Nor is it contrary to the conclusion of the aforesaid reasons, that all the parts of the universe are subordinate to the perfe6tion of the whole. For that subordination means that one serves another: thus there is no inconsis- tency in saying that unintelligent natures serve the intelligent, and at the same time serve the perfe6tion of the universe: for if those things were wanting which subsistent intelligence requires for its perfedtion, the universe would not be complete.
By saying that subsistent intelligences are guided by divine providence for their own sakes, we do not mean to deny that they are further referable to God and to the perfection of the universe. They are cared for for their own sakes, and other things for their sake, in this sense, that the good things which are given them by divine providence are not given them for the profit of any other creature:f while the gifts given to other creatures by divine ordinance make for the use of intelle6tual creatures.
Hence it is said: Loo{ not on sun and moon and stars besides, to be led astray with delusion and to worship what the Lord thy God hath created for the service of all nations under heaven (Deut. iv, 1 9): Thou bast subjected all things under his feety sheep and all oxen and the beasts of the field (Ps. viii, 8).
Hereby is excluded the error of those who lay it down that it is a sin for man to kill dumb animals: for by the natural order of divine providence they are referred to the use of man: hence without injustice man uses them either by killing them or in any other way: wherefore God said to Noe: As green herbs have I given you all flesh (Gen. ix, 3). Wherever in Holy Scrip- ture there are found prohibitions of cruelty to dumb animals, as in the prohibition of killing the mother-bird with the young (Deut. xxii, 6, 7), the objeft of such prohibition is either to turn man's mind away from practising cruelty on his fellow-men, lest from practising cruelties on dumb animals one should go on further to do the like to men, or because harm done to animals turns to the temporal loss of man, either of the author of the harm or of some other; or for some ulterior meaning, as the Apostle (1 Cor. ix, 9) expounds the precept of not muzzling the treading ox.
* Still in face of such texts as, The heavens are in Aristotelian and Thomist phrase, ' natural slaves,9 tilting the glory of God (Ps. xviii): Traise ye him9 O sun paying their service immediately to God; and of them and moon: praise ye him, all ye stars and light (Ps. the text would have been verified: The Lord shall recxlviii): it is hard to deny that God might have joke in his vtorfa (Ps. ciii).
chosen to eredl a monument to His glory in the shape t Thus the strength of the labourer is given him of a world of irrational creatures, and even of inani- to till the earth, not for the profit of the earth, but mate nature alone. Such creatures would have been, for the profit of human society.
CHAPTER CXIJI-That the Acts of the Rational Creature are guided by God, not merely to the realisation of the Specific Type, but also to the reafisation of the Individual EVERYTHING is reckoned to exist for the sake of its activity, activity being the final perfection of a thing. Thus then everything, so far as it comes under divine providence, is guided by God to its proper act. But a rational creature subject to providence is governed and provided for as an individual for its own sake, not merely for the sake of the species, as is the case with other perishable creatures (Chap. CXI I). Thus then rational creatures alone are guided by God to their acts, not merely specific but individual.
2. Whatever things are guided in their acts only in what appertains to the species, such things have not the choice of doing or not doing: for what is consequent upon the species is common and natural to all individuals con- tained under the species; and what is natural is not in our power.* If then man were guided in his a6ts only to the extent of fitting him for his species, he would have no choice of doing or not doing, but would have to follow the natural inclination common to the whole species, as happens in all irrational creatures.f 3. In whatsoever beings there are found actions over and above such as fall in with the common inclination of the species, such beings must be regu- lated by divine providence in their actions with some guidance beyond that which is extended to the species. But in the rational creature many a&ions appear, which the inclination of the species is not sufficient to account for, as is shown by their being not alike in all, but various in various individuals.
