Thus in answer to the question, Why? asked of any natural effett, we can render a reason from some proximate cause, yet so that we reduce all things to the prime cause. Thus if »t is asked why wood gets hot in presence of fire, it is answered [etc., etc., in terms of Aristotelian physics], and so on till we come to the will of God [who willed to create matter and energy, such as we know them, from the beginning]. Hence whoever answers the question, why the wood got hot, Because God has willed it so, answers appro- priately, if he intends to carry back the question to the prime cause; but in- appropriately, if he intends to exclude all other causes.f • This error represents an extreme form of No- t If asked, * Why does the train start at 6.30?'
minalism. These two opposite erroneous tendencies I should answer, ' Because the traffic manager has so must often strike the careful reader of philosophy arranged it.' He might have taken the train off, or and theology. Catholic thinkers, abhorring the Cha- put it at another hour, or, with the concurrence of rybdis of the latter error, sometimes run perilously the Directors, have suspended traffic altogether. The near to the Scylla of the former. I mean, they are Time Tables represent the Manager's will: yet by apt to refer too much to the arbitrary will of God, no means his arbitrary will. A Time Table drawn and too little to the ' nature of things.' up at hap-hazard would result in a block of the CHAPTER XCIX-That Qod can work beyond the Order laid down for Creatures, and produce Effe&s without Proximate Qauses SINCE accidents follow upon the substantial principles of the thing, he who immediately produces the substance of a thing must be able imme- diately to work in the thing whatever effects follow upon substantial existence. But God by creation has brought all things immediately into being. He can therefore immediately move anything to any effect without inter- mediate causes.* But if any one says that, once God has fixed an orderly course of events, He cannot change it without changing Himself; and that He would change Himself, if ever He worked in the world to the produftion of effedts apart from their own proper causes, such a saying may be refuted by a study of nature. For the orderly course of events fixed by God, if we look at it as it obtains in creation, will be found to hold for the most part, but not every- where or always:t for sometimes, although in a minority of cases, the thing whole line: it would not work. The Time Tables what impossible, what things absolutely God could do, consequently are drawn up with much care and fore- thought for the natures of trains and the exigencies of traffic. The Manager controls actualities, but not pos- sibilities and conveniences. He must make his actual appointments tally with what he finds possible and convenient.
In like manner all actuality in creatures depends on the mere will of God. And God need not will to create anything at all. He might have acquiesced in His own existence, with nothing but Himself alone in any way existing. So says St Thomas, and so the Catholic Church, in opposition to the determinist idealism of Hegel, who makes the universe and its on-goings consist of the irreversible thoughts and thought-processes of Deity. On the other hand God's power of creating is not an arbitrary power to create anything and everything that a foolish fancy may call up. He cannot give reality to intrinsic absurdities. He cannot, we may venture to think, create a race of mortal men without stomachs, or animals whose natu- ral food should be stones, or a circle having the pro- perties of a cycloid, or a politician licensed to lie. If He creates, He must create according to the eternal exemplars, the natures of things, as He views them in order of possibility in Himself. These eternal exem- plars, or ' intelligible essences ' as the schoolmen call them, represent whatever of truth there was in Plato's Ideas. They are founded upon the divine nature, as imitable outside of God: they are discerned in the divine intellect: they do not depend, formally speaking, on the divine will. God's will and decree does not make and unmake possibilities. These inttlligibUia, on the lines of which creation must take place, if crea- tion there is to be at all, are treated of in B. I, Chapp. XLIX-LIV. They were ignored by the ultra-Nomi- nalists, who took all meaning out of the phrase * the nature of things,' and, like those * doctors of the Mo- hammedan law' whom St Thomas mentions, ascribed all events without distinction to the arbitrary will of the Creator.
With these archetypal Ideas, according to which creation is laid out, and athwart of which it cannot run, we are very imperfectly acquainted. Consequently our predication cannot travel far, when we undertake to pronounce what things are intrinsically possible and and what things He absolutely could not. More things probably are intrinsically impossible than we are aware of. Among the meshes of this necessary system of the nature of things (a necessity founded upon the divine nature itself) the divine will ranges free, electing to actualise this possibility in creation, and to leave that unactualised.
