Commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologiae

In the title note that, since a power is an active or passive principle of operation, it contains two things in itself: namely, the relation of principle; and an absolute thing, which is the proximate reason of acting or undergoing. In the present case the question is not about the relation but about the absolute thing. So the sense of the title is: Whether a power, taken not as a relation but as the absolute thing it signifies, is the same as the substance of the angel.

II. In the body there is a single conclusion, answering in the negative, and it is universal, covering the angel as well as any creature whatever, namely: No operative power, whether of an angel or of any creature, is its substance. – And it is proved thus. The being (esse) of no creature is its operation: therefore the substance of no creature is its operative power.

The antecedent is clear from the preceding article. – The consequence, however, is deduced because, according to the diversity of acts, there must be a diversity of proper powers: for each proper act corresponds to a proper power. But operation and being (esse) are diverse acts, whose proper powers are the substance and the operative power. Therefore the substance and the operative power are diverse.

III. Concerning the aforesaid reasoning a doubt arises on many counts. And first, about that proposition: The diversity of acts requires a diversity of powers¹. For the talk is either of diversity absolutely, or of a certain kind. If absolutely, it concludes nothing: because a distinction among things produced does not infer a distinction among principles, save perhaps a formal distinction of powers, which does not suffice for the point at issue. – If of a diversity of a certain kind, it is either of a formal one: and so again it does not infer the point at issue. Or of a real one: and so it is manifestly false, because with a diversity of real acts there stands the unity of a power, as is clear in the visual power and others; indeed even with a real contrariety of acts, as is clear from II Caeli, comm. XVIII.

IV. Again, the talk is either of every act or of a certain kind. If of every act, an infinite regress manifestly follows: since the operative power is itself a certain act, in your view, since it is posited as an accident, and as subjectively in the soul; and so, if every act requires a proper power, another prior power will precede; and since that one too would be a certain act, it would require another prior one, and so on to infinity. – But if of an act of a certain kind, it will not be easy to assign what kind. For if it is said that the talk is of ultimate acts, one discovers that this is a kind of evasion, because then an ultimate act, inasmuch as it is an ultimate act, would have this property, namely to require a proper power. But this is false: since, as is clear in XI Metaphys.², and II de Anima³, and III Physic.⁴, every act that comes to be per se comes to be in a proper power; but it is evident that not every act that is the per se terminus of some action is an ultimate act; since every absolute accidental form is ordered to some operation.

– But if it is said that the talk is of an act of such a kind, that is, of an act per se awaited by that whose act it is, this is found to be false from the statement of St Thomas, who here subsumes under these propositions that esse is such an act with respect to essence. For it is evident that essence does not await being, nor does any intermediate process of coming to be intervene in order to join such an act to such a power; rather they are generated and corrupted by the same generation.

V. There is also a third ground for doubt from the subsumed propositions, namely: Essence is the proper power with respect to being, and the operative power with respect to operating⁵. For if these propositions are true, together with what was said before, it manifestly follows that, just as operating and being (esse) are always distinguished formally and really, so too every essence will always be distinguished really from every operative power. Which implies a contradiction. Both because no essence of any accidental form would be an operative power: and so heat would not be a heating power. And because no operative power would have being: since it would not be an essence.

VI. Concerning the conclusion itself there are many doubts and objections, inasmuch as it posits that no created substance is the immediate principle of any operation⁶. For either he understands this universally, of the principle both active and passive; or of the active only. If of both, it follows that substance can be the proximate subject of no change. But this is unfitting. Both because the opposite appears in prime matter. – And because this cannot be saved except by positing in every substance certain potential accidents connate with the substance itself, by whose mediation it would be changeable by diverse changes. But this is arbitrary and irrational: because plurality is not to be posited without necessity; for nature does as much as it can from fewer things, as is clear in I Physic.⁷

But if the talk is of the active principle only, it follows that it is supposed here that all the powers of the sensitive and intellective part are active, on the ground that they are operative powers. And yet in II de Anima⁸ the senses are manifestly said to be passive powers; and likewise the possible intellect, in the Third Book of the same work⁹.

VII. Next, against this there are the objections of Scotus¹⁰, in the Second Book, dist. XVI, and in the Fourth, dist. XII¹¹. And first he argues thus. What is ordered to an end, the more immediately it is ordered to it, the more nobly it is ordered: a created substance is ordered in the noblest way to the end to be attained through operation: therefore it will operate immediately.

– And it is confirmed. Because operating immediately belongs to the less noble form, namely the accidental, and to the nobler form, namely the Deity: therefore it belongs also to the intermediate form, namely the created substantial form. – And it is confirmed a second time. Because otherwise an intellectual substance would be blessed per accidens: which is unfitting. The consequence is proved: because it would be the subject of beatitude through a receptive intermediary, in which beatitude would be received, if that intermediary were separated from the substance.

