59

8 THE ONE AND THE MANY ON THE SAME LEVEL OF BEING:

ESSENTIAL FORM AND PRIMARY MATTER

(1) Recapitulation: We have previously seen the problem of the one and the many on the
widest possible scale, that of the entire sweep of being itself, including all possible universes.
We have seen the Thomistically-inspired solution, that in any universe where there is
more than one being, every being save perhaps one must be a limited participation through
essence in the central perfection of the universe, the act of existence.
Note the general principle that emerges (which we can now use as an instrument for fur-
ther metaphysical analysis) is the following:
All multiplicity and distinction in beings implies (1) an underlying unity, something
shared in common, without which it would be impossible to compare the distinct
elements of all; and (2) a principle of negation to ground the truth, "This being is not
that," which must be a principle of some kind of limitation (one lacks something the
other has) without which non-identity would be impossible.

(2) New Problem: As we come now to examine the universe of our experience more
closely, we discover that in addition to the basic unity and diversity in the ultimate context of
existence itself, there are also many smaller domains exemplifying the same one-many pat-
tern. For all beings are not simply unique in what they are, but group together to form levels
and classes, kinds, of being wherein many individ-uals have in common not only existence
but the same specific kind or mode of being.
Thus, many people share a common or similar human nature, many rose bushes the same
rose structure and properties, many molecules of oxygen the same mole-cular structure and
properties, etc.
In other words, we find the one and the many reappearing this time in the order of
species, i.e., a class or group of beings which possess the same specific nature or essence
(e.g., human being, as distinguished from the individual essence, John Smith, shared by no
other being). The essence-existence structure is too general and unspecific to take care of this
new and tighter unity within essences themselves. A new metaphysical structure is needed, it
seems.
The problem is thus: What are the ultimate conditions of possibility that render intelligi-
ble the fact that many distinct individuals share the same species or essential mode of being?
The peculiar difficulty the solution must cope with is that while each of the members of a
species is a new individual being, unique in its own being and hence essentially distinct from
every member, yet it can contain no essential qualitative difference from the others, for then
it would form a new species of kind of being.1
(3) Explanation: Thomas explains this new problem by the composition of form and
quantitatively extended primary matter, interpreted as another case of participation: par-
ticipation in the same intelligible form by distinct material subjects as act in potency. Again,
the participated perfection, form, is limited by reception in matter and tied down to a
particular point in space-time.2 Note however that in this case of participation, the
participated perfection--the specific form--does not exist on its own anywhere in the real
order as a subsistent ontological plenitude--source of all the participants. It cannot, being
universal, abstract, indeterminate by itself because its nature is to exist in matter, to unify a
60

material manifold. Hence the plenitude of the form exists only in a mind in the form of a
universal idea capable of indefinite further realizations in matter (either as exemplary idea in
the mind of its maker or as abstracted by a receptive knower). Thus, the Platonic realism of
ideas is carefully removed from the participation structure as applied here, though the formal
structure remains intact.
(4) Argument: Every individual in a species is both essentially like, identical to, every
other in its specific essence and essentially distinct from every other as individual. These
properties are objective and irreducible. Hence, they require a real metaphysical composition
of two principles. Thus, if a human being were this being named John by the same principle
by which he was a human being, then every human being would be John, which is false.
The Principle of Specific Identity, i.e., specific, essential or substantial form, is that
principle in virtue of which a being is this essential kind or mode of being.
The Principle of Distinction cannot be another substantial form, because this would (a)
destroy the unity of the essence and its being, and (b) any essential formal difference would
change the species. Hence it must be a non-formal principle, called primary matter. How does
this distinguish without introducing any formal difference? It does this through its primary
property of quantitative extension, or parts outside of parts, allowing endless reproduction of
the same intelligible form in distinct parts of matter. This forms the space-time world, one of
limited, imperfect unity or presence of each form to itself because dispersed over space, and
hence of limited imperfect presence to each other because distant in space, hence also in time.
Thus, matter can be considered not as some heavy positive principle, but simply as a
further level of negation of esse, partially negating the perfect unity and presence of form to
itself and others.
An Objection could arise from the application of this argument to the human being: It would
be an "insult to human dignity that the individuality of a person comes only from body." The
response: Each human soul, though not formally different from others by any absolute
spiritual note as soul, is intrinsically "commensurated" adapted for its particular body, hence
is essentially distinct relatively. This endures after death.3
_______________
(5) Summary: Aristotelian-Thomistic Solution (adapted).
(1) General Principle: Wherever there is a situation of many beings sharing in some one
common property, there is a participation structure, i.e., a metaphysical composition or struc-
ture of two co-principles, one to ground the similarity, the other to ground the distinction or
multiplicity; this latter must be a principle of limitation, since all distinction implies negation
and all negation implies limitation (one is not the other because one lacks what the other has).
This is the situation we are faced with here. The question is: What kind of principles will do
the job?
(2) Principle of Similarity: All the individuals of the species must possess a principle
within them which explains why they are determined to this specific mode or essence and not
another. This principle of specific essential similarity was called by Aristotle form, specific or
essential or substantial form, drawn from the analogy of sculpture, where a sculptor imposes
a form or shape on some kind of raw material. Essential form is the inner natural "shape" of a
being, its intelligible structure or pattern that makes it what it is. It is this form or pattern
which we abstract to form universal concepts applying to all the members of a class: "John is
a human being. This is a horse." The form determines and expresses the common nature and
 Form-Matter -

