CRITIQUE OF HUME ON SUBSTANCE

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2017.

Substance is descriptively defined as that reality to whose essence or nature it is proper

to be by itself (esse per se, or to be in itself [esse in se1]) and not in another subject.2 There are
two basic aspects of predicamental substance: 1. The substance is the substratum, the subject,
that supports the accidents; and 2. This function of substance is based upon the fact that the
substance is the subsistent. This means that it does not exist in something else but is by itself (or
is in itself), not needing to inhere in another like the accidents do, which need the support of a
subject, namely, the substance, in order to be. A horse, for example, is a substance because, in
view of its nature or essence it is proper to it to subsist in itself (in se), having its own being
distinct from the being of anything else. The weight of this horse, however, doesn’t subsist in
itself (in se), but is an accident that needs to inhere in an existing subject. We say “This hundred
and fifty kilo horse.”

For the immanentist and empiricist John Locke (1632-1704), in contrast, substance
becomes the unknown substrate of the accidents. R. J. Kreyche writes that “the notion of
substance for Locke is not given in our sensible experience, although our ideas of certain basic
qualities are. Since it is unreasonable to suppose that these qualities can exist by themselves, we
must ‘assume’ that there is a support of these qualities which Locke identifies with ‘substance.’
Hence our general notion of substance is nothing more than an unknown substrate of accidents,
and this notion is produced by the mind.3”4 Locke states the following concerning substance in
his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “The notion one has of pure substance is only
a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities, which are capable of producing
simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents…The idea than we have, to
which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown
support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist, ‘sine re substante,’
without something to support them, we call that support substantia.”5 “Whatever therefore be the
secret abstract nature of substance in general, all the ideas we have of particular distinct sorts of
substances, are nothing but several combinations of simple ideas, co-existing in such, though
unknown, cause of their union, as makes the whole subsist of itself.”6 “Not imagining how
simple ideas (i.e., of primary qualities) can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to

1
“Esse per se and esse in se, as opposed to esse in alio, have the same signification. Both are correct, if they are
properly understood.”(H. GRENIER, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 3 (Metaphysics), St. Dunstan’s University,
Charlottetown, 1950, p. 173).
2
An accident, on the other hand, is that reality to whose essence it is proper to be in something else, as in its
subject.
3
To appreciate what Locke has in mind we must consider that for him we have no (external) experience of
substance. All that we do experience from without are the impressions that we have of certain sense qualia. For
example, when we perceive the impressions of a ‘turtle’ we are not aware of anything beyond its sense qualities,
such as its shape, hardness, and so forth. Whatever might be the substance of the turtle – as something distinct from
its sensible qualities – of that we have no experience. Nevertheless we must imagine it (the substance or turtle) ‘to
be there,’ since these qualities cannot exist by themselves.
4
R. J. KREYCHE, First Philosophy, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1959, p. 280.
5
J. LOCKE, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book II, ch. 23, section 2.
6
Ibid.

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suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result, which
therefore we call substance. So that if anyone will examine himself concerning his notion of pure
substance in general, he will find no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not
what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities
are commonly called accidents.”7 “Our idea of substance is equally obscure, or none at all, in
both: it is but a supposed I-know-not-what, to support those ideas we call accidents…By the
complex idea of extended, figured, colored, and all other sensible qualities, which is all that we
know of it, we are as far from the idea of the substance of the body, as if we knew nothing at
all.”8 Thonnard notes that “Locke concedes that we legitimately assert the existence of this
substratum distinct from its properties, for one cannot conceive of modes without a subject
which bears them up; we are, however, totally ignorant of its nature or quiddity, for our ideas,
coming from experience, do not allow us to know simple qualities and their diverse
combinations in any proper sense. It is clear in this theory that substance, in the ordinary sense of
the word, designates a vague something of which we have no clear idea and whose essence it is
impossible to penetrate”9 Criticizing Locke on substance, John F. McCormick writes: “For
Locke, substance was the ‘unknown substrate of accidents.’ This definition really arises from his
false interpretation of experience, as if we knew only qualities or accidents by experience, and
brought in the idea of substance merely because we could not imagine accidents existing without
something to inhere in. He always maintained that he did not deny that substance had reality. He
claimed that he called in question only the idea of substance, not its reality. But if our idea is
questionable, if it does not correspond with any reality, then we should have no right to assert
that real substance existed at all. Locke was neither very clear nor very consistent in his
thinking…”10 Thus, Locke paves the way for the radical skepticism of Hume on substance.

For the pan-phenomenalist, sensist empiricist Hume, the substance which he inherited
from his predecessor Locke (substance as the unknown substrate of accidents) is dismissed
altogether as a fiction. For Hume, “we have no idea of substance distinct from that of a collection
of particular qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we either talk or reason concerning
it…The idea of substance as well as that of a mode, is nothing but a collection of simple ideas,
that are united by the imagination, and have a particular name assigned them, by which we are
able to recall, either to ourselves or others that collection.”11 Louis de Raeymaeker writes that
“Hume pushed empiricism to the limit, and derived phenomenalistic conclusions from it. The
concept of substance has no intelligible content; it is not possible to distinguish the substance of
things from the immediate data which these things furnish us, for in this case it would have to be
possible likewise to separate them from this substance. But if we make an abstraction from these
data there is nothing left to know.12 What we call substance is only a collection of the data which

7
J. LOCKE, op. cit., book II, ch. 23, 1, 2.
8
J. LOCKE, op. cit., vol. 1, book 2, ch. 23, pp. 406-407.
9
F. J. THONNARD, A Short History of Philosophy, Desclée, Tournai, 1956, pp. 601-602.
10
J. F. McCORMICK, Scholastic Metaphysics, vol. 1: Being, Its Division and Causes, Loyola University Press,
Chicago, 1940, pp. 101-102.
11
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, book I, p. I, sect. 6, Oxford, 1896, p. 16.
12
“We have no impression of self or substance, as something simple and individual. We have therefore no idea of
them in that sense.
“Whatever is distinct is distinguishable; and whatever is distinguishable is separable by the thought or the
imagination. All perceptions are distinct. They are, therefore, distinguishable and may be conceived as separately

2
we consider as constant, because we can discover them at will in our experiments. The ego is not
a privileged instance; it, too, is merely a flux of impressions and feelings, which through memory
we gather up into a peculiar and ‘substantial’ unity.13”14 Although Hume dismisses Locke’s
substance as the unknown substrate of accidents as a fiction, nevertheless, he erroneously
attempts a substantialization of accidents. He writes: “Every perception is a substance and every
distinct part of a perception is a distinct substance.”15 Hume denies the real distinction between
substance and accidents and reifies or substantializes accidents. For Hume, “that which exists per
se…is proper to every clear and distinct perception, that is, to that which one calls phenomenon
or accident.”16 Now, against Hume, it must be said that there is a real distinction between
substance and accidents. Alvita, Clavell, and Melendo write: “A substance and its accidents are
really distinct from one another. This can be clearly seen by observing accidental changes, in
which certain secondary perfections disappear and give way to other new ones without the
substance itself being changed into another substance. Such alterations are only possible if the
accidents are really distinct from the substance which they affect. The color of an apple, for
instance, is something really distinct from the apple itself, since the apple changes in color when
it ripens, but does not cease to be an apple.

“The readily-changeable accidents are not the only ones really distinct from the
substance. All the accidents, by virtue of their very essence, are distinct from their subject. For
instance, to be divisible is by nature proper to quantity whereas substance is by itself both one
and indivisible. Relation is a reference to another; in contrast, substance is something
independent.

“Substance has its own consistency, truly distinct from that of the accidents, and superior
to it. Substance determines the basic content of things and makes them to be what they are (a

existent, and may exist separately, without any contradiction or absurdity.”(D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature,
book I, appendix, Oxford, 1896, pp. 633-634).
13
“The idea of substance must therefore be derived from an impression of reflexion, if it really exists. But the
impressions of reflexion resolve themselves into our passions and emotions; none of which can possibly represent a
substance. We have therefore no idea of substance distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities, nor have
we any other meaning when we either talk or reason concerning it…
“The idea of substance as well as that of a mode, is nothing but a collection of simple ideas, that are united by the
imagination, and have a particular name assigned them, by which we are able to recall, either to ourselves or others
that collection.”(D. HUME, op. cit., book I, p. I, sect. 6, p. 16).
“We readily suppose an object may continue individually the same, though several times absent from and present
to the senses; and ascribe to it an identity, notwithstanding the interruption of the perception, whenever we conclude
that if we had kept our eye or hand constantly upon it, it would have conveyed an invariable and uninterrupted
perception. But this conclusion beyond the impressions of our senses can be founded only on the connexion of cause
and effect; nor can we otherwise have any security, that the object is not changed upon us, however much the new
object may resemble that which was formerly present to the senses.”(D. HUME, op. cit., book 1, p. III, section 2, p.
74).
“Setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are
nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an unconceivable rapidity,
and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”(D. HUME, op. cit., book I, p. IV, sect. 6, p. 252).
14
L. DE RAEYMAEKER, The Philosophy of Being, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1957, pp. 189-190.
15
D. HUME, op. cit., I, p. IV, sect. 5.
16
F.-J. THONNARD, op. cit., p. 639.

