A writer in a Catholic periodical has ventured to say that if the formality of substance (and the same would also apply to the suppositum) is negative, then substance “will consist merely in a negation.” It is surprising that a philosopher has not seen the absurdity of such a conclusion. Substance is not to be confounded with its formality. There are many positive things which involve a negation. In an empty pocket, emptiness is a negation; ignorance in the ignorant is a negation; and limit in all things finite is a negation. Yet no one will say that an empty pocket, an ignorant pupil, or a finite being “consist merely in a negation”; and therefore, although the formality of substance is a negation, it does not follow that substance is a mere negation. It now remains for us to show that neither of the two aforesaid negations is essential to any created being, and that a created being can therefore, absolutely speaking, exist, at least supernaturally, without either of them. Our first proof is drawn from the fact that neither the one nor the other negation is reckoned among the essential constituents of created beings. All complete nature, by common admission, consists “of essence and existence”—_ex essentia et esse_—the existence being the formal complement of the essence, and the essence itself involving, as its principles, an act with its corresponding term, as the readers of our last article already know. Accordingly, there is nothing essential in a complete being besides its act, its term, and its complement; and therefore neither the mode of substance nor the mode of suppositum is essential to a complete created being. Our second proof is drawn from the notion of existence. “To exist strictly and simply,” says Suarez, “means only to have a formal entity in the order of nature; and therefore things existing are equally susceptible of the mode of being which consists in leaning on a supporter, and of the opposite mode which excludes all support.”(18) This is a tangible truth; for although a complete being possesses in its own constitution what is required for its own existence, yet it has nothing in its constitution which implies the necessity of existing in itself and by itself. It can indeed, and will naturally, be in itself without anything underlying as a supporter, since it sufficiently supports itself on its own term; but it contains nothing that would make impossible the sub‐introduction of a supernatural supporter. And, again, a complete being can subsist by itself without further completion, since it is sufficiently complete by its formal complement; but it contains nothing which would exclude the possibility of its acquiring a further completion and a supernatural subsistence.