set of properties common to all the members of the class and distinguishing it from all other
classes.
Thus, essential form is defined as: that intrinsic metaphysical principle by which a being
is determined to be this specific kind of being and not another. This part of the doctrine is
easy and commonly accepted.
(3) Principle of Distinction: This is the difficult part, to find a principle that will distin-
guish one individual from another without introducing an essential qualitative difference be-
tween them--which would change the species. Let us proceed by the method of elimination of
possible hypotheses. This principle must be either another formal one or a non-formal one.
(a) It cannot be another substantial form: or formal qualitative principle in the essential
order. For then -
(i) This would introduce a new qualitative formal note different in each member, which
would automatically turn it into a new species--which would destroy the original data of the
problem. There is no use appealing here to qualitative accidental or non-essential properties.
For these properties presuppose that we already have two distinct subjects or subjects set up
to receive these two sets of properties. For example, two men cannot be essentially distin-
guished by one having red hair, the other black. For to have two colors of hair they must first
be set up with two distinct heads and two bodies. How distinguish the two basic subjects of
further attributes?
(ii) Another reason: Two essential forms in the same being would destroy the unity of its
essence. Since an essential form is that which determines a being to be this kind of being,
two essential forms at once would make it two kinds of being at once--which is absurd. I
cannot be both a human being and a dog at once. True, one higher form can include the
operations and properties of lower types of forms. But then it includes them in a single
synthetic unity, a single unified structure in which the subordinate elements lose their full
autonomy of independent being and operation. To be one kind of thing, you must have one
essential form.
(b) Hence, we must adopt the other alternative: the principle of distinction must be a non-
formal or non-qualitative one, which is able to distinguish without intro-ducing formal differ-
entiation.
Since this principle is the complementary opposite to form, Aristotle called it matter, pri-
mary matter. It is the ultimate plastic, indeterminate but determinable "raw material" whose
nature and role it is to be molded and structured by form. It is a real principle distinct from
form, but since of itself alone it is pure radical indeterminate plasticity, receptivity, de-
terminability--or pure potentiality, as Aristotle put it, cannot exist by itself but only as
structured under some form. It is a correlative co-principle with form or essence, not a thing
in itself; it might be called a function of deter-minability-by-form.
But how can this non-formal principle positively distinguish one individual of the species
from another? By its one positive property of quantitative extension, or spatial extension. It is
precisely this lowest mode of being which makes possible distinction without qualitative dif-
ference, hence also non-qualitative limitation. For it is the essence of matter as quantitatively
extended to have "parts outside of part" or dispersed, spread out, over space. The identical
form, or formal structure, can now be reproduced endlessly in different parts or locations of
this spread out matter. Each new reproduction is distinct from every other because it is
located precisely here and not there within the space-time matrix of matter. This is also a
 Central Problems in Metaphysics -