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flower, an elephant, a man). In contrast, accidents depend on the substantial core, and at the same
time constitute its determining aspects.”17

Describing how this real distinction between substance and accidents, nevertheless, does
not destroy the unity of a concrete being (ens), Alvira, Clavell and Melendo point out: “The real
distinction between substance and accidents may seem to undermine the unity of a concrete
being. This, in fact, is the result that emerges from theories which regard the substance as a
substratum disconnected from the accidents, and merely juxtaposed to them in an extrinsic
fashion. It must, however, be stressed that the real distinction between substance and accidents
does not destroy the unity of the being. Substance and accidents are not several beings put
together to form a whole, just as various decorative elements are combined to constitute a room.
There is only one being (ens) in the strict sense, namely, the substance; all the rest simply
‘belong to it.’ A tree, for instance, does not cease to be a single thing even though it has many
accidental characteristics. The accidents are not complete, autonomous realities added to a
substance; they are only determining aspects of the substance, which complete it and do not,
therefore, give rise to a plurality of juxtaposed things.

“The unity of the composite also becomes evident in the case of operations. An animal,
for instance, carries out many different actions, which do not hamper its unity. On the contrary,
its entire activity forms a harmonious unified whole precisely because there is a single subject
that acts. In the case of man, it is neither the intelligence which understands, nor the will that
desires; rather, it is the person who understands and desires by means of these respective powers,
and consequently all his operations are imbued with an underlying unity.”18

Errors of Hume Concerning Substance. Hume maintained that the very notion of
substance as a support or substrate of accidents was merely a fiction of the imagination that
needed to be discarded or abandoned. Hume writes in his A Treatise of Human Nature: “When
we gradually follow an object in its successive changes, the smooth progress of the thought
makes us ascribe an identity to the succession…When we compare its situation after a
considerable change the progress of the thought is broken; and consequently we are presented
with the idea of diversity: In order to reconcile which contradictions, the imagination is apt to
feign something unknown and invisible, which it supposes to continue the same under all these
variations; and this unintelligible something it calls a substance…”19

Hume explains in his A Treatise of Human Nature that “the idea of substance as well as
that of a mode, is nothing but a collection of simple ideas that are united by the imagination and
have a peculiar name assigned to them by which we are able to recall either to ourselves, or to
others, that collection.”20 “I would fain ask those philosophers, who found so much of their
reasonings on the distinction of substance and accident, and imagine we have clear ideas of each,
whether the idea of substance be derived from the impressions of sensation or reflection? If it be
conveyed to us by our senses, I ask, which of them; and after what manner? If it be perceived by
the eyes, it must be a color; if by the ears, a sound; if by the palate, a taste; and so for the other

17
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, Metaphysics, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 1991, p. 52.
18
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 52-53.
19
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. P. H. Nidditch, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978, p. 220.
20
D. HUME, op. cit., I, Section VI (Of Modes and Substances), p. 222.

4
senses. But I believe none will assert, that substance is either a color, sound or taste. The idea of
substance must therefore be derived from an impression of reflection, if it really exist. But the
impressions of reflection resolve themselves into our passions and emotions; none of which can
possibly represent a substance. We have, therefore, no idea of substance, distinct from that of a
collection of particular qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we talk or reason
concerning it.”21

Robert J. Kreyche’s Critique of Locke and Hume Concerning our Knowledge of

Substance: “The very existence of metaphysics is contingent on the fact that substances exist and
that we have knowledge of them. Should we suppose, as did Locke, that the notion of substance
is not drawn from things and nevertheless hold that substance is real, then our philosophy would
rest on a blind act of faith. On the other hand, should we suppose with Hume that philosophy has
no way of establishing an objective counterpart for the ‘idea’ that we have of substance, we
would be led down the path of phenomenalism. On either supposition the human mind would be
deprived of any direct, existential contact with an order of really existing things.

“To refute these denials it is necessary to give some consideration to the origin of our
notion of substance, and the first question we must ask is this: Does an empirical knowledge of
substance require that we have an ‘experience’ of substance ‘all by itself.’? From reading the
Essay of Locke one certainly gets the impression that unless we can ‘isolate’ substance and view
it ‘all by itself’ with our senses, then we can have no real knowledge of substance at all. In other
words, either we must be able to ‘lift up the veil’ of accidents and in so doing to experience
substance as a thing by itself, or we have no knowledge of substance except as an unknown ‘X’ –
as an unknown substrate of accidents. This is the fundamental dilemma of the Essay and, in his
theory of knowledge, Locke has no means of escaping its horns.

“In recognition, then, of the difficulty experienced by Locke it is to be noted as a matter

of fact that we have no ‘experience’ of substance in the way Locke would have us experience it,
for two reasons: 1. substance as substance is not a per se object of sensation, and 2. when we do
experience substance it is precisely in connection with, and not apart from, its concrete
accidental characteristics or modes.

“The importance of both these points requires that we take them up separately. In
reference to (1) above, when we say that substance is not a per se object of sensation we mean
that our powers of sensation do not know substance formally, or, what amounts to the same
thing, they have no knowledge of substance as such. Yet granting this, we need not assume (as
did Locke) either that an ‘experience’ of substance would be limited to sensation alone or that
the senses do not know substance at all. Both of these suppositions are contrary to fact, and in a
few moments we shall see why.

“Regarding (2) it is no more possible to experience substance as a thing apart from its
accidents than it is to perceive accidents ‘all by themselves.’ However, this fact alone does not
imply an inability on our part to abstract the given contents of experience, even though these
contents are not given in a ‘pure’ state. Substance, in other words, is not given ‘by itself,’ but this

21
Ibid.

5
is not to say that it cannot be known by itself, as something that has been abstracted from
experience.

“Contrary, then, to the doctrine of Locke, our knowledge that substances exist is not a
product of inference. Substance rather is something that we experience, and we experience it the
moment we perceive it. Now it is true, as we have already indicated, that substance is not a per se
object of sensation, but it would be false to suppose that we do not perceive substance at all. That
we do have a perception of substance may be seen from the fact that our sensible knowledge of
accidents (color, shape, weight, and the rest) is never a knowledge of accidents all by themselves.
Rather, what we perceive is the thing itself together with its accidental modes (for example,
something like a live, slippery fish that is speckled in color and oval in shape). It is this concrete
thing existing under these concrete determinations of color, shape, and the like, that constitutes
the object of perception. In our concrete perception of the sensible qualities of objects we
perceive incidentally but really the reality of the substance itself.

“Substance, then, is given in perception, and it is incidentally perceived by the senses

themselves. This means that in the process of experiencing ‘accidents’ in their concrete form we
cannot avoid also experiencing the substance itself. However, beyond this point we must also
recognize that a human awareness of objects is not limited to sensation alone. Except in the case
of infants our human awareness of objects is at one and the same time both sensory and
intellectual. Whenever we experience an object, the intellect too is ‘involved’ so as to discover
whatever element of meaning (or intelligible significance) the object itself might convey. As
regards, then, our knowledge of substance, the very least we can say is this: the moment we
perceive a thing with our senses (for example, a rock, a tree, a frog) we immediately know
through an act of understanding that what we perceive is a thing or a substance of a definite
kind. Hence, even though we may be ignorant of the precise nature of the object at hand, we at
least know on the level of understanding that what we experience is a thing.

“To understand this point well we must consider that in man there are two levels of
knowing – sensation and intellection – and that in a normal human experience we do not operate
on either of these levels to the absolute exclusion of the other. On the one hand, our
understanding of things is always in some way related to the order of our sensible experience,
and for this reason even such exalted notions of God are based on the analogy of experience.
Conversely, whenever we (as adult humans) perceive an object with our senses, our
understanding too is simultaneously present in that act of perception. Every human experience,
unlike the bare sensory perception of brutes, is fraught with some meaning, and to that extent
also involves an intellectual grasp, however imperfect, of the nature of the object perceived.
This, then, is the nature of our knowledge of substance.”22

Henry J. Koren’s Critique of Hume on Substance: “When Hume reasons that substance is
nothing but a name by which we recall a collection of conjoined phenomena, he labors under the
false impression that substance and accidents, as such, must be objects of sense knowledge.
Hence it was natural for him to argue: If I enumerate all phenomena (sense perceptible accidents)
of a thing, there will be nothing left to which we can attribute the function of acting as a support
of these phenomena; therefore, there is no such support. However, our external senses reveal to
22
R. J. KREYCHE, op. cit., pp. 282-285.

6
us neither substance nor accidents as such, but only this or that concrete whole which impresses
itself upon the senses as, say, fragrant, soft, warm, etc. It is the intellect which interprets these
sense impressions and abstracts from them the concepts of accident as existing in something else,
and of substance as existing in itself and supporting accidents…The phenomenalists are right
when they claim that sense experience itself does not teach us anything about the nature of
substance…but they deny or forget that we have the power to analyze the data of sense
experience with our intellect, and thus to arrive at an abstract but valid knowledge of
substance.”23

Benignus Gerrity’s Critique of Hume’s Sensism as Regards the Knowledge of Substance.

“Sensism. Hume’s original error, which led to his rejection of substance and causality as valid
philosophical concepts, was sensism. He considered experience as the sole ultimate source of
valid human knowledge, which it is, but by experience he meant pure sensation, or at very best
perception, and nothing more. Impressions of sense and their less vivid relics in the mind,
namely, ideas, are the only data of knowledge for which experience vouches, according to
Hume. We have no impression of causality or substance; therefore, he argues, these are not given
in experience.

“Hume mistakes an analysis of the factors in perception for an account of the perceptive
act. The data of pure sensation are, as he says, fragmentary and intermittent sense impressions.
But the act which he is analyzing is not an act of pure sensation. What I perceive is not these
fragmentary impressions, but the things of which they are accidents. It is doubtful that even
animals perceive merely sensory qualities. Substances (i.e., particular, concrete) are the data of
perception. They are incidental sensibles immediately perceived by means of internal sense co-
operating within external sense. In his analysis Hume takes as the immediate datum of
perception something which is actually known only as a result of a difficult abstraction, namely,
the pure sensation. Then his problem is to discover how, starting from pure sensations, we come
to believe in objective substances which exist unperceived and permanently. It is a false problem.

“Human Experience Includes Understanding. Hume is right in saying that we never have
a sensory impression of causality or substance. But he is wrong in saying that we never
experience causes or substances. Efficient causes are immediately experienced every time we
observe anything physically influencing anything else, every time, for example, we see a
hammer driving a nail. But the cause qua cause is never sensed directly; cause, like substance, is
only sensed per accidens. The cause as a sensible object, its movement, and the subsequent
movement of the object acted upon are the immediate data of sense. But to limit experience to
the sensible data perceived is to imply that man perceives without ever at the same time
understanding what he perceives. When I perceive a hammer descending upon a nail and the nail
moving further into the wood, I also understand that the hammer is something and is driving the
nail into the wood. Both perception and understanding are equally parts of the experience. To
exclude the understanding is to reduce all human experience to uncomprehending sense
awareness. Not only is this not the only kind of human experience, but, at least in the case of
adults, it never normally occurs at all. We simply do not perceive without some understanding of
what we are perceiving; we do not perceive phenomena without perceiving them as the

23
H. J. KOREN, Introduction to the Science of Metaphysics, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1965, p. 194.

7
phenomena of something; nor do we perceive one thing acting upon another without at the same
time understanding the former as a cause of the effect produced in the latter.

“Understanding in Perception. There is surely a crystal-clear distinction between mere

perceiving and understanding. The domestic animals of the battlelands of Europe are no more
spared the bombing and the fire, the hunger and the cold, the noise and the stench, than are their
human owners. But they have no understanding of what is going on; no reason for what is
happening is known to them, and none is sought. Their minds do not grope for reasons the way
their parched tongues crave for water. The darkness that their eyes suffer when they are driven in
the midst of the night through strange lands is matched by no darkness of intellect seeking a
reason which it cannot find – that awful darkness which is so often the lot of man. Failure to
understand could no more be a privation and a suffering in man if his intellect were not made for
grasping the reasons and causes of things, than blindness would be a suffering if sight never
grasped the visible. A man who does not understand feels frustrated, because his mind is made
for understanding; he suffers when he cannot grasp the reason, because he knows that there is a
reason. Perception is not understanding; but normally some understanding occurs together with
perception: we could not possibly have the experience of failing to understand what we perceive,
if we did not have the prior experience of understanding what we perceive.

“Cause is ‘Given’ to the Intellect. Cause is something that we grasp intellectually in the
very act of experiencing action – whether our own action or another’s. We understand the cause
as producing the effect: the hammer as driving the nail, the saw as cutting the wood, the flood as
devastating the land, the drill as piercing the rock, the hand as molding the putty, ourselves as
producing our own thoughts, words, and movements, our shoes as pinching our feet, a pin as
piercing our finger, our fellow subway travelers as pressing our ribs together. We do not think
that the nail will ever plunge into the wood without the hammer, the marble shape up as a statue
without a sculptor, the baby begin to exist without a father, the acorn grow with no sunlight; if
something ever seems to occur in this way, we do not believe it, or we call it a miracle (i.e., we
attribute it to a higher, unseen cause). In a similar manner, substance is given directly to the
intellect in the very act of perception; the substance is grasped as the reason for the sensible
phenomena.”24

Charles A. Hart’s Critique of Hume on Substance: “Actually what all these empiricist
philosophers do is to substantialize accidents, which supposedly can be reached by the senses
directly. This endows each action with the character of substance as something existing in itself.
The senses, of course, are completely incapable of knowing being as such and therefore of
knowing substance, because substance is simply being in the full and proper sense of the term as
being requiring existence in itself. Nor can the senses really experience any isolated accidents.
Rather they receive some external manifestation of the whole being. Further, accident as
accident, can only be known by the intellect because only the intellect is capable of finally
distinguishing between what requires existence in itself and that which does not have any such
need. Only when the intellect is permitted to perform its proper role in the knowing process can
the mind see the need of such a real distinction. But it never makes the mistake of thinking that
this distinction between substance and accidents is anything like the full or major real distinction
between one being and another.
24
B. GERRITY, Nature, Knowledge, and God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1947, pp. 337-339.

8
 “Ultimately, therefore, the more fundamental issue between Thomism and empiricism is
on the nature of human knowledge. Actually, it is very hard for empiricists so to divest
themselves of this fundamental intuition of their intellect and of their common sense. They still
go on speaking of the ego, of the mind, of bodies, despite their professed denial of the reality of
such substances. For example, Hume does not hesitate to say: ‘Upon the whole necessity is
something that exists in the mind, not in objects.’25 This is but one of a multitude of similar
observations. Evidently this whole school, having publicly exorcised all such metaphysical
notions, such as substance, from their thinking, still feels the need of what William James called
‘clasdestine metaphysics,’ because the intellect cannot exorcise itself. On the whole, however,
there have been no more potent influences in the establishing of the anti-metaphysical attitude in
the contemporary mind, and particularly the English speaking mind, than this group of
philosophers, with the possible exception of the German transcendental idealist Immanuel
Kant.”26

Peter Coffey’s Critique of Hume and Phenomenalism on Substance: ““The Phenomenist

Attack on the Traditional Doctrine of Substance. – Passing now to the question of the existence
and nature of substances, and their relation to accidents, we shall find evidences of
misunderstandings to which many philosophical errors may be ascribed at least in part. It is a
fairly common contention that the distinction between substance and accident is really a
groundless distinction; that we have experience merely of transient events or happenings,
internal and external, with relations of coexistence or sequence between them; that it is an
illusion to suppose, underlying these, an inert, abiding basis called ‘substance’; that this can be at
best but a useless name for each of the collections of external and internal appearances which
make up our total experience of the outer world and of our own minds. This is the general
position of phenomenists. ‘What do you know of substance,’ they ask us, ‘except that it is an
indeterminate and unknown something underlying phenomena? And even if you could prove its
existence, what would it avail you, since in its nature it is, and must remain, unknown? No doubt
the mind naturally supposes this ‘something’ underlying phenomena; but it is a mere mental
fiction the reality of which cannot be proved, and the nature of which is admitted, even by some
who believe in its real existence, to be unknowable.’

“Now there can be no doubt about the supreme importance of this question: all parties are
pretty generally agreed that on the real or fictitious character of substance the very existence of
genuine metaphysics in the traditional sense depends. And at first sight the possibility of such a
controversy as the present one seems very strange. ‘Is it credible,’ asks Mercier,27 ‘that thinkers
of the first order, like Hume, Mill, Spencer, Kant, Wundt, Paulsen, Littré, Taine, should have
failed to recognize the substantial character of things, and of the Ego or Self? Must they not have
seen that they were placing themselves in open revolt against sound common sense? And on the
other hand is it likely that the genius of Aristotle could have been duped by the naïve illusion
which phenomenists must logically ascribe to him? Or that all those sincere and earnest teachers
who adopted and preserved in scholastic philosophy for centuries the peripatetic distinction
between substance and accidents should have been all utterly astray in interpreting an elementary
fact of common sense?’

25
D. HUME, op. cit., p. 165.
26
C. HART, Thomistic Metaphysics, Prentice-Hall, Englewoof Cliffs, N.J., 1959, pp. 196-197.
27
D. MERCIER, Ontologie, 138, 3rd edit., p. 263,

9
 “There must have been misunderstandings, possibly on both sides, and much waste of
argument in refuting chimeras. Let us endeavour to find out what they are and how they
gradually arose.

“Phenomenism has had its origin in the Idealism which confines the human mind to a
knowledge of its own states, proclaiming the unknowability of any reality other than these; and
in the Positivism which admits the reality only of that which falls directly within external and
internal sense experience. Descartes did not deny the substantiality of the soul, nor even of
bodies; but his idealist theory of knowledge rendered suspect all information derived by his
deductive, a priori method of reasoning from supposed innate ideas, regarding the nature and
properties of bodies. Locke rejected the innatism of Descartes, ascribing to sense experience a
positive role in the formation of our ideas, and proving conclusively that we have no such
intuitive and deductively derived knowledge of real substances as Descartes contended for.28
Locke himself did not deny the existence of substances,29 any more than Descartes. But
unfortunately he propounded the mistaken assumption of Idealism, that the mind can know only
its own states; and also the error of thinking that because we have not an intuitive insight into the
specific nature of individual substances we can know nothing at all through any channel about
their nature: and he gathered from this latter error a general notion or definition of substance
which is a distinct departure from what Aristotle and the medieval scholastics had traditionally
understood by substance. For Locke substance is merely a supposed, but unknown, support for
accidents.30 Setting out with these two notions – that all objects of knowledge must be states or
phases of mind, and that material substance is a supposed, but unknown and unknowable,
substratum of the qualities revealed to our minds in the process of sense perception – it was easy
for Berkeley to support by plausible arguments his denial of the reality of any such things as
material substances. And it was just as easy, if somewhat more audacious, on the part of Hume to
argue quite logically that if the supposed but unknowable substantial substratum of external
sense phenomena is illusory, so likewise is the supposed substantial Ego which is thought to
underlie and support the internal phenomena of consciousness.

