.

_-·ιτ mmn^

LESSONS IN

SCHOLASTIC
PHILOSOPHY
BY MICHAEL W. SHALLO, S. J.
FORMER. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA

WITH AN OUTLINE
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

BY PATRICK J. FOOTE, & J·
ST. IGNATIUS COLLEGE
SAN FRANCISCO

kb.

V-

PHILADELPHIA

THE PETER REILLY COMPANY
PUBLISHERS — IMPORTERS
1929

............

202

-

--

·”

_~-------...------- ...

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

attained, and of the various relations existing between the
elements to be co-ordinated or subordinated in order to attain it
Hence, a constant ordered arrangement of many distinct
elements, of themselves unintelligent, and indifferent to this
arrangement or another, requires intelligence as its propor­
tionate efficient cause. This is a simple metaphysical principle
universally recognized by the common sense of mankind. It
is, in fact, an immediate application of the Principle of
Causality.
Supplementary Article.—Beauty.

85. Beauty is that property or perfection in things, on
account of which their mere perception, apart from use, posses­
sion or other advantages, pleases; “perfection giving pleasure
to the beholder.”
That an object be beautiful, therefore, it must be (1) per­
fect in entity and action; (2) all its elements, really or virtu­
ally distinct must be duly proportioned and harmoniously
related to each other; (3) this perfection and harmony of parts
must clearly manifest itself to the beholder. .
Wherever, therefore, these three elements are found in
any object, whether of the spiritual or material order, there we
have beauty, the “splendide perfectum.”
1
86. As only intelligence can apprehend completeness and
harmony of elements, it follows that the intellect is strictly
the aesthetic faculty; as our power of reasoning may be
cultivated and perfected, so our taste or power of apprehending
and enjoying beauty may be perfected by culture.

PART THREE
COSMOLOGY

i
:
[
I
I
I

I. Cosmology is, The science of the material universe.
Its material object is corporeal substance and its nroperties.
Its formal objects are the ultimate supra-sensible causes of the
same. As the ultimate escient, final and exemplary Cause of
all finite Beings is the subject-matter of Natural Theology,
we shall confine ourselves here mainly to the investigation of
the ultimate material and formal causes of corporeal substances,
their properties and phenomena.
We start with the data of observation and experiment,
and applying rational principles to these we shall deduce a
systematic body of ultimate truth in regard to the nature and
properties of corporeal substance in general and of the three
highest genera into which it is divided, viz. : the mineral, vege­
table and animal kingdoms of nature.
We may conveniently divide our subject into three Chap­
ters:—
I. The General Properties of Corporeal Substance.
II. The Intrinsic Constituents of Corporeal Substance.
III. Organic Life.

CHAPTER I.
General Properties of Corporeal Substance.
i

We may group what we have to say on this subject under
two heads, viz.: I, Quantity; II, Motion.
s»3

y

304

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY
Article I.—Quantity.

ί·

2. Quantity.—The most obviously manifested property of
bodies is quantity, i. e., that property in virtue of which they
are extended, have parts outside parts, are divisible and occupy
space; so that different parts of the occupying body correspond
to different parts of the occupied space^
Omitting other senses in which the word quantity may be
used, we speak here only of continuous quantity. This is had
when the extraposited parts are bounded by common limits,
that is to say, the parts into which the extended substance is
divisible, but not divided have, antecedently to division, no
extremities of their own distinct from those of the whole^..·
We have in reality but one thing, though that one thing is
divisible into many parts, i. e., it is actually one; potentially
many.
3. That we have the concept of such continuous quantity
is undisputed : the whole science of geometry is based upon it.
Let us briefly analyze its contents. Take, for instance, a cubic
foot of continuous extension, prescinding from.the particular
substance to which it belong. Extension thus conceived is
mathematical quantity. It has three dimensions: length,
breadth, and depth, or thickness. The solid is bounded or
terminated by surfaces; the surface, by lines; the line, by
points. A point has no extension; a line, neither breadth nor
depth; a surface, no depth. Points, lines and surfaces, then,
are but the limits or extremities of linear, superficial and solid
extension, respectively, and have no positive entity of their
own apart from that of the extension they terminate.
Note.—All actual extension, therefore, is represented by
lines, surfaces, or solids, i. e., extension of one. two or three
dimensions. This may be expressed algebraically by the sym­
bols x, χ1, χ\ e. g,t 'an inch long,’ ‘an inch square,’ ‘a cubic
inch.’ Bm if we go on, in the same sense of the terms, to write
it becomes impossible to realize or to conceive a

j
i
,
i
i
«
|
I

|
,

i
i

COSMOLOGY

<

205

geometric figure which such a symbol might represent. Hence,
the N-dimensional extension of the non-Euclidean geometry
becomes when applied to continuous quantity a mere algebraic
illusion.
4. Continuous extension of whatever kind is necessarily
divisible. But how far is it divisible? Take a line an inch
long, for instance, halve it, take half of that half again, and
so on, as often as you please. Shall you ever reach a part
which is incapable of further division, that is to say, unex­
tended? Clearly no; for, if you could divide the line into un­
extended points, then the sum of these points should give you
the line, and you should have O, O, O, etc., equals 1 inch. In
the same way, it is obvious that a surface cannot be divided
into a sum of lines ; or a solid into a sum of surfaces. Hence,
continuous extension is divisible into parts which are them­
selvesextended and, therefore, indefinitely divisible.
Note.—In the preceding paragraph we have been speaking
of the divisibility of continuous quantity as such, i. e., con­
sidered in itself and without regard to.the substance to which
it belongs. If we consider, however, the quantified corporeal
substance, then we admit that there is a minimum beyond which
division cannot go, atoms in the literal sense of the word.
Thus, there is a minimum quantity of material substance re­
quired for the smallest existible portion of O-, C., H., etc.
But in all these cases the indivisibility is due, not to the
quantity as such, but to the nature of the substance. “Corpus
mathematice acceptum divisible in infinitum; corpus naturale
non est divisible in infinitum * ♦ * sed requirit determinatam
quantitatem.”
5. But, again, we may ask: In what sense are the parts
into which it is divisible contained in the undivided con­
tinuous whole? A quantitative part implies two things, viz. :
(l) a positive extended reality, (2) with limits or extremities
of its own so that it is impossible to conceive a part without
conceiving it as terminated by limits of its own independent

2θ6

scholastic philosophy

of those of the whole of which it is part. Now, in continuous
extension we have the positive reality, but not the independent
boundaries ; consequently, we have no actual parts ; we have
actual unity and only potential plurality. Hence, if we are
asked how many parts are there in a given continuous line,
we answer there are no parts; there may be more than you
can think.
6. But now we go on to ask, Is continuous extension a
real property of bodies in the world around us (physical
quantity)? or are the bodies we see and touch made up of a
multitude of unextended mathematical points ? The question
is general; nor do we care for the moment to inquire whether
the larger tangible masses around us are themselves continu­
ously extended, or merely composed of contiguous smaller
masses which are so continuously extended. We are satisfied
here, if it be admitted that there is in nature an objective
reality corresponding to our concept of continuous quantity.
Now, we say it is absurd to maintain that the extension and the
extended resistance which our senses perceive in the material
world can arise from a multitude of unextended points. For,
either these points are contiguous, and then, as they have no
extension either of length, breadth or solidity, any number of
them touching each other will give us, as far as extension is
concerned, only O, O, O, etc.=O; or they are not contiguous,
but separated from each other by an interval, and then, as
unextended points do not occupy space, the visible tangible
universe becomes in reality an unoccupied vacuum; and exten­
sion a subjective illusion projected upon a background of
nothingness. Nor will it help to say that it is the motion of
these points, in space which furnishes the basis of our percep­
tion of continuous extension. For, to perceive the motion of
an object is simply to perceive the object itself as it moves
from place to place; but here the object is imperceptible, and,
consequently, its motion and the path in which it moves are
imperceptible. We conclude, therefore, that 'our concept of

-,

à

. /i

xVd

!

COSMOLOGY

207

continuous extension is verified in the corporeal substances
around us, i. e., that bodies have continuous extension of 1
I dimensions.
Note.—Some have supposed that the continuous extension
we perceive can be accounted for by supposing that bodies are
made up of unextended points of force separated off from one
another and acting across the interval which divides them.
In this supposition, we ask what sort of a being is it that
bridges over the vacuum between unextended force centers
and gives us the continuity we perceive in our own bodies and
in the material world around us? A substance? Then we
have real extension. An accident? Then we have an accident
self-supporting, an accident which is not an accident but a sub­
stance and extended so as to fill the interval. Nothing? Then
the continuous extension which our senses, whether alone or
when aided by the most powerful physical instruments, cannot
help perceiving is merely an inevitable illusion, and idealism
and scepticism are the necessary logical consequence.
It is true that science reveals that many bodies which seem
to be continuous to the unaided senses are in reality porous.
But science, too, reveals and requires true continuity, and in
order to account for the propagation of light, etc., fills all those
ultimate pores with hypothetical ether, itself a continuously
extended and highly elastic material substance.
7. Continuous quantity, then, is a real property of bodies.
In what does it formally consist?
■ In corporeal substance we may consider many character­
istics, all of which are more or less closely connected with that
. actual extension in space from which we derive our concept of
continuous extension. Thus (a) we may consider the cor­
poreal substance in itself; and this of its very nature, as dis­
tinguished from spiritual substance, implies entitative parts and
parts ; (b) we may consider this multiplicity of parts as con' tinuously connected and extraposited in a certain determinate
order in relation to each other; (c) we may consider this

r

aoS

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

internally quantified body as actually occupying a definite por­
tion of space.
Now, the mere multiplicity of parts included in the essen­
tial concept of corporeal substance in no way corresponds with
our concept of continuous quantity. On the other hand, the
actual extraposition of continuous parts in a definite order in
relation to space implies as prior to itself their extraposition in
a definite order in relation to each other.
Hence we say that the formal or primary effect of quantity
consists in the continuous extraposition of the parts of a sub­
stance in relation to each other whence flows its connatural
aptitude and capacity to occupy space. Hence, quantity may
be described as a property which gives to corporeal substance
internal continuous extension in virtue of which it becomes
capable of occupying space and actually does occupy space
unless the ordinary laws of nature are interfered with.
8. That this property must be conceived as a positive per­
fection not included in the adequate essential concept of cor­
poreal substance is clear from what we have just said. But we
may go further and ask, If the substance and the quantity of a
body are two distinct things? Long ago the old Greek philos­
ophers by mere “discourse of reason” arrived at the conclusion
that the substance of a *body is one thing ; its quantity,
quite another. For, as they said, the corporeal substance, e. g.,
of a fig-tree or of a crystal of sulphur, is certainly something
different from the property which extraposits their entitative
parts in the order which they naturally take and gives them the
power of occupying a definitely outlined portion of space.
This property would then be an absolute accident of cor­
poreal substance, nor could any valid reason be assigned why
it could not be miraculously sustained in existence from the
corporeal substance in which it connaturally inheres.
9- Variability of Volume.—External local extension, we
have said (6), is a connatural result of quantity. Now, is
this external extension—this actuation of the quantified body’s

J

i

J

COSMOLOGY

209

i

,

I
;
i

J

,
‘

'
f
,

,

aptitude to occupy space—constant under all. circumstances?
Or is it variable within certain limits under the influence of
natural agencies, e. g., heat, pressure, etc. ? The latter is the
view of the plain common sense of mankind, and, philosophi­
cally speaking, seems altogether necessary to account for some
of the commonest phenomena in nature, e. g., ‘the contraction
and extension of bodies,’ ‘elasticity,’ ‘universal attraction,’ ‘the
transmission of sound,’ ‘heat,’ etc., etc. Indeed, if we deny
this variableness of real volume, we must ultimately assume the
existence of action at a distance, i. e., across a vacuum—“an
assumption which may be made to account for anything; but
it is impossible, as Newton long ago pointed out, for any one
who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking to admit for a moment the possibility of such action.”*
If, then, there are good reasons for maintaining that ex­
ternal local extension as a secondary effect of quantity is
naturally variable within certain limits, there can be little
difficulty in admitting that a quantified body may miraculously
exist without any external local extension, i. e., with merely
aptitudinal or potential external extension.
io. Impenetrability is that, power by which an actually
extended body maintains its possession of the portion of space
it occupies and hinders another actually extended body from
simultaneously occupying it. But here again we must distin­
guish the power from its actual exercise; just as we distinguish
between the power of thinking and its actual exercise. The
power of excluding other bodies from the same place is an
essential concomitant of quantity ; but, though its actual exer­
cise naturally follows upon its possession, just as actual local
extension is a natural consequence of quantity ; yet, there is
no ground for denying that its exercise may be prenaturally
modified or suspended by the all-controlling power of God.
No power can be exercised without His free concurrence, and
there is no reason why He should not modify or suspend this
. *
Tait & Stewart, “The Unseen Universe,” p. 146.

Î ’’
i

310

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

concurrence in a particular case, when His Wisdom sees fit to
do so.
■ ■
: ν’
II. Space.—From the actually extended bodies around us,
we easily derive the concept of abstract continuous extension
indefinite in length, breadth and depth, and this we can further
conceive as of itself unoccupied—a sort of receptacle of *in
exhaustible capacity capable of containing extended bodies.
This is the concept of absolute or ideal space.
In as far as it is conceived as occupied by extended bodies
at rest or in motion/it gives us what is called actual or real
space, which may, therefore, be described as the Interval of
absolute space included within the ultimate limits of the exist­
ing corporeal universe.
Now, as it would be absurd to say with Kant that our
concept of space is a mere arbitrary fiction of the imagination,
without any sort of foundation in objective reality, so it would
be no less absurd to say that space as such, i. e., considered as
a mere receptacle of extended bodies really distinct from them,
and independent of their presence or absence, is something real
in itself and actually existing.
The true view avoids both extremes and holds that what is
conceived, i. e., actual or possible extension, is real and objec­
tively realized or realizable ; though it is not realized or realiza­
ble in the manner in which it is conceived, i. e., as a mere
independent capacity or receptacle.
If, then, we must answer the question, What is space?
we answer that, in reality actual space is the total extension of
the existing universe, conceived as one continuous container or
receptacle of that which occupies it; possible or ideal or absolute space is the total possible extension of all existible bodies,
conceived as one continuous container or receptacle in which
they would exist and move, if they existed.
Note (i).—When absolute space is conceived as eternal,
indestructible, limitless, etc., it is clear that these are attributes
not of actual but of possible extension. .

/1

? »

/i

‘"Χλ

<
j
|
i

COSMOLOGY

an

(2).—To avoid confusion of thought, we must take care
to distinguish accurately between the concept of space as above
described and the image which accompanies it in the imagina­
tion. The imagination being an organic faculty can represent
objects only in terms of sensual perception, and so cannot
represent, purely abstract notes, such as mere abstract exten­
sion; hence, it pictures space as a sort of phantom substance
perfectly permeable and extending indefinitely in all directions.
12. Place.—Akin to the idea of space is that of place.
When a body moves from one portion of space to another, we
say it changes its place. It leaves the place it occupied and
passes to another ; but the place itself remains immovable : we
never speak of a place as moving. Place, then, is an immovable
portion of space shut off, as it were, from the rest of space by
definite bounding surfaces in which the occupying body is con­
tained as in a perfectly fitting receptacle.
Fixity, then, is a characteristic of place. But how can
there be fixity where everything is in motion? For us, there
can be only relative immobility, i. e., a constant relation of
distance is preserved in regard to certain definite points on the
earth or outside of it. Thus New York and San Francisco,
though in motion with the earth and with the whole solar sys­
tem, yet in regard to certain fixed points, e. g., ‘the equator,
*
‘the poles,’ etc., are immovable ; and this relative fixity suffices
to verify our idea of place.
The place of a body, then, may be described as, The voluminal interval enclosed within the bounding surfaces which
immediately surround it, considered as immovable.
13. A pinite substance may be said to be ubicated or in a
place in two ways, viz.: (a) Commensurably, when the dimen­
sions of the occupying body correspond to and are measured
by those of the occupied space so that the whole body occupies
the whole place and different parts of the body different parts
of the place. It is in this way that corporeal substances
naturally exist in place.

212

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY
•

■

-

'■

<

\

;

(b) Incommensurably when the whole substance is whole
in the whole place and whole in each and every part of it. It is
only in this way that a finite spiritual substance, e. g., 'the
human soul,’ can be said tp be in place.
Note (i).—Hence an actually extended body is referred
to place by its quantity, which occupies a definite determinate
amount of space. A finite spirit, on the contrary, is related to
place not by its quantity (for it has hone), but by its energy or
activity, which can be exercised within certain limits but not
beyond them.
(2) .—There is another mode of presence in a place, which
we know of only through revelation. It may be called sacra­
mental ubication and is realized in the Blessed Eucharist. The
Body of Our Lord is not referred to place by its own quantity
or activities, but by the quantity (miraculously sustained) of
the bread which has been trans-substantiated. How this is
accomplished we do not know. Reason is simply silent in
presence of the mystery and has nothing to say for or against it.
(3) .—Whatever may be said in favor of the intrinsic pos­
sibility of an absolute vacuum, it seems sufficiently certain that
no such thing exists in the actual universe; else we could not
rationally account for universal attraction, the diffusion of
heat, light, electricity, etc.

Article II.—Motion.

- 14. Change.—(a) A thing is said to be changed when it
has become in some way different from what it was before,
i. e., when it has gained or lost some perfection. Hence the
idea of change implies three elements, viz.: a previous con­
dition of the thing, a new condition, the thing itself which has
passed from the one condition to the other; or, as they say, a
term from which, a term to which, and a subject which passes
from the one to the other. In every change, then, we conceive
something which ceases to be; something which begins to be;

COSMOLOGY

:
i

i
,

I
f

■

,

213

and something which remains constant and common to both
tenus..
(b) If one complete substance wholly ceases to be in
order to give place to another and only the same accidents
remain constant, the change is called Trans-substantiation. If
one substantial form gives place to another in the same pri­
mordial matter, we have what is called a Substantial Change.
If the same complete substance remains and the difference
regards only its accidents, we have an Accidental Change.
(c) Again, when the terms, from one to the other of
which, the subject passes, are contradictorily opposed—A and
not-A—the passage from the one to the other is called an
Instantaneous Change ; inasmuch, as on merely leaving one
term, the subject must necessarily be in the other. On the
other hand, if the opposition between the terms is merely one of
contrariety, and that in a broad sensé of the word, i. e., so that
there is an assignable mean between them, e. g., ‘10 deg. C.,
and 20 deg. C.,’ the change is called Successive; inasmuch as
the subjection leaving 10 deg. C., must pass through all the
grades of the interval one after another before reaching 20
deg. C. Now this successive change, if continuous, !, e., with­
out stop or break from starting point to goal, is what is called
Movement or Motion.
(d) But before going on to analyze more fully this idea
of motion we must notice one or two axioms which hold true of
every changeable Being:—
1st—Every mutable Being is of. its nature a potential
Being; for it is of its nature in a state of potency as to the
possession or privation of a given perfection.
2d—Every mutable Being is, so far forth, an imperfect
Being; inasmuch as it either has not the perfection in question;
or if it has it is at least capable of losing it.
3d—That a mutable Being may pass from the state of
privation to the possession of a given perfection, the positive
action of an efficient cause is needed; else, we should have an

’ ‘ ; 11 H

' A
\
\

2i4

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

effect without a cause; while, on the contrary, to pass from
possession to privation, it would suffice that the causal action
which maintained the given perfection in existence be siwpended.
15. Motion.—(a) All change then involves a transition
from potentiality to act; and, if this transition is successive and
continuous, we have Movement. Hence, Aristotle defines mo­
tion as ‘The act of that which is potential, inasmuch as it is
potential.’ The Being in process of change has left the state
of mere potency, but has not yet arrived at the term toward
which it is unceasingly advancing; and, therefore, its motionis
but a partial and incomplete actuation of its potentiality in
regard to that term. When, then, motion is said to be an Act,
our attention is called to the prior state of potentiality which is
constantly being left behind; while, the words, of a Being in
potency inasmuch as it is in potency, remind us that, though
our subject has emerged from a mere state of potentiality, its
actuation in regard to the term toward which it is tending is
not yet complete.
(b) The two characteristics, then, of motion are sue·
cession and continuity; it is the passage of a thing successively,
i. e., one after another, through «all the parts of the interval
’between two terms without break or halt. Hence, the difference and the similarity between continuous quantity and motion.
They differ in this, that the parts into which extension is divis­
ible exist simultaneously; while the parts into which motion is
divisible exist successively. They are alike in this, that as it is
impossible to assign, even in thought, a minimum of extension
which is not conceivable as capable of still further division,
so it is impossible to conceive a minimum of motion which is
not further divisible : a point, if we may say so, of motion, like
a point of extension, has no entity of its own apart from that
of the preceding and succeeding parts which it connects or
terminates.

1
’

1
'

COSMOLOGY

f
I

i
(
?

>

f

I

215

16. Time.—(a) As for the perception of continuous ex­
tension in the world around us, we rise to the concept of space;
so from the perception of motion within and without us, we
elaborate our idea of time. What, then, is time?
. Duration, in general, is defined as Permanence or perse­
verance in existence. Now, we can conceive a Being as exist­
ing without beginning, without end and without change or
possibility of change in its substance or action so that it is
absolutely, and in every sense .the same forever without any
shadow of difference in-its full and simultaneous possession of
all-perfect life. This duration is eternity in the strict sense of
the word ; and it belongs to God alone.
. On the other hand, we can conceive a thing whose exist­
ence is rather a continuous becoming and ceasing than an
abiding fact, i. e., whose existence is had only by parts, and in
such a way that each preceding part ceases to be, just as the
succeeding part begins, yet without break or interruption in the
continuous succession of Before and After. Such is the suc­
cessive duration of motion which gives us oùr idea of time.
Now, the whole corporeal universe and everything in it is
inacontinual state of change or motion. From the perception
of this concrete motion we naturally rise to the abstract con­
cept of one uniformly flowing motion whose successive dura­
tion is conceived as co-existing with and measuring the various
motions of all actual or possible moving things. This is the
concept of absolute or ideal time.
That portion of this ideal evenly flowing successive dura­
tion which has been, or is, or will be co-existent with the actual
motion of concrete existing things is what is called real time.
Time, then, as we have already said of space, is neither a
mere baseless fiction of the imagination; nor yet, on the other
hand, is it an independent entity in itself standing out apart
from the concrete motion of actual or possible moving sub­
stances. IVhat is conceived, i. e., actual or possible successive
duration, is real and objectively realized or realizable, but not

2l6

scholastic philosophy

precisely in the manner in which it is conceived, i. e., as a mere
successive duration whose onward uninterrupted flow is inde­
pendent of and embraces and measures the concrete duration of
all moving things.
*
(b) Wherever, then, there is continuous change or move­
ment, there is successive duration; and, wherever there is suc­
cessive duration, there is real time ; and hence, as each changing
moving thing in the corporeal universe has its own changes
and motion, so it has its own intrinsic time. But just as we
take one fixed standard of extension to measure the extension
of other things, so we can take one particular actual motion
to measure the duration of all other motion that takes place
around us. Hence, as the motion of the heavenly bodies is
the most even and uninterrupted we can find, we take its
regular succession as the measure of our time. .
Note (.i).—A being is said to eixist in time inasmuch as it
undergoes successive change or motion.
: A being which endures unchanged along with other beings
which are in time may be said to co-exist with time. It has
and is (all that it has and is) unchangeably without any suc­
cession in itself, and its simple unaltered duration is virtually
equivalent to the imperfect successive duration of all possible
changing things.
(2).—The word Present is used in many senses in regard
to time. Sometimes we mean an interval of time part of which
is past and part of which is yet to follow, e. g., the present
century, 'year/ ‘day/ etc. Sometimes we mean that small
portion of time which passes while we think or say Now. In
strictness, however, the present is that indivisible point which
has itself no duration, but is conceived as a limit connecting
the past and future. “Time speeds onward," says Seneca,
“what is past is not mine, nor what is future; all of existence
that is really mine consists of a point of fleeting time.”
If we find it hard to explain to ourselves or to another,
what time is, St. Augustine’s words may console us: “What

COSMOLOGY

217

is time? If no one asks me, I know: but if I am asked, and I
try to explain, then I know not.”
17. Turning now from motion in the abstract to the actual
world of corporeal things in which we live, we find that it is
a world of ceaseless change and motion. The material of
which it is made is in constant circulation, now borne upwards
to become living rosebuds or human hearts and brains and
then, as if by an inevitable law, returning to the lowly con­
dition of dead dust. Take any one of the most familiar
substances around us, e. g., 'the post to which you tie your
horse’; what a volume it would take to chronicle the changes
it undergoes in a single day! How much space it has passed
through, as it moves forwards with the moving earth ! how per­
sistently it has been enticed to move this way and that by the
manifold attractions of its fellow bodies! how it has been af­
fected and modified by their chemical activities! how it has
expanded and contracted in the heat and cold, etc, etc. !
All these changes that take place in corporeal substance,
as such, may be grouped under two general heads, viz. ; Sub­
stantial and Accidental Changes; and these latter again may
be subdivided into Local, Qualitative and Quantitative changes.
A brief word, then on each of these four kinds of change,
and we shall dismiss the subject of corporeal motion.
18. Substantial Change.—The ultimate inner nature of
a Being is manifested to us by its properties and actions, as
the source is revealed by the stream. Hence chemistry, as well
as the common sense of mankind, makes similarity or differ­
ence in specific properties the test of similarity or difference in
substance. Now, it is a matter of every-day experience that
certain substances may be so transformed as to acquire wholly
different properties, so that no trace of their former specific
character remains, e. g., to take a most obvious instance,
‘hydrogen burns readily in the air, and oxygen supports com­
bustion better than the air ; while the properties of water into
which they may be transformed are quite different and even

|àMMl

218

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

COSMOLOGY

219

tiens are such (extreme heat, etc.) that we are justified in
opposite.’ Hence, we argue that since the specific properties
saying that the compound substance, as such, has ceased to
are different, the sources from which they flow are different;
exist, i. e., that it has been decomposed into the primitive suband that, therefore, the substantial natures are different; and ί stances from whose substantial transformation it originated.
consequently that in such transformations we have true sub­ 1
(4).—Substantial change is effected in two ways, viz:
stantial changes.
I by combination when two substances, e. g., ‘H and O,’ unite
Here, then, as in every change, something has passed from 1 to form a third substance, water, different from either; or by
one condition to another—something from being one substance * assimilation, when a living being transforms by its nutritive
has become another—the source of the old specific properties
! powers other substances into its own.
has given place to a new one from which new specific prop­
j
(5).—The transformed substances are said to exist virerties proceed. Now, that determinable potential constituent
i tually in the compound, i. e., the compound has been formed
which remains constant and common in both substances is I from them and can be resolved into them.
called Primordial or Ultimate Matter, while the old determin­
19, Quantitative Change.—Actual extension we have
ing actuating constituent that has passed away and the new
already said is a connatural property of all corporeal sub­
one that has taken its place are called Substantial Forms.
stances. In virtue of this property and of the cohesive and
Whatever may be said of the characters of these two in­
resistive forces which accompany it, the parts into which a
trinsic constituents of corporeal substance—and we are not
■ body is divisible are held together in continuous unity and
concerned to say anything here—their existence is a fact which I
maintain their occupation of a portion of space against each
we cannot ignore; there is a Material Cause which remains
other and against all other bodies. Now, apart from these
constant in both terms of a substantial change, and there is a
changes of real volume in living Beings consequent on nutri­
Formal Cause which is different in each.
tion, etc., it is necessary, as we have already said (8) to
Note (1).—It is not necessary to call attention to the
admit not merely apparent but real rarefaction and condensa­
difference between a Mixture, e. g., 'gun powder,’ and a Com­
pound, e.g., 'water’; the former is a mere aggregate, or col- I tion, i. e., of a perfectly continuous solid, in organic sub­
stances in order to account, on the one hand, for the
lection of heterogeneous substances; the latter is strictly one i
possibility of rectilinear motion, and, on the other, for the
homogeneous substance.
I
propagation of light, for universal attraction, elasticity, etc.
(3).—When chemistry writes, e. g., *Water as H,O,’ the f
For either the corporeal universe is a perfect Plenum of
meaning is not that these substances are actually there, whidj. !
inelastic
particles; and then how account for the possibility of
would be contrary to all experience, but that they are paten- !
free rectilinear motion? Or there are parts of actual space
tially, or better, virtually there. Just as when some misfortune
befalls a newly-sown field which destroys the seed, the farmer ’ perfectly vacant; and then how account for universal attrac­
tion for the propagation of light, etc., across the Vacua?
may complain that he has lost his crop, though, in strict truth,
Here Quantitative Change, or real rarefaction and con­
he has lost not an actual, but only a potential or virtual crop.
densation,
is one of the commonest phenomena in nature, and,
(3).-—Composite bodies have spectra of their own differ­
as might naturally be supposed, accompanies more or less all
ent from those of their components. In the cases where the
other accidental modifications of quantified corporeal subspectra of the original elements are clearly detected, the condi-

220

i
ii
*ί ?s,1

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

stances. Indeed, it is clear that an extended substance cannot
be intrinsically modified without having its extension in some
way or other affected by the change.
20. Local Motion.—The passage of a body from one
place (n) to another is called local motion. If the whole body
changes its place, we have what is called Molar Motion. If
the whole body maintains the same relative place, while only
its continuous parts are rarefied and condensed successively,
and so change their relative places, we have what is called
Molecular Motion.
Now, apart from the Spontaneous Motion of the animal
world—obvious sufficient reason of which is found in facul­
ties of the living Being, which are clearly distinct from the
mere change of place—we say that, even in inorganic bodies,
local motion is inexplicable, unless we admit the existence, in
the moving body, of a real physical quality which is not the
mere change of place, but its efficient cause.
Let us roughly illustrate what we mean. Take a baseball
lying at rest in the field. It will never move itself, but it has
the capacity or potentiality to be moved; and if you once
actuate that potentiality, it will, if unhindered, keep the even
tenor of its way long after the pitcher’s name is forgotten. An
impulse, or force, or quality has been actuated in it which will
bear it on in a straight line forever with a steady velocity,
unless some opposing force intervene to stop it or turn it aside.
Now, this impulse, or propelling force is something in­
trinsic in the moving body which is the immediate efficient
cause of its continuous change of place. Hence, local motion,
whether molar or molecular, implies an active force actuated
in the moving body which is not local motion, but its cause.
“Motion,” as Silliman puts it, “requires a force to maintain it,
as well as to produce it.”
21. Qualitative Change.—All the remaining absolute
accidents (Gen. Met. 50) of corporeal substances as such may
be classed under one common head as Qualities, e. g., ‘shape,’

COSMOLOGY

■

I
I

[
s
!
j
I

i
5

j
i
j

221

'color/ ‘taste/ ‘heat/ ‘electricity/ etc. Now, if these things
are objectively what our normally disposed faculties perceive
them to be—and we cannot deny it without taking up a position
which leads to absolute scepticism—then the existence of Quali­
tative Changes in the corporeal world is an obvious fact.
That these changes affecting as they do extended bodies
in space should be accompanied by local change, molecular or
molar, in the modified body, is, as we have said (18), to be
expected. Nay, that to every qualitative change a certain meas­
ure of quantitative or local change should so exactly correspond, that the measure of one may be taken as the symbol of
the other, is but what we should anticipate. But if one should
go on to confound the two and say, e. g., that different colors
are merely different modes of local motion, he would be perpetrating the puerile sophism, that because two things are
invariably associated, therefore one of them is the other.
For the rest, we might ask him, how does he know of the
existence of the local motion? If he will not trust his senses
when they tell him of the objectivity of light, color and heat,
why should he trust their testimony to the existence of local
motion ?
Hence, as we do not object to a chemist using a certain
formula for a compound substance, which expresses not what
it is, but what it may be resolved into; so we do not object to a
physicist expressing the various qualities of bodies, as far as
may be in terms of local motion, provided it be understood
that the formula represents, not the quality in question, but its
invariable concomitant, or, perhaps, we might better say, effect.
22. So much then for the four kinds of change or motion.
(Though substantial changes are not strictly Motion, still they
imply motion, or successive Qualitative change, preparatory to
the education of the new Substantial form.)
Now, as all change implies a transition from potentiality
to act, and as such transition can only be effected by active
forces actually exercising their energies, it follows that therç

I

t

g

I'

222

e

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

are constantly at work in the corporeal world a variety of
active forces as different in their specific character as these
changes are.
On the other hand, these active forces could effect noth­
ing, if there were not corresponding capacities or potentialities
in material substances, reducible to act; the greatest artist can­
not make a statue out of mere water.
Hence, recalling what we said in General Metaphysics
(67 c) about the efficiency of Secondary Causes, we conclude
that the corporeal substances around us are really endowed
with a vast variety of active and passive properties by the
efficiency and actuation of which all the wonderful cosmic
changes we behold are produced.
But though all these cosmic phenomena result immediately
from the efficiency of material forces ; yet the measure, har­
mony, uniformity and constancy—the finality, in a word—of
the world's motion as a whole can find its sufficient reason only
in an Intelligence which has so adapted these blind activities
and potentialities and so ordered their mutual relations that
all work together for the universal good (Metaphysic, 71).
23. The Laws of Nature.—A law is primarily, A perma
nent rule of action. Now, ordinary experience shows us that
the irrational natures around us follow uniformly and con­
stantly each its own fixed mode of action, and hence, these
constant uniform modes of action are called Laws of Nature.
That many of these laws are known to us with certainty is
also clear.
But we may ask further, how far are these laws neces­
sary? As the very existence of finite beings is contingent, of
course their action is also, absolutely speaking, a contingent
fact. But supposing their existence and the existence of a
final cosmic order freely determined by the Creator, how far
is their mode of action necessary? To this we may answer
again, that supposing certain conditions present, the mode of
action of irrational beings is necessary, i. e., the laws of nature

COSMOLOGY

223

are conditionally necessary. The conditions of which we speak
are chiefly—(1) the absence of impediment to or interference
with the natural action of the agent, (2) the presence of the
ordinary divine preserving and concurring influence. Hence
» in a particular case the free Omnipotence of God can hinder,
j neutralize, elevate or otherwise modify the action of the crea­
ture for wise and worthy ends. Such a particular instance of
deviation from the ordinary rule of action of a corporeal being
• can be recognized as easily as any other obvious fact, and upon
I proper examination of all the circumstances, can be known to
' be due to divine interference, on the principle that every effect
must have a proportionate cause.
CHAPTER II.
The Intrinsic Constituents of Corporeal Substance.

