SUBSTANCE AND ACCIDENTS

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2016.

Let us observe accidental changes around us. A fathers face, for example, gets red
because his son bumped his favorite car. The passage from the fathers originally white face to a
red face to a white face again does not obviously destroy the individual being that is the father.
He doesnt turn into a cat or into an elephant. Neither does he simply vanish into thin air.
Therefore, this accidental change or modification that he undergoes without destroying his being
an individual man reveals a reality that changes only in its secondary aspects, without losing its
nature. There is manifested, in the accidental alteration that we have observed in the father, the
presence of both a stable, permanent substratum, called the substance, and certain secondary
changeable perfections, called the accidents. There is, in each individual finite being, a single
substantial core which is affected by various accidental modifications.

Substance

Substance is that reality to whose essence or nature it is proper to be by itself (esse per
se, or to be in itself [esse in se1]) and not in another subject. There are two basic aspects of
substance: 1. The substance is the substratum, the subject, that supports the accidents; and 2.
This function of substance is based upon the fact that the substance is the subsistent. This means
that it does not exist in something else but is by itself (or is in itself), not needing to inhere in
another like the accidents do, which need the support of a subject, namely, the substance, in
order to be. A dog, for example, is a substance because, in view of its nature or essence it is
proper to it to subsist in itself (in se), having its own being distinct from the being of anything
else. The brown color of this dog, however, doesnt subsist in itself (in se), but is an accident that
needs to inhere in an existing subject. We say This brown dog.

First Substance and Second Substance. Aristotle2 distinguished between first substance
and second substance. Such a division is according to the point of view of the mode of being of
substance.3 A first substance (substantia prima) is the individual, concrete thing existing in
reality. That real dark brown barking dog in front of me, for example, as it exists as an individual
concrete being in reality, is a first or primary substance. First substance means the individual
thing itself with all of its real determinations. It is the individual thing considered as a whole or
unit. Because first substance is an individual thing, it cannot be shared by many (as a universal
nature can).4

1
Esse per se and esse in se, as opposed to esse in alio, have the same signification. Both are correct, if they are
properly understood.(H. GRENIER, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 3 (Metaphysics), St. Dunstans University,
Charlottetown, 1950, p. 173).
2
Cf. ARISTOTLE, Categories, 5, init.
3
For further divisions of substance, 1. according to the point of view of completeness, 2. from the point of view of
physical essential composition, and 3. from the point of view of essence, see: H. GRENIER, op. cit., pp. 174-175 ;
P. J. GLENN, Ontology, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1957, pp. 223-227.
4
R. J. KREYCHE, First Philosophy: An Introductory Text in Metaphysics, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1959,
p. 278.

1
 A second substance (substantia secunda), on the other hand, is universal substance
according to the mode of being it has in the intellect. Substantia secunda designates the universal
which expresses the essence of a subject, as, for example, dog, cat, horse. Because
second substance is universal it can (unlike first substance) be shared by and predicated of many
in a class. Hence dog (which is reducible to the category substance) can be predicated of
individual dogs (first substances).5 Second substance is a universal and therefore is called
substance only by analogy as the universal cannot subsist. Substantia secunda is not an
independent substance.

Accidents

An accident is that reality to whose essence it is proper to be in something else, as in its

subject. If what is most characteristic of the substance is subsistence (to subsist), that which is
most characteristic of accidents is to be in another (their being esse in or inesse). Take for
example a cat. The substance here would be the substance cat, while its accidents would be the
various perfections inhering in the substance cat (a substance that, though modified by its
accidents, nevertheless does not change into another substance), accidents such as its shape, size,
colour, fluffiness of its fur, etc.

Classification of Accidents

Classification of Accidents According to Origin. Alvira, Clavell, and Melendo classify

the various accidents into four groups according to their origin, writing: a) accidents which
belong to the species: these are accidents which spring from the specific principles of the essence
of a thing, and are therefore properties common to all individuals of the same species (e.g., the
shape of a horse, the powers of understanding and willing in man); b) accidents which are
inseparable from each individual: these accidents stem from the specific way the essence is
present in a given individual, for instance, being tall or short, being fair or dark-complexioned,
being a man or a woman these are all individual characteristics which have a permanent basis
in their subject; c) accidents which are separable from each individual: these accidents, such as
being seated or standing, walking or studying, stem from the internal principles of their subject,
but they affect it only in a transient manner; d) accidents which stem from an external agent:
some of these may be violent, that is, they are imposed upon the subject against the normal
tendency of its nature (e.g., a viral disease); others, in contrast, may actually be beneficial to the
subject which receives them (e.g., instruction received from another person).6

The Nine Accidents.The nine accidents enumerated by the Stagirite are quantity, quality,
relation, when, where, posture, action, passion, and habitus. Concerning the classification of the
nine accidents, Grenier explains: The secondary form added to substance, i.e., accident can
affect substance absolutely, i.e., in itself, or relatively, i.e., in relation to another subject: 1. If
absolutely: a) it renders substance distinct and determinate: quality; b) or it extends substance
into parts: quantity; 2. If relatively: a) it relates substance to a term: relation; b) or it modifies
substance in relation to an external subject; 3. This extrinsic subject may be: a) totally extrinsic,
b) or partially extrinsic; 4. If the extrinsic subject is totally extrinsic, a) it is not a measure of

5
Ibid.
6
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, Metaphysics, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 1991, pp. 48-49.

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substance: habit; b) or it is a measure of substance; 5. If it is a measure of substance, a) it is a
measure of time: when; b) or it is a measure of place, either without reference to the disposition
of parts in the place: where; or with reference to the disposition of parts in the place: posture; 6.
If the extrinsic subject is only partially extrinsic, a) it is intrinsic as regards its principle: action,
which derives its name from passion, of which it is a principle; b) or it is intrinsic as regards its
term: passion, which derives its name from action, of which it is a term.7

The Real Distinction Between Substance and Accidents

There is a real distinction between substance and accidents, as Alvira, Clavell and
Melendo explain: A substance and its accidents are really distinct from one another. This can be
clearly seen by observing accidental changes, in which certain secondary perfections disappear
and give way to other new ones without the substance itself being changed into another
substance. Such alterations are only possible if the accidents are really distinct from the
substance which they affect. The color of an apple, for instance, is something really distinct from
the apple itself, since the apple changes in color when it ripens, but does not cease to be an apple.

The readily-changeable accidents are not the only ones really distinct from the
substance. All the accidents, by virtue of their very essence, are distinct from their subject. For
instance, to be divisible is by nature proper to quantity whereas substance is by itself both one
and indivisible. Relation is a reference to another; in contrast, substance is something
independent.

Substance has its own consistency, truly distinct from that of the accidents, and superior
to it. Substance determines the basic content of things and makes them to be what they are (a
flower, an elephant, a man). In contrast, accidents depend on the substantial core, and at the same
time constitute its determining aspects.8

Describing how this real distinction between substance and accidents, nevertheless, does
not destroy the unity of a concrete being (ens), Alvira, Clavell and Melendo point out: The real
distinction between substance and accidents may seem to undermine the unity of a concrete
being. This, in fact, is the result that emerges from theories which regard the substance as a
substratum disconnected from the accidents, and merely juxtaposed to them in an extrinsic
fashion. It must, however, be stressed that the real distinction between substance and accidents
does not destroy the unity of the being. Substance and accidents are not several beings put
together to form a whole, just as various decorative elements are combined to constitute a room.
There is only one being (ens) in the strict sense, namely, the substance; all the rest simply
belong to it. A tree, for instance, does not cease to be a single thing even though it has many
accidental characteristics. The accidents are not complete, autonomous realities added to a
substance; they are only determining aspects of the substance, which complete it and do not,
therefore, give rise to a plurality of juxtaposed things.

