25 On Accident
On Accident could, by divine power, be false while the proposition ascribing existence to the relevant subject were true. Propositions like the following are contingent:
'Substance is quantified', 'Every fire is hot', and 'Man laughs'; whereas, propositions like 'Every man is susceptible of discipline', 'Every body is mobile', and 'Every man can laugh' are necessary. They cannot, that is, be false while the Proposition ascribing existence to the subject in question is true; but this is to say that they are equivalent to modal propositions expressing possibility.
Thus, 'Every man is risible' is equivalent to 'Every man can laugh'. In the second proposition the subject is taken for that which is. (In that way a childish objection is blocked.) The reason why the first set of porpositions is contingent (why, that is, they can be false while the corresponding existential propositions are true) is that God can create an object without also creating an entity distinct from it. At least He can do this where the first is prior and the second posterior.
In way of summary it should be said that a property as we have been using the term (where a property is a universal distinct from other univeisals) is an intention predicable of some species in quale and convertible with it. It connotes affirmatively or negatively something extrinsic to the thing which is designated by the subject. It is not, however, necessary that the extrinsic thing be some entity outside the mind and actually existing in the nature of things.
It can be something which is by nature predicable, or it can be a proposition existing or capable of existing in the mind. The same point holds with regards to passions (i.e., universals predicated of a subject in the second mode of perseity); they are not things inhering in an entity outside the mind. In that case a passion could not be predicable of something, nor could it be the predicate ofa conclusion in a demonstration; and both of these points hold true ofpassions. A passion, we must grant, is an intention of the soul.
25: On Accident The fifth species of universal is accident. Philosophers define it as follows: an accident is what can be present in or fail to be present in a subject without the corruption of that subject.
To see the point of this definition it should be noted that 'accident' has four senses. In one sense an accident is something really inhering in a substance in the way in which heat really inheres in the fire and whiteness in the wall. Taking
'accident' in this sense the previous definition comes out true, for no accident is So present in a subject that God could not remove it from the subject without corrupting that subject. Taking 'accident' in this sense (for something outside the mind) we do not have the fifth species of universal. The accident which is the fifth species of universal is predicable of many; but no accident outside the mind, except a word or a conventional sign of some other sort, can be predicable of many.
In another sense an accident is any thing which can be predicated contingently of something in such a way that while the proposition ascribing existence to the relevant subject remains true, the accident can either be or not be predicated of that subject. Using 'accident' in this very general sense there is nothing wrong with saying that God has some accident. Indeed, Anselm attributes this sort of accident to God as is clear in chapter 24 of the Monologion.' Nevertheless, as Anselm indicates in the same chapter, God is not susceptible of the kind of accident that really inheres in a subject. The accident one can attribute to God is simply a predicable which holds contingently of something.
The definition quoted above fits this second kind of accident when we construe 'to be present in or to fail to be present in' to refer not to real inherence, but rather to inherence by way of predication. Thus the definition is construed to mean that an accident is something that can cither be predicated or not predicated of a subject without the corruption of that subject.
In the third sense an accident is a predicable; it is predicated contingently and is capable of being successively affirmed and denied of something either as a result of a change in that which is designated by its subject or as a result of a change in some other thing. According to Anselm, many relations are accidents in this sense. They can come or leave (i.c., be affirmed or denied) merely as a result of a change in the thing designated by the subject or as a result of a change in something else.
In the fourth sense an accident is a predicable. It does not designate some absolute thing inhering in the subject. It is capable of being predicated contingently of something, but it can come to be predicated of a subject only as a result ofachange in the thing designated by that subject. Thus, those who hold that quantity is not a thing distinct from substance and quality say that quantity is an accident, for it cannot be successively affirmed and denied of a subject except by a local change in that which is designated by the subject. They would say that something is now of greater quantity than it was before simply because its parts now lie at a greater distance from each other than they did before, and they claim this can occur only by means of a local motion in the parts of the thing concerned.
We should note that although nothing is an accident unless it can be removed by divine power from a substance with the substance persisting in existence, the "PLL.,T. 158, 178C-179B.
On Accident Philosopher would deny this. He would say that there are many accidents in the heavenly bodies which can in no way be taken away from them.
Further, accidents are either separable or inseparable. A separable accident is one which can as a matter of natural fact be removed from its subject without the destruction of that subject; whereas, an inseparable accident is one that cannot. It could, however, be so removed by divine power.
Inseparable accidents differ from properties in that although an inseparable accident cannot as a matter of natural fact be taken away from the subjects whose inseparable accident it is, it could be taken away from some other subject without the destruction of that subject. Thus, although the blackness of the crow cannot as a matter of natural fact be taken away from the crow, blackness can be taken away from Socrates without his destruction. A property, on the other hand, cannot be taken away from anything. A property is no more separable from one of its subjects than from another; anything having it is destroyed by its removal.
In summarizing some points made about universals it should be noted that every universal is an intention of the soul which signifies many things and which can supposit for the many things it signifies. One intention is predicated of an intention distinct from it, not for itself, but for the things it signifies. Therefore, those propositions, in which one intention is predicated of another, do not assert that one intention is another, but rather that what is designated by one intention is what is designated by another. Universals of this sort are not things outside the mind. They do not belong to the essence of things outside the mind, nor are they parts of those things. They are entities in the soul different from each other and from things outside the mind. Some are signs of things outside and others are signs of those very signs. Thus, the name 'universal' is common to all universals; and, consequently, it is a sign of all the universals other than itself. It ought to be granted then that the universal which is predicable of the five universals, standing not for itself but for other universals, is the genus of universals in just the way an expression predicable of all expressions is a name and not a verb, particle, conjunction, or any other part of speech.
These remarks about the universals are sufficient. Those who want a more detailed knowledge about universals and their properties can read my commentary on Porphyry," where I have treated this material at greater length. The points I have omitted here can be found there.
2 See Expositio In Librum Porphyrii De Predicabilibus, edited by Ernest A.
Moody, St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute, 1965.