VIII. Second, thus. A substance must be produced by a substance also as by the principle by which the agent acts: therefore substance is an active principle as that by which: which is nothing other than an active power.

– And this is confirmed. Because in your view, the form in which what is generated is assimilated to the generator is the reason and principle of generating: therefore the generative power in any substance is the substance.

And if it is said, conceding that substance is the active principle by which operation and generation proceed, not the proximate but the first, as is said in the definition of nature¹²; and that operative power names the proximate principle: against this there are many objections. First because it cannot be denied that substance is the immediate principle of such an operative power, which you posit to be an accident.

And because it also cannot be denied that substance is the immediate principle of substantial production. For either substantial production is elicited immediately by the substantial form, or by an accidental form. If by the substantial, the point is established. If by an accidental form, then either by its own power: and not so, as is evident of itself. Or by the power of the substance, because it is its instrument: and that this too is false is shown in four ways. First, because an instrument, in your view, moves only when moved by the principal agent: therefore there is some operation of the substance by which it moves the accident to act: which is the principal point intended.

– Second, because the principal and the instrumental cause are ordered essentially as superior and inferior. But it is evident that the superior cause reaches the effect prior by nature to the inferior; and if it is a natural cause, whatever or as much as it can, it acts naturally prior to the inferior. In that prior, therefore, the substance was produced immediately by the substance. And consequently, in the second sign of nature, in which the action of the secondary cause terminates, no substance is produced, unless the same thing is produced twice.

– Third, because where the instrument does not extend, there the action of the principal agent must reach: but the action of an accident does not reach the essence of bare prime matter: therefore the substantial generation that takes place in it must be elicited immediately by the substance. – Fourth, because when an accident is said to cause substance in the power of the substance, the term in the power adds either something absolute or something relative. If absolute, since that would be an accident, the same question will arise. If relative, it is manifestly clear that an accident cannot make a substance from a superadded respect: since a relation does not bestow active power. And that relation too would be an accident.

And because it cannot be denied that substance, in its own order, is the immediate principle of some proper operation, as is clear from the account of the superior principal cause, as we said. – And it is confirmed. Because although God, in the view of the philosophers, causes only by means of second causes, nevertheless he himself is the immediate cause of the proper operation in his own order. Therefore the created substance and the accidental form will stand likewise, granted that it causes only by means of an accident.

IX. Third, he argues by leading to the impossible. Because it would follow that by divine power an intellectual substance could be made without intellect, and conversely: because every prior absolute can be made without another absolute really distinct from itself.

And if it is said that this cannot be done because of the necessary connection between them, from this the point is rather established, for two reasons. First, because that connection is considered not according to the connection of a power to its act (because every power is a power of contradiction, as is said in IX Metaphys., text. XVII¹³), but according to the connection of an active cause naturally to its effect (whence in your view also the powers flow from the essence). Therefore the substance is immediately active: which is the principal point intended. – Second because, since God can supply the place of every extrinsic cause, however necessary such a connection may seem, God will nevertheless be able to make the one without the other.

X. Fourth, he argues from admitted facts and experience. We admit in the first place that an angel understands its own substance through itself: therefore the essence of the angel is the proximate principle of intellection. – We also experience that heated water cools of itself: therefore its own substance is the proximate principle of the cooling.

XI. For the clarity of the present matter, some distinctions must be noted. The first is about act. One kind is adequate to a power, as to understand with respect to the intellect, and to see with respect to sight: another is inadequate, as such an understanding, say to understand an ox, and such a seeing, say of something white. – In the present case the talk is only of adequate acts: since it is verified only of these that powers are distinguished by acts.

The second is about the gradation of things. For some things are intended by nature with primary intention as acts, others as powers: although it happens that things intended as acts have something of power mixed in, and likewise things intended as powers have something of actuality mixed in. And the former are per se primarily and essentially acts: and for this reason are simply located in the coordination of acts. The latter are per se primarily and essentially powers: and consequently are simply located in the order of powers. So that one must imagine that, just as in the genus of substance one finds certain things intended by nature per se primarily as principles of others, so in any genus there are certain things intended per se primarily by nature as the proximate principles of others.

And if this is so, from it we get a third distinction, of act and of power. Because each is twofold. For of acts, one is per se primarily act and secondarily power; another conversely. And likewise of powers, one is per se primarily power and secondarily act; another the reverse. Although in these there is a certain latitude. Because passive powers are acts only modally, inasmuch as some of them inhere in subjects: for from this they have a certain mode of act. But active powers are indeed acts, yet of such a kind that they are essentially intended, and produced in nature for this, to be principles of operations. And for this reason they are located essentially in the genus of principles.

