In the middle ages 207

are before their appearance and after their disap-

pearance, is to reveal a complete misunderstanding

of the scholastic system. One has no right to re-

quire of a doctrine a solution which it does not pre-

tend to give. We simply know, by reasoning, that

there must be matter and form, — just as we know

that there 7}iust be substances and accidents. In

their explanation of facts, the scholastics taught

that a given thing 7riust be ; but they did not always

teach what that thing is.

This doctrine represents a definitely teleological

interpretation of the universe. For, the successive

stages of change in each of the becoming sub-

stances, and the recurrence of the same transfor-

mations in the corporeal world, require the inclina-

tion on the part of each being to follow a definite

order in its activity.^" Such inclination in each sub-

stance is immanent finality.

To sum up. Two kinds of change suffice to ex-

plain the corporeal world. First the becoming of

constituted substance; thus, an oak is in process of

becoming, in its activities, its quantity, its qualities,

its relations, but it retains the same substance.

Second, a change of one substance into another (or

into many other substances) ; such as the change

of an oak into a collection of chemical bodies, when,

under external influences, the disposition of the

3" The term natura is used to signify the individual substance as

far as it possesses such definite inclination.

208 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

primary matter requires a new substantial becom-

ing of the whole.

V

It is impossible here to give a detailed survey of

such an interpretation of the corporeal world. Let

us merely apply this conception of the world to

the famous scholastic problem of "individuation,"

and show how all of these doctrines are employed

for an explanation of humanity.

The problem of individuation (individuatio) in

the scholastic philosophy has a peculiar but re-

stricted significance. The problem is: How can

so many distinct individualities of the same sub-

stantial perfection, and therefore of the same kind,

exist ? Why are there millions and millions of oaks,

and not only one oak, one forma querci? Why

should there be millions and milhons of htmian be-

ings, and not only one man? Why myriads of

molecules of water, and not only 07ie molecule of

water? Why not one molecule or ion or electron of

each kind? If this were in fact the case, the world

would still represent a scale of perfection, differing

degree by degree; but there would be no two cor-

poreal beings of the same kind. One thing would

differ from another, as the nmnber three differs

from the number four.

The monads of Leibnitz realize in some aspects

such a conception of the world. But the thomistic

solution is more profound and lies in this thesis: