and all the rest of the predicates interpretative of the 'sensephenomena,' or 'states of sense-consciousness,' were not engendered in my mind by aught except my mind itself; supposing, I say, that all this were the case, as Kant actually maintained: would it or would it not follow, as Kant believed it would, that the Principle of Causality, thus embodying mere subjective concepts, could never lift me by any process of inference from the world of 'subjective mental appearances or phenomena' (within which alone the concepts of 'cause and effect' were formed,1 and the Principle of Causality finds its valid application), to the extra-mental' world of 'realities'which latter world must therefore ever transcend' and baffle all the attempts of man's speculative reason to reach a knowledge of it?

Whether these suspicions are well founded, or, in other words, whether the destructive side of the Kantian Critique is in any way answerable, I purpose to discuss in a future article.

The reader who may have accompanied me so far in these discussions will probably have asked himself more than once whether realist and idealist mean the same thing by 'reality'? Whether they disagree in language rather than in thought when the one affirms and the other denies that some objects' of knowledge are 'really distinct' from the 'knowing subject,' and from one another? Whether the phenomenon' is devoid of 'reality' simply because it appears' to the sentient mind? Whether what we are compelled to think is devoid of reality simply because we succeed in 'thinking' it? Whether or why reality is or should be in itself unknowable? Whether those who think so can admit any distinction' to be 'real'? Whether finally, the endless discussions of modern philosophy on appearance and reality,' 'thought reality,''thought and thing,' 'the nature of the real' and such like, are not simply reproductions of the equally endless controversies with which the student of medieval philosophy is familiar -the Thomist' and 'Scotist' controversies, concerning

1 Cf. supra, p. 122.

the 'ens reale' and the 'ens rationis,' the 'distinctio logica,' the distinctio virtualis-cum fundamento in re'-and the 'distinctio formalis'?

So that these perennial questions have, after all, a living as well as an historic interest. Nor is this living interest merely speculative: it is one that is eminently practical; one that is not for the scholar alone but for every good man who loves the truth; one that has even a poignant element in it for the Catholic, when he, knowing what it is to possess the truth, asks himself this anxious question: Is it possible that there should be multitudes of good, earnest, sincere men outside the fold of the one True Church at the present day partly at least because they give their adherence to systems of philosophy which, although really in harmony with Revealed Truth, are formulated in such a terminology that they appear to be, and are believed by most Catholics really to be, at variance with the very fundamentals of all Religion?

[To be continued.]

P. COFFEY.

THE CAUSALITY OF CREATURES AND DIVINE CO-OPERATION: OR, THE THEORY OF THE FLOW OF MOTION-I1

ΤΗ

HE origin and nature of activity, the existence in creatures of a principle of efficient causality, the relation of the creature to the Creator in the natural and supernatural orders, are questions which have exercised a strange fascination over philosophic minds, and have given rise to lengthy and sometimes bitter controversies. The Occasionalists sought to solve the mystery of the relationship between God and His creatures by denying causality to creatures, while Deists taught that the world is running its course according to law, independently of divine providence or divine interference, and that the Deity Himself is living a life of happy aloofness from and unconcern with the affairs of the world; and both parties agreed that the creature is really distinct from the Creator. Among those who question or deny the existence of a Supreme Being distinct from the world, whether they call themselves agnostics, or atheists, or pantheists, there cannot be, properly speaking, a question of determining the relations of the creature to the Creator. And then we are all more or less familiar with the historic controversies between rival Catholic schools on this question of the nature of divine co-operation. The Essay under review is the expression of a new attempt to adjust the relations between the creature and the Creator in the light of modern science and modern thought. The desire to expound the truths of faith so as to recommend them to the favourable notice of the men of science is in itself truly admirable; but it has had already, in quite recent times, very unhappy results. I will give a summary of the new theory in the following paragraphs.

1 Le Mouvement, Paris, 1898.

Cf. De l'action de Dieu sur les creatures, criticised by Tournely, De opere sex dierum, Quaestio Quarta, art. iii.

I.

The substance of this theory is, that all action is motion; that motion originates exclusively from God; that creatures become active by receiving and transmitting a motion produced by God. The first point therefore to be expounded is the nature of Motion.

It

Motion or Movement (Motus ') is sometimes taken, in a wide signification, to include every operation; in which sense the term is applied even to God, the 'Primum Movens Immobile.' Again it is taken to express change ('mutationem'); and in this sense it can be predicated of the Angels in relation to their acts. And finally there is the movement of bodies, which is perceptible even by the senses. When a formal definition of Movement is attempted philosophers accept the definition of Aristotle, which is thus rendered in our text-books: Actus entis in potentia, prout in potentia. In the Essay under review the Aristotelic formula is not correctly translated. It is rendered, 'The act of being in potentiality, as such.'1 should be translated, 'The act of a being in potentiality as such '—'entis' being used substantively and not participially; for movement supposes a pre-existing subject, so that creation, for example, is not called 'motus.' But, you will say, the definition itself is very obscure; please explain it. Let us consider, then, a journey from Maynooth to Dublin. As long as the intending traveller has not yet set out on the journey he is not in movement, at least he is not in movement towards Dublin, he is altogether in potentia in regard to presence in Dublin. When he has set out on his journey he is said to be in movement or in motion, until he reaches his destination, when the movement ceases. And hence movement' (motus) is understood to be the condition of a thing or of a person who has made a beginning, who is actually tending towards some goal, but who has not yet reached that goal. Hence it is defined: Actus entis in potentia, prout in potentia; because a being in motion is in act, it is actually tending towards

1 Motion, p. 24.

some term; but yet it is, from another point of view, in potentiality, namely, in regard to the term; it is an actus entis in potentia, prout in potentia' (ad terminum), for when the term is reached the movement ceases.

Movement, of whatever kind, always exists in the object moved, and it can be local, quantitative, or qualitative. Local movement I have just described. An example of quantitative movement is the continuous growth of man in quantity from infancy to perfect manhood. And an example of qualitative movement is the growth of heat in some object put into a fire until the desired maximum degree of heat is attained. In all these cases we have an 'Actus entis,' for there is a pre-existing subject which is already in act, tending towards a determined goal; and yet it is an 'Actus entis in potentia, prout in potentia,' because the thing moved, and while in motion, is in potentia in relation to the term to which it is moving.

Movement can be instantaneous or successive. Some philosophers deny that motus, in the aristotelic sense, is applicable to what is called instantaneous movement, on the ground that motus implies something which is partly in act and partly in potentiality, or that motus must be a via ad terminum; but, if we except immanent acts, philosophers generally teach that instantaneous change can be a true movement; that we can distinguish between its transient fieri and its stable factum esse, and that the fieri can be regarded as the via ad factum esse. Thomist philosophers deny that the aristotelic definition of motus applies to immanent acts, as thoughts and volitions, though they may be called motus in the wider signification of the term; but according to Suarez they, too, can be considered to be movement in the sense of the aristotelic definition.

Now according to the author whose Essay I am reviewing, the same individual motion can pass from one agent into another. And motion,' he writes,1 passes quite readily from one agent into another without losing its

1 Ibid., p. 9.