In the present case, therefore, the talk is of an act per se primarily intended in the account of act, and of a power per se primarily intended in the account of power. – That such things are given in nature would require a special question. Yet it readily appears that they can reasonably be posited. Since all practical habits, as Aristotle taught in the Ethics¹⁴, are such things: because they exist for nothing other than to operate. Similarly the formal significates of the powers of the soul exist for nothing other than to operate.

XII. With these things presupposed, to the objections made against the reasoning of St Thomas¹⁵ the reply is that the present talk is of a real diversity, not of just any, but a formal one; not of any acts whatever, but of adequate ones, and per se primarily intended in the account of act. For such a total diversity requires a diversity of powers, inferring it not a posteriori but a priori: since the adequate act is the end of the power, and from II Physic.¹⁶ it is expressly clear that to assign the reason and condition of what is for the end from the end is to give the cause a priori; indeed the foremost cause in natural things, because natural things are for the sake of an end. And therefore that argument, a distinction among things produced does not argue a distinction among principles, is a sophism of Accident: since the acts of powers distinguish powers not as effects but as ends.

XIII. As to what is objected against the subsumed propositions¹⁷, it is said that, as is clear from the words of St Thomas in the reply to the last argument, esse is not taken here universally, as it is something common to the first act, substantial and accidental; but only for substantial being. And the reason is that here it is taken as totally distinguished from the being which is given through operating: but accidental being is not such, because to operate is to have a certain accidental being. And therefore it is no wonder if the accidental form is the proximate principle of being and operating: because both its being and its operating are a certain accidental being. But operating and substantial being do not stand thus, as is evident of itself: because the one is substance, and the other accident.

XIV. To the objections against the conclusion¹⁸, answering in order, the reply is that the present talk, properly speaking, is only of operative power, whether operating is said actively or passively, provided there be a true operation there. And by this all purely receptive powers are excluded, that is, those which have something as act without the mediation of any operation; such as the power of a subject with respect to its proper property, and universally with respect to those things which are per se connate to a thing. Hence it does not seem unfitting to posit such potentialities connate to the substances of things. Nor are beings multiplied without necessity. Since, as is clear in XII Metaphys., in texts XXVI and XXVII¹⁹, in any genus one must give a proper power and a proper act, which are as the principles of that genus²⁰. For from this it manifestly follows that one of two things must be said: either that substance is reductively in the other genera, as power is reduced to the genus of act; or that these connate powers are given. And since the first is unfitting, as even Scotus himself admits²¹, the second must be said. – Nor can that text of Aristotle be answered by saying that he speaks of objective power. Since he expressly speaks of power and act as they are principles of what is in a genus: but it is evident that objective power is not a principle of the thing; rather it is the thing itself, as it is possible to be. – As to what is objected about the power of matter, the reply is clear from St Thomas²², who intends that the power of matter is toward substantial being (esse), with no intervening operation that would be truly an operation, and hence an accident, between matter itself and the substantial form: since in the instant of generation nothing is in matter but the substantial form, with what follows upon it.

XV. To the first argument of Scotus²³ it is said that being the principle of operation happens in three ways: namely either as proximate only, or as principal only, or as proximate and principal together. And that to elicit operation as the proximate principle only is of imperfection: because it must be of the genus of accident. To elicit operation as proximate and principal together is of the highest perfection: because it posits in the thing the perfection of substance and accident. But to elicit as principal only is intermediate: and therefore it reasonably belongs to a created substance, which is intermediate between God and accidents.

Hence to the first it is said that a substance must be ordered to the end in the noblest way, one that is nevertheless possible. But immediacy through the exclusion of an intermediate power is a way impossible for a created substance. – And by this the reply to the first confirmation is clear: namely, that by reason of the excessive perfection it would have, it is repugnant for a created substance to be the proximate principle of operation; since it would be proximate and principal together.

To the other confirmation, unless we wish to abuse words, the consequence is denied: since to operate by means of its own power as that by which is not to operate per accidens.

– And to the proof, it is denied that beatitude is related to the power of an intellectual substance, and to the intellectual substance itself, as color to the surface and the corporeal substance; so that, just as color would inform the surface if it were separated from the body, so beatitude would inform the power if it were separated from the substance. For I say that this conditional is false: since beatitude is essentially a vital operation, which is not intelligible to be except of a living thing. Also because beatitude cannot be except in one who is blessed: but it cannot be imagined that a separated power would be blessed, as a surface would be colored. Hence not only the antecedent and consequent of that conditional are impossible, but also the conditional itself.

XVI. To the second argument of Scotus²⁴, it is conceded that a substance must be made by a substance as by a principal cause, but not a proximate one. – And to the first instance, about the causation of an accident by a substance, it is said that no accident is caused by a substance immediately through an intermediate operation. With this, however, it stands that many accidents follow upon the substance both in the genus of efficient cause and of material cause, by way of natural consequence. And in this way the substance is the cause of its properties and powers.

