§ " Making a sort of chameleon of the happy man, should develop a counter-energy in the Church, and resting his happiness on an unstable foundation " (Etb. Nic. I, x, 8). A well-known poem tells "of the chameleon's form and nature."
GOD THE END OF CREATURES with black. But it is impossible for man in the state of this life to be alto- gether free from evils, — not to say bodily evils, as hunger, thirst, cold and heat, but even from evils of the soul. There is no man living who is not at times disturbed by inordinate passions, who does not at times overstep the mean in which virtue consists, or fall short of it, who is not in some things deceived, or ignorant of what he wishes to know, or driven to weak surmises on points where he would like absolute certainty.
6. Man naturally shrinks from death, and is sad at the thought of it. Yet man must die, and therefore cannot be perfectly happy while here he lives.* 7. Happiness consists, not in habit, but in activity: for habits are for the sake of acts. But it is impossible in this life to do any act continually. t 8. Thejmore a thing is desired and loved, the greater grief and sadness docs its loss^bring. But if final happiness be in this world, it will certainly be lost, at least by death; and it is uncertain whether it will last till death, since to any man there may possibly happen in this life diseases totally debarring him from any virtuous activity, such as insanity. Such happiness therefore must always have a natural pendent of sadness.
But it may be replied that whereas happiness is the good of an intelligent nature, true and perfect happiness belongs to those in whom intelligent nature is found in its perfection, that is, in pure spirits J; but in man it is found imperfectly by way of a limited participation. And this seems to have been the mind of Aristotle: hence, enquiring whether misfortunes take away happiness, after showing that happiness lies in virtuous activities, which arc the most permanent things in this life, he concludes that they who enjoy such perfection in this life arc " happy for men," meaning that they do not absolutely attain happiness, but only in a human way.§ Now it is demonstrable that the aforesaid answer is not to the undoing of the arguments above alleged. || For (a) though man is inferior in the order * Because to every Here frietb there answers a disembodied human spirits, and this whole reply is Here Beth. not amiss.
t Understand, any ' human act.' No man is happy $ Nic. Btk. I, x, 1 6: " We will call them happy in by the beating of his heart. The proof that happiness life who have and shall have the specified qualincaconsists in an activity of the best in man may be put tions, — I mean, they are happy men." In X, vii, 8, he scholastically thus. — Being is good. Every being, ac- bids us aim at a happiness "too good for man"; and cording to its kind and capacity, asserts itself and aims concludes (X, viii, 8): " For heavenly beings, all their at maintaining itself: this we may call the self-preserva- life is happy: for men, life is happy so far as they have tive nisus. Every being, that is capable of development any likeness of this blissful activity of contemplation: aims, not at mere maintenance, but at development of of other animals, none is happy, since they have no self. This effort after development is the Aristotelian part in contemplation."
<£vcri5. In a conscious and intelligent being, the sue- II As there is a difference between the work that cessful maintenance and development of self is happi- a machine is theoretically capable of doing, and the ness, which might be defined conscia plenitude essendi. work that under actual circumstances can be got out Being (esse) carries power (fosse), and power carries of it, — one such circumstance being, e.g., the strength act (agtre). Power is called by Aristotle the first actua- of the stoker's arm; — so there is a difference between lity9 and act the second actuality. Being is in its full the happiness that man is absolutely capable of, and development when it reaches the second actuality. Man the happiness that he can attain relatively to the con- therefore is in the fullness of being, and therefore man ditions of this life. None knew better than Aristotle is happy, when he is in the best second actuality of how far the latter grade of happiness falls short of the which his nature is capable; and that, as Aristotle former. He would therefore fall in with all that has proves, and St Thomas after him (Chapp. XXVI, been argued about happiness in this chapter, except XXXVII), is the act of contemplation. — Whether with the conclusion implied in the fourth argument, this demonstration is sufficiently observant of the Even that argument is borrowed from Aristotle, who essential sociableness of human nature, is a point to is said however to have made it matter of lame nta- consider. Is self complete in the individual, and not tion, not of hope. The Aristotelian text holds out no rather in society? Heaven is the new Jerusalem (Apoc. hope of everlasting and perfect happiness for the human xxi, 2) and Jerusalem is the city of the great King soul after death, — as Plato in two places (PJutdo, 1 1 4 c: (Matt, v, 3 5 ). Phtdrus, 2 48 c) does for the departed soul of the philo- X In substantia separatis. Include under that term sopher.