28
Cf. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book IV,, ch. VI., § 11: “Had we such ideas of substances, as to
know what real constitutions produce those sensible qualities we find in them, and how these qualities flowed from
thence, we could, by the specific ideas of their real essences in our own minds, more certainly find out their
properties, and discover what properties they had or had not, than we can now by our senses: and to know the
properties of gold, it would be no more necessary that gold should exist, than it is necessary for the knowing the
properties of a triangle, that the triangle should exist in any matter ; the idea in our minds would serve for the one as
well as the other.”
29
“Sensation convinces us that there are solid, extended substances; and reflection, that there are thinking ones:
experience assures us of the existence of such beings.” – ibid., book II., ch. XXIII, 29. Locke protested repeatedly
against the charge that he denied the existence of substances.
30
The notion one has of pure substance is “only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities, which
are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents. . . . The idea then we
have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown support of those
qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist, ‘sine re substante,’ without something to support them,
we call that support substantia” book II, ch. XXIII, 2. In the following passage we may detect the idealistic
insinuation that knowledge reaches only to “ideas” or mental states, not to the extramental reality, the “secret,
abstract nature of substance”: “Whatever therefore be the secret abstract nature of substance in general, all the ideas
we have of particular distinct sorts of substances, are nothing but several combinations of simple ideas, co-existing
in such, though unknown, cause of their union, as makes the whole subsist of itself.” It belongs, of course, to the
Theory of Knowledge, not to the Theory of Being, to show how groundless the idealistic assumption is.

10
 “Hume’s rejection of substance is apparently complete and absolute, and is so interpreted
by many of his disciples. But a thorough-going phenomenism is in reality impossible; no
philosophers have ever succeeded in thinking out an intelligible theory of things without the
concepts of ‘matter,’ and ‘spirit,’ and ‘things,’ and the ‘Ego’ or ‘Self,’ however they may have
tried to dispense with them; and these are concepts of substances. Hence there are those who
doubt that Hume was serious in his elaborate reasoning away of substances. The fact is that
Hume ‘reasoned away’ substance only in the sense of an unknowable substratum of phenomena,
and not in the sense of a something that exists in itself.31 So far from denying the existence of
entities that exist in themselves, he seems to have multiplied these beyond the wildest dreams of
all previous philosophers by substantializing accidents.32 What he does call into doubt is the
capacity of the human mind to attain to a knowledge of the specific natures of such entities; and
even here the arguments of phenomenism strike the false Cartesian theory of knowledge, rather
than the sober and moderate teachings of scholasticism regarding the nature and limitations of
our knowledge of subtances.

“The Scholastic View of Our Knowledge in Regard to the Existence and Nature of
Substances. – What, then, are these latter teachings? That we have a direct, intellectual insight
into the specific essence or nature of a corporeal substance such as gold, similar to our insight
into the abstract essence of a triangle? By no means; Locke was quite right in rejecting the
Cartesian claim to intuitions which were supposed to yield up all knowledge of things by
‘mathematical,’ i.e. deductive, a priori reasoning. The scholastic teaching is briefly as follows:

“First, as regards our knowledge of the existence of substances, and the manner in which
we obtain our concept of substance. We get this concept from corporeal substances, and
afterwards apply it to spiritual substances; so that our knowledge of the former is ‘immediate’
only in the relative sense of being prior to the latter, not in the sense that it is a direct intuition of
the natures of corporeal substances. We have no such direct insight into their natures. But our
concept of them as actually existing is also immediate in the sense that at first we spontaneously
conceive every object which comes before our consciousness as something existing in itself. The
child apprehends each separate stimulant of its sense perception – resistance, colour, sound, etc.
– as a ‘this’ or a ‘that,’ i.e. as a separate something, existing there in itself; in other words it
apprehends all realities as substances: not, of course, that the child has yet any reflex knowledge
of what a substance is, but unknowingly it applies to all realities at first the concept which it
undoubtedly possesses of ‘something existing in itself.’ It likewise apprehends each such reality
as ‘one’ or ‘undivided in itself,’ and as ‘distinct from other things.’ Such is the child’s

31
Inquiring into the causes of our “impressions” and “ideas,” he admits the existence of “bodies” which cause them
and “minds” which experience them: “We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body?
But ’tis vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our
reasonings.” A Treatise on Human Nature, part IV, § 2.
32
Of the definition of a substance as something which may exist by itself, he says: “this definition agrees to
everything that can possibly be conceiv’d; and will never serve to distinguish substance from accident, or the soul
from its perceptions….Since all our perceptions are different from each other, and from everything else in the
universe, they are also distinct and separable, and may be consider’d as separately existent, and may exist separately,
and have no need of anything else to support their existence. They are, therefore, substances, as far as this definition
explains a substance.” ibid., § 5. “We have no perfect idea of substance, but . . . taking it for something that can exist
by itself, ’tis evident every perception is a substance, and every distinct part of a perception a distinct substance.” –
ibid.

11
immediate, direct, and implicit idea of substance. But if we are to believe Hume, what is true of
the child remains true of the man: for the latter, too, ‘every perception is a substance, and every
distinct part of a perception a distinct substance.’33 Nothing, however, could be more manifestly
at variance with the facts. For as reason is developed and reflective analysis proceeds, the child
most undoubtedly realizes that not everything that falls within its experience has the character of
‘a something existing in itself and distinct from other things.’ ‘Walking,’ ‘talking,’ and ‘actions’
generally, it apprehends as realities, – as realities which, however, do not ‘exist in themselves,’
but in other beings, in the beings that ‘walk’ and ‘talk’ and ‘act.’ And these latter beings it still
apprehends as ‘existing in themselves,’ and as thus differing from the former, which ‘exist not in
themselves but in other things.’ Thus the child comes into possession of the notion of ‘accident,’
and of the further notion of ‘substance’ as something which not only exists in itself (ὀυσία, ens in
se subsistens), but which is also a support or subject of accidents (ὑποκείμενον, substans,
substare).34 Nor, indeed, need the child’s reason be very highly developed in order to realize that
if experience furnishes it with ‘beings that do not exist in themselves,’ there must also be beings
which do exist in themselves : that if ‘accidents’ exist at all it would be unintelligible and self-
contradictory to deny the existence of ‘substances.’

“Hence, in the order of our experience the first, implicit notion of substance is that of
‘something existing in itself’ (ὀυσία) ; the first explicit notion of it, however, is that by which it is
apprehended as ‘a subject or support of accidents’ (ὑποκείμενον, sub-stare, substantia); then by
reflection we go back to the explicit notion of it as ‘something existing in itself.’ In the real or
ontological order the perfection of ‘existing in itself’ is manifestly more fundamental than that of
‘supporting accidents.’ It is in accordance with a natural law of language that we name things
after the properties whereby they reveal themselves to us, rather than by names implying what is
more fundamental and essential in them. ‘To exist in itself’ is an absolute perfection, essential to
substance; ‘to support accidents’ is only a relative perfection; nor can we know a priori but a
substance might perhaps exist without any accidents: we only know that accidents cannot exist
without some substance, or subject, or power which will sustain them in existence.

“Can substance be apprehended by the senses, or only by intellect? Strictly speaking,

only by intellect: it is neither a ‘proper object’ of any one sense, such as taste, or colour, or
sound; nor a ‘common object’ of more than one sense, as extension is with regard to sight and
touch: it is, in scholastic language, not a ‘sensibile per se’ not itself an object of sense
knowledge, but only ‘sensibile per accidens,’ i.e. it may be said to be ‘accidentally’ an object of
sense because of its conjunction with accidents which are the proper objects of sense: so that
when the senses perceive accidents what they are really perceiving is the substance affected by
the accidents. But strictly and properly it is by intellect we consciously grasp that which in the
reality is the substance: while the external and internal sense faculties make us aware of various
qualities, activities, or other accidents external to the ‘self,’ or of various states and conditions of
the ‘self,’ the intellect – which is a faculty of the same soul as the sense faculties – makes us
simultaneously aware of corporeal substances actually existing outside us, or of the concrete
substance of the ‘ego’ or ‘self,’ existing and revealing itself to us in and through its conscious
activities, as the substantial, abiding, and unifying subject and principle of these conscious
activities.

33
Cf. MERCIER, op. cit., § 142, p. 272.
34
Cf. KLEUTGEN, op. cit., Dissert, vi., ch. 3, 2 § 592.

12
 “Thus, then, do we attain to the concept of substance in general, to a conviction of the
concrete actual existence of that mode of being the essential characteristic of which is ‘to exist in
itself.’

“In the next place, how do we reach a knowledge of the specific natures of substances?35
What is the character, and what are the limitations, of such knowledge? Here, especially, the
very cautious and moderate doctrine of scholasticism has been largely misconceived and
misrepresented by phenomenists and others. About the specific nature of substances we know
just precisely what their accidents reveal to us – that and no more. We have no intuitive insight
into their natures; all our knowledge here is abstractive and discursive. As are their properties –
their activities, energies, qualities, and all their accidents – so is their nature. We know of the
latter just what we can infer from the former. Operari sequitur esse; we have no other key than
this to knowledge of their specific natures. We have experience of them only through their
properties, their behaviour, their activities; analysis of this experience, a posteriori reasoning
from it, inductive generalization based upon it: such are the only channels we possess, the only
means at our disposal, for reaching a knowledge of their natures.

“Phenomenist Difficulties Against This View. Its Vindication. – Now the phenomenist
will really grant all this. His only objection will be that such knowledge of substance is really no
knowledge at all; or that, such as it is, it is useless. But surely the knowledge that this mode of
being really exists, that there is a mode of being which ‘exists in itself,’ is already some
knowledge, and genuine knowledge, of substance? No doubt, the information contained in this
very indeterminate and generic concept is imperfect; but then it is only a starting point, an all-
important starting point, however; for not only is it perfectible but every item of knowledge we
gather from experience perfects it, whereas without it the intellect is paralysed in its attempt to
interpret experience: indeed so indispensable is this concept of substance to the human mind that,
as we have seen, no philosopher has ever been really able to dispense with it. When
phenomenists say that what we call mind is only a bundle of perceptions and ideas; when they
speak of the flow of events, which is ourselves, of which we are conscious,36 the very language
they themselves make use of cries out against their professed phenomenism. For why speak of
‘we,’ ‘ourselves,’ etc., if there be no ‘we’ or ‘ourselves’ other than the perceptions, ideas, events,
etc., referred to?

“Of course the explanation of this strange attitude on the part of these philosophers is
simple enough; they have a wrong conception of substance and of the relation of accidents
thereto; they appear to imagine that according to the traditional teaching nothing of all we can
discover about accidents – or, as they prefer to term them, ‘phenomena’ – can possibly throw any
light upon the nature of substance: as if the rôle of phenomena were to cover up and conceal
from us some sort of inner core (which they call substance), and not rather to reveal to us the
nature of that ‘being, existing in itself,’ of which these phenomena are the properties and
manifestations.

35
Assuming for the moment that we can know substance to be not one but manifold: that experience reveals to us a
plurality of numerically or really, and even specifically and generically, distinct substances. Cf. infra, p. 221,
36
Cf. HUXLEY, Hume, bk. II., ch. 2. TAINE, De L’Intelligence, t. I., Preface, and passim,

13
 “The denial of substance leads inevitably to the substantializing of accidents. It is
possible that the manner in which some scholastics have spoken of accidents has facilitated this
error.37 Anyhow the error is one that leads inevitably to contradictions in thought itself. Mill, for
instance, following out the arbitrary postulates of subjectivism and phenomenism, finally
analysed all reality into present sensations of the individual consciousness, plus permanent
possibilities of sensations. Now, consistently with the idealistic postulate, these ‘permanent
possibilities’ should be nothing more than a certain tone, colouring, quality of the ‘present’
sensation, due to the fact that this has in it, as part and parcel of itself, feelings of memory and
expectation; in which case the ‘present sensation,’ taken in its concrete fulness, would be the sole
reality, and would exist in itself. This ‘solipsism’ is the ultimate logical issue of subjective
idealism, and it is a sufficient reductio ad absurdum of the whole system. Or else, to evade this
issue, the ‘permanent possibilities’ are supposed to be something really other than the ‘present
sensations.’ In which case we must ask what Mill can mean by a ‘permanent possibility.’
Whether it be subjective or objective possibility, it is presumably, according to Mill’s thought,
some property or appurtenance of the individual consciousness, i.e. a quality proper to a subject
or substance.38 But to deny that the conscious subject is a substance, and at the same time to
contend that it is a ‘permanent possibility of sensation,’ i.e. that it has properties which can
appertain only to a substance, is simply to hold what is self-contradictory.

“After these explanations it will be sufficient merely to state formally the proof that
substances really exist. It is exceedingly simple, and its force will be appreciated from all that
has been said so far: Whatever we become aware of as existing at all must exist either in itself, or
by being sustained, supported in existence, in something else in which it inheres. If it exists in
itself it is a substance; if not it is an accident, and then the ‘something else’ which supports it,
must in turn either exist in itself or in something else. But since an infinite regress in things
existing not in themselves but in other things is impossible, we are forced to admit the reality of
a mode of being which exists in itself – viz. substance.

“Or, again, we are forced to admit the real existence of accidents – or, if you will,
‘phenomena’ or ‘appearances’ – i.e. of realities or modes of being whose nature is manifestly to
modify or qualify in some way or other some subject in which they inhere. Can we conceive a
state which is not a state of something? a phenomenon or appearance which is not an appearance
of something? a vital act which is not an act of a living thing? a sensation, thought, desire,
emotion, unless of some conscious being that feels, thinks, desires, experiences the emotion? No;
and therefore since such accidental modes of being really exist, there exists also the substantial
mode of being in which they inhere.

“And the experienced realities which verify this notion of ‘substance’ as the ‘mode of
being which exists in itself,’ are manifestly not one but manifold. Individual ‘persons’ and

37
Cf. § 65, infra.
38
Such terms as “corruptible,” “destructible,” etc., imply certain attributes of a thing which can be corrupted,
destroyed. Conceiving this attribute in the abstract we form the terms “corruptibility,” “destructibility,” etc. So, too,
the term “possibility” formed from the adjective “possible,” simply implies in the abstract what the latter implies in
the concrete – an active or passive power of a thing to cause or to become something; or else the mind’s conception
of the non-repugnance of this something. To substantialize a possibility, therefore, is sufficiently absurd; but to
speak of a possibility as real and at the same time to deny the reality of any subject in which it would have its reality,
is no less so.

14
‘things’ – men, animals, plants – are all so many really and numerically distinct substances (38).
So, too, are the ultimate individual elements in the inorganic universe, whatever these may be
(31). Nor does the universal interaction of these individuals on one another, or their manifold
forms of interdependence on one another throughout the course of their ever-changing existence
and activities, interfere in any way with the substantiality of the mode of being of each. These
mutual relations of all sorts, very real and actual as they undoubtedly are, only constitute the
universe a cosmos, thus endowing it with unity of order, but not with unity of substance (27)…

“…We cannot help thinking that this phenomenist denial of substance, substance, with its
consequent inevitable substantialization of accidents, is largely due to a mistaken manner of
regarding the concrete existing object as a mere mechanical bundle of distinct and independent
abstractions. Every aspect of it is mentally isolated from the others and held apart as an
‘impression,’ an ‘idea,’ etc. Then the object is supposed to be constituted by, and to consist of, a
sum-total of these separate ‘elements,’ integrated together by some sort of mental chemistry. The
attempt is next made to account for our total conscious experience of reality by a number of
principles or laws of what is known as ‘association of ideas.’ And phenomenists discourse
learnedly about these laws in apparent oblivion of the fact that by denying the reality of any
substantial, abiding, self-identical soul, distinct from the transient conscious states of the passing
moment, they have left out of account the only reality capable of ‘associating’ any mental states,
or making mental life at all intelligible. Once the soul is regarded merely as ‘a series of
conscious states,’ or a ‘stream of consciousness,’ or a succession of ‘pulses of cognitive
consciousness,’ such elementary facts as memory, unity of consciousness, the feeling of personal
identity and personal responsibility, become absolutely inexplicable.39

“Experience, therefore, does reveal to us the real existence of substances, of ‘things that
exist in themselves,’ and likewise the reality of other modes of being which have their actuality
only by inhering in the substances which they affect. ‘A substance,’ says St. Thomas, ‘is a thing
whose nature it is to exist not in another, whereas an accident is a thing whose nature it is to exist
in another.’40 Every concrete being that falls within our experience – a man, an oak, an apple –
furnishes us with the data of these two concepts: the being existing in itself, the substance; and
secondly, its accidents. The former concept comprises only constitutive principles which we see
to be essential to that sort of being: the material, the vegetative, the sentient, the rational
principle, in a man, or his soul and his body; the material principle and the formal or vital
principle in an apple. The latter concept, that of accidents, comprises only those characteristics of
the thing which are no doubt real, but which do not constitute the essence of the being, which can
change or be absent without involving the destruction of that essence. An intellectual analysis of
our experience enables us – and, as we have remarked above, it alone enables us – to distinguish
between these two classes of objective concepts, the concept of the principles that are essential to
the substance or being that exists in itself, and the concept of the attributes that are accidental to
this being; and experience alone enables us, by studying the latter group, the accidents of the
being, whether naturally separable or naturally inseparable from the latter, to infer from those
accidents whatever we can know about the former group, about the principles that constitute the
specific nature of the particular kind of substance that may be under investigation.

39
Cf. MAHER, Psychology, ch. XXII, for a full analysis and refutation of phenomenist theories that would deny the
substantiality of the human person.
40
Quodlib., IX, a. 5, ad 2.

15
 “It may, perhaps, be urged against all this, that experience does not warrant our placing a
real distinction between the entities we describe as ‘accidents’ and those which we claim to be
constitutive of the ‘substance,’ or ‘thing which exists in itself’; that all the entities without
exception, which we apprehend by distinct concepts in any concrete existing being such as a
man, an oak, or an apple, are only one and the same individual reality looked at under different
aspects; that the distinction between them is only a logical or mental distinction; that we separate
in thought what is one in reality because we regard each aspect in the abstract and apart from the
others; that to suppose in any such concrete being the existence of two distinct modes of reality –
viz. a reality that exists in itself, and other realities inhering in this latter – is simply to make the
mistake of transferring to the real order of concrete things what we find in the logical order of
conceptual abstractions.

“This objection, which calls for serious consideration, leads to a different conclusion
from the previous objection. It suggests the conclusion, not that substances are unreal, but that
accidents are unreal. Even if it were valid it would leave untouched the existence of substances.
We hope to meet it satisfactorily by establishing presently the existence of accidents really
distinct from the substances in which they inhere. While the objection draws attention to the
important truth that distinctions recognized in the conceptual order are not always real, it
certainly does not prove that all accidents are only mentally distinct aspects of substance. For
surely a man’s thoughts, volitions, feelings, emotions, his conscious states generally, changing as
they do from moment to moment, are not really identical with the man himself who continues to
exist throughout this incessant change; yet they are realities, appearing and disappearing and
having all their actuality in him, while he persists as an actual being ‘existing in himself.’”41 For
Coffey’s treatment of the real distinction between substance and accidents, see section 67, pages
240-245 of his Ontology.

Tomas Tyn, O.P.’s Critique of Hume on Substance: “La dissoluzione della causalità trova
la sua controparte, condotta a termine con una conseguenza e veemenza non minori, in quella
della sostanza. Il fatto non sorprende, perché il parallelismo della duplice critica non fa altro che
rivelare un importante dato di fatto consistente in una reale analogia tra causalità e sostanzialità.
Si potrebbe dire che quel che rappresenta la causalità nell’ambito dinamico del divenire, la
sostanzialità lo significa nell’ambito statico dell’essere. La dipendenza dell’effetto dalla causa è
simile a quella dell’accidente dalla sostanza cui inerisce: come la causa fonda e costituisce
l’effetto, così la sostanza sostiene e riceve in sé le sue proprietà. In entrambi i casi è evidente la
dualità complementare dell’aspetto essenziale e di quello esistenziale. L’effetto non solo procede
de facto dalla causa, ma procede da essa secondo una certa somiglianza; similmente la sostanza
non solo sottostà alle sue proprietà, ma le riceve secondo il modo suo proprio corrispondente alle
esigenze della sua essenza costitutiva. L’effetto richiama la causa come origine del suo esserci e
del suo essere tale, la proprietà accidentale a sua volta esige un soggetto di inesione che le
permette di esistere e un’essenza da cui risulta e che le conferisce consistenza formale. La
dipendenza da una causa rivela la finitezza dell’essere, quella da un soggetto di inesione è indice
della limitatezza dell’essenza stessa. Infatti, il limite, dato dalla potenzialità di essere, consiste
nell’essenza che, realmente distinta da esso, ne partecipa; quello dell’essenza invece consiste nel
fatto di non poter sussistere in sé ma di dipendere da un altro soggetto di inesione.

41
P. COFFEY, Ontology, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1926, pp. 213-225.

16
 “La dipendenza dell’ente nell’essere quanto alla causalità e quella dell’essenza nel
sussistere quanto alla sostanzialità è realmente data nelle cose sensibili, anche se non può essere
colta se non tramite l’intelletto il quale, avvertendo il limite nell’uno e nell’altro caso, risale dalla
parte al tutto di cui la parte è partecipe. Tale via rimane assolutamente preclusa a Hume,
dimodoché un’altra volta risalta con ogni evidenza il legame che connette l’epstemologia
all’ontologia e il realismo in un ambito a quello nell’altro. La divisione dicotomica in idee
derivanti da impressioni e quelle originate da riflessioni riduce il reale (oggettivo) all’empirico e
il razionale o intelligible all’intenzionale (soggettivo, psicologicamente parlando). La sostanza
non è abbordabile empiricamente e quindi viene relegata nel mondo delle rappresentazioni
soggettive dovute particolarmente all’immaginazione: «The idea of a substance […] is nothing
but a collection of simple ideas, that are united by the imagination».42 Ancora una volta si tratta
non già della legge obiettiva dell’ente, ma di un modello ideale al quale si è abituato il pensiero.
Ma, mentre tale abitudine era una convenzione assolutamente necessaria quanto alla causalità,
essi risulta quasi superflua rispetto alla sostanzialità, poiché rinunciando alla «finzione» di un
soggetto comune, le nostre percezioni sono comunque unificabili tramite la contiguità e la
derivazione causale.43 Inutile dire che tale unità risulta ontologicamente del tutto insufficiente,
poiché la riduzione humiana equivale a un’abdicazione decisa a ogni ontologia a favore della
psicologia del soggetto conoscente, sicché, soddisfatte le esigenze di quest’ultima, tutto sembra
essere detto.

“L’analogia di proporzionalità che differenzia e accomuna nell’ambito dell’ente

trascendentale la molteplicità dei predicamenti e che primariamente si dirime in quel duplice
ordine delle essenze, il primo dei quali risulta suscettibile di sussistere in sé, mentre l’altro
abbisogna di un’altro soggetto di inesione – sostanziale il primo, accidentale il secondo, viene
pure sottoposta a una critica tanto radicale in apparenza, quanto pretestuosa e sofistica in realtà.
Innanzitutto viene dichiarato senza mezzi termini che ogni idea concepibile, quanto alla
possibilità, è suscettibile di sussistere in sé, dimodoché la caratteristica di esclusione di ogni altro
soggetto di inesione sarebbe del tutto priva di specificità rispetto alla sostanza e dunque inadatta
a definirla.

“Questo punto è più rilevante di quanto non appaia a prima vista, perché rivela il punto di
vista decisamente soggettivistico pervadente tutte le speculazioni humiane. Infatti, l’idea
dell’oggetto nel suo essere astratto coglie la sua essenza, ma prescinde dal suo modo di esistere.
Se il modo di pensare coincide con quello di essere; se, in breve, ogni realtà è riducibile alla
rappresentazione mentale, non c’è dubbio che Hume ha allora ragione, come l’avrebbe
d’altronde anche Platone, seppure per motivi diametralmente opposti, giacché come Hume
riduce il reale all’ideale, Plato riduce l’ideale al reale e né l’uno né l’altro sono in grado di
distinguire i diversi modi di essere al di la della differenza delle essenze.

“Tutto dunque può essere sostanziale, dato che ogni idea è pensabile separatamente da
ogni altra, come pure tutto può risultare accidentale a modo dei sensibili platonici sussistenti solo
per partecipazione alle idee, le quali invece, qualsiasi cosa rappresentino, sono tutte dotate di
sussistenza intrinseca. Il pensiero tuttavia ha in sé la capacità di chiarire l’equivoco, purché
sappia distinguere tra il modo di pensare e quello di essere ponendo al di là dell’essenza, che è

42
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1, 1, 6; p. 16.
43
Cfr. ibid., I, 4, 5; pp. 234-239.

17
comune nell’essere e nel pensare, il problema del suo modus essendi ovviamente diverso nel
campo intenzionale e in quello reale e altrettanto evidentemente differenziato, in quest’ultimo
ambito, in essenze sussistenti in sé e sussistenti in altro. Per giungere a tale consapevolezza basta
ricollegare l’idea col dato empirico corrispondente: nel pensiero astratto sussiste sia l’uomo che
il suo agire, nella realtà concreta solo l’uomo esiste in sé, il suo agire non può esserci se non in
lui come in un altro da sé. E tanto basti a titolo d’esempio.

“Non meno pretestuosa è la critica del concetto di inesione. Dire che le percezioni non
esistono nei corpi è una banalità indegna d’una mente filosofica, ma non tutto è percezione e
quindi forsa qualità corporee ineriranno ai corpi e qualità psichiche, come appunto le percezioni,
all’anima. Ma Hume insiste continuando ad affermare che nemmeno nell’anima può esistere la
percezione. Per rendere forte more sophistarum un’affermazione assai debole ricorre a una
trasparente anàbasis eis allos ghenos (o, per dirla più volgarmente, «cambia le carte in tavola»)
passando con sbalorditiva facilità, dal modo di essere soggettivo a quello oggettivamente
conveniente al contenuto rappresentato: la quantità e il quantificato rappresentati nella mente non
sussisterebbero in essa come in un soggetto immateriale, perché il quanto si dice solo del corpo
materiale. Vediamo qui in questo sofisma di Hume un segno che la capacità di distinguere
propria del sapiente si è quasi estinta nel pensiero moderno.

“Se le premesse sono vere, l’inesione non ha più ragione di essere, ma data la debolezza
dei presupposti di questa filosofia che pretende di essere ‘critica,’ è meglio rimanere sulle
posizioni ben più salde di quel pensiero che, per quanto deriso come ‘precritico,’ riesce ancora a
distinguere tra essere e pensare, tra essere sostanziale ed essere accidentale. Ad ogni modo,
sebbene negativamente, Hume fornisce un’esemplificazione più che convincente del legame tra
il realismo epistemologico e quello ontologico degli universali, come pure tra quest’ultimo e la
concezione partecipativa dell’ente fondata sul realismo della causalità e della sostanzialità.”44

Régis Jolivet’s Critique of Empiricism and Phenomenalism Regarding Substance:

“Nozioni aberranti della sostanza…Definizioni empiristiche. Tutti gli empiristi, e Kant al loro
seguito, definiscono la sostanza come una cosa permanente, immobile e invariabile sotto il
mutamento. Ora questa definizione, anzitutto, non conviene affatto alla sostanza, che non è
assolutamente immobile e invariabile sotto il flusso fenomenico: essa non è affatto una cosa
inerte sotto altre cose mobili e mutevoli. Infatti, essa è soggetta al mutamento accidentale e non
cessa di modificarsi con il movimento degli accidenti, che sono qualche cosa d’essa stessa.
D’altra parte, una simile definizione rende la sostanza inintelligibile e perfettamente inutile e
conduce al più radicale fenomenismo.”45

Ҥ l - Teorie fenomenistiche.

“554 - Queste teorie sonò state proposte dagli empiristi del secolo XVIII e XIX. Il loro
principio generale è che la personalità può e deve spiegarsi attraverso i soli fenomeni,
considerati come capaci, in certe condizioni, di formare una somma o collezione contrassegnata
dai caratteri che determinano il «me» personale.

44
T. TYN, Metafisica della sostanza, Fede & Cultura, Verona, 2009, pp. 316-319.
45
R. JOLIVET, Trattato di filosofia, vol. 4 (Metafisica II), Morcelliana, Brescia, 1960, p. 123.

18
 “A. Argomenti del fenomenismo.

“Questi argomenti sono di tre specie. Gli uni sono puramente negativi e tendono a
provare che l’ipotesi di un soggetto sostanziale è incomprensibile. I secondi impugnano il valore
sperimentale del concetto di personalità. I terzi cercano di dar ragione senza alcun soggetto dei
caratteri della personalità.

“1. Critica del concetto di sostanza - Tutti gli empiristi del XVIII secolo (Locke,
Condillac, Berkeley, Hume) considerano inintelligibile il concetto di soggetto sostanziale. Una
sostanza o un soggetto, dicono costoro, è per definizione qualcosa che si trova posto sotto i
fenomeni (sub-jacere, sub-stare), cioè un sostrato o sostegno. Però una tale realtà, se esistesse,
sarebbe in se stessa inconoscibile, perché l’esperienza non ci presenta mai altro che le qualità o
fenomeni, inutile, perché sarebbe immobile e inerte sotto il flusso dei fenomeni, - impensabile in
se stessa, perché dovrebbe essere considerata come una cosa priva di ogni determinazione,
infine contraddittoria, perché, pur essendo destinata a servire da sostegno ai fenomeni, anch’essa
avrebbe bisogno di sostegno (Locke, An Essay on Human Understanding, L II, c. XXIII, in
Works of J. L., 4 voll., Londra, 1777; tr. it., Bari, 1951).

