The Nature of the Bodily World

The Cosmological Question is the question of the philosophy of the cosmos or bodily universe. It is, in a word, the question of bodies. It raises the following points for study: the nature of bodily substance, its ultimate constitution, its first origin, its development and goal. The answer to the Cosmological Question makes up that department of philosophy called cosmology. This science is part of natural philosophy, not of metaphysics. For, as we have learned, metaphysics is the science of non-material real being; cosmology is a science of material real being. Cosmology is philosophical physics, not metaphysics. Cosmology does not make distinction of bodies as living and lifeless, but studies bodies as such. The question of life and living bodies, as distinct from lifeless bodies, is the Psychological Question which we shall undertake in the following Chapter.

The present Chapter is divided into these three Articles:

Article 1. The Nature of the Bodily World
Article 2. The Origin and Development of the Bodily World
Article 3. The Fact of Finality in the Bodily World

a ) Bo d ie s

A body is a material substance which normally has extension in space by the three dimensions of length, width, and thickness. We accept as sane men must, and for compelling reasons which we have considered in studying The Critical Question, the actuality of the bodily world in which we live. We find this world a vast complexity of natural bodies, among which we ourselves are numbered. Man, by his inventive activity, has made many artificial bodies, from bricks to chronometers, but these are only various arrangements, unions, and treatments of bodies that are found naturally existing in this world. Our present study is concerned with natural bodies, that is, with physical bodies as they exist or are existible in the material world, unchanged by human art or industry.

The bodily world and the bodies that make it up have the following characteristics: composition, changeability, contingency, limitation.

(1) Composition.—All bodies are compounded or composed. Large bodies are made of smaller bodies, and, as the chemist and physicist will explain, their ultimate physical division (for laboratory science) is a matter of molecules and atoms, and of atomic parts called protons and electrons. But this splitting of bodies into smaller and smaller parts cannot be an endless process; there is no material division that can run on to infinity. Physical partition, or division into parts, rests upon another sort of composition as its ultimate basis, and this composition is (as we shall explain hereafter) the composition of primal matter and substantial form. The point we make at present is simply this: bodies are necessarily composed. Composedness or composition is a property of bodies.

(2) Changeability.—Anything put together can be conceivably taken apart. Anything composed can be decomposed. In a word, anything compounded or composed is subject to change. Now, as we have seen, bodies are compounded or composed ; hence they are subject to change. Changeability is a property of bodies. Change is called substantial when one substance ceases to be and another emerges. Substantial change is an in stantaneous thing, which, looked at in one way, is the ceasing of one substance, and, regarded in another way, is the emergence of a new substance. The ceasing of a substance is called corrup tion; the simultaneous emergence of a new substance is called generation. The generation of one substance is the corruption of another or others, and vice versa. An example of substantial change is found in the process of nutrition by which lifeless food becomes living flesh. Change is called accidental when a substance, remaining itself, undergoes a shift in accidentals, as when water which is cold becomes hot. The most notable types of accidental change are change of quantity and change of quality. Change of quantity is either increase or diminution, as, for example, the change in the weight of a child from seventy to eighty pounds, or the change made in the contents of the sugar-bowl by taking out a spoonful for your coffee. Change of quality, called alteration, is a change in almost any accidental other than quantity; such, for instance, is the change from hot to cold, from young to old, from ignorant to learned, from sinfulness to grace. A change from “fat to thin” is at once a change in quantity and in quality. Our chief concern at this moment is to stress the truth that bodies are properly subject to change.

(5) Contingency.—A being which is so perfect that existence is of its very essence is called a necessary being; it is a thing that must exist and cannot be non-existent. A non-necessary being is called contingent. The word “contingent” means “dependent,” for a contingent thing depends on its causes to produce it and maintain it; it has in itself no absolute requirement for existing. A contingent being can exist, but it does not have to exist, and it would not exist if definite causes, which are prior to it, did not operate to give it existence. It is manifest that bodies are contingent. For we see them emerge, and we see them disappear. Each birth and death, each spring and autumn, each dawn and dusk, is a plain proof of the contingency of bodies. For a thing which can change has no necessity in its being. And what has no necessity in its being is contingent. Now, we have seen that bodies are changeable; it follows that they are contingent.

