Chapter 108 — Arguments that would seem to prove that there can be no sin in the demons

Since malice in the demons is not natural to them, and since it has been proved (Ch. 106.) that they are evil, it follows of necessity that the evil in them is voluntary. Accordingly, we must inquire how this can be.

For it would seem altogether impossible. For we proved in the second book (Ch. 90.) that no intellectual substance is naturally united to a body except the human soul, or, according to some, the souls of the heavenly bodies, (Bk. 2, ch. 70.) which it is unreasonable to deem evil, since the movement of heavenly bodies is most orderly, and is the principle of the entire natural order in a sense. Now, every other cognitive power, except the intellect, employs animate corporeal organs. Therefore, the substances in question cannot have any cognitive power besides the intellect. Therefore, whatever they know, they understand. Now one does not err in what one understands, since all error results from lack of understanding. Therefore, there can be no error in the knowledge of those substances. But there can be no sin in the will without error, because the will always tends to the apprehended good; so that unless there be error in the apprehension of a good, there cannot be sin in the will. Therefore, it seems there can be no sin of the will in those substances.

Again. In us, sin occurs in the will about matters of which we have true knowledge in general through the judgment of the reason being hindered by a passion that shackles the reason in a particular instance. But there can be no such passions in the demons; for passions belong to the sensitive faculty, which exercises no operation without a corporeal organ. Consequently, if these separate substances have right knowledge in general, it is impossible for their will to tend to evil through defective knowledge in a particular matter.

Moreover. No cognitive faculty is deceived about its proper object, but only about one that is outside its purview. Thus the sight is not deceived in its judgment about colors, but deception may occur if a man judge by sight of taste, or of the species of a thing. Now, the proper object of the intellect is the quiddity of a thing. Consequently, there can be no deception in the knowledge of the intellect if it were to apprehend the mere quiddities of things, and all deception of the intellect would seem to occur through its apprehending forms mingled with phantasms, as is the case with us. But this mode of knowledge is not in intellectual substances that are not united to bodies, since there can be no phantasms apart from a body. Therefore, there can be no error in the knowledge of separate substances, and consequently neither can there be sin in the will.

Besides. In us, falsehood occurs in the intellectual operations of synthesis and analysis through the intellect not absolutely apprehending the quiddity of a thing, and coupling something with the thing apprehended. Now falsehood does not occur except accidentally in the operation whereby the intellect apprehends what a thing is—insofar as in this operation also there is a certain mixture of the intellectual operation of synthesis and analysis. This happens because our intellect attains to the knowledge of the quiddity of a thing not at once, but in a certain order of inquiry. Thus at first we apprehend animal, then we divide it by opposite differences, and setting one of these aside, add the other to the genus, until we come to the definition of the species. In this process there may be falsehood, if we take one that is not a difference of the genus as a difference of the genus. Now, to proceed thus to the knowledge of what a thing is belongs to an intellect that discourses from one thing to another by reasoning, and is not becoming to separate intellectual substances, as we proved above. (Bk. 2, ch. 101.) Seemingly, therefore, there can be no error in the knowledge of such substances: consequently, neither can there be sin in their will.

Moreover. Since nothing desires other than its own good, it would seem impossible for that which has but one single good to err in its appetite. For this reason, although faults happen in natural things through some defect occurring in the execution of the appetite, they never happen in the natural appetite. Thus a stone always tends to a lower place, whether it reach it or be hindered. Now, sin happens in us in the act of appetite because there is more than one good in us, since our nature is composed of spiritual and corporeal elements: one thing is our good in relation to the intellect, another is our good in relation to the senses, or in relation to the body. And among these various things that are man’s goods there is an order, so that what is of less account must be subordinate to that which is of more account. Hence sin of the will occurs in us when, in defiance of this order, we desire that which is good for us in a restricted sense in preference to that which is good simply. But this composition and diversity of goods is not in separate substances: in fact, their very good is in relation to the intellect. Therefore, it seems that no sin of the will is possible in them.

Again. In us, sin of the will results from excess or deficiency, between which virtue stands. (Nicomachean Ethics 2.6.) Consequently, in matters that do not admit of excess and deficiency, but only of the mean, the will cannot sin. Thus no man can sin in desiring justice, since justice itself is a kind of mean. Now separate substances cannot desire other than intellectual goods, for it is absurd to say that things by nature incorporeal desire corporeal goods, or that those which have no senses desire sensible goods. But in intellectual goods there can be no excess, for by their very nature they are a mean between excess and deficiency. Thus the truth is a mean between two errors, one of which is on the side of excess, the other on that of deficiency; hence both sensible and corporeal goods are in the mean insofar as they are according to reason. Therefore, it seems that intellectual separate substances cannot sin in the will.

Moreover. An incorporeal substance is, seemingly, more remote from defects than a corporeal substance. Now, no defect can occur in these corporeal substances that are remote from contrariety, namely, the heavenly bodies. Much less, therefore, can any sin occur in separate substances that are remote both from contrariety, and from matter, and from movement, which seem to be the sources of any possible defect.