Chapter IV: Reality as One and Manifold (2)

If the object formally represented by each of the concepts is one and the same—as, _e.g._ when we compare “_A_” with “_A_,” or “man” with “rational animal,” or, in general, any object with its definition—the identity is both _real and logical_ (or _conceptual_, _formal_). If the concepts differ in their formal objects while representing _one and the same reality_—as when we compare “St. Peter” with “head of the apostles,” or “man” with “rational”—the identity is _real, but not logical_ or formal. Finally, if we represent two or more realities, “John, James, Thomas,” by the same formal concept, “man,” the identity is _merely logical_ or formal, _not real_. Of these three kinds of identity the first is sometimes called _adequate_, the second and third _inadequate_.

Logical identity may be _specific_ or _generic_, according as we identify really distinct individuals under one specific concept, or really distinct species or classes under one generic concept. Again, it may be _essential_ or _accidental_, according as the abstract and universal class-concept under which really distinct members are classified represents a common part of the essence of these members or only a common property or accident. Thus John, James and Thomas are essentially identical in their _human nature_; they are accidentally identical in being all three _fair-haired_ and _six feet in height_. Logical identity under the concept of _quality_ is based on the real relation of _similarity_; logical identity under the concept of _quantity_ is based on the real relation of _equality_. When we say that _essential_ (logical) _identity_ (_e.g._ the identity of John, James and Thomas under the concept of “man”) is based on the fact that the really distinct individuals have really _similar_ natures, we merely mean that _our_ knowledge of natures or essences is derived from our knowledge of qualities, taking “qualities” in the wide sense of “accidents” generally: that the properties and activities of things are our only key to the nature of these things: _Operari sequitur esse._ It is not implied, nor is it true, that real _similarity_ is a partial _real identity_: it is but the ground of a partial _logical_ identity,—identity under the common concept of some quality (in the wide sense of this term). For example, the height of John is as really distinct from that of James as the humanity of John is from that of James. If, then, individual things are _really_ distinct, how is it that we can represent (even inadequately) _a multitude_ of them by _one_ concept? To say that we can do so because they reveal themselves to us as _similar_ to one another is to say what is undoubtedly true; but this does not solve the problem of the relation between the universal and the individual in human experience: rather it places us face to face with this problem.

Reverting now to _real_ identity: whatever we can predicate affirmatively about a being considered as _one_, and as subject of a judgment, we regard as really identical with that being. We cannot predicate a real part of its real whole, or _vice versa_. But our concepts, when compared together in judgment, bear _logical_ relations of extension and intension to each other, that is, relations of logical part to logical whole. Thus, the _logical_ identity of subject and predicate in the affirmative judgment may be only _inadequate_.(152) But the real identity underlying the affirmative judgment is an adequate real identity. When we say, for example, that “Socrates is wise,” we mean that the object of our concept of “wisdom” is in this case really and adequately identical with the object of our concept of “Socrates”: in other words that we are conceiving one and the same real being under two distinct concepts, each of which represents, more or less adequately, the whole real being, and one of them in this case less adequately than the other.

We have to bear in mind that while considering being as one or manifold, identical or distinct, we are thinking of it in its _static_ mode, as an object of abstract thought, not in its _dynamic and kinetic_ mode as actually existing in space and time, and subject to change. It is the identity of being with itself when considered in this static, unchanging condition, that is embodied in the logical _Principle of Identity_. In order, therefore, that this principle may find its application to being or reality _as subject to actual change_—and this is the state in which _de facto_ reality is presented to us as an immediate datum of experience—we must seize upon the changing reality and think of it in an indivisible instant apart from the change to which it is actually subject; only thus does the Principle of Identity apply to it—as _being_, not as _becoming_, not _in fieri_, but _in facto esse_. The Principle of Identity, which applies to all real being, whether possible or actual, tells us simply that “a thing is what it is”. But for the understanding of actual being as subject to real change we must supplement the Principle of Identity by another principle which tells us that such an actual being not only is actually what it is (Principle of Identity), but also that it _is potentially something other than what it actually is, that it is potentially what it can become actually_ (Ch. ii.).

We have seen that, since change is not continuous annihilation and creation, the changing being must in some real and true sense _persist_ throughout the process of change. It is from experience of change we derive our notion of time-duration; and the concept of permanence or stability throughout change gives us the notion of a real sameness or abiding self-identity which is compatible with real change. But a being which persists in existence is identical with itself throughout its duration only in so far forth as it has not changed. Only the Necessary Being, whose duration is absolutely exempt from all change, is _absolutely_ or _metaphysically_ identical with Himself: His duration is eternity—which is one perpetual, unchanging _now_. A being which persists unchanged in its essence or nature, which is exempt from substantial change, but which is subject to accidental change, to a succession of accidental qualities such as vital actions—such a being is said to retain its _physical_ identity with itself throughout those changes. Such, for instance, is the identity of the human soul with itself, or of any individual living thing during its life, or even of an inorganic material substance as long as it escapes substantial change. Finally, the persisting identity of a collection of beings, united by some moral bond so as to form a moral unit, is spoken of as _moral_ identity as long as the bond remains, even though the constituent members may be constantly disappearing to be replaced by others: as in a nation, a religious society, a legal corporation, etc.