From this chapter of St Thomas I have been con- strained to excise much obsolete physics. To examine the plan of creation, in an age when men knew no- thing of physical nature, microscopic and telescopic, molecular and sidereal, beyond what their unassisted senses could detect, and knew that little ill, — was a laudable effort, but could lead to no more than pro- visional results. A modern Aquinas, dwelling, as St Thomas loved to dwell, on the variety of creation and the differences of things, cannot but feel him- self in face of the question, how all these differences arose; whether they were explicit in the first crea- tion, or whether, out of a creation originally homo- geneous, things came to be differentiated by a primi- tive plastic power, called Evolution, which has turned out an oak, or a sycamore, to be head and representa- tive of one line of development, and a lion, or an eagle, of another. And, if he chooses Evolution, he will have to consider the part of God's providence therein.
This chapter should be read in the light of the teleological Psalm ciii, and of St Thomas's own decla- ration of his purpose in B. II, Chap. IV. In the un- translated portion occurs this curious aphorism: "The first thing aimed at in creatures is their multiplica- tion {prima ratio in creaturis est eorum numtrositas), and to the gaining and securing of this end all things else seem to be subordinate."
* He who created matter, can move it. He who created the human soul, can speak to that soul, with- out need of creatures to be His intermediaries and messengers.
t That is to say, the subordinate laws of nature operate under such a complication of conditions, that it is difficult to state them as universal principles. So Suarez, <De Ltgibus, II, xiii-xv, speaking of the appli- cation of general moral principles to exceptional cases.
GOD THE END OF CREATURES turns out otherwise, either for lack of power in the agent, or for indisposi- tion of the matter, or from some >/> major supervening. Yet not on that account does the law of providence * fail or suffer change: for it comes under providence that the natural course of things, instituted to hold usually,t should sometimes fail. If therefore by the action of some created power the natural course of events may be altered from the usual to the unusual, and that with- out any alteration of divine providence, much more may the divine power sometimes do a thing, without prejudice to its own providence, beyond the course assigned to natural events by God. This God does at times to manifest His power: for there is no better way of manifesting the subje6tion of all nature to the divine will than by something being done at times beyond the course of nature: for thereby it appears that the course of events proceeds from Him, and is not of necessity of nature, but through free will. 4 Nor should this be accounted a frivolous reason to allege, that God works some effedts in nature to the end of manifesting Himself to human minds, since it has been shown that all the material creation is subordinated to serve the end of intellectual nature, while the end of intelledtual nature itself is the knowledge of God. No wonder then if some change is wrought in corporeal substance to afford intelligent nature a knowledge of God.
CHAPTER C-That the things which God does beyond the Order of Nature are not contrary to Nature % SINCE God is prime agent, all things inferior to Him are as His instru- ments. But instruments are made to serve the end of the prime agent, according as they are moved by Him: therefore it is not contrary to, but very much in accordance with, the nature of the instrument, for it to be moved by the prime agent. Neither is it contrary to nature for created things to be moved in any way whatsoever (qualitercunque) by God: for they were made to serve Him.|| 4. The first measure of every being and of every nature is God, seeing that He is the first being and cause of being to all. And since everything must be judged by its measure, that must be called 4 natural' to a thing whereby it is conformed to its measure, or standard. That then will be natural to a thing, which has been put into it by God. Therefore, though something • No, nor the law of physical nature either. There are then restraints upon God's willing, restraints There is no law of physical nature that every harvest shall ripen. Corn ' tends ' to ripeness, and fcsitis po- nendis, in the absence of all counteracting causes, must actually ripen. Mill in his Logu has the remark, that the laws of nature are best expressed as ' ten- dencies ' only.
t Or by us formulated and anticipated in view of what usually occurs.
X It is of the free will of God, — (a) that crea- tures exist at all: (h) that these creatures exist rather than those: (c) that these existent creatures were arranged, to begin with, in this rather than in that primitive collocation.
$ Does * nature ' mean anything definite and fixed at all? Because, if it does not, nothing can be contrary to nature. Does 'nature' mean merely 'what God wills?' If so, nothing that God wills can be contrary to nature. But the question recurs in another form: 'What can God will? Any fantastic and bizarre com- bination that we choose to name?' Certainly not.
in the eternal nature of things, which, in the last re- duction means God's own nature. His will may be said to be conditioned by His nature. H- is not a arbitrium, an absolute, arbitrary will. Then there must be something definite and fixed, which may be called 'nature,' against which God can have no will.
