Certain Accidents

Article 3. Certain Accidents

a) Quality　　b) Relation　　c) Quantity　　d) Action, Passion, Motion　　e) Place and Space　　f) Time

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a) Quality

We often say that any accident qualifies its subject. The word qualify (and its cognate quality) is thus seen to be capable of a wide or loose meaning. In such a meaning, any accident which tells us something about what sort of thing its subject is, is a quality. Strictly, however, a quality is an accident which modifies or influences a substance in itself or in its activities. Any quality makes the substance which it affects better or worse in itself, or makes it function more easily or less easily.

Marks of a quality are these: (1) It is a thing which has an opposite, and qualities may be listed in opposed pairs. Thus, virtue, vice; knowledge, ignorance; health, illness; whiteness, blackness, are examples of opposed qualities. (2) It is a thing of degrees, being capable of increase or diminishment. (3) It is a thing which serves as a basis of comparison. Things which are like in quality are called similar, and things which differ in point of quality are, in so far, dissimilar.

Important types of quality are the following:

1. Dispositions and habits. A habit is a settled and enduring quality, born of repeated acts or of a continued state of being, which influences a substance in itself or its operations. A habit is firmly fixed and not readily removable. Before it becomes so fixed, and while it is still relatively easy to remove, it is called a disposition. Continued lying will fix the practice as a habit. Continued application will make regular study a habit. A habit is distinguished as good or bad, according to the effect it has on action or conduct. Vice is a morally bad habit; virtue is a morally good habit. Again, a habit is distinguished as natural or supernatural; a natural habit is one acquired by the unaided powers of nature; a supernatural habit is one bestowed by God. Thus, knowledge gained by study, is a natural habit; sanctifying grace is a supernatural habit. The basic meaning of habit (from Latin habitus, the passive past participle of the verb “to have”) is “a thing had, a thing one has got,” a thing that stays. Good habits render “the right thing” prompt and easy in ordinary circumstances.

2. Capacities. A capacity or power is the faculty for doing something. All the activity of a substance comes from its nature (for nature means an essence viewed as the root and source of operations), but nature is not operative immediately, but only through faculties or powers or capacities which inhere in it as qualities. Thus the capacity for thinking (the mind or intellect) and for choosing (the will) and the capacities for sensing (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, imagination, memory, consciousness, instinct) are not the substance of a man, nor the nature of a man, but powers (which in themselves are accidents and qualities) which serve the man in his connatural activities. The noblest of human faculties are, of course, the soul-faculties of mind and will.

3. Passive characteristics. The result of the actual undergoing of influences (actions) inheres in the affected subject as a quality. Thus color, complexion, age, temperature, etc., are qualities of this type. Temperature and age can also be quantities when they are presented in more or less definite terms of measurement or degree.

4. Outlines and figures. The outline or figure or form or shape of a thing is the limit of its quantity. Every actual body has quantity, and the quantity has ends, terminations, limits, points where it breaks off. These limits determine the shape of the body, or its outline or form or figure. The form or figure of a bodily substance is a quality of the substance; it is a quality of quantified matter. Roundness, angularity, straightness, curvedness, are qualities of this type. The student is warned that the term form (which here means, of course, accidental form) is a most potent and most frequently recurrent word in a philosopher’s vocabulary; in general, a form means any determinateness of being, essential or non-essential, substantial or accidental.

b) Relation

Relation is not something which inheres in a subject, or in-exists; it is rather something that exists between two subjects, or among a plurality of subjects. Relation is the standing, the ordering, the habitude of one thing towards another. The world about us is marked by a most complex tissue of relations or relationships.

It is possible for us to consider certain realities alone, and in this view they are called absolute realities. But if we take into account all that can be known about such things, we inevitably see them in relations which they bear to other things. Some things can be regarded as absolute; but some cannot. Thus, for example, you cannot conceive of parent absolutely; for parent means a person who bears a relationship to offspring. You cannot think of son or daughter without implicitly thinking of a parent.

