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Composition as Identity
Composition
as Identity
edited by
A. J. Cotnoir
and Donald L. M. Baxter
3
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© the several contributors 2014
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First Edition published in 2014
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Acknowledgements
This volume was conceived in 2011 during discussions between the editors.
It received additional momentum from a session on Composition as Identity
at the 2011 Eastern American Philosophical Association meetings and a confer-
ence on Baxter’s work in May 2012 at the Eidos Centre for Metaphysics at the
University of Geneva. We would like to thank both sets of participants for stimu-
lating discussion. Thanks to Peter Momtchiloff for his editorial assistance and to
OUP for their support. Thanks also to John MacFarlane for Pandoc, which saved
us from much tedium.
All the contributions in this volume appear here for the first time. We are
grateful to the contributors for their patience and dedication (and timeliness)
in all aspects of the preparation of this volume. Various people provided help,
guidance, and encouragement along the way: the entire group at the Northern
Institute of Philosophy, JC Beall, Katherine Hawley, Michael Lynch, Nikolaj
Pedersen, and Philipp Blum. Special thanks belong to Toby Napoletano for his
careful proofreading work and help with the index.
Contents
List of Contributors ix
Part I. Introduction and History

1. Composition as Identity 3
A. J. Cotnoir
2. On Bits and Pieces in the History of Philosophy 24
Calvin G. Normore and Deborah J. Brown
Part II. Ontological Commitments of CAI

3. Counting and Countenancing 47
Achille C. Varzi
4. Ontological Innocence 70
Katherine Hawley
5. Parts Generate the Whole, But They Are Not Identical to It 90
Ross P. Cameron
Part III. Metaphysical Commitments of CAI

6. Composition as Identity, Modal Parts, and Mereological Essentialism 111
Meg Wallace
7. Compositional Pluralism and Composition as Identity 130
Kris McDaniel
8. Unrestricted Composition as Identity 143
Einar Duenger Bohn
Part IV. Logical Commitments of CAI

9. Is there a Plural Object? 169
Byeong-uk Yi
10. Logical Considerations on Composition as Identity 192
Paul Hovda
viii contents
11. Consequences of Collapse 211

Theodore Sider
Part V. Indiscernibility and CAI

12. Donald Baxter’s Composition as Identity 225
Jason Turner
13. Identity, Discernibility, and Composition 244
Donald L. M. Baxter
Index 255
List of Contributors
DONALD L. M. BAXTER is Professor and Head of the Philosophy Department at

the University of Connecticut.
EINAR DUENGER BOHN is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Oslo.
DEBORAH J. BROWN is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Queensland.
ROSS P. CAMERON is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Virginia.
A. J. COTNOIR is Lecturer in the Department of Logic and Metaphysics at the

University of St Andrews.
KATHERINE HAWLEY is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the School
of Philosophical, Anthropological, and Film Studies at the University of St
Andrews.
PAUL HOVDA is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed
College.
KRIS MCDANIEL is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University.
CALVIN G. NORMORE is Macdonald Chair of Moral Philosophy Emeritus at
McGill University, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los
Angeles, and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland.
THEODORE SIDER is Frederick J. Whiton Professor of Philosophy at the Sage
School of Philosophy, Cornell University.
JASON TURNER is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University.
ACHILLE C. VARZI is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University.
MEG WALLACE is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of

Kentucky.
BYEONG-UK YI is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto
and Kyung Hee International Scholar at Kyung Hee University.
PART I
Introduction and History

1
Composition as Identity
Framing the Debate
A. J. Cotnoir
Because, if a thing has parts, the whole thing must be the same as all the parts.
Theatetus 204a
Thus, totality is nothing else but plurality contemplated as unity.

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Categories of Understanding, III.7
A composite is nothing else than a collection or aggregatum of simple

substances.
Leibniz, The Monadology, in The Rationalists (1960), 455
1 Groundwork: Motivations
Composition is the relation between a whole and its parts—the parts are said to
compose the whole; the whole comprises the parts. But is a whole anything over
and above its parts taken collectively?
It is natural to think ‘no’. Consider the following scenario.
Suppose a man owned some land which he divides into six parcels . . . He sells off the six
parcels while retaining ownership of the whole. That way he gets some cash while hanging
on to his land. Suppose the six buyers of the parcels argue that they jointly own the whole
and the original owner now owns nothing. Their argument seems right. But it suggests
that the whole was not a seventh thing. (Baxter 1988a, 85)
The land-buyers’ argument seems correct because the parts jointly make up the
whole; the parts taken together and the whole are, in some sense, the same.
Some philosophers have expressed sympathy with the view of the land-buyers.
Frege, in the Foundations of Arithmetic, claimed,
4 introduction and history
If, in looking at the same external phenomenon, I can say with equal truth ‘This is a copse’
and ‘These are five trees’, or ‘Here are four companies’ and ‘Here are five hundred men’,
then what changes here is neither the individual nor the whole, the aggregate, but rather
my terminology. (Frege 1980, §46)
The five trees are parts of the copse. A whole battalion may have four companies
as its parts; each company may have five platoons as parts; each platoon may
consist of twenty-five soldiers. But the five hundred soldiers just are the battalion.
Take away the soldiers and you have taken away the platoons, the companies, and
the battalion. A copse is nothing but a group of trees. A battalion is nothing over
and above a group of soldiers.
This idea has a long and complicated history. It was already a view under con-
sideration among the ancients, making an appearance in Plato’s Parmenides and
Sophist.1 The view’s provenance and influence through the Middle Ages up to
the Early Modern period is traced by Normore and Brown in Chapter 2 of this
volume.
The intuitive notion that the whole is ‘nothing over and above’ its parts—
that the whole is the same as its parts—may be clarified by claiming the whole
is identical, in some sense or other, to its parts. This is the thesis of composition as
identity (CAI).
But why should this sameness be considered identity? One intuitive line of
thought comes from Armstrong (1978): consider two objects that have a part in
common, say Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, where their common part
is the famed intersection. It is natural to say that Hollywood is partially identical
to Vine. But of course, we may consider further cases with larger areas of ‘over-
lap’, such as Seventh Avenue and Broadway. Since Seventh runs diagonally across
Manhattan, its common part with Broadway is larger than usual, creating Times
Square. Relatedly, large portions of the famous Route 66 were replaced by the
I-40; the ‘partial identity’ of the two roads covers significant ground. And, of
course, the limiting case of such overlap is just the case where two roads are
wholly identical to each other. But the continuity between the cases indicates that
the limit case is not different in kind. Similarly, each part of a whole is partially
identical to the whole. But then shouldn’t we say that the parts taken together are
identical to the whole as well?
Besides its intuitive appeal, there are other motivating concerns that lead one
naturally to CAI. The first is that CAI can easily explain the particularly intim-
ate relationship between parts and wholes. Sider (2007) notes various natural
1 See Harte (2002, ch. 2) for details.

cai: framing the debate 5
principles to which philosophers have been attracted that represent aspects of

this intimacy. For example, take the following two:
Inheritance of Location: A whole is located where its parts are located.

Uniqueness of Composition: Any wholes having the same parts are identical.
For CAI theorists, the truth of these principles is no mystery. A whole shares its
location with its parts because the whole is identical to its parts. If two wholes
have the same parts, then because each whole is identical to those parts, the
wholes are identical merely by the transitivity of identity. Perhaps other theor-
ies of composition can explain these and similar principles; indeed, Cameron’s
contribution in Chapter 5 of this volume attempts to do just that. But CAI does
so plainly, taking the intimacy at face value.
A second motivation is that CAI satisfies an intuitively plausible no double-
counting constraint on possible inventories of the world. Consider again an
example from Baxter (1988a):
Someone with a six-pack of orange juice may reflect on how many items he has when
entering a ‘six items or less’ line in a grocery store. He may think he has one item, or
six, but he would be astonished if the cashier said ‘Go to the next line please, you have
seven items’. We ordinarily do not think of a six-pack as seven items, six parts plus one
whole. (579)
Astonishment at the cashier is justified, we think, because she has counted the
same thing twice. She has clearly violated the no double-counting policy. Of course,
in this case (as in the case of the land-buyers above) there are a number of prac-
tical reasons why one should not count a six-pack as an additional thing over
and above the six cans—presumably, one pays for such things all at once. But the
general prohibition about double counting is not merely a practical constraint;
it is thought to be an ontological constraint. And quite a few philosophers have
endorsed it. Lewis claimed: ‘If you draw up an inventory of Reality according to
your scheme of things, it would be double counting to list the [parts] and then
also list [the whole]’ (Lewis 1991, 81). Likewise, Varzi (2000) argues that, while
it is often useful to countenance wholes in addition to their parts, this should
not be thought of as counting wholes in addition to their parts when drawing
up our inventory of the world. This is particularly obvious, he claims, when the
double counting involves wholes and their undetached parts. So, Varzi adopts the
following policy:
Minimalist View: An inventory of the world is to include an entity x if and only if x does
not overlap any other entity y that is itself included in that inventory.
Varzi then goes on to present various arguments and considerations in its

favour.2 Similar count policies are also endorsed by Cotnoir (2013) and Schaffer
(2010).3
One advantage of CAI is that it makes satisfying such a policy easy. One way
objects can overlap is if one is part of the other. But if wholes are identical to
their parts, then wholes are never counted as distinct from their parts. And so
overlapping objects of this sort are never counted as distinct. But there is another
way objects can overlap, namely, by sharing a proper part. Suppose that one has
managed to include two distinct overlapping wholes x and y in one’s inventory
of the world, such that neither is a part of the other, but they have some proper
part z in common. But if wholes are identical to their parts, one’s inventory of
the world has included the parts of x as distinct from the parts of y. But the parts
of x are not totally distinct from the parts of y, since both include z among them.
And this violates the no double-counting rule.
Even though such a counting policy is natural, one might wonder whether
it has any deep philosophical motivations. Though there are many possible
reasons,4 I will only mention two that provide additional motivation for CAI.
First is the avoidance of colocation. It is a commonplace metaphysical view
that two distinct material objects cannot occupy the same region of space time.
Wallace (2011a) argues that this thought extends to pluralities of material objects
as well: two distinct pluralities of objects cannot occupy the same region of space
time, and further one material object cannot occupy the same region as many
distinct material objects. According to Wallace, colocation of the latter kind
seems just as bad as the more usual kind. But CAI avoids the problem. Because
they are identical, parts and wholes are colocated, but only in the trivial sense
that everything is colocated with itself. Secondly and relatedly, CAI can handle
cases of causal overdetermination. Merricks (2003) argues against the existence
of wholes, since wholes would be in competition for the causal powers of their
parts. But if CAI is true, wholes and their parts are not competitors. Parts collect-
ively cause whatever wholes individually cause, because wholes and their parts
are identical.5
2See also Berto and Carrara (2009) for objections.

3In Cotnoir (2013), I suggested that a count should partition the universe. Schaffer’s constraint,
by contrast, applies only to fundamental, or basic, entities:
Tiling Constraint: The basic actual concrete objects collectively cover the cosmos without
overlapping.
Schaffer then provides a number of arguments for why the fundamental entities in any ontology
must satisfy it.
4 For a good start, see Varzi’s (2000) and Schaffer’s (2010) arguments.
5 For (much) more detail on this line of argument, see Wallace (2009), ch. 5.
Another possible philosophical motivation for CAI derives from considera-

tions involving supervenience. Consider Armstrong (1997, 12):
The mereological whole supervenes upon its parts. But equally, the parts supervene upon
the whole . . . This has the consequence that mereological wholes are identical with all
their parts taken together. Symmetrical supervenience yields identity.
Armstrong here suggests that there is an important metaphysical interdepend-

ence between parts and wholes, and this is best explained as identity. Of course,
the two-way supervenience between parts and wholes is controversial, but
something the CAI theorist should accept.
Perhaps the major motivation for CAI is that it implies the ‘ontological inno-
cence’ of classical mereology. Classical mereology (to be discussed in detail in §4)
is the currently dominant formal theory of parts and wholes. It has been put to
many applications, and served as a foundation for a great number of metaphys-
ical theories. But classical mereology is ontologically extravagant; it has as an
axiom that whenever there are some things there is a whole composed of them.
This ‘universalist’ feature of classical mereology has been a source of much con-
troversy. Proponents of restricted theories of composition often object that there
is no such thing as an object composed of, say, the Eiffel Tower and some elec-
tron in the President’s nose. But if CAI is true, it would go some way toward
alleviating these worries. Witness Lewis (1991, 81–2):
But given a prior commitment to cats, say, a commitment to cat-fusions is not a further
commitment . . . Commit yourself to their existence all together or one at a time, it’s the
same commitment either way . . . In general, if you are already committed to some things,
you incur no further commitment when you affirm the existence of their fusion. The new
commitment is redundant, given the old one.
And again Armstrong (1997, 12): ‘Mereological wholes are not ontologically addi-
tional to all their parts, nor are the parts ontologically additional to the whole that
they compose.’
Insofar as one accepts the existence of the Eiffel Tower and that electron in
the President’s nose, since the whole made up of them is identical to them,
one accepts the existence of the object composed of them. Since everything is
identical to itself, universalism should come as no surprise. And so, presum-
ably, the CAI theorist can reap all the theoretical benefits of classical mereology
without any additional ontological cost. Hawley’s contribution to this volume,
Chapter 4, examines this possible motivation in detail. Chapter 3, by Varzi,
also addresses this motivation by attempting to reconcile this thought about
ontological innocence with a more standard Quinean approach to ontological
commitment.
So much for motivations. In §2, I turn to the varieties of CAI that have been
developed, and mention some options that have yet to be developed. These vari-
eties are not without problems; in §3, I present some of the main objections to
CAI in the contemporary debate. In §§4–5, I present some technical background
that is often presupposed in the debate. Axioms and models for classical mere-
ology are given in §4, highlighting relevant theorems along the way. In §5, I
present an example of plural logic, and discuss some relevant issues involving
plural identity and multigrade predicates. All this, I hope, will provide some
groundwork and structural support for the excellent and intriguing essays in this
volume.
2 Blueprints: Varieties of CAI

On the face of it, CAI seems to be a simple, straightforward thesis that reduces
a difficult question, about the nature of composition, to a much easier question
about the nature of identity. Most contemporary metaphysicians would agree
with Lewis (2001, 192–3) when he writes,
Identity is utterly simple and unproblematic. Everything is identical to itself; nothing is

ever identical to anything else except itself. There is never any problem about what makes
something identical to itself; nothing can ever fail to be. And there is never any problem
about what makes two things identical; two things never can be identical.
But this is quite a modern and philosophically loaded view. One can distinguish
at least two different notions of identity: numerical identity and qualitative iden-
tity. Things are numerically identical when they are counted the same. Things are
qualitatively identical whenever they have all their properties in common.
But philosophers have taken a stand and generated an orthodoxy: there is no
such distinction. The ‘indiscernibility of identicals’ and ‘identity of indiscern-
ibles’ jointly yield that things are numerically identical if and only if they are
qualitatively identical.
∀x∀y(x = y ↔ (ϕ(x) ↔ ϕ(y)))
Call this biconditional ‘Leibniz’s Law’. Here ϕ is usually intended as schematic,

ranging over any extensional predicate. That is, the principle must be restricted
so as not to imply the indiscernibility of identicals with respect to intensional
properties of objects. Leibniz’s Law is often taken to be definitive of iden-
tity; if a relation does not satisfy it, by definition it is not an identity relation.
Obviously related is the standard elimination rule for identity, the ‘substitutivity
of identicals’.
x = y ϕ(x)
ϕ(y)
But then this rule, combined with the fact that identity is reflexive (e.g. everything
is identical with itself), can be used to show that identity is unique; it is not pos-
sible for there to be two extensionally distinct relations satisfying Leibniz’s Law.6
So, on the orthodox view, there appears to be only one way of developing the
claim that composition is identity.
This is a bit too quick, however, as CAI is a thesis about many things (some
parts) being identical to one thing (a whole). As we will see concretely in §5, what
is really needed is an identity predicate that takes not only singular terms, but
also plural terms. One would also need to generalize Leibniz’s Law accordingly.
Notice that a whole is a single thing, while the parts are many things. It appears,
then, that the whole and its parts are discernible, at least with respect to their
number. So one must take some care in formulating the view. Moreover, the
orthodox view also says nothing about the modal force of identity; for example,
it might be argued that composition is contingent identity, to reflect the idea that
wholes may survive changes to their parts.
As a result of these complications, there are a variety of ways to develop CAI.
Weak CAI: The relationship between the parts taken collectively and the whole is
analogous to identity.
Moderate CAI: The relationship between the parts taken collectively and the whole is
non-numerical identity.
Strong CAI: The relationship between the parts taken collectively and the whole is
numerical identity.
Lewis (1991) concluded that the difficulties involving generalizing the identity
relation and the initial troubles with Leibniz’s Law showed that only weak CAI
could be maintained. What is needed, then, is a theory of composition that pre-
serves many of the relevant aspects of identity. Sider (2007), in a similar vein,
attempts to construct a theory of composition that does just this.
Since moderate CAI takes composition to be non-numerical identity, there
could feasibly be as many varieties of moderate CAI as there are variant theories
of identity. The inspiration can be put by taking Lewis’s words literally, ‘Ordinary
Identity is the special, limiting case of identity in the broadened sense’ (Lewis
1991, 85). For example, Baxter (1988a; 1988b; 1999) sees the number of things as
relative to what he calls ‘counts’. A six-pack that is one thing in one count may
6 The proof, which presupposes classical logic, can be found in Williamson (2006) who cites
Quine. But see Schecter (2011) for a theory of multiple identity relations satisfying the substitutivity
of identicals based in a weakly classical logic.
be six things in another. More fundamental than the numerical identities within
counts is the cross-count identity of what is counted variously. Composition, on
this view, is a case of cross-count identity. Similarly, Cotnoir (2013) defends mod-
erate CAI by taking composition to be a generalization of numerical identity; but
one that is still an equivalence relation satisfying an appropriately generalized
version of Leibniz’s Law.
A more radical option is to fly in the face of orthodoxy by claiming that com-
position is purely qualitative identity, where qualitative identity does not imply
numerical identity. Another option, inspired by considerations raised by Butler,
and arguably developed in Baxter (1988a), would distinguish between identity in
the ‘strict and philosophical’ sense (i.e. numerical identity) and identity in the
‘loose and popular sense’, and suggest that composition is the latter. Of course,
there is an orthodox weak CAI variant of this view; it will include the thesis that
loose identity is not a kind of identity at all, but merely one of its analogues. Or,
one might have a version of moderate CAI holding that composition is relative
identity (à la Geach 1962). This would reflect the idea that composed objects fall
under different sortal predicates than their parts.
The view that has received the most attention is strong CAI. Although many
have attributed strong CAI to Baxter (1988a, 1988b, 1999), this is incorrect since
Baxter rejects the orthodox view of numerical identity, except within counts.
In fact, as Yi (1999) rightly notes, Baxter argues against strong CAI insofar as he
thinks that the whole and its parts are never to be included within the same count,
and thus would never be numerically identical. Although Sider (2007) does not
endorse strong CAI, his work certainly developed it in many ways. Bohn (2009)
and Wallace (2011a, 2011b) appear to be the only adherents of strong CAI.
Finally, I have hinted at another important classification that cuts across the
weak CAI, moderate CAI, and strong CAI taxonomy. This is the distinction
between count-based views and non-count-based views. Recall that CAI was ori-
ginally motivated by the idea that there are different ways of counting the same
external phenomena: the six-pack vs. the six cans, the battalion vs. the five hun-
dred soldiers. Some versions of CAI—the count-based ones—attempt to preserve
this basic idea, and thus feature ‘ways of counting’ prominently. Other versions
leave counts by the wayside and develop the view independently. It is notable
that many of the defenders of CAI in the literature have endorsed count-based
theories.7 However, many of the arguments against CAI have been levelled
against non-count-based variants.
7 Baxter’s (1988a, 1988b) counts are integral to understanding composition as cross-count iden-
tity, as they are in Cotnoir (2013). Wallace (2011a, 2011b) has counts feature in her notion of ‘relative
counting’ in order to avoid certain objections.
As is clear, there are a number of rival versions of the thesis; no doubt there
are others yet to be invented. Each variant will undoubtedly have strengths and
weaknesses over others. It is to those weaknesses that I now turn.
3 Problems: Structural or Superficial?

CAI is not without criticism. Not only the various actual theories, but its very
motivations have recently come under attack. This section will provide a brief
summary of some of the most prominent objections, without pausing to supply
any lines of response. I will start with objections to the motivations, proceed to
objections based on linguistic considerations, and close with objections based on
metaphysical considerations.
First, Sider (2007) argues that strong CAI does not explain the inheritance
of location thesis. The inheritance of location thesis can be read two ways: (i) a
whole is (wholly) located wherever its parts (taken collectively) are located; and
(ii) a whole is (partly) located wherever its parts (taken individually) are located.
Sider thinks that (ii) is the relevant fact to be explained, however, as this concerns
a more fundamental relation between a thing and each of its parts. Strong CAI
can explain only (i). And so strong CAI can only give an incomplete account of
the intimacy of composition.
Second, some have suggested that it is unclear whether accepting CAI justi-
fies a commitment to mereological universalism. Merricks (2005) gives a modal
argument that CAI entails universalism; that is, he claims that, if composition is
restricted, then CAI is false. The argument, which is too complicated to go into
here, turns on the following premises: (i) if CAI is true, it is so necessarily; (ii) if
two things are identical, they are so necessarily; and (iii) it is possible that some
plurality of objects composes some singular object. Sider (2007) provides a vari-
ant of Merricks’s modal argument. In addition, Sider gives the following line of
argument. For any things, the xs, there are some ys identical to the xs (namely,
the xs themselves). But the intuitive idea behind strong CAI is that speaking of
the many ys is equivalent to speaking of them as a single y. Substituting yields
that for any xs, there is some y identical to the xs, and hence some y composed of
the xs, by strong CAI.
But these arguments have recently come under fire. Cameron (2012) responds
by pointing out that strong CAI only establishes that some parts compose a whole
iff the parts are identical to a whole. But this does entail that, given some things,
they in fact compose a whole; he thus rejects Sider’s ‘dodgy move’ of repla-
cing the ys with a single y in the argument. He also provides a more detailed
response to the Merricks argument. Rather than responding directly to Sider and
Merricks, McDaniel (2009) provides a direct argument against the entailment.

He shows that a mereological nihilist—one who accepts that composition never
occurs—who accepts that extensionally equivalent properties are identical would
be forced to accept strong CAI. But since nihilists reject universalism, strong CAI
does not entail it. In Chapter 8 of this volume Bohn takes on these arguments and
defends unrestricted strong CAI.
Third, some have argued that CAI does not imply the ontological innocence
of mereology. The primary arguments are due to Yi (1999). His argument has
two parts: (i) the only version of CAI that implies the innocence of mereology
is strong CAI; and (ii) strong CAI is false. In favour of (i), Yi provides some
level of detail in arguing that Lewis’s version of weak CAI does not yield ontolo-
gical innocence; but I take it he intends these criticisms to apply more generally
to variants of moderate CAI as well. In favour of (ii), let Genie be the fusion
of Tom and Jerry. Then strong CAI yields that Genie is identical to Tom and
Jerry. Since Genie is one of Genie,8 we can substitute: Genie is one of Tom and
Jerry. But this last claim is clearly false. Koslicki (2008) runs the following argu-
ment against the innocence of Lewis’s weak CAI. She considers a world with
only two objects: a and b. Universalism implies the existence of an object c, the
fusion of a and b. She claims that because c = a and c = b, c is a new (possibly
objectionable) ontological commitment.
While the strengths of these arguments against the motivations for CAI vary,
it is clear that the initial attractions of CAI are not without controversy.
Another class of objections to CAI aim at its commitments to various aspects
in the philosophy of language. van Inwagen (1994) is an early example of this type
of objection. He claims that CAI theorists cannot state their view grammatically
in natural language.
There is the ‘is’ of (singular) identity. This word makes syntactical sense when it is flanked
by singular terms and variables . . . There is the ‘are’ of (plural) identity. This word
makes sense when it is flanked by plural terms and plural variables . . . But what kind
of syntactical sense is there in taking either the ‘is’ or ‘are’ and putting a singular term or
variable on one side of it and a plural term or variable on the other? (1994, 210–11)
Sider (2007) flags this concern as well: ‘Grammatical revisionism was perhaps
already in place right at the start’ (2007, 57). Whether or not one takes this
syntactic point seriously,9 the correctness of van Inwagen’s and Sider’s claims
depends heavily on the results of the best theories of agreement in the syntax
of English. The grammaticality of such sentences is an empirical question; and
8 See §5 for a discussion of the plural ‘is one of ’ predicate. Ordinarily, ‘is one of ’ takes a plural
term on the right. Yi recognizes this, and suggests a fix.

9 van Inwagen seems to, Sider seems not to. See also Cameron (2012), n. 4.
Cotnoir (2013) argues that on at least one linguistic theory of plural agreement
such claims are grammatical.
A similar sort of linguistic objection to CAI (particularly, strong CAI) is Sider’s
(2007) contention that it destroys the usefulness of plural quantification. I will
defer discussion of these objections until after plurals are properly presented (§5).
More metaphysically minded objections can be found as well. The most
obvious is the objection from Leibniz’s Law. Consider Lewis (1991, 87):
[E]ven though the many and the one are the same portion of reality, and the character
of that portion is given once and for all whether we take it as many or take it as one, still
we do not really have a generalized principle of the indiscernibility of identicals. It does
matter how you slice it—not to the character of what’s described, of course, but to get the
form of the description. What’s true of the many is not exactly what is true of the one.
Lewis appears to be right. For example, consider a square divided diagonally into
two right-angled triangles. The triangles compose the square, and so according
to moderate CAI and strong CAI the triangles are identical to the square. But
of course the triangles have the property of being triangular and lack the prop-
erty of being square, whereas the square has the property of being square and
lacks the property of being triangular. Yet, according to the orthodox view, if
we do not have the indiscernibility of identicals, we do not really have identity.
Compare Sider (2007, 57): ‘Defenders of strong composition as identity must
accept Leibniz’s Law; to deny it would arouse suspicion that their use of “is
identical to” does not really express identity.’
The objection seems most acute for strong CAI. It is perhaps less acute for
more radical versions of moderate CAI, but only at the cost of having to reject
(or at least generalize) the orthodox view of identity. Indeed, as is made clear in
Chapter 13, Baxter does not generally accept the indiscernibility of identicals, and
thinks there are principled reasons for rejecting it in the case of parts and wholes.
Turner, in Chapter 12, formalizes these commitments in illuminating ways.
Merricks (1992) suggests a further metaphysical objection to CAI: some ver-
sions appear committed to the implausible view that wholes have their parts
essentially. The argument, in effect, turns on the idea that, if parts are identical
to a whole, and identity is necessary, then the whole is identical to those parts
in every possible world. Of course the objection is a problem only insofar as
mereological essentialism is; but one might wish to avoid the commitment if one
can.10 One option is a form of CAI according to which composition is contin-
gent identity. Another avenue of response involving modal parts is pursued by
Wallace in Chapter 6.
10 See also Borghini (2005).
Another recent metaphysical objection to CAI is McDaniel’s (2008) argument

that strong CAI is incompatible with strongly emergent properties. McDaniel
argues that any acceptable version of CAI ought to accept a plural duplication
principle.
PDP: if the xs compose w, then z is a duplicate of w iff there are some ys that are plural
duplicates of the xs and compose z.
But this principle is incompatible with strongly emergent properties, that is, nat-
ural properties of a whole that do not locally supervene on the natural properties
of its (atomic) parts. Whether there are any such things as strongly emergent
properties is controversial. But on the face of it, they do seem to go directly
against the CAI theorist’s contention that a whole is ‘nothing over and above’ its
parts. But Sider, in Chapter 11 of this volume, shows how a strong CAI theorist
might avoid this argument.
Again, there may be lots of ways to respond to these objections. Of course,
different versions of CAI might be vulnerable to some objections and not others.
I cannot canvass all the combinations and variations here. Some of the various
options are explored in the chapters that follow.
4 Foundations: Mereology
We have been using ‘part’, ‘whole’, and ‘composition’ without providing any pre-
cise interpretation of these terms. There are a number of formal theories of parts,
wholes, and the composition relation that holds between them; but classical mere-
ology has been the most influential. It is probably the dominant view among
contemporary metaphysicians; indeed, many of the chapters in this volume
presuppose it. What follows is a brief introduction to classical mereology.11 I
start by presenting a standard axiom system, and proceed to discuss several
important theoretical implications of classical extensional mereology that relate
to CAI. In the background to mereology, let MA0 be any axiom system sufficient
for classical first-order logic with identity. In this axiom system, the parthood
relation (symbolized by ≤) is the only primitive and must satisfy the axioms
MA1–MA3.
MA1. Reflexivity:
∀x(x ≤ x)
11 For a more complete introduction to mereology more generally, the reader should consult
Varzi’s excellent entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. For more formal details, see Hovda
(2009).
MA2. Antisymmetry:
∀x∀y((x ≤ y ∧ y ≤ x) → x = y)
MA3. Transitivity:
∀x∀y∀z((x ≤ y ∧ y ≤ z) → x ≤ z)
MA1 says that everything is part of itself; in other words, identity is a limit case
of parthood. MA2 says that things that are parts of each other are identical. MA3
says that if something is part of another thing which is part of a third thing, the
first is part of the third. MA1−MA3 ensure that the parthood relation is a partial
order.
We can now define several useful mereological notions:
MD1. Proper Parthood:
x < y := x ≤ y ∧ x = y
MD2. Overlap:
x ◦ y := ∃z(z ≤ x ∧ z ≤ y)
MD3. Disjoint:
x y := ¬x ◦ y
According to MD1, something is a proper part of a whole whenever it is a part

distinct from the whole. MD2 says that two things overlap whenever they have a
common part. MD3 tells us that two things are disjoint when they have no parts
in common.
Given the notion of proper parthood, questions regarding the decomposition
of objects may arise; for example: if an object has a proper part, shouldn’t it have
another? To guarantee this, one can add a supplementation axiom to MA1−MA3.
Here is the standard candidate:12
MA4. Strong Supplementation:
∀x∀y(x y → ∃z(z ≤ x ∧ z y))
One special case of x y is when y < x; so MA4 tells us, in that case, that if y
is a proper part of x, then there is some part of x disjoint from y—call it z. It is
12 There are at least two other candidates, one weaker and one stronger:
MP1. Weak Supplementation: ∀x∀y(x < y → ∃z(z ≤ y ∧ z x))
MP2. Complementation: ∀x∀y(x y → ∃z∀w(w ≤ z ↔ (w ≤ x ∧ w y)))
In the presence of MA1−MA3, MP2 implies MA4 which implies MP1, but none of the converse
implications hold. Classical mereologists have favoured MA4 for reasons related to extensionality.
appropriate to think of z as the ‘remainder’ of x when y is removed. It may also

be helpful to think of MA4 in its contraposed form: ∀z(z ≤ x → z ◦ y) → x ≤ y.
Thus, the axiom guarantees that, if every part of x overlaps y, then x is part of y.
But what is required for the composition of objects from others? Importantly,
I haven’t yet specified when wholes exist. To do this, we need a definition of
fusion.13
MD4. Fusion:
Fu(t, ϕ) := ∀y(y ◦ t ↔ ∃x(ϕ ∧ y ◦ x))
So, t is the fusion of the ϕs when t overlaps exactly those things that overlap some
ϕ. As already mentioned, in classical mereology fusions are unrestricted; we need
to guarantee the existence of a fusion for every instance of ϕ with only x free.
MA5. Unrestricted Fusion:
∃xϕ → ∃z Fu(z, ϕ)
Since we can substitute any suitably open sentence for ϕ, MA5 is an axiom
schema; it has infinitely many instances since we have infinitely many suitably
open sentences.14 This fusion axiom guarantees that for every (specifiable) sub-
set of the domain objects, there is an object that overlaps anything that overlaps
the members of that subset; that is, we always have a fusion of the members of
that subset.
That’s it. MA0−MA5 is the standard axiomatization of classical mereology.
To recap, we simply have classical logic (MA0), the partial order axioms for
parthood MA1−MA3, a supplementation axiom (MA4), and a fusion axiom
schema MA5.
It is worth pausing to notice that classical mereology itself yields some
important—albeit controversial—connections between parthood, composition,
13 I use the term ‘fusion’ simply as the converse of the term ‘compose’. Wherever x is the
fusion of the ϕs the ϕs compose x. This is in contrast to how some other authors use the term
(e.g. van Inwagen (1990) and Varzi (2008), where composition is a relation that holds between
non-overlapping objects and a whole).
14 Because MA5 is an axiom schema, like all first-order theories it will have unintended models.
As an illustration, assume there are k-many atoms in our domain. Then a complete Boolean algebra
will have size 2k (subtracting the empty set: 2k−1). If k is finite then the domain is finite, and if
k is infinite then the domain is uncountable. In either case, we will not have a countably infinite
domain. But by the Löwenheim–Skolem theorems, we know that, if any first-order theory has an
infinite model, it will have a countably infinite model. In effect, the axiom schema MA5 fails to
quantify over all subsets of the domain, but merely the first-order definable ones expressed by open
sentences ϕ(x). Formulating MA5 using plural logic avoids these issues.
and identity. In particular, there are several ‘extensionality principles’ that follow
immediately from MA0−MA5.15
EO. Extensionality of Overlap:
∀z(z ◦ u ↔ z ◦ v) → u = v
EP. Extensionality of Parthood:
∃z(z < u ∨ z < v) → (∀w(w < u ↔ w < v) → u = v)
UC. Uniqueness of Composition:
(Fu(u,ϕ) ∧ Fu(v,ϕ)) → u = v
All three extensionality principles are theorems of classical mereology. In other

words, EO states that if two things overlap all the same things, they are the
same thing.16 EP states that if two composite objects have the same proper parts,
then they are identical.17 The principle is restricted only to composite objects—
objects that have proper parts—to allow for more than one uncomposed object,
or atom.18 UC claims that if two things are fusions of the ϕs, then they are the
same thing.19
Some philosophers have rejected classical mereology on the grounds of exten-
sionality principles.20 But others have regarded extensionality principles as
virtues. For example, Goodman (1951) endorses hyperextensionality for any type
of ‘collection’ (e.g. sets, classes, fusions, etc.): objects built from the same atoms
are identical.
A class is different neither from the single individual that exactly contains its members,
nor from any other class whose members exactly exhaust this same whole . . . the nom-
inalist recognizes no distinction of entities without a distinction of content. (Goodman
1951, 26)
15 These principles are so-named due to the parallel extensionality principle of set theory: two
sets are identical if and only if they have all the same members.
16 Proof : notice that ∀z(z ◦ u → z ◦ v) → u ≤ v is logically equivalent to Strong
Supplementation (MA4). But then applying antisymmetry (MA2) to two converse instances
of that implication suffices to prove EO.
17 Proof: from definitions MD1 and MD2, among non-atomic objects, if x and y have the same
proper parts, then anything that overlaps x overlaps y and vice versa. Formally:
∃z(z < u ∨ z < v) → (∀w(w < u ↔ w < v) → (w ◦ u ↔ w ◦ v))
But then, by EO and the transitivity of the logical implication, we have EP.
18 Suppose any two objects with the same proper parts were identical. Since atoms have no proper
parts, any two atoms trivially have all the same proper parts. Thus every atom would be identical to
every other atom.
19 Proof : assume that both u and v are fusions of the ϕs. From MD5, we have ∀y(y ◦ u ↔
∃x(ϕ ∧ y ◦ x)) and ∀y(y ◦ v ↔ ∃x(ϕ ∧ y ◦ x)). But, again by transitivity of implication, this implies
that ∀z(z ◦ u ↔ z ◦ v). Now, u = v follows via EO.
20 The literature is rife with objections to extensionality principles. For a start, see the discussion
and references in Varzi (2008).

