HAVING shown (Chap. VI) that God is to some things the cause of their being, we must further show that nothing out of God has being except of Him. Every attribute that attaches to anything otherwise than as constituting its essence, attaches to it through some cause, as white- ness to man.* To be in a thing independently of causation is to be there primarily and immediately, as something ordinary [per se) and essential. It is impossible for any one attribute, attaching to two beings, to attach to each as constituting its essence. What is predicated as constituent of a thing's essence, has no extension beyond that thing: as the having three angles to- gether equal to two right angles has no extension beyond 'triangle,' of which it is predicated, but is convertible with 'triangle.' Whatever then attaches to two things, cannot attach to them both as constituting the essence of each. It is impossible therefore for any one attribute to be predicated of two sub- je<Sts without its being predicated of one or the other as something come there by the operation of some cause: either one must be cause of the other, or some third thing must be cause of both. Now 'being' is predicated of everything that is. It is impossible therefore for there to be two things, each having being independently of any cause; but either these things must both of them have being by the operation of a cause, or one must be to the other the cause of its being. Therefore everything which in any way is, must have being from that which is uncaused; that is, from God (B. I, Chap. XV).
2. What belongs to a thing by its nature, and is not dependent on any causation from without, cannot suffer diminution or defedh For if anything essential is withdrawn from or added to nature, that nature, so increased or diminished, will give place to another. If on the other hand the nature is left entire, and something else is found to have suffered diminution, it is clear that what has been so diminished does not absolutely depend on that nature, but on some other cause, by removal of which it is diminished. Whatever property therefore attaches to a thing less in one instance than in others, does not attach to that thing in mere virtue of its nature, but from the concurrence of some other cause. The cause of all effects in a particular kind will be that whereof the kind is predicated to the utmost. Thus we see that the hottest body is the cause of heat in all hot bodies, and the brightest body the cause of brightness in all bright bodies. But God is in the highest degree ' being ' (B. I, Chap. XIII). He then is the cause of all things whereof 'being' is predicated, f •We do not ask, what made man a rational air ideally cold, and the cause of all cold: water ideally animal, because man must be a rational animal, if he humid r and cause of all humidity: earth ideally dryf is to be man at all. But we may well ask: What made and cause of all dryness. The mediaeval mind de- the Englishman white and the Chinaman yellow? lighted in this recurrence to unity, ascribing all the t This argument rests unfortunately on a theory particulars of a kind to some one source and cause, of physical nature, to which there is no counterpart the perfect expression of that kind. Thus motion was in rerum natura, the theory of the * four elements,' a traced to one primum mobile, political power to the physical presentation of Plato's doctrine of Ideas. Fire Emperor, etc. The unities of nature are not so easy was taken to be ideally hot, and the cause of all heat: to discern in the light of our increased knowledge.
84 GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES 3. The order of causes must answer to the order of effc&s, since effects are proportionate to their causes. Hence, as special effe&s are traced to special causes, so any common feature of those special effe&s must be traced to some common cause. Thus, over and above the particular causes of this or that generation, the sun is the universal cause of all generation; and the king is the universal cause of government in his kingdom, over the officials of the kingdom, and also over the officials of individual cities. But being is common to all things. There must then be over all causes some Cause to whom it belongs to give being.
4. What is by essence, is the cause of all that is by participation, as fire is the cause of all things fiery, as such. But God is being by His essence, because He is pure being: while every other being is being by participa- tion, because there can only be one being that is its own existence (B. I, Chapp. XXII, XLII). God therefore is cause of being to all other beings.
5. Everything that is possible to be and not to be, has some cause: because, looked at by itself, it is indifferent either way; and thus there must be some- thing else that determines it one way. Hence, as a process to infinity is impossible, there must be some necessary being that is cause of all things which are possible to be and not to be.* 6. God in His a6tuality and perfeftion includes the perfections of all things (B. I, Chap. XXVIII); and thus He is virtually all. He is therefore the apt producing cause of all.
This conclusion is confirmed by divine authority: for it is said: Who made heaven and earthy the sea, and all things that are therein (Ps. cxlv, 6). And, All things were made by him, and without him Was made nothing (John i, 3). And, From Vohom are all things, by \0bom are all things, in (unto) whom are all things CHAPTER XVI- That God has brought things into being out of nothing TO every effect produced by God there is either something pre- existent or not. If not, the thesis stands, that God produces some effe6t out of nothing pre-existent. If anything pre-exists, we either have a process to infinity, which is impossible, or we must come to some- thing primitive, which does not presuppose anything else previous to it. Now this primitive something cannot be God Himself, for God is not the material out of which anything is made (B. I, Chap. XVI): nor can it be any other being, distindt from God and uncaused by God (Chap. XV).