4. The rational creature alone is capable of being guided to its acts not merely specifically but individually: for by the gift of understanding and reason it is able to discern the diversity of good and evil according as is befitting to diverse individuals, times and places. J 5. The rational creature is not only governed by divine providence, but is also capable to some extent of grasping the notion of providence, whereas other creatures share in providence merely by being subject to providence. Thus the rational creature is partaker in providence, not merely by being governed, but by governing: for it governs itself by its own a<Sh, and also other beings. But every lower providence is subject to the supreme providence of God. Therefore the government of the acts of the rational creature, in so far as they are personal acts, belongs to divine providence.
* NaturaRa non sunt in nobis, the natural being characteristic! of their own, St Thomas would say marked off from the voluntary (note, p. 268). The na- that any dog or horse, so born, so bred, so circumtural appetites, apart from their voluntary gratification stanced, would behave just as Ms or that dog or horse to thisorthateffecl,donotinduce acts of the individual behaves. Determinists say the same of man: but St man, but acts of the species man. Such acts are not Thomas, not being a determinist, would deny it of the acts of Charles or James: they are racial, not per- man. Under determinism, all St Thomas's argumensonal; and so long as they remain racial, and are not tation of a special divine providence over each indiin any way brought about or taken up by the will of vidual man falls to the ground. According to St the person in whom they occur, they are outside of Thomas, a man using free will is an original, not the category of morality, being neither moral nor merely one of a tribe. Originality is lost in deurmiimmoral, but organic. nism, and all true individuality; and no difference t The phrase, 'realisation of a species type,' or between man and man is left beyond the difference 4 fitness for the species' {congruentia species), in this of one piece of iron hammered into the shape of a chapter, points, not the attributes which a man should crook and another into the shape of a cross, have to make him a good man, but the attributes that t When one of a pair of horses foils on its side, it he actually has and must have by the fact of his being will go on using its legs as though it were still trotting, a man at all. — With regard to dogs, horses and other thereby kicking its yoke-fellow. A beaver, shut up in 'educable' animals, who come to possess individual a room, is said to make dams with the furniture.
GOD & HIS CREATURES BOOK III 6. The personal adls of the rational creature are properly the a6ts that come from a rational soul. Now the rational soul is capable of perpetuity, not only in the species, as other creatures are, but also in the individual. The adts therefore of the rational creature are guided by divine providence, not only as they belong to the species, but also as they are personal a6ts.* CHAPTER CXIV-That it was necessary for a Law to be given to ZMdn by God THE a6b of irrational creatures, as they belong to the species, are guided by God according to a natural inclination, consequent upon the nature of the species. Therefore, over and above that, there must be given to men something to guide them in their personal adts, and that we call ' law/ 3 and 4. To them is a law fittingly given, who know what they are about, and have the alternative of doing a thing or leaving it undone. But that is proper to the rational creature only. Therefore the rational creature alone is conceptible of law.f Hence it is said: I will give my law in their hearts (Jer. xxx, 33): I will write for him my manifold laws (Osee viii, 12).
CHAPTER CXV-That the Main Purpose of the Divine Law is to subordinate ZMan to God HE end which God intends is Himself.
2. The end of every human creature is to adhere to God, for in that his happiness consists.
4. That should be the main purpose of a law, from which the law derives its efficacy. But the law given by God has efficacy among men from the fa6t that man is subject to God. This therefore ought to be the chief pre- cept in the divine law, that the human mind should adhere to God.
Hence it is said: And nowy Israel, what doth the Lord thy God ask of thee but that thou fear the Lord thy God and walk in his ways, and love him and serve the\Lord thy God with thy whole heart and thy whole soul? (Deut. x, 12.)