35. DISTINCTION.—Distinction is the correlative of identity; it is the absence or negation of the latter. We express the relation called distinction by the negative judgment, “this is not that”; it is the relation of a being to whatever is not itself, the relation of _one_ to _other_.

Distinction may be either _adequate_ or _inadequate_, according as we distinguish one total object of thought from another total object, or only from a part of itself. For example, the distinction between John and James is an adequate real distinction, while that between John and his body is an inadequate real distinction; the distinction between John’s rationality and his animality is an adequate logical distinction, while the distinction between either of these and his humanity is an inadequate logical distinction.

We have already (23) briefly explained and illustrated the most important classification of distinctions: that into real and logical; the sub-division of the latter into purely logical and virtual; and of the latter again into perfect (complete, adequate) and imperfect (incomplete, inadequate). But the theory there briefly outlined calls for some further analysis and amplification.

36. LOGICAL DISTINCTIONS AND THEIR GROUNDS.—The purely logical distinction must not be confounded with a mere _verbal_ distinction, _e.g._ that between an “edifice” and a “building,” or between “truthfulness” and “veracity”. A logical distinction is a distinction _in the concepts_: these must represent one and the same reality but in different ways: the one may be more explicit, more fully analysed than the other, as a definition is in comparison with the thought-object defined; or the one may represent the object less adequately than the other, as when we compare (in intension) the concepts “man” and “animal”; or the one may be predicated of the other in an affirmative judgment; or the one may represent the object as concrete and individual, the other the same object as abstract and universal.(153)

Comparing, in the next place, the purely logical with the virtual distinction, we see that the grounds for making these distinctions are different. Every distinction made by the mind must have an intelligible ground or reason of some sort—a _fundamentum distinctionis_. Now in the case of the purely logical distinction the ground is understood to consist exclusively in the needs of the mind itself—needs which spring from the mind’s own limitations when confronted with the task of understanding or interpreting reality, of making reality intelligible. Purely logical distinctions are therefore seen to be a class of purely logical relations, _i.e._ of those _entia rationis_ which the mind must construct for itself in its effort to understand the real. They have no other reality as objects of thought than the reality they derive from the constitutive or constructive activity of the mind. They are modes, or forms, or terms, of the cognitive activity itself, not of the reality which is the object apprehended and contemplated by means of this cognitive activity.

The virtual distinction, on the other hand, although it also, as an object of thought, is only an _ens rationis_—inasmuch as there is no real duality or plurality corresponding to it in the reality into which the mind introduces it, this reality being a real _unity_—the virtual distinction is considered, nevertheless, to have a ground, or reason, or foundation (for making and introducing it) in the nature of this one reality; that is, it is regarded as having a _real_ foundation, a _fundamentum in re_. In so far, therefore, as our knowledge is permeated by virtual distinctions, reality cannot be said to be _formally_, but only _fundamentally_ what this knowledge represents it to be. Does this fact interfere with the objective validity of our knowledge? Not in the least; for we do not ascribe to the reality the distinctions, and other such modes or forms, which we know by reflection to be formally characteristic _not of things_ but _of our thought or cognition of things_. Our knowledge, therefore, so far as it goes, may be a faithful apprehension of reality, even though it be itself affected by modes not found in the reality.

But what is this _real_ foundation of the virtual distinction? What _is_ the _fundamentum in re_? It is not a real or objective duality in virtue of which we could say that there are, in the object of our thought, two beings or realities one of which is not the other. Such duality would cause a _real_ distinction. But just here the difficulties of our analysis begin to arise: for we have to fix our attention on actually existing realities; and, assuming that each and every one of these is an individual, we have to bear in mind the relation of the real to the actual, of reality as abstract and universal to reality as concrete and individual, of the simple to the composite, of the stable to the changing, of essential to accidental unity—in any and every attempt to discriminate in detail between a real and a virtual distinction. Nor is it easy to lay down any general test which will serve even theoretically to discriminate between them. Let us see what grounds have been mainly suggested as real foundations for the virtual distinction.

If a being which is not only one but simple, manifests, in the superior grade of being to which it belongs, a perfection which is equivalent to many lesser perfections found really distinct and separate elsewhere, in separate beings of an inferior order, this is considered a sufficient real ground for considering the former being, though really one and simple, as virtually manifold.(154) The human soul, as being virtually threefold—rational, sentient and vegetative—is a case in point: but only on the assumption that the soul of the individual man can be proved to be one and simple. This, of course, all scholastics regard as capable of proof: even those of them who hold that the powers or faculties whereby it immediately manifests these three grades of perfection are _accidental_ realities, _really distinct_ from one another and from the _substance_ of the soul itself.

Again, the being which is the object of our thought may be so rich in reality or perfection that our finite minds cannot adequately grasp it by any one mental intuition, but must proceed discursively, by analysis and abstraction, taking in partial aspects of it successively through inadequate concepts; while realizing that these aspects, these objects of our distinct concepts, are only partial aspects of one and the same real being. This, in fact, is our common experience. But the theory assumes that we are able to determine when these objects of our concepts are only mental aspects of _one_ reality, and when they are several separate realities; nay, even, that we can determine whether or not they are really distinct entities united together to form one _composite_ individual being, or only mentally distinct views of one _simple_ individual being. For example, it is assumed that while the distinction between the sentient and the rational grades of being in a human individual can be shown to be only a virtual distinction, that between the body and the soul of the same individual can be shown to be a real distinction; or, again, that while the distinction between essence, intellect, and will in God, can be shown to be only a virtual distinction, that between essence, intellect, and will in man, can be shown to be a real distinction.

