Ontology Or The Theory Of Being Metaphysics PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ...(6vaia, ens in se subsistens), but which is also a support or subject of accidents (JyiroKeifievov, substans, substare) Nor, indeed, need the child's reason be very highly developed in order to realize that if experience furnishes it with "beings that do not exist in themselves," there must also be beings which do exist in themselves: that if " accidents" exist at all it would be unintelligible and self-contradictory to deny the existence of "substances ." Hence, in the order of our experience the first, implicit notion of substance is that of " something existing in itself" (pvaia); the first explicit notion of it, however, is that by which it is apprehended as "a subject or support of accidents" (rrroKeijjievov, sub-stare, substantial; then by reflection we go back to the explicit notion of it as " something existing in itself." In the real or ontological order the perfection of "existing in itself" is manifestly more fundamental than that of "supporting accidents." It is in accordance with a natural law of language that we name things after the properties whereby they reveal themselves to us, rather than by names implying what is more fundamental and essential in them. "To exist in itself" is an absolute perfection, essential to substance; "to support accidents " is only a relative perfection; nor can we know a priori but a substance might perhaps exist without any accidents: we only know that accidents 1 Cf. Mercier, op. at., % 142 (p. 272). 1 Cf. Kleutghn, op. cit., Dissert, vi., ch. iii., ii, 592. cannot exist without some substance, or subject, or power which will sustain them in existence. Can substance be apprehended by the...