Of course, mereology is independent of these nominalist motivations. But

CAI theorists are apparently committed to hyperextensionality for fusions, and
indeed extensionality principles EP, EO, and UC. After all, if the whole is identical
to its parts, then any two wholes composed of the very same parts must be
identical to each other, by the transitivity of identity. In that case, then objec-
tions to extensionality principles would thereby be objections to CAI. McDaniel,
in Chapter 7, explores various options for CAI theorists who reject UC.
5 Foundations: Plurals
Plural constructions are ubiquitous in natural language: ‘My children are loud’
contains the plural description ‘my children’; ‘Abe and Ian are playing with each
other’ contains the plural term ‘Abe and Ian’ and the plural pronoun ‘each other’.
Of course, these sentences are plural in form only; one could easily recast them so
they contain only singular constructions: ‘My first child is loud, and my second
child is loud’ or ‘Abe is playing with Ian and Ian is playing with Abe’.
But some sentences involving plurals cannot be recast in this way. Consider
the sentence ‘The crowd is loud’ which contains a plural description ‘the crowd’.
Attempting to recast would yield, ‘Crowd member 1 is loud and crowd member
2 is loud . . .’ But this is clearly not an adequate paraphrase; after all, a crowd
of people may be loud, even if none of the members of the crowd is loud on
her own. A more famous example is the Geach–Kaplan sentence: ‘Some critics
admire only each other.’ There is no way to translate this sentence using singular
quantification.21 These irreducibly plural constructions can be accommodated in
various plural logics.
It would appear that merely stating the thesis of CAI necessarily involves
a plural formulation. Recall Lewis: ‘The fusion is nothing over and above the
[parts] that compose it. It just is them. They just are it’ (1991, 81). But claims like
‘they are it’ and ‘it is them’ are irreducibly plural. They cannot be reduced to the
claim that each individual part is identical to the whole, as that is not what is
meant.22 And CAI does not involve the claim that the set of parts is identical to
the whole. After all, the set of parts is an abstract object, whereas the whole need
not be; as Boolos (1984) notes, ‘I am eating the Cheerios’ does not involve my
eating a set. This irreducibly plural character of the characteristic identity state-
ments of CAI leads one to believe that CAI is closely bound up with the nature
of the logic of plurals.
21 See Boolos (1984).

22 But see Baxter, Ch. 13 in this volume.
It will be useful, then, to give a formalization of an example of plural logic.

Suppose we start with first-order classical logic with identity. In order to obtain
a plural logic, add to our first-order language the following.
• Plural Variables: xx, yy, zz, . . .

• Plural Constants: aa, bb, cc, . . .
. .
• Plural Quantifiers: ∀, ∃, . . .
. . .
• Plural Predicates: F , G, H , . . .
• Logical Predicate: ≺
The set of formulas is defined in the usual way, except that ordinary non-logical
first-order predicates (e.g. F, G, H, . . .) may only take singular terms and vari-
ables as arguments, while non-logical plural predicates (e.g. Ḟ, Ġ, Ḣ, . . .) may only
take plural constants and variables. Likewise, singular variables must be bound
by ∀ or ∃; and plural variables must be bound by ∀˙ or ∃. ˙ The set of sentences is
merely the standard restriction to those formulas where all occurring variables
(if any) are bound.
While I will not provide a full semantics for this language, the main idea is that
while singular terms (i.e. singular constants and variables) denote single objects
from the first-order domain, plural terms (i.e. plural constants and variables)
denote ‘pluralities’ of objects from the first-order domain. A plurality of objects
is, intuitively, just some objects. Just as singular predicates are usually interpreted
as sets of objects, plural predicates are interpreted as sets of pluralities.23
The primitive predicate ≺ is meant to represent the ‘is one of ’ relation: a
≺ bb is true if the thing denoted by a is one of the things denoted by bb. So,
≺ relates singular terms variables to plural terms (e.g. ∃xx∀y(y˙ ≺ xx) is well
.
formed). Plural identity = is a generalization of standard first-order identity, and
. .
may be defined as follows: xx = yy := ∀z(z ≺ xx ↔ z ≺ yy). So = takes plural
terms in both argument places.
There are some key additional principles governing the standard logic of
plurals that one may wish to be satisfied.24
PA1. Comprehension:
˙
∃yϕ(y) → ∃xx∀y(y ≺ xx ↔ ϕ(y))
23 Giving a full semantics would take us too far afield. The typical semantics, modelling pluralities
via sets, is sometimes considered to have an objectionable ontology. But the ontological innocence
of plural quantification has been highly controversial. See Boolos (1984), Resnik (1988), and Linnebo
(2003) for a start.
24 See Rayo (2007) for motivations and arguments involving these principles.
PA2. Extensionality:
. .
∀˙ xx∀˙ yy(∀z(z ≺ xx ↔ z ≺ yy)) ↔ (ϕ (xx) ↔ ϕ (yy))
The plural comprehension principle PA1 states that every satisfiable predicate ϕ
has a corresponding plurality of things that satisfy it. PA1 is restricted to sat-
isfiable predicates since it is typically thought that there is no such thing as
the ‘empty’ plurality. PA2 says that any two pluralities having exactly the same
things among them have all and only the same plural predicates true of them.
Another way of seeing PA2: pluralities that are ≺-indiscernible are indiscern-
ible tout court. Taking seriously the identity of indiscernibles, PA2 implies plural
identity of any such xx and yy.
An important fact about the plural logic shown: plural predicates and singu-
lar predicates are distinct. I noted that some plural predications are irreducibly
plural, while others are not. That is, some plural predication is distributive: Ḟ(aa)
implies F(a) for each a ≺ aa. Some plural predication is collective: Ġ(bb) is true
while G(b) may be false (for some b ≺ bb).
On this approach to plural logic, plural predicates like is loud are ambiguous:
there are two distinct predicates, one of which is plural (L̇) and the other singular
(L). This approach proliferates homonymous predicates. Moreover, since I have
not drawn any semantic connections between L̇ and L, there is nothing that could
validate (or invalidate) the inference from L̇(aa) to L(a). In other words, there is
no way to draw the collective/distributive distinction.
One option is to forget about plural predicates like Ḟ, Ġ, Ḣ, . . . and simply
allow our first-order predicates F, G, H, . . . to take either plural or singular terms
as arguments. On this approach both F(a) and F(aa) are well formed. The prim-
itive predicate, ≺, could likewise be extended to relate either singular or plural
terms to plural terms. As such, it would represent both the ‘is one of ’ relation and
the ‘are among’ relations. Such predicates are called multigrade. Allowing multi-
grade predicates into plural logic opens up a variety of new issues, too many to
explore here.25
Note that the identity claims characteristic of CAI are naturally thought to
be multigrade. If the parts (plural) just are the whole (singular) we would need
an identity relation ≈ that could be flanked by a plural term on the left and a
singular term on the right (aa ≈ b). Likewise, if the whole just is the parts, we
require ≈ to be flanked by plural terms on the right and singular terms on the
left (b ≈ aa). As such, ≈ must be multigrade in both argument places in order
25 For an excellent exploration of the history and philosophy of multigrade predicates, see Oliver
and Smiley (2004). For the first major contribution to the study of their logic, see Morton (1975).
to express the relevant many–one and one–many identities.26 Presumably, CAI

theorists would want one–one identities expressed by (a ≈ b) to coincide with the
singular identity = of first-order logic. Likewise, many–many identities expressed
.
by (aa ≈ bb) ought to coincide with the plural identity = of standard plural logic.
These considerations were partly responsible for Lewis’s retreat to weak CAI.
I know of no way to generalize the definition of ordinary one–one identity in terms of

plural quantification. We know that x and y are identical iff, whenever there are some
things, x is one of them iff y is one of them. But if y is the fusion of the xx, then there are
some things such that each of the xx is one of them and y is not; and there are some things
such that y is one of them but none of the xx is. (1991, 87)
Indeed, whether and how CAI should be formulated in plural logic is an

interesting and open question addressed by some of the chapters in this volume.
Philosophers who write on mereology—indeed, even those who endorse
CAI—often use plural quantification to give the fusion definition and axiom,
rather than relying on an axiom schema. For instance:
MD4 . Plural Fusion:
Fu(t, xx): = ∀y(y ◦ t ↔ ∃x(x ≺ xx ∧ y ◦ x))
MA5 . Plural Unrestricted Fusion:
∀xx∃z Fu(z, xx)
Note that because there is no ‘empty’ plurality, the fusion axiom may be
simplified from MA5, by eliminating its antecedent.27
It is worth highlighting, however, that combining mereology and plural quan-
tification proves to be expressively very powerful. Lewis (1991, 1993) called this
combination ‘megethology’ and shows how it allows one to express hypotheses
about the size of the universe, how it (combined with a theory of singleton func-
tions) has the expressive resources of ZFC and (with Hazen and Burgess) how to
simulate quantification over relations.
But there is some reason to think that if some versions of CAI are true, megeth-
ology has nowhere near this sort of expressive power. Indeed, certain varieties
of CAI have consequences for plural logic. Yi (1999) suggests that considera-
tions from plural logic rule out CAI as a possible view, and in Chapter 9 in this
volume Yi develops and adds to these arguments. Sider (2007) argues that strong
CAI has numerous bad consequences for plural logic and otherwise wreaks havoc
26 The concept of many–one and one–many identity is due to Baxter (1988b).

27 Moreover, mereology with MA5 does not suffer the same problem with non-standard models
that was noted with MA5.
on the usefulness of plural logic. Primarily, it eliminates the possibility of dis-

tributive plural predicates, it requires a rejection of plural comprehension (PA1),
and it forces a collapse in that ‘is one of ’ has to behave exactly like ‘is part
of ’. The formal and philosophical consequences of these results are explored in
Sider’s Chapter 11. Others have suggested that plural logic can come to the CAI
theorist’s aid. Cotnoir (2013) argues that the moderate CAI theorist can co-opt
considerations from plural logic to provide independently motivated responses
to objections. Hovda’s Chapter 10 develops a number of plural languages that are
friendly to the CAI theorist. The expressive power of mereology, plurals, and any
of the varieties of CAI is an area that is just beginning to be discovered in full
detail.28
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2
On Bits and Pieces in the History
of Philosophy
Calvin G. Normore and Deborah J. Brown
Our concern in this chapter is with a long millennium of the history of attempts
to answer one question: whether a thing which has parts just is its parts taken
together.
The period with which we are concerned runs roughly from Boethius
(d. 524) to Hobbes (d. 1679) and our focus will be entirely on the Latin tradi-
tion. Our question has a long history before our period and around it there grew
up in antiquity a famous set of puzzles, paradoxes, and mysteries—the growing
problem, the Ship of Theseus, and the Christian mysteries of the Incarnation,
the Resurrection, and the Trinity among many others. Behind the puzzles and
the mysteries there lies the issue of what makes for unity—what accounts for
something being one.
Medieval and early modern thinkers generally agreed that the clearest cases of
a unitary being were cases in which that being had no parts at all. God, celestial
intelligences or angels, and human souls were often taken to meet this condition.1
Corporeal things, on the other hand, were thought to be extended and to be
extended was to have part outside of part so such things always had parts. It is for
them that the question arises of whether they and their parts taken together are
the same or are, in a more recent idiom, identical.
“Identity” is the Englishing of the Latin identitas (or idemtitas) a neologism
and an abstract form of the Latin pronoun idem which is usually translated
1 We speak indifferently of celestial intelligences and angels. The celestial intelligences were
introduced in the Aristotelian tradition as movers of the various celestial spheres and the theory
of them was highly developed in late antiquity and in the Islamic world. Angels have a different
history but they were often treated together. Cf. Tobias Hoffman (ed.), A Companion to Angels in
Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
on bits and pieces 25
“same” and has all of the ambiguity that “same” has in English. One particularly
prominent type of sameness considered by medieval and early modern writers
is numerical sameness (identitas in numero). Here again though there are poten-
tial pitfalls. Numerical identity of A and B is nowadays typically taken to require
intersubstitutability of “A” and “B” in at least a wide range of contexts.2 Medieval
theorists focused instead on the issue of whether intuition requires that one count
two things. Thus Abelard would insist that a thing and a part of it are not numer-
ically distinct though they are obviously very different and Duns Scotus would
insist that the human intellect and human will are numerically one though they
differ widely in what can be predicated of them.
A certain amount of recent discussion has centered on the relation between
composition and constitution, where, roughly, composition is a relation between
a thing and its parts and constitution a relation between a thing and what it is
made of.3 There does seem to be a sense of “part” in which anything of which
a thing is made may be said to be a part of it and if a thing is made of its parts
it may be more than difficult to distinguish its being composed of from its being
constituted by them. Although they had no exact analogues of “composition” and
“constitution” (componere seems to cover either), medieval theorists typically dis-
tinguished between integral parts and essential parts. In some cases the distinction
is easily made out. Consider, for example, a wooden table! Among its integral
parts are its legs and its top. Its essential parts are another matter—a particular
amount of wood and a particular shape might be good candidates.4 In this case
we can see the distinction between integral and essential parts clearly enough;
each of the integral parts is itself made up of parts of the essential parts—part of
the wood and “part” of the shape. Some things, a Daltonian atom for example,
may have no integral parts and still be thought of as constituted, perhaps by
a particular bit of matter. If bits of matter themselves are things, as Descartes
seems to have thought bits of extension were, then they may be composed of
smaller bits of matter but not constituted of anything at all (unless we want to
take constitution to be reflexive). This last case is of consequence for us because
almost all post-twelfth-century medieval theorists think everything besides God,
2 Exactly how wide is, of course, the subject of considerable debate. Cf. e.g. A. Gibbard, “Contin-
gent Identity,” Journal of Philosophical Logic, 4 (1975), 187–221. S. Kripke, “Identity and Necessity,”
in M. K. Munitz, Identity and Individuation (Albany, NY: New York University Press, 1971), 135–64.
3 For discussion of the relation between composition and constitution cf. Simon J. Enine,
“Composition and Constitution: Three Approaches to Their Relation,” Protosociology, 27 (2011):

<http://www.protosociology.de/Volumes/Volume27.html> accessed Apr. 2013.
4 Cf. Boethius Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii, De divisione liber, critical edition, translation, pro-
legomena, and commentary (Leiden: Brill, Philosophica Antiqua, 77, 1998), 41: “Moreover, a whole
is divisible into matter and form, for a statue consists in one sense of its peculiar parts, in another of
matter and form, i.e. of bronze and a shape.”
angels/celestial intelligences, and souls has matter and form as parts. They think
too that neither matter nor forms are made up of anything (else). Hence the dif-
ference between being composed of essential parts such as matter and form and
being constituted from them cannot be made out as was the difference between
being composed of legs and a top and being constituted of wood and a shape in
our example. There is pressure then to think that essential parts are related to
their wholes by the same part/whole relation that related integral parts.
Medieval discussions of essential parts are also complicated by the complexity
of fitting together hylomorphism, the view that (most) things are constituted by
matter and form, with the theory of definition by genus and differentia. To adapt
hylomorphism to the picture of definition as spelling out what a thing is (giving
its essence) by genus and differentia there grew up a picture of the genus term
in a definition as somehow expressing the matter of the thing and the differen-
tia as expressing the form. Thus writers in the Aristotelian tradition could move
between speaking of matter and form as the essential parts of a composite sub-
stance like a butterfly or a musk-ox and speaking of the essential parts as the
genus and differentia.5
1 The Beginning: Essential and Integral Parts

Latin medieval discussion of the relation between wholes and their parts seems
to begin from Boethius’s De Divisione. There, in the course of explaining the
difference between the division of a genus into its species and that of a whole into
its parts, Boethius suggests both that the parts of a whole are (metaphysically)
prior to it and that they are essential to it in the sense that losing a single part
would destroy the whole.6 He does not go on to claim that the existence of the
5 Cf. e.g. Aquinas, ST III q. 90 art. 2 corp. “I answer that, a part is twofold, essential and quant-
itative. The essential parts are naturally the form and the matter, and logically the genus and the
difference.” (Integral parts are frequently referred to as quantitative parts.) For discussion of the
history of genus as matter cf. R. Rorty, “Genus as Matter: A Reading of Metaphysics Z-H,” in E. N.
Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. M. Rorty (eds), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy
Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Essen: Van Gorcum & Co., 1973), 393–420.
6 “Second difference: Every genus is by nature prior to its proper species whereas a whole is
posterior to its proper parts. The parts, being what make up the whole, sometimes have only natural
priority to the completion of that which they compose, sometimes temporal priority as well. In that
sense we resolve a genus into things posterior but a whole into things prior. Hence it is true as well
to say that if the genus is destroyed the species immediately perish, but that if a species is destroyed
the genus consists inviolate in its nature. Things are just the reverse in the case of a whole, for if a
part of the whole perishes then that of which one part has been destroyed will not be whole, whereas
if the whole perishes the parts remain, in separation. For example, if someone removes the roof
from a house that is complete he destroys the continuity of the whole that existed before; but even
though the whole perishes the walls and foundation will continue to exist.” Boethius, De divisione
liber, 13–15.
parts which make up a whole is also sufficient for the existence of the whole, but
given what he does claim it is natural enough to wonder about that too and in the
intense debates about ontology and semantics which characterized (and divided)
the twelfth-century schools, all of these became burning issues. Boethius does
not give ordinary things as examples of wholes in De Divisione, and although
he distinguishes division of a genus from division of a whole, he also confounds
them. Among the examples he does give of the division of a whole into its parts
is the division of the species human into individual humans and in discussing the
relation between definition and division he writes:
It should also be pointed out that in division the genus is a whole, in definition a part. And
definition is such that it is as if parts of some kind are constituting a whole, division such
that it is as if a whole is being resolved into parts: division of a genus resembles division
of a whole; definition resembles the composition of a whole.7
Thus the relationship between integral and essential parts was a tortured one
from the beginning.
2 The Twelfth-Century Latin Debates