of nature to pure spirits, yet he is superior to irrational creatures; and there- fore he must gain his final end in a more perfect way than they. But they gain their final end so perfectly as to seek nothing further. Thus the natural desire of dumb animals is at rest in the enjoyment of sensual delights. Much more must the natural desire of man be put to rest by his arrival at his last end. But that is impossible in this life: therefore it must be attained after this life.* {b) It is impossible for a natural desire to be empty and vain: for nature does nothing in vain. But the desire of nature (for happiness) would be empty and vain, if it never possibly could be fulfilled. Therefore this natural desire of man is fulfillable. But not in this life. Therefore it must be fulfilled after this life.f Alexander and Averroes laid it down that the final happiness of man is not in such knowledge as is possible to man through the speculative sciences, but in a knowledge gained by conjunction with a separately subsis- tent intelligence, which conjunction they conceived to be possible to man in this life. But because Aristotle saw that there was no other knowledge for man in this life than that which is through the speculative sciences, he sup- posed man not to gain perfect happiness, but a limited measure of happiness suited to his state. In all which investigation it sufficiently appears how hard pressed on this side and on that these fine geniuses (praec/ara ingenid) were. From this stress of difficulty we shall find escape in positing, according to the proofs already given, that man can arrive at true happiness after this life, the soul of man being immortal. J In this disembodied state the soul will understand in the way in which pure spirits understand (B. II, Chapp. XCVI, sq.) The final happiness of man then will be in the knowledge of God, which the human soul has after this life according to the manner in which pure spirits know Him.
Therefore the Lord promises us rewara in heaven (Matt, v, 12), and says that the saints shall be as the angels (Matt, xxii, 30), who see the face of God in heaven (Matt, xviii, 10).
* "It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a cotnachean Ethics, 11,448). Is man then a lusus nature, pig satisfied " (J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, pp. 1 1-16, who wins an insufficient pittance in repeated doles by ed. 2). St Thomas argues that as there is something ever asking for more? Is this what Ecclesiastes xii calls within the pig's reach which will satisfy the pig, there all man? We have then the fourth petition of the Lord's must be something within Socrates's reach which will Prayer granted to the rejection of the second, which satisfy Socrates. Though Socrates dissatisfied is better scarcely looks like the fulfilment of the third. We have off than the pig, yet he is not well off — for Socrates, daily bread, but no kingdom come. We have the race pro- 1 1 have been at considerable pains to explain and gressing indefinitely, but all individual progress ending vindicate this argument in my Ethics and Natural Law, at no long time in a plunge into nothingness. Is not pp. 1 3-21. The alternative to the acceptance of it is the case the same with all other animal life and with the view of Professor Stewart, — and, no doubt, of the whole vegetable world? To be sure it is, but man Aristotle: — "The dtwprjriKos fiiog is an ideal: it can- alone knows it, and his knowledge is his misfortune, not be realised by man, for he is concrete. But the t To the cavil that the soul of man is not man, effort to realise it, so far as possible, is all important in we may reply in the words of Aristotle: " Every man human life. The effort to realise it co-ordinates man's may be reckoned to be that, which is the controlling powers, it gives him ilan, and carries him on to the and better part of him " ($Qc. Eth. X, vii, 9). The attainment of many things within his reach, which he controlling and better part of man is his immortal soul: would not otherwise aspire to " (Stewart's Notes on Ni- the soul then is the man.
GOD THE END OF CREATURES CHAPTER XL1X- That the Knowledge which Pure Spirits have of God through knowing their own Essence does not carry with it a Vision of the Essence of God WE must further enquire whether this very knowledge, whereby separately subsistent intelligences and souls after death know God through knowing their own essences, suffices for their own happiness. For the investigation of this truth we must first show that the divine essence is not known by any such mode of knowledge. In no way can the essence of a cause be known in its effect, unless the effect be the adequate expression of the whole power of the cause.* But pure spirits know God through their own substances, as a cause is known through its effect, inasmuch as each sees God as mirrored in another, and each sees God as expressed in himself, t But none of these pure spirits is an effect adequate to the power of God (B. II, Chapp. XXVI, XXVII). It is impossible therefore for them to sec the divine essence by this method of knowledge.
2. An intelligible likeness, whereby a thing is understood in its substance, must be of the same species as that thing, or rather it must be its species, — thus the form of a house in the architect's mind is the same species as the form of the house which is in matter, or rather it is its species, — for by the species of man you do not understand the essence of ass or horse. \ But the nature of an angel is not the same as the divine nature in species, nay not even in genus (B. I, Chap. XXV).
3. Everything created is bounded within the limits of some genus or species. But the divine essence is infinite, comprising within itself every per- fection of entire being (B. I, Chapp. XXVIII, XLIII). It is impossible therefore for the divine substance to be seen through any created medium.