“Bisogna quindi rinunziare ad ogni idea di soggetto sostanziale, il quale non ha altro
fondamento nell’esperienza che un gruppo di qualità costanti sostrato delle qualità variabili.

“La sostanza piombo, per esempio, si riduce ad un complesso di qualità: colore opaco e
biancastro, un determinato grado di pesantezza, di durezza, di duttilità e di fusibilità. Il soggetto
uomo non è che un complesso di qualità estese e di qualità dette spirituali. Il soggetto anima o
spirito non è che una collezione di fatti interni che coesistono per l’azione della memoria.

“555 - 2. Critica dell’esperienza di personalità - Questa critica è opera soprattutto di

Hume, il quale si sforza di dimostrare che noi siamo ben lungi dall’avere una coscienza precisa e
ferma dell’unità e dell’identità del «me». Infatti non constatiamo in noi stessi nessuna
impressione costante e invariabile.46 Il sentimento dell’«io» (Self), di cui si fa tanto conto, non è
un’esperienza, ma una costruzione da filosofo, perché per quanto avanti io penetri in me stesso,
non arrivo mai ad afferrare altro che delle percezioni particolari. Tutti questi argomenti (già
inclusi nell’affermazione di Condillac, che il «me» è soltanto una collezione di sensazioni), sono
stati ripresi nel secolo XVIII da Taine per il quale il «me» si riduce interamente ad una «serie di
avvenimenti» e ad un «ramificarsi tentacolare di immagini». (De l'Intelligence, 2 voll., Parigi,
1870, t. I, p. 350).

“556 – 3. Genesi dell’illusione dell’«io-soggetto»

“a) Come funziona l’associazione. Tutto si può spiegare, secondo Hume, con
l’associazione. L'idea di soggetto rappresenta soltanto una generalizzazione del concetto comune
di cosa. Difatti, questa ha tre proprietà: è unità di una molteplicità coesistente; è unità di una
molteplicità successiva; è un sostrato le cui modificazioni sono rappresentate dalle qualità

46
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, 4a parte, sez. VI: «Senza tener conto di alcuni metafisici, io oso
affermare, quanto al resto degli uomini, che essi non sono che un fascio od una collezione di diverse percezioni, le
quali si succedono con una rapidità inconcepibile e sono in un flusso e in un movimento perpetui».

19
sensibili. È. dunque facile dimostrare che tutte queste proprietà risultano da come funziona
l’associazione. La prima è prodotta dalla coesistenza delle qualità nella percezione: lo spirito
rappresenta a se stesso tutte insieme queste qualità e tratta questa collezione come un tutto
organico, designandola con una sola parola. A poco a poco, l’unità verbale si trasforma in unità
reale. La seconda proprietà deriva dal fatto che la cosa non sembra cambiare, od almeno non
cambia, in modo rilevante che in un tempo relativamente lungo: da ciò deriva il fatto che la cosa
ci appare identica a se stessa. Ma siccome questa identità non può essere attribuita alle qualità
palesemente cangianti, noi l’attribuiamo al raggruppamento stesso delle qualità e, al di là di
queste, ad un soggetto comune immobile delle modificazioni.

“b) Genesi della persona-soggetto. Proprio allo stesso modo noi ci formiamo l’idea di
sostanza spirituale. Come la sostanzialità delle cose esterne per noi proviene dalla rassomiglianza
che esse presentano nel tempo, così la sostanzialità del «me» nasce dalla memoria. Infatti questa
basta a spiegare il nostro sentimento di identità personale: essa ci dà, insieme alla continuità
successiva delle nostre percezioni interne, il sentimento della causalità reciproca di queste
percezioni, ossia del loro concatenamento, ed infine raggruppa queste percezioni in base alla loro
rassomiglianza. Da queste diverse relazioni conservate dalla memoria nasce il concetto della
nostra identità personale e sostanziale. Però quest’ultima non è, in definitiva, che l’identità
sostanziale del legame che esiste in una serie di cause e di effetti (Treatise of Human Nature,
Oxford, 1951, tr. it., Bari, 1948, 1. I, 1a parte, sez. VI).

“Taine e Stuart Mill, partendo dallo stesso principio di Hume, propongono spiegazioni un
po’ diverse. Secondo Taine, fra i fatti psicologici, che sono l’unica realtà concreta alcuni sono
stati forti e, in quanto tali, prendono forma di interiorità e si innalzano fino a diventare corpo e
«me»; gli stati deboli invece vengono respinti e compongono il mondo degli oggetti o «non-me».
Insomma, l’idea di personalità si riduce a quella di stati psichici interni, e gli oggetti o mondo
esterno sono effetto di una «allucinazione vera». (Taine, De l’Intelligence, t. II, libro III, c. I).
Quanto a Stuart Mill egli definisce il «me» come una «possibilità permanente di sensazioni».
«Credere che il mio spirito esiste, anche quando esso non sente se stesso, non si pensa, non ha
coscienza della propria esistenza, si riduce a credere in una possibilità permanente di questi
stati... Io non vedo niente che ci impedisca di considerare lo spirito come ciò che è soltanto la
serie delle nostre sensazioni, quali esse si presentano di fatto, aggiungendovi le possibilità
indefinite di sentire che esigono, onde esser tradotte in atto, delle condizioni che possono aver
luogo o no, ma che, in quanto possibili, esistono sempre e molte delle quali possono realizzarsi a
volontà». (An Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy, Londra, 1865; tr., fr., p. 228).

“B. Discussione

“557 - Dobbiamo esaminare brevemente le tre categorie di argomenti fenomenistici.

“1. Il soggetto non è un sostrato inerte - La critica del concetto di sostanza è basata tutta
su un equivoco. Il termine soggetto non equivale a sostrato inerte del cambiamento sul quale
verrebbero in qualche modo ad appiccicarsi le qualità, come un vestito che aderisce al corpo o
come una vernice che ricopre la superficie delle cose. Questa concezione è assurda. Infatti, il
soggetto non costituisce con le sue qualità che un unico essere completo, anche se, propriamente
parlando, non sono le qualità a cambiare, ma è il soggetto che cambia con esse e per esse. Il

20
soggetto cambia quindi continuamente secondo il succedersi dei fenomeni che lo investono: la
permanenza e la stabilità fanno parte soltanto della sua essenza, non della sua realtà concreta. Da
ciò si vede bene come l’obiezione di Hume, secondo il quale il soggetto sarebbe impensabile in
se stesso, non ha nessuna importanza. Il soggetto viene in sé determinato sia dalle sue proprietà
essenziali, sia dalle qualità che lo individualizzano, perché il soggetto concreto è composto da
tutte queste cose prese insieme.

“558 – 2. La realtà empirica dell’«io» - Hume impugna invano l’esperienza psicologica

dell'«io». Tale esperienza può avere dei gradi, ma è un fatto evidente quanto la molteplicità degli
stati di coscienza. Inoltre, contrariamente a quanto immaginano gli empiristi, questo «io» non è
costruito cominciando dai suoi elementi, come se questi esistessero dapprima come isolati e
dispersi, e fossero in seguito riuniti in un tutto. È il tutto quello che viene per primo, e gli
elementi, in quanto tali, non sono percepiti e distinti che successivamente.

“Ciò che abbiamo detto sopra circa la formazione del «me» nel fanciullo non è in
contraddizione con questa osservazione, perché, propriamente parlando, il fanciullo non
costruisce il suo «me», ma lo scopre progressivamente, via via che si realizzano le condizioni
degli organi, dell’esperienza e della ragione. Quanto alla sintesi psicologica, essa non risulta nel
fanciullo da una disposizione di elementi preesistenti, ma da una presa di coscienza sempre più
approfondita di un ordine di diritto incluso e preformato entro la ragione. Essa dunque è, in
quanto tale, anteriore agli elementi.

“Infine, non fa meraviglia che Hume non arrivi a scoprire l’«io» nella sua esperienza:
l’«io» che egli cerca non esiste e non può esistere, perché non è un sostrato che esista separato
dagli stati di coscienza, ma è l’insieme stesso del «me» dotato dei caratteri di unità e di identità
personali.

“3. Confutazione dell’associazionismo - Le ragioni addotte da Hume per spiegare la

formazione dell’idea di cosa o di soggetto permanente sono delle autentiche petizioni di
principio. Se infatti le cosiddette «collezioni» vengono designate con una sola parola, è evidente
che ciò avviene perché fin dal loro sorgere ciascuna di esse appare come un tutto organico. È
inutile che i sassi di un mucchio si presentino insieme alla percezione; nonostante ciò, essi
continuano a formare un mucchio, cioè una collezione, non una cosa o un soggetto. D’altronde, è
davvero impossibile pensare che una collezione o serie di stati di coscienza possa giungere a
conoscere se stessa come unità identica a se stessa.47 Hume medesimo, d’altronde, finì col
rendersene conto, dicendo che, nell’ipotesi dell’io-collezione è impossibile ammettere
l’esperienza di unità e identità e che l’unica soluzione plausibile sarebbe quella di un soggetto
permanente.48

47
La spiegazione di Taine è altrettanto arbitraria. Non si riesce a capire come, esistendo soltanto gli stati psicologici,
la loro differenza di intensità sia tale da poter bastare a trasformarli in mondo interno od esterno, reale od
immaginario.
48
Treatise, I. I, 4a part., Appendice: «A dirla in breve, vi sono due princìpi che io non riesco ad accordare, senza che
possa rinunziare ancor più all’uno o all’altro e cioè: il principio che le nostre percezioni distinte sono esistenze
distinte, e che la mente non percepisce mai alcun nesso reale fra esistenze distinte. Non vi sarebbe più nessuna
difficoltà se si ammettesse sia che le nostre percezioni sono inerenti a qualcosa di semplice e di individuale, sia che
la mente percepisce qualche nesso reale fra loro. Per ciò che mi riguarda, io devo confessare che questa difficoltà
sorpassa la mia comprensione...». S. Mill confessa la stessa cosa: «Se consideriamo lo spirito come una serie di stati

21
 “…D. Conclusione

“564 – 1. Necessità di un soggetto - Lo studio delle diverse teorie riguardanti la

personalità ci porta a concludere che l’esperienza e i caratteri dell’«io» non hanno altra
spiegazione possibile che per mezzo di un soggetto sostanziale. Il fenomenismo, sotto qualunque
forma si presenti, è infatti incapace di spiegare questa esperienza. Una collezione di cose non è
un ente; una serie od una carovana non formano un tutto organico; una serie successiva od una
collezione simultanea non possono riconoscere se stesse né come serie, né come collezione, né
tanto meno come unità.

