Chapter XXVI. The Source or Hasits (Q. 51)

ART. 1. DO HABITS COME FROM NATURE?

Opposite errors meet us here. Plato and Descartes hold that our primary ideas are innate, not abstracted from senseactivity. Leibnitz, too, says that these first principles are in us, at least virtually, before sense-cognition. Opposed to this excess is the view of sensists and empiricists, who admit no essential distinction between intellect and sense. Let us first note a twofold meaning of the word “natural.” 1. A thing can be natural according to the nature of the species, for instance, “man is a risible being.” 2. A thing can be natural according to the nature of the individual, for instance, “Socrates is healthy.”

First conclusion. Man has entitative habits, some (like health) totally from nature, others partly from nature (health restored by medicine).

Second conclusion. No operative habits come totally from nature. Here man differs from the angel, whose ideas come totally from its nature, a privilege unsuited to human nature, because the human intellect naturally uses sense-activity. Man’s proper object is the lowest of intelligible objects, those mediated by sense qualities. A man born blind can have no direct knowledge of color. Here lies condemnation of the theory of innate ideas.

Third conclusion. Some human operative habits arise partly from nature and partly from an exterior principle. The habit of first principles, for instance, the principle that the whole is greater than a part, is a natural and inevitable possession, not a mere empirical association, reiterated by tradition. The habit of first principles is an indivisible natural quality, not divided into parts. But it is not totally from nature, as would be an innate idea.

A comparison may illustrate. Just as nutrition is a natural act of the soul when food is offered, so the knowledge of first principles is a natural act, which receives its food only when, on coming to the age of reason, it derives its first ideas from experience. Then there flows into the possible intellect that quality which we call the habit of first principles. Thus we steer between the two extremes of innatism and sensism: innatism, which says that all our ideas are inborn; sensism, which denies the essential superiority of intellect over sense.

But the human will has no need of a natural habit, because in the very inclination of the will to universal good proposed by reason, we have the seeds of virtue, the roots from which grow the habits of justice, temperance, and fortitude. Some operative habits, while they arise from individual nature, depend partly on a well-disposed organism: a truth expressed by the proverb, “Poets are born, not made.” Similarly, some men are naturally disposed to chastity or mildness. Not all operative habits, however, are natural. Science, for instance, is not a gift of nature, since it arises only from demonstration, and hence is properly styled an acquired habit.

ART. 2. DO HABITS ARISE FROM ACTS?

Again we meet two opposite views. One view, based on the inertia of matter, derives habit from the passivity of the subject. The other view says that habits (e.g., carpentry) are caused by activity, by repetition of acts. St. Thomas begins with three objections in favor of the theory of passivity. 1. Quality depends on the receptiveness of the subject, whereas activity is not a receiving, but a giving. 2. A faculty, which by acting would cause a habit, would be simultaneously mover and the thing moved. 3. Effect cannot be nobler than cause, and habit is something nobler than the act which precedes.

SOURCE OF HABITS 351

Against these objections stands the affirmation of Aristotle, that the habits of virtues and vices are caused by acts. St. Thomas finds partial truth in each theory, harmonizing them, not in the fashion of eclecticism, but in a higher synthesis.

First conclusion. An agent whose only principle is active cannot develop habits. Stones and plants, to illustrate, neither develop new customs nor lose old ones. A stone falls always the same way, the plant nourishes itself always in the same way.

Second conclusion. An agent which has both active and passive principles can develop habits in its passive principle. This statement is proved, first, by experience. The will, moved by reason, develops the habit of justice. And the senseappetite develops temperance and fortitude. Moved by the habit of first principles, the intellect develops the habit of drawing scientific conclusions.

The statement is proved, secondly, by argument. Everything that is moved by another is disposed by the act of that agent. Men have faculties which are moved, either by another faculty, or by themselves as already in act. Hence multiplied acts result in habits in the power which is moved. Nor is the habit nobler than its cause. Reason itself is a nobler principle than the moral virtue generated by repeated acts. And the habit of first principles is nobler than the knowledge of conclusions. Moral virtue is a participation in reason, and the habit of knowledge is a participation in the light of first principles.

Pedagogical Corollaries

1. To learn is not simply to remember. Here we oppose Plato who, since he did not distinguish potential knowledge from actual knowledge, said that knowledge pre-existed in the pupil’s mind, hence the teacher’s work would be that of reminding, not of instilling.

The teacher is perfect in proportion to his power of re-

ducing the truth to higher and more universal principles, since under this influence the disciple acquires the habits of science and wisdom. Great teachers are instruments in a kind of natural revelation, whereas hardly any intellectual formation comes from a teacher who is satisfied with the positivist or empirist approach. Facts unrelated to principles, while they furnish materials for science, can never become science, can never result in scientific synthesis.

3. Pedagogical theories are three: the traditional one (Aristotelian-Thomistic), the innatism of Plato, and empiricism. Against the traditional theory, which regards the human intellect as the lowest of intellects, Plato sins by excess, the empiricists by defect.

ART. 3. CAN HABIT BE PRODUCED BY ONE ACT?

Preliminaries. It seems so: 1. By one demonstration we create science, at least one scientific conclusion. 2. One intense act is equivalent to many acts less intense. 3. By one act a man becomes sick or well; and sickness, like health, is a habit. But, as “one swallow does not make spring,” so one day does not make a man virtuous.