limitation, a pinning down in space so that at any one time one can be only here and not
every-where at once. On the other hand, to be a spirit means precisely to transcend space-
time dispersion, not be pinned here or there and have its parts dispersed over space. Yet this
space-time limitation makes no qualitative difference at all in the form that is reproduced in
each distinct material "receptacle." To be here and not there is not to be a different kind of
thing.
Hence, we have found what we are looking for, a principle of real but non-qualitative dis-
tinction, enabling many beings to be really distinct as individuals yet each possessing the
identical formal structure: the spatially extended field of matter where every part is distin-
guished from every other by the mere fact of being here and not there. Note that the distinc-
tion of here and there is not a formal one and hence cannot be represented in a purely in-
tellectual concept. It must be pointed to existentially with one's finger, or indicated by a set of
measurement operations to be carried out practically from a given perspective: 10 feet west of
this tree, 5 feet north, etc.
(c) Conclusions, Corollaries, Implications:
(i) Thus, the ultimate essential distinction between two human beings, two oxygen atoms,
etc., comes from their material principle or body, not from the kind of souls or essential
forms they have. This does not mean that the soul of each human being is not quite distinct
and unique. It is, but not absolutely in itself because it is this kind of soul, but only relation-
ally, because it is inhabiting and correlated with this parti-cular body and ultimately primary
matter, the ultimate indeterminate "stuff" below the lowest atom or particle making up the
body.
Hence, I am this unique soul because I am the soul of this particular body situated in
space-time history. Of course, once set up as this individual in the spatial field because of pri-
mary matter, a whole multitude of accidental qualitative differences can now be added on, in
fact immediately and necessarily ensue due to my particular situation, environment, and suc-
cessive unique interaction with it that constitutes my personal history. But this qualitatively
unique history and accidental properties do not make me an essentially different kind of being
from my fellows in the species; with a different history I would be essentially the same.
(ii) We have now discovered the two great modes of limitation and thus of distinction, in
the universe: the first is qualitative, in terms of formal qualities, which gives a vertical scale
of higher and lower levels and kinds of being; the second is quantitative, by spatial extension
of parts outside of parts in a material field, which makes possible a horizontal scale of
distinction on the same qualitative level, one here, the other there. Thus, the ultimate onto-
logical condition of possibility of there being a world in which there can be societies of
equals, families, is that such a world be material.
The reverse corollary of this--which St. Thomas explicitly draws and makes the basis of
his theory of angels--is that there is no democracy in the world of pure spirits. Every spirit,
since it has no matter to multiply its form, must be unique of its own kind, exhausting the
fullness of its species. Thus, Thomas says, Gabriel is Gabrielity. But no human being is
humanity.
(iii) Note the remarkable illumination this theory sheds on the uniqueness peculiar to each
human being, quite different from that proper to a purely spiritual being--if there is such.
 Form-Matter -

My human uniqueness is a humbler one. Though I am unique, I am never totally different

from everyone else. For I too am always and inescapably a human being, hence essentially
like other human beings.
This makes possible a common basic moral law, etc., refutes pure situational ethics (my
moral situation is always totally unique, hence not subject to any common rules or laws).
This means too that my uniqueness, coming as it does through my body as situated in history,
is not independently timeless, but radically historical in character. This means there is no me
outside human history, that is, not originating in it.
(iv) Since primary matter is indeterminate by itself, with no qualitative determinations of
its own, and it is only a co-principle of being, not a thing, it is impossible for it to be observed
or discovered by any scientific techniques or experiments. Nothing can manifest itself save
through determinate actions; hence matter can manifest itself only as structured by some
form. It is knowable only as a metaphysical postulate to render intelligible the observed.
(v) One can also say that form-matter is a general analogous conceptual structure for
helping us to understand the world. Even if one does not admit the strict technical notion of
ultimate radically indeterminate matter with absolutely no form of its own--the most difficult
and controversial part of the theory--everyone admits that something "like" the general mat-
ter-form structure is essential for making sense, or talking sense, about one of the most sig-
nificant features of our world: the fact that identical formal structures are reduplicated over
and over again in some kind of plastic receptive material, whether this is totally indeterminate
all the way down or not.
C. Epilogue: Every being is active: Action as the self-expression and self-real-ization of
being; and the bridge between the structures of participation and the structures of becoming.
In the two previous sections, we have discovered the two main structures constitutive of
the very being of all things in the universe except perhaps one (i.e., of all finite beings, with
the possible exception of one infinite being, if there is such). These are structures of
participation:
(1) of participation in the basic unifying perfection of all reality, existence, through the
structure or metaphysical composition of essence and existence;
(2) of participation in one specific mode of being through the structure of essential form
and matter. This might be called the "static" structure of being in the sense that it includes
the structures constitutive of the very essential being of a thing as long as it lasts, considered
as prior to its active dimension of change and be-coming.
We can now move into the study of the second great aspect of all the beings of our ex-
perience, namely, the dynamic dimension of their activity with its corollaries of change and
becoming. This study will reveal the principal dynamic structures of being: the general struc-
ture of act/potency as the inner condition for all change, together with the two particular
structures of act/potency as applied to the two main kinds of changes: (1) substance/accident
for all accidental or non-essential change, and (2) essential form/primary matter for all es-
sential changes. These are the intrinsic conditions of possibility (intelligibility) for any being
to undergo change. Then we will discover that in order to explain why and how any change
actually takes place we must move beyond the changing being (or the changing parts of it) to
the extrinsic explanatory principles of any change, i.e., efficient causality, and inside of the
effi-cient cause the final cause.
 Central Problems in Metaphysics -