This
I.
II.
III.

chapter may be divided into three_articles, viz.:
The State of the Question;
Unsatisfactory Theories ;
Hylomorphism.

Article I.—State of the Question.

24. From what we have said in the preceding chapter,
we may, in general, describe a body as a substance which connaturally possesses continuous extension of three dimensions,
and is endowed with certain activities of powers of producing
change in other Beings like itself. But reason will not rest
satisfied with a mere generic description ; it seeks a Real Defi­
nition. A knowledge of properties will not suffice: we want
to know what the substantial thing is to which the properties
belong; seeing the stream we wish to know its source.
We are in search, then, of a theory as to the ultimate
inner nature of corporeal substance, as such. Now, it

i

224

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

would seem to be sufficiently obvious that we are not at liberty
to construct a theory of the nature of bodies a priori, and then
to force the facts with which all men are familiar into harmony
with it ; rather surely, the other way about, the familiar facts
are the secure fixed data, while the value of a theory will de­
pend wholly on its capacity rationally to account for them.
Yet this plain rule is only too often forgotten. -Theories are
daily invented and obtruded upon us, in regard to the intrinsic
nature of corporeal substances, which, far from explaining,
contradict the manifest facts; and when the plain man remon­
strates that he with the rest of mankind is conscious of per­
ceiving the facts he is calmly told, “So much the worse for the
facts and for mankind that perceives them: they are mere
illusions of sense.”
25. Before proposing, then, any theory as to the ultimate
forces corresponding to the various changes taking place, and
intrinsic nature of bodies, let us set before us clearly and briefly
one or two classes of facts which such a theory is bound
to harmonize with and explain.
(a) We have first, what we may call the Antinomies of
corporeal substances, e. g., in one and the same substance, the
unity and multiplicity involved in its continuous extension; its
elective affinities and antipathies; its inertia and passivity on
the one hand and its aggressive activity on the other, etc., etc.
(b) We have cohesion, elasticity, gravitation, universal
attraction and the other physical properties common to all
bodies to account for.
(c) We have, again, what are called Chemically Simple
substances, i. e., those which are not chemically resolvable into
specifically different substances, e. g., Ή.,’ Ό.,’ ‘C.,’ etc.,
which though generally alike in possessing extension, divisi­
bility, mobility and many other properties common to all
bodies; yet are specifically different in density, affinities, active
and passive properties, etc.

Z-/ Ao. . /

r~

\z'" " X

COSMOLOGY

225

(d) Lastly, we have substantial changes (18) of two
or more chemically simple substances into a new compound
substance wholly different in specific properties from any or
J all of the components, yet resolvable into them and into them
* alone by chemical analysis, and so virtually, though not for­
merly, containing them. “Bear in mind that when we say that
water is composed of H. and O., we mean no more than this,
that by various chemical processes these two substances can
be produced from water. * * * We cannot say that water
I consists of H. and O. * * * In all instances of true chemical
J union and decomposition, the qualities of the substances con­
cerned in the process entirely disappear, and wholly different
substances with new qualities appear in their place.”*
Finally, these substantial changes are not effected at ran­
dom, but require the combination of certain determinate subI
stances according to fixed invariable laws of Definite Propor" tions, Multiple Proportion, etc.
26. Independently, then, of any hypothesis, we are safe in ’
making the following syllogisms as to the ultimate nature
[
of all corporeal substances.
(a) Properties which are not only different, but diamet­
rically opposite, imply a difference in the substantial sources
from which they flow. But the unity and multiplicity, the
activity and passivity, etc., which are characteristic of every
corporeal substance, etc., are properties not only different but
mutually contradictory. Therefore, there is a certain dualism
or composition in the ultimate intrinsic nature of every cor­
poreal substance which a satisfactory theory of the nature of
bodies must account for.
(b) If in a given class of substances there are certain
properties common and constant in every individual of the
class, while certain other properties are peculiar and constant
in different groups of these individuals, then, the inner sub♦ Cooke, “The New Chemistry,” p. 98-99.

226

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

stantial nature of all these substances is composed of two
principles, one of which is (homogeneous and the source of
their generic likeness {the other,| heterogeneous and the source
of their specific difference.| But it is a fact, that there are
certain properties common to all corporeal substances, and cer­
tain others peculiar in different species of them. Therefore,
all corporeal substances are composed of two principles, etc.
(c) In every substantial change, we must account for
two distinct substantial principles, one of which is generic and
constant in both terms of the change, the other differential
and specific, which in union with the generic common element
constitutes a complete substance of this or that peculiar spe­
cies. But all corporeal substances are susceptible of substan­
tial change. Therefore, in all corporeal substances we must
account for the existence of two distinct substantial compo­
nents.
27. To account for this substantial dualism in the nature
of bodies is a problem which has occupied the attention of
thinking men as far back as the history of philosophy ex­
tends; and well it may; for the answer to it will express the
relation in which the Mind and Matter of which man himself
is composed stand to each other.
Setting aside the Idealism which would make the whole
substantial universe a mere illusory projection of the Ego upon
a background of nothingness, and the Pantheism which main­
tains that all bodies are nothing but one eternal substance
of God evolving, modifying and variously manifesting itself,
all views on the subject may be reduced to one or other of
the three famous theories: Atomism, Dynamism and Hylomorphism. If antiquity be a fault or newness a merit in a
theory, all three have about equal claims on our consideration;
for all three come to us from Ancient Greece.
The Atomic theory may be said to have been first pro­
posed as a system of Democritus (about 400 B. C.) ; and Tait
tells us that, as to what corporeal substance is, modem Atom-

·. Μ.

/Γ -

xf

COSMOLOGY

,
!

227

ism “knows no more than Democritus or Lucretius did.” The
origin of the Dynamic theory is ascribed to Pythagoras (about
550 B. C.) ; it has never been popular, “rather a hobby of
esoteric circles, than an accepted theory in schools of science.”
Hylomorphism dates from Plato and Aristotle (about 350
B. C.). Evolved and perfected by SS. Augustine and Thomas
this theory has always held a prominent place in the history
of philosophy.
We now proceed to examine briefly these various theories.

1

I*

3
1

f.ï

Article II.—Atomism and Dynamism.

Γ

28. Both these systems agree in supporting all bodies to
be mere aggregations of immutable indivisible units, but they
differ in the account they give of the character of these ulti­
mate units. Atomism postulates atoms of mass; while Dynamism would construct the material universe out of atoms of
mere force.
29. Pure Atomism, or as Tyndall calls it, "the mechani­
cally intelligent theory of Dalton,” supposes all bodies to con­
sist of very minute, perfectly hard particles, “extended pieces
of matter,” in fact, “with shape and motion, intelligible sub­
jects of scientific investigation.” These particles, or mass
atoms, have no inherent forces or activities of their own: they
are merely the passive subjects or recipients of local motion
of great velocity and complexity. Tait, for instance, tells us
that in a mass of H, at ordinary temperature and pressure,
each of these minute particles is moving at the rate of seventy
miles a minute and collides with other particles and, there­
fore, changes its direction 17,700,000,000 times in a second.
Where this motion comes from, we are not told, except that it does not come from the particle itself, but is communicated
to it from without.
As to the nature of these particles there has been much
variety of opinion among atomists. ^The common tendency
at present is to regard them as perfectly homogeneous, either

i
I f
a
i

‘1ÿ
I/Ï ’»
'Λ

I
«

Ï

'1 l·
g V

4; I

228

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

all of hydrogen, or all of ether, or of some other kind of
Cosmic Vapor, or Cosmic Dust, or Perfect Fluid, which is sup­
posed to fill all space. All the various so-called substances in
nature, simple as well as compound, all their differences, and
all their physical and chemical properties “results,” Herbert
Spencer says, “from differences of arrangement (and local
motion) arising from the compounding and recompounding of
ultimate homogeneous units.”
Sir John Herschel describes the whole theory briefly, as
“one that resolves the entire assemblage of natural phenomena
into the mere knocking about of inconceivably minute billiard
balls (or cubes, or tetrahedrons, if that be preferred) which
once set in motion and abandoned to their mutual encounters
and impacts work out the totality of natural phenomena.”*
Note ( 1 ).—This theory, when it is assumed, as is often
the case, to account for all the phenomena, material, vital and
intellectual, with which we are familiar, is called Materialism.
It is the starting-point and fundamental assumption of all
thorough-going evolution. “As we now understand it,” writes
H. Spencer, "evolution is definable as a change from an in­
coherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity accompany­
ing the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.”
(2).—The reader will observe the vast difference between
the Philosophical Atomism and the Atomic Theory with which
he is familiar in the common text books of chemistry. Of this
latter we shall have a word to say presently.
30. Now, setting aside for the moment all vital phenomena,
is this theory, with its inert homogeneous atoms and
purely passive local motion, a satisfactory explanation
even of the inanimate material world in which we live?
We think not; and, for the following out of many reasons
which will naturally suggest themselves to any one who gives
any thought to the question..
’ ; . :

' ih
fi
i ’ ; ’i J,j

♦ “Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects,” p. 463.

7 i

. aà

/r

COSMOLOgA .

..

22Q

1st—It does not answer Our question, what are the mtnnsic constituents of corporeal substances? It tells us that
all bodies are made up of what? Of other little bodies, each
of which, as being an extended piece of matter, exhibits in its
, unity, and divisibility, i. e., its continuous quantity, in its co­
hesion and resistive force, the intrinsic dualism of corporeal
substance just as truly as a mountain does.
2d.—It explains all the manifold properties and activities
of things by mere varieties in the position and motion of the
i inactive particles of the homogeneous atomic mass, i. e., its
» explanation is a denial of what it undertakes to explain. “The
Kinetic theory,” says W. Thompson, “gives not even a sug­
gestion toward explaining the properties in virtue of which
the atoms or molecules influence, one another.” And, in an( other place, the same great physicist declares that the theory
“is a dream and can be nothing else until it can explain chemi- cal affinity, electricity, magnetism, gravitation,” etc., which it
is plain it cannot do ; for, no number of inactive zeros, arrange
them as you will, will ever give you an active unit.
3d.—In like manner it explains away all the substantial
differences between bodies by simply denying them. Gold and
iron, water and coal-oil, sugar and strychnine, chalk and cheese
are simply one and the same substance, with the slight acci­
dental difference that the particles are variously grouped and
are "knocked about” in various directions and with various
velocities. Finally, we are left without even a suggestion as to
why each chemical element is limited by nature to a select list
' of admissible companions; and the terms of its partnership (as
I
io definite proportions, etc.) with every one of them are so
strictly prescribed that no power in nature can alter them
by the most trivial fraction.
31. If one asks how such a theory could ever be acp cepted, and become popular among reasonable men, the rea‘ son may be found:

230

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

1st.—In the natural tendency of the mind to reduce all
things to some sort of unity and harmony;
2d.—In the tendency, equally strong, in our modern minds
to do so in the easiest possible way without any very serious i
regard to the strictness of our method ; hence, as the knocking ΐ
about of billiard balls is a phenomenon familiar to most people,
the formula Matter and Motion is a delightfully simple syn­
thesis of all physical and chemical knowledge;
3d.—Lastly, the fact that it is not unpleasant for a trou­
bled conscience to be permitted to hope that perhaps itself and
its bad thoughts and deeds as well as its good ones are mere 1
“modes of atomic motion over which no fellow has any con- n
trol,” may have contributed somewhat to the popularity of
materialism.
32. As pure Atomism admits matter only and no force,
so Dynamism will have -force only and no matter. Instead |
of solid particles with mass, shape and size, it recognizes only f
mathematical points or force-centers dotted about in space and
influencing one another, not by impact, but by action at a dis­
tance. If you can imagine an attraction (or repulsion) without
any solid thing which attracts or is repelled; if you can localize
„
this disembodied attraction in a mathematical point, and make
it subject to the influence of other similar attractions; you can |
have some idea of a dynamical force-atom.
If you can make .up your mind that such unextended
force-atoms actually exist, and that all that we call corporeal
substance is a mere aggregation of them; and that the differ­
ence between one body (simple or compound) and another,
arises from a mere difference in the grouping and interplay of |
these mathematical force-atoms; then, you are a dynamist.
Γ
Your explanation of bodies refines away from the universe !
everything corresponding to our notion of corporeal substance:
you deny extension and all substantial differences and changes: (
vou reduce all our sense-perceptions to illusions ; and hence, ?

COSMOLOGY

231

we cannot accept your theory. Though we may not enter with
full sympathy into the first two items of Bossuet’s criticism of
it, we cannot help agreeing with the last when he says that it
is "nova, pulchra, falsa.”
33. We are compelled, therefore, to reject the purely
Atomic and Dynamic hypotheses ; because both fail to ac­
count for the substantial difference of bodies and for the sub­
stantial changes which are patent facts in nature ; and because,
moreover, the former denies all activities in corporeal sub­
stances, while the latter denies its extension and, we might al­
most say, its very existence. In a word, both fail to account
for the essential dualism manifested in every body, great and
small.
Yet both have a certain value, as seeking to express half
truths. Atomism errs by attending only to the characteristics
of bodies which are on the side of the passive homogeneous
element in them: Dynamism attends solely to those which are
on the side of the active element in them. When you synthesize
both theories by assigning substantial sources of both orders of
phenomena in the intrinsic nature of corporeal substance as
such, you are at least on the way to a true theory of bodies.
Now, this is precisely what Hylomorphism does, as we shall try
to show briefly in the following article. But first a word on
Chemical Atomism, as it is called.
\ 34. Chemistry recognizes the existence of some sixtyfive or seventy specifically different bodies which, so far at
least, have resisted all attempts to analyze them into chem­
ically simpler bodies. Besides these, it recognizes a vast num­
ber of other specifically different substances each of which on
analysis, i. e., by the destruction of the compound as such,
yields two or more of the elemental substances in certain fixed
proportions. Now, it is assumed and on good grounds that
in the act of synthesis or analysis, each of the combining ele­
ments is divided up into the smallest quantitative parts in which
it is naturally capable of existing. Immediately before actual

232

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

combination, these atoms, as they are called, are, at first, true
substances of the same nature as the original masses of which
they are parts, e. g., 'an atom of H is as truly H as a gallon
of it.' These specifically different particles under the influ­
ence of external agents act and react on one another in virtue
of their mutual affinities until at length the nature of both is
so altered that we have no longer distinct atoms of different
substances, but perfectly homogeneous molecules of a new sub­
stance wholly different in properties from any of the original
components. Hence, the chemist knowing the elemental sub­
stances from which these products spring names them after
their ancestors, and thus expresses every compound substance
in terms of two or more of the sixty-seven elements.
35. So far, we are all with the chemist. But should he
go on to conclude, that since all bodies can be thus expressed
in terms of his sixty-seven elements, therefore, the corporeal
universe is nothing but a vast collection of very small bodies
of sixty-seven different kinds and that all compound substances
are mere groups of these small bodies ; then, we tell him that
his conclusion is not philosophical :
1st.—Because it explains an obvious fact (substantial
change) by gratuitously denying it; and
2d.—That, even omitting this decisive objection, his ex­
planation of the nature of bodies is, at best, penultimate; for, 1
each of his sixty-seven elemental bodies exhibits all the dualism
of an essentially composite substance; and the question is, what
are its substantial components ?
Of course, it is quite allowable and very convenient for
the chemist to express a compound substance in terms of the
elements from whose chemical combination it is derived: but
it must always be remembered that in this, Chemical Atomism
is, as Cooke says, "only a temporary expedient for representing
the facts of chemistry to the mind:”* and that, as another

* The New Chemistry, p. 103.