(4) Limitation— A thing which is absolutely unlimited is

QUANTITY 261 called infinite. It is such a being as cannot be increased or decreased in any way; for an increase supposes a point or line or limit where the addition takes effect, and decrease is always a shrinking in of lines. Now, it is manifest that bodies are capable of increase and diminishment, whether literally in point of quantity or analogously in point of quality. Hence, bodies are not infinite, but finite or limited. Bodies, too, are capable of undergoing substantial change, and substantial change (generation- corruption) is a process of loss and gain which, like increase and diminishment, is incompatible with infinity. Therefore, we conclude that bodies as such are limited. Limitation is a property of bodies.

To sum up: a body is a material substance, normally extended by three dimensions, and marked by composition, changeability, contingency, and limitation.

b) Quantity

Quantity is that property of bodily substance which extends it, spreads out its parts; first, with reference to the bodily substance itself; second, with reference to the place that the bodily substance normally occupies.

Quantity therefore is extension. And, as the definition indicates, there are two types of extension. The first and essential type is internal extension. A normal effect of internal extension is external or local extension. A body must be extended in itself before it can be extended in space, that is before it can have place. And it is conceivable that a body should have the essential type of extension (that is, internal extension) without actually occupying space or being localized within external dimensions. We have no example of such a thing in the natural bodily world, but we have an example in the supernatural order: the actual Body of Christ is present in the Holy Eucharist without external extension.

Internal extension is a property of bodies, that is, it is a characteristic which belongs by natural necessity to bodies. External extension is a secondary effect of quantity (or of internal extension).

A body is not to be identified with its extension any more than a man is to be identified with his size. Just as the man has size, the body has extension; it is not true that the man is his size, nor is it true that a body is its extension. A body is a substance; quantity or extension is an accident, albeit a proper accident or property. A bodily substance is in itself independent of extension or quantity, although extension is a required condition for the normal existence of bodily substance in this material world.

The effects of quantity in an existing natural body are these: (a) the external extension and localization of the body; (b) the impenetrability of the body which renders naturally (but not supernaturally) impossible the compenetration of bodies; (c) divisibility of the body into an indefinite number of parts; (d) mensurability of the body, which renders it expressible in units of dimension or numberings of parts.

Quantity when unbroken is called continuous quantity, and a body of unbroken quantity is called a continuum, whether this be perfect or imperfect, that is, whether the continuum has absolute continuity without pores or interstices, or has, in fact, such ‘Tioles” which it surrounds as water surrounds islands. Quantity that is broken up in pieces (like a pound of sugar, or a heap of bits of broken glass) is called discrete quantity. Each item of a discrete quantity is a continuum. A discrete quantity is called contiguous if its parts or items touch one another (as in a spoonful of salt) ; it is called separate if the parts do not touch (as in a dozen eggs spread widely on a table). The basis of quantity in bodies is perfectly continuous matter, at least in its basic physical parts; and perfectly continuous matter can only exist in virtue of a unifying form or principle which determines the matter as an existing reality of an essential kind. Our bodily world is a great contiguous quantity (or contiguum) which is made of substances that are, in their essential existing elements, true continua.

The extension of the whole bodily universe,—that is, its natural external extension,—fills up what we think of as a kind of capacity or container, the name of which is real space. The position of each body in space is called its place. Our mental image of space as a container of bodies is a mental image and no more; it is an ens rationis; it is logical being, not real being. For space is only thought of as a container. As a fact, space is the actual extension of existing bodies in the universe.

