Disputationes metaphysicae

1. Various opinions.—Ailly a stranger to the preceding opinion.—On this matter there was an old opinion asserting that created things operate nothing, but that God effects everything at their presence, and that action is attributed to fire, water, etc., on account of appearance, and because God, as it were, made a pact not to effect such effects except at the presence of such things. This opinion is reported by Averroes, IX Metaph., comm. 7, and bk. XII, comm. 18; and by Albert, II Phys., tract. II, c. 3; and by St. Thomas, III Cont. Gent., c. 69, and I, q. 105, a. 5, and In II, dist. 1, q. 1, a. 4; yet they cite no definite author for it. Philo, however, seems to incline towards it, bk. II of the Allegories, when he says that God is the sole efficient cause; and in the book On the Cherubim and the Flaming Sword, when he says that it is proper to God to effect, but to the creature to suffer. But these things could easily be understood by antonomasia, as can other utterances of the philosophers, which we shall report later, dealing with the action of God. This opinion is also commonly attributed to Peter of Ailly, In IV, dist. 1, a. 1, at the end; there, however, he openly confesses that secondary causes act truly and properly by their own power and from the nature of the thing, and not by the will of God alone; he adds, however, at the same time, that it is true that the creature does nothing except by the will of God, and with God Himself also acting, indeed acting so that it may act, and consequently with God doing even more than if He acted alone; which things pertain to the necessity of the divine concurrence and can have a true and a false sense, as we shall see later in the proper disputation. Gabriel, however, favours this opinion more, In IV, dist. 1, q. 1, a. 3, dub. 3, where he reckons this opinion probable and adduces in its favour those words of I Cor. 12¹: God worketh all in all; and II Cor. 3: Not that we are sufficient to think any thing of ourselves, as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is from God. He himself, however, does not dare to assert that opinion.

2. Reasons for the preceding opinion.—I see no foundation for this opinion which is of any weight; the chief one, however, seems to have been that whatever efficiency is attributed to the creature is so much taken away from the divine power of the Creator; for either God operates all things, or not; the latter derogates from the divine efficacy; whence we shall show below that it is wholly false and erroneous, because it implies that something exists and does not depend on God. If, however, God effects all things, I ask further whether He does so immediately and with sufficient power, or only mediately and with insufficient power. The latter derogates from the divine perfection. If, however, the former is true, every other efficiency is superfluous, because one sufficient and efficacious cause is enough for the effect. Hence, since nature does nothing in vain, it conferred no power of operating on created things. And I confirm this: whatever God is supposed to do with a secondary cause, He will be able to do by Himself alone, for this at least pertains to His infinite power, as will be evident below; therefore in fact He does so. The consequence is evident, both because this better befits the divine power and efficacy, and especially because this seems necessary in order that a creature be made. Which I prove thus: the creature has an essential dependence on God alone, since without Him it cannot be made, and without any other whatever it can be made; therefore a creature cannot exist without this essential dependence which it has on God alone, because it cannot exist without what is essential to it; therefore every creature is through dependence on God alone; therefore it is through the efficiency of God alone, for efficiency and dependence are either the same or correlatives; therefore no creature has efficiency upon another, and consequently there is no secondary cause that effects anything.

3. Second opinion.—The second opinion denies that corporeal creatures can effect anything, but grants it of spiritual ones. St. Thomas, in the places cited, reports this from Avicebron, in the book Fons vitae, who said that no body is active, but that a certain power of a spiritual substance existing intimately in bodies effects all the actions which seem to be done through bodies. His foundation seems to have been that the agent must be intimately present to the patient; but bodies cannot be so present to one another, for quantity impedes that intimate entering of one thing into another which action requires. Hence he said that quantity not only is not active, but even impedes action; and it is confirmed, because corporeal substance is the lowest of all and the most unlike the first agent, and therefore neither has it a lower substance subject to it, on which it could act, nor can it have likeness to God in acting. Wherefore Augustine, V De Civit., c. 9, expressly says that corporeal causes are not to be numbered among efficient causes.

4. Third opinion.—The third opinion was that corporeal things can effect accidents, yet not substances, but that created spiritual substances can effect certain lower substances. St. Thomas reports this in the same place, from Avicenna, bk. I Sufficient., c. 10, and bk. IX of his Metaph., cc. 4 and 5, who seems to have held two errors in this matter. One is that one created spiritual substance can create another; for the first uncreated cause immediately effects only one intelligence, and that the most perfect, while that one creates a second, and the second a third, and so on down to the lowest. The other error asserts that this lowest spiritual substance infuses substantial forms into matter disposed by the proximate corporeal agents, which are not sufficient to effect substantial forms. His foundation as to the former part was that from one there is not, proximately and immediately, anything but one. As to the latter part, however, which more concerns the present matter, it was that these corporeal agents do nothing except by means of accidents, which are insufficient principles for effecting substantial forms. And he confirms this, because it is established by experience that many substances are generated which do not have proximate causes sufficient to introduce such forms, as when animals are generated from putrefaction by reason of accidental dispositions which concur by chance or fortuitously; therefore it is a sign that there is, as it were, some superior spiritual power ready to induce substantial forms whenever the accidental dispositions sufficiently concur; therefore all substantial generations take place from that power.

First assertion, concerning the efficiency of created causes

5. It must be said, however, first, that created agents truly and properly effect effects connatural and proportioned to themselves. This truth I judge to be not only most evident to sense and reason, but also most certain according to Catholic doctrine. Hence, just as on account of the former ground St. Thomas called the opposite opinion foolish, on account of the latter we can call it rash and erroneous; and therefore it is deservedly rejected by all philosophers and theologians. For Aristotle, although he never expressly reported or refuted the opposite opinion, yet everywhere supposes as most evident that natural causes do something. Indeed, all the ancient philosophers, whose opinions he himself reports in I Phys. and I Metaph., and elsewhere, often suppose that natural causes effect something; and therefore they laboured in explaining what they can do and from what, since from nothing nothing is made. Plato too, whom I cited from Damascene in the preceding disputation, in this sense calls natural causes instruments of the first cause, because they have a power of acting derived from it and dependent on it. In which sense Trismegistus² also said that the world is the instrument of God and has received seeds from Him in order to produce all things. And in the same way Philo, in the book On the Congress for the Sake of Learning, said that God permitted this lowest genus of things to sow and to beget. These philosophers were followed by the Commentator and other later writers. Among the Fathers, Augustine, bk. III De Trinit., cc. 7, 8 and 9, seems in his manner of speaking to have imitated the said philosophers when he says that God has placed in the elements and in other created causes the seminal reasons of things. These are nothing else than the active and passive principles of generations and of natural motions, which God placed in created things, as St. Thomas elegantly expounded, I, q. 115, a. 2, and In II, dist. 18, q. 1, a. 2; where also Durandus, Hervaeus, Giles and others; and Capreolus, In I, dist. 42, a. 3. Again, the same Augustine, VII De Civ., c. 30, speaking of God, says: Thus He administers all things which He created, that He also allows them to exercise and perform their own motions. This opinion all the scholastics confirm and celebrate, wherever they dispute either of the efficiency of causes or of the freedom of man; they may be seen in the places cited, and In II, dist. 1, where especially Durandus, q. 5.

6. The assertion is proved by experience.—Absurdities from the opposite conclusion.—And it is proved first by experience; for what is better known to sense than that the sun illuminates, fire heats, water cools? But if they say that we experience indeed that these effects take place when these things are present, yet not that they are produced by them, they plainly destroy all the force of philosophical argumentation, because we cannot otherwise experience the emanation of effects from causes, or gather causes from effects. And to this experience the common consent and voice of all bears witness, who think thus about these things. Secondly, I argue from the drawbacks; for according to that opinion living things cannot be distinguished from non-living ones, because some things would no more have the principle of their actions than others. Then nature would have given in vain to diverse things the various qualities and powers which we experience in them. Indeed, we could not even gather from action the variety of such qualities in the elements, and consequently not in other things either. For if fire does not heat, but God at the presence of fire, He could equally naturally heat at the presence of water; therefore from that action we cannot gather that fire is hot any more than water. For if God could, equally consonantly with the natures of things, have made a pact about heating at the presence of water, let us suppose He did so; then it would not be permitted to gather from the heating that water is hot; therefore neither can we now infer that it is cold, or that fire is hot.

7. Someone may say that that pact was not wholly arbitrary, but founded in some way in the natures of things, not because they are active, but because they have qualities like those to be produced; and so we gather that fire is hot because God heats at its presence, since this pact was founded on such a quality of fire. But this cannot be said philosophically; both because by the same reasoning, according to the natures of things, God ought to have produced whiteness at the presence of whiteness, since, if of itself heat is not a more active quality than whiteness, then from the nature of the thing that pact is no more due to heat than to whiteness. And the same argument can be made about any other quality whatever, indeed about quantity, and about substance, and about anything at all. And also because that has no place in equivocal causes, in which there is no like form or quality, nor is it necessarily more eminent, if they are going to do nothing. Moreover, according to that opinion the dispositions of the earth, rains, prayers, the motions of the heavens, etc., are superfluous, if all these do nothing; but it would suffice, for wheat to exist, that God should generate wheat at the presence of wheat; and so of other things. Moreover, a similar argument is made from the various organs and instruments with which God has composed bodies, especially living ones; for, just as some appear from their very disposition fitted for receiving, so also others are fitted for acting, all of which would be superfluous if these things did nothing. Finally, for this reason Aristotle said very well, II De Caelo, c. 3, and I Ethic., c. 7, that all things are for the sake of their operation; wherefore nothing is more repugnant to the institution of things and their end than to be lacking all efficiency. Moreover, if created things did nothing among themselves, from the nature of the thing all would be equally incorruptible, because they could suffer nothing from a created agent; in vain, therefore, would God have ordained so many motions of the heavens and so great a multitude of causes so that the species of these lower things might be preserved for a long time through the succession of generations and corruptions; for the same things created from the beginning would remain more easily for ever, if God Himself corrupted nothing, because the things themselves would not fight with one another nor corrupt one another. Many similar drawbacks can easily be devised, from which it is understood that the whole order of nature fights against that opinion.

8. The a priori reason for the conclusion.—Thirdly, there is the a priori reason: because to have a power of acting is not repugnant to created things, but rather is most consonant with their perfection; therefore, since God founded each thing perfect in its nature, it must not be denied that He created such things as have a connatural power of acting. The antecedent is proved, because not every power of acting requires infinite perfection; therefore the finite power of a creature will suffice for it to be able to have some efficacy. The antecedent is evident, because no probable reason persuades the necessity of infinite perfection for every action. Rather, as we shall see below, theologians have laboured much to find a reason which proves that infinite power is required for creating; for other actions and changes, therefore, such power is not required, especially in those agents which do not act without dependence on a superior.

9. An objection is met.—You will say that in this very thing a repugnance is found, namely, that something should be an agent and yet dependent in acting on a superior agent; and that therefore infinite power is required in every agent, because, if it acts, it acts by its own power alone and without dependence on another. This objection touches the foundation of the contrary opinion, of which we must speak at length below in treating of the necessity of the divine concurrence; now it is briefly answered by denying the assumption; for just as it is not repugnant to be and to be dependently on another, so it is not repugnant to act and to act dependently on another. For why should it be? Is it because it is repugnant that the same action should be at once from several total causes? But this is false, if those causes are of diverse orders and essentially subordinated. Wherefore, so far is this efficiency of secondary causes from derogating from the divine efficacy or authority, that rather it commends and declares it in the highest degree. For, as St. Thomas argues above, God so communicated His goodness to created things that He also gave them an inclination and power to communicate to others what they participate of the goodness of God Himself, imparting it to each according to its capacity. Because, as Plato said to this purpose in the dialogue On Nature, God is good, and is touched by no envy, nor does He begrudge anyone; and therefore He made all things good and like Himself in the appetite of communicating themselves according to their capacity. Hence some things communicate themselves materially, others formally; it is not repugnant, therefore, that they should also communicate themselves efficiently.

10. Whether God, effecting with secondary causes, does more than if He acted alone.—Therefore what Ailly said above, namely, that God does more by effecting with secondary causes than if He effected all things by Himself alone, is true presuppositively (so to speak), but false formally; that is, if the secondary cause effects something, God is supposed both to have effected the secondary cause itself and to have communicated to it active perfection, in which He shows His power more, and then to act with the secondary cause whatever it itself does; and so presuppositively He does more. But through the very action with which He acts with the secondary cause, He does not do more, nor equally, than if He acted by Himself alone, because He does not apply the whole efficacy necessary to act alone. Hence in such a mode of acting, although He acts with sufficient power in the notion of first cause, yet not with power sufficient in every genus. Nor is this an imperfection in God, because it is not from His need or impotence, but from the voluntary and most prudent application of His power. In which sense what Ailly said is also true, namely, that secondary causes do nothing except by the will of God; for they require, as we shall say below, the concurrence of God, which God supplies not by necessity, but by will; that will, however, is not wholly absolute (miracles being set aside), but is accommodated to the natures of things and as it were from a certain debt of just distribution; and therefore this voluntariness does not hinder such efficiency from being simply natural to created things. Just as they also have the power of acting itself from the will of God, yet not from a will wholly superadded and as it were merely gratuitously joined to the will by which He wills such creatures to exist; but these volitions are connected according to the natural debt and connection of the things themselves. Hence, that God willed fire to heat and water to cool is not merely voluntary, but in its own way due, on the supposition that He willed to create such things. We are speaking, however, of the connatural power of acting; for of the supernatural and infused power there is another account, which does not concern us. And thus at the same time the conclusion laid down has been proved and the foundation of the first opinion solved.

11. What is touched on in the confirmation about essential dependence is to be treated ex professo below in the disputation on creation; now I say only that an equivocation is committed in that proposition: the creature depends essentially on God alone; for that proposition can be understood positively and negatively. Understood positively, it gives this sense: the creature essentially demands to depend on God alone; and this is not true, speaking universally, although perhaps it can be verified of some action or of some thing on account of a special condition, which pertains to the special questions on creation, or on grace, etc. Understood negatively, however, its sense is that the notion of creature, as such, does not essentially demand dependence except on God. And this is true, because by virtue of this it is not excluded that in fact, or according to some mode of production, it can have dependence on God and on some creature, as is evident per se.

The same assertion treated from supernatural principles

12. So far the conclusion laid down has been treated philosophically; but since we said that it also has certainty according to the doctrine of faith, it is necessary to add a few things on this part. This certainty is gathered, then, first from the manner of speaking of divine Scripture, Gen. 1: Let the earth bring forth the green herb; and let the earth bring forth the living creature; where Basil, hom. 9, notes that by virtue of these and similar words natural things received the efficacy of continually effecting the generations and corruptions of things; which Ambrose pursues more at length, bk. III Hexam., from c. 8, and bks. V and VI, almost throughout. Hence, in Mark 4, Christ says: And other fell upon good ground, and brought forth fruit, etc.; and below: For the earth of itself bringeth forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, afterwards the full corn; and Luke 21: When they now shoot forth their fruit, etc.; and in Wis. 16 it is attributed to a miracle that fire, forgetful of its power, did not consume the just and their garments; and there it is attributed to water that it extinguishes all things, and to serpents that they have venomous teeth for killing, and it is attributed to the divine power if sometimes they are impeded from these actions. Moreover, there are other truths of faith which cannot subsist without this principle. The first and chief is the truth of free choice, which can consist only in a power and mode of acting, as we shall show below. Hence the Council of Trent, sess. VI, can. 4, condemns those who say that created free choice does nothing at all and behaves merely passively. By which definition it plainly condemns the first opinion reported above and defines our conclusion. And (what convinces the matter a fortiori) the Council wills that the human will has efficiency not only in natural operations, but also in supernatural ones, or the free works of grace. From which, by the way, those testimonies are understood which Gabriel adduced to the contrary, in which the discourse is specially of the works of grace, which are so attributed to God as the primary cause that our cooperation is not excluded. For in the same place Paul says both that we are not sufficient of ourselves and that our sufficiency is from God. And he who in one place says that God works in us, in others says that He cooperates with us and that we are cooperators with the grace of God.

13. Nor does the reason taken from the efficiency of the act of sin have less efficacy; for if the secondary cause does not effect, but God at its presence, we do not make evil volitions, but God alone infuses them into us at the presence of objects, which is blasphemous and erroneous, not only because then we would not sin freely, but also because then we would sin not from ourselves but from God. Moreover, an excellent theological reason is taken from the definitions of the Councils concerning the mystery of the Incarnation, by which they teach that there are in Christ two operations and two principles of operating, or operative powers, on which one may read Damascene, III De Fide, c. 15. All which and similar things cannot be true if in created nature there is no power of acting. Finally, from the creation of the rational soul arises an excellent argument, because according to the contrary opinion it is no less true that a man generating creates the rational soul than that fire generates fire; for, just as God at the presence of fire makes fire, and the action is attributed to the fire only because it is a condition sine qua non, and, it being posited, God infallibly makes it, so God at the presence of human seed infallibly creates the soul, and not without that condition. But the consequent is an error in faith.

Second assertion

14. What efficiency Augustine denies to bodies.—I say secondly: not only incorporeal substances, but corporeal ones too, can have physical and true efficiency. This follows from the preceding by almost the same demonstration and with the same certainty; for the experiences, reasons and testimonies adduced proceed both of natural and material causes and of immaterial ones. Indeed, if the discourse be of efficiency through transient action, it is better known and more evident to us that bodies act than that incorporeal substances do. Wherefore nothing need be added in confirmation of this conclusion. Nor is the foundation of the contrary opinion of any weight, because, in order that one body act upon another, it is not necessary that it be penetratively together with it in the same place, but it is enough that they be sufficiently near, as experience itself shows and as is to be declared more at length below. Wherefore, although quantity is not active, yet it does not wholly impede action, just as matter too is not active, yet does not impede the action of the form. For quantity seems to be compared to qualities as matter to form. Hence neither impedes, but rather contributes in its own way to action, if not by acting, at least by sustaining and connaturally applying the principle of acting. To the confirmation, however, it is answered that corporeal substance according to its whole self is not in the lowest order, nor supremely distant from God, but only according to prime matter; and therefore of that we confess that it has no proper power of acting; but according to form, bodies have greater perfection and likeness to God; and therefore according to it they can have the power of effecting. Augustine, however, in the words cited speaks of efficient causes which in some way act of themselves, that is, which have dominion over their actions and can apply themselves to acting. For thus he says: Corporeal causes, which are made rather than make, are not to be numbered among efficient causes, since they can do what the wills of spirits do from them.

Third assertion

15. I say thirdly: although created causes cannot effect a substance according to its whole self, or per se primo, they can nevertheless, from presupposed substantial matter, generate a substance by educing a substantial form. This efficacy, however, is to be attributed to corporeal causes rather than to created spirits. The first part of this assertion is most certain, because created causes cannot create anything, as we shall show in treating of creation; but a substance per se primo and according to its whole self cannot be made except through creation; for it cannot be made from a presupposed subject, because no subject is presupposed to the whole substance, since it is a being complete per se; therefore it must necessarily be made from nothing, and hence through creation. And hence it is that a created spiritual substance cannot procreate another like itself, either in species or in grade, because such a substance, since it is simple in essence, cannot be made except through creation. And for the same reason material substance, as regards matter, cannot be effected by a created cause, whether incorporeal or corporeal; and in this sense we say that a substance according to its whole self and per se primo, that is, as to its whole entity and presupposing nothing of the substance, cannot be effected by a created cause; but on this matter more is to be said in what follows.

16. Substantial forms are made by corporeal supposits.—The second part of the conclusion, however, about the eduction of the substantial form by the proper efficiency of secondary causes, is not so evident and certain as are the foregoing ones about efficiency absolutely, because the effecting of this form is less sensible, and therefore less known to us, than the efficiency of accidents, and because in explaining this efficiency there is no small difficulty, as we shall see in the following section. Nevertheless this part is the more probable, especially taken absolutely and without descending to particular modes of explaining this efficiency. And it is proved, first, because, just as we see fire heat, so we see it generate fire, and the sun produce minerals, and the earth, by the action also of the sun, bring forth grass, etc. Secondly, because, since these things are not made by creation but by generation, neither on the part of the thing made nor from the mode in which it is made is infinite power required for their effecting; therefore such power does not exceed the capacity of created causes; therefore it has been communicated to them by the first cause and is connatural to them. But on this part more in the following section; for it cannot be exactly proved and defended unless the mode of this efficiency is first declared.

17. Spiritual substances cannot effect substantial forms.—The third part of the conclusion, namely, that this efficiency is not to be attributed to created spirits, is evident from the fact that they are disproportioned to an action of this kind; whereas corporeal causes are more proportioned and accommodated. Among created things, however, it is not enough that something be more perfect in order that it can effect something less perfect, unless it is established from elsewhere that it contains it eminently; but created spirits, although they are more perfect than bodies, yet since they are limited to their proper grade, and each to signifying its proper perfections, do not contain corporeal things eminently; and since they are not forms in matter, but wholly abstract, they are disproportioned to inducing forms into matter; on which matter too we shall say more below, in treating of created intelligences, where we shall show that they can effect neither substantial forms nor qualities in bodies; for they cannot alter bodies at the nod of their will. But if they cannot do this, much less will they be able to induce a substantial form into matter; for he who does not have the power of disposing matter, much less can have the power of informing it. Corporeal agents, however, since they can alter and dispose matter, are more proportioned to be able to inform it, either by educing from it or by introducing into it a substantial form, according to the capacity and quality of the form.

18. To the foundation of Avicenna, therefore, as to the former point, we deny that from the first cause only one intelligence or one effect could proceed, because the first cause does not act by necessity of nature so as to be determined to one effect, but is an intellectual agent, having in itself the exemplars of infinite things, whose effecting it defines by its will and choice. The foundation of the second error, however, raises a difficulty pertaining to the following section.