To the instance about the proper causality of the principal and superior cause, it can be said in two ways. First, by denying that the substance and its operative power are, properly speaking, principal and instrumental cause, superior and inferior: and therefore the objections have no place. And the reason for the denial can be that the substance and the operative power concur not as two causes, but as a cause and, as it were, a condition of the cause. – Second it can be said (admitting that they stand not as superior and inferior cause, but in a way as principal and instrumental) that an instrument is twofold, conjoined and separate: and again among conjoined instruments there is latitude, since heat and the augmentative power can be called conjoined instruments of the soul, yet the power is the more conjoined instrument. Nor is it necessary that every conjoined instrument be moved by the principal agent: rather, that it operate principally, with the principal agent concurring in that operating. Since, taking instrument in this broad sense, it suffices to have this condition of an instrument. – Hence there is no need to answer the objections otherwise, which suppose that the substance and the operative power stand as two causes.

XVII. As to what is touched on, however, about the proximate eliciting principle of substantial generation²⁵, it is said that, in reality, instantaneous substantial generation is not an operation, but is the terminus of the generation that changes matter up to this point. Hence there is no need to seek another principle of it: rather that same one which generated in the whole preceding time generates in the last instant of that time, terminating its action.

And when it is asked how an alteration, or any accident, makes a substance by the power of the substance: – what is that power? Briefly I say it can be said in two ways. First, it is said by some that it is a certain intentional thing, in the way in which the intention of color is said to be in the air. And that although it is an accident according to being (esse), it is nevertheless causally substance, not as the principal cause, but as a force in a way instrumental; which, it is evident, can be less perfect than the effect, as is clear of the forms of seeds, and is approved in XII Metaphys., text. XL²⁶. – Second it is said that the accident itself, by the very fact that it is conjoined to such a substance, is its conjoined organ, and is its power; nor need another power be added. And this I think true in those things which are not true instruments, but the accident and the substance are one cause.

XVIII. To the third argument²⁷ it is said first that that absolute proposition, things really distinct are separable from one another, is false; even in his own doctrine. Since the essential parts taken together, in his view²⁸, are really distinguished from the whole; and yet one could not be made without the other.

Then it is said that the necessary connection between a substance and its power, granted that it were from active causality, would nevertheless not infer that the substance is the immediate principle of any operation, as is clear from what was said²⁹. – Nor does it infer that God can separate them, because he can supply the place of an efficient cause. Since this is understood of the efficient cause properly, namely through an intermediate operation: but the substance is not such with respect to its property, as is already clear from what was said³⁰.

XIX. To what he objects about the essence of the angel³¹, it is said that the substance of the angel is not the eliciting principle of intellection, but the power is. And although the substance concurs in intellection without an intermediate intelligible species, it does not concur as eliciting, but as the source³² of the intellect in act with respect to itself, as will be clear below³³.

XX. To the last, about the cooling of hot water³⁴, it is said in two ways. First, that the principle of that cooling is the form by means of the coldness which has remained in it in some degree: since it cannot be totally stripped of it. – Nor does it matter that that coldness is less than the heat introduced. For although it is less formally, it is nevertheless greater radically or virtually, because of the proper substantial form, its root, of which it is the power and property. And it can happen that the whole in a way undergoes action from the whole, because of the contrariety of the active qualities existing in the whole in continual conflict.

Second it is said, and better, that it cools per se from the generator; and from its proper form only by way of consequence, in the way in which a heavy thing by weighing down breaks what prevents it from descending, and is moved downward. For one must imagine, and so it is, that just as downward motion would naturally follow upon the form of a heavy thing generated outside its place, unless something prevented it; so upon the form of water there follows being cold in such perfection; and if it is impeded from such perfection, the motion of cooling follows, once the preventing factor is removed. And just as a heavy thing by weighing down sometimes overcomes what prevents it, so the cold by chilling overcomes the hot that prevents it, when that hot is deprived of the agent that was sustaining it. And again, just as downward motion follows a heavy thing by means of weight, so the cooling follows water by means of that coldness of which it cannot be stripped.

That it happens in one of these two ways, which are very close, is clear from this, that unless it is said so, one will have to have recourse to extrinsic causes, say the container. But this cannot reasonably be said. Both because the water becomes colder than the container. And because if the container were removed, or posited as neutral, the hot water would nonetheless cool: an evident sign of which is that hot water placed in a container that is not hot grows lukewarm. Hence the container, and any other extrinsic cause, cannot be posited except as a cause per accidens, as removing what prevents. For one must posit nature, which is an intrinsic principle, as the cause of some natural accident, as is clear in II Physic.³⁵