COSMOLOGY

233

great modern chemist adds, its symbolism is a device of lan­
guage, not a representation of actual facts.
*

Article III.—Hylomorphism.
36. As has been said, every phenomenon of the corporeal
universe asserts the intrinsic dualism of corporeal substance
and manifests the presence in all bodies of two essential phys­
ical constituents really distinct from each other, viz. : a homo­
geneous material principle which is the source of their divisi­
bility, mass, inertia and other generic properties, and a differ­
ential dynamic principle, which is the source of their unity,
activity, specific properties, etc.
The former or homogeneous mass-principle, is of itself
indifferent, potential, determinable as to being this specific sub­
stance or that, and is that constituent of bodies which remains
common and constant in all substantial changes. The latter, or
differential specific principle, determines the specific principle,
determines the specific nature of the substance and varies in
the various substantial changes which bodies undergo. Both
are incomplete substances from whose intrinsic union a com­
plete corporeal substance or body of this or that specific nature
results.
Now if you call the former element Primal or Primordial
or Ultimate Matter ; and, the latter Substantial Form, you have
in brief the hylomorphic (“matter-and-form”) theory of the
nature of bodies.
Of course, many questions remain as to the peculiar char­
acteristics of each of these two ultimate constituents of bodies,
their mutual relations, the passing away of old and the origin
of new substantial forms, etc., etc.; but the existence, in bodies
of a constant and a variable substantial element will not be
* Berthelot, Synthese Chimique, pp. 167-69.

234

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

questioned by any one who analyzes the idea of substantial
change.
The argument^ then, for hylomorphism is based on the
facts and reasoning given above (25, 26), and it is needless to
repeat it here. Substantial changes are a fact. In a substantial
change the subject is something substantial, and so are the con­
stituents lost and gained ; else, the change would be merely acci­
dental. That the constant subject and the variable terms are
really distinct is also clear, since the same matter is actuated
successively by different forms.
37. As far as the general answer to the question, What
are the intrinsic constituents of bodies ? is concerned, we might
safely leave the matter here ; but the mind will feel more
satisfied if we can determine a little more precisely the
character of this Primal Matter and Substantial Form,
their relation to each- other, etc. This we shall try to do very
briefly, leaving a large unexplored field for the genius of the
philosophic student to work in.
38. As to the ultimate -material element of bodies. It
is not a complete substance, but an incomplete constituent of
substance, the primal, constant, fundamental subject of substantia! changes. It is a positive reality; yet it cannot exist
alone unactuated by any form any more than extension can
exist without a definite shape and figure. It is indestructible
except by annihilation: no force in nature can do more than
substantially change it; hence, the law, as it is called, of Con­
servation of Matter, i. e., whatever the change, the new being
will always give the exact weight of the elements from which
it is derived. Of itself considered apart from the forms which
differentiate it, it is perfectly inert and homogeneous, essentially needing some form, yet indifferent to all forms and al­
ways in potency and ready to receive the proportionate action
which would substantially transform it. It is neither C. nor
fruit or flesh, but is successively the material basis of them.
alL The senses cannot perceive it: imagination cannot picture

1

(

k

■

j

COSMOLOGY

235

it: reason alone can apprehend it, and is compelled to recognize
. it as the constant, passive, inert element in the constitution of
bodies.
J
39. As to the formal element.
f
(a) It, too, is clearly a constituent of corporeal sub\ stance, not a complete substance in itself. It may be described
as The ultimate substantial determinant which actuates and
: differentiates primal matter and, by its union with it, consti­
tutes a complete substance of this or that specific nature. All
[ the specific differences with which we are familiar in the
1 actions, properties and nature of bodies come from differences
in their substantial forms. As matter passes up the line of
corporeal being from the state of a simple elemental body to
' the condition of living sensitive flesh, it is informed succes­
sively by a series of substantial forms each of which contains
virtually and excels by a new degree the perfections of the
lower forms which have gone before it, whose place it takes ;
just as a higher number contains and excels those below it.
Hence, we have a sort of hierachy in substantial forms ac­
cording to which the various grades of perfection in cor­
poreal substances are determined.
(b) In the entire cosmic order we can distinguish
four broad generic grades of substantial forms, viz.:
1st.—Those of inanimate bodies ; 2d, the vital principle in
plants; 3d, the animal soul; 4th, the spiritual soul of Man. Of
these four orders of substantial forms, the first three, as being
wholly dependent on matter in their action and, consequently,
in their existence and origin are called material forms. In
each of these three orders of forms are included innumerable
specific diversities in ascending degrees so that the highest
species of a lower order just touches the boundary-line which
separates it from the lowest species of the order above.
The human soul, on the contrary, as being independent of
matter in its higher characteristic operations and, therefore,
in its existence, its origin and its destiny is called a spiritual

236

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

form. Hence, in the human body, primordial matter reaches
its highest level. Here it is informed and constituted a com­
plete substance by its immediate union with a spiritual soul “a
little less than the angels,” proceeding immediately from the
creative hand of God ; so that the resultant compound, Man,
unites within himself the two great words of Spirit and Matter
into which all creation is divided, and, hence, is well styled a
Microcosmus or Little Universe.
(c) The spiritual soul, or substantial form of man, needs,
as we shall see later on, the immediate creative action of God
to bring it into existence. But, leaving man out of the ques­
tion, it is clear that in the three lower kingdoms of the irra­
tional world, new substantial forms are constantly coming into
existence, while others are as constantly disappearing.
Now, whence do these forms come? whither do they go?
how are they produced in matter? An analogy drawn from a
common accidental change will help us to understand the
answer. Take a cube of soft wax and carefully model it into
the shape of a rose. The new shape is something; for, it has
cost you labor to produce it, and, if you are only skilful
enough, it has given the wax a market value much greater than
it had before. Now, whence this new perfection? You will
say and rightly that the aptitude or passive potency of the wax
and the action of the artist are sufficient to account for the new
figure; or, in technical language, if you prefer it, that the rose­
shape lias been educed out of the potentiality of the wax by the
action of a competent efficient cause. If, again, I ask you,
what has become of the cubic form which the wax originally
had and lament that you have annihilated it, you will answer
that you have done nothing of the kind, that though it is not
actually there—since wax cannot, at the same time, be rose­
shaped and cubic—yet it is potentially there and can be had
back again by a little effort on the part of an efficient cause.
Finally, before leaving our simile, notice (1) that the wax
is of its nature indigerent as to what shape it may have; (2)

COSMOLOGY

237

that it must always have some shape; (3) that it cannot have
P two different shapes, e. g., ‘of a rose and a cube,’ at the same
I time; (4) that, while actually in any given shape, it is still in
potency to receive any of the other innumerable shapes which
i the artist’s skill can give it; (5) that the change from one
shape to another may require more or less manipulation on the
I part of the efficient cause, e. g., ‘it is easier to change our cube
S into a tetrahedron than into the figure of a rose’ ; (6) that the
I wax needs the action of a competent efficient cause external to
I itself to effect any change in its shape.
i
Now we can apply all this to what it called the Passive
I Evolution of Matter, if we only bear in mind that, in substan­
tial changes, there is question of the ultimate inner nature of
> the body, not of its outer visible accidents.
Primal matter, of itself and theoretically considered, is in1 different to any of the innumerable substantial forms which
■ can complete it as a substance and make it a body of this or
I that specific nature, e. g., ‘C’ or ‘human flesh.
*
Yet it never exj i’ts alone, but is always actuated by some form. It cannot,
I however, be at once actuated by two forms; else, it would be
L two specifically different substances at the same time. But
I while actuated by one form it is still in potency to receive any
J other form. Yet it is not always in proximate potency to rei ceive every form, e. g., ‘matter under the pure elemental forms
!
of C. Hi O. and N. without intermediate substantial changes,
would be but doubtful nourishment for man or beast.’ Hence,
there is a fixed order in nature, according to which matter is
i
gradually elevated from lower to higher substances. Again,
even when matter is in proximate potency (owing to the subI stantial form by which it is actuated) for a new substantial
i form, it is not by every agent that the new form can be educed,
e. g., ‘only a horse can transform barley into horse-flesh.’
Lastly, when in matter thus proximately disposed, a new and
I
higher form takes the place of the lower one preceding it
i
through the action of proportionate natural causes, the new
<
.
· ·

238

' * ΜΙι

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

form is not created, but educed from the potentiality of the
matter so disposed. Nor is the old form which passed away
annihilated, but reduced to potency, and it, with all its charac­
teristic properties and activities, can again be actuated by
efficiency of proportionate causes.
. 40. Such, in very brief outline, is the scholastic theory
of the nature of bodies. It may seem, at first sight, subtle and
hard to grasp, but when we come to examine it closely and,
especially, to apply it to the solution of the great problems
connected with vegetative, animal and Tinman life, we shall find
that it is forced upon us with overwhelming cogency by the
inexorable facts of nature.
· .

’»1 1

ÎT.’ir

ii

CHAPTER HL
Organic Life.

" Article I.—Organic Life

in

General.

41. Definition of Life.—A living being is one which
moves itself, which acts upon and perfects itself ; one whose
action as a living being begins and ends in itself.
The essential characteristics of vital action are, therefore,
spontaneity and immanence as opposed respectively to the ,
inertia and transitive activity of inanimate things.
|
42. Division.—Hence, we may classify the various grades I
of life with which we are familiar in the'world around us under
three general heads according to the different degrees of span- {
taneity manifested in their vital action:—
I
(a) The vital activity may be exercised without cognition ‘
of any kind on the part of the living being, e. g., 'a plant sim- I
ply assimilates material substances,’ i. e., changes them into its 1
own living substances and thus develops and reproduces itself.
(b) Or the self-motion may imply cognition and appetition of individual material objects on the part of the living
;
·'.

„··'*

-

1

■

,

5

1

'J;!

f>f 1 <· i

COSMOLOGY

239

being, but without liberty, or power of consciously determining
the end of perceptions, desires, local motion, etc., in regard to
the individual material objects around it.
(c) Or finally, the living being ,may be capable of cog­
nition and appetition of abstract, universalized or wholly im­
material objects, and, consequently, endowed with liberty and
with the power of apprehending and determinig the end of its
actions. This “perfecta suique potens spontanéités"—this
self-controlled spontaneity—is the characteristic excellence of
human life.
' '. .. /·< ·
43· Organic Life; i. e., vegetative and sensitive life, is
exercised in and by a material organism. An organism is a
natural material structure composed of various parts (organs)
each of which exercises a special function in relation to the
life of self-motion of the whole. The organism at first con­
sists of a single cell of protoplasm which nourishes and in­
creases itself by assimilation of external substances and then
divides so as to form two connected cells. Each of these again
in turn increases, divides, etc., until the whole organism of
cellular tissue is built up according to a fixed specific type.
44. Essential Difference between living organisms and
non-living bodies.
(a) In Origin. Living organisms are produced only by
living bodies of their own specific type.
(b) In Development. By nutrition and growth they con­
struct and preserve themselves according to a certain morpho­
logical type within certain limits of size and during a certain
limited time, after which, they decay and disintegrate, even
though all external conditions remain the same.
(c) In the variety of functions exercised by different
parts of the same organic body.
(d) In the mutual interdependence of the different parts
of the organism, so that all the organs constantly and per sc
act for one ultimate result—the development, preservation and
propagation of the whole organic being.

240

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

(e) Lastly and chiefly, in the character of the action of
the organic being, which is spontaneous and immanent and
tends, not to equilibrium or rest, but to continual self-perfec­
tive motion.
Note.—The formal or dynamic principle of organic life is
called a soul.

Article II.—Vegetative Life.

45. This is the lowest, and in the visible world the most
universal grade of life. The lowest because least independent
of matter in its exercise, which consists in the development,
conservation and propagation of a material organism. The
most universal, as being common to plants, animals and men.
Its chief functions are nutrition, increase and propagation of
the organism.
· ■.
'■
46. Nutrition is that function by which a living organism
converts external substances into its own. This implies various
operations on the part of the living organism: absorption of
external substances by roots, leaves, mouth, etc. ; digestion, or
preparation of these raw materials by various elaborate chem­
ical processes; circulation of the food thus elaborated through­
out the organism ; and finally, assimilation or conversion of the
food into the living substance of the organism. This last is
strictly the act of nutrition or the vital act. The previous
preparations may be called Vital actions, only inasmuch as they
are accomplished under the influence and directive power of
the living organism and for its benefit.
The purpose and necessity of the nutritive activity in the
organism is clear. A microscopic germ cannot grow and evolve
itself into a perfect plant or animal without assimilation or
intussusception of new material.
47. Growth or increase is that function by which the
living being builds up its complete organic structure according

. / i

/i

\ /f

COSMOLOGY
i

I
j
;
I
H

i
ί
*

,·
I[
I

p
f
j
I
5
I'
I
ί

241

to à definite morphological type out of the nutriment assimi. lated.
48. Generation is that function by which the living
organism produces out of its own living substance a germ or
seed capable of evolving itself into a new living organism simi­
lar in specific nature to the parent.
49. Vegetative Life, therefore, requires a dynamic principle in the organism which :
(a) Modifies, elevates and controls the physico-chemical
properties of the anorganic matter absorbed, as it passes
through the various channels which fit it for immediate assimilation;
(b) Makes the living organism capable of constant, selfperfective action, e. g., ‘development,’ ‘continual. change and
renovation of itself’;
(c) Enables the living organism to communicate to a
special portion of its own substance a. formative power which
makes the microscopic germ capable of building itself up
into a complete living organism of the parent type of pre­
serving and restoring its integrity, and of propagating itself
indefinitely.
But such a principle is essentially different from and
superior to the dynamic principle in anorganic bodies.
Therefore, there is in every living vegetative organism a
dynamic principle essentially different from and superior to
the Forms of anorganic substances, i. e., a Vital Principle or
soul. ■
■
'
Note (i).—Hence, a living vegetative organism is essen­
tially different from a crystal. In the latter there is no nutrition, growth or generation, as explained above—no immanent
action of any kind: its development is the result of mere
external accretion, not of assimilation.
(2).—Organicism pretends to account for the phenomena
of vegetable life by the mere grouping and interplay of inanimate atoms. But, no mere arrangement of a multitude of dead

242

•

u

Ϊ

<s
I!

I

1

:

•Γ

,<· ’ i·

F«.

* I.

I

■
.