The unity of the composite also becomes evident in the case of operations. An animal,
for instance, carries out many different actions, which do not hamper its unity. On the contrary,

7
H. GRENIER, op. cit., pp. 188-189.
8
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., p. 52.

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its entire activity forms a harmonious unified whole precisely because there is a single subject
that acts. In the case of man, it is neither the intelligence which understands, nor the will that
desires; rather, it is the person who understands and desires by means of these respective powers,
and consequently all his operations are imbued with an underlying unity.9

Accidents Have Esse in Actu But Not an Act of Being (Esse as Actus Essendi) of
Their Own

Although accidents have esse in actu, a secondary existence (existentia), they do not have
an act of being10 (esse as actus essendi) of their own, but rather are by reason of the act of being
(actus essendi) which belongs to the substance. Esse in actu corresponds to esse essentiae.
Accidental esse is the esse in actu in first substance (substantia prima), esse accidentale being a
secondary existence derived from the real substance. Accidental being (esse accidentale) would
indicate, explains Cornelio Fabro, the reality of the accidents insofar as they are properties and
acts or perfections of the individuated substance from which they proceed and in which they are
received; []. In other words, the accidents have and give a modus essendi according to a
proper content and this esse accidentale, which is actuated according to that temporal-plexus,
can be called existentia. accidents are attributed a proper existence, a proper special-
temporal situation in the substance, but not a proper esse as actus essendi.11

Concerning the act of being (esse as actus essendi) Fabro writes in his Partecipazione e
causalit: Esse ut actus essendi is the principium subsistendi of the substance, thanks to which
both the essence of the substance as well as that of the accidents are in act esse in the
proper sense is only actus essendi which gives subsistence to the substance. There is, therefore,
esse essentiae and esse which is actus essendi; the actualizing esse which is non-divisible
actus essendi, is so because it indicates the quality of absolute act that makes the first
discrimination of the real and the first foundation of truth, since it is inseparable and most simple
affirmation of its act and only has non-being for its contrary.12

Esse in the proper sense is actus essendi. In its intensive meaning esse as actus essendi
emerges over all other acts, formalities and perfections, it being the actuality of all acts and the
perfection of all perfections, as St. Thomas Aquinas writes in De Potentia Dei and the Summa
Theologiae: That which I call esse is among all (things), the most perfect, and this is clear
because act is always more perfect than potency. Now no signate form is understood to be in act
unless it be supposed to have esse. For humanity or fiery nature may be considered as existing
potentially in matter, or as existing in the power of an agent, or even as in the intellect: but when
it has esse it becomes an existens in act. Wherefore it is clear than when I say esse, it is the
actuality of all acts, and therefore the perfection of all perfections.13 Esse is the most perfect of

9
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 52-53.
10
If essence (essentia) is that which makes a thing to be what it is, the act of being (esse) is that which makes a thing
to be.
11
C. FABRO, Partecipazione e causalit secondo san Tommaso dAquino, SEI, Turin, 1961, p. 200.
12
C. FABRO, op. cit., pp. 201, 203-204.
13
De Potentia Dei, q. 7, a. 2, ad 9: Ad nonum dicendum, quod hoc quod dico esse est inter omnia perfectissimum:
quod ex hoc patet quia actus est semper perfectio potentia. Quaelibet autem forma signata non intelligitur in actu nisi
per hoc quod esse ponitur. Nam humanitas vel igneitas potest considerari ut in potentia materiae existens, vel ut in

4
all, for it is compared to all as act; for nothing has actuality except insofar as it is. Hence esse is
the actuality of all things, even their forms. Therefore it is not compared to other things as the
receiver is to the received; but rather as the received to the receiver.14

Christian Ferraro, professor of Metaphysics at the Lateran University, explains in his

Appunti di metafisica (2013) that, although accidents do indeed have esse in actu, they do not
have an esse as actus essendi of their own (which belongs to the substance), this esse as actus
essendi being that which enters into a real composition with the essence (essentia) and is the
principle of subsistence of the suppositum. The suppositum, Ferraro stresses, has only one esse ut
actus, which is the esse suppositi, but he notes that the suppositum has a multiplicity of esse in
actu, according to the specific degree of the substantial essence and of the diverse accidental
actuations: Che gli accidenti allora non siano composti da essenza e atto di essere?
Effettivamente. Gli accidenti non hanno un esse proprio. Lesse ut actus (lessere come atto,
latto di essere, ipsum esse, actus essendi) propriet esclusiva della sostanza, principio della sua
sussistenza. Pertanto, mentre ci che appartiene al genere della sostanza per forza realmente
composto, invece ci che appartiene ad alcuno dei nove generi di accidenti non composto,
bens semplice, anche se entra in composizione con la sostanza come abbiamo appena visto.15

Se laccidente non ha lesse ut actus, non detto per che non abbia lesse in actu.
Anche la forma accidentale infatti d lesse in actu, com proprio di ogni forma. Gli accidenti
esistono, sono attuali, e questa loro attualit lesse in actu, con il quale arricchiscono la
sostanza.

Ora, questo esse accidentale, del quale parla pi volte san Tommaso, non per da
confondersi con lesse ut actus, quellesse che entra in composizione reale con lessenza ed il
principio della sussistenza del supposito.16 Si tratta invece dellattualit seconda che acquista la
sostanza sussistente in virt della forma accidentale. Infatti, cos come la forma sostanziale
specificava lesse ut actus determinandone il grado dintensit e conferendo al composto lesse
in actu, in maniera simile la forma accidentale determina ulteriormente il tutto sostanziale
conferendo un secondo esse in actu, a seconda di tutte le modalit accidentali: un esse qualis,
un esse quantum, un esse ad, ecc. Perci laccidente non ente nel senso di eseguire o di avere

virtute agentis, aut etiam ut in intellectu: sed hoc quod habet esse, efficitur actu existens. Unde patet quod hoc quod
dico esse est actualitas omnium actuum, et propter hoc est perfectio omnium perfectionum.
14
Summa Theologiae, I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3: Ad tertium dicendum quod ipsum esse est perfectissimum omnium,
comparatur enim ad omnia ut actus. Nihil enim habet actualitatem, nisi inquantum est, unde ipsum esse est actualitas
omnium rerum, et etiam ipsarum formarum. Unde non comparatur ad alia sicut recipiens ad receptum, sed magis
sicut receptum ad recipiens.
15
Cf. De Veritate, q. 27, a. 1, ad 8.
16
Per non aver adeguatamente distinto lesse in actu e lesse ut actus, molti rappresentanti della scuola tomista
(Gaetano, Giovanni di san Tommaso, Gredt, Maritain, M.-D. Philippe, Elders, De Raeymaeker, per elencare soltanto
alcuni) hanno attribuito agli accidenti un esse (ut actus) proprio. Si sono visti costretti ad ammetterlo, sia sulla base
di certi testi di san Tommaso che sembrerebbero affermarlo (nei quali per egli parla soltanto ed esclusivamente
dellesse in actu), sia sulla base della loro fuorviante interpretazione dellesse ut actus come exsistentia, nel senso
del principio per cui la cosa messa fuori delle cause: se infatti laccidente reale, esso allora dovrebbe avere una
existentia propria. Certamente, poi aggiungevano che questo atto di essere era s debole da aver bisogno di
poggiare sulla sostanza.
chiaro che questa posizione non rispecchia fedelmente il pensiero di san Tommaso. Daltronde, un esempio
quanto mai eloquente dellessenzialismo formalista e del da Heidegger deprecato oblio dellessere.