CHAPTER CXVI-That the End of the Divine Law is the Love of Qod THE main intention of the divine law is that man should adhere to God; and man adheres to God chiefly by love. There are two powers whereby man may cleave to God, his understanding and his will. By the lower faculties of his soul man cannot cleave to God, but adheres to lower things. Now the adhesion that is of the understanding is completed by that which is of the will: for by the will man comes to rest in what the understanding apprehends. The will cleaves to a thing either # The idea of this argument is that God cares t St Thomas is here speaking of the Natural for the ongoings of permanent beings. In dumb ani- (moral) Law, not of the Eternal Law, which binds mals the species is permanent, but in man also the every creature. See Ethics and Natural Law, pp.
through love or through fear, but in different ways. When it adheres to a thing through fear, it adheres for the sake of something else, namely, to avoid an evil threatening it, if it does not adhere: but when it adheres to a thing through love, it adheres for the thing's own sake. But what is for its own sake carries the day over what is only for the sake of something else. Therefore the adhesion of love to God is the chief way of adhering to Him, and is the point principally intended in the divine law.
2. The end of every law, and particularly of the divine law, is to make men good. Now a man is called good from having a good will: for the will it is which reduces to adl whatever good there is in the man: but the will is good by willing good, and particularly the chief good, which is the end: the more then the will wills this good, the better the man is. Therefore the will of the sovereign good, which is God, is what most of all makes men good, and is principally intended in the divine law.
3. The law aims at making men virtuous: but it is a condition of virtue that the virtuous person should a6t firmly and with pleasure; and love it is that best makes us do a thing firmly and with delight.
Therefore it is said: The end of the commandment is charity (1 Tim. i, 5): The greatest and first commandment />, Thou sha/t love the Lord thy God (Matt.
CHAPTER CXVII-TAat by the Divine Law we are direfted to the Love of our Neighbour THERE should be a union of affedtion among those who have one common end:* but men share in the one common last end of happi- ness, to which they are ordained of God; and therefore they should be united in mutual love.
2. Whoever loves another, must in consequence also love those whom that other loves and who are united with him.T But men are loved by God, seeing that for them He has prepared the enjoyment of Himself as their last end. Therefore as one is a lover of God, so must he also be a lover of his neighbour.
3. Since man is naturally a social animal, he needs to be helped by other men to gain his proper end; and this is most aptly done by mutual love pre- vailing amongst men.
4. To attend to divine things, a man needs tranquillity and peace. Now the things that might trouble peace are most effectually taken away by mutual love. Since then the law of God orders men to attend to divine things, mutual love amongst men must necessarily be a provision of the divine law.
5. The divine law is given to man to bear out the natural law 4 But it is natural to all men to love one another: a sign of this is the fa£t that by a sort of natural instindt man helps any man, even a stranger, in necessity, as by calling him back from a wrong turn that he may have taken on his way, lifting him up from a fall, and the like, as though every man were kinsman and friend of every other man.
* Except it be a competitive end, and then the t Love mef love my dog.
proverb comes in which is as old as Hesiod, Works X In the order of nature, apart from revelation, and Days, 25: *al *cpa/icvs Kcpapel Koriti rai Aot&os the divine law is the natural law: it is the exigency dot&p: Two of a trade can ntier agree. of nature enforced by God.
Hence it is said: This is my commandment, that ye love one another (John xv, 1 2): This commandment we have of God, that he who lol>eth God do love also bis brother (1 John iv, 21): The second commandment is, Thou sbalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Matt, xxii, 39).
CHAPTER CXVlll-That by Divine Law Men are obliged to a Right Faith AS sight by the bodily eye is the principle of the bodily passion of love, so the beginning of spiritual love must be the intellefrual vision of some object of the same. But the vision of that spiritual objedt of understanding, which is God, cannot be had at present by us except through faith, because God exceeds our natural reason, especially if we consider Him in that regard under which our happiness consists in enjoying Him.
2. The divine law directs man to be entirely subject to God. But as man's will is subjefted to God by loving Him, so his understanding is subje&ed to Him by believing Him, — but not by believing anything false, because no falsehood can be proposed to man by God, who is the truth: hence he who believes anything false does not believe God.
