Substantial Forms

The errors of our senses serve us as general and very fertile principles for drawing false conclusions, which in turn serve as principles.

I have explained in what our sensations consist and the general errors found within them.

I now show that these general errors have been used as indisputable principles to explain all things; that an infinity of false consequences has been drawn from them, which have also in their turn served as principles for drawing other consequences; and that thus, little by little, those imaginary sciences without body and without reality have been composed, after which people run blindly, but which, like ghosts, leave to those who embrace them nothing but confusion and the shame of having allowed themselves to be seduced, or that mark of folly which makes one take pleasure in feeding on illusions and chimeras. This must be shown in particular by examples.

We are accustomed to attribute our own sensations to objects, and that we judge that colors, smells, tastes, and other sensible qualities are found in the bodies we call colored, odorous, tasty, and so on. It has been recognized that this is an error. It must now be shown that we use this error as a principle to draw false consequences, and that subsequently we regard these latter consequences as other principles upon which we continue to base our reasoning. In short, we must here expose the steps taken by the human mind in the search for certain particular truths when this false principle—that our sensations are in the objects—appears to it indisputable.

But, to make this more evident, let us take some particular body whose nature is being investigated, and let us see what a man would do who wished, for example, to know what honey and salt are. The first thing this man would do would be to examine their color, smell, taste, and other sensible qualities, determining which belong to honey and which to salt, in what they agree, in what they differ, and what relationship they may still have with those of other bodies. This done, here is roughly the manner in which he would reason, assuming he believed as an indisputable principle that sensations were in the objects of the senses.

Origin of essential differences

All the things I feel in tasting, seeing, and handling this honey and this salt are in this honey and in this salt. Now it is indubitable that what I feel in honey differs essentially from what I feel in salt. The whiteness of salt undoubtedly differs far more than merely in degree from the color of honey, and the sweetness of honey from the pungent taste of salt: and consequently, there must be an essential difference between honey and salt; since all that I feel in the one and in the other does not differ only in degree (more or less), but differs essentially.

This is the first step this person would take; for undoubtedly he can judge that honey and salt differ essentially only because he finds that the appearances of one differ essentially from those of the other—that is, that the sensations he has of honey differ essentially from those he has of salt, since he judges them only by the impression they make on the senses. He therefore next regards his conclusion as a new principle from which he draws other conclusions in this manner.

Substantial forms

Since, then, honey and salt and other natural bodies differ essentially from one another, it follows that those are greatly mistaken who wish to make us believe that all the difference found between these bodies consists only in the different configuration of the small parts that compose them. For since figure is not essential to different bodies, if the figure of these small parts that they imagine in honey changes, honey will remain honey, even if these parts had the figure of the small parts of salt. Thus, it is necessary that there be found some substance which, being joined to the primary matter common to all different bodies, causes them to differ essentially from one another.

Here is the second step this man would take, and the happy discovery of substantial forms: those fertile substances that produce everything we see in nature, although they subsist only in the imagination of our philosopher.

But let us see the properties he will liberally give to this being of his invention, for he will undoubtedly strip all other substances of the properties most essential to them in order to clothe this being with them.

On some other errors of Scholastic philosophy.

Since, then, there are found in each natural body two substances that compose it, one which is common to honey and salt and to all other bodies, and the other which makes honey honey, salt salt, and all other bodies what they are, it follows that the first, which is matter, having no contrary and being indifferent to all forms, must remain without force and without action, since it has no need to defend itself. But as for the others, which are the substantial forms, they need to be always accompanied by qualities and faculties to defend them. They must always be on their guard, lest they be surprised: they must work continually for their preservation, to extend their dominion over neighboring matters, and to push their conquests as far as they can, because if they were without force, or if they failed to act, other forms would come upon them by surprise and annihilate them immediately. They must therefore always fight, and nourish antipathies and irreconcilable hatreds against those enemy forms that seek only to destroy them.

If it happens that one form seizes the matter of another—for example, if the form of a corpse seizes the body of a dog—it is not enough for this form to content itself with annihilating the form of the dog; its hatred must be satisfied in the destruction of all the qualities that followed the party of its enemy. Immediately, the hair of the corpse must be white with a newly created whiteness; its blood must be red with a redness that is not suspect; this whole body must be covered with qualities faithful to their mistress, defending her according to the little strength possessed by the qualities of a dead body, which must soon perish in their turn. But because one cannot always fight and all things have a place of rest, it is undoubtedly necessary that fire, for example, have its center, where it always strives to go by its lightness and natural inclination, in order to rest, to burn no more, and even to quit the heat it kept here below only for its defense.

Here is a small part of the consequences drawn from this last principle, that there are substantial forms, consequences which our philosopher has been made to conclude with perhaps too much liberty, for ordinarily others say these same things more seriously than he has done here.

There are yet an infinity of other consequences that every philosopher draws daily, according to his humor and inclination, according to the fertility or sterility of his imagination; for it is only these things that make them differ from one another.

We do not stop here to combat these chimerical substances; other persons have examined them sufficiently. They have shown clearly enough that substantial forms were never in nature, and that they serve to draw a very great number of false, ridiculous, and even contradictory consequences. We content ourselves with having recognized their origin in the human mind, and that they owe what they are today to this prejudice common to all men, that sensations are in the objects they feel.

For if one considers with a little attention what we have already said, namely, that it is necessary for the preservation of the body that we have essentially different sensations, although the impressions that objects make on our body differ only very slightly, one will see clearly that it is wrongly that one imagines such great differences in the objects of our senses.

But I must say here in passing that there is nothing to object to in these terms of form and essential difference. Honey is undoubtedly honey by its form, and it is thus that it differs essentially from salt; but this form or this essential difference consists only in the different configuration of its parts. It is this different configuration that makes honey honey and salt salt; and although it is only accidental to matter in general to have the configuration of the parts of honey or of salt, and thus to have the form of honey or of salt, one can nevertheless say that it is essential to honey and to salt, in order to be what they are, to have such or such a configuration in their parts: just as the sensations of cold, heat, pleasure, and pain are not essential to the soul, but only to the soul that feels them; because it is by these sensations that it is called to feel heat, cold, pleasure, and pain.