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esso stesso lesse ut actus, bens nel senso che per esso (eo mediante) un qualcosa in un
determinato modo secondario, che presuppone lattualit e consistenza sostanziale. Il supposito
pertanto ha un unico esse ut actus, che lesse suppositi, ma molteplice il suo esse in actu, a
seconda del grado specifico dellessenza sostanziale e delle diverse attuazioni accidentali.17

Influenced by the existential Thomism of tienne Gilson and Cornelio Fabro on this
matter, Toms Alvira, Luis Clavell and Toms Melendo explain that strictly speaking, what
properly is is that which has the act of being as an act belonging to itself, i.e., that which is by
itself, and this is true only of the substance. In contrast, since the accidents do not subsist, they
do not have being (esse) strictly speaking: it is their subject that is, in one way or another, in
accordance with these accidents.18 The weight of a horse does not exist by itself, neither does its
color or shape. Hence, it is more correct to say that the horse is heavy, or is white, precisely
because of having these accidents.

In the final analysis, accidents do not possess an act of being of their own; rather, they
depend on the act of being of the substance, which is their subject. Thus, a 5-kilo weight only
exists in a body endowed with that specific heaviness. This does not mean that the accidents are
nothing; they also are, that is, they are real, insofar as they form part of a substance, and
constitute specific determinations of that subject.

Hence, the accidents always imply imperfection, since their being consists in being in
another, on which it depends and, consequently, in being part of a composition formed with
some subject.19

We can also arrive at the conclusion that the accidents do not have an act of being of
their own by observing generation and corruption. Since generation and corruption the
acquisition and loss of being affect that which has being, these terms are only applied to the
substance. Whiteness, for instance, is neither engendered nor corrupted; rather, bodies become
white or lose their original whiteness. Accidents are neither generated nor corrupted. We can
only validly state that accidents are generated or corrupted insofar as their subject begins to
be or ceases to be in act in accordance with these accidents.20

Explaining how the act of being (esse) is the root of the unity of the substance-accidents
composite, Alvira, Clavell, and Melendo write: A being (ens) is a certain whole which is
composed of a substance and certain accidents. These are elements which form a certain unity,
and do not exist separately. No accident exists without its substance, and no substance exists
without its accidents.21 These realities lie in different levels, however, since the accidents depend

17
C. FERRARO, Appunti di metafisica, Lateran University Press, Vatican City, 2013, pp. 282-283.
18
De Veritate, q. 27, a. 1, ad 8.
19
Idem. In I Sententiarum, d. 8, a. 4, a. 3.
20
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 50-51.
21
There are exceptions to this statement. First, in God, who is absolutely simple, no accidents are found; God cannot
be perfected by accidents because He is the fullness of being. Second, in the Holy Eucharist, as soon as
transubstantiation takes place, the accidents of the bread and wine remain present in a miraculous way they no
longer inhere, in their own substance, or in any other substance. The first exception is studied in Natural Theology,
while the second is taken up in Sacramental Theology, which presupposes supernatural faith.

6
on the being of the substance and not the other way around. Therefore, the composite is by virtue
of the act of being (actus essendi) of the substance in which each of the accidents also shares.

Each thing has but one act of being. Thus, the entire substantial and accidental reality
of a being is by virtue of a single act of being, which, properly speaking, belongs to the
substance. A being has esse in accordance with the manner determined by its specific essence,
which is the essence of the substance. This substantial perfection, in turn, gives rise to a wide
range of accidental perfections in conformity with that specific manner of being. Hence, every
man is a single being which possesses the act of being according to his human essence or nature.
From that degree of perfection of being, his accidental perfections arise: for instance, a certain
bodily make-up, a complex of sense and motor powers, as well as spiritual operations.

A being has but one act of being (actus essendi), which is that of the substance. Though
lacking their own being, the accidents are also real, by virtue of the act of being of the substance.
There are some Thomists, however, who speak as though accidents had a being of their own,
distinct from that of the substance. Such statements tend to undermine the radical unity of a
being. St. Thomas Aquinas does employ at times the terms esse substantiale and esse
accidentale. Nevertheless, in these cases the term esse does not strictly signify actus essendi; it is
used in a more general sense of being real (esse in actu); every being certainly has some
accidental realities which are distinct from its substantial reality, but it has those accidents only
by virtue of a single esse, which properly belongs to the substance.22

Gilson explains in the fifth edition of his Le Thomisme (the 1948 French edition,
translated into English by Lawrence K. Shook, C.S.B. and published by Random House, New
York, in 1956): To speak of things as substances is not to conceive of them as groups of
accidents bound by some kind of copula to a subject. Quite to the contrary, it is to say that they
set themselves up as units of existence, all of whose constitutive elements are, by virtue of one
and the same act of being, which is that of the substance. Accidents have no act of being of their
own to be added to that of the substance in order to complete it. They have no other act of being
than that of the substance. For them, to be is simply to-be-in-the-substance or, as it has been
put, their being is to-be-in.2324 Gilson also maintains this position in his article, La notion
dexistence chez Guillaume dAuvergne, published in Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire
du moyen age in 1946.25 The position is also held by Louis-Baptiste Geiger, the scholar on
participation in St. Thomas Aquinas,26 Aim Forest in his La structure mtaphysique du concret

22
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 53-54.
23
Nam accidentis esse est inesse(In V Metaphys., 9, 894, p. 286). It has therefore only a relative and borrowed
esse. Esse enim album non est simpliciter esse, sed secundum quid,(In VII Metaphys., I, 1256, p. 377). Accidents
are not beings, but the beings of being; non dicuntur simpliciter entia, sed entis entia, sicut qualitas et motus(In XII
Metaphys., 1, 419, p. 683).
24
E. GILSON, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Random House, New York, 1956, pp. 31, 445.
25
E. GILSON, La notion dexistence chez Guillaume dAuvergne, Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du
moyen age, 15 (1946), p. 89, n. 1.
26
L.-B. GEIGER, La participation dans la philosophie de s. Thomas dAquin, Vrin, Paris, 1942, pp. 269ff.

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selon saint Thomas dAquin,27 and Cornelio Fabro in his Partecipazione e causalit
(Participation et causalit).28

And even after knowing via Louvains Louis De Raeymaeker that the Thomist
Commentator Domingo Baez29 later in life changed his mind on this issue, in opposition to the
position of Gilson, Geiger, Forest, and Fabro, this, nevertheless, did not change Gilsons position
on this matter: in the sixth and final edition of Le Thomisme (the 1965 French edition [Vrin,
Paris], translated into English by Lawrence Shook and Armand Maurer, and published by the
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto in 2002) Gilson states as his final position on
this issue: To speak of things as substances is not to think of them as groups of accidents bound
to a subject by a copula. It is rather that they present themselves as units of existence, all the
elements of which are in virtue of one and the same act of being (esse), which is that of the
substance. The accidents have no act of being of their own, which would be added to that of the
substance so as to complete it. They have no other act of being than that of the substance. Their
esse is simply to be in the substance, or, as is sometimes said, their esse est inesse.3031

In Partecipazione e causalit, Fabro explains how accidents, though having esse in actu,
have no act of being (esse as actus essendi) of their own; what has the act of being (esse as actus
essendi) is the substance and the accidents are by reason of this one act of being (esse as actus
essendi) which belongs to the substance: Una conferma ed unapplicazione dellesse essentiae
(lessenza metafisica), la divisione dellesse in esse substantiale ed esse accidentale che non
pu riguardare direttamente lesse come actus essendi, il quale latto proprio della sostanza
completa (substantia prima). Per il fatto stesso che lesse essentiae detto comune a tutti i
predicamenti, ed quindi o sostanziale o accidentale, San Tommaso usa con frequenza anche del
termine di esse accidentale32: in modo esplicito lAngelico attribuisce agli accidenti un esse

