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dividuation was one which occupied all the scholastics, and whose answer in Scotus opened the way through the forest of abstractions, and disclosed the path of modern science.

Abelard had said, each individual is composed of matter and form. The matter of Socrates is humanity, the form is Socratitas. Form in general, then, is the individuating principle with Abelard. Thomas made matter to be this principle, matter designated by certain dimensions, by the here and the now. For Socrates we must say this flesh and these bones, not flesh and bones absolutely. The current expression in the school was "matter quantitatively determined."

Now comes Scotus, and changes all this, introducing a destructive factor into the system. The principle of individuation cannot be matter, for this is generic, and individuality must come from elsewhere. It cannot be a negation or a deficiency, as matter is according to the Thomist view, but must rather be something positive and a perfection. The individual unity must be grounded in a positive entity, which is added to the generic nature. Now, this positive entity cannot be a mere accident like quantity, according to Thomas, but, as form to matter, it contracts the species to individual being. Thus, in general, form plays the rôle of individuation in the Scotist system; and its principle is "the last reality of form." Nevertheless, this last element is not to be considered a thing added to the species as another thing, but it is "the last reality of being." To this ultimate element Scotus himself, in one place at least, gives the name Hæcceitas, and his scholars commonly use this term. Hæcceity, then, or thisness, is to Scotus the principle of individuation. But the individual form is not distinguished from the specific, as thing from thing; rather the distinction is between two realities of the same thing. Here, again, comes in his doctrine of formalities, for it is a formal distinction. Scotus thus shows again that the rubrics of matter and form are not sufficient to account for individual being. He virtually introduces a new substantial principle in the line of form, which yet is the last reality of being. Thus the question of Universals is of but little consequence to Scotus, compared to that of the individual. It is true he does not draw out the full result of this great innovation. Of the essential and the individual, Thomas emphasizes only the

essential. Occam holds only to the individual. Scotus, in holding to both, and with persistency to the latter, breaks up scholasticism, and gives us to see in the distant perspective of the future the modern idea of force as substantial. The hæcceity of Scotus is the precursor of this notion through Nicholas and Bruno and Leibnitz.

Through this aperçu of Scotus the light broke in upon Peter Aureolus, who said, Every thing actual is, as such, individual; also upon Durandus, who said, The primal cause which gives being to the thing, gives it, eo ipso, individual being. Occam but repeated this in saying, that being and individual being are coincident.

The significance of the question of Individuation to Leibnitz may be seen in the fact that he wrote a dissertation on the subject quite early in his career, and thereby gained his Baccalaureate. He criticises Scotus, it is true, who was bound in the hamper of scholasticism, and held on to matter and form. Leibnitz broke with them utterly, and hence his dictum on this question is essentially the same with Aureolus and Occam: "Every individual is individuated by his whole entity." The entelechy of Aristotle becomes the monad, and the substantial forms of the scholastics become forces.

4. A great advance of thought is seen in Scotus' doctrine of God. Thomas had never succeeded in freeing himself from the apprehension of the Divine as substance. To him God is absolute being. Thought and will are only subordinate factors in the divine essence. Being thus, not necessarily conceived as spirituality, is the very heart of the Divine Essence. He has not disentangled himself from the notion of the PseudoDionysius of the essential incognizability of God, for no predicates are applicable to him. God can be known only by dim and distant reflection of the external world. Thus the emphasis of the transcendence of God leads to a representation of him, after the spirit of Spinoza, as the absolute substance, in relation to which all other things and beings are but accidents. The immanence of God in the human soul, by which knowledge of God and communion with him are mediated, is ignored. As he then is the only true being, all definite existence is a mode of the Divine Substance. The solvent word with Aquinas is participation. The creature participates in being. Even the

bad, so far as it is anything real, comes from God. But since it is a defect, a limit, it does not come from the Divine Causality. The line which divides such a course of thought from Pantheism, it is evident, is hard to be drawn.

Now, in marked contrast with all this, Scotus emancipates himself from the notion of substance as applied to God, and represents him mainly as cause. His three primalities in God are first cause, final cause, and perfect being, which imply each other. The highest efficient cause must work for itself as end, and thus will be the perfect being. This absolutely perfect being must be one. From this he proceeds to show that it is infinite, then absolutely simple, no combination of potentiality and actuality. So Scotus eliminates the category of substance as relates to God, and is thoroughly in earnest with the notion of cause. Substance is an inadequate thought.

God must be considered as subject. Hegel claimed to do this, but many fail to see that he has raised this category to its highest potency, making him really a person; certainly Scotus does this, which Aquinas failed to do, because it was utterly inconsistent with his notion of substance. Over against the shibboleth of Aquinas, which was participation, the solvent word with Scotus was creation. The creature is a product of the divine act. Participation or any category of quantity is wholly irrelevant here.

Now there is much of the thinking of to-day which has not disentangled itself from the notion of substance as the highest. Hamilton gives us some of this folly, even when he is discussing causality. "When God is said to create out of nothing," he writes, "we construe this to thought by supposing that he evolves existence out of himself. We are utterly unable to realize in thought the possibility of the complement of existence being either increased or diminished." Nevertheless, we submit, this is just what we mean by creation, if we leave the notion of substance behind us. God, in creation, posits the world and is no less in himself after creation than before. Creation has added to the sum of being. There is no other way to escape Pantheism.

An important question raised by Scotus is that regarding the Divine perfections or attributes. Are they grounded in the Divine nature, or are they merely our subjective modes of

viewing him? He answers that they are distinct, grounded in the Divine nature and not merely relative to our thought. Here again his doctrine of formalities plays its usual part. The distinction of the attributes is not an absolutely real one, but formal. There is not a diversity as between thing and thing, although this formal diversity he declares to be between realities. The statement of the younger Dr. Hodge regarding the Divine attributes shows that he has conned the pages of Duns. "The attributes differ among themselves," says the Princeton theologian, "not as distinct things, but as different tendencies and modes of existence and action of the same thing," that is, the Divine Substance. Schleiermacher is a distinguished example in modern times of the counter view regarding the attributes. This diversity, however, according to Duns, does not destroy the simplicity of the Divine Being, for all these perfections are infinite, and being expressive of the whole Divine Essence, are in this reference one.

Let us pass now to Scotus' notion of the freedom of God. Intellect and will are both to be asserted of him. They are not diverse from his essence, but rather identical with it. He relates them also to his trinitarian thought. The ultimate principle of the Divine Son is knowledge: the principle of the Divine Spirit is will or love. But will is deeper than intellect in God. Duns says expressly, "The will in God is his very essence." Still more the will does not depend ultimately upon intellect, but, he asserts, "from the nature of the thing, will is in God." So also from the the contingency which we observe in the world, we infer contingent causality or freedom in God. For singular contingent things there is no other ground to be asserted than the will of God. To take any further cause or reason is to fall into absurdity. Scotus asserts of God that he is causa sui. On the verge of a great thought, he yet draws back from the logical result of his system. In some places he asserts that God is a se with no limitation, but in the Repor tata he declares he is causa sui in the negative sense, that his principium is from no other. He denies it there in the positive sense, declaring that no being has its principium from itself. Here is one of the places, we believe, when he holds back from the ultimate truth. That is just what distinguishes God from all other beings, that he is causa sui in the fullest sense.

This distinction has been looked at askance by theologians, but it is not a fearful specter if we boldly confront it. Let us pause to peer down into this abyss. Mayhap we shall in our dredging bring up mud, and haply we may find goodly pearls. What do the theologians mean by ascribing to God underived existence? What else do they mean by asserting him to be absolutely unconditioned, independent, and therefore self-existent? Self-existence is simply a less frightful way of saying causa sui. The tremor that comes over us when we make the assertion arises from the suspicion that we mean by it that God came forth from non-being into being. Thus, John Howe argues in this way: "It is also evident that some being was uncaused, or was ever of itself without any cause. For what never was from another had never any cause, since nothing could be its own cause, nor did it ever of itself step out of non-being into being." So conservative a theologian as Van Oosterzee asserts, "In himself he has the cause, the source, the power of his life; he is causa sui, precisely because he is the absolute infinite being." Does any say this is absurd? What may be absurd on the creature plain is not such as to the divine. Tutor Wordsworth in his Bampton Lecture of last year on "The One Religion," speaks of the apparent incompatibility of the two attributes, infinite and personal, as applied to God. He says, "This mystery, then, is a perfectly credible one, though completely inexplicable; and it is credible also because it is to us inexplicable." He further says, the Credo quia absurdum of Tertullian has much of the soberest common sense at the bottom. Julius Müller goes further in the same direction, telling us directly we must change the negative view of mere independence held by the older theologians into the positive one of causa sui. "His essence," he tells us, "is wholly his own deed;" and again, "the original being in his innermost ground is to be considered as intelligence determining itself, that is, as absolute personality; and once again he says, "God, in the original ground of his essence, is nothing else than will and freedom." So also Thomasius tells us we must place this distinction at the summit of our doctrine of God, since he is causa sui in the exact sense.

There are three philosophic stages of the doctrine of God, which should be carefully discriminated, namely, those of sub

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