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ACCIDENTS devised, or rather the two extreme views of the Greeks referred to above are revived. Descartes, making quantity the very essence of matter, and thought the essence of spirit, denies all real distinction between substance and accident. While teaching an extreme dualism in psychology, his definition of substance, as independent being, gave occasion to Spinoza's monism, and accidents became still more deeply buried in substance. On the other hand substance seems at last to disappear with Locke, the world is resolved into a congeries of qualities (primary, or extension, and secondary, or sensible properties). The primary qualities, however, still retain a foundation in the objective order, but with Berkeley they become entirely subjectified; only the soul is allowed a substantial element as the support of psychical accidents. This element is likewise dissolved in the philosophy of Hume and the Associationists. Kant considered accidents to be simply subjective categories of sense and intellect, forms according to which the mind apprehends and judges of things—which things are, and must remain, unknowable. Spencer retains Kant's unknowable noumenon but admits phenomena to be its objective aspects or modifications.

III.—Several other classifications of accidents are found in the pertinent treatises. It should be noted that while accidents by inhesion modify substance, they are witnesses to its nature, being the medium whereby the mind, through a process of abstraction and inference, builds its analogical concepts of the constitution of substances. From this point of view material accidents are classed as (a) proper sensibles—the excitants of the individual senses, colour for sight, sound for hearing, etc.—and (b) common sensibles—extension and its modes, size, distance, etc.—which stimulate two or more senses, especially touch and sight. Through these two groups of accidents, and concomitantly with their perception, the underlying subject is apperceived. Substance in its concrete existence, not in its abstract essence, is said to be an accidental object of sense.

IV.—The modern views of accident, so far as they accord to it any objectivity, are based on the physical theory that all, at least material, phenomena (light, colour, heat, sound, etc.) are simply varying forms of motion. In part, the kinetic element in such phenomena was known to Aristotle and the Scholastics (cf. St. Thomas, De Anima, III, Lect. ii); but it is only in recent times that physical experimentation has thrown light on the correlation of material phenomena as conditioned by degrees of motion. While all Neo-Scholastic philosophers maintain that motion alone will not explain the objectivity of extension, some (e.g. Gutberlet) admit that it accounts for the sensible qualities (colour, sound, etc.). Haan (Philos. Nat.) frees the theory of motion from an extreme idealism, but holds that the theory of the real, formal objectivity of those qualities affords a more satisfactory explanation of sense-perception. The majority of Neo-Scholastic writers favour this latter view. (Pesch, Phil. Nat.)

V.—The teaching of Catholic philosophy on the distinct reality of certain absolute, not purely modal, accidents was occasioned by the doctrine of the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, though the arguments for the theory are deduced from natural experience. The same doctrine, however, suggests the further question, whether such accidents may not be separable from substance. Reason alone offers no positive arguments for such separability. The most it can do is to show that separability involves no inherent contradiction, and hence no absolute impossibility; the Omnipotence that endows substance with the power of supporting accidents can, it is claimed, supply some other means of support. Nor would the accidents thus separated, and supernaturally supported, lose their character as accidents, since they would still retain their essential property, i.e. natural exigence of inhesion. Of course the intrinsic possibility of such separation depends solely on the supernatural interference of God, nor may it extend to all classes of accidents. Thus, e.g., it is absolutely impossible for vital faculties, or acts, to exist outside their natural subjects, or principles. Theorists who, like the Cartesians, deny the objective, distinct entity of all accidents have been obliged to reconcile this negation with their belief in the Real Presence by maintaining that the species, or accidents, of bread and wine do not really remain in the Eucharist, but that after Consecration God produces on our senses the impressions corresponding to the natural phenomena. This theory obviously demands a seemingly unnecessary multiplication of miracles and has at present few if any serious advocates. (See .)

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Accidents,. See.

Acclamation (Lat. ad, to, clamare, to cry out). —The word acclamatio (in the plural, acclamationes) was used in the classical Latin of Republican Rome as a general term for any manifestation of popular feeling expressed by a shout. At weddings, funerals, triumphs, etc., these acclamations were generally limited to certain stereotyped forms. For example, when the bride was being conducted to her husband's house the spectators cried: Io Hymen, Hymenaee, or Talasse, or Talassio. At a triumph there was a general shout of Io Triumphe. An orator who gained the approbation of his hearers was interrupted with cries of belle et festive, bene et præclare, non potest melius, and the like where we should say "Hear, hear!" Under the Empire these acclamations took a remarkable development, more particularly in the circus and in the theatre. At the entrance of the emperor the audience rose and greeted him with shouts, which in the time of Nero were reduced to certain prescribed forms and were sung in rhythm. Moreover, like the guns of a royal salute, these cries were also prolonged and repeated for a definite and carefully recorded number of times. The same custom invaded the senate, and under the later Antonines it would seem that such collective expressions of feeling as would nowadays be incorporated in an address of congratulation or a vote of censure, then took the form of acclamations which must have been carefully drafted beforehand and were apparently shouted in chorus by the whole assembly. A long specimen of denunciatory acclamations which indeed might better be called imprecations, chanted in the Senate after the assassination of the Emperor Commodus (192), is preserved by Lampridius. The original occupies several pages; a few clauses may suffice here: "On every side are statues of the enemy (i.e. Commodus); on every side statues of the parricide; on every side statues of the gladiator. Down with the statues of this gladiator and parricide. Let the slayer of his fellow-citizens be dragged in the dust; let the statues of the gladiator be dragged at the cart's tail."

More to our present purpose, however, are the favourable acclamations of the Senate, such as those recorded by Lampridius at the election of Alexander Severus: "Alexander Augustus, may the gods keep thee. For thy modesty; for thy prudence; for thy guilelessness; for thy chastity. From this we understand what sort of a ruler thou