37. THE VIRTUAL DISTINCTION AND THE REAL DISTINCTION.—Now scholastics differ considerably in classifying this, that, or the other distinction, as logical or as real; but this does not prove that it is impossible ever to determine with certitude whether any particular distinction is logical or real. What we are looking for just now is a general test for discriminating, if such can be found. And this brings us to a consideration of the test suggested in the very definitions themselves. At first sight it would appear to be an impracticable, if not even an unintelligible test: “The distinction is real if it exists in the reality—_i.e._ if the reality is _two_ (or more) _beings_, not _one being_—antecedently to, or independently of, the consideration of the mind; otherwise the distinction is logical”. But—it might be objected—how can we possibly know whether or not any object of perception or thought is _one_ or _more than one_ antecedently to, or independently of, the consideration of the mind? It is certainly impossible for us to know what, or what kind, reality is, or whether it is one or manifold, apart from and prior to, the exercise of our own cognitive activity. This, therefore, cannot be what the test means: to interpret it in such a sense would be absurd. But when we have perceived reality in our actual sense experience, when we have interpreted it, got the meaning of it, made it intelligible, and actually understood it, by the spontaneous exercise of intellect, the judging and reasoning faculty: then, obviously, we are at liberty to reflect critically on those antecedent spontaneous processes, on the knowledge which is the result of them, and the reality which is known through them; and by such critical reflection on those processes, their objects and their products, on the “reality as perceived and known” and on the “perceiving” and “knowing” of it, we may be able to distinguish between two classes of contributions to the total result which is the “known reality”: those which we must regard as purely mental, as modes or forms or subjectively constructed terms of the mental function of cognition itself (whether perceptual or conceptual), and those which we must regard as given or presented to the mind as objects, which are not in any sense constructed or contributed by the mind, which, therefore, are what they are independently of our mental activity, and which would be and remain what they are, and what we have apprehended them to be, even if we had never perceived or thought of them. This, according to the scholastics, is the sense—and it is a perfectly intelligible sense—in which we are called on to decide whether the related terms of any given distinction have been merely rendered distinct by the analytic activity of the cognitive process, or are themselves distinct realities irrespective of this process. That it is possible to carry on successfully, at least to some extent, this work of discrimination between the subjective and the objective factors of our cognitive experience, can scarcely be denied. It is what philosophers in every age have been attempting. There are, however, some distinctions about the nature of which philosophers have never been able to agree, some holding them to be real, others to be only virtual: the former view being indicative of the tendency to emphasize the rôle of cognition as a passive representation of objectively given reality; the latter view being an expression of the opposite tendency to emphasize the active or constitutive or constructive factors whereby cognition assimilates to the mind’s own mode of being the reality given to it in experience. In all cognition there is an assimilation of reality and mind, of object and subject. When certain distinctions are held to be real this consideration is emphasized: that in the cognitive process, as such, it is the mind that is assimilated to the objective reality.(155) When these same distinctions are held to be logical this other consideration is emphasized: that in the cognitive process reality must also be assimilated to mind, must be mentalized so to speak: _Cognitum est in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis_: that in this process the mind must often regard what is _one_ reality under _distinct aspects_: and that if we regard these distinct aspects as distinct realities we are violating the principle, _Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_.

Now those philosophers who hold certain distinctions to be
virtual, and not real, thereby ascribe to cognitive experience a
larger sphere of constitutive or constructive influence than would
be allowed to it by advocates of the reality of such distinctions.
But by doing so are they to be regarded as calling into question
the objective validity of human knowledge? By no means: the fact
that the human mind can understand reality only by processes of
abstracting, generalizing, comparing, relating, analysing and
synthesizing—processes which involve the production of logical
entities—in no way vitiates the value of these modes of
understanding: it merely indicates that they are less perfect than
intuitive modes of understanding which would dispense with such
logical entities,—the modes characteristic of pure, angelic
intelligences, or the knowledge of the Deity. The objective
validity of human cognition is not interfered with either by
enlarging or by restricting the domain of the mind’s constitutive
activity in forming such logical entities; nor, therefore, by
claiming that certain distinctions are real rather than virtual,
or _vice versa_. It must be remembered, moreover, that the virtual
distinction is not purely logical: it has a foundation in the
reality, a “_fundamentum in re_”; and in so far as it has it gives
us an insight into the nature of reality.