3. The more universal the effcft, the higher the cause: for the higher the cause, the wider its range of efficiency. Now being is more universal than motion. Therefore above any cause that a6te only by moving and transmuting must be that cause which is the first principle of being; and that we have shown to be God (B. I, Chap. XIII). God therefore does not a<5l merely by moving and transmuting: whereas every cause that can only bring things into Nature is more manifold and broken into detail than but, metaphysically, it may be urged thus. — God is as St Thomas knew it. It is true that the sun, ex kypothesi the ideal Being, the fulness of Being: the " warmest and brightest of beings," is the chief name ' God * means no less than that. If then there cause of the heat and light that make human exis- be a God at all, all other being must be derived tence on earth possible: — to the sun we owe the from Him.
coal-forests, — and we may observe that the sun is # Understand, 'and yet are.' This is the argument thus an image of God in the universe: but this is an for the existence of God, known as the 'argument from analogy, not an argument. St Thomas's conclusion, contingent being.' so far as I see, gains no support from modern physics: 85 being out of pre-existing material a&s merely in that way, for a thing is made out of material by movement or some change.
4. It is not proper to the universal cause of being, as such, to a6t only by movement and change: for not by movement and change is being, as such, made out of not-being, as such, but 4 being this ' is made out of 6 not being this.' But God is the universal principle of being (Chap. XV). Therefore it is not proper to Him to aft only by movement or change, or to need pre- existent material to make anything.
5. Every agent has a term of adtion like itself, for it a6ts inasmuch as it is in a&uality. Given then an agent in actuality by some form inherent in it, and not to the whole extent of its substance,* it will be proper to such an agent to produce its efFett by causing a form in some way inherent in matter. But God is in actuality, not by anything inhering in Him, but to the whole extent of His substance (B. I, Chap. XVIII). Therefore the proper mode of divine adtion is to produce the whole subsistent thing, and not a mere inherent thing, as is form in matter.
1 o. Between adtuality and potentiality such an order obtains, that, though in one and the same being, which is sometimes in potentiality sometimes in actuality, potentiality is prior in time to actuality (although actuality is prior in nature), yet, absolutely speaking, actuality must be prior to potentiality, as is clear from this, that potentiality is not reduced to actuality except by some aftual being. But matter is being in potentiality.! Therefore God, first and pure a&uality, must be absolutely prior to matter, and consequently cause thereof.
This truth divine Scripture confirms, saying: In the beginning God created heaven and earth (Gen. i, 1). For to create is nothing else than to bring a thing into being without any pre-existent material.
Hereby is confuted the error of the ancient philosophers, who supposed no cause at all for matter, since in the adlions of particular agents they always saw some matter pre-existent to every aftion. Hence they took up the common opinion, that nothing is made out of nothing, which indeed is true of the a6tions of particular agents. But they had not yet arrived at a knowledge of the universal agent, the aftive cause of all being, whose causative aftion does not necessarily suppose any pre-existent material. J CHAPTER XVII- That Qreation is not a Movement nor a Q^ange EVERY movement or change is the aftualisation of something that was in potentiality, as such: but in this aftion of creation there is nothing pre-existent in potentiality to become the subject of the adtion.
* That is to say, given a corporeal agent: for the mean St Thomas's notion) of primordial matter, see schoolmen held that material forms on earth did not Plato, Timaeus, 50, 51, 52.