3. Whoever holds an erroneous view about a thing, touching the essence of the thing, does not know the thing. Thus if any one were to fix on the notion of irrational animal, and take that to be man, he would not know man. The case would be otherwise, if he was mistaken only about some of the acci- dents of man. But in the case of compound beings, though he who errs about any of the essentials of a thing does not know the thing, absolutely speaking, still he knows it in a sort of a way: thus he who thinks man to be an irrational animal knows him generically: but in the case of simple beings this cannot be, — any error shuts out entirely all knowledge of the thing. But God is to the utmost degree simple. Therefore whoever errs about God does not know God. Thus he who believes God to be corporeal has no sort of knowledge of God, but apprehends something else instead of God.* Now as a thing is known, so is it loved and desired. He then who errs concerning God, can neither love Him nor desire Him as his last end. Since then the divine law aims at bringing men to love and desire God, that same law must bind men to have a right faith con- cerning God.
Hence it is said: Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. xi, 6); and at the head of all other precepts of the law there is prescribed a right faith in God: Hear, 0 Israel: the Lord thy God is one Lord (Deut. vi, 4).
* This reasoning is not very convincing. Though early Church, who believed that God was a being in God is a simple being in Himself, He is not simple human shape. When some one undeceived him, he to us. We do not know Him, as we know a triangle, went about weeping and crying, " They have taken or the number two, by one comprehensive apprehen- away my God." In making that complaint the hermit sion, but by an accumulation of partial concepts. It was mistaken. For all his anthropmorphism, he had is not clear that error in one of these concepts spoils known God as Maker, Lord, Father, Last End; and our view of all the rest. There was a hermit in the in all those capacities God still remained to him.
CHAPTER CXlX-That by certain Sensible Rites our Mind is direEled to God BECAUSE it is connatural to man to gather his knowledge through the senses, and most difficult for him to transcend sensible things, God has provided for man that even in sensible things there should be made for him a commemoration of things divine. To this end sensible sacrifices have been instituted, which man offers to God, not as though God needed them, but to bring home to man the lesson that he ought to offer himself and all he has to God, his end, Creator, Ruler, and Lord of all. There are also exercised upon man certain hallowings through certain sensible things, whereby man is washed, or anointed, or given to eat and drink, along with the utterance (prolatione) of audible words, to represent to man by these sensible signs the augmentation of spiritual gifts wrought in him from without, namely, by God, whose name is expressed in audible words. Also certain sensible rites are performed by men, not to rouse God to a6tion,* but to prompt themselves to divine service. Of this nature are prostrations, genuflections, vocal cries and chants: which things are not done as though God had need of them, who knows all, even the affeftion of the mind, — whose will is unchangeable (Chap. XCV), and who moreover does not accept the movement of the body for its own sake:f but we do these things on our own behalf, that by these sensible rites our intention may be directed to God and our affection inflamed. At the same time also we hereby make profession of God being author of our soul and body, in that we pay Him adts of homage spiritual and bodily. J Hence it is not surprising that the [Manichean] heretics, who say that God is not the author of our body, blame these bodily observances being paid to God. In which censure they evidently fail to remember that they themselves are men, not seeing that sensible representations are necessary to us for inward knowledge and affeftion. For it is experimentally shown that our soul is excited by bodily a6ts to think and feel: hence we properly use such adls to raise our mind to God.
In the payment of these bodily observances the cult, or worship, of God is said to consist. For we are said to cultivate those objects to which we pay attention by our works. Now we busy ourselves in paying attention to the things of God, not as though we were of service to Him, as is the case when we are said to tend, or cultivate, other things by our attentions, but because such a6tions are of service to ourselves, enabling us to come nearer to God.§ And because by inward a6ts we go straight to God, therefore it is by inward a6ts properly that we worship God: nevertheless outward adts also belong to the cult, or worship, of God, inasmuch as by such a6ts our mind is raised to God, as has been said.