27
A. FOREST, La structure mtaphysique du concret selon saint Thomas dAquin, Etudes de philosophie
mdivale, 14 (1931), p. 89.
28
C. FABRO, Partecipazione e causalit, SEI, Turin, 1961. French translation: Participation et causalit selon s.
Thomas dAquin, Louvain-Paris, 1961, pp 299-302. See especially page 301.
29
Cf. B. S. LLAMSON, Supposital and Accidental Esse: A Study in Baez, The New Scholasticism, 39 (1965),
pp. 170-188.
30
Nam accidentis esse est inesse(In V Metaphys., 9, ed. Cathala-Spiazzi, p. 239, n. 894). Hence an accident has
only a relative and borrowed esse: Esse enim album non est simpliciter esse, sed secundum quid(In VII Metaphys.,
1, p. 317, n. 1256). Accidents are not beings, but beings of a being; non dicuntur simplicter entia, sed entis entia,
sicut qualitas et motus(In XII Metaphys., 1, p. 568, n. 2419).
31
E. GILSON, Thomism. The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto,
2002, p. 156.
32
In creaturis per paternitatem additur novum esse quod est esse accidentale, et non idem, quod est esse
subjecti(In I Sent., d. 21, I, 2; Parm., VI, 181 b; Mand. I, 520). Ver., XXI, 6 ad 9um: Sicut est aliud esse
substantiale et accidentale, ita constat esse aliam formam substantialem et accidentalem et utraque propium habet
modum et proprium ordinem. E prima: Sicut ens est quoddam essentiale et quoddam accidentale ita est bonum, et
eodem modo amittit aliquis bonitatem sicut esse substantiale vel accidentale(Ver. XXI, 1 ad 6um). Ancora: Forma
substantialis est principium substantialis esse, et accidentalis dat aliquod esse, scilicet accidentale(In I Sent., d. 32,
q. 11, a. 1, Parm., VI, 261 b; Mand., I, 752). Omnis forma addens aliquod esse super esse substantiale, facit
compositionem cum substantia et ipsum esse est accidentale, sicut esse albi et nigri(De Pot., IX, 5 ad 19um). Qui
sinsinua il principio forma dat esse, di cui pi avanti. Ho limpressione che la terminologia di esse accidentale si
dirada negli scritti pi maturi.

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accanto a quello della sostanza33, cos che si diffusa fra i tomisti lopinione che attribuisce agli
accidenti un esse come actus essendi in senso proprio, bench dipendente dallesse principale
della sostanza. chiaro, ed ripetuto in tutte le opere da San Tommaso, che lesse in senso forte
quello che fa composizione reale con lessenza latto proprio della sostanza ed alcune
volte indicato col termine speciale di subsistere, mentre agli accidenti compete linesse. Lesse
accidentale quindi la realt degli accidenti in quanto sono propriet e atto o perfezioni della
sostanza individua dalla quale procedono e nella quale sono ricevuti; lesse dellaccidente nella
formalit secondaria realt di fatto che i vari attributi e molteplici modificazioni conferiscono
alla sostanza. In altre parole, gli accidenti hanno e dnno un modus essendi34 secondo un
contenuto proprio e questo esse accidentale, che si attua secondo quel plesso-temporale, pu
essere detto lexistentia. In senso rigoroso quindi agli accidenti va attribuita al pi una esistenza
propria, una propria situazione spazio-temporale, nella sostanza, non un proprio esse come actus
essendi.

lesse in actu corrisponde allesse essentiae: come allessenza sostanziale corrisponde

un esse sostanziale, cos allessenza accidentale (la quantit, la qualit, la relazione)
corrisponde lesse accidentale.35 Ma lesse ut actus essendi il principium subsistendi della
sostanza, grazie al quale tanto lessenza della sostanza come anche quella degli accidenti sono in
atto e operano nella realt: lesse degli accidenti lesse in actu nel tutto ch la sostanza prima,
quindi unesistenza secondaria derivata dalla sostanza reale come un tutto in atto.36

Three Ways Substance and Accidents are Mutually Connected

Concerning the three main aspects of the mutual connection between substance and
accidents37 as regards the substance-accidents composite of the finite being (ens), we find that:
33
C. G., IV, 14: In nobis relationes habent esse dependens, quia eorum esse est aliud ab esse substantiae; unde
habent proprium modum essendi secundum propriam rationem, sicut et in aliis accidentibus contingit; quia enim
omnia accidentia sunt formae quaedam superadditae, et a principiis substantiae causatae, oportet quod eorum esse sit
superadditum supra esse substantiae et ab ipso dependens. Lesse di cui si parla qui e nei testi consimili non indica
lesse come actus essendi, ma lesse in actu di una forma ovvero lattuazione che tale forma conferisce al soggetto
nellmbito formale ed in questo senso che San Tommaso, daccordo con Aristotele, parla di un esse accidentale.
34
Che si tratti dellesse essentiae, e non dellactus essendi, lo si vede chiaramente dallinterpretazione che San
Tommaso d della definizione aristotelica della relazione come predicamento nel Quodl., IX, q. 11, a. 4: U. in
Christo sit una tantum filiatio. Ob. 3: Huiusmodi relativa secundum Philosophum in Praedicamentis [cfr. Cat., 7,
6 b 36] sunt quorum esse est ad aliud se habere: Dicendum quod in illa Philosophi descriptione esse ponitur pro
ratione essendi, secundum quod definitio dicitur realis secundum genus, quod est esse; unde non oportet quod habeat
esse relatio ex respectu, sed ex causa respectus; ex respectu vero habet propriam rationem generis vel speciei(ad
3um).
35
Summa Theologiae, III, 77, 1 ad 4um. E prima ancora: Illud autem proprie dicitur esse, quod habet ipsum esse,
quasi in suo esse subsistens. Unde solae substantiae proprie et vere dicuntur entia; accidens vero non habet esse,
sed eo aliquid est et hac ratione ens dicitur; sicut albedo dicitur ens, quia ea aliquid est album. Et propter hoc dicitur
quod accidens magis est entis, quam ens[Metaph., VII, 1, 1028 a 25]. Et eadem est de omnibus aliis formis non
subsistentibus(Summa Theologiae, I, 90, 2). Questa dottrina non che una conseguenza del principio della
partecipazione e si trova con ogni chiarezza negli scritti della maturit: cfr. Summa Theologiae, I, 45, 4; I-II, 55, 4 ad
1um; III, 8, 1; Pot., VII, 7 ad 7um. In VII Metaph., lect. I, n. 2157; XI lect. 3, n. 2197; XII, lect. 1, n. 2419: Ens
dicitur quasi esse habens: hoc autem est solius substantiae. Ancora: Accidentia entia dicuntur non quia in seipsis
esse habent, sed quia esse eorum est in hoc quod insunt substantiae(De subst. sep., c. 6, n. 42; Perrier 149: tertia
ratio).
36
C. FABRO, Partecipazione e causalit, SEI, Turin, 1961, pp. 199-201.
37
Cf. De virtutibus in communi, q. 1, a. 3.

