Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/263

226 Coming downwards from God, the first case is that of the angels. They (Q. L, Art. II) are not “composites of matter and form.” “It is impossible,” says Thomas, “that a substantia intellectualis (such as is an angel) should have any kind of matter whatever.” The angels are therefore, according to the famous Thomistic doctrine, primarily individuated by their species, i.e. by their forms, since they too are (in so far like God) formæ subsistentes. “It is impossible that there should be two angels of one species, as it is impossible to say that there are several separated whitenesses, or several humanities” (Q. L, Art. IV). One must add, of course, that the individual angel is no mere abstraction, like whiteness or humanity, but has those other characters of the rational individual before enumerated. Within himself, namely, the angel has, as Thomas proceeds to expound, his self-consciousness, his freedom of will (a freedom now, to be sure, confirmed forever to good or to ill), and his measure of knowledge of the truth that is both above and below him. In his relation to God, the angel has his individual “mission.” In respect of other angelic individuals, the angel has his incommunicable and specific distinctio ab aliis. In all these ways his individuality is marked off, and herein lies the separate subsistence of his form.

If one passes to the case of the human soul, one meets with a new problem. The Thomistic doctrine of the soul was notoriously a subtle and complex one — a development of Aristotle’s doctrine, in a somewhat difficult sense. The soul itself is not a composite of form and matter. It is immaterial. Yet its