Hence the worship of God is also called religion, because by such a£ts a * St Thomas is thinking of such a rite as that I This last sentence is important to exclude a described in 3 (1) Kings xviii, 26-28. misconception. See Ethics and Natural Lata, pp. 194-5, t I conceive that the insertion, et cujus Voluntas § 6. est immutabilis9 should stand after et affeSum mentis, § This is the answer to the enquiry, started by not before. If God does not accept the heart's affec- Plato, Euthyfbro, 13, 14. The answer lies in a mean tion for its own sake, what does he accept for its between the savage notion of gods hungering after own sake that man can give? Moreover a special the reek and savour of sacrificial meats, and the Epititle of God is that of * searcher of hearts.' curean poco-curante intermundane deum natura nihil iudiga nostri, set forth in Lucretius I, 61.
man in some sort binds (ligat) himself, that his thought may not wander astray from God; and also because by a sort of natural instin6t he feels him- self bound {pbligatum) to God, that in such manner as he can he should pay reverence to Him from whom is the origin of his being and of all his good.* Hence also religion has received the name of piety, for piety is that whereby we pay due honour to parents: hence aptly the honour paid to God, parent of all, is taken to be a part of piety, and they who oppose the worship of God are called impious.
But because not only is God cause and origin of our being, but our whole being is in His power, and all that is in us is His due, and thereby He is truly our Lord and Master, therefore what we perform in honour of God is called service. Now God is our master not by accident, as one man is another's master, but by nature; and therefore the service that we owe to God is quite different from that whereby we are accidentally subjeft to a man, the dominion of man over man being partial, and derivative from God. Hence the service specially due to God is called among the Greeks /atria.f CHAPTER CXX-That the Worship of Latria is to be paid to Qod alone THERE have been some who have thought that this worship should be paid not only to the first principle of all things, but also to all creatures that are above men. Hence, while considering God to be the one prime and universal principle of all things, they have still thought it right to pay latria, first after God, to the subsistent intelligences in the heavens, which they also called gods, whether they existed entirely apart from bodies or were the souls of spheres or stars. Secondly, also to certain subsistent intelligences which they believed to be united to bodies of air, and called them genii (dcemones): because they believed them to be above men, as a body of air is above a body of earth, they insisted that these intelli- gences also were to be worshipped by men with divine worship, and in comparison with men they said that they were gods, as being intermediate between men and gods. And because they believed that the souls of good men, by the fa6t of their separation from bodies, passed to a higher state than the state of the present life, they considered that divine worship should be paid also to the souls of the dead, whom they called ^cs, or manes. Some again, taking God to be the soul of the universe, have believed that the worship proper to Godhead is to be paid to the whole universe and to all its parts, not however for the sake of the material part, but for the sake of the soul, which they said was God, as honour is paid to a wise man, not for his body but for his mind. Some again used to say that even things naturally below man still should be worshipped by man with divine honours, inas- much as some portion of the power of a higher nature is communicated to * From Lewis and Short's Dictionary, s.v. religio; whence also lex: hence reUgja sometimes means the " Cicero derives it from relegere, an opinion favoured same as obligation by the verse, religentem esse oportet, refigiosum nefas: t The word in Greek means either hired service^ whereas Servius, Ladtantius, Augustine, assume reli- or religious service, anyhow the service of one permagare as the primitive, and for this derivation Lallan- nently retained by and bound to another. Hence the tius cites the expression of Lucretius, religionum nodis chained Prometheus says, tqIi Xarpcvw irc'rpp (I do animos exsolvere. Modern etymologists mostly agree my fixed duty by this rock, P.V. 968). with this latter view, assuming as root Kg (to bind), them. Hence, believing that certain images made by man were receptive of supernatural power, either from the influence of the heavenly bodies or from the presence of spirits within them, they said that such images should receive divine worship, and they called those images gods: on which account themselves were called ' idolaters,' because they paid the worship of latria to idols and images.* 1. But it is irrational in men who posit one only separate first principle, to pay divine worship to another. For we pay worship to God, not as though He needed it, but to strengthen in ourselves by sensible signs a true opinion about God. Now the opinion that God is one, exalted above all, cannot be strengthened in us by sensible signs except by our paying him some separate and peculiar tribute, which we call divine worship. Evidently then true opinion about the one principle is weakened, if divine worship is paid to several.