II This would be a pretty argument, were all in- struments alike capable of all things, and not limited in efficiency each by its own nature. As it is, the word quatitercitnqui seems to have crept into the conclusion without being in the premises. Instruments have their several natures and capacities, and cannot be used in- differently one for another. A looking-glass will not serve for a drinking-cup. Even God could not set an ox to govern a State, nor make a three pound weight in a fair balance, without interference natural or pre- ternatural, outweigh five pounds. Miracles are not wrought in that way, which indeed, so far as words go, is the very thesis of St Thomas in this chapter.
further be impressed upon a thing, making it otherwise than as it was before, that is not against nature.* 5. All creatures stand to God as the products of art to the artist (B. II, Chap. XXIV). Hence all nature may be called an artistic produdt of divine workmanship (artificiatum divina artis). But it is not contrary to the notion of workmanship for the artist to work something to a different effedt in his work, even after he has given it the first form. Neither then is it contrary to nature if God works something in natural things to a different effeft from that which the ordinary course of nature involves.
Hence Augustine says: "God, the Creator and Founder of all natures, does nothing contrary to nature, because to every creature that is natural which He makes so, of whom is all measure, number and order of nature."t CHAPTER CI-O/ Miracles THINGS that are done occasionally by divine power outside of the usual established order of events are commonly called miracles (wonders). We wonder when we see an effe6t and do not know the cause. And because one and the same cause is sometimes known to some and unknown to others, it happens that of the witnesses of the effe<5t some wonder and some do not wonder: thus an astronomer does not wonder at seeing an eclipse of the sun, at which a person that is ignorant of astronomy cannot help wonder- ing. J An event is wonderful relatively to one man and not to another. The absolutely wonderful is that which has a cause absolutely hidden. This then is the meaning of the word 'miracle,' an event of itself full of wonder, not to this man or that man only. Now the cause absolutely hidden to every man is God, inasmuch as no man in this life can mentally grasp the essence of God (Chap. XLVII). Those events then are properly to be styled miracles, which happen by divine power beyond the order commonly observed in nature.
Of these miracles there are several ranks and orders. Miracles of the highest rank are those in which something is done by God that nature can * Provided it be not essentially incompatible with That alone 'doth become a God,' which is consonant with the £1817, or fixed intelligible natures of things, which are the expression of His nature as imitable beyond Himself. God is " the first measure of every being and of every nature " by virtue of what He is in Himself in His own being and His own nature, not by mere virtue of His will.
t Contra Faustum Maniclutum, XXVI, Chap. iii. St Augustine goes on to explain himself in apt accordance with text and notes preceding: "We call 'nature' the course of nature, that we know and are accustomed to. When God does anything contrary to this course, such doings are called extra- ordinary, or marvellous. But against that supreme law of nature, which is hidden from the knowledge as well of the wicked as of others who are still weak, God is as far removed from ever doing anything as He is removed from doing anything against Himself."
X ' Wondering ' here is scarcely the right word: rather ' being surprised,' or 'puzzled.' The mind must view with awe if wonder all great fulfilments whether of the anticipations of science or of the promises of faith. One cannot fancy Newton viewing an eclipse without wonder. A look of wonder is sometimes the last look that comes over the face of the dying.
what was 'put in' originally. Bnt if bovine nature be the original endowment, civil status and capacity can- not possibly ' impressed ' upon that.
I hope I may insist upon this without disrespect to St Thomas, — nay, without departure from his further and inner mind (Chap. XCVII), here not so clearly expressed, bent as he was for the nonce upon explaining the Augustinian quotation with which he concludes. In these days, when the great philosophic difficulty against theism is the prevalence of evil, it is of the first importance to beware of any theistic state- ment which seems to represent God as mere Will, arbitrary, unconditioned, and untrammelled by any regard to the eternal fitnesses and possibilities of na- ture. In the presence of evils such as we daily expe- rience, to ally such sheer, imperious, overruling and overwhelming Will with Goodness, is a task which one shrinks from contemplating. Happily, it is not the task of the philosopher and the Christian. No lord paramount Ovjaoq or fiovXrfais can run counter to the £1877. If we might put words into the mouth of our Creator, words suggested by our great dramatist, we might fancy God saying: I can do all that doth become a God: Who can do more, is none.
never do.* Miracles of the second rank are those in which God does some- thing that nature can do, but not in that sequence and connexion. Thus it is a work of nature that an animal should live, see and walk: but that it should live after death, see after blindness, walk after lameness, these things nature is powerless to effe<5t, but God sometimes brings them about miracu- lously. A miracle of the third rank is something done by God, which is usually done by the operation of nature, but is done in this case without the work- ing of natural principles, as when one is cured by divine power of a fever, in itself naturally curable, or when it rains without any working of the elements, t CHAPTER Cll-That God alone works Miracles WHAT is entirely subjedt to established order cannot work beyond that order. But every creature is subject to the order which God has established in nature. No creature therefore can work beyond this order, which working beyond the order of nature is the meaning of working miracles.
2. When any finite power works the proper effefl to which it is deter- mined, that is no miracle, though it may surprise one who does not under- stand the operation. But the power of every creature is limited to some definite effect, or effedts. Whatever therefore is done by the power of any creature cannot properly be called a miracle. But what is done by the power of God, infinite and incomprehensible, is properly a miracle.
3. Every creature in its a&ion requires some subjedt to adt upon: for it belongs to God alone to make a thing out of nothing (B. II, Chap. XXI). But nothing that requires a subject for its action can adt except to the pro- duction of those effects to which that subject is in potentiality: for the work of adtion upon a subject is to educe that subjedt from potentiality to adtuality. As then a creature can never create, so it can never a6l upon a thing except to the production of that which is in the potentiality of that thing. But in many miracles done by divine power a thing is done, which is not in the potentiality of that upon which it is done, as in the raising of the dead.
Hence it is said of God: Who doth great wonderful works alone (Ps. cxxxv, 4). \ • St Thomas instances " the com penetration of my Oxford and Cambridge Conferences, First Series, two bodies, the standing still of the sun, the making 1897- 1899, there is a discussion on the compatibility of a way through the sea by division of the waters." of miracle with the invariability of the laws of The instance usually alleged by more recent writers nature.
is the raising of the dead, which however would be- J By definition, a miracle is a work which trail- long to St Thomas's second class of miracles. scends the powers of nature, where by * nature ' is t Rain without any working of the elements {sine understood the physical forces, material and mental, operatione prineipiorum naturae) would be a miracle of of which we have ordinary experience in this life, the first rank, which we do not venture to pray for Beyond the world in which we live there is the when we pray for rain. No doubt, St Thomas means world of spirits, — of disembodied human souls, of * without any working of the elemental powers suffi- angels, good and bad, and of God. Whatever any cient of itself to produce the effecV There seems to power of nature does of itself is, by definition, ex- be a certain law of parsimony about miracles, God eluded from the category of the miraculous. But a using natural causes so far as they will go, and eking question arises whether, if disembodied spirits or them out by divine or angelic power, when of them- angels, good or bad, ever effecl any sensible change selves they would go no further to His purpose. In in this world of matter and sense, such a change CHAPTER CIII-How Separately Subsisting Spirits work certain Wonders y which yet are not true Miracles IT was the theory of Avicenna that matter is far more obedient to spiri- tual agencies than to the adlion of contraries in nature. Hence he goes on to say that upon the suggestion of these spiritual agents there some- times follows an effedt in the lower world, such as rain, or the cure of some sick person, without the coming in of any intermediate corporeal agency. He instances the change wrought in the body by the mere suggestion of a strong impression of phantasy, as when one walking upon a plank set aloft easily falls, because his fear pictures a fall to him, whereas he would not fall if the same plank were laid on the ground, giving him no occasion to fear. Again it is notorious that upon the mere suggestion of the soul the body grows hot, as in desire or anger, or is chilled, as in fear. Sometimes too a strong suggestion brings on an illness, a fever, or even leprosy. Thereupon Avicenna says that if the soul is pure, not subject to bodily passions, and strong in its suggestive power, not only its own body will obey its sugges- tion, but even foreign bodies, even to the healing of the sick upon suggestion made by it.* And this he thought to be the cause of the evil eye {fascina- tionis)^ that any soul having a strong affedtion of malevolence is capable of making a noxious impression on another, particularly on a child, who for the tenderness of his constitution is readily susceptible of such impressions. Hence he concludes that much more does an effe6t in this lower world follow upon the suggestion of pure spirits, without the a6tion of any bodily agent. And this position tallies well enough with his other theories: for he supposes that all substantial forms in this lower world are effluxes from a pure spirit, and that bodily agents do no more than prepare the matter to receive the impression of the separately subsisting spiritual agent, f But this is not true according to the dodtrine of Aristotle, who proves that such forms as are in matter arise from other forms which are also in matter, for thus is maintained the likeness between ma\er and made.
The fa6t is, a created spirit has no power of its own to induce any form upon corporeal matter otherwise than by setting some body into local motion. This much is in the power of a created spirit, to make a body obey it to the -extent of moving locally. So by moving a body locally an angel can employ natural agents to the produdtion of certain effedls. But such adtion is not miraculous, properly speaking. J Hence it remains true that created spirits do not work miracles of their own power. But there is nothing against their working miracles inasmuch as they work in the power of God, as appears from the fadt that one choir of angels is especially told off, as should be called a miracle. To that question St ordinary action of the woodman. Such angelic a&ivi- Thomas addresses himself in the succeeding chapter, ties were scarcely regarded by St Thomas's age as # Ad ejus apprehensionem. It is not clear whether extraordinary occurrences. They thought that spirits the suggestion is to be communicated to the patient, frequently meddled with sublunary things. We should as in modern faith-healing and hypnotism, or whether count any such interference extraordinary; and if we Avicenna thought it enough for the suggestion to be believed it to be the interference of a good angel, strong in the operator's own mind. acting within his own power by divine permission, t What Christian philosophers hold concerning we should not hesitate to call it a miracle. We have the origin of that substantial form, the intelligent to consider, not merely what the angels can do physihuman soul, Avicenna maintained about all substan- cally, but what God allows them to do in this lower tial forms, or active principles. world. He seems to allow them frequently to influence X Were angels in the habit of using bodily in- men's minds, but seldom to play any part in the struments to bodily effects within the circle of our production of physical phenomena. It would be more experience, we could no more call the felling of a true to say that angels make men their instruments tree by an angel with an axe * miraculous ' than the than that they use material things instrumentally.
GOD THE END OF CREATURES Gregory says, to work miracles.* Gregory further says that some saints sometimes work miracles by an a6t of power, and not merely by intercession, t CHAPTER CIV-That the Works of Magicians are not due solely to the Influence of the Heavenly Spheres \ CHAPTER ON -Whence the Performances of Magicians derive their ejjicacy § MAGICIANS in their performances use certain words with a mean- ing to the production of definite effects. Now a word, as meaning something, has no power except from some understanding, the understanding either of him who utters the word or of him to whom it is uttered: from the understanding of the utterer, in the case where a word is of such power that by the idea which it contains it is apt to produce real effedts, the idea being applied to the produdtion of those effefts by the ministry of the voice: from the understanding of the person addressed, in the case when the hearer is induced to do something by the reception into his understanding of the idea conveyed by the word. Now it cannot be said that those words, uttered by magicians with a meaning, have their efficacy from the understanding of him who utters them. For, since power follows upon essence, difference of power argues a difference of essential principle. But we find the condition of the understanding of men generally to be such that it is more true to say that its cognition is caused by things than that any idea which it conceives can be the cause of things. If then there are any men who by words expressive of the concept of their understanding can change things one into another, and do that by power of their own (res possint transmutare propria virtute)^ they must be beings of another species from ordinary mortals, and cannot be called men in the sense in which others are men {dicentur aequrvoce homines).^ The alternative is to suppose that such effedts are accomplished by the understanding of some person, to whom the speech of him who utters such words is addressed. This supposition has its confirmation in the fa<5t that the expressions which magicians use consist of invocations, entreaties, adjurations, or even commands, as of one person talk- ing with another.