Compendium of the Study of Theology

to the cause, as the name "heat" belongs more properly to fire than to hot things. This solution Bacon rejects with indignation, and regards as destructive of the philosophy of Aristotle. He proceeds to argue that a name signifies the thing on which it is imposed: when it is used to signify the form, it is used in a different sense (nova impositione) and equivocally. Thus, when I say "a man runs," this is not true of the form of man, i.e., the anima rationalis. This is so, so long as we are dealing with words as signs arbitrarily imposed: he admits, however, that, considered as a natural sign, the name of an aggregate does signify the form and the matter; i.e., the form and matter are not the meaning of the word, but we may infer the existence of both the form and the matter from the existence of the thing: when we say "a man runs," we do not mean "his rational soul runs"; but, if we know that it is a man who is running, we know that he must have a rational soul. Bacon denies that the name signifies the form "more worthily"; the form has not more "dignity" than the aggregate; on the contrary, the aggregate has more dignity than the form, because it has more being, since it has the dignity and the being of matter as well as that dignity and being which belong to the form; and our knowledge begins with the aggregate and advances to the form and the matter. Other arguments follow, tending, as it were, to vindicate the dignity and importance of matter against the Averroistic exaltation of the form. "Matter," he declares, "is not a mere nothing, but a real nature and essence, having the being which belongs to its own essence; and so, when it enters into the essence of the composite" (i.e., the real particular thing made up of form and matter), "the essence of the composite and its being depend essentially upon the matter, although (it may be) more upon the form." He describes as a "vile sophism" the argument that the name of an aggregate must be considered primarily to belong to the form, because it belongs to it by virtue of its actuality (secundum quod est in actu), which is caused by the form; and that, when a name is applied to two things related as cause and effect, it is applied more properly (magis) to the