In passing, it is to be noted that philosophy has no quarrel with science on the question of space or that of place. But some scientists, misunderstanding their own field, propound philosophies of space which are in conflict with sound reason. But with physics or mathematics as such, philosophy cannot come into contact or conflict. Professor Einstein’s theory of the relativity of space or the curvedness of space does not concern us. This is not properly a theory of space but of distance and measurement, that is, of partial space and its interpretation in terms of numbering.

Since real space is the actual extension of existing bodies, and since bodies are limited, as we have learned, it follows that real space is limited. The universe may be expanding, it may be contracting, it may be doing neither. But whatever it is doing, at any given instant, it has its definite limits. The fact that man has no instruments to enable him to tell just where these limits lie, does not change the basic fact that the limits are there. Real space is finite.

In addition to real space we may mention ideal space (or the idea of space) which is the mind’s concept of all possible space. So also we may mention imaginary space which is the envisioning by fancy or imagination of the visible reaches of space stretching on and on into the void. Ideal and imaginary space are indefinite; real space is definitely limited.

Bodies with quantity are subject to change. Change is movement or motion, for “change is a transit, a going-over, a movement from one state of being to another.” Now, movement or motion is a matter of “now this—then that” ; it is a matter of “before and after.” And motion or change, under the aspect of before-and-after, is the basis of real time. Time in itself is described as a continuous and numerable series of motions under the aspect of before-and-after. Man conceives of time as a meas ure, just as he conceives of space as a container. But just as space in its reality is the real extension of bodies, so time in its reality is the continuous numerable succession of bodily movements. Time as a measure is logical being, not real being. Its serves man’s uses to note some regular and reliable movement (of sun, of stars, of moon) and to use this as a standard of comparison with other and less regular motions. Thus we have solar time, sidereal time, lunar time. And man’s inventiveness,—which is to say, his mind or intellect at grips with material problems,—has enabled him to devise mechanical instruments with regular movements that can be recorded, and to indicate these recordings as intervals of solar time, sidereal time, or lunar time. Thus we have chronometers, watches, clocks. Besides real time, we have ideal time which is the mind’s concept of all possible numerable and continuous movement; and we have imaginary time which is the fanciful envisioning of real time indefinitely extended. Real time is necessarily finite, for it is finite motion in a finite world of finite bodies. Ideal time and imaginary time are indefinite or potentially infinite, but never actually infinite. Thoughtless people sometimes confuse ideal or imaginary time with eternity. But eternity is, strictly speaking, the opposite of time. It is an endless “now” ; it has nothing of “before and after” which is of the essence of time. Eternity in its strict meaning belongs only to the Infinite Being, to God. Angels and men’s separated souls (and men’s bodies after the resurrection) have “evitemity” or endless duration without the vicissitudes of time.

c) Activity of Bodies

Activity is a doing, an operating, or at least a co-operating, a responding. All bodily substances are active if it were only in holding their parts together by cohesion, or in responding to the thing called gravitation, which is really the effect of the activity of body on body.

Bodily activity is immanent or vital when its chief effect is in the agent, that is, in the thing which is active. Growing, for example, is first of all in the growing body. A tree’s growth has an outer effect; the tree casts a larger shade as it grows taller and fuller; it may so grow as to block the view from a window; but the main effect of growing is in the growing tree. Such activity is therefore called immanent, that is, “indwelling.” Non-immanent activity is called transient, that is, “passing over” and having its effect outside the agent The activity of the growing tree in blocking the window, or in throwing a shadow, is transient. Growth is immanent; these outer and alien consequences of growth are transient. Truly immanent activity is always life- activity or, as it is usually called, vital activity.

Transient activity is called mechanical when it consists of local movement. Such is the activity of the rolling stone, the turning wheel, the expanding balloon, the rising steam, the drive of the tennis-racquet against the ball. Transient activity is called phys ical when it consists of change or motion in quality. Such is the activity of a light which continuously sends out its rays, the activity of a sounding body, the activity of an electrical charge. It will be noticed that physical activity is normally accompanied by mechanical activity, for some local movement is to be discerned in every qualitative change or movement; but physical activity as such does not consist of these local movements. The man who says that heat is movement (meaning local or mechanical movement) is not thinking clearly or observing well; he should say that heat is produced by mechanical movement and is accompanied by mechanical movement; he has no right to assert that heat is mechanical movement. Transient activity is called chemical when it affects a body in its substantial being, and usually changes it into another substance or other substances. Such is the activity which resolves water into hydrogen and oxygen. Chemical activity is usually accompanied by both mechanical and physical activity.

Bodily activity is something which the bodily substance does; it is not what the bodily substance is. Each body is equipped by its nature with certain powers for activity. No body is immedi ately active, but it is active mediately, that is through the medium of real powers which it possesses. These powers, in themselves, are accidentals of the bodily substance; they are among its qualities.

A false philosophy (that is, a false cosmology) called mech anistic materialism teaches that the world consists of matter and motion. But this theory is so much a simplification that it is a falsification. It does not explain the origin of motion which is never self-originating; it does not explain the transference of motion; it does not explain the conserving of motion. Another false cosmology (called energeticism) explains the bodily world as a complexity of kinetic and potential energies which act according to the laws of conservation, intensity, and entropy. Now these “laws” may be at work in the world but they do not explain the world. Energy requires a source, a sustaining power, a transferring power. To speak of energies, and waves of power, and electrical charges, and so on, without reference to actual substantial bodies exercising such powers by true bodily activity, is like speaking of the tides while denying the existence of the ocean. The truth is that bodily activity exists as the product of bodily substance equipped with powers for exercising such activity.

d) Constitution of Bodies

The question here raised is that of the ultimate constitution of bodily substance. We seek to know what makes a body a body, and what makes any body an existing reality of the essential or specific kind that it actually is. Thus our investigation probes far more deeply into reality than that of the physicist and the chemist who wish to know the proximate constitution of the bodies they handle in their laboratories. Ours is a philosophical inquiry; theirs is an experimental investigation. The physicist who explains to us that a body is made up of atoms and atomic parts, leaves us, philosophically speaking, exactly where we were before he explained. For the smallest atomic part is a body. And our inquiry is, “What makes a body a body?” To tell us that a body is made of smaller bodies is to tell us precisely nothing; our inquiry is about the smallest body as well as about the largest

The theories about the constitution of bodies may be reduced to four: monism, atomism, dynamism, hylemorphism.

( /) Monism, a name derived from the Greek monos “alone” or “single,” means the theory that this bodily world is all one kind of reality; that there are no substantial or essential differences among bodies. Monism is of two types, (a) Materialistic monism makes the world a vast lump of homogeneous matter of which all bodies,—lifeless, living, plants, animals, men, earth, air, stars,—are different shapings, like differently shaped biscuits from one pan of dough, (b) Idealistic monism denies the reality of bodily substances as our senses present them to knowledge, and makes them various “appearances” or “expressions” of thought, of will, of “the unconscious,” of “the Absolute,” of “the Unknowable.” The pupil will take benefit here if he will cast back to the First Part of this manual and read again what has been said of the philosophies of Spinoza, Fichte, von Schel- ling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Spencer. Both types of monism are pantheistic, for if only one reality exists, this must be self- existent reality, and self-existent reality is Infinite Being or God.

Monism is inept and inadmissible. It is inept inasmuch as it offers itself as a philosophy of bodies and then refuses to explain bodies. For it is no explanation of the essence of bodies to say that there is only one body, or that bodies are only apparent. Monism is inadmissible because it involves self-contradiction and thus conflicts with reason, and because it disagrees with normal sense experience which is the basis of all certitude. Both types of monism involve self-contradiction. Materialistic monism makes bodily substance self-existent and hence infinite, whereas bodily substance is (as we have seen) necessarily limited; thus monism preaches “a finite infinity” or “an infinite finiteness.” Idealistic monism says there are no bodies, and then tries to explain them as bodily expressions of something else. Both types of monism are manifestly in conflict with normal sense experience, for it is one of the clearest facts of immediate experience that we are living in an actual universe of different bodies.

