Endnote (fn. 204)

Aristotle calls the soul substance, but always adds that species, forms, are substances, 'like the species of the living, natural body' (De Anima, bk. 3). A little further on (in Michele Sofiano's translation), he says that the soul is 'a substance which consists IN REASON' because it constitutes the reason (concept) of the animate body, that is, the being of such a body, that which is included in the definition. Similarly, he says, iron is not an axe; the form of an axe is that which provides the definition and being of an axe. He also compares form to the image impressed into wax: 'If we have to say that something is common to every soul, this will be the first act of an organic, natural body. We do not need to ask whether the soul and body are one, just as we do not need to ask whether wax and image are one, nor generally whether matter and the thing of which it is matter are one. One and being, although understood in different ways, are properly Speaking the act.' Later he says that if the eye were an animal, the soul would be vision, in which case vision would be the substance 'according to reason', that is, the essential part or constitutive difference of the animal (De Anima, bk. 2).

Here we clearly see that according to Aristotle the soul is a substance in the sense that it is an act perfecting the subject, not the subject itself, which is a function he attributes to the body. There is uncertainty everywhere because of the double sense of the Greek (*) meaning both essence and substance. Ritter himself, in his Storia delta Filosofia (vol. 3), notes as worthy of observation the fact that Aristotle calls the form of things substance: 'It is clear that for Aristotle form indicates something that really is, whereas matter must express the general faculty for being something. Anyone acquainted with Aristotle's way of expressing himself will not be at all surprised to find that he concludes by calling even form "substance" or that which is something, and the idea of a thing, because being is expressed in the idea.' If we remember that Plato's idea corresponds to Aristotle's form which in Greek is (*) a word that also means species, we see that Aristotle's teaching about form is a modification of Plato's opinion.

Plato did not distinguish between idea and what is intuited in the idea, that is, essence. If the distinction I made between idea, essence and substance is borne in mind, soul in the Aristotelian system is the essence, not the substance of the thing named, that is, of the animal. A History of Philosophy (and all attempts so far are full of inaccuracies) should relate how Aristotle's teaching that substance is the form of things gave rise to a school of realists who maintained that matter is that which is identical in things, and that form, because it constitutes individual difference, is the principle of individuation. This obviously contradicts those who posited the individuating principle in matter.

Peter Abelard, in his book on Porphyry's Libri delle cinnque voci speaks of the realists' opinion as follows: 'Certain people accept what is universal in such a way that they posit the essentially same substance in things which differ through form. Substance is the material essence of the individual things in which it is. In itself it is one, and differs only through the forms of lesser things, forms whose function it is to separate themselves. Things whose difference arises only from their forms would not really be different, because essential matter would be basically the same. For example, in singular human beings that differ only in number, the human substance is the same; one accident makes this man Plato, another makes him Socrates.' In fact Aristotle says that both animate and inanimate bodies are different substances because they have different forms, although the matter in both is the same. The realist school, however, whose view is explained by Abelard in the passage quoted above, understood matter in many individuals not as a species but as absolutely one and identical; having no species, it had no quantity (at least, this what they should have said). Species and quantity itself are simply form which already multiply matter.

Abelard found this opinion in certain places of Porphyry: 'Porphyry certainly seems to accept these opinions, for he says, "By sharing in the species, many human beings are one. But if something is one and common to particular individuals, they are many," and elsewhere: "They are said to be individuals because each is composed of properties whose combination is never the same in another".' In this second passage, Porphyry clearly distinguishes individuals according to the different combination of their properties; in other words he distinguishes them according to the forms.

All the ancient philosophers and the modern thinkers that I know fall at some time or other into this error, simply because none of them has distinguished between the specific individual, that is, the full species, from the real individual. Consequently, they applied to the latter what is applicable only to the former (cf.NE,vol.2,646-659 and 406-407). It is certainly true that the specific individual, that is, the possible or ideal individual, varies according to the different combination of its properties. But an individual of this kind has no matter. On the contrary, a real individual is individuated by its different reality, not by its form, which can be the same (cf. AMS, 782-788).

The second of the two passages from Porphyry contains two contradictory parts. In the first Porphyry acknowledges that many human beings are one through species, that is, through the idea to which they relate ('By sharing in the species, many human beings are one'). In the second passage, however, he says that what is one and common in individuals becomes many ('If something is one and common to particular individuals, they are many'). He is thus positing what is one and common in individuals, that is, he is positing the idea in them, relative to which alone humanity in general exists.

Abelard continues his explanation of the realists' system: 'Similarly, they posit the essentially one and same substance of animal in individual animals that differ in species. This substance is present in different species because it receives various differences. For example, a piece of wax can be made into a statue of a human being or an ox's head by adapting different forms to the same abiding essence.' And they held on to this opinion, even though they saw that the wax could undergo many configurations only successively, whereas what is universal or common takes on many forms simultaneously, a fact they attributed to a particular property of the universal. Abelard continues: 'Here we must note that the same wax does not constitute the statues simultaneously, as it does when we conceive the wax universally. As Boethius says, what is universal is common, if the same thing is simultaneously and totally in different things whose substance it materially constitutes.

The same thing, because universal in itself, becomes singular through the forms that come to it. Without these forms it subsists NATURALLY in itself (that is, it subsists in potency, because nature is the principle of generation) and does not in any way ACTUALLY endure. It is indeed universal IN NATURE, but singular IN ACT. It IS UNDERSTOOD in the simplicity of its universality as incorporeal and insensible, but the SAME THING, corporeal and sensible, subsists in act through its accidents. According to Boethius, the same things subsist as singulars and are understood as universals.' These opinions of Porphyry, Boethius and others show the truth what 1 have already noted: 'Philosophers reason about an object conceived by the mind, that is, an object composed of both an entitative part a pate sui and an ideal element added at the time of conception.

This explains the persistent error by which what the mini posits in conceiving an ens is attributed to the ens in se. This is the source of all the interminable disputes that have raged in the world about the nature of universals.' I owe the passage quoted from Abelard to the kindness of Fr. Strazza who transcribed it for me from the codex in the Ambrosian Library.