Besides, in the ceremonies of this art they employ certain characters and geometrical figures. But a figure is no principle of action, imparted or re- • The choir called Virtues. imaginary forms for true ones except in cases of t Such is the case in sacramental action, though alienation of the mind from exterior impressions: that is not to be called miraculous, being terminated only when the natural judgement of sense is im- to no sensible effect. paired can phantoms be attended to as though they J It would be superfluous to translate this chap- were realities: but these conversations and appari- ter. The one point of interest which it contains is tions occur to men who have the full use of their the enumeration of wonders ascribed to magicians in external senses." He mentions "statues made by the the thirteenth century. Such wonders are — answers necromantic art," but does not explicitly refer to given about the whereabouts of things stolen, about that evocation of the spirits of the departed, which buried treasures, about future events, also about is the pretence of modern spiritualism, points of science: speaking apparitions: statues that $ The gist of this chapter is to show that magi- move and speak: locks opening on a person's mere cians (spiritualists) have an understanding with some approach: people becoming invisible. St Thomas person, or persons, beyond the confines of humanity, writes: "If any one says that such apparitions are and are not availing themselves of the ordinary forces not in the external sense but are simply imaginary, of nature.
that explanation has its difficulties: for no one takes || Aequivoce, o/iwv/xut, as in Aristotle's Categories.
ccivcd: or else mathematical drawings would be a<5tive and passive. Matter therefore cannot be disposed by geometrical figures to the reception of any natural effeft. It follows that these figures are not used as disposing causes, but as signs. Now we use signs only to address other intelligent beings. Magical arts therefore owe their efficacy to some intelligence, to whom the speech of the magician is addressed, — as is also shown by the sacrifices, pro- strations, and other rites employed, which can be nothing else but signs of reverence paid to some intelligent nature.
CHAPTER CVl-That the Subsistent Intelligence, which lends Efficacy to Magical Performances > is not good in both Cate- gories of Being* IT remains to be further investigated, what that intelligent nature is, by whose power these operations are carried into effe<5t. To begin with, it is apparent that it is no good and praiseworthy nature. For it is not the behaviour of an intelligence well disposed to lend countenance to adts con- trary to virtue. But that is what is done by magical arts: they usually serve to bring about adulteries, thefts, killing, and the like evil practices. Hence they who use such arts are called 'evil practitioners' (malefici).
3. The working of a benignant intelligence is to bring men to the proper good things of men, which are the good things of reason: but to draw men away from those good things, and allure them to trifles, is the condudt of an intelligence of a perverse bent. Now by these magical arts men make no profit in the good things of reason, which are sciences and virtues, but only in such trifles as the finding of things stolen, the catching of robbers, and the like.
4. There seems to be a certain grimace and character of unreasonableness attaching to the proceedings of the aforesaid arts. Thus they require an agent who abstains from sexual intercourse, and yet they arc frequently employed for the procurement of sexual intercourse in its illicit forms.
6. As it belongs to the good to lead on to goodness, one might expedt any right-minded intelligence to lead on to truth, truth being the proper good of the understanding. But the proceedings of magicians are generally of a character to mock men and deceive them.
8. It is not the way of a rightly ordered intelligence, supposing it to be a superior being, to take orders from an inferior; or, supposing it to be an inferior, to suffer itself to be entreated as though it were a superior being. But magicians invoke those whose assistance they use, with supplication, as though they were superior beings; and then, when they have come, they com- mand them as though they were inferiors.
# Secundum utrumque esse. The two categories of being are Nature {esse naturaky <j>v*ts) and Will (esse Vo/untarium, irpoaiptrnq).
CHAPTER CVH— That the Subsistent Intelligence, whose aid is employed by 3fagicy is not Evil by Nature* WHATEVER is in things must be either cause or caused: other- wise it would not be in relation with other things. The subsistent beings in question then are either causes only or they are also caused. If they are causes only, evil cannot be cause of anything except inci- dentally (Chap. XIV); and everything incidental must be reducible to that which is ordinary:f therefore there must be something in them prior to the evil that is there, something whereby they are causes. But that which is prior in everything is its nature and essence. Therefore these subsistent beings are not evil in their nature. The same conclusion follows if they are things caused. For no agent afts except with some intention of good: evil therefore cannot be theeffe&of any cause except incidentally. But what is caused incidentally only cannot be by nature, since every nature has a regular and definite mode of coming into being.