No doubt, any particular distinction cannot be virtual and at the
same time simply real: either view of it must be erroneous: and
possibly both, if it happen to be _de facto_ a _purely_ logical
distinction. But the error of confounding a virtual distinction
with a real is not so great as that of regarding either as a
purely logical distinction. Now the tendency of much modern
philosophy, under the influence of Kant, has been to regard all
the categories in which the mind apprehends reality as being
wholly and exclusively forms of cognition, as being in the reality
neither formally nor even fundamentally; and to infer from this an
essential, constitutional inability of the mind to attain to a
valid knowledge of reality. But if, as a matter of fact, these
categories are in the reality formally, nay, even if they are in
it only fundamentally, the inference that issues in Kantian
subjectivism is unwarranted. And those categories we hold to be in
the reality at least fundamentally; we therefore reject the
Kantian phenomenism of the speculative reason. Moreover, we can
see no valid ground for admitting the Kantian division of the
human mind into two totally separate cognitive compartments, the
speculative and the practical reason, and ascribing to each
compartment cognitive principles and capacities entirely alien to
the other. To arrive at a right theory of knowledge human
cognitive experience as a whole must be analysed; but provided the
analysis is really an analysis of this experience it may be
legitimately directed towards discovering what the mental
conditions must be—_i.e._ the conditions on the side of the
knowing subject, the subject having the experience—which are
_necessarily prerequisite_ for having such experience. And if it
be found by such analysis that cognitive experience presupposes in
the knowing subject not merely a sentient and intelligent mind,
but a mind which perceives, imagines, remembers reality in certain
definite ways; which thinks reality in certain modes and through
certain forms which by its own constitutive activity it constructs
for itself, and which it recognizes by reflection to be its own
constructions (_e.g._ distinctions, relations, affirmations and
negations, abstractions, generalizations, etc.: _intentiones
logicae_, logical entities),—there is no reason whatever in all
this for inferring that because the mind is so constituted,
because it has these modes of cognition, it must necessarily fail
to reach, by means of them, a true, valid, and genuine knowledge
of reality. From the fact that human modes of cognition are human,
and not angelic or divine; from the fact that reality can be known
_to man_ only through these modes, these finite modes of finite
human faculties,—we may indeed infer that even our highest
knowledge of reality is inadequate, that it does not _comprehend_
all that is in the reality, but surely not that it is essentially
illusory and of its very nature incapable of giving us any true
and valid insight into the nature of reality.

Fixing our attention on the virtual distinction we see that the mind is supposed by means of it to apprehend, through a plurality of distinct concepts, what it knows somehow or other to be _one_ being. Now if it knows the reality to be _really one_, it knows that the formal object of every distinct concept of this reality is really identical with the objects of all the other concepts of the latter. This condition of things is certainly verified when the mind can see that each of the distinct concepts, though not _explicitly_ presenting the objects of the others, nevertheless _implicitly and necessarily_ involves all these other objects:(156) for by seeing that the distinct concepts necessarily involve one another objectively it sees that the reality apprehended through all of them must necessarily be _one reality_. This is what takes place in the _imperfect_ virtual distinction: the concepts prescind from one another formally, not objectively. But suppose that the distinct concepts prescind from one another _objectively_, so that they cannot be seen by any analysis to involve one another even implicitly, but present to the mind, so far as they themselves are concerned, adequately distinct modes of being—as happens in the _perfect_ virtual distinction, _e.g._ between organic life, sentient life, and intellectual life (in man), or between animality and rationality (in man),—then the all-important question arises: How do we know, in any given case of this kind, whether or not these adequately distinct thought-objects are _identical with one another in the reality_? What is the test for determining whether or not, in a given case, these objects, which are _many_ for abstract intellectual thought, are _one being_ in the real order? The answer seems to be that _internal and external sense experience_ can and does furnish us with embodiments of these intellectual manifolds,—embodiments each of which we apprehend as _a being that is really one_, as an _individual subject_ of which they are conceptually distinct predicates.

It would appear, therefore, that we cannot reach a true conception
of what we are to regard as _really one_, or _really manifold_, by
abstract thought alone. It is external and internal sense
experience, not abstract thought, which first brings us into
direct and immediate mental contact with _actually existing_
reality. What we have therefore to determine is this: Does sense
experience, or does it not, reveal reality to us as a _real
manifold_, not as _one being_ but as _beings_ coexisting outside
one another in space, succeeding one another in time,
interdependent on one another, interacting on one another, and by
this interaction causing and undergoing real change, each
producing others, or being produced by others, really distinct
from itself? In other words, is separateness of existence in time
or space, as revealed in sense experience, a sufficient index of
the real manifoldness of corporeal being, and of the really
distinct individuality of each such being?—or are we to take it
that because those space and time distinctions have to be
apprehended by thought in order that not merely sense but
intellect may apprehend corporeal beings as really manifold,
therefore these distinctions are not _in the reality_ given to us?
Or, again, is each person’s own conscious experience of himself as
one being, of his own unity, and of his distinctness from other
persons, a sufficient index that the distinction between person
and person is a real distinction?—or are we to take it that
because his _feeling_ of his individual unity through sense
consciousness must be interpreted by the _thought-concepts_ of
“one”—“individual”—“person”—“distinct” from “others,” these
concepts do not truly express what is really given him to
interpret? Finally, if we can infer from the actually existing
material reality which forms the immediate datum of direct
experience, or from the human _Ego_ as given in this experience,
the actual existence of a real mode of being which is not material
but spiritual, by what tests can we determine whether this
spiritual mode of being is really one, or whether there is a real
plurality of such beings? The solution of these questions bears
directly on the validity of the adequate or “greater” real
distinction, the “_distinctio realis major seu absoluta_”.

