GLOSSARY
GLOSSARY1
accident:
Something which does not have ontological consistency and which therefore needs to inhere in something else, as upon a foundation. It is opposed to substance. Examples of accidents are: weight (quantity), virtue (quality), paternity (relationship) which cannot exist without something to support them. The support of an accident is called a “subject.” St. Thomas, following Aristotle, accounts for nine accidents, which, added to substance, constitute the Ten Predicaments or Categories.
administratively:
This word, used in the text to translate the Latin administrative, means subordinately, that is, performed by a minister, who is a servant.
apprehension:
Man’s action depends on two faculties: one by which he learns about the existence of an external object; the other by which he is attracted (or repelled) by this object. The former is the apprehensive faculty, the latter is the appetitive.
art:
Human activity directed to the modification of external matter is said to be engaged in a factio (cutting, building, melting, etc.); but when this activity remains within the doer, it is called actio (in the restricted sense of the word). Examples of actio are feeling, willing, etc. The rational regulation of a factio is art. Art is contrasted with nature in that the latter is a principle of change within the thing itself: a seed grows naturally into a tree because the seed contains within itself the principle of germination. But in the case of art the principle of change is external to the thing: a stone becomes a statue not because of something it possesses but because of an action external to it. This distinction is still kept alive by our use of artificial vs. natural.
difference (differentia):
It is the relation of otherness between things that, from another point of view, are identical. This identity may be a generic one (as between one kind of animal and another). The character that distinguishes one species from others within the same genus is called the differentia specifica. So, e.g., man is constituted within the genus animal by the differentia of rationality. Popularly this was described by saying that the differentia is the knife that carves a species out of the genus.
element:
This is anything from which something is originally made. In a bronze statue, bronze is not an element, because bronze itself is made out of something simpler (earth, etc.). An element moreover has a form and is thus constituted into a species, a fact which differentiates it from formless primal matter. And finally an element is inherent in the things it constitutes, which differentiates it from a principle. In physics the four elements were earth, water, air, and fire, to which ether (the quintessence) is added.
end (finis):
It is that for the sake of which something else is done. The end is the first and foremost principle of causality, for, according to Aristotle, not only does man act finalistically (teleologically) but nature as well. The only cause not controlled by teleology is chance. And yet even here it plays its part because, though the ploughman who stumbles upon a buried pot of gold does not intend to find it (he is not actuated by that end), yet if we are to speak at all of fortune, the thing accidentally discovered must be such as to be able to be envisaged as an end by the human will (it must be such that, were its existence known, would be desirable. The end is the first moment in the endeavor and the last in the achievement; e.g., recovery of health, the thought of which begins the series of: deliberation, visit to the physician, entrance into the hospital, etc., is the last moment of the process. Since the end is what our will strives after, its meaning coincides with what we call “the good.”
essentially:
This word is frequently used in the text in the strict sense of “according to essence or nature”; not in the common sense which the word has acquired colloquially, whereby it means “not completely but almost so.”
fomes:
An inclination in man, due not to human nature as instituted by God, but to nature as corrupted by original sin. It consists in a proclivity to sensuality in disregard of the dictates of reason.
form:
It is that by which a thing is what it is: John is a man, i.e., an animal with a rational soul, and this rational soul is his form. Form is the principle of being; by itself it constitutes a thing in act; form is to act as matter is to potency.
habit:
This word is sometimes used to designate one of the Ten Predicaments. It then has the meaning we find in the phrase: “The habit does not make the monk.” It also has the post-predicamental meaning and signifies then the opposite of privation. Finally, it can designate one of the varieties of the accident quality. In this sense it has a meaning close to ours when we say “Virtue is a habit,” or, “Walking becomes a habit in a well-trained child.” St. Thomas uses the word habitudo to mean relationship.
honest:
“Honesty” (honestas) does not regularly have the restricted meaning which the word has acquired. It is broadly equivalent to “moral virtue.” Honestum is contrasted to “useful” and “pleasurable.” What is honest is desired for its own sake by the rational appetite, as opposed to that which is desired for its use or, by the appetitive faculty, for pleasure.
injury:
The Latin word iniuria is translated in the text by “injury.” We must recall however that iniuria is the opposite of “justice,” so that the colloquial meaning of “injury” does not fit.
intention:
In addition to the ordinary meaning this word still possesses in the volitional sphere, it had another one which was once very common in the field of apprehension. The representation of an external thing, as it exists in human consciousness, was called an intentio. The adverb intentionaliter was, therefore, regularly contrasted with the adverb realiter. Logic is an intentional science, botany a real one.
ius:
This word has given rise to confusion. Like droit, Recht, diritto, etc., ius has two aspects: viz., that of a regulating norm, and that of a faculty to a claim. Today the first is called “objective,” the latter “subjective” ius. In English we have two different words for these two aspects: ius as norm is “law”; as a faculty it is “right.” Confusion arises when the subjective term “right” is used to translate ius, droit, Recht, in the objective sense of “law.” St. Thomas seldom uses ius in its subjective sense.
judicial:
This term has a narrow technical significance: iudicialia are those precepts given by God for the purpose of regulating man’s action toward other men which became obsolete at the coming of Christ.
legal:
This term has a special sense as a modifier of “justice.” It applies to the enjoinment of certain moral acts (bravery, temperance, etc.) the performance of which is deemed politically indispensable. When the state, for example, commands a man to face death on the battlefield, it issues an order which is indeed just, but it is so by a kind of political justice, which, according to the Aristotelian usage, is called “legal” justice.
