The Divine Lamp

Article 3

Without the idea of substance the development of our intellectual life would be impossible (see note 1).
Now, if Locke, instead of examining whether the idea of substance does exist, had directed his attentnion to the question whether it can exist, he would very soon have become convinced that its necessity is such that it cannot but exist.

Without this idea it is impossible for us to make any reasonings either in though or speech.  Locke himself acknowledges that if forms the general subject of human discourse.  Apart from it we should not be able to conceive the existence of anything, corporeal or spiritual.  But we do conceive it; therefore we possess the idea of substance.

Concerning this, a distinguished Italian philosopher writes as follows:- “The idea of substance must have greatly embarrassed Ideologists had they reflected on it in good faith.  They taught that we perceive nothing but our own modifications.  The consequence of this would be either that we have not any idea of substance, or that this idea must be in us independently of our sensations.  The first of these suppositions is belied by our intimate consciousness, and by the very language of Locke and Condillac.  These philosophers confess that we are obliged to imagine an unknown something as sustaining the sensible qualities, which is the same as to admit that we have, somehow or other, a notion of substance, independently of the sensations.  Say what you will about this being a vague and obscure notion, you must needs allow that it is the center to which all the sensible qualities are referred by us, and that, without it, we could never for the idea of any sensible object.’  (see note 2)

Article 4

Why the idea of substance cannot come from sensation alone.

But whence the  impossibility, acknowledged by Locke himself, of accounting for the idea of substance by means of sensation alone?  I am sorry to be obliged, at so early a stage of these inquiries, to enter upon the difficult task of submitting to analysis the idea of substance; for I would very much rather have reserved it till near the end, when my way would have been considerably smoothed by the previous treatment of easier topics.  But, as I have no alternative, I shall endeavour to do it as clearly as I can.

The difficulty, then, lies in this: every sensation we experience, whether external or internal, is purely an affection of our own-a modification of the feeling or sentiment which we naturally have of ourselves-a passivity; and in the receiving of it our understanding has no part whatever.  A substance, on the contrary, cannot be conceived by us except as a thing which subsists in itself; which is in no way a modification, but is itself a subject of modification; and which therefore cannot fall under the perception of our senses.  Hence the idea of substance is entirely different from the idea of sensation.  The properties of the one have nothing to do with the properties of the other.  Consequently, this idea cannot be contained, nor therefore found, in sensations.  But I will point out more distinctly some essential differences between the idea of sensation and that of substance.

First difference: A sensation is an accident subsisting, not in itself, but in us; a substance subsists in itself.

Second difference: A sensation is a modification of the sentient subject; while a substance my be the sentient subject itself.

Third difference: A sensation is the result produced by that which affects our sensitive organs.  The substance of bodies, on the contrary, remains in our thoughts after being divested of all sensible qualities; which shows that it is something beyond the mere sensible. (see note 3)

In short, the substance (i.e., of bodies) is conceived by us through the following reasoning:- ‘The sensible qualities could not exist without a support.  But the sensible qualities exist; our sensations advertise us of the fact.  Therefore, that which supports them-the subject to which they belong, and which is called substance-exists also.’

The sensations simply advertise us of the presence of the sensible qualities; they do not go any further.

To deduce from these qualities the necessity of substance is the work of the understanding; and this faculty deduces it on the following principle:- ‘The sensible qualities cannot exist without a support.’

But whence does our understanding draw this principle?  Certainly not from the experience of the sensible qualities, since the support of which we speak never falls within that experience.

How come we, then, to affirm with such absolute assurance, not only that the support exists, but also that it must exist?  We could not do so unless (1) we knew what a support (a substance) is, or, which is the same thing, had the idea of it; (2) unless we possessed in us a rule whereby to discriminate between that which cannot exist without a support and that which can; (3) unless we applied this rule to the sensible qualities, and found them to be of that class of things which cannot exist without a support, a subject to which they belong.

Hence the whole difficulty which is met with in explaining the origin of the idea of substance, consists in finding a satisfactory answer (which Locke himself felt unable to give) to the question, How is it possible for us to make the above-mentioned judgment, ‘the sensible qualities cannot exist without a support’?

