Commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologiae

In the title, the word omnium is distributed over all things other than God, since this treatise concerns God's causality with respect to what is outside him.

II. In the body there is a single conclusion: The divine goodness is the end of all things. – It is proved thus. The first agent intends only to communicate its goodness, and every creature intends to attain the likeness of that goodness: therefore the divine goodness is the end of all things.

The antecedent, as regards the first part, is declared from the difference between the first agent and the other imperfect agents: namely, that these, even while acting, intend to acquire something, because they act and are acted upon at once; but this one acts not on account of acquisition, but solely on account of the communication of its end. As regards the second part, it is proved: because the end of the agent and of the patient is the same, as such, though in different ways. – The consequence itself is proved, as regards the first agent, from two propositions. The first is that every agent acts for an end. This is proved: because otherwise no more would follow from the agent's action that this rather than that, except by chance. The second is: the end of the agent and of the patient is the same. As regards creatures, however, it is proved from the aforementioned proposition, namely: the end of the agent and of the patient is the same.

III. Concerning the foregoing, insofar as they hold that the divine goodness is the end of all things, including even the first agent, note that God can be taken in two ways. In the first way, absolutely: and thus he has no end. In another way, as first agent: and then in two ways. In one way, with respect to the thing that is the action by which he is said to act: and thus again he has no end, because the action of God is his substance. And so it has been customary to say that God acts on account of an end not for his own sake but for that of others, as was touched upon in qu. XIX, art. 1, ad 1. In another way formally, according to the intelligibility of the action: and thus his goodness is the end of his action, because every agent, as is said in the text, acts on account of an end. And this is confirmed: because the end is the cause of causes, that is, of the causality of the other causes; therefore it is the cause of the causality of the agent, which is to be the cause of its own action. If, therefore, the end on account of which God acts is his goodness, that goodness itself will be the cause why God acts.

And the text explicitly tries to teach this in the body and in the reply to the first objection, by distinguishing between an agent acting in order to attain an end, or to communicate it; and in the reply to the fourth objection, by teaching that it is not unfitting that, according to reason, God's goodness be distinguished as prior cause from Himself as agent. – And thus the response is in a certain way broader than the question. I said in a certain way: because the causality of the divine goodness, as end, is not extended to more things than all creatures are; but to some aspect of reason in the Creator Himself as such, as is clear from what has been said.

IV. Concerning the difference between other agents and the first¹, know that imperfect agents, which act and are acted upon, are of two kinds. Some act and are acted upon by those upon which they act, through reaction; and these are those that share in matter, as is said in I On Generation². Others, however, are those which act and are acted upon, that is, act as moved by another; and this is the condition of all secondary agents. And they are called imperfect in the same mode of imperfection in which all beings short of the first are also called imperfect, because they fall short of the nobility of the first. And the text speaks directly of these, distinguishing the first agent in contrast to them. For from the fact that they act as though acted upon, it follows that in³ acting they tend, as being in potency, to acquire or preserve (for it makes no difference which of these is said in the present matter, since to act for preserving apart from the order of acquiring does not occur) some perfection proper to themselves; and, as Averroes says, XII Metaph., comm. XXXVI⁴, at least an assimilation to the first cause in the causing of beings. And this is the highest perfection: since, as Dionysius says⁵, the most divine of all things is to become a cooperator with God.

V. In reply to the second, note three things. First is that a certain distinction is intimated, of which only one member is expressed, namely: The form of the begotten is taken in two ways; in one way, as like the form of the begetter; in the other way, it is left unspoken. For this distinction is intimated when it is said that only as like is it an end: there is therefore another way in which it may be understood. – Second is what is said there, namely that the form of the begotten, only as like the begetter, is an end. – Third is that this is proved, because the end is nobler than those things which are for the sake of the end. – About each of these there is doubt.

Regarding the distinction, it is ambiguous which is the one member of the distinction.