In the current state of scholarship it is difficult to trace debates about these issues
in the Latin West before the time of Peter Abelard and we won’t try. Abelard
himself seems to have been a key figure in them and we begin there.
One of the ways Abelard stakes out his own distinctive position is by contrast
to that which he attributes to his teacher William of Champeaux. As Abelard
presents William’s view it holds that an ordinary thing—an animal say—is a
composite of a genus which constitutes its “material essence” (as well as the
material essence of every other thing of the same genus) and a sequence of
“advening forms” which are accidental to the genus but which taken together
with it uniquely characterize an individual thing. Abelard claims that this view
is committed to the identity of a thing with its material essence and so of a thing
with each other thing of that genus. We still know too little about William’s view
to be sure how fair Abelard’s attack is. While it is clear that if it commits William
to holding both that a thing is its essence and that its essence is a genus common
to many, it faces grave problems, it is not clear that William could not instead
identify a thing with its genus and advening forms taken together. Abelard
claims this position is incoherent but the jury is still out on how decisive his
arguments are. Of course, even if William did take this stance, and so commits
7 Boethius, De divisione liber, 39.

himself to a thing being individuated by accidents, he would have to face the

question of whether things were just “kooky objects” coming into and passing
out of existence with each accidental change.8
Abelard was a corpuscularian, perhaps even in some sense an atomist. Central
to his ontology is the thought that besides souls the world consists of individual
material corpuscles which can be (by God) fused into continuous wholes or (by
us) brought into contact with one another. The collection of such corpuscles that
underlies a particular material object at a time is its essentia. Abelard seems to
have thought that any collection of corpuscles was an essentia and so that an
essentia could (and typically did) overlap with other essentiae, be a part of other
essentiae, and have other essentiae as parts.
Besides essentiae Abelard supposed there were forms. Forms inform essentiae
and give them status. Statuses themselves are not things and not picked out by
nouns but by constructions like “to be a horse (esse equinem).” Abelard’s famous
view of universals is that things fall into kinds because they “share” a status—
which is just to say that predicates like “is a horse” can be predicated of each of
them.
Abelard’s use of the combination of essentia and status is illustrated by his
discussion of the relationship between a statue and the stone “from” which it
is carved. As Abelard presents the case, to say that the statue is the stone or the
stone is the statue would be simply false—the statue was made by the sculptor
but the stone was not. Still what it is to be that statue is what it is to be that stone.
What is what it is to be that statue or that stone? It is an essentia. The statue and
the stone are that same essentia with different relevant statuses—that of being a
statue or that of being a stone.
As we have suggested, to determine whether a whole is the same as its parts one
needs some account of sameness. For early medieval theorists a controlling text
seems to have been Topics 1.7. There, having distinguished sameness in number
from sameness in species and sameness in genus, Aristotle distinguishes three
“ways of indicating” numerical sameness: (1) sameness in definition (as a cloak is
the same as a mantle), (2) sameness in a distinctive property (as what can acquire
knowledge is the same as a human), and (3) sameness with reference to an acci-
dental property (as someone seated is the same as Socrates).9 These three senses
8 William’s position and Abelard’s attack on it have received a fair amount of study. For a survey
and a selected bibliography cf. Peter King, “The Metaphysics of Peter Abelard,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 65–125.
9 “It seems that things numerically one are called the same by everyone with the greatest degree
of agreement. But this too is apt to be rendered in more than one sense; its most literal and primary
use is found whenever the sameness is rendered by a name or definition, as when a cloak is said to
(if senses they be) of sameness invite corresponding senses of difference and raise
the question whether things that are numerically the same can nonetheless be
different in other ways.
Taking his cue from this text, it seems, Abelard presents a distinctive theory of
sameness which, at its most elaborated, counts five different kinds.10
Abelard claims that the statue and the stone are one in essentia and one
in number. Here he echoes Metaphysics 5.1016b31–3 (a text Abelard did not
have!) where Aristotle claims that those whose matter is one are one in number.
Following the lead of Aristotle, Topics 1.7, Abelard goes on to claim that while one
in number, the stone and the statue differ in definition, distinctive property, and
accident, and so cannot be said to be in every way the same. He thus makes it
clear that sameness in number is far from sufficient for indiscernibility. Abelard
also claims that an essentia just is its parts and he claims that what a material
thing is is its essentia. Sameness of essentia entails sameness of parts of that essen-
tia. Nonetheless, as we read him, Abelard does not think that, for an animal to
remain the same animal over time, what it is (id quod est), that is, its essentia, has
to be the same at different times. This focuses the question whether an ordinary
artifact like a statue or a natural thing like a horse is its parts at a given time.
What then is a statue or a horse? One might well wonder whether Abelard
embraces the view that there really is no such thing but only matter arranged
statuewise or horsewise. Abelard would demur, we think, insisting that while
there is one something which is the statue, is the stone (and is too a collection of
corpuscles), the persistence conditions for that thing are not those for the statue
or for the stone. He argues that no thing grows (nihil crescit) but he does not deny
that Socrates might grow. What that would require, however, is that at least part
of Socrates (for he is human and humans differ from everything else in nature in
also having an indivisible soul) be different essentiae at different times.
Abelard hints at this picture in his Dialectica and somewhat more fully in his
Logica Ingredientibus where, as Christopher Martin has pointed out, he suggests
that the problem of how different essentiae can be the same ordinary thing over
time “may easily be solved, if, that is, we say that that grows which by the addition
be the same as a doublet, or a two-footed terrestrial animal is said to be the same as a man; a second
sense is when it is rendered by a property, as when what can acquire knowledge is called the same
as a man, and what naturally travels upward the same as fire; while a third use is found when it is
rendered in reference to some accident, as when the creature who is sitting, or who is musical, is
called the same as Socrates. For all these are meant to signify numerical unity.” Aristotle, Topics 1.7
103a6–38 tr. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984), i. 7–8.
10 Abelard, Theologia Christiana, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert, in Petri Abaelardi opera theologica.
Corpus Christianorum (continuatio mediaevalis), 12 (Brepols: Turnhout, 1969), part III, 138–64.
of something other becomes a composite that does not cease to have its nature
or property, just as for example if some water is added to water, it becomes a
composite which is also called water.”11
As later writings from and about Abelard’s followers, the Nominales, attest, the
idea here is that if something is an essentia with a status which is appropriately
related to a nature or a property and that essentia is succeeded by another essentia
which has the same status, then it is the same thing. The intuition at work is
that a thing of a kind cannot become a different thing of the same kind with
no intervening stage. How far do Abelard and his followers think this extends?
Exactly what statuses are appropriately related to natures or properties?
Here Abelard seems to have vacillated. There are texts which suggest that any
status will do but, as Andrew Arlig has argued, others which suggest that artifacts
at least cannot survive any addition or subtraction from their essentia.12
Abelard claimed that while no thing (nihil) grows, Socrates might well grow by
being different things at different times. Among the theses condemned at Paris
in 1277 we find “that a human through nourishment is able to become another
(alius) in number and individual” (Quod homo per nutritionem potest fieri alius
numeraliter et individualiter).13 Like the bishop of Paris, Abelard would have
rejected this thesis, in his case because it is formulated using the masculine alius
and not the neuter aliud. Abelard and his followers, the Nominales, regiment
their terminology using the neuter form to pick out the essentia and the mascu-
line and feminine forms to pick out items like Socrates. The same terminology
is used to distinguish the divine nature (which plays the role of essentia in God)
from the persons of the Trinity.
Abelard’s position marked one extreme in a series of twelfth-century positions
about the relation of wholes to their parts. The other which has been most studied
is a text that may be by Joscelin of Soissons. Like Abelard, (Pseudo?)-Joscelin
identifies an ordinary object at a given time with its integral parts at that time,
but unlike Abelard and his followers, seems content to suggest that the whole of
11 Logica “Ingredientibus,” 299: “Sic autem fortasse facilius soluetur, si uidelicet crescere id dic-
amus quod per adiunctionem alterius transit in tale compositum quod a natura uel proprietate
sua non recedit, ueluti si aquae alia aqua superaddatur, aqua cui superadditum est, in quoddam
transit compositum quod etiam aqua dicitur.” Quoted and tr. in Christopher J. Martin, “The Logic
of Growth: Twelfth Century Nominalists and the Development of Theories of the Incarnation,”
Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 7 (1998), 1–15, p. 6.
12 There are texts, cited by Martin, “Logic of Growth,” which suggest that any status will do but, as
Andrew Arlig has argued, others which suggest that artifacts at least cannot survive any addition or
subtraction from their essentiae. Cf. Andrew Arlig, “A Study in Early Medieval Mereology: Boethius,
Abelard and Pseudo-Joscelin,” Diss., Ohio State University, 2005, ch. 4.3.
13 Roland Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés le 7 mars 1277 (Louvain: Philosophes
médiévaux, 22, 1977), 187.

those integral parts, its essentia, can itself persist through changes of parts. Thus
instead of maintaining that the same ordinary object can be (strictly speaking)
different things at different times, he maintains that the same ordinary object is
the same thing (essentia) but that that thing itself may be made up of different
parts at different times.14
There are important similarities between the positions taken in the twelfth-
century debates and those taken by the fourteenth-century Nominalists. It seems
to have been common ground in the twelfth century that a whole at a time just
is it parts at that time. Where thinkers differed was over whether that whole was
the item picked out by ordinary names like “Socrates” and “Brownie” and over
whether to be the same whole or the same ordinary thing over time required
the same parts over time. Abelard thought that at least some ordinary objects
could be different essentiae over time while (Pseudo?)-Joscelin thought that it
sufficed even for sameness of essentia that either certain key parts remained the
same or that there was sufficient continuity among them over time. In the four-
teenth century, Ockham claimed that it sufficed for sameness over time that a
principal part remain the same—in the case of a human, the intellectual soul,
and in the case of an animal, he suggests the heart—and Buridan, as we shall
see, not only included this as one of his senses of sameness over time but added
as his third sense the continuity condition. Albert of Saxony meanwhile worried
whether there could be any names that tracked the very same thing over time
since if a thing is its parts and the parts change, then what is being tracked seems
to change as well. It would go well beyond our evidence to suggest an influence
of the twelfth-century debates on the Nominalist tradition but the parallels are
striking.
3 Aquinas
Whereas someone as influenced by Epicureanism and Stoicism as Abelard was
inclined to think particular chunks of actual matter the basic stuff of the universe
and forms to be what advened upon them to generate the statuses that give rise
to the objects of our familiar discourse, an Aristotelian like Aquinas saw anim-
als and the elements as basic and saw matter and form as incomplete relative to
them. This reversal strongly suggested that wholes were prior to their parts and
Aquinas embraced this conclusion, insisting that matter and form were incom-
plete substances, that matter as such was merely potential, that the integral parts
of a substance—the organs of an animal, for example—existed properly speaking
14 Cf. Arlig, “A Study,” ch. 5.

only as parts of the substance and that whatever survived of them outside the
substance was only homonymously called by the name of the organ.
That substances constitute their parts (rather than being constituted by them)
does not, however, settle the question whether they are identical with the wholes
made up of those parts. Aquinas certainly thinks that a substance at one time
is not always the same as the whole of its parts at another time. This is perhaps
clearest in the human case where he holds that you can survive death in virtue of
your soul surviving death even though in life you are at any time a composite of
that soul and a body. If one holds, as seems plausible, that the composite does not
survive if only the soul does, one seems driven to the conclusion that you after
death are not identical with the composite of your parts now. Aquinas insists that
the soul after death and before the resurrection is not a human being because the
essence of human being includes matter. Its existence, its esse in his terminology,
is nonetheless the same as that of the human being before death. He maintains
that all the integral and the essential parts of a composite substance share the
same esse but seems prepared to allow that in some sense they are different beings
(entia).
Another and more complicated question concerns essential parts—those
which enter into the definition of a thing. Aquinas, like his mentor, Albertus
Magnus, and many of their contemporaries, and following Averroes, distin-
guishes between a forma totius and a forma partis. Aquinas claims the human
soul is a forma partis and that what constitutes the essence of a human is not its
soul but its soul and body together. The soul may be what causes the union but it
is not the union and it is that union which is the individual human. That union
changes over time and may even at some time be a sort of null union consisting
of the soul alone, but it is the union and not the soul, properly speaking, which
is the individual. From this perspective, we see less the “top-down” character of
the relation between the whole and its integral parts and more a “bottom-up”
relation between the essential parts and the union they constitute. The tension
between those has a subsequent history.
4 John Duns Scotus

We might begin that history with John Duns Scotus. Unlike Aquinas, Scotus is
impressed with the embryological fact that in many animals individual organs
develop and begin to function before the whole animal can plausibly be said
to exist. What then is the ontological status of such organs? Scotus apparently
regards them as substances in their own right and suggests that the forma totius
accounts for (or is?) their constituting a whole animal.15 This commits him to
rejecting the doctrine apparently espoused by Aquinas that no substance can
have another as a part. Scotus (and many of those after him) preserves the letter
though not the spirit of this dictum by claiming that only what is not a proper part
of a substance can properly be called a substance and that what would otherwise
be substances but are parts are “incomplete substances.”
For Scotus the forma totius in virtue of which parts make up a whole appears to
be something other than the parts themselves and so the whole is not just its parts.
As Ockham understands Scotus, this form of the whole is not just the composite
substance itself but an item which accounts for the distinctness of the compos-
ite from its essential parts. Ockham is right to understand Scotus (and indeed
the whole tradition of appeal to the form of the whole) in this way. Scotus is con-
cerned to show that (for example) humanity is not the same thing as human form
or human flesh and bones taken severally or jointly. It is a distinct metaphysical
item. Scotus thinks of this item, the human essence, as being individuated by the
presence of another item, something “on the side of the form” as he sometimes
puts it, which some of his followers call a haecceity. Thus the distinctness of a
composite substance from its essential parts is fixed independently of its indi-
viduation. Hence, we should not simply identify the so-called form of the whole
with the individual composite substance. There is a sense in which it is naturally
prior to that substance—though it is not really but only formally distinct from it.
There is then also a sense in which Scotus’s appeal to the form of the whole is
a sleight of hand. To identify simply the form of the whole with the individual
composite seems to beg the question against the position that the composite just
is the essential parts taken jointly. To suggest that the supposed form of the whole
is another part of the composite invites the question of whether the composite is
distinct from all its essential parts taken jointly. Scotus attempts to slip between
the horns by introducing the unified essence as a new metaphysical item distinct
from both the composite substance and its parts but it is at best unclear whether
this is just stamping his foot! Ockham certainly thinks so.
5 Fourteenth-Century Developments
Ockham recognizes in beings just essential and integral parts and while he
thinks that substances are not identical with their integral parts, he does think
that they are identical with both of their essential parts (i.e. with their form
15 Cf. Thomas Ward, “The Hylomorphism of John Duns Scotus,” Ph.D. Diss., UCLA, 2011, esp.
ch. 3. For Ockham’s critique of Scotus’s account of the forma totius cf. Summa philosophiae naturalis
1.19 in William Ockham, Opera Philosophica, vi (St Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute of St
Bonaventure University, 1984), 206–7.
and their matter), taken together.16 Here he explicitly sets his face against Duns
Scotus’s claim that there is a form of the whole which accounts for a composite
substance being a distinct thing from its essential parts taken together. Ockham
thinks that the essence of Socrates just is Socrates; and he recognizes no distinc-
tions in nature other than real distinctions. Hence, on his view, the form of the
whole would have to be either the composite itself or one of its essential parts.
To posit another essential part besides substantial form(s) and matter seems to
Ockham to multiply entities to no purpose, and simply to claim that the com-
posite must be a thing distinct from its essential parts taken jointly is to beg the
question.
The crucial question for Ockham is how we are to understand the “both” or the
“taken together” or the “jointly” in the formula that a composite substance is both
its essential parts taken together or jointly.17 He claims that unlike “either one
of ” (uterque), “ both” (ambae) has a collective reading just as does “all” (omnes)
in “All the apostles are twelve.” Being twelve is not the property of any single
apostle, nor need we introduce a new entity—the dozen of apostles. Rather we are
to understand the “all” collectively and allow that predication can be plural. What
is distinctive and interesting about Ockham’s thinking at this point is that, while
he is prepared to admit that there are predicates which can be applied to wholes
and not to their parts, he also insists that, once we understand the resources of
plural quantification, we need not take this admission to commit us ontologically
to sums over and above the items summed.
Ockham’s explicit use of a collective sense of “all” (omnis) to avoid introducing
a new entity besides the essential parts of a thing taken together becomes stand-
ard in the nominalist tradition. His Parisian contemporary, Jean Buridan, shares
the view that “the integral whole . . . not only is [made up] from its parts, but it
also is its parts.”18 In his Physics Commentary, Buridan devotes an entire question
(bk. 1 q. 9) explicitly to whether a whole is its parts.19 There he argues that it is,
and, considering the special case in which the parts are the matter and form of a
composite object, that if the matter and form are not themselves the composite
then the composite needs be a third thing as closely united to the matter and form
16 Ockham, Opera Philosophica, vi. 206–7.