9
a) The substance is the substratum of the accidents, not only insofar as it supports them, but
also insofar as it gives them being.38 Laccidente ha lessere nella sostanza, con lessere della
sostanza, e realizza la ratio entis in maniera derivata e impoverita.39 La sostanza esiste in virt
di un essere che gli appartiene, ma gli accidenti sono in virt dellessere della sostanza. La
sostanza dunque ci che propriamente esiste, mentre gli accidenti sono sempre qualcosa della
sostanza, dalla quale dipendono per esistere.40 Laccidente non privo di essere, perch se
fosse privo di essere sarebbe un nulla e non una qualit, una quantit, unazione ecc., ma un
accidente proprio perch non dispone dun atto dessere suo proprio. Laccidente deriva lessere
direttamente dalla sostanza, alla quale lessere compete direttamente e primariamente, mentre
allaccidente appartiene mediatamente e secondariamente. Pertanto lo statuto ontologico
dellaccidente sta nellinerire: Naturae accidentis est inesse, sive inhaerere ipsi rei.41

b) The substance is the cause of those accidents which arise from it. The shape of a
given animal, for instance, is an effect of its essential principles, and for this reason all of the
individuals of the same species have a similar shape.

c) The substance has a passive capacity (potency) of receiving further perfections

conferred on it by the accidents, which are thus called accidental forms; for instance, operations
(which are accidents) are a kind of perfection to which a substance is in potency.42

Knowledge of Substance and Accidents

Explaining how the substance-accidents composition is known with the intelligence

starting from the data offered to it by the senses, and how, in our knowledge of the singular and
concrete being (ens), we find ourselves in a continuous going back and forth between the
substance and its accidents, Alvira, Clavell and Melendo write: Our way of knowing substance
and accidents is determined by their respective natures and their mutual relation.

In the first place, the substance-accident composite is known through the intelligence on
the basis of the data provided by the senses. Sense knowledge always refers directly to the
accidents of a thing; in contrast, the intelligence grasps, through the accidents, their source and
basis, which is the substance. This, of course, is possible because the accidents are not like a veil
that hides the substance: on the contrary, the accidents reveal the substance.

Since its proper object is being (ens), the intellect is not limited to grasping the more
peripheral aspects of things, so to speak, but knows everything that is, i.e., the entire being
(ens) with all its real characteristics. Thus, the intellect perceives being (ens) as a whole,
composed of substance and accidents and which is not merely the result of putting together
various aspects of the thing. The distinction between substance and accidents can only be

38
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., p. 55.
39
C. FERRARO, op. cit., p. 98.
40
M. PREZ DE LABORDA and L. CLAVELL, Metafisica, EDUSC, Rome, 2006, p. 108.
41
B. MONDIN, La metafisica di S. Tommaso dAquino e i suoi interpreti, ESD, Bologna, 2002, pp. 283-284.
42
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., p. 55.

10
grasped through the intellect. It cannot be obtained through the external or internal senses
because these faculties perceive only the accidents.43

In the process of knowing the specific individual being (ens), we constantly go back and
forth from the substance to the accidents, and vice-versa. For the sake of clarity, we may
distinguish three stages in this knowledge.

a) First, what we have is an indistinct or vague knowledge of the composite. Whenever

we encounter an unknown object, whose nature we are not familiar with, we immediately
understand that the qualities perceived by our senses (e.g., color, shape, size) are not independent
realities, but a unified whole by virtue of their belonging to a single substance. Even at this initial
stage of knowing an object, we know that the accidents are secondary manifestations of a subject
that subsists by itself, notwithstanding our inability to know as yet what sort of substance it is.
Indeed, since being (ens) is what is first known by the intelligence, and in the strict sense the
substance alone is being (ens), our intellect cannot grasp accidents without simultaneously
perceiving their subject.

b) Then from the accidents we move on to the substance. Once the subject of the
accidents is known in an indistinct way, the accidents, which reveal the substance, become the
natural path to know what the substance is, i.e., its nature or essence. The accidents of a man (his
shape, his proper operations), for instance, lead us to his essence: rational animal. Thus, starting
from the more external aspects of a being, so to speak, we gradually come to grasp its deeper,
more internal aspects. We penetrate its substantial core through its more peripheral
manifestations.

c) From the substance, we go back to the accidents. Once we have discovered the
essence of a thing, this knowledge becomes a new, more intense light which illumines all the
accidents arising from the substance. It enables to acquire a more adequate notion of each of the
accidents and of their mutual relationships. No longer are we merely aware of them as mere
external manifestations of something, whose nature is not yet distinctly known to us. Rather,
we recognize them as the proper natural manifestations of a specific way of being. Once we have
come to know the essence of man, for instance, we can fit together in a better way his diverse
accidents, since we are aware that they stem from his nature and are dependent on it. This helps
us to have a better grasp of their real meaning. We can, for instance, perceive the many activities
of man as the result of a free rational activity, which is itself a consequence of his specific
essence, and as a result, we are able to grasp them in their true dimension. Otherwise, even
though we might obtain a very detailed description of human activities and succeed in measuring
many aspects of human behavior, our knowledge of the human person would remain extremely
poor; we would even fail to realize that man has a spiritual and immortal soul.

Summing up, we can say that our knowledge begins from the sense-perceptible
properties of things, perceived as manifestations of a thing which has being (esse). These

43
The senses are said to perceive the substance, not in the strict sense, but only in a certain way (per accidens).
Thus, the eye does not see a color as such and as a separate reality; what it always perceives is a colored object.
Likewise, the sense of touch does not grasp a separated extension, but an extended thing. Nevertheless, the
intelligence alone grasps the substance precisely as substance, differentiating from the accidents.

11
properties reveal the essence to us, and the accidents, in turn, are seen as stemming from this
substance, which provides the light for a better knowledge of them. This process is not, of
course, undergone and completed once and for all in an instant. In fact, an unending flux
characterizes our knowledge, as we move on from the accidents to the substance, and from the
substance to the accidents, thus gradually acquiring a deeper knowledge of both.44

Erroneous Views Concerning Substance

Errors of Descartes and Spinoza Concerning Substance. Ren Descartes (1596-1650)

erroneously defined substance as a thing which exists in such a way that it does not need any
other thing to exist.45 Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) would take Descartes definition of
substance to mean an absolutely independent substance and conclude that there really is only one
substance, the Divine Substance, which is God or Nature (Deus sive natura). This erroneous
position is obviously pantheistic monism. Spinoza writes that by substance I understand that
which is in itself and is conceived by itself; in other words, that whose concept does not need the
concept of any other thing from which it must be formed.46 For Spinoza, the things that we see
around us (pebbles, rocks, ants, trees, dogs, cats, horses, etc.) are nothing but modes of the One
Substance (God or Nature).47 He writes that individual things are nothing but modifications of
the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and
definite manner.48 Spinoza defines mode, stating: By mode, I understand the modifications
(affections) of substance, or that which is in another thing, through which also it is conceived.49

R. P. Phillips observes concerning Descartess definition of substance that if the

definition be taken literally it would ascribe absolute independence to substance; it would be not
only intrinsically independent, that is independent of any subject, but also extrinsically, and so
independent of any cause; so that, as Descartes himself notices, the definition applies, strictly
speaking, only to God. It was in this latter sense that Spinoza took up the Cartesian definition,
making this meaning still more explicit in his own definition: Per substantiam intelligo id, quod
in se est, et per se concipitur: hoc est id, cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo
formari debeat.50 From this he immediately deduces that it is impossible that one substance
should produce another, and consequently that there can be only one substance, which is
necessarily infinite. So he concludes: There does not exist, and it is impossible to conceive, any
substance outside God; and all that exists, exists in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived

44
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 55-57.
45
R. DESCARTES, Principia philosophica, I, no. 51.
46
B. SPINOZA, Ethica, I definition 3.
47
Man, for Spinoza, would not be a composition of two finite substances but only of two corresponding modes of
the one divine substance. Spinozas answer to the Cartesian dualism of mind-substance and body-substance is to
deny the substantial character of the two terms and to achieve the harmony of mind and body through their mutual
expression of the same substance, even though they do so under different attributes(J. COLLINS, God in Modern
Philosophy, Gateway Edition, Regnery, Chicago, 1967, p. 75).
48
B. SPINOZA, op. cit., prop. 25, Corollary.
49
B. SPINOZA, op. cit., I, definition 5.
50
B. SPINOZA, op. cit., I, definition 3.