Now, if we examine the three things which we have said to be necessary for the making of this judgment, we shall find that there is only one of them which is not supplied by the senses.

In fact, the third of those things is the act by which, applying the rule to the sensible qualities, we judge that they necessarily demand a support.  Now, this judgment can be made as soon as our mind is in possession (1) of the said rule, and (2) of the idea of support

But the idea of support is already included in the rule.

To make this plain, let us suppose that our mind is possessed of some principle in virtue of which it understands that the sensible qualities cannot exist by themselves alone.  From this principle it is easy for the mind to draw at once the idea of support-i.e., of something (whatever that may be) which is found united to the sensible qualities and renders it possible for them to subsist.

All that remains to be discovered, therefore, is, ‘How our mind can be possessed of, or form to itself, a rule or principle authorising it to judge that “the sensible qualities cannot exist by themselves alone.”‘

 Now, this rule is of a major syllogism, and might be worded thus: ‘Accidents cannot exist by themselves alone;’ the meaning of which formula is that the mind sees an intrinsic contradiction between the idea of a certain species of things called accidents, considered by themselves alone, and the idea of existence.

The analysis, therefore, of this rule gives us two elements: (1) the accidents, and (2) the idea of existence.

The accidents themselves are furnished to us by the sensations, since they are only the sensible qualities.

What the sensations do not and cannot furnish to us is the universal and pure idea of existence; that idea which mixes itself up with all our reasonings; and this is where the point of the difficulty lies.

To recapitulate:

The idea of the substance of external bodies cannot be formed otherwise than by a judgment.

This judgment is made by means of a rule.

This rule, when analyzed, is found to be the compound result of two elements-that is to say, (1) the accidents, and (2)the idea of existence.

The accidents are supplied to us by the sensations.

The idea of existence, on the contrary, is a universal which cannot possibly come from the sense.  Consequently, on the supposition that all our ideas are derived from sensations alone, the idea of substance remains inexplicable. Excerpted from THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS, Vol 1, by Blessed Antonio Rosmini.  Public domain boo

 Notes:
Text in normal script are the notes which Rosmini himself made.  Text in italics represent my notes.

1. The word ’substance’ is derived from the Latin ’sub stans’, which means ‘to stand under.’  Locke basically denied that substance had real existence, rather, it was a product of the mind.  This was disastrous to his philosophy.  To get some idea of the importance of substance consider this quote from Maurice de Wulf:

(let us take as a particular example) “a particular oak tree…This particular individual thing possess many characteristics: it has a definite height, a trunk of cylindrical for and of definite diameter, its bark is rugged, or ‘gnarled’ as the poets say, its foliage is of a somber color, it occupies a certain place ion the forest, it leaves exercise a certain action upon the surrounding air, and itself is influenced by things external to itself by means of the sap and the vitalizing elements which it contains.  All these are so many attributes or determinations of being (existence), or, to use the scholastic terminology, so many ‘categories,’-quantity, quality, action, passion, time, space, relation.

“But all of the above categories or classes of reality presuppose a still more fundamental one.  Can anyone conceive of being ‘courageous’ without someone who is courageous?  Can one conceive quantity, thickness, growth, and the rest, without something-our oak tree in the above instance-to which they belong?  Neither the action of growing, nor the extension which comes from quantity, can be conceived as independent of the subject.  This fundamental subject Aristotle and the schoolmen after him call substance.   The substance is reality which is able to exist in and by itself (ens per se stans); it is self-sufficient.  It has no need of any  other subject in which to inhere, but it is also the support of all the rest, which therefore are called accidents,-id quod accidit alicuri rei, that which supervenes on something.” (The philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas)  
2.  Galuppi, Lettere filosofiche, &c., Messina, 1827.

3.  It may also be said that the mere sensible (whatever that may be) is not a substance, because without the addition to it of the perception of the understanding it is not yet a being, as will be said latter: whereas the term substance includes the idea of being.