“Viceversa, l’unità e l’identità divengono intelligibili appena si ammette che esse

esprimano la realtà di un soggetto sottoposto al mutamento e di un soggetto che continua ad
esistere mutando. Quanto all’ autonomia, se essa esige ben altro che l’unità e l’identità, le quali
sono i caratteri della individualità (indivisum in se et divisum a quolibet alio), almeno essa trova
nell’individualità la propria condizione necessaria: solo un individuo (e non una colonia od una
serie) può essere persona, cioè essere intelligente e libero, padrone di sé (individuum ratione
praeditum, sui juris).

“565 – 2. L’intuizione dell’io

“a) Forma dell’intuizione. Il soggetto che noi siamo non è una costruzione dello spirito,
ma un dato dell’esperienza. L'intuizione del me-soggetto si deve estendere a tutta la nostra vita
psicologica, nel senso che noi non cessiamo di essere in qualche modo ontologicamente presenti
a noi stessi e cogliamo questa presenza ontologica negli atti che ne emanano.49

“Tale coscienza di sé come soggetto è una coscienza abituale. Affinché divenga

coscienza attuale, si deve compiere un atto di riflessione su se stessi. Anche quando è coscienza
attuale e riflessa, essa non è mai quell’intuizione dell’io puro che gli empiristi si accaniscono a
pretendere e che è impossibile. Infatti il soggetto può cogliere se stesso solo nei suoi atti e
attraverso i suoi atti, dai quali non è possibile distinguerlo che per mezzo di un’astrazione della
mente. Infine, la coscienza, o intuizione di sé come soggetto, non è una conoscenza intuitiva
della natura del soggetto che ci costituisce. Essa è soltanto colta a partire da una realtà
esistenziale di cui si arriverà a conoscere con precisione la natura solo a prezzo di analisi
minuziose e difficili.50

di coscienza, siamo obbligati a completare la proposizione chiamandola serie di stati di coscienza che conosce se
stessa come passata e futura: e siamo ridotti a dover scegliere fra il credere che lo spirito, o «io», è una cosa ben
diversa dalle serie di stati di coscienza possibili, e l’ammettere il paradosso per cui qualcosa che, per ipotesi, è solo
una serie di stati di coscienza, può conoscere se stessa come serie». (An Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's
Philosophy, Londra, 1865; tr. fr., p. 235).
49
S. TOMMASO, De Veritate, q. 10 a. 8: «Quantum ad cognitionem habitualem, sic dico quod anima per essentiam
suam se videt, id est, ex hoc ipso quod essenti a sua est praesens, est potens éxire in actum cognitionis sui ipsius [...]
Ad hoc autem quod percipiat anima se esse et quid in seipsa agatur attendat, sufficit sola essentia animae, quae
menti est praesens: ex ea enim actus progrediuntur, in quibus actualiter ipsa percipitur». 1a, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2um: «Illa
quae sunt per essentiam sui in anima cognoscuntur experimentali cognitione, in quantum homo experitur per actus
principia intrinseca».
50
Cfr: S. TOMMASO, De Veritate, q. 10, a. 8, ad 8 in contr.: «Secundum hoc scientia de anima est certissima quod
unusquisque experitur se animam habere et actus animae sibi inesse, sed cognoscere quid sit anima difficillimum
est».

22
 “b) Contenuto dell’intuizione. Qual è il vero e proprio contenuto di questa intuizione
esistenziale? Noi percepiamo noi stessi come un soggetto complesso, che è principio di fenomeni
e di attività di natura assai diversa, perché diciamo con uguale verità: «io mangio», «digerisco»,
«soffro», «amo», «ragiono», «voglio». Questa complessità lascia dunque sussistere
nell’intuizione l’unità essenziale del soggetto; ma nell’intuizione dell’io si manifestano, in
qualche modo, anche due poli: il polo fisico (corpo) e il polo psichico (anima). Niente di tutto
questo si precisa con chiarezza al livello dell’intuizione empirica dell’io. Però, come abbiamo già
detto, proprio in questa intuizione l’analisi metafisica giunge a distinguere la natura e il modo
con cui si uniscono i princìpi dai quali risulta la complessa unità della persona umana.”51

Alvira, Clavell, and Melendo on Our Knowledge of Substance and Accidents. Explaining
how the substance-accidents composition is known with the intelligence starting from the data
offered to it by the senses, and how, in our knowledge of the singular and concrete being (ens),
we find ourselves in a continuous going back and forth between the substance and its accidents,
Alvira, Clavell and Melendo write: “Our way of knowing substance and accidents is determined
by their respective natures and their mutual relation.

“In the first place, the substance-accident composite is known through the intelligence on
the basis of the data provided by the senses. Sense knowledge always refers directly to the
accidents of a thing; in contrast, the intelligence grasps, through the accidents, their source and
basis, which is the substance. This, of course, is possible because the accidents are not like a veil
that hides the substance: on the contrary, the accidents reveal the substance.

“Since its proper object is being (ens), the intellect is not limited to grasping the more
peripheral aspects of things, so to speak, but knows ‘everything that is,’ i.e., the entire being
(ens) with all its real characteristics. Thus, the intellect perceives being (ens) as a whole,
composed of substance and accidents and which is not merely the result of putting together
various aspects of the thing. The distinction between substance and accidents can only be
grasped through the intellect. It cannot be obtained through the external or internal senses
because these faculties perceive only the accidents.52

“In the process of knowing the specific individual being (ens), we constantly go back and
forth from the substance to the accidents, and vice-versa. For the sake of clarity, we may
distinguish three stages in this knowledge.

“a) First, what we have is an indistinct or vague knowledge of the composite. Whenever
we encounter an unknown object, whose nature we are not familiar with, we immediately
understand that the qualities perceived by our senses (e.g., color, shape, size) are not independent
realities, but a unified whole by virtue of their belonging to a single substance. Even at this initial
stage of knowing an object, we know that the accidents are secondary manifestations of a subject
that subsists by itself, notwithstanding our inability to know as yet what sort of substance it is.

51
R. JOLIVET, Trattato di filosofia, vol. 3 (Psicologia), Morcelliana, Brescia, 1958, nos. 554-560, 564-565.
52
The senses are said to perceive the substance, not in the strict sense, but only in a certain way (“per accidens”).
Thus, the eye does not see a color as such and as a separate reality; what it always perceives is a colored object.
Likewise, the sense of touch does not grasp a separated extension, but an extended thing. Nevertheless, the
intelligence alone grasps the substance precisely as substance, differentiating from the accidents.

23
Indeed, since being (ens) is what is first known by the intelligence, and in the strict sense the
substance alone is being (ens), our intellect cannot grasp accidents without simultaneously
perceiving their subject.

“b) Then from the accidents we move on to the substance. Once the subject of the
accidents is known in an indistinct way, the accidents, which reveal the substance, become the
natural path to know what the substance is, i.e., its nature or essence. The accidents of a man (his
shape, his proper operations), for instance, lead us to his essence: rational animal. Thus, starting
from the more external aspects of a being, so to speak, we gradually come to grasp its deeper,
more internal aspects. We penetrate its substantial core through its more peripheral
manifestations.

“c) From the substance, we go back to the accidents. Once we have discovered the
essence of a thing, this knowledge becomes a new, more intense light which illumines all the
accidents arising from the substance. It enables to acquire a more adequate notion of each of the
accidents and of their mutual relationships. No longer are we merely aware of them as mere
external manifestations of ‘something,’ whose nature is not yet distinctly known to us. Rather,
we recognize them as the proper natural manifestations of a specific way of being. Once we have
come to know the essence of man, for instance, we can fit together in a better way his diverse
accidents, since we are aware that they stem from his nature and are dependent on it. This helps
us to have a better grasp of their real meaning. We can, for instance, perceive the many activities
of man as the result of a free rational activity, which is itself a consequence of his specific
essence, and as a result, we are able to grasp them in their true dimension. Otherwise, even
though we might obtain a very detailed description of human activities and succeed in measuring
many aspects of human behavior, our knowledge of the human person would remain extremely
poor; we would even fail to realize that man has a spiritual and immortal soul.

“Summing up, we can say that our knowledge begins from the sense-perceptible
properties of things, perceived as manifestations of a thing which has being (esse). These
properties reveal the essence to us, and the accidents, in turn, are seen as stemming from this
substance, which provides the light for a better knowledge of them. This process is not, of
course, undergone and completed once and for all in an instant. In fact, an unending flux
characterizes our knowledge, as we move on from the accidents to the substance, and from the
substance to the accidents, thus gradually acquiring a deeper knowledge of both.”53

53
T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 55-57.

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