,

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

particles can account for one constant, spontaneous, immanent,
self-perfecting activity. It would not help us at all to account
for life to give us a piece of dead protoplasm, even if chemistry
could succeed in producing it (which it cannot). We can get
a whole perfectly organized dead ox any day in the meat market. What we want is protoplasm with the power of nutri­
tion, growth and reproduction, i. e., besides organized matter,
we want a special dynamic principle within it, animating it, in
order to account for the phenomena of vegetative life.
Again, it is not the organism that produces life, but life
that produces, develops, preserves and propagates the organ­
ism. It is as if a little particle of matter should build itself up
into a perfect watch, keeping itself in constant repair and be
able to detach from itself little specks of matter, each capable
of growing into, and reproducing the parent type indefinitely.
Organization, therefore, far from being the cause, is the effect
of life.
(3) .—The physical and chemical forces of matter are
undoubtedly at work in the living organism, but they can
account neither for the organism itself nor for its vital action,
unless a special vital principle be admitted which permanently
modifies, elevates, controls their action fot a fixed end, viz.:
the development, preservation and reproduction of a living
organism of a specific type. As a matter of fact, all scientists
are agreed that no force of chemistry can combine anorganic
elements so as to form a single cell of protoplasm; much less a
living cell; much less an organism capable of developing, preserving and propagating itself. “It is futile to attempt by
chemistry to bridge over the chasm between the living and the
non-living.”—Du Bois Reymond. “Chemistry can never pro­
duce a leaf, a fruit, a muscle, an organ.”—Berthelot. “All
scientific experience tells us that life can be produced from a
living being only.”—Stewart and Tait. See Maher, Psychol­
ogy, P· 547 seqq.)
(4) .—Within each living organism there is a non-living

COSMOLOGY

243

liquid (blood or sap) in continual circulation to nourish the
organism, and to carry away the material continually being
detached from the organism.. What is called organic or syn­
thetic chanistry has succeeded with, difficulty in producing
some of the non-living elements thus carried upwards or down­
wards by the non-living stream, e. g., ‘formic acid,’ ‘urea,’ etc.
This is the utmost that chemistry has been able to accomplish
in regard even to the external products of life, and it does so
only by méans of powerful electric currents or enormous
temperatures.
50. In plants there are no organs of sensation, no evidences
of perception, feeling, emotion or spontaneous local motion.
Hence, we are justified in saying that plants have no power of
sensation.
The motions of the sensitive plant, fly-trap, etc., are due
to physical contractility of fibre, etc., under the influence of
heat, light, friction, etc. The motions of zoospores, antherozoids, etc., have not that irregularity, intermittence and arbi­
trary change of direction which indicate spontaneous local
motion.
51. A fortiori the dynamic principle of merely vege­
tative life is not spiritual, i. e., capable of acting and existing
by itself apart from matter. For, all the vital operations of
plant are essentially dependent on the material organism, i. e.,
nutrition, growth and generation are exercised in and through
the material organism.
Note.—Hence, the Soul of the plant is not created by a
special action of God, but educed from the potentiality of mat­
ter by the action of a proportionate natural cause, i. e., by a liv­
ing being of the same species, and ceases to exist on the
destruction of the organism.
52. Natural corporeal substances are specifically distin­
guished from each other, not by the uiasr-principle in them,
but by the active or dynamic principle. Plants are natural cor­
poreal substances, and the matter of which they are composed

I

244

1
5 Ji
••d

i

«s

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

does not distinguish them from other corporeal substances. In
fact, it may become C, Ο, H, N, as simple elements, or any of
their combinations. Hence, plants are distinguished by the j
dynamic or life-principle in them, from other corporeal sub­
stances. Hence, the vegetative soul is truly a substantial form ‘
—the differentiating substantial constituent of the living body.
Note (i).—Take care not to imagine the plant soul as
one complete substance indwelling in the organism as in another
complete substance. In that case the organism would not be
a living body endowed with immanent activity. The soul of the
living plant must therefore be conceived as a substantial con­
stituent pervading and vivifying the whole organism whence
flows the unity, activity and specific properties of the plant.
(2).—In general, therefore, a Soul may be defined as The
substantial form of an organized body capable of spontaneous
immanent action. We say, capable of vital action: because a
thing may be a living body even though it does not actually 1
exercise any vital function, e. g., ‘hybemating animals,’ I
‘frozen fish,’ ‘frogs,’ etc.
I
53. In each individual plant there is but one vital
principle or soul, for, one vital activity manifests one vital
principle. But in each separate plant all vital activity constantly,
naturally and per se tends to one definite result—the develop­
ment, preservation and reproduction of one living organism of
a fixed specific type. Amid all the variety of parts and func­
tions in the plant, one immanent result is steadily aimed at and
procured; and this constant ultimate unity of effect demands
unity of principle as its proportionate cause.
Note. (i).—We said above, each individual plant, because
we have many instances of numbers of both plants and animals
living together in connected clusters or colonies, e. g., ‘corals,’
‘mosses,’ etc.
■ ■
(2).—The phenomena that sometimes take place on the
separation of parts from a living organism require a word of
explanation here. In some cases the separated parts, if cared

■>

/ ?

COSMOLOGY

245

for in a special way, can continue to exercise indefinitely some,
though not all, of the functions of the original organism, e. g.,
'a graft of a pear tree, if planted in the earth, will die, but if
properly inserted in another suitable tree it will live, grow and
produce its own species of leaves, fruit, etc.’ In other cases the
separated parts can live on by themselves and exercise all the
functions of the original organism, e. g., ‘branches of the vine,’
‘poplar,’ etc.
The explanation is this. Each organism begins as a simple
living cell of protoplasm. This Mother Cell, as it is called,
increases by nutrition and divides into two cells ; these again
increase, divide, etc., until a whole organism of the parent type
is built up. These Derived or Daughter-Cells, as they are
called, are all living matter, but incomplete in themselves and
destined to form part of some organ, e. g., ‘root,’ ‘fibre,’ etc.
In the lower grades of plants and animals the whole organism
is very simple, and when such plants have built up all the
organs of their simple structure their further growth is but a
repetition of the whole previous structure. If, then, one of
these living sections, e. g., ‘of a vine,’ is separated, it possesses
a complete organism and can put forth roots, etc., and live on
alone. The vital principle of such a plant is actually one, but
potentially as manifold as there are completely organized sec­
tions in it, i. e., while the parts are united there is but one vital
principle in the whole plant, as is evidenced in the mutual
interdependence of all the parts upon each other, and upon
the whole; but when the parts are separated each has enough
of organization to sustain the vital principle and to live an
independent life of its own.
Sometimes no one section is quite complete in itself. It
may lack, for instance, the power of putting forth roots and
thus acquiring nutriment for itself. But if this deficiency can
be artificially supplied, e. g., by properly grafting it on a suitable
rooted stem from which it can receive its nutritive material, it
can do all the rest for itself. It will assimilate the nutriment

h

i:8!

4
η

i r

il

3.1

246

hii
! u >1

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

and change it into, e. g., pear-wood, produce pears, etc., though
grafted on quite a different tree. And here again we have an
instance of “anima vegetatrix, actu una potentia multiplex.”
54. As to the origin of organic life upon the earth,
the doctrine of Abiogenesis or Spontaneous Generation, i. e.,
the origin of life from the mere grouping and interplay of
inanimate anorganic atoms has been sufficiently refuted above
(49). No grouping or multiplication of o’s, no matter how
long you may continue the process, will give you 1 ; and in the
same way no mere grouping of inanimate particles will give
you a living, self-perfective organism. Reason cannot admit
an effect without a proportionate cause.
Moreover, all the elaborate experiments cf Pasteur, Tyn­
dall, etc., have shown to a certainty that, as Huxley says, “the
doctrine of biogenesis, ‘life from life/ is victorious all along
the line.”
On the other hand, it is certain from Geogony, or the
science of the formation of the earth, and from Geology, or
the science of the material substances of which the crust of
the earth is composed, that there was a time when organic life
did not exist upon the earth, and was in fact impossible.
!
Hence, all life that has appeared since, from monera to
man, is a caused thing, an effect, and requires a proportionate
cause. Very little reflection will show us that the ultimate
living cause of life must be itself uncaused—a self-existent
eternal life.
55·: Organic life is transmitted by generation, i. e.,
the production by a living organism out of its own living sub­
stance of a new living being specifically similar to itself, i. e,
of a new being having within itself the power of developing
itself into a complete organism specifically similar to the parent
typeSometimes the new organism may be had by taking cut­
tings or bulbs from the parent stem. The formation of such
parts by the parent organism is called Aggeneration.

rib:
■

COSMOLOGY

247

Usually, however, the new being produced by generation
is a highly specialized particle containing within its small
dimensions the power of building itself up into a complete
organism (a fly or an elephant, an oak tree or a fern) accord­
ing to the nature of the parent.
Again, there are some cases where the complete life-germ
is wholly the product of a single organism without any influ­
ence from without This is called Asexual Generation.
More frequently, however, the living germ is the product
of two factors. One plant, for instance, produces Ovules,
another plant of the same species produces Pollen. Neither of
these elements separately, but the combination of the two, will
give us the complete life-germ or seed. Naturally, the new
being, as it is produced bÿ two distinct causes, will tend to
possess the characteristics of both, a fact which the gardener
takes advantage of to produce new varieties of the same species
of flower. The union of pollen and ovule is called Fertilization
or Fecundation of the ovule, and it results in an internal sub­
stantial modification by which the life-principle of the new
plant is educed from the potentiality of matter.
Note.—We have said that both ovule and pollen must
come from plants of the same species. If they are taken from
plants of different species, the great universal law is that their
union will give no result ; both ovule and pollen will simply
decay. In exceptional cases, when the two species from which
these elements are derived are very similar, fecundation may
take place, in which case the seed will produce neither of the
parent types, but a cross between the two, called a hybrid.
These hybrids cannot perpetuate their new type. ’As a rule
they are altogether sterile, or incapable of reproduction. In
the few cases where they produce offspring, these after a few
generations either die out or return to one or other of the two
original types. This law, which is absolutely universal in
nature, is called the Law of Reversion, and is the great safe­
guard of the permanence or fixity of specific types in nature.

248

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

56. The fecundated life-germ produced by generation
will give us an individual living being of a definite specific
type, possessing in itself the power to build up by slow
degrees a fixed type of organism and no other. The order and
the path it must follow in its development are defined for it
beforehand, and no power in nature can change them. You
may destroy the germ or embryo, but you cannot alter its
powers or its destiny. “It is possible that at the first moment
of their existence all animals resemble each other as spheres of
protoplasm, but the specific type of each is fixed from the first
and governs all its development. The embryo of a vertebrate
is a vertebrate (potentially) from the start, and never corre­
sponds to an invertebrate.”—Von Baer, Agassiz, etc.
Note.—Of course accidental modifications may result from
food, climate and other external circumstances; but they can
never substantially alter the fixed specific type.
57. Finally as our life-germ has to build up gradually
into a complete organism, e. g., ‘of an oak,’ ‘a horse’ or ‘an
elephant,’ it is no wonder that on its passage to perfection it
should exhibit many strange-shapes and appearances more or
less resembling creatures lower than itself. In some cases
these successive changes take place while the new being is still
enclosed in the egg or within the organism of the parent. In
other cases the changes take place after the birth of the new
being, but are all accomplished within the lifetime of a single
individual, e.g., ‘a butterfly.’ These changes of form are called
Mctamorphoses. Lastly, we have cases where it would appear
that the lives of several successive individuals are required
to bring the. offspring to the full parental type ; so that ‘‘the
parent finds no resemblance to herself in her offspring till she
comes down to the great-grandchild” ; e. g., ‘the medusa.’ This
is called the phenomenon of Alternate Generation.
But whatever the mode of development may be, it is as
fixed for each type as natural law can make it.
58. Not only, then, is Life only from Life, or “Biogene-

X7' /à /.i’ sV/

Ύ\

COSMOLOGY

=

i

249

sis,” a fundamental law of nature, but “Like from Like,” or
“Homogenesis,” is a law equally universal. All observations
and experiments affirm it. Reason itself requires it on the
principle that every effect must have a proportionate cause. If
a living being communicates vitality to a portion of its own
substance, that vitality cannot be superior to or of a different
nature from that which the parent itself possesses.
Heterogenesis, therefore, or Equivocal Generation, i. e.,
offspring of a different type from parent, in whatever form it
may be proposed, is inadmissible.

;

Article III.—Sensitive Life.

f

ÇQ. Sensitive Life implies a living organism capable of
perceiving individual material objects, of feeling, desire and
aversion and of spontaneous local motion. In the present
article we shall consider briefly these functions of animal life,
and the nature of the animal soul from which they proceed.
(i) Functions of Sensitive Life.

60. Sensitive Cognition in General may be described as
a vital reaction by which a sentient faculty, in response to an
impression received from an individual material object, pro­
duces within itself an intentional representation (78, below) of
the object. Hence, there are four elements to be considered in
sensation, viz.: (a) the sentient faculty, (b) the sensile object,
(c) the impression produced by the sensile object in the sen­
tient faculty (technically called Impressed Image or Species),
(d) the formal act of perception or the actual representation
of the object (technically called the Expressed Image or Spe­
cies). We may illustrate this by a rough analogy; thus. Given
a substance on the one hand, a seal on the other, it is required
to stamp the seal on the substance. In the first place, the sub­
stance must be in a condition to receive the impression, and the
seal must be in a condition to give the impression. Again, the

0

250
■,r.

î$

H Ί

i

1?

υ 4
"I

Ç! :
X
14

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

substance of itself is indifferent as to what impression it shall
receive ; it can receive the impression of this seal, or that, or the
other. That it express one rather than the other depends upon
which acts upon it or determines it to a particular representa­
tion; hence, the seal must act upon the substance in order to
produce an impression of itself. But this is not enough. The
seal may act forever and produce no image of-itself unless
the substance reacts; but when the substance acted upon by
the seal reacts it becomes a re-presentation of the seal. If,
finally, we can imagine the substance thus informed with the
image of the seal, as perceiving, not the image, but the seal
itself which helped to produce it, we shall have a rough illustra­
tion which will help us to form an idea of sensation and, indeed,
of cognition generally.
■ 61. Applying the preceding analogy to our present sub­
ject and remembering that (according to the axioms, “quid­
quid recipitur secundum modum recipientis recipitur,” and
“agere sequitur esse”) the impression received in and the reac­
tion of the sentient organ are not merely physical, but psycho­
physical phenomena, we may gather up, the general doctrine of
sense-perception in the following brief statements.
(a) In all sensitive cognition the object must be united
to the faculty by its impressed image or species, else, as the
cognitive faculty is indifferent and undetermined of itself, it
will not represent any one object rather than another.
(b) Sensation is not the mere reception of an impression
of the object in the living organic faculty; for, sensation is a
vital immanent action, while the mere impression of the object
is nothing more than a transient action of the object by which
the faculty suffers an intrinsic modification.
;
(c) The impression received from the object determines
the vital faculty and thus enables it to produce the expressed |
image or vital representation; for, the formal act of sensation
is such that it can proceed from neither independently of the
other. The faculty is incapable of producing it without a deter-

-

COSMOLOGY

251

mination received from the object; and, on the other hand, as
we have said above, the mere passive reception of the determination is not a vital act of perception.
(d) The subjective image or species is not that which is
j perceived in sensation, but that by which the cognitive faculty
directly and immediately perceives the object. It is essentially
a formal sign by which not itself but the thing signified is
I directly and immediately perceived.
I
(e) Hence, the fundamental difference between cognitive
and non-cognitive natures; the latter possesses only their own
proper form; the former, besides their own form, acquire also
intentional or representative forms of the objects of their actual
cognition.
;
Note.—“The organic constituents of the sentient faculties,
generally, consists of the nervous system. This is composed
of two parts, the central mass and the branches which ramify
i throughout the body. The central mass, called the cerebro­
spinal axis, is made up of the brain and the spinal cord passing
from it down through the backbone. The brain consists of a
soft, convoluted substance of mixed grey and white matter.
The spinal cord consists of a column of the white fibrous mat' ter, enclosing a core of grey cellular substance. From the
spinal cord between every two vertebrae there issues forth two
( pairs of nerves. The nerves proceeding from the front of the
spinal column are called anterior, efferent or motor nerves, as
they transmit impulses outwards, and are the organic instruments of muscular movement. The nerves coming from the
r back of the spine are called afferent, or sensory nerves, because
by their means the organic impressions which accompany sensations are conveyed inwards from the various external senseorgans of the body. In the several external sense-organs these
nerves are arranged and modified in various ways to suit the
various psychic faculties and to . respond to their external
r stimuli.”
It is hardly necessary to remark that the perfection and

1 's;
J'

ί
.
I

fi
$;
.

jii
Jii
hS
i i
kj
|· £
| i
k ;■
|mi­
pr
I
■■-ps;

252

i

I»s

A?