The philosophy which defends the validity of this
distinction,—which holds that the distinction between individual
human beings, and between individual living things generally, is
in the fullest and truest sense a real distinction,—is at all
events in conformity with universally prevailing modes of thought
and language; while the monism which repudiates these spontaneous
interpretations of experience as invalid by denying all real
manifoldness to reality, can make itself intelligible only by
doing violence to thought and language alike. Not that this alone
is a disproof of monism; but at all events it creates a
presumption against a system to find it running counter to any of
those universal spontaneous beliefs which appear to be rooted in
man’s rational nature. On the other hand, the philosophy which
accords with common belief in proclaiming a real plurality in
being has to reconcile intellect with sense, and the universal
with the individual, by solving the important problem of
_individuation_: What is it that makes real being individual, if,
notwithstanding the fact that intellect apprehends reality as
abstract and universal, reality nevertheless can exist only as
concrete and individual? (29-33).

38. THE REAL DISTINCTION.—In the next place it must be remembered, comparing the virtual distinction with the real, that philosophers have recognized two kinds of real distinction: the _major_ or _absolute_ real distinction, and the _minor_ real, or _modal_ distinction. Before defining these let us see what are the usual signs by which a real distinction in general can be recognized.

The relation of efficient causality, of efficient cause and
effect, between two objects of thought, is sometimes set down as a
sure sign of a (major) real distinction between them.(157) And the
reason alleged is that a thing cannot be the efficient cause of
itself: the efficient cause is necessarily extrinsic to the effect
and cannot be really identical with the latter. It is to be noted
that this test applies to reality as actually existing, as
producing or undergoing change, and that it is derived from our
sense experience of reality in process of change. But since our
concept of efficient causality has its origin in our internal
experience of our own _selves_ as active agents, as causing some
portion of what enters into our experience, the test seems to
assume that we have already introduced into this experience a real
distinction between the self and what is caused by the self. It is
not clear that the relation of efficient cause to effect, as
applied to created causes, can precede and reveal, in our
experience, the relation of what is _really one_ to what is
_really other_, in this experience. If the reality revealed to us
in our direct experience, the phenomenal universe, has been
brought into existence by the creative act of a Supreme Being,
this, of course, implies a real distinction between Creator and
creature. But it does not seem possible in this case, or indeed in
any case, to prove the existence of the causal relation
antecedently to that of the real distinction, or to utilize the
former as an index to the latter.

Two distinct thought-objects are regarded as _really_ distinct (1) when they are found to exist separately and apart from each other in time or space, as is the case with any two individuals such as John and James, or a man and a horse; (2) when, although they are found in the same individual, one of them at least is separable from the other, in the sense that it can actually exist without that other: for example, the soul of any individual man can exist apart from the material principle with which it is actually united to form this living human individual; the individual himself can exist without the particular accidental modes, such as sitting, thinking, speaking, which actually affect his being at any particular instant of his existence.

From this we can gather in the first place that the distinction between two “individuals,”—individual “persons” or individual “things”—is a real distinction in the fullest and plainest sense of this expression, a major or absolute real distinction. It is, moreover, not merely real but actual. Two existing “individuals” are always actually divided and separate from each other, while each is actually one or actually undivided in itself. And they are so “independently of the consideration of the mind”.

In the second place, assuming that the mind can apprehend, in the individuals of its experience, a unity resulting from the union or composition of separable factors or principles, whether essential or accidental [27 (_b_)]; and assuming that it can know these factors to be really separable (though actually one and undivided), that is, separable in the sense that each of any two such factors, or at least one of them, could actually exist without the other,—it regards the distinction between such factors as real. They are really distinct because though _actually_ one and undivided they are _potentially_ manifold. If each has a positive entity of its own, so that absolutely speaking each could exist without the other, the distinction is still regarded as an absolute or major real distinction. For example, the human soul can exist without the body; the body can exist without the soul, being actualized by the new formative principle or principles which replace the soul at death; therefore there is an absolute real distinction between the soul and the body of the living human individual: although both factors form _one actual being_, still, independently of the consideration of the mind _the one factor is not the other_: each is really, though only potentially, other than the factor with which it is united: the relation of “one” to “other” though not _actually_ verified of either factor (since there is only _one actual_ being: the existing individual man), is potentially and really verified, _i.e._ _verifiable_ of each. Again, the individual corporeal substance can, absolutely speaking, exist without its connatural accident of external or local extension; this latter can, absolutely speaking, exist without its connatural substance;(158) therefore these are absolutely and really distinct.

If only one of the factors is seen to be capable of existing without the other, and the latter to be such that it could not actually exist except as united with the former, so that the separability is not mutual, the distinction is regarded still as real, but only as a _minor_ or _modal_ distinction. Such, for instance, is the distinction between a body and its location, or its state of rest or motion: and, in general, the distinction between a substance and what are called its accidental modes or modal accidents. The distinction is regarded as real because reflection is held to assure us that it is in the reality itself independently of the mind, and not merely imposed by the mind on the reality because of some ground or reason in the reality. It is called a modal distinction rather than an absolute real distinction because those accidental modes of a substance do not seem to have of themselves sufficient reality to warrant our calling them “things” or “realities,” but rather merely “modes” or “determinations” of things or realities. It is significant, as throwing light on the relation of the virtual to the real distinction, that some authors call the modal distinction not a real distinction but a “distinctio _media_,” _i.e._ intermediate between a real and a logical distinction; and that the question whether it should be called simply a real distinction, or “intermediate” between a real and a logical distinction is regarded by some as “a purely verbal question.”(159) We shall recur to the modal distinction later (68).

In the third place it must be noted that separability _in the sense explained_, even non-mutual, is not regarded as the _only_ index to a real distinction. In other words, certain distinctions are held by some to be real even though this test of separability does not apply. For instance, it is commonly held that not merely in man but in _all_ corporeal individuals the formative and the determinable principle of the nature or substance, the _forma substantialis_ and the _materia prima_, are really distinct, although it is admitted that, apart from the case of the human soul, _neither_ can actually exist except in union with the other. What is held in regard to _accidental_ modes is also applied to these essential principles of the corporeal substance: _viz._ that there is here a special reason why such principles cannot actually exist in isolation. Of their very nature they are held to be such that they cannot be _actualized_ or _actually exist_ in isolation, but only in union. But this fact, it is contended, does not prove that the principles in question are merely mentally distinct aspects of one reality: the fact that they cannot actually exist as such separately does not prove that they are not really separable; and it is contended that they are really and actually separated whenever an individual corporeal substance undergoes substantial change.

This, then, raises once more the question: What sort of
“separation” or “separability” is the test of a real distinction?
Is it separateness in and for sense perception, or separateness in
and for intellectual thought? The former is certainly the
fundamental index of the real distinction; for all our knowledge
of reality originates in sense experience, and separateness in
time and space, which marks its data, is the key to our knowledge
of reality as a manifold of really distinct individual beings; and
when we infer from sense-experience the actual existence of a
_spiritual_ domain of reality we can conceive _its_ “individuals”
only after the analogy of the corporeal individuals of our
immediate sense experience. Scholastic philosophers, following
Aristotle, have always taken the manifoldness of reality, _i.e._
its presentation in sense experience in the form of “individuals,”
of “this” and “that,” “τοδὲ τι,” “_hoc aliquid_,” as an
unquestioned and unquestionable _real datum_. Not that they
naïvely assumed everything _perceived by the senses_ as an
individual, in time and space, to be really an individual: they
realized that what is perceived by sense as _one_ limited
continuum, occupying a definite portion of space, may be in
reality an aggregate of many individuals; and they recognized the
need of scrutinizing and analysing those apparent individuals in
order to test their real individuality; but they held, and
rightly, that sense experience does present to us some data that
are unmistakably real individuals—individual men, for instance.
Next, they saw that intellectual thought, by analysing sense
experience, amasses an ever-growing multitude of abstract and
conceptually distinct thought-objects, which it utilizes as
predicates for the interpretation of this sense experience. These
thought-objects intellect can unite or separate; can in some cases
positively see to be mutually compatible or incompatible; can form
into ideal or possible complexes. But whether or not the
_conceptually_ distinct, though mutually compatible,
thought-objects forming any such complex, will be also _really
distinct_ from one another, is a question which evidently cannot
arise until such a complex is considered as an actual or possible
_individual being_: for it is the individual only that exists or
can exist. They will be _really_ distinct when found actualized in
_distinct individuals_. Even the _conceptually_ one and
self-identical abstract thought-object will be _really distinct
from itself_ when embodied in distinct individuals; the one single
abstract thought-object, “humanity,” “human nature,” is really
distinct from itself in John and in James; the humanity of John is
_really other_ than the humanity of James.

Of course, if conceptually distinct thought-objects are seen to be
mutually incompatible they cannot be found realized except in
really distinct individuals: the union of them is only an _ens
rationis_. Again it may be that the intellect is unable to
pronounce positively as to whether they are compatible or not
(18): as to whether the complex forms a possible being or not. But
when the intellect positively sees such thought-objects to be
mutually compatible—by interpretation of, and inference from, its
actual sense experience of them as embodied in individuals
(18)—and when, furthermore, it now finds a number of them
co-existing in some one actual individual, the question recurs:
How can it know whether they are _really distinct_ from each
other, though actually united to form one (essentially or
accidentally composite) individual, or only conceptually distinct
aspects of one (simple) individual [27 (_b_)]?

This, as we have seen already, is the case for which it is really
difficult to find a satisfactory test: and hence the different
views to be found among scholastic philosophers as to the nature
of the distinctions which the mind makes or discovers _within the
individual_. The difficulty is this. The conceptual distinction
between compatible thought-objects is not a proof of real
distinction when these thought-objects are found united in _one
individual_ of sense experience, as _e.g._ animality and
rationality in man; and the only distinction given to us by sense
experience, at least directly and immediately, as undoubtedly
real, is the distinction _between_ corporeal _individuals_
existing apart in space or time, as _e.g._ between man and man.
How then, can we show that any distinctions _within the
individual_ are real?