motion:
The word motus has more meanings than our term “motion.” St. Thomas speaks of spiritual and of natural motus, and of the latter he frequently considers three varieties: qualitative, e.g., change of color; quantitative, e.g., change of weight; and local, e.g., change of place, which is the sense in which we still use the word.
order:
A multiplicity of diverse individuals acting together for the attainment of an end of common interest to them all must be made into a unit. This unification is obtained by assigning to the properly endowed and accurately prepared individuals the performance of those tasks necessary for the attainment of the desired end. This hierarchy of indispensable posts graded up to the highest is called an “ordo.” The term covers both the form of the array and the resulting organization. A good example of “ordo” is an army, arrayed from the lowest private up to the commanding general. What keeps it together is order, which subsequently comes to mean a command which, in turn, is not a mere arbitrary injunction but rather the norm imposed by the very nature of the organization. The purely formal side of order is obvious when we consider, for example, that an army seized by panic loses its capacity to defend itself and the life of its components. But as soon as order is re-established these same soldiers, in the same numbers and with the same weapons, pass from destructive confusion to victory.
politic:
St. Thomas, following Aristotle, gives to this the meaning of “non-despotic,” derived from the word politia when used in the sense of the good popular government (a popular government which rules not for the good of the lower classes alone, but for the benefit of the entire community).
positive:
In addition to the meanings which this word has as the opposite of negative and privative, it also has that of non-natural. This is a very old usage and originates with the Greek Sophists who dwelt on the distinction between that which is abiding (by nature) and that which is transient (by convention). The latter term eventually came to be “thesis,” which was easily translated into Latin as “positio.”
potency:
In addition to other well-known meanings, “potency”—as passivity—was used in the sense which is still found today when we speak of a thing as potential and not actual. The seed is the tree (in potency). A country, potentially invincible, may actually be very vulnerable. Closely connected with this significance is the meaning which the word has in psychological parlance: the power of seeing, of hearing, etc. As long as we live we can always see but we do not see at every instant of our life; we must have the potentia, the power to see at all times; this potency becomes an act at the apparition of the appropriate object (color).
principally:
The adjective principal does not render the corresponding Latin one. Principally often means something quite different from chiefly: it does not indicate that something which is affirmed of a thing could, in a lesser degree, be affirmed of others; but rather that these other things must be traced back to it. If we say that snow is principally constituted by water, it does not mean that there is another minor element in it, but that water is the one thing from which snow comes.
principle:
This is the source or cause of being (“nature is the principle of motion, etc.”); it is also the source of intelligibility (“not every principle of knowing is a principle of being”). It is a proposition posited at the start of a discourse, which, within the given system, cannot be further deduced from anything anterior to it, and which therefore is accepted without further discussion. (This is the sense in which it is used by St. Thomas in the treatment of natural law; in this sense it is usually called primum principium.) It is a basic constituent: e.g., “The principles of natural things are these: matter, form, privation.” A principle is more comprehensive than cause, and cause in turn more so than element. The point is the principium of the line, but not its cause. It must be recalled that cause among Aristotelians is fourfold : the material cause, the formal, the efficient, and the final. What we today call cause corresponds to the efficient cause.
property:
(proprium). The accident proprium is the one which is possessed by every individual of a species and by no one outside of that species; e.g., the property of a magnet is the power to attract iron. From Aristotle down through medieval times, the proprium ascribed to man was “risible,” because every man can smile, and no other being can. Intellectuality is not man’s “property” because angels also have it.
reason
(ratio) This word is often used in a restricted sense, in opposition to intellect (intellectus). It then signifies the discursive, ratiocinative process in contrast to the immediate, intuitive grasp of the intellect. It is dianoetic and the intellect is noetic.
simply:
This word is used in the texts above to translate simpliciter. We must remember however that simpliciter is a quasi-synonym of “absolutely” and is used in contrast with the term “relatively” (secundum quid).
subject:
In the logical sphere it is that concept of which something must be predicated and which cannot itself be a predicate. In its ontological sense it is correlative to accident; the support of an accident, be that support another and more basic accident, or, ultimately, the substance, is called subject; e.g., the subject of color is the surface of a body. In view of this usage we are confronted with the passages in which the Latin word subjective must be translated as “objectively.” Both the logical and the ontological meaning must be kept in mind in interpreting the Aristotelian definition of substance as “that which is not in a subject nor is predicated of a subject.” The first part excludes accident which is in a subject; the second part excludes the universal, or second substance, i.e., species or genus. For in a proposition of which John Doe is the predicate no subject (other than John Doe himself) can be placed; therefore John Doe is a substance.
suppositum:
This term denotes an individual subsisting in any given species or nature: John Doe is a suppositum in the species “man”; Fido, in the species “dog.” The natures of created things are individuated by matter which is subjected to the nature of the species. Individuum, suppositum, and person are closely connected. Any single nature, to whatever genus it might belong, can be called “individual”; when restricted to the category of substance it is a “suppositum”; further narrowed to rational substance it becomes “person.” Any person is a suppositum, and any suppositum is an individual. But the converse is not true. “Hypostasis,” likewise, means “person.” The word originally signified essence or physis (nature). But as a result of the Trinitarian controversies over substance and persons, and of those over the nature of Christ, the word “hypostasis” lost its original significance and came to be used in the sense of person.
1This is not a list of formal definitions. It is a list of suggestions intended to facilitate an initial study of the text of St. Thomas.