II
i
8

j*

«
t i

II

ar

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

differentiation of the nervous system varies according to the
grade of the sentient being in the scale of animal life.
62. As we have already said, the sphere of sensitive cognition is limited to material objects as affected by material
individuating notes. Hence, the first great division of the
sensitive faculties of cognition is into those which perceives
material objects external to the sentient subject and those which
perceive, retain or recall the sensations of the external senses,
or perceive certain other concrete material aspects of external
objects which do not fall within the sphere of the five external
senses, and yet are necessarily connected with the preservation
and perfection of animal life. The former are called external
senses, the latter internal.
63. The External Senses.—These are sight, hearing,
smell, taste and touch. The peripheral extremities of the
nervous system immediately concerned in the operations of
these five senses are, respectively, the rods and cones of the
retina of the eye, the Cortian organ of the ear, the mucous
membrane of the upper cavity of the nose, the gustative papillae
of the tongue and palate, and the tactile papillae of the dermis,
or under-skin. ■
'
64. The formal objects of these senses are (following the
order above) colored extension, sound, odor, sapidity and extended pressure or resistance.
Note (i).—Temperature in so far as it is perceived as
an objective quality of bodies, may be considered (like soft;
ness, roughness, etc.) as a secondary modification of the proper
object of touch.
. —The five external senses are found only in the
(2)
higher or more perfect animals. The lower types have only
the sense of touch and probably of taste. Yet even some of
these lower types manifest a certain vague sensibility to light
and sound which is often spoken of as Dermatoptic Sensibility.
65. As to the objectivity of the perception of the external
senses, see Logic, n. 104, etc.

I

|
I
i
1
!
'

l
1
|
!
;
'
I
I
J
1
I

j
!

COSMOLOGY

253

66. The Internal Senses.—The immediate and direct
objects of external sense-perception are individual facts and
phenomena external to the sentient subject as such. The
immediate and direct objects of the internal senses, on the con­
trary, are the present or past sensations, or subjective states
of the sentient subject, as well as certain concrete aspects of
the objects perceived by the external senses, which, however,
do not fall within the sphere of any of the five external senses.
These internal senses are four: the common or central sense,
the imagination, the sensuous memory and the estimative sense
or instinct. The organs of these senses are situated in the
hemispheres of the brain.
67. The central or common sense is an internal organic
faculty which perceives, distinguishes and synthesizes the actual
operations and affections of the various sensitive organs which
ramify from the brain. Thus, the sense of sight may perceive
a certain object as white; the sense of touch, as hard; and the
sense of taste, as sweet. When these several data are referred
on to the central sense, the sentient subject becomes aware that
it is in the presence of one external object which is white, sweet
and hard, pleasant to sight and taste, but painful to the touch.
As the central sense is thus the terminus to which all our
external sense-perceptions are referred, so it is also the source
from which all the sensitive activity of the peripheral senses
is derived. “Vis sentiendi diffunditur in organa quinque sen­
suum ab aliqua una radice communi, ad quam etiam terminantur
omnes immutationes singulorum sensuum.” Hence, when the
central sense is rendered inactive, as in sleep, or by nerve­
poison, e. «/./chloroform, all the external senses become inoper­
ative.
68. The imagination is an internal sensitive faculty which
retains and reproduces the past experiences of the central and
external senses It may recall these representations singly, or
combine them to form entirely new images. Thus it can recall
the sensations of sight, sound, etc., which have been expe-

254

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

rienced, and it can also form new representations by combining
them, e. g., 'representations of mountains of gold,’ 'walking
trees,’ 'rivers of blood,’ etc.
69. The causes which determine the imagination to
reproduce the sensile representations it retains are mainly:
(a) The association which exists between the objects
whose images are recalled, e. g., 'co-existence or succession in
time and space,’ 'relations of whole and part,’ 'relations of simi­
larity and contrariety,’ etc. On account of this association, an
object will naturally recall those related to it in past experience;
(b) The internal condition of the body, inasmuch'as it
affects the brain. The brain is the organ of this faculty; hence,
an impression, however produced on the living brain, similar
to that which accompanied a given imaginative sensation, is
likely to recall that sensation. Hence, the varied unconnected
series of imaginative representations which occur in dreams
or in cases of violent fever; hence, too, the predominance of
sad or pleasant phantasms according to the various states of
the nervous system.
Note (i).—The state of sleep, as we have said, results
from the temporary suspension of the activity of the central
sense (caused either by natural fatigue or by artificial means)
and the consequent inactivity of the other sensitive faculties.
During the time of sleep the nutritive functions are exercised
more regularly and. perfectly, and the wear and tear of the
nervous system, occasioned by sensuous activity, is repaired.
Hence, natural sleep has been described as “vinculum sensorii
primi quod fit gratia salutis.”
If, however, during this state of sleep, any impression,
whether from within the organism or from without, should
reach that portion of the brain which is the organ of the imagi­
nation and arouse this faculty to action, it will reproduce some
of the many images of past experience of which it is the store­
house; and these, in turn, will recall others in a series accord­
ing to the nature of the present impression and the laws of

J

/

j

s' ' ' X

COSMOLOGY

355

association, etc., spoken of above. This activity of the imagina­
tion partially arouses the central sense to action: and as the
primary function of the latter faculty in the normal waking
state is to refer the various impressions passed on to it from
the external senses tp the external objects which produced
them, so now abnormally stimulated to action and without the
influence of the external senses to guide it, it refers the phan­
tasms of the imagination to the external world and “gives to
airy nothing a local habitation and a name.”
This projection into the outer, world of the phantasms of
the imaginaiton when it occurs in sleep is called a dream.
(2) .—In somnambulism some of the external senses seem
to be open to impressions from without which are woven into
,
thé texture of the dream, and this serves to intensify the illu­
sion and to call even the motor faculties into play.
(3) A-A hallucination may be called a -waking dream. In
,
some case of hyperaesthesia, or exceptional morbid excitement
- of the nervous system, the representations of the imagination
become so extremely vivid as even to counterfeit and over­
balance the normal external sensations. The whole sensitive
i
energy of the soul is, as it were, absorbed by the phantasmal
image, and the waking sufferer regards it as an external reality.
It is even said that, at times, the internal disturbance may be
so great as to produce modifications in the peripheral organs
similar to those that are normally produced by external objects.
(4) .—“Hypnosis is a species of artificial sleep in which
some of the sentient organs are inhibited, while others are overstimulated. · When induced by human agency this state involves
a dependent condition of the subject which makes him respon­
sive to the suggestions (by words or other signs) of the
f
hypnotizer. The secret of this strange power of suggestion
I
is probably to be found in the fact that the last and strongest
impression left in the central sense and imagination just before
r
the inhibition and hyperesthesia are affected, is produced by
the commands and personality of the hypnotizer. His image

5' ti

Γ 71

V I

256

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

1 ¥

>

‘I

$
Hi

i ·
æ ■>

!«

ft’?·

will then occupy all the energies of the imagination and central
sense and his suggestions will, as a general rule, be followed
and obeyed with almost automatic precision, while the subject
remains insensible to all other external impressions.”
70. The sensitive memory retains, recalls and recognizes,
as perceived before, the representations of the various internal
and external senses. In this it differs from the imagination,
that while the latter merely reproduces objects of past experi­
ence, the memory also recognizes them as old acquaintances
that have been met before. Recognition of past objects of
internal or external sense-perception is therefore the charac­
teristic function of the sensitive memory.
Note.—“The tendency of an experience to lapse out of
memory is in proportion to the feebleness of the original im­
pression and the infrequency of its repetition.”
“A past experience becomes unrecognizable in proportion
to the length of time and the number and vivacity of the
experiences which have intervened since its last occurrence or
reproduction.”
71. The estimative sense or instinct, as it is commonly
called, is an internal organic faculty which apprehends certain
individual concrete notes of material objects which do not come
within the sphere of any or all of the external senses. Thus,
“the Iamb does not flee because the color or form of the wolf
is disagreeable to the external senses, and the bird does not
collect twigs for its nest because they are attractive in them­
selves, but both animals are endowed with a faculty which,
under appropriate conditions, is determined by the apprehen­
sion of these objects to guide them in the mere execution,
without foresight or reflection, of operations beneficial to their
specific natures respectively.”
72. The organic character of all the faculties enumer­
ated above is manifest, as their objects do not transcend the
sphere of individual concrete material facts and “phenomena—
singularia qualia-quanta.” In man, as in the lower animals,

#1
5

Z/7Ù /Z'-ïvC'x

j

.

COSMOLOGY

257

these faculties are organic, but their operations are more per­
fect, inasmuch as they are subject to the guidance of intellect
and free will.
73. The Sensuous Appetites.—The term appetite is used
in a very wide sense. It denotes all forms of internal inclina­
tion, comprehending alike (1) the natural tendencies or affini­
ties implanted in all finite beings, even plants and inanimate
substances, which impel them blindly towards what is suitable
to and perfective of their nature, independently of all cognition
on their part; and (2) the attractions and aversions which
follow upon cognition in sentient and rational beings..
The former class of inclinations or tendencies are called
natural appetites, inasmuch as they flow from the very nature
of the being, i. e., from the dynamic element, or form which
constitutes it the being it is. To this class of appetites, belong
the natural tendencies or nisus in the various powers and fac­
ulties of beings to fulfill the function for which they are by
their nature and constitution destined.
The latter class of tendencies arr called Elicited Appetites,
because they are aroused to vital action by cognition. Elicited
appetition is again of two kinds, rational or sensuous, according
to the character of the cognitive faculty by which their objects
are perceived and proposed.
74. That the sensuous appetite is an organic faculty fol­
lows from the nature of the objects in regard to which it is.
exercised, viz., those presented by the.external and internal
senses, i. e., concrete individual material things. As to the
organ of this faculty, however, opinions are divided. Some
hold that it is the brain, others, on the contrary, maintain that
it is the ganglia and nervous fibres of the heart. In favor of
the latter opinion it may be said, (l) that it is the common
usage of men to attribute the feelings, e. g.,of ‘love,’ ‘hatred,’
‘fear,’ etc., to the heart ; (2) that no part of the organism is so
much modified by these feelings as the heart, so that as CL

ÉBH

258

«
1 <

i»

a

S
IB 1'
H
ft
v

«B

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

Bernard has said, it may be considered the organic index of
their intensity.
75. The various forms of sensitive appetition may be
classified as follows: the object presented by cognition may
be, (1) suitable or repugnant in itself simply and just as it
stands; or (2) it may be a suitable object difficult to obtain, ‘
or a repugnant object difficult to avoid. The former would
be the object of what is called the concupiscible appetite ; the
latter, of the irascible appetite. In other words, the object of
the concupiscible appetite is the good or evil to be attained or
avoided: the object of the irascible appetite is the difficulty to
be overcome in attaining the good or avoiding the evil.
The acts of the concupiscible appetite are love and haired,
desire and aversion, joy and sadness.
The acts of the irascible appetite are hope and despair,
courage and fear, anger.
Note.—Sensuous Pleasure and Pain. Sensuous pleasure
is the satisfaction or repose which the faculties of a sentiment
being finds in the possession or enjoyment of their proper
objects. It is, therefore, an accompaniment of the natural !
normal exercise of these faculties. In proportion as the energy
of the faculty is greater and the object more fitted to call forth
and satisfy that energy, so is the pleasure more intense. Pain,
on the other hand, arises from excess or defect in the exercise
of a faculty, or from imperfection or unsuitability in the object
presented to it
Both pain and pleasure are therefore dependent on, (1)
the natural scope and efficiency of the faculty, its acquired
habits and its actual condition of health and energy; and (2)
the suitable presence of an object in harmony with the energies
of the faculty. ... ■
,
76. Locomotion.—Every sentient being is capable of
some kind of exterior spontaneous local motion. In fact, it is
by the exterior motion that they manifest to us their sensitive
faculties of cognition and appetition. Perception of agreeable

à

/ ■

COSMOLOGY

259

or disagreeable objects is followed by desire or aversion; and
this, in turn, gives rise to movement toward or from the
object The special organ of this faculty of movement is con­
sidered to be the efferent nerves which terminate in the muscles.
Note.—The vital movements, e. g., of the heart, lungs,
etc., which are effected independently of cognition, are called
automatic; those which result from cognition and appetition are
called autonomic. These latter, again, are either instinctive or
volitional, according as they are determined by the sensuous
appetites (as in brutes'), or by the free will (as in man).
(ii) Nature of the Animal Soul.

yy. That the brute animals around us possess powers
of perception, appetition and autonomic locomotion is the
unanimous verdict of the common sense of mankind. These
animals have various organs of sense perception more or less
similar in structure and function to our own, and, on the other
hand, they exhibit in their exterior action generally, all the
signs of true perception, feeling and autonomic movement.
The higher animals, at least, also clearly manifest by their
actions that they possess the four internal, as well as the five
external senses.
78. Now, if we consider the character of the chief and
fundamental operation of sensuous activity, i. e., perception,
or cognition, we shall see clearly that it differs essentially from
the activities of merely inanimate bodies on the one hand and
from those of merely vegetative activities, on the other. ■
For, on the one hand, all the activities of inanimate sub­
stances, e. g., their power of attraction, of producing motion,
heat, chemical changes, etc., are merely transitive, i..e., they
are capable of producing changes in other bodies but not in
themselves. ■ As to bodies at a distance, they affect them only,
inasmuch as having first affected the intervening media, the
energy thus transmitted produces physical change in the distant
object

260

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

The vegetative activities, on the other hand, are merely
immanent; the term of their action is change in the organism
of the agent, i. e., its nutrition, development, etc.
Cognitive activity, on the contrary, is, at the same time
under different respects, both immanent and transitive, sub­
jective and objective. The action is entitatively immanent and
does not emerge from the sentient faculty which produces it;
and it is at the same time representatively transitive, i. e., it is
wholly occupied upon an external object. For instance, the
action by which the sense of sight perceives the sun does not >
issue forth from the eye or produce any change in the sun j
or in the intervening ether, and yet it is wholly engaged upon ;
an object 93,000,000 of miles away. Hence it is that we speak
of the scope which is aimed at and reached by mechanical, J
physico-chemical and vegetative activity, or the term of their i
efficiency, i. e., the effect produced by them; while the scope >
aimed at and reached by cognitive and appetitive activity, is
called their object, i. e., that external thing upon which thar >
immanent action is occupied. Hence, the actions of cognitive j
and appetitive faculties are sui generis and eventually different |
from and superior to the action of mere physico-chemical or
vegetative powers.
Note.—Hence, the cognitive act is called intentional, i. e.,
an immanent act with a transitive or objective reference or
efficacy.·.··.',·
■ ..... ■
There is also another aspect of sensitive cognition and Γ
appetition which deserves consideration. On the one hand, the ;
objects of our sensations are extended material things. These ί
make an extended impression on the extended peripheral sense­
organs, and these, in turn, transmit thar impressions to the
extended nerve-centres, which are the organs of the internal
senses, and hence, the objects are perceived, imagined, etc., as
individual extended things or as qualities or properties of indi­
vidual extended things. On the other hand, experience shows j
us that these objects are perceived as units.
>
I

COSMOLOGY

261

Now, it is a contradiction to say that an extended organ
can perceive an extended object as a unit, unless the organ be
informed by a simple dynamic principle which is itself not
made up of parts. Take for instance, a marble in your hand.
Your sense of touch apprehends it as one thing. But it is
impossible that the different parts of the marble which make
different impressions, e. g., on the different tactile papillæ
distributed over your hand should be apprehended as one
thing unless the hand is informed by a simple perceptive
principle.
And this becomes more manifest still, if we go on to con­
sider that while the sight apprehends the marble as a colored
thing; the touch, as a cold thing; the taste, as an insipid thing;
the smell, as an odorless thing, etc., it is apprehended by the
central sense, recalled by the imagination, recognized by the
memory, etc., as one colored, cold, tasteless,· odorless thing.
79. From the preceding considerations it is evident that
no aggregation of merely inanimate, or merely vegetative
forces, can give us the cognitive and appetitive faculties
which manifest themselves in the operations of what is called
the animal kingdom; unless, indeed, we are prepared to admit
that a sum of zeros can give us a positive number. An animal
is, therefore, an organism informed by a dynamic principle
sui generis, esentially different from and superior to the sub­
stantial forms oi merely vegetative or anorganic substances.
80. Brute cognition and appetition, however, are\
strictly limited to certain concrete aspects of individual
material things. Even the estimative sense never rises above
the apprehension of the concrete suitableness or repugnance,
here and now, of individual material objects to the actual,
needs of the sentient organism. This estimate or instinctive
apprehension is the same in all individuals of the same species
and differs according to difference of species. Just as each
plant builds up its own organism according to a fixed type
without cognition of any kind, so "omnis hirunda similiter
V