Well, we have seen that certain entities, which are objects of
sense or of thought, or of both, can disappear from the individual
without the residue thereby perishing or ceasing to exist actually
as an individual: the human soul survives, as an actual individual
reality, after its separation from the material principle with
which it formed the individual man; the individual man persists
while the accidental modes that affect him disappear. In such
cases as these, intellect, interpreting sense experience and
reasoning from it, places a real distinction, in the composite
individual, between the factors that can continue to exist without
others, and these latter. In doing so it is apparently applying
the analogy of the typical real distinction—that between one
individual and another. The factor, or group of factors, which can
continue to exist actually after the separation of the others, is
an individual: and what were separated from it were apparently
real entities, though they may have perished by the actual
separation. But on what ground is the distinction between the
material principle and the vital principle of a plant or an
animal, for example, regarded as real? Again on the ground
furnished by the analogy of the distinction between individuals of
sense experience. Note that it is not between the material and the
vital principles _as objects of abstract thought_, _i.e._ between
the _materiality_ and the _vitality_ of the plant or the animal,
that a real distinction is claimed: these are regarded only as
conceptually distinct aspects of the plant or the animal; nor is
it admitted that because one of these thought-objects is found
embodied elsewhere in nature without the other—materiality without
vitality in the inorganic universe—we can therefore conclude that
they are really distinct in the plant or the animal. No; it is
between the two principles conceived as coexisting and united in
the concrete individual that the real distinction is claimed. And
it is held to be a real distinction because substantial change in
corporeal things, _i.e._ corruption and generation of individual
corporeal substances, is held to be real. If it is real there is a
real separation of essential factors when the individual perishes.
And the factors continue to be real, as _potential_ principles of
other individuals, when any individual corporeal substance
perishes. Each principle may not continue to exist actually as
such in isolation from the other—though some scholastics hold
that, absolutely speaking, they could be conserved apart, as
actual entities, by the Author of Nature. But they _can_ actually
exist _as essential principles of other actual individuals_: they
are real _potentialities_, which _become actual_ in other
individuals. Thus we see that they are conceived throughout _after
the analogy of the individual_. Those who hold that, absolutely
speaking, the material principle as such, _materia prima_, could
actually exist in isolation from any formative principle, should
apparently admit that in such a case it would be _an individual
reality_.

39. SOME QUESTIONABLE DISTINCTIONS. THE SCOTIST DISTINCTION.—The difficulty of discriminating between the virtual and the real distinction in an individual has given rise to the conception of distinctions which some maintain to be real, others to be less than real. The virtual distinction, as we have hitherto understood it, may be described as _extrinsic_ inasmuch as it arises in the individual only when we consider the latter under different aspects, or in different relations to things extrinsic to it. By regarding an individual under different aspects—_e.g._ a man under the aspects of animality and rationality—we can predicate contradictory attributes of the individual, _e.g._ of a man that “he is similar to a horse,” and that “he is not similar to a horse”. Now it is maintained by some that although independently of the consideration of the mind the grounds of these contradictory predications are not _actually_ distinct in the individual, nevertheless even before such consideration the individual has a real _intrinsic capacity_ to have these contradictory predicates affirmed of him: they can be affirmed of him not merely when he is regarded, and because he is regarded, under conceptually different aspects, but because these principles, “animality” and “rationality,” are already really in him not merely as aspects but as distinct capacities, as potentially distinct principles of contradictory predications.

The virtual distinction, understood in this way, is described as _intrinsic_. It is rejected by some on the ground that, at least in its application to finite realities, it involves a violation of the principle of contradiction: it seems to imply that one and the same individual has in itself absolutely (and not merely as considered under different aspects and relations) the capacity to verify of itself contradictory predicates.

Scotus and his followers go even farther than the advocates of this intrinsic virtual distinction by maintaining the existence of a distinction which on the one hand they hold to be less than real because it is not between “thing and thing,” and on the other hand to be more than logical or virtual, because it _actually_ exists between the various thought-objects or “_formalitates_” (such, _e.g._ as animality and rationality) in the individual, independently of the analytic activity whereby the mind detects these in the latter. This distinction Scotists call a “formal distinction, actual on the part of the thing”—“_distinctio formalis_, _actualis ex natura rei_.” Hence the name “formalists” applied to Scotists, from their advocacy of this “Scotistic” distinction. It is, they explain, a distinction not between “things” (“_res_”) but between “formalities” (“_formalitates_”). By “thing” as opposed to “formality” they mean not merely the individual, but also any positive thought-object which, though it may not be capable of existing apart, can really appear in, or disappear from, a thing which can so exist: for instance, the essential factors of a really composite essence, its accidental modes, and its real relations. By “formality” they mean a positive thought-object which is absolutely inseparable from the thing in which it is apprehended, which cannot exist without the thing, nor the thing without it: for instance, all the metaphysical grades of being in an individual, such as substantiality, corporeity, life, animality, rationality, individuality, in an individual man. The distinction is called “formal” because it is between such “formalities”—each of which is the positive term of a separate concept of the individual. It is called “_actual_ on the side of the thing” because it is claimed to be _actually_ in the latter apart from our mental apprehension of the individual. What has chiefly influenced Scotists in claiming this distinction to be thus _actually_ in the individual, independently of our mental activity, is the consideration that these metaphysical grades are grounds on which we can predicate contradictory attributes of the same individual, _e.g._ of an individual man that “he is similar to a horse” and that “he is not similar to a horse”: whence they infer that in order to avoid violation of the principle of contradiction, we must suppose these grounds to be _actually_ distinct in the thing.

To this it is replied, firstly, that if such predications were truly contradictory we could avoid violation of the principle of contradiction only by inferring a _real_ distinction—which Scotists deny to exist—between these grounds; secondly, that such predications are not truly contradictory inasmuch as “he is similar” really means “he is partially similar,” and “he is not similar” means “he is not completely similar”; therefore when we say that a man’s rationality “_is not_ the principle whereby he resembles a horse,” and his animality “_is_ the principle whereby he resembles a horse,” we mean (_a_) that his rationality is not the principle of complete resemblance, though we know it is the principle of partial resemblance, inasmuch as we see it to be really identical with that which is the principle of partial resemblance, _viz._ his animality; and we mean (_b_) that his animality is the principle of his partial resemblance to a horse, not of total resemblance, for we know that the animality of a man is not perfectly similar to that of a horse, the former being really identical with rationality, the latter with irrationality. When, then, we predicate of one thing that “it is similar to some other thing,” and that “it is not similar to this other thing” we are not really predicating contradictories of the same thing; if we take the predicates as contradictories they are true of the same reality undoubtedly, but not under the same aspect. Scotists themselves admit that the _real identity_ of these aspects involves no violation of the principle of contradiction; why, then, should these be held to be _actually_ distinct formalities independently of the consideration of the mind? How can a distinction that is actual independently of the mind’s analysis of the reality be other than real? Is not predication a work of the mind? And must not the conditions on which reality verifies the predication be determined by the mind? If, then, we see that in order to justify this predication—of “similar” and “not similar”—about any reality, it is merely necessary that the mind should apprehend this reality to be in its undivided unity equivalent to manifold grades of being or perfection which the mind itself can grasp as mentally distinct aspects, by distinct concepts, how can we be justified in supposing that these grades of being are not merely _distinguishable_, but _actually distinct_ in the reality itself, _independently of the mind_?

The Scotist doctrine here is indicative of the tendency to
emphasize, perhaps unduly, the assimilation of reality as a datum
with the mind which interprets this datum; to regard the
constitution of reality itself as being what abstract thought,
irrespective of sense experience, would represent it; and
accordingly to place in the reality as being actually there,
independently of thought, distinctions which as a matter of fact
may be merely the product of thought itself.

Scotists, by advocating an _actual_ distinction between these
grades of being, as “formalities” in the individual, have exposed
themselves to the charge of extreme realism. They teach that each
of these “formalities” has, for abstract thought, a _formal_ unity
which is _sui generis_. And this unity is not regarded as a
product of thought, any more than the distinction between such
unities. Thus, the materiality apprehended by thought in all
material things is one, not because it is made one by the
abstracting and universalizing activity of thought, as most if not
all other scholastics teach; it is not merely _conceptually one_
through our thought-activity, it is _formally one_ apart from the
latter; and it thus knits into a “formal” unity all material
things. And so does “life” all living things; and “animality” all
animals; and “rationality” all men. Now, if this “formal unity” of
any such essential or metaphysical grade of being were regarded as
a real unity, monism would be of course the logically inevitable
corollary of the theory.

But the “formal” unity of any such essential grade of being
Scotists will not admit to be a real unity, though they hold it to
be characteristic of reality independently of our thought. They
contend that this unity is quite compatible with the _real
plurality_ conferred upon being by the principles which
individuate the latter; and thus they cannot be fairly accused of
monism. Their reasoning here is characteristically subtle. Just as
any metaphysical grade of being, considered as an object of
thought, is in itself neither manifold individually nor one
universally—so that, as Thomists say, designating it in this
condition as the _universale directum_, or _metaphysicum_, or
_fundamentale_, or _quoad rem conceptam_, we can truly affirm of
it in this condition neither that it is one (logically, as a
universal) nor that it is manifold (really, as multiplied in
actual individuals),(160)—so likewise, Scotists contend, it is in
this condition _ontologically_, as an entity in the real order
independently of thought, and as such has a unity of its own, a
formal unity, which, while uniting in a formal unity all the
individuals that embody it, is itself incapable of fitting this
grade of being for actual existence, and therefore admits those
ultimate individuating principles which make it a real manifold in
the actual order.(161)

Thus, the metaphysical grade of being, which, as considered in
itself, Thomists hold to be an abstraction, having no other unity
than that which thought confers upon it by making it logically
universal, Scotists on the contrary hold to be as such something
positive in the ontological order, having there a “formal” unity
corresponding to the “conceptual” or “logical” unity which thought
confers upon it by universalizing it. The metaphysical grade of
being, thus conceived as something positive in the real order,
Scotists will not admit to be a “reality,” nor the unity which
characterizes it a “real” unity. But after all, if such a
“formality” with its proportionate “unity,” is independent of
thought; and if on the other hand “universality” is the work of
thought, so that the universal as such cannot be real, it is not
easy to see how the Scotist doctrine escapes the error of extreme
realism. The metaphysical grade of being is a “formality” only
because it is _made abstract_ by thought; and it has “unity” only
because it is _made logically universal_ by thought; therefore to
contend that as such it is something positive in the real order,
independently of thought, is to “reify” the abstract and universal
as such: which is extreme realism.