Chapter 103 — That the divine goodness is the cause not only of things, but also of all motion and activity

The divine goodness is not only the end of the creation of things; it must also be the end of every operation and movement of any creature whatever. For each thing acts according to the way it is: for example, what is hot causes heat. But every created thing has, in keeping with its form, some participated likeness to the divine goodness, as we have pointed out. Therefore, too, all actions and movements of every creature are directed to the divine goodness as their end.

Further, every movement and operation of every thing are seen to tend toward something perfect. Now, the perfect has the character of the good, since the perfection of any given thing is its goodness. Hence every movement and action of anything whatever tend toward good. But any given good is a certain likeness of the supreme Good, just as all being is a likeness of the first Being. Therefore, the movement and action of any given thing tends toward taking on a likeness to the divine goodness.

Moreover, if there are many agents arranged in order, the actions and movements of all the agents must be directed to the good of the first agent as to their ultimate end. For since lower agents are moved by the higher agent, and every mover moves toward its proper end, consequently the actions and movements of lower agents must tend toward the end of the first agent. Thus in an army the actions of all the subordinate units are ultimately directed to victory, which is the end intended by the commander-in-chief. But we showed above that the first mover and agent is God, and that his end is nothing else than his goodness. Therefore, all the actions and movements of all creatures exist on account of the divine goodness, not, of course, in the sense that they are to cause or increase it, but in the sense that they are to acquire it in their own way, by sharing to some extent in a likeness of it.

Now, created things attain to the likeness of the divine goodness by their operations in different ways, as they also represent it in different ways conformably to their being. For each of them acts according as it is. Therefore, as all creatures in common represent the divine goodness inasmuch as they exist, so by their actions they all in common attain to the divine likeness in the conservation of their being and in the communication of their being to others. For every creature endeavors, by its activity, first of all to keep itself in perfect being, so far as this is possible. In such endeavor it tends, in its own way, to an imitation of the divine permanence. Second, every creature strives, by its activity, to communicate its own perfect being, in its own fashion, to another; and in this it tends toward an imitation of the divine causality.

But the rational creature tends toward the divine likeness by its activity in a special way beyond all other creatures, as it also has a nobler existence than all other creatures. The existence of other creatures is finite, since it is hemmed in by matter, and so lacks infinity both in act and in potency. But every rational nature has infinity either in act or in potency, according to the way its intellect contains intelligibles. Thus our intellectual nature, considered in its first state, is in potency to its intelligibles; since these are infinite, our intellect has a certain infinity in potency—this is why intellect is the species of species, because it has a species that is not determined to one thing alone, like a stone, but has a capacity for all species. Now, the intellectual nature of God is infinite in act, because it precontains within itself the perfection of all being, as was shown above. And other intellectual creatures occupy a middle position between potency and act. By its activity, therefore, the intellectual creature tends toward the divine likeness, not only in the sense that it preserves itself in existence, or that it multiplies its existence, in a way, by communicating it; it also has as its end the possession in act of what by nature it possesses in potency. Consequently, the end of the intellectual creature, to be achieved by its activity, is the complete actuation of its intellect by all the intelligibles for which it has a potency. In this respect it will become most like to God.