4. Nothing can exist unless it has existence from the first being, and the first being is the sovereign good (B. II, Chap. XV). But since every being, as such, adts to the produdtion of its own likeness, all things that come of the first being must be good.
7. Since the will tends to good grasped by the understanding, and finds therein its natural and proper objedt and end, it is impossible for any subsis- tent intelligence to have by nature a bad will, unless the understanding in it naturally is mistaken in its judgement of what is good. But no understanding can be so mistaken: for false judgements in adts of the understanding are like monsters in the physical universe, which are not according to nature, but out of the way of nature: for the good of the understanding and its natural end is the knowledge of truth.
This is also confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripture: for it is said, Every creature is good (1 Tim. iv, 4): God saw all things that he had tnade^ and they were very good (Gen. i, 31).
Hereby is excluded the error of the Manicheans, who suppose that these subsistent intelligences, commonly called demons or devils, are naturally evil.
Porphyry tells in his Letter to Anebo J that there is a certain kind of spirits who make it their business to listen to magicians, a kind naturally deceitful, assuming every form, personating gods [angels] and men and souls of the departed; and that this kind of being it is which makes all these appearances for better or for worse: for the rest, that this kind of spirit ren- ders no assistance towards anything that is really good, but on the contrary is the author of evil counsel, and accuses and hampers and envies the earnest votaries of virtue, and is full of hastiness and pride, rejoices in the smell of burnt meats, and is captivated by flatteries.§ The only thing to quarrel with in this account is his saying that such malice is in these spirits " naturally." || * Understand, 'but is evil by will* (p. 268, note), tributing to the literature of Spiritualism. Eusebius t Because the incidental hangs on to the ordinary, calls Anebo an Egyptian prophet. Porphyry's Letter and presupposes it; whereas the ordinary is conceiv- to him exists only in fragments, able without the incidental. A man is ordinarily well, $ This remarkable quotation indicates the great and incidentally sick. Sickness presupposes health as danger of modern spiritualism, — that the spirits who the standard to which it is referred. appear at siances may not be the departed souls of men, X Eusebius, De preparation evange/ii, B. V, Chapp. as they profess to be, but lying devils, who know enough vii-x, quotes the Neo-Platonist Porphyry's Letter to of the past history of our departed friends plausibly to Anebo the Egyptian. St Augustine, De c'fpitate Dei, personify them.
B. X, Chap, xi, also quotes him; and from St Augus- II Porphyry wrote in Greek, where <£vcr« (* natutine St Thomas borrows his quotations. The passages rally ') is often used in the sense of ' thoroughly ' (cf.