First conclusion. In no appetitive power can the habit of virtue be generated by one act. One act of reason cannot totally conquer any appetitive power, because the appetitive power is multiple and variable. Only gradually, like fire in damp material, or water dripping on rock, can reason create that second nature which we call habit. Reason’s first act produces a disposition, the second act strengthens that disposition, and the series must continue to a final act, strong enough to turn the disposition into a permanent quality, difficult to change.

To illustrate. One set of circumstances demands that we act humbly, another set that we act magnanimously. Magnanimity is not ambition, just as humility is not pusillanimity. Multiplied and repeated acts of reason are required before both humility and magnanimity become man’s second na-

SOURCE OF HABITS 353 ture. The term “second nature” is illuminating. As nature imitates God, so the virtuous man imitates nature, whose unchangeable laws are God’s own creation.

Two Corollaries

1. All virtues are fields of slow development. Justice, unbroken recognition of our neighbor’s rights, becomes a habit only under the persistent prodding of reason. Only after long training does religion become a virtue, independent of sensible devotion. The same road is marked out for temperance, fortitude, meekness, patience, and chastity, which develop only by a long-continued restraint on sensuality.

2. Disposition, although it is the necessary road to habit, is never identified with habit, which is the goal of all dispositive activity. A moral habit is thus distinguished from a scientific habit, which can be generated by one act.

Here we meet a mystery, which permeates all levels of creation. It is just as difficult to draw the line between ultimate disposition and habit, as it was for biologists finally to determine that the sponge, say, is not the apex of vegetative life, but one of the lowest forms of senselife. But, admitting this concrete difficulty, vegetative life still remains specifically distinct from senselife, and licit mental restriction still remains distinct from a lie.

Second conclusion. Science can be caused by one act, but opinion cannot. One proposition, if self-evident, convinces the intellect, though this one scientific conclusion can grow, both in intensity and in extension, by application to other conclusions. In illustration, we may refer to the subordination of all second causes, including the human will, to God the First Cause. But, though conviction may be immediate, the scientific habit, by reason of external dependence on sense powers, becomes firmly established only by repeated acts.

As similar instances of a metaphysical habit established by one act we may note: first, being as being, reality as reality, is the precise object of ontology. Secondly, in God alone is essence identified with existence. Opinion, too, is a habit, but it cannot be established by one act, because it depends on probable propositions.

Third conclusion. Only by repeated acts can habits be established in the lower cognitive powers, particularly in the memory. Experience is sufficient proof for this statement. But we must note the terminology of Aristotle,? who uses the word “passive intellect” to express a sense-power, which applies memory and imagination to concrete and particular problems. This power, he says, is subject to corruption, as are all sense-powers. Averroes, erroneously identifying this “passive intellect” with “possible intellect,” concluded that Aristotle had denied personal immortality.

Reason argues thus: Because organic powers depend on matter, the principle of corruption, they need much repetition to become fixed in one definite direction. Here lies the reason why men differ in the power of imagination. What Aristotle ° calls a “dry” memory does not easily receive, but preserves well what it has received, whereas a “wet” memory receives easily, but also loses easily. Climates, dry and wet, may serve as illustrations.

Fourth conclusion. Bodily habits can be caused by one act if the active element is very strong. One dose of strong medi- cine may restore health. Inversely, one blow may destroy health.

Corollary

A widespread error confounds instruction with education. Instruction aims at intellectual habits, which can be generated, often by a single act. But education, which aims at moral habits in the will and in the sense-powers, is a long and slow process. To suppose that children who are merely instructed, not educated, will become good citizens, with

SOURCE OF HABITS 355 well developed moral and religious habits, is a fatal error. Imagine parents who would exercise no care over their children’s food, because, forsooth, these children, as adults, will suddenly be capable of self-control.

ART. 4. ARE SOME HABITS INFUSED BY GOD?

It is of faith * that the process of justification includes the infusion of virtues: faith, hope, and charity, and so on. These virtues are qualities permanently inherent in the soul or in its faculties, though it does not seem certain by faith that these qualities are in the strictest sense habits, since the Council does not use the words “quality” and “habit.” But while the demands of faith are met by holding that sanctifying grace is an habitual internal gift, it is still theologically certain that grace and its consequent gifts are habits.

First conclusion. Supernatural habits cannot arise except by infusion. Habits, natural or supernatural, must be proportioned to the end for which they dispose us. But natural habits acquired by repeated acts can never dispose us to a supernatural end. Supernatural habits, therefore, cannot arise except from supernatural infusion. This truth holds good of even the highest angel, even if he should have been created from eternity.

Second conclusion. Habits which are in themselves natural may arise from infusion. Such habits (e.g., sudden mastery of a strange tongue) are said to be infused per accidens. Adam must have had many such habits,

First Corollary

A habit infused per accidens is of the same species as an acquired habit, just as the eyes given to a man born blind are specifically the same as natural eyes. But habits per se infused are also per se supernatural, not supernatural only in their mode (such as origin by miracle), but supernatural in their very essence.¹

Second Corollary

© While infused habits are simply indispensable for meritorious acts, still certain salutary acts, not yet meritorious, may, under actual grace, arise even before justification and infused habits.

Question. Do the acts arising from an infused habit beget another habit of the same species? Answer: No, because one and the same subject cannot have two forms of the same species, Acts produced by an infused habit simply strengthen the pre-existing habit.

Footnotes

1. Conc. Trid., sess. 6, can. 8. ↩