17 Ockham takes this up in Quaestiones Variae, q. vi art. Ii, Opera Theologica, viii (St Bonaventure,
NY: Franciscan Institute of St Bonaventure University, 1984), 207–19.
18 See Jean Buridan, Summula De Dialectica, tr. G. Klima (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2001), 428. Buridan adds: “But the terms ‘integral whole’ and ‘integral part’ are terms of first inten-
tion or imposition, for they aptly supposit for external things, existing apart from the operations of
the soul; for a house is an integral whole, as well as a man or a stone, for any of these consists of
many parts and is those parts.”
19 Jean Buridan, Subtillisime Questiones Super Octo Physicorum libros Aristotelis, ed. J. Dullaert
(Paris, 1519), lib. 1 q. 9 f. 11v –13v .

as they are to each other. In that case the three of them will be parts of a whole
and if that whole is not just them, then there will be a fourth entity of which they
three are parts, and so where we thought there was the matter and the form there
will turn out to be infinitely many entities!
Despite his identification of a thing with its parts, Buridan does not think all of
a thing’s integral parts are necessary for its continued existence. Like (Pseudo?)-
Joscelin he distinguishes between the principal parts of a thing without which
it could not exist at all and other integral parts which are necessary for it to
be “complete.” Buridan, though, adds a wrinkle. In his Summula de Dialectica,
adopting the reading of Aristotle which has it that functional parts of a thing can-
not exist apart from that thing, he suggests that parts in the sense he has in mind
are not actual apart from the whole of which they are parts—though the material
of which they are constituted is. Elsewhere he is more liberal in his use of “part”
so that the matter which makes up a part in the narrow sense is a part in the
more liberal sense. Turning in his Physics Commentary to the question of same-
ness over time, Buridan suggests that sameness (identitas) can be taken in three
ways. In the narrowest way only a thing which has no parts can be the same from
one time to another. God, angels, and human souls are the only things the same
over time in this sense. Things which have a principal part which remains the
same in the narrowest sense but other parts which do not can be the same in the
second sense. Human beings are the same over time in this sense. Finally, there
are things which remain the same over time not in virtue of any part remaining
the same but in virtue of a spatio-temporal continuity among the parts. Non-
human animals, plants, and items like rivers are the same over time in this sense.
These views taken together commit Buridan to the view that, while necessarily a
thing is the same as its parts and there may be principal parts which are neces-
sary to the thing, there need not be any parts of parts with which the thing is
necessarily the same.20
The position taken by Ockham and Buridan—that a material thing is exactly its
parts—was developed within the Nominalist tradition and some of the problems
to which it gives rise were noted and discussed. Albert of Saxony, for example,
worries whether if a thing is its parts the name of the thing is a universal since
it signifies many things. He insists that although “Socrates” is a name of many
things, all but one of which are parts of one thing, it names them in virtue of a
single act of naming. He goes on to claim that, if one of the lesser parts were to
be destroyed, a finger say, the rest would properly be called Socrates—though it
20 For insightful discussion of Buridan on identity cf. O. Pluta, “Buridan’s Theory of Identity,” in
J. M. M. H. Thijssen and Jack Zupko (eds), The Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy of John Buridan
(Leiden: Brill, 2000), 49–64.
is not the very same thing that is now called Socrates because that includes the
finger.21
Albert makes clear, as Ockham had, that while a thing is its parts, it is not the
case that necessarily those parts are the thing. Unlike Aquinas, for whom parts
cannot survive outside the substance they compose, the Nominalists think those
parts can and they think that the same substance can be made of different parts
at different times.
One related issue that was very much discussed was that raised by the triduum.
According to the standard theology, in the period between the Crucifixion on
Good Friday and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, Christ’s body and soul were
separated. For Resurrection to make sense in this context it seems required that
the composite being there was before the Crucifixion not exist then, though all
its parts do. This posed a problem which seems to have only two solutions: either
one holds that when the parts all exist but the thing does not, there is some item
(e.g. a mode of union), perhaps not quite earning the name “thing,” which is
missing, or one holds that there is some item whose presence prevents the thing
from existing even when its parts all do. Ockham, having no truck with items that
are not full-blooded entities, takes the second horn of this dilemma, at least in
Quaestiones Variae, vi, art. 2. Others with more sympathy for diminished beings
take the first horn.
6 Francisco Suárez
One thinker with such sympathies, and with a very considerable influence on the
early modern period, is Francisco Suárez. Suárez can be fruitfully seen as sum-
ming up a long scholastic tradition. Like Scotus and Ockham and unlike Aquinas,
he claimed that prime matter and substantial form are both entities in their own
right and, because there is no real distinction between essence and existence, exist
in their own right.22 Composite substances are thus, for him, truly composite,
made up of really distinct essential parts. Like Scotus and unlike Ockham, Suárez
held that the composition of really distinct entities requires something positive,
but like Ockham and unlike Scotus, he nonetheless insisted that a composite
substance was just its essential parts taken together!
21 Albert of Saxony, Expositio et Questiones in Aristotelis libros Physicorum ad Albertus de Saxonia
attributae, ed. B. Patar (“Philosophes médiévaux,” 39–41; Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1999), bk. I q. 7.
22 Cf. Disputationes Metaphysicae (DM) 15.9.5 for substantial form and 13.4 and 5 for prime mat-
ter. The standard edition of the Disputationes Metaphysicae is found in R.P Francisci Suarez Opera
Omnia, ed. A. C. B. Vives (1858 ff.), xxv–xxvi. A slightly better text, however may be found at
<http://www.salvadorcastellote.com/investigacion.htm> accessed Apr. 2013.
Suárez devoted the third section of Disputation 36 of his Metaphysical

Disputations to the question whether a whole is its parts and there, after explicitly
denying that a thing is distinct from its parts taken collectively, concludes that it
is its parts united by a mode of union. What makes this a form of the view that a
thing is its parts is that Suárez, following a Jesuit tradition, denies that modes are
items distinct from the things of which they are modes.23 Thus we return to the
issue we first saw in Abelard: whether if what A is is what B is we can conclude
that A is B. Abelard denies this but Suárez seems happy to accept it. These issues
come into sharp focus when Suárez turns in Disputation 44 of De mysteriis vitae
Christae to discuss the Resurrection.24 From the time of Augustine on, the major-
ity of Christian theologians had maintained that the doctrine of the Resurrection
required that the resurrected body and soul be numerically the same as they had
been before death. This raised a host of problems which were widely discussed.
If sameness of body required sameness of matter what happened if matter that
had been part of one body became part of another? If sameness of body did not
require sameness of matter, what did it require? Suárez argues that while the
very concept of resurrection requires numerically the same substantial form but
does not require numerically the same matter or the same mode of union, the
Christian conception of Resurrection does so require. Suárez takes Durandus of
St Pourcain to be his major opponent here. He understands Durandus to claim
that only humans can be resurrected because the origin of a thing is essential to
it and only the human soul does not perish at death and so can provide con-
tinuity of identity and esse for the resurrected human. Suárez, on the other hand,
maintains that God can re-create anything he can create and so that God can
recreate numerically the same matter, form, and even mode of union that any
composite substance had before its destruction. True to his view that a compos-
ite substance just is its essential parts, Suárez claims that their re-creation would
be the re-creation of the substance but he maintains nevertheless that in fact at
the Resurrection God re-creates as well numerically the same mode of union that
united the human body and soul.
7 Seventeenth-Century Developments: Hobbes

and Descartes
In many ways it is Hobbes not Descartes who is the transitional figure between
medieval and early modern debates about compositionality and identity. Clearly
23 DM 5.6.5–6.
24 Cf. F. Suárez, De mysteriis vitae Christae, disp. 44, sectio 1–2, in F. P. Suarez Opera Omnia, ed.
A. Carolo Berton Vives (1860), xix. 744–52.
immersed in the Nominalist tradition, Hobbes approaches compositionality and

identity from a consideration of the ways in which names for things are used.
To speak of a whole is to acknowledge that it is composed of parts and to speak
of something as a part is to acknowledge the whole of which it is a part and other
parts as well. That reference to the whole and its parts perform different semantic
functions does not, according to Hobbes, produce a counting problem. A whole
is one in number, “whole” means “all the parts together,” and a whole is called
“one” before division and “the whole” even after division.25 To understand how
a whole relates to its parts, it is necessary neither to divide a thing up nor to
compose it from its parts; it is sufficient to understand how something could
be divided. Hence, “the whole and all the parts together are the same thing.”26
Identity, meanwhile, functions according to the meaning of names. There is no
separating a question about the identity of a thing from an examination of the
criteria for applying a given name.
In defining body, Hobbes shares with Descartes the view that extension is the
essence of body and that extension, along with magnitude and real space (which
are only distinct by reason), is the same thing as body.27 Hobbes also denies that
accidents are real or exist in bodies as parts. An accident is not in a body the way
blood is in a body. Although, in general, accidents are defined as “the manner of
our conception of body,” the conceptual distinctions we make must have some
foundation in the nature of bodies. Extension and figure are accidents bodies
could not exist without and it is by virtue of these that bodies are either in motion
or at rest. All other perceived accidents (“colour, heat, odour, virtue, vice”) are
25 This is not to say that the parts of a thing are mind-dependent. That real division is not
required for conceptual division does not make real division dependent upon conceptual division.
In his commentary on White’s De Mundo, Hobbes accepts divisibility beyond that which can be
conceived or represented by a sign or image, namely, infinite divisibility. See the English tr., Thomas
White’s “De Mundo” Examined (hereafter, DME), tr. Harold Whitmore Jones (Bradford: Bradford
University, 1976), 29–30. Here he is keen to distinguish between what in the tradition would have
been held as the division between integral and essential parts, and to assert that the proper use of
“part” is in relation to integral parts. When I consider a thing in terms of its parts (e.g. a man as
being composed of a head, shoulders, arms, etc.), I perform a division (even if the man remains
intact) whereas if I think of a definition (e.g. of a man as a rational animal) there is no division.
To think of a part is to think of something smaller contained within a thing. It does not follow
from any of this that Hobbes is an “anti-realist” as some scholars have suggested. Cf. Thomas
Holden, The Architecture of Matter (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), 98–9. The foundation for division
is the nature of matter, extension, or space. It is because any division of a body is a correspond-
ing division in space that we cannot have two bodies in the same space or one body in two spaces.
Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy, tr. William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839), i.
108.
26 Elements of Philosophy, i. 95–8.
27 Extension is distinct from imaginary space or place which depends on our cogitation. Elements
of Philosophy, i. 105.
likely, Hobbes suggests, to be accounted for in terms of motions existing either

in the perceiver or in bodies themselves.28
Hobbes uses the term “essence” somewhat liberally. That accident (or acci-
dents) in virtue of which we name a thing is its essence. Hence, rationality is
the essence of a human, whiteness the essence of a white thing, and extension
the essence of a body. When an essence is generated, it is called “form.” Only
accidents are generated, but they are not things; bodies are things but are not
generated. Bodies do not grow, nor are they generated from something not-body,
nor do they go out of existence through being destroyed. The generation and
destruction of things (e.g. a living creature) is accounted for in terms of the dif-
ferent accidents that come into being and perish and in virtue of which the same
matter29 comes to be called by different names at different times.30 This way of
using “essence” to pick a thing out by its essential properties does not produce
a real distinction between matter and form. A human is nothing other than the
body of which it is composed, called now “human” by reference to its rational-
ity, now “body” by virtue of its extension. But what a human is just is what its
body is.
The combination of Hobbes’s views about compositionality and his materi-
alism lead him naturally to many of the puzzles about identity which exercised
medieval philosophers. If there is only a conceptual distinction between a whole
and its parts, it seems to follow that for A to be identical with B, all the parts of
A must be identical with those of B, but this conclusion conflicts with our com-
mon practice of using names to apply to distinct collections of matter at different
times as though they were identical in parts (Socrates, the Thames, the ship of
Theseus). The absence of real accidents from Hobbes’s views makes it difficult to
imagine how the persistence of accidents could account for the persistence of a
thing through change in its matter, but what else is there for Hobbes’s account
of identity to rely upon except forms or what he calls essential accidents in those
cases where the matter is continually replaced? A second problem is how things
may be the same in material parts (the sculpture and the stone) although bearing
different accidents. If these were identical, one would expect that any accident of
one would be an accident of the other. Yet, as Abelard had noted, the sculpture
is made by the sculptor whereas the stone is not.

29 We refer to body as “matter” relative to different forms it comes to have, and as “body” as
the subject of accidents (Elements of Philosophy, i. 117). Prime matter is simply body in general,
considered without respect to any accidents or forms, not by virtue of lacking accidents or forms
but simply so considered for the purposes of argumentation (Elements of Philosophy, i. 118).
Another random document with
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Kadulle tultuaan he pysähtyivät erään porttikäytävän eteen, sillä
Pettersson muisti äkkiä erään tärkeän asian.
— Minullahan ei ole kauluksia, eikä niin fiiniin paikkaan pääse

ilman maitolänkiä.
— Ykskaikki, ole huoletta, kyllä se jenkkaantuu, — sanoi Silvo ja

kaivoi taskustansa jotakin. — Kas tässä on palanen valkoista paperia,
äläs huoli nyt, kyllä minä värkkään…
Silmänräpäyksessä hän taittoi maalarin paperinkäsittelytaidollaan

paperin kolminkertaiseksi, taivutti sen kaarelle ja vetäisi takinpielestä
Petterssonin luoksensa. Hän asetti paperin toverinsa kaulaan, nosti
hänen takinkauluksensa ylös, pisti kauluksen rinnustasta
säppineulalla kiinni, taivutti takinkauluksen taas alas puolitiehen ja
sanoi:
— Siinä sitten on kaveri, jonka nyt veisi vaikka vihille.
Kaikki tämä oli tapahtunut niin nopeasti, että Pettersson ei

vieläkään täysin tajunnut muutosta, joka hänen ulkomuotonsa
eduksi oli tapahtunut. Silvo vihelsi ajurin, ja sitten lähdettiin oikein
herroiksi »Enkeltensäveltä» kohti.
Silvo maksoi ja koetti käyttäytyä niin hienosti kuin osasi ja säläsi

parhaansa mukaan pientä päihtymystään. Ovenvartija loi heihin
pikaisen silmäyksen ja avasi kohteliaasti kumartaen »herroille» oven.
»Enkeltensävel» oli yksikerroksisessa puutalossa sijaitseva toisen

luokan ravintola, joka käsitti kaksi huonetta. Etuhuone oli suuri, salin
tapainen. Peräseinällä oli punaisesta koivusta tehty »bufetti»
tiskeineen, jolle oli ladottu runsaasti kaikenlaisia, eriarvoisia
väkijuomapulloja. Bufetin takana istua lohotti lihava »frouva», kasvot
kömpelösti maalattuina, halliten tätä punaisten samettisohvien,
rautaisten pöytien ja savustuneiden uudinten koristamaa salia.
Vieraita oli runsaasti, ja kaikkien edessä höyrysi sikurille tuleva,
väkevä kahvi, ja punssi helmeili matalissa pikareissa.
Tulokkaat tervehtivät »frouvaa», joka armollisesti hymyillen näytti

kellastuneita tekohampaitaan ja sanoi ranskanpullaa muistuttavalla
kädellään viitaten:
— Härrat on hyvä ja astu vaan kammarin päälle, siellä vielä pitäisi

olla joku platsi.
Pettersson seurasi Silvoa, ja he asettuivat pienen pöydän ääreen,

jonka marmorilevy oli halki. Huoneen seinät olivat paperoidut
tummanpunaisilla tapeeteilla, ja katossa riippui punakupuinen
lamppu, joka levitti huoneeseen salaperäistä hohdettaan. He tilasivat
kahvia ja puolikkaan punssia. Kun he olivat kallistelleet muutamia
laseja, sanoi Pettersson:
— Jumaliste, tämähän on kaikki kuin unta, punaista unta, ja sen

fröökinänkin povi kun on niin korkee ja valkee, että ihan minua
pyörryttää.
— Äläs turhia, mitäs tyhjästä pyörtyy, saahan sitä hiukan taputella,

jos näyttää lompsasta setelinkanttia…
Samassa alkoi kuulua etuhuoneesta soittoa. Orkesteriin kuului

piano, viulu ja harppu. Kappale, jota soitettiin, oli jokin
surunvoittoinen valssi, ja Pettersson vaipui suloisen raukeaan
tunnelmaan. Kun soitto oli loppunut, huokasi hän:
— Jaa, kyllä täällä todella on kuin taivaan ilossa, ei tämän nimenä
suotta ole »Enkeltensävel». Se soitto niin sulatti sydänalaa.
— Älä sinä Pettersson puhu pehmeitä… tavallista rämpytystä…

sinussa vaan ei ole yhtään taiteilijaa, mutta me maalarit ollaan,
jumaliste, tarkkoja konstin päälle… meitä ei turha huimase.
— Tilataan lisää, — sanoi Pettersson alistuvasti, ja lisää tilattiin.
Nyt alkoi viulunsoittaja näyttää suurta taitoaan. Pettersson näki

avoimesta ovesta, kuinka hän asetti jousen polviensa väliin ja alkoi
hangata viulunkieliä paikallaan olevaa jousta vasten soittaen
reipastahtista polkkaa. Soitto sujui mainiosti, sen loputtua oli yleisö
haltioissaan. Kättentaputukset olivat myrskyisiä, ja sama kappale
vaadittiin uudestaan.
Pettersson riehui ylinnä, tämä soitto oli hänestä taiteen huippu.

Silvo oli moisesta esiintymisestä närkästynyt, sillä jouduttuansa
alkoholin nauttimisesta vissille asteelle, herkistyivät hänen
taiteilijavaistonsa. Hänen musikaalinen korvansa tuli tavallista
tarkemmaksi, niin että hän kuuli paremmin kuin muulloin
epäpuhtaudet soitossa.
»Enkeltensävel» oli täydellisesti pikkutuntien tunnelmassa.

