72. SUBSISTENCE AND PERSONALITY.—We have already examined the relation between the individual and the universal, between _first_ and _second_ substances, in connexion with the doctrine of Individuation (31-3). And we then saw that whatever it be that individuates the universal nature, it is at all events not to be regarded as anything extrinsic and superadded to this nature in the individual, as anything really distinct from this nature: that, for instance, what makes Plato’s human nature to be Plato’s is not anything really distinct from the human nature that is in Plato. We have now to fix our attention on the nature as individualized. We have to consider the complete individual nature or substance itself in actually existing individual “things” or “persons”. We must remember that scholastics are not agreed as to whether there is a real distinction or only a virtual distinction between the actual existence and the complete individual essence or substance or nature of created individual beings (21-4). Furthermore we have seen that philosophers who study the metaphysics of the inorganic world and of the lower forms of life are unable to say with certainty what is the individual in these domains: whether it is the chemical molecule or the chemical atom or the electron; whether it is the single living cell or the living mass consisting of a plurality of such cells (31). But we have also seen that as we ascend the scale of living things all difficulty in designating the genuine individual disappears: that a man, a horse, an oak tree, are undoubtedly individual beings. Bearing these things in mind we have now to inquire into what has been called the _subsistence_ or _personality_ of the complete individual substance or nature: that perfection which enables us formally to designate the latter a “subsisting thing”(285) or a “person”. By personality we mean the subsistence of a complete individual _rational_ nature. We shall therefore inquire into the meaning of the generic term _subsistentia_ (or _suppositalitas_), _subsistence_, in the abstract. But let us look at it first in the concrete.