IN WHAT MANNER THE IDEA OF SUBSTANCE MAY BE APPLIED TO GOD.
95. In the idea of substance as formed from the beings around us and from the testimony of our consciousness we find the relation to changes which occur in it as their subject or recipient. But we have before remarked that besides this relation there is a negation of inherence in another as the modifications are inherent in the substance; this negation implies a perfection which exempts it from the necessity of inherence to which the changeable and transitory beings which we call accidents or modifications are subject. As we are ignorant of the intrinsic essence of substances, we do not know what this perfection is; yet we cannot doubt that it exists in the very nature of the subject, and is independent of the modifications which transform it. If then the essence of the substance must consist in any thing, it must be in this perfection of which we have a knowledge, but not an intuitive cognition. When therefore substance is defined in relation to accidents,quod substat accidentibus, it is rather defined by the manner in which it is presented to us than by what it is in itself.
96. Hence, of the two definitions usually received in the schools:Ens per se subsistens, a being subsisting by itself, and,id quod substat accidentibus, the subject of accidents; the first is the more correct, because it comes nearer theexpression of what it is in itself. Although we know finite substances only inasmuch as revealed by accidents, and even our own mind knows itself only in its acts, reason tells us that in order to be known things must exist, and in order that our mind may find in them something permanent, it is necessary that this something should be in them. Our knowledge does not produce its objects; in order to be known they must exist.
97. These reflections manifest the possibility of the existence of a substance not subject to accidents or change of any kind; and that this substance not only does not lose the character of substance by being immutable, but possesses it in a much more perfect degree. The perfection of substance is not in its changes but in what is permanent in it, not in having a succession of modifications inherent in it, but in existing in such a manner as not to need to inhere in another. The substance which should possess this permanence, this perfection enabling it to exist by itself, and at the same time should have no modification, should experience no change, would be infinitely superior to all other substances. This substance is God.
98. Now it is easy to answer the question whether when applied to God the idea of substance is understood in the same sense as when applied to creatures; or, to speak in the terms of the schools, whether it is taken univocally or analogously.
99. In the idea of every substance is contained the idea of being; what does not exist cannot be a substance. Inasmuch as we conceive being as a reality, as opposed to nothingness, the idea of being belongs both to God and to creatures: God is, that is to say, God is a real thing, not nothing. But if from this general idea, such as we conceive it in opposition to nothingness, we pass to its realization in objects, to the manner of its application, so to speak, wefind all the difference that there is between the contingent and the necessary, the finite and the infinite. Although we do not intuitively see the infinite being, nor the essence of finite beings, still we have evident knowledge that the wordbeingapplied to the infinite means something very different from what it does when applied to the finite.
100. In the idea of substance is also contained the idea of something permanent; this permanence belongs also to God: the infinite being is essentially permanent.
101. In the substances around us we find this permanence combined with the succession of the modifications which affect them; these changes are impossible in God. The relation to modifications is a characteristic quality of finite substances.
102. Substances are not inherent in others as modifications are inherent in them; this non-inherence also belongs to the divine substance.
103. Substances must contain something which exempts them from the necessity of inherence and raises them above the things which so rapidly succeed each other, and in their existence always need another to sustain them; this perfection is found in the divine substance which is being essentially, the fountain of perfection.
104. It follows from this analysis that all the perfection contained in the idea of substance may be applied to the infinite being; and that all that is contained in this idea which cannot be applied to this being is what implies negation or imperfection.