IS THERE A MATERIAL CAUSE OF ACCIDENTS? IF SO, IN WHAT SENSE?

PROPOSITION CLVII.

There is a Material Cause of accidents.

I. This Proposition is proved, first of all, by the witness of a universal experience. The argument is precisely the same as that which has been already used in order to establish the existence of a Material Cause in corporal substance; but it has a greater cogency in the present question, because accidental are more patent to sense than substantial transformations. Indeed, it is only by means of the former that the latter become known to us. Who, then, is there, that has not constantly perceived in himself and other entities these accidental changes? At one time, the hair was of a lighter colour; then, it became darker; now, it is grey. Yet all along, I knew it to be my hair. An apple in the summer shows small and green; in the autumn, it has become large and red. I know that it is the same apple; yet its quantity and colour have changed. The same water in the kettle was first cold, then hot, then grew cold again. The nugget of gold is drawn out into a thin wire of amazing length; and is subsequently reduced to its pristine form. The dough was pliant, cohesive, heavy; the bread is hard, crummy, light. Yet it is substantially the same apple, the same water, the same gold, the same leavened dough from first to last. One is obliged to be so careful in these days of the empire of physical science, that it may be perhaps necessary parenthetically to disclaim any intention of being disrespectful to chemistry in our use of these illustrations. We are taking the phenomena, as they offer themselves to the uninitiated mass of mankind. It is on the common sense and observation of men that the present argument is based; and this common sense is for the most part much nearer metaphysical truth than the teaching of physical science. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that a chemical or physical examination of these phenomena would land us at exactly the same conclusion. Now, in these and similar instances your man of common sense perceives that there are some things that are different, that there are changes from one thing to another; yet that there is something or other which remains the same all through the changes. Moreover, he recognizes that those changing entities are successively in that one constant

entity. Again: That the ideas and names of green, red, hot, cold, long, thick, sticky, crummy, heavy, light, soft, hard, represent something real and actual in nature, it never enters into his head to doubt. Yet, if you would endeavour to persuade him that green could grow up by itself like a tree, or that heat could form part of a house and exist by itself like a brick, or that heariness could be sold by the baker like a loaf; he would judge at once that you were only fit for a lunatic asylum. But what then? Thus much: It is plain that our man of common sense judges those changing somethings to be real, yet to be incapable of existing by themselves; and to be necessarily, according to the constitution of their nature, in that something else that keeps them going and on which they depend. Call these changing and inhesive entities accidents, because they happen to substance, and his conclusions read, as follows: Accidents are somehow real things; but they cannot possibly exist in the natural order by themselves. They, therefore, require, and evidently have, a Subject to support them. That Subject, on which the accidents depend and in which they inhere, is their Material Cause.

II. The same conclusion is deduced from the philosophical concept of accidents; for this, like all other true concepts, is based on the judgments of common sense. St. Thomas shall once again be our guide, in a passage where he gives us the scientific idea of accident under different shapes. Substantial bodily Forms,' he writes, 'and accidents, and other like things, are not denominated beings as though they exist themselves; but because by them something exists;-that is to say, receives a new partial existence in the accidental composite. Thus, whiteness is called being; because the Subject is white,' as, for instance, we speak of the whiteness of chalk, because chalk is white. Hence, according to the Philosopher, accident is said to be of Being, rather than Being. As, then, accidents and' (substantial bodily) 'forms, and such like as do not subsist,' (that is to say, do not exist by themselves, independently of a Subject), are co-existences rather than Beings; in the same way, they ought rather to be called concreations than creations','that is to say, when, as in the case of the elements or simple bodies, 1 'Formae autem, et accidentia, et alia hujusmodi non dicuntur entia, quasi ipsa sint, sed quia eis aliquid est; ut albedo ea ratione dicitur ens, quia ea subjectum est album. Unde, secundum Philosophum (7 Metaphys. text. 2), accidens magis proprie dicitur entis quam ens. Sicut igitur accidentia, et formae, et hujusmodi quae non subsistunt, magis sunt coexistentia quam entia: ita magis debent dici concreata quam creata.' 1ae xlv, 4, c. Cf. Ibid. xc, 2, c.

they are purely the term of the Creative Act.