12
without God.51 Spinozas notion of substance is only possible by an abuse of abstraction; and
is totally divorced from any conception of it which is acceptable to common sense.52

Coffeys Critique of Spinozas Pantheistic Monism of Substance. Peter Coffey critiques

Spinozas pantheist monism of substance in his Ontology as follows: There is yet another
mistaken notion of substance, the notion in which the well known pantheistic philosophy of
Spinoza has had its origin. Spinoza appears to have given the ambiguous definition of Descartes
Substania est res quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum an interpretation
which narrowed its application down to the Necessary Being; for he defined substance in the
following terms: Per substantiam intelligo id quod est in se et per se concipitur: hoc est, id
cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei a quo formari debeat. By the ambiguous
phrase, that substance requires no other thing for existing, Descartes certainly meant to convey
what has always been understood by the scholastic expression that substance exists in itself. He
certainly did not mean that substance is a reality which exists of itself, i.e. that it is what
scholastics mean by Ens a se, the Being that has its actuality from its own essence, by virtue of
its very nature, and in absolute independence of all other being; for such Being is One alone, the
Necessary Being, God Himself, whereas Descartes clearly held and taught the real existence of
finite, created substances.53 Yet Spinozas definition of substance is applicable only to such a
being that our concept of this being shows forth the actual existence of the latter as absolutely
explained and accounted for by reference to the essence of this being itself, and independently of
any reference to other being. In other words, it applies only to the Necessary Being. This
conception of substance is the starting-point of Spinozas pantheistic philosophy.

Now, the scholastic definition of substance and Spinozas definition embody two
entirely distinct notions. Spinozas definition conveys what scholastics mean by the Self-Existent
Being, Ens a se ; and this the scholastics distinguish from caused or created being, ens ab alio.
Both phrases refer formally and primarily, not to the mode of a beings existence when it does
exist, but to the origin of this existence in relation to the beings essence; and specifically it
marks the distinction between the Essence that is self-explaining, self-existent, essentially actual
(a se), the Necessary Being, and essences that do not themselves explain or account for their
own actual existence, essences that have not their actual existence from themselves or of
themselves, essences that are in regard to their actual existence contingent or dependent,
essences which, therefore, if they actually exist, can do so only dependently on some other being

51
Prter Deum nulla datur neque concipi potest substantia, Ethica, Pars I, Prop, XIV; and Quidquid est, in Deo
est, et nihil sine Deo esse neque concipi potest, ibid., Prop. XV.
52
R. P. PHILLIPS, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 2 (Metaphysics), The Newman Bookshop, Westminster,
MD, 1935, p. 207.
53
But from Descartes doctrine of two passive substances so antithetically opposed to each other the transition to
Spinozism was easy and obvious. If mind and matter are so absolutely opposed as thought and extension, how can
they unite to form one human individual in man? If both are purely passive, and if God alone puts into them their
conscious states and their mechanical movements respectively, what remains proper to each but a pure passivity that
would really be common to both? Would it not be more consistent then to refer this thought-essence or receptivity of
conscious activities, and this extension-essence or receptivity of mechanical movements, to God as their proper
source, to regard them as two attributes of His unique and self-existent substance, and thus to regard God as
substantially immanent in all phenomena, and these as only different expressions of His all-pervading essence? This
is what Spinoza did; and his monism in one form or other is the last word of many contemporary philosophers on the
nature of the universe which constitutes the totality of human experience. Cf. HFFDING, Outlines of
Psychology, ch. ii., and criticism of same apud MAHER, Psychology, ch. xxiii.

13
whence they have derived this existence (ab alio) and on which they essentially depend for its
continuance.

Not the least evil of Spinozas definition is the confusion caused by gratuitously
wresting an important philosophical term like substance from its traditional sense and using it
with quite a different meaning; and the same is true in its measure of the other mistaken notions
of substance which we have been examining. By defining substance as an ens in se, or per se
stans, scholastic philosophers mean simply that substance does not depend intrinsically on any
subjective or material cause in which its actuality would be supported; they do not mean to imply
that it does not depend extrinsically on an efficient cause from which it has its actuality and by
which it is conserved in being. They assert that all created substances, no less than all accidents,
have their being ab alio from God; that they exist only by the Divine creation and conservation,
and act only by the Divine concursus or concurrence; but while substances and accidents are
both alike dependent on this extrinsic conserving and concurring influence of a Divine,
Transcendent Being, substances are exempt from this other and distinct mode of dependence
which characterizes accidents: intrinsic dependence on a subject in which they have their
actuality.54

By saying that substance exists in itself we mean to exclude the notion of its
existing in another thing, as an accident does.55

Errors of Locke Concerning Substance. For John Locke (1632-1704), substance is the
unknown substrate of accidents. R. J. Kreyche writes that the notion of substance for Locke is
not given in our sensible experience, although our ideas of certain basic qualities are. Since it is
unreasonable to suppose that these qualities can exist by themselves, we must assume that there
is a support of these qualities which Locke identifies with substance. Hence our general notion
of substance is nothing more than an unknown substrate of accidents, and this notion is produced
by the mind.5657 Locke states the following concerning substance in his An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding: The notion one has of pure substance is only a supposition of he knows
not what support of such qualities, which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which
qualities are commonly called accidentsThe idea than we have, to which we give the general
name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown support of those qualities we find
existing, which we imagine cannot subsist, sine re substante, without something to support
them, we call that support substantia.58 Whatever therefore be the secret abstract nature of
substance in general, all the ideas we have of particular distinct sorts of substances, are nothing
but several combinations of simple ideas, co-existing in such, though unknown, cause of their

54
Esse substanti non dependet ab esse alterius sicut ei inhrens, licet omnia dependeant a Deo sicut a causa
prima
55
P. COFFEY, Ontology, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1926, pp. 230-232.
56
To appreciate what Locke has in mind we must consider that for him we have no (external) experience of
substance. All that we do experience from without are the impressions that we have of certain sense qualia. For
example, when we perceive the impressions of a turtle we are not aware of anything beyond its sense qualities,
such as its shape, hardness, and so forth. Whatever might be the substance of the turtle as something distinct from
its sensible qualities of that we have no experience. Nevertheless we must imagine it (the substance or turtle) to
be there, since these qualities cannot exist by themselves.
57
R. J. KREYCHE, op. cit., p. 280.
58
J. LOCKE, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book II, ch. 23, section 2.

