Chapter 69 — Concerning the opinion of those who withdraw from natural things their proper actions

This was an occasion of error to some who thought that no creature has an active part in the production of natural effects: thus fire would not heat, but God would cause heat at the presence of fire; and they maintained the like of all natural effects.

They endeavored to confirm this error with arguments, by showing that no form, whether substantial or accidental, is brought into being except by the way of creation. For forms and accidents cannot be made out of matter, since matter is not a part of them. Hence, if they be made, they must be made out of nothing, and this is to be created. And since creation is the act of God alone, as we proved in the second book, (Ch. 21.) it would seem to follow that God brings into being forms both substantial and accidental.

The opinion of certain philosophers agreed in part with this position. For, seeing that whatever is not of itself must result from that which is of itself, it would seem that the forms of things which do not exist by themselves but in matter result from forms that are by themselves without matter (as though forms existing in matter were participations of forms that are without matter). For this reason Plato supposed that the species of sensible things are certain separate forms, which are causes of being to these objects of sense, insofar as these partake of them.

Avicenna maintained that all substantial forms emanate from the active intelligence. But he held accidental forms to be dispositions of matter, resulting from the action of lower agents disposing the matter. In this he avoided the absurdity of the previous opinion.

A sign of this apparently was that no active power can be found in these bodies except the accidental form— for instance, active and passive qualities—and these would not seem capable of causing substantial forms.

Moreover, in these lower things we find certain things that are not engendered from their like—for instance, animals caused through putrefaction. Therefore, it seems that the forms of these are caused by higher principles; and other forms in like manner, some of which are much more perfect.

Some too find proof of this in the inadequacy of natural bodies for action. Because the form of every natural body is annexed to quantity. Now quantity is an obstacle to action and movement: they see a sign of this in the fact that the more we add to the quantity of a body, the heavier it becomes, and the slower its movement. Hence they conclude that no body is active, but that all bodies are purely passive.

They also attempt to prove this again from the fact that every patient is subject to the agent; and that every agent, save the first which creates, requires a subject inferior to itself. But no substance is inferior to a body. Therefore, seemingly no body is active.

They add that the corporeal substance is the furthest removed from the first agent. Hence they do not see how the active power can reach as far as the corporeal substance, and maintain that, as God is purely active, so the corporeal substance, being the lowest thing of all, is purely passive.

For these reasons, then, Avicebron, (Jewish philosopher, 1020–1070.) in the book Fons Vitae, (Tract. 2, 3.) held that no body is active: but that the power of a spiritual substance pervading through bodies produces the actions which seem to be performed by bodies.

Moreover, certain Muslim theologians are said to have argued that even accidents are not the result of corporeal activity, because an accident does not pass from one subject to another. Hence they deem it impossible for heat to pass from a hot body into another body so as to heat it, but that all like accidents are created by God. (See Moses Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, bk. 1, ch. 73.)

However, many absurdities arise from the foregoing positions. For if no inferior cause (above all a body) is active, and if God works alone in all things, since God is not changed through working in various things, no diversity will follow among the effects through the diversity of the things in which God works. Now this is evidently false to the senses: for from the application of a hot body there follows, not cooling, but only heating; and from human seed is generated a man only. Therefore, the causing of inferior effects is not to be ascribed to the divine power so as to withdraw the causality of inferior agents.

Again. It is contrary to the notion of wisdom that any thing should be done in vain in the works of a wise man. But if creatures did nothing at all towards the production of effects, and God alone wrought everything immediately, other things would be employed by him in vain for the production of effects. Therefore, the above position is incompatible with divine wisdom.

Besides. He who gives a principle gives whatever results from the principle: thus the cause that gives gravity to an element gives it downward movement. Now to make a thing actual results from being actual, as we see to be the case in God, for he is pure act, and is also the first cause of being in all things, as we proved above. (Bk. 1, ch. 13.) If, therefore, he bestowed his likeness on others in respect of being, insofar as he brought things into being, it follows that he also bestowed on them his likeness in the point of acting, so that creatures too should have their proper actions.

Further. Perfection of effect indicates perfection of cause, since greater power produces a more perfect effect. Now God is the most perfect agent. Therefore, things created by him must receive perfection from him. Consequently, to detract from the creature’s perfection is to detract from the perfection of the divine power. But if no creature exercises an action for the production of an effect, much is detracted from the perfection of the creature; because it is due to the abundance of its perfection that a thing is able to communicate to another the perfection that it has. Therefore, this opinion detracts from the divine power.

Moreover. Just as it belongs to the good to produce a good, so it belongs to the highest good to make a thing best. Now God is the highest good, as we proved in the first book. (Ch. 41.) Therefore, it belongs to him to make all things best. Now it is better that the good bestowed on someone should be common to many than that it should be proper to one, since the common good is always considered more godlike than the good of one only. (Nicomachean Ethics 1.2.) But the good of one becomes common to many if it flows from the one to the other; this can only be when the one, by its own action, communicates it to the others. If it has not the power to transmit it to others, that good remains its own property. Accordingly, God communicated his goodness to his creatures in such a way that one thing can communicate to another the good it has received. Therefore, it is derogatory to the divine goodness to deny things their proper operations.

Again. To take order away from creatures is to deny them the best thing they have, because each one is good in itself, while altogether they are very good on account of the order of the universe: for the whole is always better than the parts, and is their end. Now if we subtract action from things, the order among things is withdrawn, because things differing in nature are not bound together in the unity of order, except through the fact that some are active and some passive. Therefore, it is unreasonable to say that things have not their proper actions.

Besides. If effects be produced not by the act of creatures but only by the act of God, the power of a created cause cannot possibly be indicated by its effect. This is so because the effect is no indication of the cause’s power, except by reason of the action which proceeds from the power and terminates in the effect. Now the nature of a cause is not known from its effect except insofar as this is an indication of its power which results from its nature. Consequently, if creatures exercise no action in producing effects, it will follow that the nature of a creature can never be known from its effect, so that all knowledge of physical science would be denied us, for it is there that arguments from effects are chiefly employed.

Further. By induction it can be proved that like produces like. (On Generation and Corruption 1.7.) Now, that which is produced in lower things is not a mere form, but a composite of matter and form, because every generation is movement out of something (namely, matter), and to something (namely, form). Therefore, the producer must be not a mere form, but composed of matter and form. Therefore, the cause of forms which exist in matter is not the separate species of things, as the Platonists maintained, nor the active intellect, as Avicenna said, but an individual composed of matter and form.

Again. If action is consequent to being actual, it is unreasonable that the more perfect act be deprived of action. Now the substantial form is a more perfect act than the accidental. Consequently, if the accidental forms in corporeal things have their proper actions, (See above: Avicenna maintained...) much more has the substantial form an operation proper to it. But this action does not consist in disposing matter, because this is effected by alteration, for which accidental forms suffice. Therefore, the form of the generator is the principle of the action whereby the substantial form is introduced into the thing generated.

The arguments they adduce are easily solved. For, since a thing is made that it may be, just as a form is called a being not as though itself had being, but because by it the composite is, so neither is the form made, properly speaking, but it begins to be through the composite being brought from potency to the act which is the form.

Nor is it necessary that whatever has a form by way of participation receive it from that which is a form essentially; for it may receive it immediately from something having a like form in a like manner (namely, by participation), and acting by virtue of the separate form, if there be any such. Thus like agent produces like effect.

Nor does it follow, because every action of inferior bodies is effected through active or passive qualities, which are accidents, that nothing save accidents results from those actions, because even as those accidental forms are caused by the substantial form, which together with matter is the cause of the proper accidents, so do they act by virtue of the substantial form. Now that which acts by virtue of another produces an effect like not only to itself, but also, and more, to that by virtue of which it acts—thus the action of the instrument reproduces in the work done the likeness of the art—so that the action of accidental forms produces substantial forms inasmuch as they act instrumentally by virtue of substantial forms.

As to animals generated from putrefaction, the substantial form is caused in them through the agency of a body (namely, the heavenly body) that is the first principle of alteration. Consequently, in this lower sphere, whatever acts dispositively to a form must act by virtue of that body, so that the virtue of the heavenly body suffices without an univocal agent for the production of certain imperfect forms. But for the production of more perfect forms, such as the souls of the higher animals, an univocal agent is required besides the celestial agent, for such animals are not produced otherwise than by seed. Hence Aristotle says that man and the sun generate man. (Physics 2.2.)

Again, it is untrue that quantity is an obstacle to a form’s activity except accidentally, namely, insofar as all continuous quantity is in matter. Thus the form which exists in matter has less active virtue through being less actual, so that the body which has less matter and more form (fire, for instance) is more active. But if we suppose the measure of action of which a form existing in matter is capable, then quantity favors an increase rather than a decrease of action: for the greater the fiery body, the more heat does it give, supposing the heat to be equally intense; and supposing an equally intense gravity, the greater a heavy body is, the more rapid will be its natural movement (and for the same reason the slower will its non-natural movement be). Accordingly, the fact that heavy bodies are slower in their non-natural movements, through being of greater quantity, is no proof that quantity is an obstacle to action, but rather that it is a help to its increase.

Again, it does not follow that all bodies are without action because corporeal substance is of the lowest kind in the order of things, since even among bodies one is higher, more formal and more active than another, as fire in comparison with lower bodies, and yet not even the lowest body is excluded from activity. For it is clear that a body cannot be wholly active, since it is composed of matter, which is potential being, and form, which is act. For a thing acts according as it is actual: hence every body acts in respect of its form, to which the other body (namely, the patient) is compared as subject with regard to its matter, inasmuch as its matter is in potency to the form of the agent. If, on the other hand, the matter of the active body be in potency to the form of the passive body, they will be mutually active and passive, as in the case of two elementary bodies; or else one will be purely active and the other purely passive in relation to it, as the heavenly body compared to the elementary body. Accordingly, a body acts on a subject not by reason of its entirety, but by reason of the form by which it works.

Nor is it true that bodies are furthest removed from God. For as God is pure act, things are more or less distant from him according as they are more or less in act or potency. And that of all things is furthest distant from God which is pure potency—namely, prime matter. This is thus purely passive and in no way active. On the other hand, bodies, being composed of matter and form, approach to a likeness to God inasmuch as they have a form, which Aristotle (Physics 1.9.) calls a divine thing. Hence they act inasmuch as they have a form, and are passive inasmuch as they have matter.

Again, it is absurd to say that a body is not active because accidents do not pass from one subject to another. For when we say that a hot body gives heat, we do not mean that the identical heat which is in the heater passes into the heated body: but that by virtue of the heat in the heater, another heat, individually distinct, becomes actual in the heated body, having been potentially in it before. For the natural agent does not transmit its own form into another subject, but reduces the passive subject from potency to act.

Consequently, we do not deny creatures their proper actions, although we ascribe all the effects of creatures to God, as operating in all.