But concerning the response, first because it seems false: since the form of the thing generated, even absolutely speaking, is the end of the generation, as is evident in itself. – Second because by means of it the inferential argument is not adequately answered: from the fact that the form of the thing generated is the end of the generation, it does not follow that the agent itself is not the end of its own action, since the end of the generation does not coincide numerically with the agent. For since from this response we have only this, that the form of the thing generated is an end only as a likeness, the argument is rather confirmed: for whether it be an end as a likeness or not as a likeness, it suffices that it itself is an end, which admittedly does not coincide numerically with the agent. – And it is confirmed also because that form, as a likeness, is distinct from the form of the agent; for diversity belongs to the intelligible content of similitude, as is said in Book V Metaphysics⁶

Finally, there is doubt concerning the account, because, since in univocal agents the nobility of the generator and of the generated is equal, if the form of the generated cannot be the end, because it is not more noble than those things that are for the sake of an end, then by parity of reasoning neither can the form of the generator, nor the form of the generated as similar to the generator, be the end.

VI. To make the difficulty of this evident, it must be known that, although, when corruptible things are compared to eternal things, as in II De Anima, text. 34⁷, and in II Caeli, comm. XVII, it is said that corruptible agents act for the sake of another (for, as is shown here, all things act in order to participate in the divine perfection); nevertheless, speaking absolutely, and not of these or those agents, and comparing them to their effects, as is done in this argument, it must be said that it is common to all agents to act for themselves, though in diverse ways. This is made clear as follows. Every agent intends to make something like itself: therefore it intends to diffuse, extend, and enlarge itself: for this reason the generator generates, so that it may persevere forever in that way in which it can, as the Philosopher said in the same place⁸. Now in what I say, to diffuse itself or to communicate itself, two things are contained, namely to diffuse and the word itself: and since it is evident that no agent intends itself for the sake of diffusing or communicating as an end, it remains that it intends to diffuse for the sake of itself as an end: and thus it is itself the end of communication, and not conversely.

Other agents, however, differ from the first in this respect: that the rest order communication to themselves, that is, to their own utility. Although this too occurs variously in eternal and corruptible substances: for those act so as to preserve their assimilation to the first cause individually, while these act so as to preserve their assimilation, as far as they can, to the same. But the first cause orders communication to itself, that is, to its own goodness. And therefore the rest act in order that they may thus be or be preserved; but God acts because He is. And for this reason He is said even by the philosophers to be of the most liberal action, as is stated in the response to the first question.

VII. With these points pre-established, to the first doubt⁹ it is said that the distinction is this: The form of the begotten is twofold, namely, as it is of the begotten, and as it is like the begetter. For the Author intends to exclude the claim that, insofar as it is of the begotten, it is not the end of the agent, so that he may maintain that God does not act on account of created nature as an end, but on account of Himself.

To the second, it is denied that this is false. For generation can be taken in two ways: in one way, as from an agent; in another way absolutely, for instance as a way. And in the latter way the end of generation is the form even as of the generated; but not in the first way, as is said in the text. – Nor is it true that on this account the argument is not sufficiently answered. For "the form as like the generating form" signifies indeed the form of the generated, but from that aspect by which it is one with it, by which it is another than itself, by which it is as it were its vicar: and thereby it intimates that if that form, as it were clothing itself in it, is the end, then that other is truly the end. And thus formally the argument is satisfied: for although the end of generation does not coincide in numerical identity with the form of the agent, it nevertheless redounds to numerical identity, from the fact that the form of the generated is not an end except as like the form of the agent. – To the confirmation it is said that likeness, since it is the same quality of distinct things, holds more to the unity which it signifies than to the distinction which it requires as a condition of its subjects. And therefore the Author used it to intimate unity.

Finally, to the doubt against the argument, it is said that the argument of the text concludes excellently that the form of the generated thing, as such, cannot be the end of generation on the part of the agent, because it is not nobler than the agent. But it cannot be turned against the form of the generated thing as like the agent, that is, against the form of the agent: because no comparison has any place once distinction is set aside. For it is not necessary that a thing be nobler than itself when it acts for its own sake; but when the end is other than the agent, the end must be nobler than the agent.