of Eusebius and Augustine are worth reading, as con- Eph. ii, 3). It is Shakespeare's 'in grain,' as "a fault GOD & HIS CREATURES BOOK III CHAPTER CIX-TAat in Spirits there may be Sin and how AS there is an order in active causes, so also in final causes, requiring that the secondary end should be subordinate to the primary, as the secondary agent depends on the primary. Now every will naturally wishes that which is the proper good of the person willing, namely, his own perfect well-being; and the will cannot possibly will aught to the contrary of this. If we can find a voluntary agent, whose good is a final end, such as not to be contained under the order leading to any other end, but rather all other ends being contained in the order leading up to it, — in such a voluntary agent there can be no fault of the will. Such a voluntary agent is God, whose being is sovereign goodness, which is the final end. In God then there can be no fault of the will. But in any other voluntary agent, whose proper good must necessarily be contained in the order leading to some other good, a sin of the will may occur, — considering the agent as he is in his own nature.* In every voluntary agent there is a natural inclination to will and love his own perfect well-being, and that to such an extent that he cannot will the contrary. But a created agent has no natural endowment of so subordinating his own wellbeing to another end than himself as to be incapable of swerving from that end: for the higher end does not belong to the creature's own nature, but to a superior nature, t It is left therefore to the decision of his own will to sub- ordinate his proper well-being to a higher end. Sin therefore might have found place in the will of a pure spirit in this way, — that he did not refer his own good and well-being to the final end, but made that good his end and adhered to it accordingly. And because rules of conduct necessarily are taken from the end in view, it followed as a matter of course that the said spirit arranged his other elections according to that same object (ex re ipsa) in which he had placed his last end. Hence his will was not regulated by any higher will, a position of independence proper to God alone. In this sense we must understand the saying that he aimed at equality with God [cf. Isai. xiv, 13], not that he ever expected his goodness to equal the divine goodness: such a thought could never have occurred to his mind. But to wish to rule others, and not to have one's own will ruled by any superior, is to wish to be in power and cease to be a subject; and that is the sin of pride. Hence it is aptly said that the first sin that a spirit committed was pride. But because once error has been committed in regard to a first principle, a varied and manifold course of error is bound to ensue, so from the spirit's first inordination of will there followed manifold other sin in his will, such as hatred of God for withstanding his pride and justly chastising his offence, envy against man, and the like.
Further we may note that when any one's proper good is subordinate to several higher powers, it is open to a voluntary agent to withdraw himself from his subordination to one superior, and not relinquish his subordination to another, be that other the superior or the inferior of the first. Thus a soldier, being subordinate at once to the king and to the general of the army, may in grain " (Comedy of Errors, II, 3). In a thoroughly But angels, or man, while naturally, necessarily, and wicked man wicked habits have grown into a sort of rightly loving himself, is further called upon to sub- second nature. ordinate his love of himself to the love of God. This * A being capable by his own nature of sinning, further call he may fail to comply with: then he sins, may be secured from sin by a supernatural endow- The argument in the text is directed against the ment, as is the case with the Blessed in heaven. Platonists, who ascribed all sinful tendency to the t Every voluntary agent loves himself. God, hav- body, and consequently could see no possibility of ing none higher than Himself, is not called upon to sin in a pure spirit, or angel, and thus came to reject subordinate His love of Himself to any other love, the Christian dogma of the fall of the angels.
direct his will to the good of the general and not to the good of the king, or the other way about. If the general withdraws from his allegiance to the king, the will of the soldier, withdrawing from the will of the general and directing his affection to the king, will be good; and the will of the soldier, following the general's will against the will of the king, will be evil. Now not only are pure spirits subordinate to God, but also one of them is subordinate to another from first to last (B. II, Chap. XCV). And because in any voluntary agent, short of God, there may be sin in his will, if we consider him as left to his own nature, possibly one of the higher angels, or even the very highest of all, committed a sin in his will. And this is probable enough, that the sinner was highest of them all: for he would not have made his own good estate the final end of his acquiescence, had not his goodness been very perfedt. Some of the lower angels then of their own will may have subordinated their good to [thrown in their lot with] that leader, and so have withdrawn their allegiance from God, and sinned as he did: while others, observing due regard to God in the motion of their will, rightly withdrew from their subordination to the sinner, although he was higher than they in the order of nature.
This is the difference between man and a pure spirit, that in the one being of man there are several appetitive faculties, one subordinate to another: this is not the case in pure spirits, although one of them is under another. But in man, however the inferior appetite may swerve from due subordination, any sin that occurs occurs in his will. As then it would be a sin in pure spirits for any inferior amongst them to swerve from due subordination to a superior, while that superior remained in subordina- tion to God; so in the one person of man sin may occur in two ways: in one way by the human will not subordinating its own good to God, and that sin man has in common with the pure spirit; in another way by the good of the lower appetite not being regulated according to the higher, as when the pleasures of the flesh, to which the concupisciblc appetite tends, are .willed not in accordance with reason; and this sin does not occur in pure spirits.* CHAPTERS CVIII, CX-Arguments seeming to prove that Sin is Impossible to Spirits, with Solutions of the same ARG. i. Every other cognitive faculty but the understanding makes use of living bodily organs. In pure spirits therefore it is impossible for there to be any cognitive faculty but the understanding; and whatever they take cognisance of, they have understanding of.f But in so far as one has understanding, one does not err: for all error springs from lack of understanding. Therefore there can be no error in the apprehension of these spirits. But without such error there can be no sin in the will: because the will always tends to good as apprehended: hence unless there be a mis- take in the apprehension of good, there can be no sin in the will. J * The parallel between the subordination of angel t Is not this also true of man, in so far at least to angel and appetite to appetite is not perfect: for as his consciousness is fully awakened, and his cogni- if the lower angel disobeys, it is the sin of that angel: tion lively? In such a case sense never a&s alone, but if the lower appetite disobeys, it is no sin, un- Then the objection holds good for man also, in re- less the disobedience be countenanced by the higher; sped of any fully deliberate sin. and then the sin is primarily in the higher, and only I See the latter half of Chap. X, where the ex- by redundance in the lower appetite. planation given of the spiritual (not the fleshly) sins of man applies likewise to angels.
Arg. 2. In us there occurs sin of the will in respeft of matters about which we have true knowledge of their general bearings, but on a particular point our judgement is hampered by some passion fettering the reason. But these passions cannot be in spiritual beings, because such passions belong to the sensitive part, and that has no a6tion without a bodily organ. Having therefore a right knowledge in general, the will of a pure spirit cannot tend to evil by any defeat of knowledge in particular.
Arg. 3. No cognitive faculty is deceived about its own proper obje6t, but only about some obje6t foreign to it: thus sight is not deceived in judging of colours, but when a man undertakes by sight to judge of tastes, then deception occurs. Now the proper obje6t of understanding is the essence of a thing.* No deception then is incident to the apprehension of understand- ing, so long as it fixes upon the pure quiddities of things: but all intelle6tual deception, we may think, arises from the forms of things apprehended coming to be mixed up with phantasms,f as in our experience. But such a mode of cognition does not obtain in pure spirits, since phantasms cannot be with- out a body. To pure spirits therefore no error in cognition can possibly be incident, and consequently no sin in the will.
Reply to Arguments 1, 2, 3. We are not obliged to say that there was any error in the understanding of a pure spirit, in the shape of a false judgement, judging that to be good which is not good: the mistake, such as it was, lay in not attending to the higher good, to which the spirit's private good ought to have been referred: the reason of which inattention [read inconsidera- tionis ratio] may have been the inward turning of the will upon the spirit's private good: J for it is open to the will to turn more or less of its affection upon this object or upon that.§ Arg. 5. Since appetite or desire tends to nothing but its own proper good, it seems impossible for desire to go astray in the case when the person desi- ring has one only definite good to desire. The reason why sin is incident to our desire is the composition of our nature, a compound of the spiritual and the corporeal, occasioning a multiplicity of things to be good for us, one thing being good for us in mind and another in body. Of this variety of good things the less important has to be subordinated to the more important. Hence sin of the will arises in us when we neglect that order, and go after what is good for us under a certain qualification, discarding what is good for us absolutely. But in pure spirits there is no such composition, no diver- # And yet it is commonly confessed that we do dental and the appropriate from the irrelevant, yet not know the essences of things. Who knows the not ignorant even of the latter: for things irrelevant essence even of a fly, or (till molecular mechanics go from one point of view are relevant from another, further than they have done) of a lump of sugar? Science and philosophy is an attempt to soar from a We know essences, only in their highest generalities human to an angelic view of things, and most abstract outlines. But we do know that, or t Not because the phantasm represents sensible we should know nothing. We do not understand phenomena is it therefore non-intellectual; but beanything unless we can say roughly what it is; and cause in a phantasm all phenomena are clustered tothat what it is is here called the quidditas or essence, gether without principle, without reference, without Lower animals take quiddities as they find them, e.g., assortment; no point of view being yet arrived at a dog the quiddity of its master: they may be said to from whence phenomena assume a relative imporknow them materially, but they do not pass upon tance to some other than an immediately present end.
them any explicit, formal judgement. Scientists and This fixing upon a distant point of view is the work philosophers make it their endeavour to go beyond of intellect.
the quiddity, which is sufficient for the plain man to t And thy heart was lifted up with thy beauty: thou know. They start from sense, but seek to transcend hast lost thy wisdom in thy beauty. — Ezechiel xxviii, 17.
sense. The 1 pure quiddity ' which the angel intues § Thus though an angel do not suffer from error, is not the bare abstraction visible to the popular he may suffer from limitation of view: his mind, to mind: it is an intuition highly concrete, full of borrow Marshal Ney's excuse at his trial, may "cease * content,' discerning the essential from the acci- to be in full relation with fccts." Cf. B. II, Chap. CI.
sity of things good for them; nay, all their good is intelleftual. Hence it seems they are incapable of sin in the will.
Reply. The angel who sinned did not go after any other good than the one good that was proper to him: but his sin lay in this, that he dropped the higher good to which he should have subordinated himself. As we sin by pursuing the lower goods of the body away from the order of reason, so the devil sinned by not referring his own excellence to the excellence of God* Arg. 6. In us, sin of the will arises out of excess or defe£t, while virtue lies in the mean between them. But pure spirits can pursue only intellectual good things, in which things no excess is possible, for of themselves they arc in the mean between excess and defe6t, as truth is in the mean between two errors.
Reply. The devil passed the mean of virtue inasmuch as he did not sub- mit himself to a superior order; and thus he gave himself more than his due, and to God less than His due.
CHAPTER CXll-That Rational Creatures are governed by Pro- vidence for their own sakes, and other Qreatures in reference to themf THE very condition of intelle&ual nature, whereby it is mistress of its own a6ts, requires the care of Providence, providing for it for its own sake: while the condition of other creatures, that have no dominion over their own aft, indicates that care is taken of them not for themselves, but for their subordination to other beings. For what is worked by another is in the rank of an instrument: while what works by itself is in the rank of a prime agent. Now an instrument is not sought for its own sake, but for the use of the prime agent: hence all diligence of workmanship applied to instruments must have its end and final point of reference in the prime agent. On the other hand all care taken about a prime agent, as such, is for its own sake.
2. What has dominion over its own a6t, is free in a6ting. For he is free, who is a cause to himself of what he does: whereas a power driven by an- other under necessity to work is subjedt to slavery. Thus the intellectual nature alone is free, while every other creature is naturally subject to slavery. But under every government the freemen are provided for for their own sakes, while of slaves this care is taken that they have being for the use of the free.
3. In a system making for an end, any parts of the system that cannot gain the end of themselves must be subordinate to other parts that do gain the end and stand in immediate relation to it. Thus the end of an army is victory, which the soldiers gain by their proper a6t of fighting: the soldiers alone are in request in the army for their own sakes; all others in other em- ployments in the army, such as grooms or armourers, are in request for the sake of the soldiers. But the final end of the universe being God, the intel- lectual nature alone attains Him in Himself by knowing Him and loving Him (Chap. XXV). Intelligent nature therefore alone in the universe is in * This reply virtually lays it down that even for t The general proposition, that matter serves the angel good is not single, but twofold, the good mind, will hardly be denied by any one. There are of his own nature, and the superior goodness of the starry heavens, vast and superhuman: but there God. are also angels, besides astronomers.
request for its own sake, while all other creatures are in request for the sake of it* 6. Everything is naturally made to behave as it actually does behave in the course of nature. Now we find in the a6tual course of nature that an intelligent subsistent being converts all other things to his own use, either to the perfe6tion of his intelle6t, by contemplating truth in them, or to the execution of works of his power and development of his science, as an artist develops the conception of his art in bodily material; or again to the sus- tenance of his body, united as that is to an intelle6tual soul.