actuate the whole potentiality of the matter in which I That is to say, who works unconditionally, they inhered. So they explained the mutability of being Himself the Unconditioned. The "error of sublunary substances. Cf. Chap. XXX. the ancient philosophers " was the error of Plato t By 'matter' St Thomas does not mean material (Timaeus, 30), who certainly had arrived to some, substances (corpora), but a sort of matrix, or mother- though an imperfect, knowledge of the Universal stuff, conceived as not yet determined by any active Agent. Plato's reluctance to confess God as more principle, or 'form,' and therefore in potentiality to than the Demiurge, — or ordering Mind of the uniall manner of material forms. This is called by the verse, not its Creator,— came from his discerning, schoolmen materia prima, or primordial matter. Pri- as he thought, the origin of evil in the existence of mordial (or formless) matter, as such, nowhere exists: matter, matter being more or less an irrational prothat is to say, all existing matter is determined by some duel, not originated by mind, and but imperfectly particular form, so as to make this or that material controlled by mind. Monists at least will not deny substance or body: but primordial matter underlies the derivation of matter from mind. To them, all all material substances. For a first notion (I do not reality is One and of One: but they deny creation 86 Digitizec GooQle GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES 2. The extremes of movement or change fall under the same order,* being either of the same kind, as contraries are, or sharing one common potentiality of matter. But nothing of this can be in creation, to which no previous con- dition of things is supposed.
3. In every change or movement there must be something coming to be otherwise than as it was before. But where the whole substance of a thing is brought into being, there cannot be any permanent residuum, now in this condition, now in that: because such a residuum would not be produced, but presupposed to produ&ion.
CHAPTER ^Mill-Solution of Arguments against Qreatiori\ HENCE appears the futility of arguments against creation drawn from the nature of movement or change, — as that creation must be in some subject, or that not-being must be transmuted into being: for creation is not a change, but is the mere dependence of created being on the principle by which it is set up, and so comes under the category of relation: hence the subject of creation may very well be said to be the thing created. J Never- theless creation is spoken of as a * change* according to our mode of conceiving it, inasmuch as our understanding takes one and the same thing to be now non-existent and afterwards existing. If creation (creaturedom) is a relation, it is evidently some sort of reality; and this reality is neither uncreated, nor created by a further adt of creation. For since the created effedt really depends on the Creator, this relation must be a certain reality. Now every reality is brought into being by God; and therefore also this reality is brought into being by God, and yet was not created by any other creation than that of the first creature, because accidents and forms do not exist by themselves, and therefore neither are they terms of separate creation, since creation is the produ&ion of substantial being; but as they are 4 in another/ so are they created in the creation of other things.
CHAPTER XIX— That Qreation is not Successive SUCCESSION is proper to movement. But creation is not movement. Therefore there is in it no succession. 2. In every successive movement there is some medium between the extremes. But between being and not-being, which are the extremes in creation, there can be no medium, and therefore no succession.
3. In every making, in which there is succession, the process of being made is before the state of achieved completion. But this cannot happen in creation, because, for the process of being made to precede the achieved completion of the creature, there would be required some subject in which the process might take place. Such a subjeft cannot be the creature itself, of whose creation we are speaking, because that creature is not till the state of its achieved completion is realised. Nor can it be the Maker, because to be in movement is an adluality, not of mover, but of moved. And as for the process of being made having for its subject any pre-existing material, that out of nothing, and consider matter a necessary and in the title of this chapter. It contains no reference eternal outcome of the Divine Mind. On Monism to the question raised in Chap. XXXVIII.
St Thomas touches, Chapp. LXXIII-LXXV. t ' Creation * here spoken of is not the action as • The " extremes 99 are the situation from which it is of God, but the action as it is received in the the movement or change starts, and the situation in creature, constituting a relation to God which we which it ends. may call 'creaturedom.'
t The addition ab *tcrno is evidently out of place 87 is against the very idea of creation. Thus succession is impossible in the a6t of creation.
5. Successive stages in the making of things become necessary, owing to defedt of the matter, which is not sufficiently disposed from the first for the reception of the form. Hence, when the matter is already perfe6tly disposed for the form, it receives it in an instant. Thus because a transparent medium is always in final disposition for light, it lights up at once in the presence of any adtually shining thing. Now in creation nothing is prerequisite on the part of the matter, nor is anything wanting to the agent for action. It follows that creation takes place in an instant: a thing is at once in the aft of being created and is created, as light is at once being shed and is shining.
CHAPTER XXI— That it belongs to Qod alone to create SINCE the order of attions is according to the order of agents, and the adtion is nobler of the nobler agent, the first and highest adtion must be proper to the first and highest agent. But creation is the first and highest adtion, presupposing no other, and in all others presupposed. Therefore creation is the proper adtion of God alone, who is the highest agent.