The bridge between the static structures of participation and the dynamic structures of be-
coming is action, that fundamental dynamic property of all beings by which they "overflow"
as it were their own being and reach out towards others. We already discovered this property
in Section II on the Meaning and Discovery of Being, as the key criterion for recognizing the
presence of real being as distinguished from mental being and the only way by which we can
know the presence and nature of any real being, including ourselves.
We concluded that to be, in a universe or community of real beings, necessarily implies
active-co-presence to other beings. A being that would have no action whatsoever could
never be known, would make no difference at all in the universe, and would in fact be indis-
tinguishable from nothing (i.e., it would have no nature, since every nature is known as a
center of action). Hence:
(a) Every being is active. That is, the power of acting in some way (not necessarily acting
all the time, but the ability to act) is an essential constitutive property of every being that is
truly present in the community of reality. This is true in its own analogous way of every
being from the tiniest sub-atomic particle to the Infinite Plenitude that we call God.
Action is thus the self-revelation and self-manifestation of being, the bridge that makes
one be present to another (as well as to its own self) and makes possible a universe. It is thus
also the key to all knowledge of the real.
(b) The functions of action:
(i) self-expression, by which a being pours over and manifests itself together, and also
enriches another. Every being to the extent that it is, possesses some perfection, is rich in
some degree, tends naturally to pour over and share its perfection with others.
(ii) self-realization: every finite being is also poor, limited in some way, less than the
infinite plenitude of being, and thus also pours over or reaches out of itself seek-ing en-
richment from others, seeking to receive from others.
Thus, every finite being pours over into action both because it is rich and poor, to give
and receive. This begets the universe of change, becoming, a vast interacting system of
giving-receiving.
1
Note 1: It is not up to the metaphysician to prove the fact that there is such objectively given species
or classes of being possessing the same specific essence. Is this a fact about our world, or is each being,
each human being, etc., so absolutely unique in itself that it forms a unique kind of being so that there
are in fact no species in the real world but only in our abstract concepts, there is no such thing as a
common human nature, oxygen molecule....? This is a question of fact, which must be settled by
analyzing our experience with the help of science, etc. But note the implications if there are no species,
if every human being is unique in kind: We are open to claims of superior races, supermen, race
subjection, rule by elite, no democracy, etc.; Christ did not take on "our human nature," etc. Once given
the fact, at least as probable, the metaphysician's job begins: How is this fact possible, intelligible? The
face does seem highly probable, a clear case being identical twins.
Note 2: Only a small number of metaphysicians have tried to come to grips explicitly with this
problem. Among the solutions proposed, one of the most powerful and controversial, is that proposed
very tersely by Aristotle and later developed by St. Thomas and modern Thomists. The theory has
considerable illuminative power, but because of the difficulty of establishing the status and necessity of
its key notion, primary matter, the original contribution of Aristotle, we propose it as probable only, at
least in its strict original form.
2
Whereas pure forms (angels) are not thus limited and each one exhausts the plenitude of perfection
of its own form and forms a species by itself.
3
CG, II, 81, n.7.