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Book I, Chapter III

Now, therefore, we must see what is the end of the whole civil order of men; and when we have found this, then, as the Philosopher1 says in his book to Nicomachus,2 the half of our labour will have been accomplished. And to render the question clearer, we must observe that as there is a certain end for which nature makes the thumb, and another, different from this, for which she makes the whole hand, and again another for which she makes the arm, and another different from all for which she makes the whole man; so there is one end for which she orders the individual man, and another for which she orders the family, and another end for the city, and another for the kingdom, and finally an ultimate one for which the Everlasting God, by His art which is nature, brings into being the whole human race. And this is what we seek as a first principle to guide our whole inquiry.

Let it then be understood that God and nature make nothing to be idle. Whatever comes into being, exists for some operation or working. For no created essence is an ultimate end in the creator's purpose, so far as he is a creator, but rather the proper operation of that essence. Therefore it follows that the operation does not exist for the sake of the essence, but the essence for the sake of the operation.

There is therefore a certain proper operation of the whole body of human kind, for which this whole body of men in all its multitudes is ordered and constituted, but to which no one man, nor single family, nor single neighbourhood, nor single city, nor particular kingdom can attain. What this is will be manifest, if we can find what is the final and characteristic capacity of humanity as a whole. I say then that no quality which is shared by different species of things is the distinguishing capacity of any one of them. For were it so, since this capacity is that which makes each species what it is, it would follow that one essence would be specifically distributed to many species, which is impossible. Therefore the ultimate quality of men is not existence, taken simply; for the elements share therein. Nor is it existence under certain conditions;3 for we find this in minerals too. Nor is it existence with life; for plants too have life. Nor is it percipient existence; for brutes share in this power. It is to be percipient4 with the possibility of understanding, for this quality falls to the lot of none but man, either above or below him. For though there are other beings which with him have understanding, yet this understanding is not, as man's, capable of development. For such beings are only certain intellectual natures, and not anything besides, and their being is nothing other than to understand; which is without interruption, otherwise they would not be eternal. It is plain, therefore, that the distinguishing quality of humanity is the faculty or the power of understanding.

And because this faculty cannot be realised in act in its entirety at one time by a single man, nor by any of the individual societies which we have marked, therefore there must be multitude in the human race, in order to realise it: just as it is necessary that there should be a multitude of things which can be brought into being,5 so that the capacity of the primal matter for being acted on may be ever open to what acts on it. For if this were not so, we could speak of a capacity apart from its substance, which is impossible. And with this opinion Averroes, in his comment on [Aristotle's] treatise on the Soul, agrees. For the capacity for understanding, of which I speak, is concerned not only with universal forms or species, but also, by a kind of extension, with particular ones. Therefore it is commonly said that the speculative understanding becomes practical by extension; and then its end is to do and to make. This I say in reference to things which may be done, which are regulated by political wisdom, and in reference to things which may be made, which are regulated by art; all which things wait as handmaidens on the speculative intellect, as on that best good, for which the Primal Goodness created the human race. Hence the saying of the Politics6 that those who are strong in understanding are the natural rulers of others.

Footnotes

  1. The common title for Aristotle from the first half of the thirteenth century. Vide Jourdain, Recherches sur les traductions d'Aristote, p. 212, note. ↩

  2. Arist. Ethics, i. 7. ↩

  3. "Esse complexionatum." ↩

  4. "Apprehensivum per intellectum possibilem." V. Aquin. I. 79, 1, 2, 10. ↩

  5. "Generabilium." ↩

  6. Arist. Polit. i. 5, 6.--(W.) ↩

Chapter 3 of 45