Nevertheless a pure spirit by knowing its own substance knows the exis- tence of God, and that God is the cause of all, and eminent above all, and removed (remotus) from all, not only from all things that are, but from all that the created mind can conceive. To this knowledge of God we also may attain in some sort: for from the effects of His creation we know of God that He is, and that He is the cause (sustaining principle) of other beings, super- eminent above other beings, and removed from all. And this is the highest perfection of our knowledge in this life: hence Dionysius says (De mystica theologiay c. 2) that "we are united with God as with the unknown"; which comes about in this way, that we know of God what He is not, but what He is remains absolutely unknown. And to show the ignorance of this most sublime knowledge it is said of Moses that he drew nigh to the darkness in which God was (Exod. xx, 2i).§ # St Thomas docs not view causation dynamically, out conclusions (cognitio discursiva). Does this really but statically. I mean, a cause to him is not a being mean more than that they reason very rapidly? What which by its changing propagates a change to some we call * sight ' is rapid inference, other being, — as when one ninepin falling knocks over X But see B. I, ch. LIV.
another ninepin, and so on to the end of the row: this $ See Ch. XXXIX, and B. I, Ch. XIV, note, p. 1 3.
he calls, not causatio, but motto, and such are the causes In later life, St Thomas wrote more cautiously on of causation usually considered by physicists, — but this subject. What he means is this. I call God, let us causation in St Thomas points to dependence of being, say, 'intelligent.' And so He is intelligent. He is, if and a cause is a being on which another being, its effect, I may use a vulgar expression, 'getting on that way ' is more or less permanently dependent for its existence: which I call the way of intelligence; only, He goes so that is why he makes quite as much of material and far on in it, that the poor little beginning of intelliformal and final as of efficient causation. gence, which is all that I can master and appreciate t All that pure spirits know, they know, accord- as such, is wholly unfit to stand for His infinite inteling to St Thomas, by sight, or intuition {yisio intelUc- ligencc. — To put the same in a more learned way.
tus): he does not admit in their minds any reasoned God to me is not bounded in this, which I under- GOD & HIS CREATURES BOOK III But because an inferior nature at its height attains only to the lowest grade of the nature superior to it, this knowledge must be more excellent in pure spirits than in us. For (a) the nearer and more express the effect, the more evidently apparent the existence of the cause. But pure spirits, that krtow God through themselves, are nearer and more express likenesses of God than the effects through which we know God.
(c) High dignity better appears, when we know to what other high digni- ties it stands preferred. Thus a clown, knowing the king to be the chief man in the kingdom, but for the rest knowing only some of the lowest officials of the kingdom, with whom he has to do, does not know the king's pre-eminence so well as another, who knows the dignity of all the princes of the realm. But we men know only some of the lowest of things that are. Though then we know that God is high above all beings, still we do not know the height of the Divine Majesty as the angels know it, who know the highest order of beings and God's elevation above them all.
CHAPTER \j-That the desire of Pure Intelligences does not rest satisfied in the Natural Knowledge which they have of Qod EVERYTHING that is imperfect in any species desires to gain the perfection of that species. He who has an opinion about a thing, opinion being an imperfect knowledge of the thing, is thereby egged on to desire a scientific knowledge of the thing.* But the aforesaid knowledge, which pure spirits have of God without knowing His substance fully, is an imperfect kind of knowledge. The main point in the knowledge of anything is to know precisely what it essentially is. Therefore this knowledge which pure spirits have of God does not set their natural desire to rest, but rather urges it on to see the divine substance.
2. The knowledge of effects kindles the desire of knowing the cause: this search after causes set men upon philosophising. Therefore the desire of know- ing, naturally implanted in all intelligent beings, does not rest unless, after finding out the substances of things made, they come also [etiamy not etiamst\ to know the cause on which those substances depend. By the fact then of pure spirits knowing that God is the cause of all the substances which they see, the natural desire in them does not rest unless they come also to see the substance of God Himself.
4. Nothing finite can set to rest the desire of intelligence. Given any finite thing, intelligence always sets to work to apprehend something beyond it. But the height and power of every created substance is finite. Therefore the intelligence of a created spirit rests not in the knowledge of any created substances, however excellent, but tends still further in a natural desire to understand that substance which is of infinite height and excellence, namely, the divine substance (Chap. XLIII).