2Ô2

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

nidificat” guided solely by the concrete sense-perception which
excites the impulse to act in a fixed, determinate way according
to the specific nature of the sentient being.
7
Note.—Hence, in all the phenomena, of animal life there
is no trace of any perception of abstract \miversal truths and
principies. There is no progress or change of any kind in the
instinctive action of animals. They make no use of instru­
ments, fire, etc., to aid them in their work. They have no
scientific, moral or spiritual notions of any kind., "Instinct is
perfect in its narrow sphere, but it cannot rise beyond this into
X^the sphere of unlimited thought and contrivance.”—Dawson.
81. Brute cognition and appetition, therefore, is essen­
tially sensuous, the action neither of the dynamic principle
alone, nor of the organism alone, but of the animated organism
{psycho-physical action). Now the action of a being mani­
fests its nature, and hence, as the action of the brute soul
is intrinsically and essentially dependent on the material organ­
ism and inseparable from it; the brute soul is therefore, com­
pletely immersed ia the organism which it animates. It is
incapable of acting or existing apart from the body and perishes j
with , the disintegration of the latter. Accordingly it does not
need annihilation to account for its destruction, nor creation
to account for its origin. It is a product of substantial trans­
formation effected by generation by which an existing vital
energy educes from the potentiality of matter a new principle *
of activity similar to itself.
·
|
. λ . 82. In the animal the vegetative functions produce, pre­
serve and develop an organism adapted for sensation; and, |
on the other hand, the sensitive faculties are chiefly exercised i
for the preservation, development and reproduction of the i
organism. Again, every modification of the sensitive activity
(anger, fear, etc.) involves a corresponding modification of the |
vegetative activities ; and, on the other hand, ill-health, disease, j
etc., of the organism affect the sensuous perceptions, desires, j
feelings, etc., of the animat But such mutual interdependence i

f7Z Z

Γ ‘X\'Z

COSMOLOGY

263

of the various vital functions, sensitive and vegetative, of thé
animal organism can only be accounted for by recognizing that
all these various activities have their source in one and the
same dynamic principle. Hence, the brute soul is a substan­
tial dynamic principle, or form, which immediately actuates
, primal matter and is the ultimate source of all the specific
properties and activities of the living, sentient coiporeal sub­
stance.
' -'
Note (1).—As to the divisibility of the brute soul, the
origin, transmission, etc.; of animal life, see above, n. 54.
(2).—On the subjects so briefly treated in the present's
k article, see Maher, especially chapters 7, 9, 10 and 12; also the )
supplementary chapter on Animal Psychology.

Art. IV.—Origin

of

Species in the Organic World.

83. As we have already more than once seen, the specific
nature of a corporeal substance is determined by the substantial dynamic principle, or form, which actuates and completes
primal matter. For our present purpose, however, it will
suffice to describe a species in the living organic world; A
collection of living organisms (a) essentially similar in struc­
ture and function and (b) productive of offspring by their
union with each other, so that the collection can be indefinitely
perpetuated in nature by generation; and hence, such that the
whole collection might have sprung originally from a single
pair. Or more briefly: A collection of individuals of one
essentially similar inalienable type, capable of indefinite perpet­
uation by generation. Similarity and filiation are therefore the
chief indications of specific unity. -Note (i).—Accidental diversities of color, size, eta, give
ns varieties within the same species. When these are perpetu­
ated by artificial selection on the part of gardeners, breeders,
eta, or by other causes, we have races or breeds. Hence, dif­
ference of race between parents in no way hinders offspring.
But even here, “Domestic varieties, on returning to savage

.
'

i

'

Ή

I

264

-5

•

.

■JH

"j i
hi

> *

t

t’

■U

T

Γ il
4 i1
- s
t :I

“*!

>

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

life, gradually, but invariably, assume the characters of the
original type.”—Darwin.
(2).—The offspring that occasionally results from the
union of individuals of different species is called a hybrid. In
the rare cases of hybrid fecundity, the inevitable return of the
offspring to one or other of the original specific types is called
reversion. The offspring of individuals of different races of
the same species is called a mongrel. The casual appearance in
a descendent of such mongrels of one or other of the external
racial characteristics of either of the primitive parents is called
atavism.
84. That there is in the organic world such collections
of individuals as we have described is a manifest fact,
e. g., the various races or breeds of horses are like each other in
fundamental structure and function; they differ essentially in
structure and function from other groups of animals, e. g.,
‘dogs’; and finally, the union of individuals of these different
races or breeds with one another is capable of perpetuating the
species indefinitely, while their union with individuals of other
groups is either not fruitful or produces a hybrid offspring
incapable of perpetuating itself. Hence, our description of
species is objective, i. e., realized in the actual world around us.
85. Most of the species both of plants and animals with
which we are familiar are comparatively new in the history of
life upon the earth. From the first appearance of organic life
upon the earth to the present time, many species of both plants
and animals have disappeared and many new ones have been
introduced. The question before us is, How is the origin of
these various species of living organisms to be accounted
for? Various hypotheses have been proposed to solve the
problem. All the different views on the subject, however, may
be classified under two heads :—the theory of independent for­
mations, and the theory of descent or derivation.
86. The Theory of Independent Formations, holding
to the principle of causality, the essential immutability of species

• J4

; 'S
fij
,λ
Zf '

~ / Γ

\\ /f'r χ

COSMOLOGY

j

i
I
i

■
J
1

i-

r

265

and the absence of connecting links by which one species can
be shown to have been gradually transformed into another,
maintains that the first beings (few or many) of each species
were produced by the Creator at the period of the world’s
history when the earth was fitted to receive them and the wellbeing of the whole would be benefited by their presence.
They would thus have been produced from pre-existing
material by the immediate action of the Creator. This action
could not strictly be called either creative, or miraculous. Not
creative, as it would not imply the production of the whole
new being out of nothing, but the eduction of a new substantial
form in matter, by a proportionate cause. Not miraculous,
because it would not be against any law of nature, nor beyond
the course of nature as designed by the Creator, any more than
the creation of matter itself, or of each individual human soul,
is beyond the order of nature.
Note.—The vague term Evolution may be applied to this
view in so far as the word can express the gradual working
out of a predetermined creative plan. In a somewhat similar
sense we speak of the evolution of the steam engine, of the
bicycle, without at all implying that the perfect machines of
our day are connected by any bond of filiation with their ri^der
predecessors.
87. The Theory of Descent or Derivation maintains,
in general, that many organic species are derived or descended
from one common parental stock. This hypothesis has been
proposed in various forms, differing from one another as to
(a) the extent of the field covered by the transformation ; (b)
the manner in which the transformation was effected. It will
suffice for our purpose, however, to classify the views of
transformists under the following four heads:—
88. Monistic Evolution is simply the extreme material­
istic atomism alluded to above (n. 29, Note 1). It starts with
a vast cloud of homogeneous atoms, each atom standing in a
definite position relatively to all others, so that the existing

T
§

266

S-

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

order of the world “lay potentially in the cosmic vapor.” To
these atoms at a certain definite tinte, a certain definite measure
of motion in a certain definite direction, was communicated;
and the actual solar system and all being therein, great and
small, living and not living, have been the result. The motion
of the homogeneous cosmic dust gave, first the simple chemical
elements, then various chemical compounds, then the simplest
living organisms, and these, in turn, advanced from stage to
stage, radiate, mollusc, articulate, vertebrate, fish, serpent, bird,
mammal, man. There is no telling where the cosmic dust came
from, or whence the primitive arrangement of its particles,
which yet contained potentially the actual cosmic order. We
are not told when the motion came, or why in such a definite
measure and direction. There is no substantial difference be­
tween bodies simple or compound, between plants and animals,
animals and men. There is no such thing as soul, or mind,
or free-will. All things are simply groups of homogeneous
atoms in motion. There is an accidental difference in the
grouping of the atoms and in the mode of motion ; that is all
89. In the preceding chapter, we have shown (n. 30) that
this system is in open contradiction with the most obvious facts
of experience which clearly manifest the existence of different
substances in the anorganic world. In the preceding articles of
the present chapter we have also shown that as Tait says, “to
say that even the lowest forms of life can be explained by the
mere relations, motions and interactions of inanimate matter
is simply unscientific.” It is needless, therefore, to attempt
further refutation of the system.
It is well to remark, however, that (a) as to its starting
point it assumes uncaused matter, an uncaused orderly arrange­
ment of the particles of this matter and. an uncaused motion of
a definite intensity and direction, communicated to this matter
at a definite time. - (b) In its progress it assumes that inani­
mate matter can produce life, and that lower vital principles
can produce higher, (c) Finally, it assumes that the irrational

,
\

I

'

COSMOLOGY
f

'

j
j,

·,
Ï

!.
[
!
i

J
j
j
j

i

267

:

-

and material can change itself into the rational and immaterial
and spiritual, and that inert extended matter can give us the
intelligent free soul of man. It is, therefore, from first to last,
a gratuitous and absurd hypothesis.
90. Darwinian Evolution holds that all the forms of
life that have appeared upon the earth have sprung from one
or two of the lowest types of organisms. Organic life origi­
nated with a few specimens of, e. g., amoeba or myxomycètes
or something lower still. Offspring differs from parent, and,
in this case of course, was an improvement on parent according
to the laws of variation. As generation followed generation
and variations multiplied and were transmitted according to the
law of heredity, & struggle for existence ensued which resulted
in the survival of the fittest which is another name for natural
selection.} Add to these factors the necessity each living organ­
ism would be under to adapt itself to its environment, the use
and disuse of different parts of its body according to circum­
stances and finally, the sexual selection by which the most
highly gifted males and females would seek and win each
other, and you have all the machinery which the Darwinian
theorist requires to obtain from his bit of slime-mould, grass,
wheat, the rose, oak, sequoia, etc.; and from his primitive
amoeba, oysters, crocodiles, bees, eagles, elephants and men.
Of course time was needed to accomplish all these wonderful
changes—more time in fact than geology or physics can afford
to grant Of course, too, these changes were gradual, generation after generation slowly accumulating the infinitesimal links
of the chain which unites monera with man, and consequently,
the strata of the earth must be stored with fossil remains of the
Intermediate or Transitional forms.
91. As to this Darwinian evolution, we say, that it is an
hypothesis in manifest contradiction with reason and fact,
(a) It is repugnant to reason to attribute stupendous
effects to wholly disproportionate causes. Now, Darwinism
attributes the production of all the manifold forms of life that

,·■ '

268

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

have ever peopled the earth to one or two types of the very
lowest grade under the influence of the so-called laws of
variability, heredity, etc. But these agencies, if they can be
called so, at work to-day with all the ingenuity and skill of man
to control and apply them, are wholly incapable of producing
more than slight varietal changes in living species. Therefore,
much less, when left to chance, are they capable of effecting
specific changes, and still less of producing from a few of the
lowest forms of living matter all the vast and wonderful variety
of plant and animal life which has appeared upon the earth.
The slightest reflection will convince us that Darwin’s socalled laws are neither universal laws of nature nor even
remotely adequate to accomplish the task which he assigns to
them. It is not true, that the accidental variations of offspring
from parent always imply an improvement on parental char­
acters. It is not true, that parents always transmit to offspring
by a law of heredity, all the minute points of excellence which
they themselves have inherited or acquired. It is not true that
only the more perfect among the offspring of each plant and
animal are selected by nature (whatever that may mean) to
survive and propagate the race. Environment may accidentally
affect the organism, but, it is gratuitous and contrary to all
experience, to say that it can effect a specific change. The
moderate use of an organ will doubtless strengthen and perfect
it, but it is nonsense to talk of the use of an organ producing
the organ itself.
Realizing the inadequacy of the causes assigned by their
leader, later Darwinians are satisfied with simply maintaining
that transformism is a fact, though we are yet unable to deter­
mine the causes which effected it
(b) We, therefore, take up the second part of our proposi­
tion: Darwinian evolution is in contradiction with all known
facts of the past or present history of life upon the earth.
Known facts are: (i) Those which are verified by present
observation and experiment (2) Those which are recorded in

X

COSMOLOGY

269

trustworthy history. (3) Those which are recorded in the
strata of which the earth’s surface is composed.
Now as to the first class of facts. Present observation and
experiment proves : (i) That no new species of plants or animals
can be produced from individuals of the same specific type by
the most careful artificial selection bn the part of gardeners,
breeders, etc. Innumerable varieties have been so produced, ·
but not a single new species, (ii) That no new species is pro­
duced by the numerous generations of microscopic plants and
animals which succeed each other withsuch astonishing rapidity
all around us, “Koch took specimens of the phthisis microbe
and placed them in a medium where they could increase and
multiply without restraint. He cultivated the microbe most
carefully, while modifying its surroundings in various ways to
see what would become of it, and whether perhaps it would turn
into something else. The stock multiplied prodigiously, but
remained absolutely unchanged in species to the end.” (iii)
That no new species can be produced by cross-breeding between >
different
*species.
This is shown by the sterility of hybrid
offspring and in the rare cases of their fecundity by'the ulti­
mate reversion of the new offspring to one or other of the
original parental types.
As to the second class of facts. “The crocodiles, ibises,
oxen, cats and various other creatures that were embalmed
among the mummies of Egypt were animals such as still live
dn the earth without having undergone any change. The same
fact is shown by the Assyrian sculptures, etc. Here, then, we
have proof that external influences acting through thousands
of years have failed to modify the living organisms that flourish
around us.” Williamson, etc. One might catalogue a long
list of plants and animals described by ancient writers, sculp­
tured on ancient monuments, preserved in tombs, ruins, etc.,
but in no case is there a trace of difference between them and
those of the present day. Three thousand years is a long time
in the life of a species : and one may be permitted in reason to

1

370

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

calculate what a longer time would accomplish by multiplying
what 3,000 years has accomplished in modifying any known
species. But three thousand years has done nothing in this
respect. Therefore, etc.
As to the third class of facts. Huxley tells us that “the
only perfectly safe foundation for the doctrine of evolution
lies in the historical or rather archaeological evidence that par- .
ticplar organisms have originated by the gradual modification^
of their predecessors which is furnished by fossil remains.
Now here is the latest testimony of palaeontology on the sub­
ject in thé words of one of the great makers as distinguished
from the retailers of science—Sir G. W. Dawson writing in
1893. ■■ r · .·
.
“Palaeontology (i) furnished no direct evidence as to the
actual transformation of one species into another; but the drift
of its testimony is to show that species came in per saltum
(i. e., suddenly and without connection with preceding species)
rather than by any slow or gradual process, (ii) In so far as
we can trace their history, specific types are permanent in their
characters from their introduction to their extinction, and their
earlier varietal forms are similar to the later ones, (iii) We
are now prepared to say that the Struggle for Existence has not
* been the determining cause of the introduction of new species.
The periods of rapid introduction of new forms of marine life
were no periods of struggle, but of expansion, i. e., periods
in which the submergence of continents afforded new and
large space for their extension and comfortable subsistence. In
like manner it was continental emergence that afforded the
opportunity for the introduction of land animals and plants,
(iv) Another important palaeontological fact is the remarkable
fixity of certain types of living beings in geological times, espe­
cially in the case of many low types of life, through vicissitudes
of physical conditions of the most stupendous character and over
a lapse of time scarcely conceivable. And this holds true in
groups which, within certain limits, are the most variable of all.