2. Nothing else is the universal cause of being but God (Chap. XV).
3. Effedts answer proportionally to their causes. Thus adtual effedts we attribute to adtual causes, potential effedts to potential causes, particular effedts to particular causes, and universal effedts to universal causes. Now the first thing caused is 6 being/ as we see by its presence in all things. Therefore the proper cause of 6 being,' simply as such, is the first and universal agent, which is God. Other agents are not causes of 4 being/ simply as such, but causes of 4 being this,' as 4 man 9 or i white': but c being/ simply as such, is caused by creation, which presupposes nothing, because nothing can be outside of the extension of i being/ simply as such. Other produdtions result in 'being this/ or 'being of this quality': for out of pre-existent being is made 'being this/ or 'being of this quality.'* 6. Every agent that adts as an instrument completes the adtion of the principal agent by some adtion proper and connatural to itself, as a saw operates to the making of a stool by cutting. If then there be any nature that operates to creation as an instrument of the prime creator, this being must operate through some adtion due and proper to its own nature. Now the effedt answering to the proper adtion of an instrument is prior in the way of produdtion to the effedt answering to the principal agent; hence it is that the final ^nd answers to the principal agent: f for the cutting of the wood is prior * to8c Tt, or Totav&€ tl, as Aristotle would say, the perfection. God is ideal Being, actualised: He is the former expressing some particular substance, as ' this actuality of ideality.
steam/ the latter some particular quality, as ' the To say that God gives being to things is by no whiteness of these washed garments.' means to deny that He gives also particular determina- The argument lies open to this difficulty. — Effects tions of being. The first being was created under certain answer proportionally to their causes: but 'being, particular determinations. Once created, created agents simply as such,' is an abstract effect: therefore it act and react, modifying these determinations. But answers to an abstract cause: which argues the Creator Being, as such, they can neither give nor take away, to be an abstract Being: now abstract Being is mere They can neither create nor annihilate anything, mental fiction. — St Thomas would not admit this Matter is indestructible; and the light of intelligence, Nominalist position, that abstract Being is mere men- once kindled by the Creator's touch, burns for eternity, tal fiction. Force, Energy, Work, Life, surely are t The final end which the work is intended to not mere mental fictions, and yet they are abstract achieve directs the progress of the work, as the prinbeings. Abstract Being does not exist as abstract: it is cipal agent also directs it. The final end first exists as a reality in these and these particulars. St Thomas, in an idea in the mind of the principal agent: this idea one place, if indeed the argument is really his, calls guides the execution; and is realised last thing of all, God an abstract Being: see B. I, Chap. XLII, n. 13, when the work is done, with note. He means that God is a Being of ideal 88 to the form of the stool. There must then be some effect due to the proper operation of the instrument used for creation; and this effect must be prior in the way of production to c being': for 4 being' is the effedt answering to the adtion of the prime creator. But that is impossible: for the more general is prior in the way of generation to the more particular.* Hereby is destroyed the error of certain philosophers, who said that God created the first spirit, and by it was created the second, and so in order to the last.
CHAPTER XXII- That God is Almighty AS creation is the work of God alone, so whatever beings are producible only by creation must be immediately produced by Him. Such are all spirits,f the existence of which for the present let us suppose,! and likewise all bodily matter. These several existences are immediate effedts of creative power. Now a power is not determined and limited to one effedt, when it is produdiive of several effecdts immediately, and that not out of any pre-existent material. I say 4 immediately,' because if the produdtion were through intermediate agents, the diversity of effedts might be ascribed to those intermediate causes. I say again 'not out of any pre-existent material,' because the same agent by the same action causes different effedts according to the difference of material. God's power then is not determined and limited to one effedt.
2. Every perfect active power is co-extensive with and covers all cases of its own proper effect: thus perfect building power would extend to everything that could be called a house. But the divine power is of itself the cause of being, and being is its proper effedt. Therefore that power extends to all things that are not inconsistent with the idea of being: for if the divine power were available only for one particular effedt, it would not be the ordinary cause of being, as such, but cause of 4 this being.' Now what is inconsistent with the idea of * being ' is the opposite of c being,' which is c not-being.' God then can do all things that do not include in themselves the element of not- being, that is to say, that do not involve a contradiction.
3. Every agent adts inasmuch as it is in actuality. According then to the mode of a6tuality of each agent is the mode of its active power. Now God is perfect a6tuality, having in Himself the perfections of all beings (B. I, Chap. XXVIII): therefore His adtive power extends to all things that are not incon- sistent with adtual being.