14
union, as makes the whole subsist of itself.59 Not imagining how simple ideas (i.e., of primary
qualities) can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum
wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result, which therefore we call substance. So
that if anyone will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will
find no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such
qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called
accidents.60 Our idea of substance is equally obscure, or none at all, in both: it is but a
supposed I-know-not-what, to support those ideas we call accidentsBy the complex idea of
extended, figured, colored, and all other sensible qualities, which is all that we know of it, we are
as far from the idea of the substance of the body, as if we knew nothing at all.61 Thonnard notes
that Locke concedes that we legitimately assert the existence of this substratum distinct from its
properties, for one cannot conceive of modes without a subject which bears them up; we are,
however, totally ignorant of its nature or quiddity, for our ideas, coming from experience, do not
allow us to know simple qualities and their diverse combinations in any proper sense. It is clear
in this theory that substance, in the ordinary sense of the word, designates a vague something of
which we have no clear idea and whose essence it is impossible to penetrate62

Criticizing Locke on substance, John F. McCormick writes: For Locke, substance was
the unknown substrate of accidents. This definition really arises from his false interpretation of
experience, as if we knew only qualities or accidents by experience, and brought in the idea of
substance merely because we could not imagine accidents existing without something to inhere
in. He always maintained that he did not deny that substance had reality. He claimed that he
called in question only the idea of substance, not its reality. But if our idea is questionable, if it
does not correspond with any reality, then we should have no right to assert that real substance
existed at all. Locke was neither very clear nor very consistent in his thinking63 Thus, Locke
paves the way for the radical skepticism of Hume on substance.

Errors of Hume Concerning Substance. The radical sensist empiricism and immanentist
phenomenalism of David Hume (1711-1776) led him not only to affirm that we are unable to
know whether objective substances with definite natures truly exist in extra-mental reality, but he
also maintained that the very notion of substance as a support or substrate of accidents was
merely a fiction of the imagination that needed to be discarded or abandoned. Hume writes in his
A Treatise of Human Nature: When we gradually follow an object in its successive changes, the
smooth progress of the thought makes us ascribe an identity to the successionWhen we
compare its situation after a considerable change the progress of the thought is broken; and
consequently we are presented with the idea of diversity: In order to reconcile which
contradictions, the imagination is apt to feign something unknown and invisible, which it
supposes to continue the same under all these variations; and this unintelligible something it calls
a substance64

59
Ibid.
60
J. LOCKE, op. cit., book II, ch. 23, 1, 2.
61
J. LOCKE, op. cit., vol. 1, book 2, ch. 23, pp. 406-407.
62
F. J. THONNARD, A Short History of Philosophy, Descle, Tournai, 1956, pp. 601-602.
63
J. F. McCORMICK, Scholastic Metaphysics, vol. 1: Being, Its Division and Causes, Loyola University Press,
Chicago, 1940, pp. 101-102.
64
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. P. H. Nidditch, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978, p. 220.

15
 Hume explains in his Treatise that the idea (sense impression) of substance as well as
that of a mode, is nothing but a collection of simple ideas (sense impressions) that are united by
the imagination and have a peculiar name assigned to them by which we are able to recall either
to ourselves, or to others, that collection.65 I would fain ask those philosophers, who found so
much of their reasonings on the distinction of substance and accident, and imagine we have clear
ideas of each, whether the idea of substance be derived from the impressions of sensation or
reflection? If it be conveyed to us by our senses, I ask, which of them; and after what manner? If
it be perceived by the eyes, it must be a color; if by the ears, a sound; if by the palate, a taste; and
so for the other senses. But I believe none will assert, that substance is either a color, sound or
taste. The idea of substance must therefore be derived from an impression of reflection, if it
really exist. But the impressions of reflection resolve themselves into our passions and emotions;
none of which can possibly represent a substance. We have, therefore, no idea of substance,
distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we
talk or reason concerning it.66

Critique of Locke and Hume Concerning our Knowledge of Substance. R. J. Kreyche

critiques the reductionist empiricism of Locke and Hume concerning substance as follows: The
very existence of metaphysics is contingent on the fact that substances exist and that we have
knowledge of them. Should we suppose, as did Locke, that the notion of substance is not drawn
from things and nevertheless hold that substance is real, then our philosophy would rest on a
blind act of faith. On the other hand, should we suppose with Hume that philosophy has no way
of establishing an objective counterpart for the idea that we have of substance, we would be led
down the path of phenomenalism. On either supposition the human mind would be deprived of
any direct, existential contact with an order of really existing things.

To refute these denials it is necessary to give some consideration to the origin of our
notion of substance, and the first question we must ask is this: Does an empirical knowledge of
substance require that we have an experience of substance all by itself.? From reading the
Essay of Locke one certainly gets the impression that unless we can isolate substance and view
it all by itself with our senses, then we can have no real knowledge of substance at all. In other
words, either we must be able to lift up the veil of accidents and in so doing to experience
substance as a thing by itself, or we have no knowledge of substance except as an unknown X
as an unknown substrate of accidents. This is the fundamental dilemma of the Essay and, in his
theory of knowledge, Locke has no means of escaping its horns.

In recognition, then, of the difficulty experienced by Locke it is to be noted as a matter

of fact that we have no experience of substance in the way Locke would have us experience it,
for two reasons: 1. substance as substance is not a per se object of sensation, and 2. when we do
experience substance it is precisely in connection with, and not apart from, its concrete
accidental characteristics or modes.

The importance of both these points requires that we take them up separately. In
reference to (1) above, when we say that substance is not a per se object of sensation we mean
that our powers of sensation do not know substance formally, or, what amounts to the same

65
D. HUME, op. cit., I, Section VI (Of Modes and Substances), p. 222.
66
Ibid.

16
thing, they have no knowledge of substance as such. Yet granting this, we need not assume (as
did Locke) either that an experience of substance would be limited to sensation alone or that
the senses do not know substance at all. Both of these suppositions are contrary to fact, and in a
few moments we shall see why.

Regarding (2) it is no more possible to experience substance as a thing apart from its
accidents than it is to perceive accidents all by themselves. However, this fact alone does not
imply an inability on our part to abstract the given contents of experience, even though these
contents are not given in a pure state. Substance, in other words, is not given by itself, but this
is not to say that it cannot be known by itself, as something that has been abstracted from
experience.

Contrary, then, to the doctrine of Locke, our knowledge that substances exist is not a
product of inference. Substance rather is something that we experience, and we experience it the
moment we perceive it. Now it is true, as we have already indicated, that substance is not a per se
object of sensation, but it would be false to suppose that we do not perceive substance at all. That
we do have a perception of substance may be seen from the fact that our sensible knowledge of
accidents (color, shape, weight, and the rest) is never a knowledge of accidents all by themselves.
Rather, what we perceive is the thing itself together with its accidental modes (for example,
something like a live, slippery fish that is speckled in color and oval in shape). It is this concrete
thing existing under these concrete determinations of color, shape, and the like, that constitutes
the object of perception. In our concrete perception of the sensible qualities of objects we
perceive incidentally but really the reality of the substance itself.

Substance, then, is given in perception, and it is incidentally perceived by the senses

themselves. This means that in the process of experiencing accidents in their concrete form we
cannot avoid also experiencing the substance itself. However, beyond this point we must also
recognize that a human awareness of objects is not limited to sensation alone. Except in the case
of infants our human awareness of objects is at one and the same time both sensory and
intellectual. Whenever we experience an object, the intellect too is involved so as to discover
whatever element of meaning (or intelligible significance) the object itself might convey. As
regards, then, our knowledge of substance, the very least we can say is this: the moment we
perceive a thing with our senses (for example, a rock, a tree, a frog) we immediately know
through an act of understanding that what we perceive is a thing or a substance of a definite
kind. Hence, even though we may be ignorant of the precise nature of the object at hand, we at
least know on the level of understanding that what we experience is a thing.

To understand this point well we must consider that in man there are two levels of
knowing sensation and intellection and that in a normal human experience we do not operate
on either of these levels to the absolute exclusion of the other. On the one hand, our
understanding of things is always in some way related to the order of our sensible experience,
and for this reason even such exalted notions of God are based on the analogy of experience.
Conversely, whenever we (as adult humans) perceive an object with our senses, our
understanding too is simultaneously present in that act of perception. Every human experience,
unlike the bare sensory perception of brutes, is fraught with some meaning, and to that extent

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also involves an intellectual grasp, however imperfect, of the nature of the object perceived.
This, then, is the nature of our knowledge of substance.67

Benignus Gerritys Critique of Humes Sensism as Regards the Knowledge of Substance.