6. The nearer a thing is to the goal, the greater is its desire. But the stand, but he is this-lify, and still more this-li\e to in- * Mankind would be a race of philosophers, if Jtnity. To express the fact, I may call God, and truly this were true of the generality of men. Men gene- call Him, this (e.g., 'intelligent'); but I may as truly rally will not take the trouble of thinking, they have (though not always as safely to unintelligent ears) deny not the ability, they have not the time (B. I, Ch. IV). the same of Him, merely meaning by the denial that St Thomas is speaking of beings in a perfect state, where the this, though the best and truest word we have, is all solicitudes are removed, and all passions are under a wholly inadequate expression to contain and repre- control (or wholly absent), and intellect has perfect sent Him, who "is not mere Being, but even beyond sway. Being in dignity and power" (Plato, Rep. 509 b). Here we have what St Thomas (B. I, Ch. XIV) calls Via rmotionts.
GOD THE END OF CREATURES intelligences of pure spirits arc nearer to the knowledge of God than is our intelligence: therefore they desire that knowledge more intensely than we do. But even we, however much we know that God exists and has the attri- butes above mentioned, have not our desire assuaged, but still further desire to know God in His essence: much more then do pure spirits. The conclu- sion is, that the final happiness of pure spirits is not in that knowledge of God whereby they know Him through knowing their own substances, but their desire leads them further to the substance of God.
Hereby it sufficiently appears that final happiness is to be sought in no other source than in activity of intellect, since no desire carries so high as the desire of understanding truth. All our other desires, be they of pleasure or of anything else desirable by man, may rest in other objects; but the afore- said desire rests not until it arrives at God, on whom all creation hinges and who made it all. Hence Wisdom aptly says: I dtoell in the heights of heaven^ and my throne is in the pillar of a cloud (Ecclus xxiv, 7); and it is said, Wis- dom calls her handmaids to the citadel (Prov. ix, 3). Let them blush therefore who seek in basest things the happiness of man so highly placed.* * A well-known difficulty arises from this chapter. If pure spirits and disembodied souls, for there is ques- tion of both here, have a natural desire of seeing the substance, essence, or what Holy Writ calls the face of God, which sight is called by theologians the ' bea- tific vision!; and this natural desire of the beatific vision points to a corresponding possibility of realisation; then either this vision can be attained by natural means, a piece of ultra-Pelagianism which St Thomas is the first to repudiate (Chapp. LI I, LIII); or men and angels, as such, require to be raised to the supernatural state, and could never possibly have been left by God to the mere intrinsic powers of their nature, — a position vir- tually Pelagian, as making grace a requisite of nature, — a position formally condemned by the Church in Baius (Michael Le Bay of Louvain) and Jansenius, and re- jected by all modern Catholic theologians, who insist on the absolute possibility of what they call a * state of pure (mere) nature.' Three Popes, in 1 567, 1 579, 1 64 1, condemned this proposition of Baius: "It is an opinion excogitated by vain and otiose men, accord- ing to the folly of philosophers, that man in his first origin was the recipient of gifts superadded to his nature, and so was elevated by the divine bounty and adopted to be a son of God." Baius meant that these gifts of adoption and sonship were proper to human nature. Again this saying of Quesnel is con- demned in the Bull Unigenitus of 1 7 1 3: " The grace of God is a consequence of nature, and was due to nature sound and whole." This matter is lucidly ex- plained in Father Harper's Peace through the Truth, First Series, pp. 293-296. I have written upon the subject, Ethics and Natural Law, pp. 21-25; Oxford and Cambridge Conferences, First Series, pp. 21 1-2 17, But how deliver St Thomas from the dilemma? The usual escape is by saying that he writes, not of human souls and angels as they are from the pure view of philosophy, in puris naturaHbus, but as they actually are in the historical order of Providence, elevated to the supernatural state, destined and fitted by God's gratuitous bounty to see Him ultimately face to face. But the Saint's arguments in this chap- ter are purely rational and philosophical, containing not the slightest reference to any fact presupposed from revelation.
Or shall we say that he deals only in tUbra, arguments of congruity, but not of necessity, or as he says (B. I, Ch. IX), rationes >erisimiles adfdeRum exercitium et consolationemf Against this interpretation it is to be considered that the chapter is an essential link in a long chain of arguments (Chapp. XXVI- LIV) evidently meant for a demonstrated theory of happiness.
I think we should consider what St Thomas would have said to the following reply to the argu- mentation of this chapter.
There is no natural desire of that which created nature, as such, is not capable of attaining in any shape or firm.
But created nature, as such, is not capable of attain- ing, in any shape or form to the vision of God face to face: therefore.