Now, in this place under a variety of

the Angelic Doctor sets accident before us aspects. It is, first of all, an incomplete form. Then, it is of Being, rather than Being. Further: It does not subsist. Once more: It is rather to be called a cause of existence to another than an existence itself. Finally: It is a co-existence rather than an existence. Now, if we rest a moment to take in these attributes of accident suggested by the Angelic Doctor; it will be found that each one of them implicitly contains a proof or confirmation of the Thesis. i. Accident is an incomplete form. This is rather implied than expressly stated by St. Thomas; nevertheless, he repeatedly states as much elsewhere. Accident is an incomplete form,essentially so. But why? Not because it is incomplete as a form within the species to which it belongs; but because it is of the species of informing forms. Accordingly, it is essentially incomplete in itself and needs completing by some other entity. But how? Evidently by some Subject which may offer itself as Material Cause of its information, or actuation; because there is no other way in which an incomplete form can be completed. Therefore, accident, as being an incomplete or informing form, essentially postulates a Material Cause. ii. Accident is of being rather than being; that is to say, by its very nature, it has a transcendental relation to some other being whose it is. Such, indeed, is its essential dependence on that other as to deprive it, so to say, of any title to the name of Being. The redness of and in a rose one can understand; but redness by itself, without relation to some Subject, is a nonentity. Yet a form can have no other essential indigence of an entity distinct from itself and intrinsically necessary to its being, than as a Subject of information and inhesion. But this is exactly what is meant by a Material Cause. iii. Accident is not subsistent; that is to say, it does not exist sui juris, as pure or complete substantial forms do. Therefore, it essentially stands in need of some other entity in order that it may be; and this entity, for the reasons already alleged, will be its Material Cause. iv. It is more truly said to be a cause of existence to another than an existence itself; not that it gives absolute or simple existence to that other, but it adds a new existing entity to that other, which the latter did not possess before. Heat does not give absolute existence to the bar of iron, for this it presupposes; but it causes that the bar should begin to exist as a hot bar. If then, of itself accident can

be hardly said to exist and all its entity, as it were, naturally belongs to another; that other, for the same reasons, can be no other than the Subject, or Material Cause, of accident. v. Accident is rather a co-existence than an existence. But this co-existence connotes a transcendental relation to some other entity which can only be its Material Cause, as being that on which its existence. depends and which sustains it in existence.

NOTE I.

From what has been said, it will appear that there is no little similarity between an accidental form and Primordial Matter. For both are such attenuated entities as to be naturally incapable of existence without the support of another. Moreover, in both cases that other constituent in the integral composite is the principal and nobler element. The substantial form is far nobler than Primordial Matter; the Subject which, as we shall presently see, is complete substance, is far nobler than the accidental form. But there is this wide dissimilarity between the two; that Primordial Matter is a pure subjective potentiality, while the accidental form is an act. So again, there is this similarity between substantial and accidental forms, that both actuate their respective Subjects, and both give to them an existence in one way or the other. Moreover, if the substantial forms are exclusively material, both alike are educed out of the potentiality of their Subjects, and neither can exist apart from its Subject of information. But there are marked differences between the two. For, -not to repeat their difference of grade as constituents of their composite, the substantial form gives specific nature and absolute existence to Matter. On the contrary, the accidental form presupposes the existence of its Subject and the complete constitution. of that Subject in its essential nature, only adding thereto a new accidental manner of existence. Again: Not all substantial forms stand in need of or admit a Material Cause; all accidental forms do. Finally: There are the following differences, among others, between substance and accident, -differences mentioned here, because they are germane to the present consideration. All substance does not postulate a Material Cause; but only bodily substance. But accident naturally requires such a Subject. Further: It is to be noticed that spiritual substance may become the Material Cause of accidents, as will be seen later on; though

it does not admit of a Material Cause in its own constitution. Once more: A Material accident cannot become the form of a spiritual substance.

NOTE II.

Accidents may be considered in the concrete or in the abstract. An accident is conceived in the concrete, when it is expressly represented as in union with its Subject. Accordingly, its grammatical form is always adjectival. Thus, hot water, green fields, slow travelling, a novel thought, a virtuous man, are examples of concrete accidents. An accident is conceived in the abstract, when its proper entity is exclusively represented without connotation of the Subject. Its grammatical form is substantive. Thus, the abstract concepts of the above concrete examples would be, heat, greenness, slowness, novelty, virtue. Out of these two distinct ways of conceiving accidents has arisen a metaphysical question which is solved in the following Proposition. The problem is this: Whether accident in the abstract, that is to say, considered intrinsically as it is in its own entity apart from any relation to its Subject,-postulates a Material Cause. In other words, Does accident include a Material Cause as one of its intrinsic constituents?

PROPOSITION CLVIII.

Accident, considered in the abstract, does not admit of a Material Cause in its own essential constitution; but, considered in the concrete, it postulates a Material Cause with which it enters intrinsically into composition.

I. THE FIRST MEMBER of this Proposition, wherein it is asserted that accident, considered in the abstract, does not admit of a Material Cause in its own essential constitution, is undoubtedly the teaching of the Angelic Doctor. In a Chapter of one of his Opuscula, from which it will be necessary to borrow more largely in the solution of one of the difficulties, he (or whoever may be the author of this treatise) thus declares his mind: Since accident is not composed of Matter and form, genus and difference cannot be assumed in its case, as in that of substance, the genus from the Matter, the difference from the form1. Hence, in the judgment of St. Thomas, accident in the abstract has no Material Cause in its own intrinsic

1 Cum autem accidens non sit compositum ex materia et forma, non potest genus et differentia sumi in eo, sicut sumitur in substantia genus a materia, differentia a forma. Opusc. XLII, (aliter XXXIX), De Natura Generis, co 19.