The first distinction of relations is that of logical relations and real relations. Logical relations are the “tie-ups” that depend on knowledge, or invention, or understood custom. Real relations are the product of things taken independently, and not in a special view of mind. A child is related to his parents, as effect to cause, independently of man’s view of the case. The pillars in St. Peter’s Basilica are alike, whether anyone notices the fact or not.

Relations are further distinguished as essential and non-essential. An essential relation is the very essence of a thing inasmuch as it involves a reference to something else. Thus the soul is created expressly for union with the body so that, in substantial union therewith, it may constitute man. This is an essential relation. A non-essential or accidental relation is one which holds between things that could exist without each other.

Relations are also mutual or non-mutual. A mutual relation is one which works both ways. The relation between parent and offspring is mutual but not equal — it is a mutual but unequal relationship. Between John and Joe who look alike there is a mutual relationship of similarity which is the same from the standpoints of both things related. A non-mutual relation is one that does not work two ways. Thus the relation between the mind of a man and a reality known to that mind is non-mutual. The man’s knowledge depends on the object, for the object must be there before it can be known. But the object does not depend on the man’s knowledge. Similarly, the relation between God and creatures is a real but non-mutual relation. Creatures depend on God; God does not depend on creatures.

In every relation we distinguish three elements: the subject (that which is referred to something else), the term (that to which the subject is referred), and the basis (the reason by which the subject is referred to the term).

A word must be said here against the intellectually and morally ruinous theories of relative truth and relative morality which are much in fashion. The relativist holds that truth changes. Against him we may show that he proposes a self-contradictory doctrine and stultifies himself: when he says “Truth changes,” we may upset him completely by asking, “Is that true?” For, if his statement be true, then his doctrine is itself an unstable, unreliable, changing theory, and is therefore inadmissible.—The relativist in moral matters says that nothing is absolutely right or wrong, good or bad, but that the moral quality of any human activity is determined by its relation to the times, or to the current needs of industrial or social groups. Our own American philosopher, William James (1842–1910), held such a relativist theory in regard to both truth and morality. He taught that the test of truth and goodness is the “workableness” of a thing. Chesterton says that the relativist is a man engaged in looking for the comparative of a word of which he has forgotten the positive. He believes in things being made better, but he does not know what good means; he believes in progress, but he has no idea of a starting-point, or a direction, or a goal.

c) Quantity

Quantity is the accident which affects a bodily substance with extension of parts. It is called “an accident which spreads out a bodily substance so that it is part here part there” (accidens extensivum substantiae corporeae in partes). Quantity is not the bodily substance itself, but an accident which affects the bodily substance. It is a proper accident of actual bodies, and, in the order of nature, an actual body is never found without some quantity.

There are five notable properties or attributes of quantity: (1) It extends the body in a manner that may be called internal, without reference to the space which the body occupies, or the place in which it moves or reposes. This is the formal property, or even the constituent property and the essence, of the accident called quantity. (2) It extends the body in an external manner so that its parts occupy space or place. (3) It makes the bodily parts incompenetrable, so that one is not precisely where another is. (4) It makes the bodily substance divisible because the extended parts, not compenetrating, are conceivably and really separable, one from another. (5) It renders the bodily substance mensurable or measurable, because parts that are divisible can be numbered and can be seen in relation to one another as equal or unequal.

Quantity as corporeal is either a matter of size or a matter of number. Quantity of size is called continuous quantity; its parts are united; the line which marks the end of one part is the same identical line which marks the beginning of the next neighboring part. By reason of this quantity a body is said to have magnitude, size, bulk. Quantity of number is called discrete quantity; its parts are not in contact with each other.

d) Action, Passion, Motion

1. Action is an accident (or non-substantial reality) by virtue of which a cause produces an effect. It is not an ability or capacity to do something; this, as we have elsewhere seen, is a quality. It is the actual “getting to work,” the “going into action” that we call the accident of action or predicamental action.