This difficulty I doubt if St Thomas ever raised to himself or had brought before him. It came into prominence three or four centuries later in the dis- putes with Baius and Jansenius. Had St Thonfis been confronted with it, I am confident that he would have met it as Catholic theologians now do. He would have acknowledged that angels and human spirits, in their mere natural condition, would find satisfaction and perfect natural happiness in a vision of God mediate and indirect. He might possibly still argue a certain congruity in such intelligent creatures being raised to the supernatural state and made capable of seeing God. He might and he might not, for such elevation is a stupendous advance upon nature; and the vision of God, but for its being a revealed fact, would be beyond any creature's dream. // hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive (1 Cor. ii, 9). But once raised to the supernatural order and endowed with grace, St Thomas would argue invincibly that there is no proper happiness for created spirits except face to face with the beauty and glory of God.
CHAPTER LI- How God is seen as He essentially is AS shown above (Chap. XLIX), the divine substance cannot be seen by the intellect in any created presentation. Hence, if God's essence is to be seen, the intelligence must see it in the divine essence itself, so that in such vision the divine essence shall be at once the object which is seen and that whereby it is seen.* This is the immediate vision of God that is promised us in Scripture: We see now in a glass darkly \ but then face to face (i Cor. xiii, 2): a text absurd to take in a corporeal sense, as though we could imagine a bodily face in Deity itself, whereas it has been shown that God is incorporeal (B. I, Chap. XX). Nor again is it possible for us with our bodily face to see God, since the bodily sense of sight, implanted in our face, can be only of bodily things. Thus then shall we see God face to face, in that we shall have an immediate vision of Him, as of a man whom we see face to face. By this vision we are singularly assimilated to God, and are partakers in His happiness: for this is His happiness, that He essentially understands His own substance. Hence it is said: When he shall appear, We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1 John iii, 2). And the Lord said: I prepare for you as my Father hath pre- pared for me a kingdom, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom (Luke xxii, 29). This cannot be understood of bodily meat and drink, but of that food which is taken at the table of Wisdom, whereof it is said by Wisdom: Eat ye my bread and drin\ the wine that I haVe mingled for you (Prov. ix, 5).
They therefore eat and drink at the table of God, who enjoy the same happi- ness wherewith God is happy, seeing Him in the way which He sees Himself.
CHAPTER \A\—That no Qreated Substance can of its natural power arrive to see God as He essentially is THE property of a higher nature cannot be attained by a lower nature except by the action of that higher nature to which it properly belongs. But to see God by the divine essence is the property of the divine nature: for it is proper to every agent to act by its own proper form. Therefore no subsistent intelligence can see God by the divine essence except through the action of God bringing it about.
5. To see the substance of God transcends the limits of every created nature: for it is proper to every intelligent created nature to understand according to the mode of its substance: but the divine substance is not intelligible according to the mode of any created substance (Chap. XLIX).
Hence it is said: The grace of Qod is life everlasting (Rom. vi, 23). For we have shown that the happiness of man consists in the vision of God, which is called life everlasting, whereunto we are led solely by the grace oj Qod, because such vision exceeds the faculty of every creature, and it is impossible to attain it except by an endowment from God. And the Lord says: I will manifest myself to him (John xiv, 21).
* At once the objefium quod and the ohjeftutn quo, the Aristotelian o and <p. See B. II, Chap. LXXV, reply 2.
CHAPTER Llll-That a Created Intelligence needs some influx of Divine Light to see God in His Essence IT is impossible for that which is the proper form of one thing to become the form of another thing, unless that latter thing comes to partake of some likeness to the former. But the divine essence is the proper intelli- gible form of the divine intelligence, and is proportioned to it: for in God these three are one, that which understands, that thereby it understands, and that which is understood. It is impossible therefore for the very essence of God to become an intelligible form to any created intellect otherwise than by the said intellect coming to be partaker in some likeness to God.
3. If two things, not previously united, come afterwards to be united, this must be either by a change in both or by a change in one of them. If therefore any created intellect begins anew to see the essence of God, the divine essence must be conjoined anew with that intellect by way of intelli- gible presentation. But it is impossible for the divine essence to change; and therefore such union must begin by some change in the created intellect, that is to say, by its making some new acquisition.
But because we arrive at the knowledge of things intelligible through things sensible, we also transfer the names of sensible cognition to intelli- gible cognition, and particularly the properties of sight, which among senses is the nobler and more spiritual and more akin to intellect: hence intellectual knowledge itself is called sight, or vision. And because bodily vision is not accomplished except through light, the means whereby intel- lectual vision is fulfilled borrow the name of light. That disposition therefore whereby a created intelligence is raised to the intellectual vision of the divine substance is called the 4 light of glory/