2. This exterior worship is necessary for man, to the end that man's soul may conceive a spiritual reverence for God. But custom goes a long way in moving the mind of man: for we are more easily moved to that to which we are accustomed. Now the custom among men is that the honour that is paid to him who holds the highest place in the commonwealth, as to the king or emperor, is paid to none other. Therefore there should be a worship that is paid to none other than the one principle of the universe; and that we call the worship of latria.
3. If the worship of latria is due to another merely because he is superior, and not because he is supreme, it would follow that one man should pay latria to another man, and one angel to another angel, seeing that among men, and also among angels, one is superior to another. And since among men he who is superior on one point is inferior on another, it would follow that men should interchange latria in their mutual dealings, which is absurd.
4. Man ought to pay God something special in recognition of the special benefit of his creation; and that is the worship of latria.
5. Latria means service, and service is due to the master. Now he is pro- perly and truly called master, who lays down to others precepts of conduft, and himself takes a precept of conduct from none: for he who executes the arrangement of a superior is rather minister than master. But God's provi- dence disposes all things to their due a&ions: hence in Holy Writ the angels and the heavenly bodies are said to minister both to God, whose ordinance they execute, and to us, to whose benefit their actions tend. Therefore the worship of latria, due to the sovereign master, is to be paid only to the sove- reign principle of the universe.
6. Among all acts of latria, a unique rank belongs to sacrifice: for genu- flections, prostrations and other such marks of honour maybe paid even to man, although with another intention than they are paid to God: but no one ever thought to offer sacrifice except to him whom he regarded as God, or affected so to regard. The outward rite of sacrifice represents the inward true sacrifice, whereby the human mind offers itself to God, as to the principle of its crea- tion, the author of its activity, the term of its happiness. Therefore to God alone should man offer sacrifice and the worship of latria, and not to any created spirits whatsoever.
Hence it is said: He shall be slain who offers sacrifice to any gods but to the * In all this St Thomas is describing the forms and shifts of Graeco-Roman paganism, in its last stand against Christianity under Julian and the Neo-Platonists.
Lord alone (Exod. xxii, 20): T'be Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and bim only shalt thou serve (Deut. vi, 13), And because it is an undue thing for the worship of latria to be paid to any other than the first principle of all things, and only an evil-minded rational creature will incite others to undue adh; evidently men have been set on to the aforesaid undue worships by the insti- gation of devils, who have presented themselves to men to be adored in place of God, seeking divine honour. Hence it is said: aAll the gods of the heathen are devils (Ps. xcv, 5): 7 he things which the heathen sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God (1 Cor. x, 20).
CHAPTER CXXI-That the Divine Law directs men to a Rational Use of Corporeal and Sensible Things AS man's mind may be raised to God by corporeal and sensible things, provided that they are duly used to show reverence to God, so also the undue use of them either totally withdraws the mind from God, fixing the final intention of the will upon inferior things,* or clogs the mind's aspiration after God, making it take unnecessary interest in such things.f Now the divine law is given for this end chiefly, to lead man to cling to God. It is a function therefore of divine law to direct man in his affection for and use of corporeal and sensible things.
2. As man's mind is subordinate to God, so his body is subordinate to his soul, and his lower powers to his reason. It belongs therefore to divine pro- vidence, the plan of which, as proposed by God to man, is the divine law, to see that all things keep their order. Therefore that divine law must so direct man as that his lower powers shall be subject to his reason, and his body to his soul, and exterior things shall serve his necessity.