Nautitut juomat ja intomielinen soitto olivat irroittaneet kaikkien
kielet ja vapauttaneet kaikkien mielet jokapäiväisten huolien
pimennoista elämän päivänpaisteisille rinteille. Laulajia esiintyi
tuhkatiheään, ja toisinaan tahtoivat kaikki laulaa yht'aikaa.
Vihdoin sai Petterssonkin tilaisuuden esittää oman lempilaulunsa.

Hän nousi seisomaan ja horjui kuin »tärpästikkeli». Hän huusi minkä
jaksoi:
»Merelle, merelle mennä aion,
merelle mieleni palaa…»
Hän joutui voimakkaan tunnelman valtaan, vaikka joku viereisessä

pöydässä huomauttikin kärmeellisesti, että niinhän se heiluu kuin
laivan kannella, ettei sen enää merelle tarvitse vuovatakaan.
Kun Pettersson oli lopettanut laulunsa, soimasi Silvo häntä siitä,

että hän oli laulanut »falskisti», niin turkasen keljusti, ettei sitä
viitsinyt kuulla kukaan… sehän oli selvää sikolahtia…
— Sinä olet itse sika, pahuksen maalihousu, sinut minä lahtaan, —

karjaisi Pettersson ja löi nyrkkinsä pöytään, niin että lasit hyppivät.
— Stop, stop, Pettersson, ollaanpas nyt herroiksi, tämä ei olekaan

mikään puulaakin poksi.
Herroiksi, kyllä minä sinulle herrat näytän, perhanan keljunkreeni…
Samassa Silvo mitään ajattelematta ponnahti pystyyn ja karkasi

Petterssonin kaulukseen. Silmänräpäyksessä sieppasi hän
paperipalasen
Petterssonin takinkauluksen alta ja alkoi juosta ympäri huonetta
heilutellen paperia ilmassa ja huusi nauraen:
— Hei, kattokaas sällit Petterssonin maitolänkiä! Tämä kraaku on

minun uuden hilsuni kirjeen takapuoli…
Aluksi Pettersson jäykistyi hämmästyksestä, mutta sitten hän

karkasi pystyyn ja kaatoi pöydän, niin että halkinainen marmorilevy
putosi kovalla melulla kahtena kappaleena lattialle.
Syntyi yleinen hämminki. Pettersson ajoi horjuen Silvoa, joka
luikerteli ketteränä kuin kärppä pöytien välissä. Pettersson kaasi vielä
pari pöytää saavuttamatta Silvoa, joka riehui paperikaulus
kädessään. Samassa tarttuivat voimakkaat kädet Petterssonin
niskaan takaapäin ja hänen rimpuilemisestaan huolimatta ovenvartija
raahasi hänet ovelle ja heitti kadulle potkaisten perään.
Silvo nauroi ja ilakoi:
— Tällä paperilla se peltiseppä pääsi tähän herrassakkiin, mutta

ilman tätä se passitettiin ulos…
— Mutta te saatte pitää sitä paluupilettinä, — huusi ovenvartija ja

heitti Silvon samaa tietä ulos. Kun rauha »Enkeltensävelessä» oli
palautettu, soitti orkesteri Porin marssin, ja yleisö osoitti myrskyisästi
suosiotaan.
*****
Mitenkä peltiseppä Pettersson vihdoin aamuyöstä oli saapunut

kotiinsa Hermanniin, sitä hän ei muistanut. Mutta kun hän vaatteet
päällään makasi omassa vuoteessaan, joka heilui niin, että hän
lujasta pitelemisestään huolimatta luuli siitä putoavansa, lauleli hän
väsyneesti:
»Merelle, merelle mennä aion, merelle mieleni palaa…»
Ja hänen sielussansa soi vieläkin suloisen keinuttavana

»Enkeltensävelen» pianon-, viulun- ja harpunsoitto. Vihdoin hän
nukkui tähän suloiseen sävelaallokkoon…
Kun Pettersson seuraavana aamuna heräsi siihen, että aurinko

kehtasi paistaa suoraan hänen kasvoihinsa, ihmetteli hän sitä, että
huoneessa oli niin kuolemanhiljaista. Ei kuulunut lasten melua eikä
akkapahus pitänyt tavanmukaista »partasaarnaansa».
— On niin suloista olla kesäleskenä, — ajatteli hän ja oikoi

särkeviä
jäseniään; varsinkin istumalihaksissa tuntui kipeää jomotusta.
Siitä hän muistikin osan eilisestä retkestään, mutta muisto
»Enkeltensävelestä» jäi kuitenkin suloisena hänen mieleensä
väikkymään.
— Jospa mamma tietäisi, kuinka hassusti pojan asiat nyt ovat, niin
hän varmasti möisi viimeisen hameensa ja ostaisi pojalleen viinaa, —
huokasi Pettersson noustessaan istumaan. Ja pidellessään kuumaa
päätänsä, jossa »kuparisepät» takoivat, hän myönsi, että kyllä Silvo
ainakin siinä oli oikeassa, kun oli sanonut, että peltisepät ovat koko
joukon keljumpaa väkeä…
Sitten hän nousi ja riensi ensimmäiseen »puulaakiin» juomaan

»purkin kaljaa», sillä niin häntä janotti…
*****
Viisitoista vuotta oli kulunut. Sen ajan oli peltiseppä Pettersson

perheineen asunut Oulussa, jossa hänellä oli ollut hyvää työansiota,
mutta nyt oli liike, jonka palveluksessa hän oli ollut, tehnyt vararikon,
ja häneltä oli työ siten Oulussa loppunut.
Pettersson kulki taas pitkästä aikaa ensi kerran

syntymäkaupunkinsa tuttuja katuja. Suuresti oli kaupunki näinä
vuosina muuttanut ulkomuotoansa, mutta kuitenkin tuntui se niin
tutunomaiselta ja rakkaalta.
Peltiseppä Petterssonia janotti. Hän päätti pistäytyä »puulaakiin»
ja ajatteli tänä iltana käydä niissä kaikkein tutuimmissa. Kun hän tuli
»Karusellin» ovelle, huomasi hän hämmästykseksensä, että sisältä
kuului voimakasta soittoa ja että koko kapakka oli muuttunut
elävienkuvienteatteriksi. Häntä vihlaisi sydänalasta.
— Mitä hemmettiä? Olisivat nyt edes pitäneet nimen »Karuselli»,

sehän olisi hyvin passannut. Mitä tuo »Biograf» muka on olevinaan,
— mutisi hän harmistuneena.
Hän suuntasi kulkunsa kadun toiselle puolelle »Kukkuvaan

kelloon».
Kas helkkari, — sanoi hän itseksensä, onkos sekin käki lakannut

kukkumasta, ja nyt siinä kukoistaa panttilainasto, tuo tyhjätaskujen
kurjuuden pankki ja onnettomuuksien itara »roikutuskonttoori», tuo
riistäjien kultainen »kani»…
Hän oli ihan haljeta harmista sitä katsellessaan.
Pettersson jatkoi matkaansa mieli kuohuksissa, ja kuivuus hänen

kurkussansa alkoi tuntua sietämättömältä. Hän joudutti askeleitaan
mennäkseen »Enkeltensäveleen», sillä nyt hänellä oli oikea kauluskin
kaulassansa. Mutta kun hän tuli sille kadulle, jossa »Enkeltensävel»
oli ennen ollut, oli hän jäykistyä mielenliikutuksesta. Sen puutalon
tilalla, jossa tämä muistojen suloinen ravintola oli ollut, kohosi nyt
viisikerroksinen kivitalo, oikea vuokrakasarmi.
Ilokseen hän huomasi kuitenkin, että eräästä suuresta lasiovesta

meni ja tuli runsaasti ihmisiä. Hänessä heräsi pieni toivo, että
»Enkeltensävel» sittenkin on tässä uudessa talossa. Suuri oli hänen
pettymyksensä, kun hän huomasi, että se olikin vain tavallinen
automaatti…
— Kaikki tutut paikat ovat hävinneet kuin tina tuhkaan, — ajatteli

hän. Eihän koko kaupungissa enää ole ainuttakaan paikkaa, jossa
viitsisi ottaa ryypyn murheeseen.
Hän kulki kauan katua ylös ja toista alas alakuloisen haikea tunne
rinnassaan, sillä nyt hän vasta huomasi, kuinka tuttu kaupunki
sittenkin oli ehtinyt käydä oudoksi ja muuttaa ulkomuotoaan.
Joksikin aikaa hän oli unohtanut janonsa, mutta yht'äkkiä hän

tunsi sen kahta kauheampana. Kuivuus kurkussa poltti miltei yhtä
kovasti kuin sisuksissakin. Oli kuin hänellä olisi ollut kurkussa pala,
jota hän lakkaamatta koetti niellä. Hän tarvitsi välttämättä
palanpainetta ja poikkesi ensimmäiseen toisen luokan ravintolaan,
joka hänen tiellensä osui.
Ravintola oli uusi nykyaikaisine kirjavapäällystäisine

huonekaluineen. Koko sali oli jaettu pieniin osastoihin niinkuin tallin
pilttuisiin. Hän valitsi itsellensä yhden sellaisen komeron salin perältä
ja tilasi itsellensä olutta, viinaa ja punssia. Mutta hänen oli siinä
sanomattoman ikävä, pala kurkussa ei tahtonut millään painua
alemmaksi. Tuntui niin yksinäiseltä ja katkeralta. Ei ollut edes
soittoakaan niinkuin »Enkeltensävelessä»…
Kun hän oli istunut siinä pari tuntia, alkoi olo tuntua hiukan
helpommalta, mutta ei häntä nyt haluttanut laulaa, vaan hän
muuttui mieleltänsä pehmeämmäksi, ja kyyneleet pyrkivät väkisinkin
esille silmänurkista.
Häntä alkoi lopuksi harmittaa.

— Täysi mies ja ämmän meiningit, — sanoi hän puoliääneen.
Kirosi, maksoi, nousi ja lähti ulos kaduille, jotka olivat samoja kuin
ennenkin, mutta jotka kuitenkaan eivät enää olleet samoja…
HAUTOJA KOHTI
Kivijalkakerroksessa olevan pesutuvan ovi oli selkoselällään. Ovesta

tulvehti vesihöyryä, keveätä kuin vaaleat poutapilvet. Mahdotonta oli
nähdä sisälle, sillä maaliskuun aurinkoinen päivä oli vielä siksi kylmä,
että ovesta tuleva kuuma, kostea ilma heti muuttui sankaksi
sumuksi. Tuvassa vallitsi usvainen hämärä, sillä huoneen ainoa
akkuna, joka antoi viereisessä talossa olevan hautakiviveistämön
pihalle, oli paksussa hiessä. Hämärässä pesutuvassa oli kaksi
pesumatamia, jotka käsivarret kyynärpäitä myöten
saippuavaahdossa pesivät kolmijalkaisissa »punkissaan» vaatteita.
Suuren muuripadan alla paloi rätisevä tuli, joka loi märälle
asfalttilattialle salaperäistä hohdettaan.
— Vallanhan tässä saa flunssan, — sanoi Vepsäläiskä, roteva,

keski-ikäinen nainen Sundbergskalle, — kun te aina tuota ovea
pidätte läämällänsä.
‒ Mitäs siinä turhia toimitat, tiuskaisi Sundbergska, alulla

kuudettakymmentä oleva pienehkö eukko. — Nuori ihminen ja
kehtaakin pitää tuosta ovesta aina sellaisen äläkän…
— No tartteekos Sunbergskankaan aina olla niin hassu niiden
hautajaisten perään?
— Jotain vaihtelua kait minäkin sentään tarvitten. Tänään pitäisi

olla oikein hauskat hautajaiset flakujen ja kranssien kanssa. Lehdissä
luki, että ylioppilaatkin ottavat osaa professori Lindevallin
hautajaisiin, ja tästähän niiden täytyy mennä ohi.
Sundbergska kuivasi käsiänsä esiliinaksi vyötäisille sitaistuun

paitaan ja asettui pesutuvan ovelle, josta pihan yli pitkin
porttikäytävää saattoi nähdä kadulle. Hän jäi siihen kotvaksi
seisomaan ja puheli jotain itseksensä.
— Ihmeellinen ihminen tuo Sundbergska, — ajatteli Manta

Vepsäläinen siinä pestessään. — Lähes viisikolmatta vuotta se on
tässä pitänyt tuota peliään. Aina, jok'ikinen Jumalan päivä, se kyttää
ja vahtaa hautajais-saattoja. Ihan se on kuin kipee, jos joku ruumis
pääsisi livahtamaan tästä ohi hänen sitä näkemättään…
— Merkillistä kun ei niitä jo kuulu eikä näy, vaikka kello on jo

kolme… Tähän aikaanhan niiden pitäisi tästä tulla, sillä ruumis
kuulemma siunataan haudalla, — puheli Fiina Sundberg ikäänkuin
itseksensä ovella.
Mutta Manta Vepsäläinen ei kuullut hänen puhettaan. Hänen

ajatuksensa kulkivat omia latujaan. — Ja on se sentään ihmeen
paikka, kun se ei väsy tuohon yhteen ja samaan. Aina se vaan
jaksaa niitä varrota ja sitten se ampasee kuin vapsahainen portille ja
katselee siinä syömättä vaikka koko päivän… Samassa Vepsäläiskän
ajatukset katkesivat jostain hänelle tuntemattomasta syystä, ja hän
rupesi hyräilemään: »Saammeekoohan tulla yhteen tuolla puolen
Joortaanin…»
Maaliskuun aurinko paistoi lämpimästi. Räystäitten jääkynttilät
kiloilivat kuin kristallipuikot ja tippuivat vettä. Muutamia kyyhkysiä
kuhersi jossain akkunalaudan päällä, ja etäämmällä olevasta
korkeitten kivimuurien ympäröimästä pihasta kuului posetiivin
soittoa.
Sundbergskaa alkoi unettaa. Hän nojasi ovenpieleen, risti kätensä

yli rinnan, ummisti silmänsä ja antoi auringon paistaa kurttuisille,
laihoille kasvoillensa. Talon tumma tiiliseinä hohti suloista lämpöä,
pesutuvan ovesta tulvehti lämmintä höyryä, ja ikäänkuin sen mukana
tuli Sundbergskan korviin tutun laulun harras sävel ja sanat:
»Yhteeheen, yhteeheen…»
Hänen oli lämmin ja hyvä olo, hän raotti silmiänsä niinkuin kissa
auringon paisteessa ja näki jonkun lipun liehuvan silmiensä ohi. Hän
huudahti hätääntyneenä:
— Auta armias, Vepsäläiskä, Vepsäläiskä, tulkaa herran nimessä,

nyt ne ajaa ohitte…
Hän riensi portille minkä vanhoilla, luuvaloisilla jaloillansa pääsi, ja

Vepsäläiskä seurasi käsiänsä pyyhkien perässä.
— Jestas sentään, kun olin aivan torkkua ohi koko hautajaiset,

mutta kun kevätilma tuppaa niin ramasemaan. Onneksi kerkesin
sentään nähdä, se oli sellainen vaalea tamminen kirstu, oikein niitä
neljänsadan markan arkkuja pislaakeineen ja hanttaakeineen. Annas
olla nyt kun lasken flakut, yksi, kaksi, … jaa-a, kokonaista seitsemän
riepua. Kyllä professori-vainaa näkyy olleen tykätty ihminen, —
puheli Sundbergska hengästyneenä, silmät ihastuksesta ja
innostuksesta hehkuen, vaikka kasvoilla väreilikin tekopyhä
hautajaisilme.
— Noi on niitä ylioppilaita ja tossa vissiin ajaa professorska
flikkansa kanssa, synti niitä rassuja, — sanoi hän nyökäyttäen
päätään hartaalla osanotolla. — Ja noi on niitä professoreja ja muita
opettajia, ai, ai, kyllä siinä sitten ajaa järkeä… Vepsäläiskä, kattokaa
nyt totakin kranssia, se on vissiin yliopiston kranssi, semmonen
maksaa parisataa, niin että präikää; köyhä sillä rahalla eläisi
puhtaasti puolisen vuotta, kyllä se sentään on synti sellaisia rahoja…
Olkaas vai nyt, etten vaan sekoo laskussani,
kaksikymmentäseitsemän, kaksikymmentäkahdeksan,
kaksikymmentä… no on siinä hevosta ja saattajaa… Tossahan tulee
pastori, ai, ai, rikas ruumis, rikas ruumis, ei tämä pastori köyhiä
hautaakkaan. Kovin on tykätty rikkailta, kuuluu tekevän sen kaidan
tien hiukan leveämmäksi, ja kannattaahan siitä vähän maksaakin, jos
toi nyt sitten auttaa. — Hän puhui koko ajan ja viittoili käsillään
tehden kaikesta havaintoja. Manta Vepsäläinen ei saanut suun
vuoroa.
— Viisikymmentäkolme hevosta, olipa siinä, pariton luku… taisipa

joutua helvettiin, sillä niinpä sitä vaan sanotaan, että suruttomien
saattoon aina tuppaa väkisinkin epätasainen luku, vaikka mene nyt
ja tiedä hänestä, — puheli Sundbergska asiantuntijan tavoin.
Saattue oli jo kaikonnut hautausmaan portille asti, mutta yhä

seisoi Sundbergska paikallaan ja katseli päinvastaiseen suuntaan,
näkyisikö sieltä toista saattoa, sillä tähän aikaan niiden kaikkien oli
tapana siitä ohi jolua.
Portti, jonka pielessä Sundbergska seisoi, oli pimennon puolella, ja