An action which produces a new substance is generation. And, since the production of a new substance is always the reduction or removal of another (or others), generation of one substance is the corruption of another (or others). Thus, the generation of water is the corruption of hydrogen and oxygen; the generation of living cells is the corruption of food. Generation and corruption are instantaneous, not successive. When the action is not productive (and corruptive) of substance, but of accidental form or forms, it is called change or alteration. Alteration is usually successive, that is, it proceeds by steps or stages.

Action which remains, in itself and in its main effect, within the being which produces it is immanent action. All vital action (that is, life action: nutrition, growth, generation, sensation, appetition, locomotion, intellection, volition) is immanent, and all immanent action is vital. Transient action is action which goes over from the being which produces it and has its main effect on something else. The action of sawing wood or hitting a ball is transient.

2. Passion is an accident (or non-substantial reality) by which a being is constituted in the actual receiving of action, the actual undergoing of action in its effect. Action is actual doing; passion is actual undergoing. Passion is thus the complement of action.

3. Motion is a kind of composite view of action and passion. St. Thomas says that “inasmuch as motion proceeds from a doer, it is action; inasmuch as it affects what undergoes the doing, it is passion.” Motion is any transit from potentiality to actuality. There is motion in generation, and in corruption, and in alteration. There is movement or motion from the state of being hydrogen and oxygen to the state of being water; from hot to cold, from cold to hot; from virtuous to vile, from sinful to sinless; in quantitative growth (enlargement) or diminishment.

e) Place and Space

I. Place is an accident which determines “where” a thing is. It is an accident of a body which is immediately, contiguously, surrounded by another bodily substance; and it is determined by the whole outer surface of the body in its contact with the surrounding substance.

Consider a glass of wine. The surface of the inside of the glass is its immediate external place or its proper place. The other places (table, room, house, county, etc.) are the mediate external places or the common places. But the outer surface of the volume of wine itself may be regarded as a kind of container, a kind of film or skin which holds the volume of wine; and this is the internal place of the wine. Internal place is immovable — no matter where the glassful of wine may be, its internal place remains the same as long as it continues to be the identical amount of wine.

How may a thing be in a place? There are four chief ways in which a reality may be localized:

1. If the thing localized is a bodily substance with quantity it has presence in a place in the literal and proper sense — circumscriptive location. A body is in a place (external and proper place) when its own dimensions are immediately circumscribed by the dimensions of surrounding surface. The Latin circumscriptum means “written around.” Only bodies can be present in a place circumscriptively.

2. If the thing localized is a form which gives actuality (existence) to a substance or accident, it is said to in-form such substance or accident, and to be in that substance informatively. Thus the substantial form of any material substance is said to be in that substance informatively. Thus the soul is said to be located in the body.

3. If the thing localized is a working force, an acting power, it is said to be present where it works in a manner that is called operative. A creatural power (finite power) can be present only in one subject at a time and is definitively present there. The Infinite Power (the Divine Essence Itself) is unlimited and is therefore present everywhere — ubiquitously present (ubique, “everywhere”). God is present everywhere operatively and ubiquitously; and, since God’s power is identified with His Essence, He is present everywhere essentially.

4. A fourth mode of localization, which does not lie within the proper scope of a purely philosophical discussion but is added here for reasons of completeness, is sacramental presence: a presence wherein a located substance has place through the mediation of the dimensions of another substance, but without making these dimensions its own. Thus the substance of Christ is present under the appearances (and dimensions) of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist, but the dimensions of the transubstantiated bread and wine are not the dimensions of Christ. Christ is present in a tiny host, not in miniature, not partially, but whole and entire in the fulness of His mature humanity as well as in the fulness of His divinity.

It may be asked whether one body can conceivably be present in two or more places at the same time — multilocation. Multilocation of bodies is an absolute impossibility if the plural localization is conceived of as circumscriptive in all cases, for it is a self-contradiction. However, it is conceivably possible for a single body to be in one place in one manner, and in other places in respectively distinct manners. Thus, as we know by revelation and faith, Christ is circumscriptively present only in heaven, but is present sacramentally in each consecrated host.

II. Space is usually thought of as a kind of container in which bodies are located and in which their movements take place. Space is not the same as place; rather, place is a portion of space, a definite part of space occupied by a bodily substance.

Real space is the relation of distance among actually existing bodies. Nature abhors a vacuum, and no true vacuum (that is, no true interval of absolute nothingness) exists within the limits of the visible world. Between our earth and the most distant star that sends its light to us there is a material medium which is continuous, and has no intervals of nothingness, no breaks of absolute vacuum.

Imaginary space is the fancy-image of space extending beyond the known universe. Ideal space is the intellectual concept or idea of space — possible extension of real space.

Both space and time are, ultimately, entia rationis cum fundamento in re, that is, logical entities with a foundation in reality.

f) Time

Time is an accident (or non-substantial reality) which affects bodily things inasmuch as these have motion or movement which presents to the mind phases of duration, and of before and of afterwards. Aristotle called time “the number or enumeration of motion looked at from the standpoint of before and afterwards.”

Space and time have this in common that they deal with quantities and parts, and that they are thought of as containers. Space, however, deals with permanent quantities, for its parts are all present at once, whereas time deals with successive quantity, for its parts are not all present at once but follow one another into being in a continuous series of moments.

In time we distinguish three elements, the present or the now which is an indivisible instant, the past, and the future. The now is indivisible, for if it be thought of as divided, it falls into three parts itself, one of which is not now, but past; another of which is not now, but future; and still the indivisible point (the now) lies between. The fundamental concept of time lies in motion, in movement from the past through the present to the future.

To define time is not easy; nay, strict definition is impossible. We are all like the great philosopher, St. Augustine, who said, “If nobody asks me (what time is), I know well enough; but if somebody asks me to explain it, I know not.” But time may be described, if not essentially defined, in these terms: Time is an extending or spreading-out which consists of an unbroken series of movements which succeed one another, and it is thought of as the container and measurer of these successions.

Time, inasmuch as it is based upon real movements in unbroken succession, is real; but inasmuch as it is conceived as a measure, it is logical or rational or mental. Time, therefore, is an ens rationis cum fundamento in re, that is, a logical entity with a foundation in reality. Rightly did Aristotle say, “If there were no such thing as mind, there would be no such thing as time.”

We reject the theory of Kant who denied real time and made time a form or determination of the sensing-power. So too we deny the theory of Newton who made time one with the eternity of God.

Real time is the actual duration of real events. Imaginary time is based on ideal time inasmuch as imaginary time presupposes the possibility of extended duration; and fancy creates an image of an extended future which is not seen merely as a possibility but as a reality. Ideal time is possible time; the mind, reflecting on the concept or idea of time, envisions it as extending unto indefinite reaches of duration.

With time we contrast timelessness or eternity. In the strict or absolute sense, eternity is duration without beginning, succession, or ending. Such eternity belongs only to the Infinite Being and is identified with His essence. Eternity in a less strict sense, is duration which had a beginning but which will have no ending; often this is called by the Latin term aeviternum or aeviternitas. In this less strict sense, we speak of the eternity of the soul, and of the eternity of human happiness in heaven.

Summary of the Article

In this very lengthy Article on the important accidents we have learned much valuable ontological doctrine. We have defined and classified quality. We have learned the meaning of relation, and have studied its elements, and its varieties. We have noted the fact that truth is never relative in the sense of changing, nor is morality relative in such a sense. We have studied quantity, and have found that its essence consists in internal extension, that is, in extension in the extended substance itself, not in external extension, that is, extension in a place. We have studied action and passion and motion. We have learned the meaning of place, both internal and external, and have found that a thing may be localized, or in a place, in ways that are various according to the variety of placeable reality; the modes of presence discussed are: circumscriptive, informative, operative, and we added a word on the sacramental mode of presence. We have discussed the possibility of multilocation and compenetration of bodies. We have defined space, and have distinguished it as real, imaginary, and ideal. We have discussed time (also distinguished into real, imaginary, and ideal), and have contrasted it with eternity. We have found that both space and time are rational or logical beings with a basis in reality.