present in each drop, expressed by the word 'water'. It is divided into parts, because the part of water in one drop is not in another drop. Thus matter which is either totally formless or has form only generically, acts in an opposite way to soul, which can be multiplied but not divided.

The form of bodies therefore, the complete form corresponding to the species, is formed by a whole group of representative sensations referred to the sensible basis and hence to the ens; this form individuates a body. Is this individuation perfect; is there an absolute individual in a body? Or do we use subjective knowledge to think the individual in the body because we are obliged by an ontological law to give to every object of our thought the form of ens, and therefore give individuality without which an ens cannot be? I have discussed this question elsewhere. I said that bodies, although without individuality in themselves, take their real individuality from the spirit whose term they are. Divided from the spirit, they are incomplete entia and can be called 'non-entia', which distinguishes them from nothing.(344) They do not subsist detached from their principle, but are part of an ens and as such correspond to a mental, abstract concept. Hence, the spirit, when it considers bodies as individuals, does so through the law of subjective synthesis.

1643. We can view bodies united to the spirit in two ways: either according to what we know about them through our sense-experience or according to reasoning, which has at least conjectural value. In the first case, our knowledge is expressed by all the words invented to indicate corporeal things. In the second, bodies are considered as effects of a simple agent foreign to us, called 'corporeal principle'. In this case, there are no words to properly express our reasonings. Furthermore, if this corporeal principle does in fact act in our spirit, bringing into effect the sensible basis and the sensations clothing the basis, bodies receive some other individuality dependent upon their proximate cause. Moreover, because everything we can say about this kind of individuality can be said about the individuality of bodies as terms of our spirit, I will speak about the latter.

1644. This individuality attributed to bodies is twofold: either we consider the corporeal elements which we take as extended and continuous, or bodies themselves composed of these elements. The only individuality possessed by the corporeal elements comes to them 1. from the continuity of the extended element they occupy and 2. from the sensible difference of this occupied, extended element. Individuality whose foundation is the continuum is not true individuality because it does not give proper unity to an ens; in the continuum every assignable space is outside the other spaces, with which it cannot form one and the same being. It is clear therefore that the continuum can have only the unity it receives from the sentient principle, to which in fact it is totally present and by which it is constituted. The rational principle therefore effects a subjective synthesis by attributing to the elements the individuality proper only to the sentient principle.

1645. Composite bodies are either unorganised or organised. Unorganised bodies are composed of elements which are even less susceptible of unity and individuality. Nevertheless the rational principle attributes unity and individuality to them because of the ontological law it must follow in thinking of things, and because of the psychological law of subjective synthesis. It is helped in this by the composite of attracting forces which pertains to the constitution of the external world. Thanks to this constitution, every body with a centre of gravity seems to have a single force determining it in one direction or position. But because this force or cause of motion does not of itself alone constitute an ens, it is an abstraction. Consequently the individuality granted to a body through the concentration of its forces is merely abstract, not specific individuality.

1646. Does organisation provide a better basis for the individuality of bodies? The organisation must either be 1. considered as an effect of brute, insensitive forces, in which case its unity is still an abstraction (the resulting individuality is abstract, and attributed by the rational principle to the body when the principle conceives it through the law of subjective synthesis); or 2. be formed and dominated by a sensitive principle which, with its perfect unity and simplicity, is seen as the true foundation of the individual. In this second case, however, the individual is no longer a body but a composite of (sentient) principle and (felt) term, a composite which is truly one and indivisible.

1647. From this we can deduce a rule for knowing the nature of a specific idea: it is that idea which makes us know an ens, an individuated ens. To do this, it has to make known the sensible basis of the ens, or something that performs this function, such as a subject or a proximate cause. In a word, the function must be a point of union for the group of qualities which determine the ens. Either the qualities clothe the ens, in which case we have the full, specific idea, or they are abstracted, leaving only the relationship between them and the basis of the ens, in which case we have the abstract, specific idea.

1648. I then described another synthesis carried out by the rational principle under the influence of the different feelings of the sentient principle where many different sensations representing different entia take place. For example, various sensations cause a feeling of joy or sadness, etc., in the soul. These feelings become as it were a bond which mentally binds together the actions of very different entia, and is another source of the genera which the human spirit composes.

1649. Again, the human spirit, when acting freely, makes all kinds of syntheses. It arbitrarily joins together any kind of complex of things which it then considers as a unity. This notably reduces its reasoning, as we see in algebra: for example, in the calculation of analytical functions, a function of one or more letters represents at one glance all the infinite ways in which the letter and letters can be bound together or with other quantities. The letters themselves are already an arbitrary synthesis of as many units as we desire, joined in any way according to the need of the calculation. To perform these syntheses as one wishes, the rational principle uses signs, one of which can represent many different things, as we choose and according to what has been agreed. Here we have complex ideas, one of which is sufficient to make known any group of other ideas, the last of which is the idea of the whole.

1650. But the idea of the whole is not arbitrary. Its foundation is partly in the unity of universal being, outside of which nothing is, as Parmenides observed.(345) We cannot say, however, that it is founded in the same way in the organism of the universe because we could think of the whole even if the universe were not organated or assembled as it is, like a kind of great, single being. On the other hand, the universe, properly speaking, is only the relative not the absolute whole.

Notes

(337) Cf. NE, vol. 2, [941-960].

(338) Cf. NE, vol. 2, [646-659].

(339) The identity of space I am discussing is not absolute but relative to the group of effects. A body moved to different places is said to be identical because in every place where it is present the group of its sensible effects remains united, and always relates to one and the same space. The diversity of the place in which a body is found does not therefore enter into the specific idea of body.

(340) In Latin, forma corresponds to the Greek (*), which means precisely species , visum .

(341) In intellective beings, individuality is called person Cf. AMS , 832-837.

(342) Aristotle, Phys ., 1: 9.

(343) AMS , 782-788 [App ., no. 16].

(344) The word 'non-ens' is, I think, very valuable. My definition, 'that which is on the way to being an ens but is not at present' (abstract concept), provides a useful tool for a reasonable interpretation of many otherwise absurd opinions of ancient philosophers.

(345) Vv. 95-96, Karsten.