(2) Atomism here means the atomist philosophy. It does not mean the atomic theory which is generally accepted among scientists. With the atomic theory we have no concern and certainly no quarrel The case is otherwise with the atomist philosophy. The atomic theory is like an explanation of a log as a thing made up of grains of wood, a perfectly sound doctrine as far as it goes. The atomist philosophy is like an explanation of a log in terms of its grains alone, denying all reference to a tree; and this is an utterly unsound theory.

Atomist philosophy has two notable forms, (a) Mechanistic atomism says that the bodily world is made up of minimum- particles (or atoms) of homogeneous matter, which have different shapes and sizes, and are kept in motion by some outside force. (&) Dynamistic atomism says that the minimum-particles of homogeneous matter are endowed with their own power of motion. Both forms of atomism explain bodies as the clusterings of differently shaped, differently sized, and variously moved atoms. There is, therefore, no real difference among bodies, and no individual body is truly a substantial unity. Most atomists hold that the atom-clusters called bodies are the result of a chance meeting of these minimum-particles of matter.

We reject the atomist theory as inadequate. It proposes itself as a philosophy of bodies, and ends precisely where it starts— with bodies. To say that bodies are dusters of smaller bodies is still to leave bodies unexplained. Further, the atomist theory un- warrantedly rejects the notion of true substantial unity, and therewith it upsets the possibility of achieving certitude. For, if we cannot trust our knowledge of the substantial character of individual bodies, we cannot trust knowledge at all, and must lapse into the insane position of the skeptic. Finally, atomism is unacceptable because it ignorantly proposes chance as a cause. Chance is never a cause. Chance is a circumstance which bdongs to an unpredictable effect.

(5) Dynamism, a name derived from the Greek dynamis “force” or “power,” means the theory that what we call substantial bodies are collections of “points of force” which have no extension (that is, no quantity), and which attract one another up to a certain distance and then hold one another off. Thus, though unextended, they constitute extended matter by marking, so to speak, extended intervals. The power-points are changeless; hence there is no such thing as substantial change in the world, or even substantial difference of bodies.

It will be noticed that dynamism, like atomism, is radically monistic. All three of the doctrines so far considered have this in common: they reduce the world to a single thing which is either a mass of homogeneous particles, or a series of expressions of a single non-bodily substance, or a complexity of indestructible power-points which are all of the same nature.

We reject dynamism as self-contradictory and inadequate. If dynamism recognizes the actual extension of bodies, it does so by the self-contradictory process of adding a series of zeros and reaching a positive sum. For unextended power-point plus unextended power-point results in inextension, not actual extension. Even if the points are separated by intervals of distance, there is pure vacancy between and among them, and the result of their addition must still be zero. Thus the form of dynamism which affirms the actual extension of bodies also denies the actual extension of bodies. If we consider the form of dynamism which frankly denies the actuality of bodies and makes the universe a dream-world of mere appearances, we find that the theory cannot explain the appearances or interpret the dream. For unextended power-points in motion are invisible and cannot create the illusion of a visible world. Indeed, no illusion of a solid universe could be excited in a mind which had no experience of real solidity to begin with. Dynamism cannot explain what we call solidity, it cannot explain substance, it cannot explain the organic unity of a living body. It invokes the activity of power-points across a void (that is, actio in distans), a thing which philosophy finds, at best, of very dubious possibility, and which science has never discovered in any experiment.

The electrical theory of matter and even the electrical theory of life are dynamistic. While that extremely mysterious thing called electricity is everywhere at work in the world, it is a thing which affects bodies but does not wholly constitute bodies. Too many inadequate scientists of our day like to talk in abstract terms of what is really concrete; they say that protons and electrons are “charges” of electricity (that is, “points of power”). What they mean, of course, is that protons and electrons are particles of bodily substance charged with electricity.

(4) Hyletnorphistn, a term made up of two Greek words, hyle “matter” and morphe “form,” is the name of the Scholastic doctrine on the ultimate constitution of bodies. This doctrine holds that a body is composed of primal matter and substantial form. It is the doctrine first explained by Aristotle, four centuries before Christ, and we may say without boasting that it stands miles above any alternative doctrine proposed since. For it meets the full problem it seeks to solve, and it offers a full solution. The doctrine of hylemorphism is not revealed; it is not a doctrine that can claim divine authority. But it is a doctrine which, despite difficulties, has weathered the intellectual and experimental storms of nearly twenty-five hundred years, and is still the only rounded explanation of the nature of bodies that we possess. It has thus a sound claim upon the attention of our minds. It has a very strong case. Yet there has been, among non-Scholastic philosophers, a marked tendency to contemn this doctrine without investigating it, and even some Scholastics have learned to speak of it with something of a cold and aloof manner. Even men who, in most of their philosophical work, merit our respect, stoop to the indecency and the dishonesty of condemning or ridiculing hylemorphism without having the slightest conception of what it actually teaches, or rather, with a totally wrong conception of what it teaches. For example, Mr. C. E. M. Joad, in his Guide to Philosophy propounds, jocosely, a certain series of comments of the “jugginess” of jugs; for this, when he comes to understand hylemorphism he will some day sit in sackcloth and ashes, for he has not shown up hylemorphism; he has only shown that it is possible for a really learned man to air abysmal ignorance.

Now, there are two facts about any actual bodily substance that a philosophy of bodies must face and explain. First, the bodily substance is a body. But it is more than that, for it is quite impossible for a body to exist without a specific determinant. We cannot say that a bodily substance actually exists as a body and nothing more; that it is no kind of bodily substance, but just pure body. The second thing, therefore, about an actual body is that it is a determinate specific or essential kind of body. In a word, some substantial principle must explain the bodili- ness of a body; and some substantial principle, fused into substantial unity with the first, must explain the existing specific character of a body. Hylemorphism calls the first of these principles primal matter (or prime matter) and the second of these principles substantial form.

Let us envision the favorite figure of the old-fashioned novelist. Let us contemplate “the solitary horseman” riding between rows of trees along a rocky road. We shall not pause upon the romantic suggestions of the picture. We shall coldly reduce it to its elements for purposes of philosophical illustration. We shall consider these four things: the man, the horse, the trees, the rocks. Here we have four examples of bodily substance. And the first truth about them is that they are all bodies, one as much as another, one as truly and completely as another. Yet, since we are not monists, we face the further fact that, although all these bodies are bodies, they are essentially or specifically different kinds of bodies. Each is a bodily substance; there is no mere ac cidental in their true bodiliness. Nor is there any mere accidental in their difference as bodily substances. For a substance that is living, like the tree, is substantially different from the substance which lacks life, like the rock. And a substance that has sentiency, like the horse, is substantially different from a non-sentient substance, like the tree. And, finally, a substance which has understanding and will (that is, rational life), is substantially different from a substance which lacks these perfections; so that the man and the horse are different by no mere accidental difference, but by a substantial difference. The four bodies are all bodily substance, yet the four bodies differ from one another as substances. There must be, therefore, a dual substantial principle, or, more accurately, two substantially fused substantial principles in each of these bodies. For the four things are in agreement, they are at one as bodily substances, and, at the same time, they are not the same substance at all, but are substantially dif ferent. There must be a substantial principle in each of the four which is the basis of its bodiliness; there must be a substantial principle in each of the four which is the substantial determinant of the kind of substance that it is. The first of these principles is prime matter; the second is substantial form.

Prime matter or materia prima is the substantial principle found in all bodies. It is common to all bodies. It is the common substrate of all bodies. In point of prime matter, all bodies are at one. So far, monism is right; but monism goes calamitously wrong when it stops here. Prime matter is wholly without deter- minateness in itself. It cannot exist itself, for, as we have noticed, it is impossible for an existing body to be just a body and no more, that is, just a body, and not any kind of body. Prime matter is substantial, but it is an incomplete substance; it requires another substantial thing to exist with it, or rather to give it existence in a determinate body. And this other substantial principle (unless it be a spiritual principle) requires prime matter to determine and make exist as a body; this other substantial principle (always remembering the exception in favor of a spiritual substance) is also an incomplete substance. Each leans on each, although the one (prime matter) is the determinable element, and the other (the substantial form) is the determining element. A crude, and in many ways misleading, illustration of this twofold incompleteness which constitutes a single completeness may be found in the two beams which come together to make the sturdy support of a gable roof. Neither beam can lean at its angle and support the roof without the other. Each renders an incomplete service. But together the beams render a complete service. So with the basic elements of bodies.

Prime matter is called “pure potentiality,” that is, pure capacity for existence as a body. It is a capacity which must be filled up, determined, made into the only existible body (that is a specific kind of existing body) by a substantial principle other than itself. And, since the result of the union of this determining principle with prime matter is a single bodily substance, the union itself must be a substantial union, the substantial fusing of two substantial principles into an actuality which is a third thing, and not prime matter alone, not substantial form alone, but an existing body of a specific kind.

Prime matter then cannot exist itself, unformed. It does exist, but not alone. It exists as the common substrate of all existing bodies. It is that which makes any body a body; not actively, but by passively receiving the impress and union of the substantial form. For the whole character of prime matter is its passivity, its inertness, its indifference (or lack of tendency) to become this kind of body rather than another, in a word, its potentiality.

Substantial form, however, is active, determining. It makes the body actual (that is, an existing body) in a definite specific kind of actual bodiliness. The result of the substantial union of substantial form with prime matter is called second matter or materia secunda; and, of course, materia secunda means an existing bodily substance. Substantial form is the root and source of bodily actuality, of substantial determinateness, of activity. Prime matter is wholly potential, indeterminate, inactive or inert.

The doctrine of hylemorphism is not a mere clever invention. It is an explanation based upon the facts of a case. And the test of its value is the fact that it stands up. It has faced many difficulties. There are cases that seem to upset it But careful investigation has always justified it.

The progress of experimental science, the splitting of the atom, the place and apparent power of one electron more or less in the constitution of a definite substance,—each of these facts, and others of like character, have seemed to some philosophers and to many scientists to be in conflict with the hylemorphic doctrine. But it is not so. There is no value in an argument of this sort: “If I knock out an electron of an atom of substance-A and find that I now have substance-B, it seems that these were basically one substance to start with.” The answer is that it seems nothing of the sort. The difference is not a mere difference of accidental character because a number of like particles is an accidental thing in itself. For, although substances act upon one another through powers which are in themselves accidental, the activity is truly of substance upon substance. And if an electron more, or an electron less, should induce change, this may well be a substantial change. It may well be a change of structure unsuited to the enduring of a certain substantial form, which disappears in consequence; and the new structure receives simultaneously that substantial form which it is suited to support. You change the substance of coal into a variety of substances loosely called “ashes and smoke” by applying the substance of fire. Yet this substan- tial change is affected by powers and capacities of the substances concerned, and these capacities and powers are, in themselves, as accidental as a mere numerical sum or numerical arrangement of electrons. The splitting of the atom, or the discovery of the character and function of electrons, is no more a new difficulty to the philosopher of bodily actuality than is the shovelling of coal on the furnace fire.

Indeed, if we short-sightedly declare that true substantial change does not occur, that all substances are the same determinate substance, we still must identify that substance as bodily (that is, as having prime matter) and as determinate in its kind of bodiliness (that is, as having substantial form). So hylemor- phism stands in any case.

But to make all substances one substance is to fall into a selfcontradictory theory called monism. It is to destroy the value of the doctrine itself which is proposed as true and certain, for if monism were true, human certitude would be bankrupt By their fruits you shall know them; a doctrine which leads logically to skepticism or to monism or to both, is a doctrine that bears the evil fruits of falsity. The fact that there is an apparent difficulty on the side of sanity is surely no excuse for going insane. It is rather a strong challenge to the champions of sanity to study its resources more completely and apply its powers more thoroughly and astutely.

For, argue as you will, experiment as you choose, the fact remains and will ever remain that any bodily substance is bodily and is a certain specific kind. Any body has, of plain necessity matter and form. If you consider the terms_old-fashioned, you are privileged to invent more pleasing ones. But you cannot change facts by changing names.

There are persons indeed who say that there is no substantial change. Yet these persons would have a hard time proving their assertion, and the proof lies with them because they make the claim in the face of common human experience and of common human certitude. They have to prove a universal negative ex- perimentally; any logician will be pleased to point out to them the difficulties of their situation.

The change from a living body to a corpse is indubitably a substantial change. For everything by which we identify the organic unity and the substantial character of the living body is not only changed by the thing called death, but all the processes once in possession and in operation are actually reversed. Instead of organic unity, we have (immediately upon death) a strong tendency to disunity and diversity; instead of a unified drive or tendency to vital function, we have the tendency to rest and equilibrium. In a word, by all the tests which distinguish one kind of body from another, the corpse is a radically different kind of thing from the living body. Substantial change is a fact. Another interesting example of substantial change is the change of bread and butter into the living flesh of the diner.

Now, if substantial change is a fact, it is an inexplicable fact unless two things are acknowledged: the substances concerned (the substance changed, and the substance which is the result of change) and some substantial actuality which supports the change. When food is digested, it is not a mere preliminary process which annihilates the food, a meaningless process which is unaccountably accompanied by the creation of blood cells. The ceasing of the food to be food is the emerging of the blood cells which came from the change of food. There is no annihilation (an abrupt and complete cessation of being) and a simultaneous creation (an abrupt and entire production out of nothing of a new being wholly unrelated to the other). N o; there is a substantial change of food into blood. Now, a change is a transit, a going- over. And a going-over requires a support which does not go over, but which is determined in bodily being first by one determinant, and, this giving way, by a new determinant which instantly takes the place of that which gives way. The support of substantial change is itself a substantial thing, and a substantial element of each of the two substantial bodily beings in turn. This support of substantial change is called prime matter; the sub-

CONSTITUTION OF BODIES 277 stantial determinant which makes it one kind of body, and then the new substantial determinant which makes it another substantial body, is called, each in its turn, substantial form. Again, you may not like the terms matter and form, but you cannot deny the facts for which they stand. Substantial change is inexplicable without hylemorphism, although, as we say, you might like it under a more modern name, such as precipitation, or galviniza- tion, or the etiology of substantial emergence.

We have truly said that there are four, and only four, doctrines which propose themselves as fundamental philosophies of bodies, although three of them are not fundamental at all. All philosophies of bodies must, in last analysis, be resolved into one or other of these four forms. Now, we have found that three of these four doctrines are unacceptable, for they conflict with experience and are in themselves self-contradictory. Therefore, by exclusion, we prove the one acceptable doctrine to be the true doctrine. This doctrine is hylemorphism.

We stand, therefore, by the doctrine of hylemorphism. We defend it, not as partisans “taking sides,” but as lovers of truth. We refuse to leave what is manifestly reasonable, although sometimes difficult of application, in favor of what is manifestly unreasonable and often impossible of application. Hence our acceptance of hylemorphism is right and reasonable; it is worlds away from the stubborn business of taking sides in free debate. In a word, we accept hylemorphism on evidence. Most of those who reject it do so by reason of mood, or temperament, or prejudice, or the desire to keep pace with the current scientistic fashion. It is not difficult to decide which of the parties stands on the more solid ground.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have defined body, and have learned that a bodily substance is, by its nature, composed, changeable, con tingent, and limited. We have investigated the proper accident