maaliskuun tuuli oli vielä kylmä. Sundbergskaa paleli. Hän aikoi
poiketa portista sisälle, mutta samassa näkyi kadunkäänteessä uusi
ruumissaatto, ja hän jäi paikalleen.
Kylmästä huolimatta hän teki tästäkin saattueesta kaikki samat
havainnot kuin edellisestäkin. Hän arvosteli arkun hinnan, vainajan
yhteiskunnallisen aseman ja varallisuuden ja luki nimen seppeleitten
nauhoista sekä laski samaan aikaan saattojoukon hevosluvun.
Nyt hän tällä kertaa olisi ollut jo tyytyväinen näkemäänsä, sillä niin
häntä vilutti, mutta vielä ilmestyi yksi ruumissaatto. Kaikkienhan
niiden täytyy mennä siitä ohitse, jos mielivät kaupungin vanhalle
hautausmaalle.
— Köyhää väkeä, köyhää väkeä, — mutisi hän itseksensä, mutta ei

malttanut kuitenkaan poistua, ennenkuin oli laskenut hevoset, joita
oli kahdeksan kappaletta. Sitten hän riensi hampaat loukkua lyöden
pesutupaan, jonne Vepsäläiskä jo heti ensimmäisen saattueen
nähtyään oli rientänyt. Hän oli sulkenut oven, ja tuvassa tuntui
miellyttävän lämpimältä, kun tuli ulkoa.
— Eihän ne tahtoneet tänään loppua millään, paljon niitä ihmisiä

näkyy kuolevan näin kevätpuoleen, — sanoi Sundbergska ja lähestyi
muuripataa lämmitelläkseen itseään. — Ihan olin paleltua pilalle, niin
mua vilutti…
— No ja tartteeko Sundbergskan kanssa siinä vahdata

tuntikaupalla ihan kuin palkan edestä, vaikka saisitte
kuolemantaudin.
Sundbergska ei ollut kuulevinaankaan koko huomautusta, vaan

alkoi kaataa kiehuvaa vettä »punkkaansa» ja ryhtyi pesemään
vaatteita…
*****
Kolme vuorokautta oli kulunut.
Viimekeskiviikkoisen kylmässä kevättuulessa seisoskelemisen

jälkeen oli Sundbergska saanut niin pahan yskän, että hänen täytyi
pysytellä huoneessaan. Hän oli ahkerasti nauttinut »Tanskan
kuninkaan rintatippoja», mutta siitä huolimatta oli yskä vain yltynyt,
niin että henkeä toisinaan salpasi vallan tukehtumiseen saakka. Ja
hän kun oli toivonut toipuvansa edes sen verran, että sunnuntaina
kykenisi hautausmaalle katselemaan ja kuuntelemaan hautajaisia.
Aurinko paistoi lämpimästi akkunasta, joka antoi kadulle. Oli

varhainen kevät ja kelirikon aika. Suuria lätäköltä näkyi likaisessa,
pahalta tulevassa lumessa. Räystäät tippuivat, auringon säteet
kimaltelivat putoilevissa vesipisaroissa ja heijastelivat kadun
tummissa vesilätäköissä.
Sundbergska nojasi kyynärpäillään akkunalautaan ja katseli

kaihoten ulos. Hän painoi kasvonsa lujasti ruutuun ja koetti
kurkotella nähdäksensä, oliko kadulla mitään suurempaa liikettä.
Mitään erikoista ei näkynyt. Vain jokunen sunnuntai-aamupäivän

kävelijä tai muutamia pika-ajureita, joissa istui mustiinpuettuja naisia
sylissään kukkaruukku tai havuista ja keinotekoisista
pihlajanmarjatertuista tehty seppele. He ajoivat
sunnuntaitervehdykselle omaistensa haudoille.
Oli ikävystyttävän hiljaista. Aurinko paistoi raukaisevasti.

Sundbergskan mustanjuovikas, puolisokea kissa lojui lattialla
auringon paisteessa ja kehräsi kuuluvasti… Hiljaisuutta häiritsivät
vain toisinaan ohitse ajavan raitiovaunun kellonkilahdukset ja öljyn
puutteessa kiljahtelevan vanhan herätyskellon vongahdukset…
Samassa alkoivat kaupungin suurimman kirkon kalseaääniset kellot
soida. Niiden tutut, kumeat lyönnit saivat Sundbergskan
levottomaksi, sillä hän tiesi kokemuksesta, että nyt oli varmasti jokin
suuri ruumissaatto tulossa. Eikä kestänytkään kauan, vaikka
odottavan aika tuntui pitkältä, kun kadulle ilmestyi komea
ruumissaatto. Siinä oli suuri joukko jalankävelijöitä, paljon hevosella-
ajajia, kokonaista neljäkymmentä hevosta ja runsaasti seppeleitä.
Sundbergskan tuli paha olla, sillä hän saattoi arvata, että haudalla
tullaan pitämään kauniita puheita. Pastori, jonka hän tunsi
persoonallisesti, tulee pitämään oikeaan jumalansanaan perustuvan
saarnan, kuoro tulee laulamaan, seppeleitä lasketaan, kukat
tuoksuvat sulavan lumen kanssa kilpaa, ja kyyneleitä vuotaa
runsaasti tänä kauniina sunnuntaina… Monta kertaa hän oli ollut
syrjemmällä mukana itkemässä tällaisissa tilaisuuksissa, sillä se oli
niin tunnelmallista…
Nytkin hän herkistyi pelkästä mielikuvituksesta miltei kyyneliin.

Hänen päänsä oli niin hirvittävän kuuma, ja ohimot takoivat rajusti.
Hän painoi otsansa ruutuun, mutta sekin tuntui näin
auringonpaisteessa liian kuumalta. Saatto jolui verkalleen ohitse, ja
viimeisen ajurin reen perässä oleva numero muuttui epäselväksi
häipyen olemattomaksi. Kumeat kirkonkellojen lyönnit värisyttivät
vieläkin keväistä, kuulakasta ilmaa, ja Sundbergskan mielen valtasi
syvä hartaus. Hänen herkistynyt, kuumeinen mielikuvituksensa
vieritti muistista kuluneen elämän monia raskaita muistoja hänen
siinä nuokkuessaan aurinkoista akkunaa vasten.
Työtä, köyhyyttä ja ainaista ponnistelua oli elämä läpeensä ollut.

Muiden hyväksi oli saanut raataa, niin että oli katketa, ja vaivoin
henkensä pitimen oli ansainnut. Tuskinpa sitä muisti olleensakaan
nuori, sillä niin varhain oli saanut alkaa taistella leipäkannikasta.
Mutta olihan sitä sentään, vaikkapa vain lyhyeen, oltu nuorikin, ja
silloin oli pidetty seuraa nuoren miehen kanssa niinkuin muutkin
nuoret. Niitä herttaisia aikoja, sydänalasta oikein hemasi, ja komea
se rakennusmestari Nordlund oli ollutkin. Siinä sitten oli ollut miesten
mies, kun sen vain näki, niin polvet veti heikoksi, ja jalat olivat lentää
alta. Ja vaikka se olikin ollut niin ylettömän nuori, niin oli se ollut
niitä ensimmäisiä siinä ammatissaan ihan. Hyvät heidän välinsä
olivat olleet, ja omaan kotiin oli päätetty muuttaa heti kun se
osaketalo vain tulee valmiiksi…
Mutta toisin oli kaikkivaltias armossaan säätänyt. Kun sen

osaketalon harjakannuja oli juotu, oli Nordlund hutikkapäissään
pudonnut korkeilta tellinkeiltä ja itsensä kuoliaaksi satuttanut…
Auta armias niitä kauheita aikoja. Ihan sitä oli luullut tulevansa
kaistapääksi, ja muutama kuukausi sen Nordlundin kuoleman jälkeen
oli vielä syntynyt tyttölapsi. Voi sitä häpeää ja alennusta, mutta
Jumalalle kiitos, lapsi oli heti pienenä päässyt tämän maailman
pahennuksesta…
Toisten ihmisten likaisia vaatteita oli sitten pesty päivästä toiseen,

vuodesta vuoteen, ja niin oli hiljalleen elää kituutettu. Mutta niistä
ajoista pitäen olivat hautajaiset ja haudat käyneet rakkaiksi. Niitä
katselemalla, niitä seuraten oli elämä sentään tuntunut ikäänkuin
paremmalta, helpommalta, ja olihan siinäkin jotain sisällystä.
Ihmisten hautajaiset osasivat sentään olla niin erilaisia. Vuosien

kuluessa hän oli pannut merkille, mikä niissä todella oli tähdellistä,
mikä itse vainajia, mikä jälkeenjääneitä ihmisiä varten… Mutta
yhteistä kaikissa oli ollut se juhlallisuus, jonka herättää itsekussakin
asustava tunto siitä, että kerran meidän kaikkien on kuljettava sitä
tietä.
Harvoin oli tullut kirkossa käydyksi, vaikka uskovaisten kirjoihin

itsensä lukikin, sillä selvempää ja enemmän sydämeen käypää sanaa
sai hautuumaalla kuulla, ja siksipä oli tullut tavaksi aina liittyä
ruumissaattoihin. Varsinkin keväällä, kun luomakunta oli heräämässä
uuteen elämään, saattoi haudalla puhjeta ankaraan synnintuntoon ja
ratketa katumuksen karvaihin kyyneliin. Silloin parhaiten tunsi
elämän turhuuden ja kuoleman varmuuden…
Näin olivat hänen ajatuksensa kulkeneet, kun ankara yskäkohtaus

herätti hänet mietteistään; päätä huimasi ja hänen täytyi kiiruhtaa
vuoteeseensa.
Kun hänen asuinkumppaninsa Vepsäläiskä iltahämärissä palasi

kaupungilta kotiinsa, löysi hän Sundbergskan ankarassa
kuumehoureessa, ja vielä samana iltana vietiin Sundbergska yleiseen
sairaalaan.
Fiina Sundberg houraili ankarasti koko seuraavan yön ja eli

mukana lukemattomissa hautajaisissa. Muutaman päivän kuluttua
Sundbergska itse oli valmis haudattavaksi.
Seuraavana sunnuntaina lähti pitkä ruumisjuna Malmin

hautausmaata kohti. Juna oli ahdinkoon saakka täynnä
mustapukuisia ihmisiä, jotka saattoivat omaisiaan viimeiseen lepoon.
Eräässä kolmannen luokan vaunussa istui Vepsäläiskä erään
tuttavansa kanssa ja puheli tälle matalalla äänellä:
— Äkkiä sen Sundbergskankin lähtö täältä tuli, mutta tarvitsiko

sen kanssa itsensä vilustaa niitä ainaisia maahanpaniaisia
vahdatessaan siinä portinpielessä.
— Mutta kun sillä nyt kerran oli sellainen luonto ja hinku niiden
hautajaisten perään, — sanoi Vepsäläiskän seuralainen.
— No, sehän se oli, mutta synti minun sitä, sittenkin käy, kun se
saa näin viheliäiset hautajaiset, sillä kait se oli toivonut parempiakin,
se kun pani niin suuren arvon komeuden päälle.
— Minkäs sille mahtaa, kun on köyhä eikä ole sukulaisiakaan.
— Niin, jokaisellahan meillä on säätynsä mukainen loppusaatto.
He vaikenivat ja ajattelivat itsekseen tämän maailman menoa.
Malmilla kannettiin ruumiit kappeliin, jossa pappi siunasi ne kaikki

yhdellä kertaa ikäänkuin summakaupalla. Sitten alettiin ruumiita
kärrätä kapearaiteisilla vaunuilla avaran hautausmaan eri osiin.
Ruumis numero kolmetoista, jonka Vepsäläiskä tiesi Sundbergska-

vainajaksi, laskettiin monien muiden kanssa pitkään linjahautaan.
Hautaa umpeen luotaessa sanoi Vepsäläiskä toverilleen:
— Kovin paha numero sen Sundbergskan kohdalle sattuikin. Se

väitti aina eläissään, että kolmetoista oli paha luku
hautajaissaatossa. Sielunvihollisen luku. Mahtoikohan se nyt joutua
helvettiin?
— Kuka sen tietää, — sanoi Vepsäläiskän toveri rauhallisena, —

mutta jonkun kait sekin numero pitää osalleen saada…
— Niin, ja jonkun kait vaivanpaikkaankin pitää joutua, oma vika,

— lohdutteli Vepsäläiskä itseänsä.
Kun hauta oli luotu umpeen ja pehmeään, valkoiseen hiekkaan oli
pistetty maalaamaton riuku, johon oli mustalla merkitty numero
kolmetoista, kiinnitti Vepsäläiskä siihen pienen seppeleen, joka oli
tehty kuivaneista lehdistä ja valkoisista vahakukista. Sitten hän
kääntyi toverinsa puoleen ja sanoi:
— Ikävät hautajaiset, olisi Sundbergska itse sanonut

hautajaisistaan…
HÖYRYLAIVAN PALO
Pääkaupunkilaisen sanomalehden nuori kesätoimittaja Einar Ruth

makasi sairaana suuressa, autiossa huoneistossa, josta varsinaiset
asukkaat, hänen varakas tätinsä perheineen, olivat matkustaneet
maalle kesää viettämään. Huoneistoa vartioi ja kukkia kasteli
perheen palveluksessa vuosikymmeniä ollut keittäjätär Liina, joka nyt
hoiti Einar-herran taloutta näin kesäaikaan.
Ovelle kolkutettiin, ja Liina, joka oli tunnettu tavattomasta

puheliaisuudestaan, astui sisälle kädessään pieni, helmellä koristettu
kultasormus.
— No, tässä se nyt on se Einar-herran rinki. Kun minä tuolla

kylpyhuoneessa siivosin, niin vilahti siellä ammeen alustaa
lakaistessa jokin kirkas esine, ja eikös siellä ollut tämä, sormus. Ai,
ai, kyllä ne nuoret herrat sentään ovat hunttiomia tavaroittensa
kanssa. Tyyrishän tämäkin kalu on ja niin koree päärlykin kun siinä
on, mutta välittääkös ne nuoret herrat semmoisista, — puheli hän
innostuneena kaikki yhteen henkäykseen punniten sormusta
kämmenellään.
— Sepä hauskaa, että Liina sen löysi. Kiitoksia vaan, minä olenkin
ollut niin pahoillani sen katoamisesta, se on minulle hiukan niinkuin
rakas, — sanoi Einar Ruth.
— Mutta tietääkös Einar-herra, että minullakin on yksi oikein tyyris

sormus? — kysyi Liina silmät loistaen ja sivellen tyytyväisenä
kädellään vuoroin leukaansa ja suupielihän.
— Vai on Liinallakin sormus? Taitaakin olla oikein kihlakalu, —

nauroi herra Ruth.
— Ja vielä mun mitä! Jestas sentään mitä se Einar-herra minusta

luulee. Johan minä nyt enää kihlakaluja… Ei, se onkin oikea
klakkisormus kiven kanssa, sellainen rupiini sen päällä paistaa, —
puhui Liina ylpeydellä.
— Jopa nyt jotakin, vai oikea rubiinisormus. Keneltä Liina sen on

saanut? — kysyi herra Ruth leikkisästi.
— No eikö Einar-herra sitä ole kuullut,
Alma-rouvaltahan minä sen sain, kun pelastin eräässä höyrylaivan

palossa ne rouvan hopeet, — sanoi Liina hiukan ihmeissään siitä,
ettei Einar-herra todellakaan näkynyt tietävän mitään hänen
sormuksestaan ja koko siitä tulipalojutusta, vaikka hän oli siitä niin
monelle kertonut.
— Liina kertoo nyt, enhän minä ole sitä kuullutkaan, — sanoi herra
Ruth silmissä pieni, iloinen veitikka, sillä kertomuksen höyrylaivan
palosta hän oli kuullut Liinalta monta monituista kertaa. Hän tahtoi
kuitenkin tällä tekosyyllä pidättää Liinaa jonkun aikaa huoneessaan,
sillä yksin sairaana olo kuumassa, tuttavista tyhjässä kaupungissa oli
niin ikävää.
Liinaa, jolla aina oli olevinaan hirvittävä kiire kotiaskareiden takia,

ei kuitenkaan tarvinnut kehoittaa kahta kertaa, sillä paljon
puhuminen kuului niihin hänen heikkouksiinsa, jotka eivät johtuneet
vanhuudesta, vaan synnynnäisestä taipumuksesta. Hän seisoi
keskellä lattiaa, otti lepoasennon nojaten kättänsä toiseen
lonkkaansa, huojutteli hitaasti ruumistansa ja siveli leukaansa ja
suupieliään.
— Voi voi Einar-herra, kun ei minulla olisi oikein tässä aikaa, mutta
kyllä se vaan sitten oli kamala paikka se laivan palo. Mistäs minä nyt
oikein alkaisin, puheli hän ikäänkuin itsekseen ja muutti
ruumiinpainon toiselle jalalle.
— Juu, nyt minä muistankin. Se oli oikein hehkeä juhannusaatto.