5. There are three ways in which an effedt may not be in the power of an agent. In one way, because it has no affinity or likeness to the agent, for every agent adts to the produdtion of its own likeness somehow:§ hence man cannot be the parent of brute or plant, though he can be parent of man, who is more than they. In another way, on account of the excellence of the effedt, transcending the compass of the adtive power: thus the adtive power of matter cannot produce spirit. In a third way, on account of the material being determined to some effedt, and the agent having no power over it: thus a carpenter cannot make a saw, because his art gives him no power over iron. But in none of these ways can an effedt be withdrawn from the divine power: not for the unlikeness of the effedt, since every being, in so much as it has • What shall a thing be, before it has being avrtf *a0* ovtyjv oxxrLa of the Platonic Ideas, which at all? the Neo-Platonists personified as spirits.
t The term here translated 'spirit' is substantia X He undertakes to prove it in Chap. XLVI. stparatay 'a substance existing by itself apart' from S Thus my writing is like, or proportioned to, my matter. The expression seems to be taken from the thought, as a sign to the thing signified.
89 being, is like God (Chap. XV): nor again for the excellence of the effedt, since God is above all in goodness and perfe&ion (B. I, Chapp. XXVIII, XLI): nor lastly for the defeft of the material, since God in His a£tion needs no material (Chap. XVI).
This also is taught by divine Scripture as a tenet of faith. J am Qod sAlmighty^ wal{ before me and be perfedt (Gen. xvii, i): i* \now that thou canst do all things (Job xlii, 2): fr(o word shall be impossible *toith God (Luke i, 37).
Hereby is excluded the error of sundry philosophers, who have laid it down that God can do nothing except according to the course of nature. Or such it is said: As though the Almighty had no power, they reckoned of him (Job xxii, 17).
CHAPTER XXIII- That GocTs AElion in Qreation is not of Physical Necessity y but of Free Choice of JVM THE power of every necessary agent is determined and limited to one effedt. That is the reason why all physical effe&s always come out in the same way, unless there be some interference: but adts of the will not so. But the divine power is not dire&ed to one effedt only (Chap. XXII). God then does not a<5t by physical necessity, but by will.* 2. Whatever does not involve a contradidtion, is within the range of the divine power. But many things that do not exist in creation would still in- volve no contradidtion if they did exist. This is most evidently the case in regard of the number and size and distances of the stars and other bodies. They would present no contradidtion, no intrinsic absurdity, if they were arranged on another plan. Many things therefore lie within the range of divine power, that are not found in nature. But whoever does some and leaves out others of the things that he can do, adts by choice of will and not by physical necessity.f 4. Since God's adtion is His substance (B. I* Chap. LXXIII), the divine adtion cannot come under the category of those adts that are c transient ' and not in the agent, but must be an adt 4 immanent 9 in the agent, such as are adts of knowing and desiring, and none other. God therefore adts and operates by knowing and willing.
6. A self-determined agent is prior to an agent determined from without: for all that is determined from without is reducible to what is self-determined, or we should have a process to infinity. But he who is not master of his own adtion is not self-determined: for he adts as led by another, not as his own leader. The prime agent then must adt in such a way as to remain master of his own adtion. But no one is master of his own adtion except he be a voluntary agent.
7. Will-adtion is naturally prior to physical adtion: for that is naturally prior which is more perfedt, albeit in the individual it be posterior in time. But will-adtion is the more perfedt, as within our experience voluntary agents * The proof referred to rests principally on this, a psychological proof of the freedom of the human that the Creator works not upon any pre-existent will; and thence argue that a perfection so conspicuous material. But this and the other arguments of Chap. in the human mind cannot be denied to the Supreme XXII do not touch the idealist and pantheist position, Mind. — See Free-will in (jod and Man in Oxford and that the Supreme Mind thinks in necessary grooves Cambridge Conferences, 1900, 1 901, pp. 142 sq. (Sands or forms; that what theologians call 'creatures' are and Co., London).
but the necessary thoughts of God; and that no- t This is the argument above referred to (B. I, thing is really possible but what thus actually comes Chap. XIII note) of the primitive collocation of the to be. This position is taken account of more in Chap, materials of the universe being no consequence of XX VI. It may be also met thus. We may lay down physical necessity but an ordinance of mind.- 90 are more perfedt than physical. Therefore will-adtion must be assigned to God, the prime agent.