.
i

I
ί
i
I
i
j

.
r

COSMOLOGY

271

In the present world, no creatures are more variable than the
protozoa, e. g., ’foraminifera and sponges.’ Yet these groups
are fundamentally the same from the beginning of the palaeozoic
until now; and modern species scarcely seem to differ from
specimens taken from rocks at least half way back to the
beginning of the geological record.”
As to this last fact (the permanence throughout vast periods
of specific types) many instances might be cited. Thus of fortysix species of mammals of the quaternary and glacial period,
thirty-nine have survived down to our own times without any
appreciable change; the other seven have become extinct rather
than changed. The common sand-clam and the short dam
now abounding on our shores are identical with those of the
crag of the Pleistocene. The oyster is substantially the same
to-day as when first introduced in the Carboniferous. “The
corals of the Gulf of Mexico have been the same for over
200,000 years.”—Agassiz. Of the trilobites which suddenly
appeared in the lower Silurian in vast number and very high
perfection, Barrande, the great discoverer and authority on the
subject, says, “throughout a series of strata 5,000 meters in
thickness they remained specifically unchanged until their com­
plete disappearance.” And he adds; “The study of the primor­
dial Silurian shows that modem theoretical calculations are
quite contrary to facts: so much so, indeed, that the real fauna
would seem to have been calculated designedly to contradict
evolutionist theories”
92. Darwinian evolution is, therefore, in contradiction with
palæontological facts. Hence, even supposing (as Christian
evolutionists do) that the first lowly forms of plant and animal
life were produced by the Creator in the beginning, and sup­
posing that each human soul, as being a spiritual substance
beyond the causality of matter, is directly created by God—
even, on this supposition, this second form of the doctrine of
descent, or Darwinian evolution, is an untenable hypothesis in
contradiction with observation and experiment, with the facts

■•Ί -

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY
’Τ! Μ.

t

Μ·

Μ

4
8
i

I4

of history, with the discoveries of palæontology and with'the
first principles of rational science, e. g., ‘the Principle of Pro­
portionate Causality.’
Note.—Some have felt so much the force of the argument
from palæontology that they have abandoned the notion of slow
insensible changes and have adopted the view that the transi­
tion from lower to higher forms was effected suddenly and
by great jumps. This, of course, saves them the trouble of
finding the Missing Links of Darwin’s finely graduated chain;
but it only increases the violence done to the testimony of actual
and historical experience and to the first and most imperative
principles of rational science. It was just to avoid this outrage
on common sense that the Darwinian hypothesis was proposed,
so that by bridging the interval between lower and higher types
of life, by a continuous procession of gradually changing
organisms, the transition from one species to another might be
more easily accepted. It would be too glaring an absurdity, to
say, e. g., that a man who had absolutely no money gave at once
$10,000 to another, but the absurdity would be less noticed
(though not less real) if it were said that he gave it gradually,
e. g., in small fractions of a cent at a time.
A third form of derivation theory would suppose that
the Creator, at certain periods when new forms were to be
introduced, either directly transformed pre-existing species into
new ones, or in some way enabled them to produce the germs
of new species. This is certainly possible hypothesis inasmuch
as a proportionate cause of the new species is assigned. Yet
the philosopher must consider it as arbitrary and gratuitous—
an interference with the ordinary laws of organic nature—and
hence, far less philosophical than the theory of independent
formations which are a part of the order of the nature, not an
interference with it.
93. The fourth form of the derivation theory supposes
that in the beginning God created all specific forms of plant
and animal life that have ever appeared upon the earth, but in

/

·' Cl

COSMOLOGY

273

a condition suited to the circumstances of the time. Outwardly
they would all appear more or less alike, just as, in the em­
bryonic stage, all animals now resemble one another. In one,
however, there was the Substantial Form or dynamic principle
of a horse; in another, the form of an eagle, etc. These higher
forms could not at first develop themselves into full perfection,
owing to the conditions of the time. Each could only reach
some low stage of embryonic development and reproduce its
kind before passing away. Gradually as conditions changed
each specific type in succeeding generations would be enabled
to manifest its innate specific power either by slow impercept­
ible degrees, or suddenly and “per saltus.” In this view again
there is no violation of the law of causality. Species are dis­
tinct from the first, only the embryonic development which is
now accomplished in one individual life would then have taken
perhaps thousands of individual lives to reach its maturity.
The objection to this view, and it is a strong one, is that
it is hard to see why the Creator should create high specific
types in circumstances in which it was impossible for them to
attain their natural perfection. Moreover, there is no animal
known to palaeontologists which would represent, e. g., “a horse”
at any period of its present embryonic development.
Note (i).—This last theory differs from Darwinian evo­
lution in two essential points: (i) Darwinism supposes nothing
to start with but the simplest forms of almost undifferentiated
living protoplasm. This acted upon by external physical
agencies would give all the varied life of the past and present
world. This theory, on the contrary, supposes that the different
organisms are, from the first, differentiated by different dynamic
principles, but that the organisms were unable to attain their
full development until suitable surrounding circumstances oc­
curred. (ii) Darwinism holds that the human soul is merely
a development of the animal life-principle. This theory, on
the contrary, holds that the human soul is in every case a
spiritual substance directly created by God.

274

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

(2) .—“The term ‘evolution,’ has been employed in so many
senses, as to have become nearly useless for any scientific pur­
pose."—Dawson. The word is used in all the senses considered
above, and in many more. When, then, a man says he is an
Evolutionist, or asks you if you admit the doctrine of Evolu­
tion, you will do well to ask what he means by the word, where
his evolution begins, where it ends, how it is accomplished, etc
(3) .—What has revealed religion to say as to the origin
of species? Very little, (i) God is the Author and Creator
mediately or immediately of all finite beings, (ii) Each individual human soul is directly and immediately created by God.
(iii) As to the origin of the first human body, Holy Scripture
says that God formed it from the earth. Hence the words
literally imply an immediate action of God in the formation of
the first human body. Now it is a canon of all interpretation
that the words of a document are to be taken literally, unless
there is a cogent reason for taking them in a figurative sense.
In the present case no such reason exists. Therefore, etc.
Again, it is a rule of interpretation in the Church, that it is not
permissible to interpret a statement of Scripture in a sense
opposed to that in which it has been unanimously understood
from the beginning by all the great doctors and theologians of
the Church. But the Scripture narrative of the formation of the
body of Adam has always been taken in thé literal sense of the
words by the great doctors and theologians. Therefore, etc.
Hence, as the matter is so closely connected with some of
the fundamental truths of revelation, e. g., the unity and
original state of the human race, etc., it would be rash and
imprudent on the part of a Christian to admit that the first
human body was in any way evolved from a brute organism;
all the more so, as there is not a shadow of a scientific reason
for doing so.
. —Why have so many scientific men (they will be
(4)
found to be, generally speaking, the popular retailers rather than
the great makers ai science) accepted the theory of Evolution?

:
1
|
j
|

|

j
j
j
i
f
!
!
’

COSMOLOGY

275

The reasons given above, (n. 31) will hold here also, (i) A
want of grasp of logical and metaphysical principles. The law
of Proportionate Causality is lost sight of in hasty efforts to
classify isolated facts, (ii) A desire, it would seem, to push the
Creator as far back as possible from the affairs of the world
He made and governs, if not to get rid of the thought of God
' altogether.
’ :
In this connection it is worth while to draw attention to two
significant passages quoted by Lord Salisbury in his address,
as president of the British Association, delivered at Oxford
before the assembled scientific representatives of America and
Europe, August, 1894.
r
Lord Kelvin, “the greatest living master of science among
us” is quoted as saying : "I feel profoundly convinced that the
argument of design has been greatly too much lost sight of in
recent zoological speculations. Overwhelmingly strong proof
of intelligent and beneficent design lie around us, and if ever
perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away
from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible
. force, showing to us, through nature, the influence of a Free
Will and teaching us that all living things depend on one Ever­
lasting Creator and Ruler.”
Prof. Weismann, a prominent evolutionist authority, is
quoted as follows: “We accept Natural Selection, not because
we are able to demonstrate the process in detail, not even be­
cause we can imagine it; but simply because it is the only expla­
nation we can conceive * * * without assuming the help of
a principle of design.”
For a clear and authoritative exposition of Evolution and
allied topics see the article by Herman Muckennann, S. J., in
the Catholic Encyclopedia.
94. Objections.
(a) From Palaontology.
. —Geology shows that the order in which the various
(i)
forms of organic life were introduced was one of gradual prog-

276

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

ress from lower to higher types. But this proves that higher
types are descended from lower.
Answer (1).—T. maj. N. Min. Fallacy, Post Hoc; ergo
Propter Hoc.
(2) .—T. maj. D. min.; If transitional forms connect the
various types, this would give probability to some rational
hypothesis of descent, c. min. If no such forms exist, the mere
fact of ascending series of types would justify any hypothesis
of descent, n. min.
(3) .—N. maj. An ascending series would be protozoa,
coelenterates, echinoderms, worms, molluscs, arthropodes, tunicates, vertebrates. Now all these sub-kingdoms are found in
the lower palaeozoic and all are found together in all the eras.
Nor is there an ascending series in the classes of these sub­
kingdoms, except reptiles, birds and animals of vertebrates.
Nor is there an ascending series in specific representatives of
these classes. The trilobites, cuttle-fishes and ganoid fishes oi
the Silurian and Devonian—the amphibians of the Carbonifer­
ous—the reptiles of the Mesozoic, etc., are as a rule, far superior
to the corresponding types of later times.
(ii) Geology gives us transitional forms, e. g., ganoid fish
of the Devonian join teleost fish and reptiles. Ichthyosaurs
(swimming reptiles), Dinosaurs (walking reptiles), Pterosaurs
(flying reptiles), show the connection between fish, birds,
amphibians, etc.
Answer.—These are the Transitional Forms required to
prove descent, N. assert. You might as well say that our bat
is a bird on its way to become a mouse.
These are distinct specific types intermediate between other
species, and permanent in their own, just as the bat is, C. assert.
Note.—The forms just mentioned may be called generalized types suited to a mixed land and water and aerial existence, such as the condition of the earth at the time of their
introduction required. But there is no trace of genealogical
connection between them and more specialized forms.

1
i

|
|

1
j

|
j
I

|
i
j
I
1
,
i
ί

COSMOLOGY

277

(iii) —At least we can trace the transformation of the
horse from a little four-toed animal about the size of a fox in
the Eocene.—(See Leconte, Compend, p. 361).
Answer.—N. assert. The best palæonotologists, even
among those who favor the doctrine of derivation, e. g., Gaudry,
etc., reject this argument for transformism. The various
animals mentioned as ancestors of the horse are too different
in structure to suggest connection by descent; and the Transi­
tional Forms to bridge over the intervals are, as usual, missing.
“If the horse is evolved out of Hipparion, myriads of in­
dividuals must have existed to effect this gradual change.”—
Williamson, etc. If we begin with Anchitherium or Miohippus,
three-toed animals, as Marsh and Cope do, the difficulty remains
the same.
Note.—The Plasticity of species, within the limits of
varietal changes, is very great, e. g., ’pigeons,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘horses,’
eta Geologists justly complain of the tendency among fossil
discoverers and naturalists, for every trifling difference in
structure, to multiply species; while the animals in question
may well be merely varieties of the same species.
(iv) —The geological record is incomplete, and therefore,
it furnishes no argument against evolution. (See Leconte,
fassim).
Answer (1).—“The geological record is much more com­
plete than is generally supposed. Over long periods of time
and many lines of being, we have a nearly continuous chain of
facts, and if these do not show the desired tendency, the fault
is as likely to be in the theory as in the record.”—Dawson.
(2).—This is a strange method of argument. Evolution
depends on Palaeontology as its “only perfectly safe founda­
tion.” The "foundation” refuses to support the airy super­
structure. Therefore evolution is “exact science,” etc.
(b) From Anatomy.
·
(i).—Similarity of structure shows descent from a com-

■j,

»
I?

I

!

ft

I

2?8

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

mon stock. But all plants and animals are similar in structure,
e. g., ‘the limbs of a fish, a bird and a horse.’ Therefore, etc
Answer (i).—The argument may be retorted. Dissimi­
larity of structure shows descent from different stocks. But
all species of animals differ in structure and function from
their neighbors, e. g., ‘the limbs of fish, bird, etc.,’ as above.
(2).—Specific similarity in structure and function shows
descent from a common stock, c. maj. Generic similarity
shows, etc., n. maj. But all animals are specifically similar in
structure, n. min. ; all animals are generically 'similar, L min.
Note.—The fallacy here is in the transmission from the
abstract to the concrete. We can form the abstract concept of
a backboned warm-blooded four-limbed being; and this con­
cept, so far as it goes, represents all such things. But when we
come to the actual concrete world we find that the abstract
notes are realized in essentially different ways. The abstract
similarity is modified in the concrete by decided differences as
essential as itself.
(ii).—In many organisms we find certain organs atrophied,
rudimentary organs—useless to their possessors, but fully
developed and useful in other animals, e. g., ‘the wings of
the apteryx,’ ‘ostrich,’ etc. Now, such rudimentary organs
show genealogical relationship between their possessors and
those organisms in which they are found fully developed.
Answer.—To say that these so-called rudimentary organs
are useless is altogether gratuitous. “There is no organ of the
body, however small, however seemingly unimportant, which
we can presume to neglect. It may be that the balance of
assimilation and nutrition, upon which the health of the whole
organism depends, hinges upon the integrity of such obscure
structures : and it is the maintenance of this balance which
constitutes health; its disturbance, disease.’’—Schafer.
Note.—The law of Correlation of Parts for the Per­
fection of the Whole governs all perfect work in nature as in
art. To construct, e. g., a vertebrae of some particular specific

COSMOLOGY.

279

type, the general parts essential to all vertebrates must be ar­
ranged and developed in subordination to the idea of this
particular whole. Some of the parts will be more developed,
some less, than in other species of the class, in order that the
whole may be a perfectly balanced structure; and any modifica­
tion of any of these parts, for better or for worse, will injure
the whole. Hence, it is misleading to speak of the normally
developed parts of any specific type as Rudimentary. They
would be rudimentary, in other types, , just as the spring of a
lady’s watch would be rudimentary in a town clock.
(c) From Embryology.
(i) .—Every day the most varied organisms are evolved out
of similar cells of protoplasm. Therefore, all organisms have
arisen from a primeval, undifferentiated mass of protoplasm.
Answer.—From cells similar in origin, internal energy
and outward appearance, n. anteced. Similar in outward ap­
pearance but different in origin and internal energy, t. anteced.
(ii) .—Ontogenesis is a summary of phylogenesis. But
the history of the embryonic development of each individual of
a higher species exhibits a series of transformations from a
simple cell through all the types of life inferior to its own.
Answer.—N. major. It is a mere fanciful and gratuitous
assertion. Also, n. min. Von Baer, on whose authority
Haeckel tries to base this assertion, calls it flatly a falsification
of science. So, too, the greatest biologists, e. g., Milne-Ed­
wards, “There is never a complete likeness between any adult
animal and the embryo of another at any period of the latter’s
development.” Thus at a certain period the vertebrate embryo
has something of the appearance of an arthopode; but closer
examination shows “that the vertebrate has its nerve-centers
in the dorsal side; the arthropodes, in the ventral. Indeed, all
the organs are oppositely situated.”—Von Baer.
Note.—It is the dynamic principle within that differenti­
ates one form of life from another, and this is fully manifested
only in the mature definite stage of a being’s development.

28ο

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY

Hence the present objection, as well as those drawn from meta­
morphosis, alternate generation, etc., do not really touch the
question.
(d) From Philosophy.
The theory of Immediate Formation is an interference
with, while that of Evolution is in accordance with, the laws
of nature.
Answer.—As to the first part of this assertion, see n. 86.
As to the second part, it must be clear from what has been said
that fixity and immutability of species is the law of nature as
revealed to us by the facts of present, historical and geological
time. Hence, the transformation of species would be an inter­
ference with law, and as such a true miracle.

; >

’J;

PART FOUR
RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY.

j

I. Rational Psychology is, The science of the human
soul, i. e., of that principle in man by which he lives, feels,
thinks and wills. Here, however, we take account only of
those vital acts which are characteristic of man and distinguish
him from all other living things in the visible world around us.
We start, then, with the data which consciousness (our own,
and that of other men), expressed in their life and language,
furnishes as to the characters of the vital acts of thought and
volition; and from these we reason back to the nature of the
ultimate principle from which they proceed, its relation to the
body, its .origin, etc. From what the soul does we gather what
it must be. Thus, our natural knowledge of the essence, origin,
destiny, etc., of our souls is not arrived at by intuition, but by
deduction.
The subject may be divided into two Chapters :—
I. Intellect and Will;
II. The Nature of the Soul.
CHAPTER I.
Intellect and Will.

Article I.—Intellect.

2. We have already shown in Logic (n. 113
exists in a man a cognitive faculty far higher and
grasp than sense, whose perceptions, as Huxley
j8i

V■
Λ

«
I·
.4