Höyrylaivan kansi oli ihan väärällään väkeä, vallan sen olisi voinut
luulla uppoavan siihen paikkaan koko höyrypaatin. Vihreät
juhannuslimot koristivat laivan akteria ja fööriä, ja niitä oli pitkin
koko paatin stakettia. Se oli oikein juhlallista.
Vihdoin sitä monen mutkan ja viivytyksen jälkeen päästiin

lähtemään Helsingin rannasta saaristoa kohti. Laivalla oli sitten
yletön menoaminen ja hoittaaminen. Kolmella hanurilla soitettiin
niinkuin viimeistä päivää, että ihan olivat korvat haljeta niiden
nälkäurkujen pauhuun, ja niin siinä pidettiin pahaa ja rietasta ääntä,
niinkuin Jumalaa ei olisi ollutkaan olemassa…
Meri makasi tyynenä ja kirkkaana kuin hyyhmä lahna-aladobin

päällä, ja kun kapeissa salmissa mentiin, niin rannoilla koivujen kuvat
tanssivat kuin häissä, ja kaislat niiasivat kuin koulutytöt…
Niin oli luonto hehkee ja hellä, että oikein mulle tuli kiitollisuuden
tunto Jumalaa kohtaan siitä, että hän armossaan oli antanut meille
niin suloisen suven. Mutta ihmiset täkillä ja kajuutoissa eivät
piitanneet mistään, hoilattiin ja soitettiin, niin että päätä huimasi ja
sydänalasta eto…
Ja auta armias, kuinka ne muutamat miehet matkan varrella

tulivat hutikkaan. Kaikilla oli mukanaan juhannuseväitä, millä viinaa,
millä konjakkia ja jos jotakin väkevää… Mutta totta sanoen, kyllä
minua äklötti, kun minä näin parinkin retkaleen ryyppivän pullosta
tinatööriä…
Eihän se Einar-herra taida tietääkään mitä »tinatööri» on? Juu,

nähkääs Einar-herra, se on aivan selvää lamppuspriitä, semmosta
kun pannaan priimuskyökkiin. No, eihän ne nyt sitä aivan
semmoseltaan latki, kyllä sitä ensin värkätään ja tisleerataan senkin
seitsemällä konstilla. Ensin halkaistaan hapanlimppu noin pitkin
leveyttään ja sen läpi sitten fadin päällä filtataan eli siivilöidään tenu
pariin, kolmeen rupeamaan, että se paha siitä lähtisi, se myrkky,
joka miehen tappaa. Sitten siihen ajetaan konjakkiesanksia ja
kolmensorttiset kuminat, ja kuuluvat ne sitä vielä kehuvankin. Mutta
kyllä niiden henki vaan tulee niin pahalle, että ihan luulisi
nuuskivansa trankkitynnöriä. Mutta siitä huolimatta näkyi se tinatööri
menevän miehiin kuin voi kanaan…
Yhä se meno vaan yltyi ja paheni. Minä ajattelin sydän kurkussa,

että jos Jumala auttais minua vielä sen verran, että antais minun
hengissä päästä maihin tästä uivasta helvetistä.
Mutta herrajestas sentään, silloin se tapahtui. Minä istuin silloin

föörissä Signe-neidin vaatekorilla ja riivin hiljaa oksasta koivunlehtiä
ja nuustelin kämmeniäni, kun ne niin mukavasti tulivat vihreelle.
Kuului kauhea huuto:
»Tuli on irti, laiva palaa, laiva palaa…» Siunatkoon, parkasin

minäkin ja ampasin pystyyn. Yksi akterissa ollut muija juoksi lapsi
sylissä minkä kerkesi fööriin ja kertoi minulle, kuinka valkea oli
päässyt irti…
Ryyppyhommissa olivat miehet sielläkin olleet ja olivat tölmässeet

vahingossa viiden litran spriipulion rikki. Sprii oli tulvinut pullosta
ruutikuivalle täkille kuin kaffi ylikiehuvasta pannusta. Hätäyksissä oli
sitten yhdeltä niistä onnettomista pudonnut palava paperossi
spriihin, ja niin oli tulipalo valmis…
Voi sitä hötäkkää ja äläkkää mikä laivalla nousi. Vanhan laivan

kuiva täkki syttyi tuleen äkkiä kuin rohtimet. Ja valkea otti heti kohta
sellaisen vallan, ettei sitä pitänyt styyrissä kukaan. Ihmiset tulivat
vallan kuin hulluiksi. Vaimoväki huusi ja parkui kuin tapettaessa, ja
osa miehistä oli siksi hutikassa, etteivät voineet ryhtyä paljon
mihinkään. Kaikki koettivat vain juosta alta pois minkä kerkisivät,
mutta juokse nyt siinä, kun laiva oli ahdinkoon saakka väkeä täynnä
ja vielä lisäksi tavaroita, kimpsua ja kampsua jos jonkin sorttista…
Täydellä höyryllä sitä sitten ajettiin suoraan maata kohti kivistä ja

kareista piittaamatta. Mutta kun oltiin merellä niinkin kaukana kuin
me, ei sitä vaan niin yks-kaks rantaan päästy. Laivan pilli vihelsi ja
huusi kuin tuomiopasuuna, ja kyllä vaan siinä oltiinkin tuomiolle
menossa täyttä vauhtia.
Ihmiset tuuppivat toisiaan ihan armotta ja tappelivat vallan kuin

sodassa. Siinä sai jokainen katsoa eteensä. Palava laiva lähestyi
rantaa kuin tuuliaispää, mutta vedosta valkea vain yltyi ja sai lisää
virikettä… Pilli huusi, ja ihmiset huusivat. Ei nyt enää haitaria
soiteltu, vaan kolmella kielellä, suomeksi, ruotsiksi ja ryssäksi,
ihmiset siinä rukoilivat Jumalalta apua, mutta kyllä se nyt tuntui
olevan tulematta…
Hädissään muutamat paiskasivat itsensä mereen, mutta ei se

sinnekään meno niin hääviä ollut, jos ei osannut uida. Toiset
viskelivät tavaroitaan mereen niin paljon kuin vaan kerkesivät, ja
tämmöisessä sekamelskassa laiva viimein pääsi joteskin lähelle
rantaa. Sen kone pysähtyi siinä paikassa, sillä kuumuuden takia
täytyi höyry päästää pannusta, ettei se räjähtäisi. Möljään saakka ei
päästy, mutta hyvä niinkin…
Nyt uskalsivat useammat paiskata itsensä mereen, ja tavaroita tuli

ihan satamalla. Vettä oli rannassa tavalliselle miehelle kainaloihin
asti. En minäkään ollut siinä toimetonna, vaan mitään sen enempää
ajattelematta heitin Signe-neidin vaatekorin mereen. Mutta sitten
minä peljästyin, niin että jalat oli aitani mennä, sillä minä muistin
samassa rouvan hopeet, jotka olivat väskyssä salongissa…
Siinä salongin ovella vasta sitten kävi kova rytäkkä ja käsirysy.

Mutta minä piinasin itseni vaan sisälle kovasta vastavirrasta
huolimatta ja palasin saman tien, vaikka siinä ovessa olinkin niin
kovassa puristuksessa, että henki ei käynyt juuri hiventäkään. Mutta
rouvan hopeet minä vaan sain täkille ja sitten suoraan mereen.
Ajattelin, että kaitpa ne siellä ovat paremmassa tallessa kuin tulessa,
niinkuin olikin…
Sitten minäkin pääsin viime tingassa yhteen pikkupaattiin, jolla

vaimoihmisiä maihin soudettiin. Eikä siinä rantaa keritty varrota,
mereen vaan vyötäisiä myöten, kun paatti palasi toisia noutamaan…
Vihdoin sen valkeankin valta saatiin laantumaan ja laiva hinattiin
lähemmä rantaa, vaikka ei se juuri laivalta näyttänyt, kun sen
melkein kaikki puuosat olivat palaneet karreksi. Siinä se hylky maata
kehitteli mustana ja kamalasti katkuavana kuin pahasti palanut
paistinpannu…
Mutta auta armias, minkä näköistä joukkoa sieltä maihin lossattiin.

Minä istuin läpimärkänä valkoisella rantahiekalla ja ihan
nääntyneenä, sillä pitkät hameet päällä vedessä kahlaaminen ei ole
mitään leikintekoa. Ajattelin juuri, että milläs ihmeen konstilla minä
saisin ne rouvan hopeet pelastettua sieltä merestä, kun samassa
nostettiin rannalle eräs oikein hieno venäläinen rouva. Voi, sitä
raukkaa, niin sen vaatteetkin olivat palaneet, ettei ollut jälellä
kauniista protyyrihameesta kuin muutamia siekaleita, mutta jaloissa
sillä oli ehjät, tulenpunaiset kengät kuin keitetyt hummerit. Voi hyvä
Jumala sentään, hengissä se oli ja valitteli ryssäksi, ja ihan minun
piti peittää silmäni, kun näin, että sen reidet olivat palaneet kuin
käristetty rosspiffi. Minä parkasin kauhusta ja olin pyörtyä ihan siihen
paikkaan…
Mutta ei sitä siinä kauan ehtinyt katsella, sillä samassa tuotiin pari
lasta, jotka olivat menneet pieniksi kuin nyrkki, aivan kuin palaneet
pyyt padassa, kuolleet lapsiraukat… Ja niin siihen rannalle
hommattiin ihmistä jos jonkin näköistä. Toiset olivat palaneet
enemmän, toiset vähemmän, mutta palaneita ne vaan olivat…
Kyllä siinä sitten piisasi itkua ja valitusta, enkä minäkään enää

jaksanut itseäni pidättää, vaan porasin ihan ääneen, vaikk'ei minulla
ollutkaan mitään hätää, mutta kun se oli niin ylettömän surkeeta…
Sitten minä rupesin oikein toden perään pelastamaan rouvan

hopeita. Sain erästä pitkää laivamiestä, jonka nimen tiesin olevan
Antersson, sillä olinhan minä niin monasti siinä laivassa reisannut,
plyysin hiasta kiinni. Se oli sellainen sinisen ja valkean raitainen
plyysi, niinkuin Einar-herra tietää merimiesten pruukaavan. Minä
pyysin häntä hakemaan rouvan hopeet merestä paikasta, jonka minä
viisaisin. Mutta se ei ottanut kuuleviin korviinsakaan minun
puhettani, nauroi vain ja nyhtäsi itsensä irti. Silloin mulle tuli ihan
hätä ja pyysin oikein ruotsiksi:
»Säärä Antersson, rettä rouvans hopeet, säärä Antersson, rouvans

hopeet…»
Antersson vain nauroi ja aikoi lipottaa tiehensä, mutta silloin minä

tarrasin häntä plyysinhiaan uudestaan kiinni kuin takkiainen ja
rukoilin oikein poru kurkussa:
»Säärä Antersson, retta rouvans hopeet, retta ny, jaak jeer

Antersson kaffe och allt, retta ny para.» — Ja silloin sen miehen sisu
pehmeni, se nauroi minun uikutukselleni ja alkoi kahlata mereen.
Minä seurasin niin pitkälle kuin uskalsin, ja kun se jonkun aikaa oli
siellä meressä lorinut, niin rouvan hopeet se löysi ja Signe-neidin
korin kans…
Voi, voi, kyllä minä sitten osasin olla iloinen ja onnellinen, kun ne
hopeet saatiin merestä ja kun minä Signe-neidin vaatteita levittelin
rannalle kuivamaan. Minä kiehautin oikein väkevää kaffeeta rouvan
tyyriistä kaffeista siinä rantakivien välissä, ja mun mieleeni tuli niin
sanomattoman suuri kiitollisuus Jumalaa ja Anterssonia kohtaan, että
mun täytyi siinä puoliääneen veisata »Sun haltuus rakas isäni…»,
vaikka ihmiset vähän pitkään katselivatkin ja kai maar luulivat, että
minä olin tullut kaistapääksi. Vaikka eihän se mikään ihme olisi
ollutkaan, jos semmoisessa löylyssä olisi järkensäkin menettänyt, ja
taisi se kuumuus siinä höyrypaatilla kysyä monenkin päätä…
Kun me sitten Anterssonin kanssa joimme siinä
auringonpaisteisella rannalla hyvää kaffeeta — kerman minä olin
juossut lähellä olevasta torpasta, — niin minä olin vallan hassusti
rakastunut Anterssoniin enkä malttanut olla hiukan paijaamatta sen
suurta, ruskettunutta kättä, jossa hohti Anterssonin naimasormus.
Olihan se oikeastaan syntinen teko, hyväillä toisen miestä, mutta en
minä silloin sille mitään mahtanut, kun minun kiitollisuuteni oli niin
suuri Jumalaa ja Anterssonia kohtaan…
Tässä Liina hiukan hengähti, pyyhki muutamia liikutuksen kyyneliä

uskollisista, tihruisista silmistään ja jatkoi sitten:
— Ja kun Alma-rouva sai hopeensa takaisin ja kuuli, kuinka minä

ne olin pelastanut, niin hän kiitti mua oikein kädestä ja kysyi, että
tahtoisinko minä palkkioksi rohkeudestani rahalahjan vai jonkin
muistoesineen. Mutta mitäs minä rahoista, onhan minulla muutamia
tuhansia pankkikirjan päällä, ja ne rahat minä olen määrännyt
pakanalähetykselle.
— Vai aikoo Liina ostaa alastomille neekeripojille vaivalla ja hiellä

keräämillään rahoilla taskuraamattuja? — sanoi herra Ruth leikkiä
laskien. — Joutaisivathan ne rahat parempaankin.
— Ai, ai, Einar-herra ei saa pilkata, kyllä kristityn ihmisen pitää

huolehtia siitä, että kaikki kansat tulisivat Jeesuksen opetuslapsiksi.
No niin, minä pyysin Alma-rouvalta sormuksen, kun ei minulla,
naimattomalla tytöllä, ole mitään semmoista. Ja sitten rouva antoi
minulle kultasormuksen oikein rupiinin kanssa, ja siihen oli
kaiverrettu sisäpuolelle »Liinalle uskollisesta palveluksesta».
Kun minä sain sen sormuksen, niin minä niiasin, niin että hameet
maata veti, ja itkin niinkuin ensi kertaa Herran pyhälle ehtoolliselle
käydessä. Minä näytän sen sormuksen Einar-herralle joskus, ei se
nyt ole minulla matkassa, sillä minä pidän tavarani tyystimmin kuin
Einar-herra, joka paiskoo sormuksiaan vaikka ammeen alle. —
Tämän huomautuksen nuorelle herralle piti vanha Liina

oikeutenaan, vieläpä velvollisuutenaankin. Tämän sanottuaan hän
pelästyi kauheasti ja huudahti hätääntyneenä:
— Jestas sentään, kun minä vallan unohdin perunat tulelle! Kait ne

nyt ovat kiehuneet ihan puuroksi.
Samassa silmänräpäyksessä hän livahti ulos huoneesta.
Einar Ruth tunsi väsymystä tämän yksinpuhelun jälkeen. Hän ei

kaivannut enää seuraa. Helteinen, kesäinen aurinko paistoi
uuvuttavasti akkunan edessä olevien keltaisten uudinten lomitse
levittäen hiljaiseen huoneeseen kellertävää tulipalon loimotusta.
Hän vaipui horrokseen ja nukkuen levottomasti tässä kellertävässä

valossa hän näki pahoja unia tulipaloista, merihädästä, tappeluista ja
muista suurista onnettomuuksista…

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Composition as identity 1st Edition Aaron J.

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Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan Nationalism as

Situating Composition Composition Studies and the

The Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland Aaron

Composition and the Rhetoric of Science Engaging the

Reforming Medicare Options Tradeoffs and Opportunities

Telomerase Composition Functions and Clinical

Japan s National Identity and Foreign Policy Russia as

Capitalism as if the World Matters Porritt J.

Part I. Introduction and History

Part II. Ontological Commitments of CAI

Part III. Metaphysical Commitments of CAI

Part IV. Logical Commitments of CAI

11. Consequences of Collapse 211

Part V. Indiscernibility and CAI

DONALD L. M. BAXTER is Professor and Head of the Philosophy Department at

A. J. COTNOIR is Lecturer in the Department of Logic and Metaphysics at the

MEG WALLACE is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of

Introduction and History

Thus, totality is nothing else but plurality contemplated as unity.

A composite is nothing else than a collection or aggregatum of simple

1 See Harte (2002, ch. 2) for details.

principles to which philosophers have been attracted that represent aspects of

Inheritance of Location: A whole is located where its parts are located.

Varzi then goes on to present various arguments and considerations in its

2See also Berto and Carrara (2009) for objections.

Another possible philosophical motivation for CAI derives from considera-

Armstrong here suggests that there is an important metaphysical interdepend-

2 Blueprints: Varieties of CAI

Identity is utterly simple and unproblematic. Everything is identical to itself; nothing is

∀x∀y(x = y ↔ (ϕ(x) ↔ ϕ(y)))

Call this biconditional ‘Leibniz’s Law’. Here ϕ is usually intended as schematic,

3 Problems: Structural or Superficial?

Merricks, McDaniel (2009) provides a direct argument against the entailment.

term on the right. Yi recognizes this, and suggests a fix.

Another recent metaphysical objection to CAI is McDaniel’s (2008) argument

MD1. Proper Parthood:

According to MD1, something is a proper part of a whole whenever it is a part

MA4. Strong Supplementation:

∀x∀y(x y → ∃z(z ≤ x ∧ z y))

appropriate to think of z as the ‘remainder’ of x when y is removed. It may also

Fu(t, ϕ) := ∀y(y ◦ t ↔ ∃x(ϕ ∧ y ◦ x))

MA5. Unrestricted Fusion:

All three extensionality principles are theorems of classical mereology. In other

and references in Varzi (2008).

Of course, mereology is independent of these nominalist motivations. But

21 See Boolos (1984).

It will be useful, then, to give a formalization of an example of plural logic.

• Plural Variables: xx, yy, zz, . . .

to express the relevant many–one and one–many identities.26 Presumably, CAI

I know of no way to generalize the definition of ordinary one–one identity in terms of

Indeed, whether and how CAI should be formulated in plural logic is an

MD4 . Plural Fusion:

Fu(t, xx): = ∀y(y ◦ t ↔ ∃x(x ≺ xx ∧ y ◦ x))

MA5 . Plural Unrestricted Fusion:

∀xx∃z Fu(z, xx)

26 The concept of many–one and one–many identity is due to Baxter (1988b).

MD4 . Plural Fusion:

MA5 . Plural Unrestricted Fusion: