Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

[ It was the error of Origen and the Priscillianists, that all souls were created from the beginning of the world along with the angels, and that, as a punishment for the sins which they had committed at that time without a body, they were thrust down into bodies as into prisons. Whence the union of the soul with the body would not be essential, but merely accidental, and man himself ought not to be considered as a being specifically distinct from others, but as a composite in some way artificial and temporary; or human nature would consist in the soul alone¹.

Another error came forth in the opposite sense. Ioannes Marcus of Prague, following Plato, Asclepiades and Protagoras, protracted animation until the birth of the infant, the soul of the mother sometimes supplying the soul of the embryo: whence he concluded that true homicide could never be committed by abortion. Which doctrine was condemned by Innocent XI. The Scholastics, among whom the Master of the Sentences and St. Thomas himself², his commentator, embraced the opinion of Aristotle, who teaches that the animation of the fetus cannot occur before the perfect organization of the body, and determines it, according to sex, at the fortieth day after conception in males, and the eightieth in females. They supposed that the fetus lived before that first by a vegetative soul, second by a sensitive soul, which, having been substituted for the former, itself vanished away when the intellective soul arrived, and thereafter this latter, as the higher form, fulfilled by its own power the offices of the two former. Although this doctrine commonly prevailed in the schools, Thomas Fienus, who in the year 1593 obtained the chair of medicine in the University of Louvain, boldly asserted that perfect animation occurs on the third day after conception, which some had already assigned to the twenty-fifth day and even to the seventh. This opinion, although closer to the truth, is to be rejected by the same right as the others. Therefore.

I say: The rational soul is created when the human body is first constituted, that is, at the very conception.

Proof 1° from Holy Scripture. It is said in Job, III, 3: Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said: A man is conceived. But this word man does not designate a formless embryo, or one outlined only by an inferior and fleeting form, but a fetus already essentially possessing human nature by virtue of the substantial form which man

properly and in act constitutes, that is, the rational soul. Therefore.-- Likewise, Psalm L, 6 and 7: To thee only have I sinned... For behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me. It is clear from this that man, in his very original conception, is stained by original sin. But the immediate subject of this sin is not a being not yet specified by its proper form and belonging either to the genus of plant through the vegetative soul, or to the genus of brutes through the sensitive soul, but a true man at least essentially formed and constituted through the rational soul, in which sin properly resides, as does grace also. Therefore.

Proof 2° from the doctrine of the Church. 1° The Council of Vienne, related at length above in art. iii, defined that « whoever should presume to assert that the rational or intellective soul is not the form of the human body of itself and essentially, is to be judged as a heretic. » Likewise the Fifth Lateran Council, renewing this definition, pronounces the rational soul « truly, of itself and essentially to be the form of the human body. » But, unless the being which is produced through human generation should belong successively to different genera before man comes to be — which cannot reasonably and with faith wholly safe be maintained — it must, in its first constitution, that is, at the very conception, be informed by its true, proper and essential form, which is the intellective soul. Therefore.

In the Brief related above to the Bishop of Breslau, Pius IX teaches « that there is in man one principle of life, namely the rational soul, from which the body receives both motion, and all life, and sense. » But, since the body is living in its first constitution, that is, at the very conception, if the rational soul were not created and infused into it except after some time, this soul would not be the sole principle of life in man, nor would the body receive all its life from that principle. Therefore.

Proof 3° by theological reasons. 1° Applying the doctrine on the substantial form of man to the mystery of the divine Incarnation, the Council of Vienne defines « that the only-begotten Son of God... the parts of our nature united together, from which

he himself, being in himself true God, might become true man, namely a passible human body and an intellective or rational soul truly informing that body of itself and essentially, [he] assumed at a point in time in the virginal chamber, unto the unity of his hypostasis and person. » From which it is established that the Word of God assumed, in his conception, a truly human body, that is, at once informed by a rational soul. But human nature was not constituted otherwise in Christ than in us. Therefore.

2° Alexander VII, in the bull instituting the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, declared that the Church, in this solemnity, commemorates not the material conception of Mary, which of itself could not be the object of worship, but her formal conception, that is, the instant at which her soul and body were united. And Pius IX, in the bull Ineffabilis, defined that « the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, was... preserved immune from every stain of original guilt. » But, just as original sin has its seat in the rational soul, so sanctifying grace, with which the Blessed Virgin was endowed in the first instant of her conception, could only have been infused into that same soul. Therefore.

3° In the ancient canonical sanctions, the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae had been decreed against those procuring the abortion of an animated fetus, and the law had been so worded on account of the opinions then current concerning the time of perfect animation through the arrival of the intellective soul, which opinions, however, the Church never approved. In the constitution Apostolicae Sedis, issued on the 4th of October, 1869, in which the number of censures is reduced, we read: « Those procuring abortion, the effect having followed. » Which signifies that excommunication is incurred at whatever time the crime is committed, even a few days after conception. But this penalty is inflicted on account of homicide, and true homicide is not committed, except when man has already been informed by the intellective soul. Therefore.

4° The Roman Ritual prescribes that, « if the pregnant mother has died, the fetus should be carefully extracted as soon as possible, and if it is alive, it should be baptized. » No time is fixed; whence,

whatever the age of the fetus may be, this is to be observed. Therefore it is supposed that the fetus is informed by the intellective soul from the beginning.

Proof 4° by physiological reasons. 1° By generation properly so called, every being generates something specifically like itself. But, if at the very conception the being generated by man is not informed by the intellective soul, it is not specifically like the one generating it. Therefore. — Proof of the minor. Man the generator has a single substantial form, which is the intellective soul, by which he is specified. Therefore, if the being generated by him is not at once informed by the intellective soul, but first and for a time by the vegetative soul only, or the sensitive, it is not specifically like the one generating it, but belongs at first to the genus of plant, or of brute. Which is altogether repugnant.

2° Man is not a multiple being, even successively, but one. Therefore in his first constitution, that is, in conception, he must have the essential principle of his unity. This the Angelic Doctor demonstrates thus, II Contra gent., c. 58: « A thing has being and unity from the same source; for unity follows upon being. Since therefore each thing has being from its form, it will also have unity from its form. If, then, several souls be posited in man as diverse [successive] forms, man will not be one being, but many; nor will an order of forms suffice for the unity of man, because to be one according to order is not to be one simply, since unity of order is the least of unities. »

3° If the intellective soul should come to the fetus already conceived only after some time, since this fetus must already have been informed by some form, either vegetative or sensitive, which would have assigned it to this or that genus, it follows that the intellective soul is united to it only accidentally, and therefore is not the substantial form of this body. Therefore. Let us hear again our Doctor reasoning thus, ibid.: « This will bring back the aforesaid untoward consequence, namely that from the intellective soul and the body there would not come to be one thing simply, but only accidentally. For everything that comes to something after its complete existence comes to it accidentally, since it is outside its essence. Now every substantial form makes a being complete in the genus of substance; for it makes a being in act, and this particular thing³. Whatever, therefore, comes to a thing after the first substantial form, will come to it accidentally. Since, then, the nutritive soul is a substantial form (for "living" is predicated substantially of man and of animal), it will follow that the sensitive soul comes accidentally, and likewise the intellective; and thus neither animal nor man will signify simply one thing, nor any genus, nor species in the predicament of substance. »