Ontology, or the Theory of BeingCoffey, P. (Peter)
Philosophy
Ontology, or the Theory of Being
Coffey, P. (Peter)
Ontology
The second point in the Thomistic doctrine is that corporeal substances
are individuated by reason of their _materiality_. The formative,
specific, determining principle of the corporeal substance is rendered
_incommunicable_ by its union with the material, determinable principle;
and it becomes individually _distinct_ or separate by the fact that this
latter principle, in order to be capable of union with the given specific
form, has in its very essence an exigence for certain more or less
determinate dimensions in space. Corporeal things have their natural size
within certain limits. The individual of a given corporeal species can
exist only because the material principle, receptive of this specific
form, has a natural relation to the fundamental property of corporeal
things, _viz._ quantity, within certain more or less determinate limits.
The form is rendered incommunicable by its reception in the matter. This
concrete realization of the form in the matter is individually distinct
and separate from other realizations of the same specific form, by the
fact that the matter of this realization demands certain dimensions of
quantity: this latter property being the root-principle of numerical
multiplication of corporeal individuals within the same species.
On the other hand, incorporeal substances such as angels or pure spirits,
being “pure” forms, “_formæ subsistentes_,” wholly and essentially
unallied with any determinable material principle, are _of themselves_ not
only specific but individual; they are themselves essentially
incommunicable, superior to all multiplication or repeated realization of
themselves: they are such that each can be actualized only “once and for
all”: each is a species in itself: it is the full, exhaustive, and
adequate expression of a divine type, of an exemplar in the Divine Mind:
its realization is not, like that of a material form, the actuation of an
indefinitely determinable material principle: it sums up and exhausts the
imitable perfection of the specific type in its single individuality,
whereas the perfection of the specific type of a corporeal thing cannot be
adequately expressed in any single individual realization, but only by
repeated realizations; nor indeed can it ever be adequately, exhaustively
expressed, by any finite multitude of these.
It follows that in regard to pure spirits the individuating principle and
the specific principle are not only really but also logically,
conceptually identical; that the distinction between individual and
individual is here properly a specific distinction; that it can be
described as numerical only in an analogical sense, if by numerical we
mean material or quantitative, _i.e._ the distinction between corporeal
individuals of the same species (28).
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