Sensism. Humes original error, which led to his rejection of substance and causality as valid
philosophical concepts, was sensism. He considered experience as the sole ultimate source of
valid human knowledge, which it is, but by experience he meant pure sensation, or at very best
perception, and nothing more. Impressions of sense and their less vivid relics in the mind,
namely, ideas, are the only data of knowledge for which experience vouches, according to
Hume. We have no impression of causality or substance; therefore, he argues, these are not given
in experience.

Hume mistakes an analysis of the factors in perception for an account of the perceptive
act. The data of pure sensation are, as he says, fragmentary and intermittent sense impressions.
But the act which he is analyzing is not an act of pure sensation. What I perceive is not these
fragmentary impressions, but the things of which they are accidents. It is doubtful that even
animals perceive merely sensory qualities. Substances (i.e., particular, concrete) are the data of
perception. They are incidental sensibles immediately perceived by means of internal sense co-
operating within external sense. In his analysis Hume takes as the immediate datum of
perception something which is actually known only as a result of a difficult abstraction, namely,
the pure sensation. Then his problem is to discover how, starting from pure sensations, we come
to believe in objective substances which exist unperceived and permanently. It is a false problem.

Human Experience Includes Understanding. Hume is right in saying that we never have
a sensory impression of causality or substance. But he is wrong in saying that we never
experience causes or substances. Efficient causes are immediately experienced every time we
observe anything physically influencing anything else, every time, for example, we see a
hammer driving a nail. But the cause qua cause is never sensed directly; cause, like substance, is
only sensed per accidens. The cause as a sensible object, its movement, and the subsequent
movement of the object acted upon are the immediate data of sense. But to limit experience to
the sensible data perceived is to imply that man perceives without ever at the same time
understanding what he perceives. When I perceive a hammer descending upon a nail and the nail
moving further into the wood, I also understand that the hammer is something and is driving the
nail into the wood. Both perception and understanding are equally parts of the experience. To
exclude the understanding is to reduce all human experience to uncomprehending sense
awareness. Not only is this not the only kind of human experience, but, at least in the case of
adults, it never normally occurs at all. We simply do not perceive without some understanding of
what we are perceiving; we do not perceive phenomena without perceiving them as the
phenomena of something; nor do we perceive one thing acting upon another without at the same
time understanding the former as a cause of the effect produced in the latter.

Understanding in Perception. There is surely a crystal-clear distinction between mere

perceiving and understanding. The domestic animals of the battlelands of Europe are no more
spared the bombing and the fire, the hunger and the cold, the noise and the stench, than are their
human owners. But they have no understanding of what is going on; no reason for what is
67
R. J. KREYCHE, op. cit., pp. 282-285.

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happening is known to them, and none is sought. Their minds do not grope for reasons the way
their parched tongues crave for water. The darkness that their eyes suffer when they are driven in
the midst of the night through strange lands is matched by no darkness of intellect seeking a
reason which it cannot find that awful darkness which is so often the lot of man. Failure to
understand could no more be a privation and a suffering in man if his intellect were not made for
grasping the reasons and causes of things, than blindness would be a suffering if sight never
grasped the visible. A man who does not understand feels frustrated, because his mind is made
for understanding; he suffers when he cannot grasp the reason, because he knows that there is a
reason. Perception is not understanding; but normally some understanding occurs together with
perception: we could not possibly have the experience of failing to understand what we perceive,
if we did not have the prior experience of understanding what we perceive.

Cause is Given to the Intellect. Cause is something that we grasp intellectually in the
very act of experiencing action whether our own action or anothers. We understand the cause
as producing the effect: the hammer as driving the nail, the saw as cutting the wood, the flood as
devastating the land, the drill as piercing the rock, the hand as molding the putty, ourselves as
producing our own thoughts, words, and movements, our shoes as pinching our feet, a pin as
piercing our finger, our fellow subway travelers as pressing our ribs together. We do not think
that the nail will ever plunge into the wood without the hammer, the marble shape up as a statue
without a sculptor, the baby begin to exist without a father, the acorn grow with no sunlight; if
something ever seems to occur in this way, we do not believe it, or we call it a miracle (i.e., we
attribute it to a higher, unseen cause). In a similar manner, substance is given directly to the
intellect in the very act of perception; the substance is grasped as the reason for the sensible
phenomena.68

Errors of Kant Concerning Substance. For the transcendental idealist Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804) substance is not anymore the first substance (prima substantia) existing in reality
(e.g., that real dog in front of me that exists, and will continue to exist even when I am not
perceiving it); rather, it is an a priori subjective category of the understanding, one of a number
of innate a priori organizing principles of understanding. The Kantian category of substance, like
the other categories of the understanding, are imposed upon previously organized sense data
(sense stimuli being initally molded by the two a priori forms of sensibility, namely, space and
time, which are purely subjective) for a further and ultimate organization of the initially molded
data. When imposed upon the intuitions of sensibility, the a priori category substance gives the
effect of permanence of an object in time, a permanent and stable subject for the changing
appearances. Copleston writes that, for Kant, turning to the categories of relation, we are told
that the schema of the category of substance is the representation of it as a substratum of the
empirical determination of time; as a substratum, therefore, which remains, while all else
changes.69 That is to say, in order that the concept of substance should be applicable to the data
of perception, it must be schematized or determined by the schema of the imagination; and this
involves representing substance as a permanent substratum of change in time. Only in this
schematized form is the category applicable to appearances.70

68
B. GERRITY, Nature, Knowledge, and God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1947, pp. 337-339.
69
B, 183; A, 144.
70
F. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, Book II, vol. 6, Image Doubleday, New York, 1985, p. 258.

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 Do individual substances with definite natures actually exist in extra-mental reality for
Kant? His answer is that, although the noumenon exists, we cannot know anything about it;
therefore, he maintains that we cannot know if individual substances with definite natures really
exist in noumenal reality. The substance that we utilize in thinking is, for Kant, merely a
subjective a priori categorical imposition upon initally molded sense data in order to endow
initially molded sense data with the characteristic of permanence of an object in the midst of all
changes of appearances in time.

Criticizing the erroneous position of Kants transcendental idealism on substance as a

subjective a priori category of the mind, while the noumenon would remain unknowable, Hart
writes: Such a view is obviously a rejection of the possibility of establishing the objective
reality of substance. It is due entirely to the subjectivism of Kants theory of knowledge, which
consists of sensation caused by the appearances of things as the matter of knowledge, plus the
imposition of innate organizing categories of sense and intellect as its form. Since metaphysical
notions like substance and cause do not give sensations we cannot know whether they are real.
They are therefore reduced to the level of innate forms of intellectual knowledge.

Kant has not escaped the subjectivism of Hume, which he set out to criticize. He gives
no evidence for the existence of innate forms in the mind which must be prior to all mental
activity. Indeed in the nature of things, he could not give evidence of such innate forms. They are
arbitrary assumptions which Kant is compelled to make as a consequence of his theory of the
nature of knowledge. It is a theory which gives to the intellect itself no proper object in the being
of things, which Kant insists cannot be known. Such an assumption dividing being into its
appearances, as thought the latter were for the purpose of concealing rather than revealing the
nature of the being, would not be necessary in a more rational understanding of the
complementary character of sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge.71

71
C. HART, Thomistic Metaphysics, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1959, p. 198.

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