Compendium of the Study of Theology

vocally. The principle is supported by many appeals to acknowledged doctrines, e.g., that nothing can be said of the Creator and of the creature in the same sense. Since the difference between an "ens" and a "non-ens" is even greater than that between the Creator and the creature, it follows a fortiori that no name can be applied in the same sense to an "ens" and a "non-ens". Names are always applied to an actual present thing. He then examines the various "cavillationes," by which the opponents seek to evade the conclusion. One of them is found in the doctrine that the name is applied to the "essence" of the thing, abstraction being made of all distinctions of time. This seems to Bacon fatuous, since men only impose names upon things present to their bodily senses, as for instance upon children at Baptism, and so they do not abstract either from present time or from actual being. Moreover, the word "essentia" implies actual being, being either identical with it or its proprium (propria passio); hence a past essence would not really be an essence at all, any more than potential being is really being. Moreover essence in composite things is constituted by the union of matter and form: hence, when matter and form are separated, as when Cæsar dies, the essence of Cæsar is gone, and the name which (according to the theory under examination) denotes the essence, is no longer applicable univocally to the dead Cæsar. Therefore they are mad who talk of the man or the essence "ceasing," when the soul (the form of man) is separated from the body. Bacon means that this would involve a contradiction in terms: if he "ceases," he is not a man; while, if he is still a man, he does not cease. Another cavil is to say that habit (habituale esse) is a term which can be applied to both being and not being (since a man is said to have a habit of doing what he has done and will do, as much as if he were actually doing it). Bacon appeals to Aristotle to show that habit belongs to the form; hence, when the form is gone, the habit is non-existent.

Passing over some additional arguments on both sides, we come to a "cavillatio," which Bacon seems to think worthy of