Chapter XXVIII. Corruption and diminution of habits (q. 53)
Moperns harp on progressive evolution, as if progress came necessarily, as if regress were not possible. This progress they guarantee by developing, not habits, but rules, methods, and mechanical aids. Here Descartes was a pioneer. He denied the very existence of habits, and even of faculties distinct from substance. And Leibnitz meditated a machine for thinking and computing, that thus the mind would be dispensed from thinking distinctly. To this “democratic” conception of science, we oppose the “aristocratic” conception, the mental nobility arising from permanent good habits. Modern treatises on mental prayer need the same reminder. Methods, while useful for beginners, can never be substitutes for supernatural habits.
The progress expected from rules and methods, however advantageous in the material and mechanical world, has not prevented mental and moral regress toward irreligion and atheism. And when we hear modern determinists applying the doctrine of transmitted heredity to modern crime and insanity, we wonder how they harmonize this view with universal progress. When God is denied, enigmas increase, and insoluble questions arise.
ART. 1. CAN HABITS BE CORRUPTED? Preliminaries
It seems that habits cannot be corrupted. 1. Nature cannot be corrupted, and habit is second nature. 2. Spiritual habits 367 cannot be corrupted, because they exist in an incorruptible subject. 3. Neither corporeal transmutation, nor sickness, nor death, can destroy the habit of knowledge or virtue, since these exist in the spiritual and incorruptible soul.
Authority. “Forgetfulness and error corrupt knowledge.” * “By contrary acts virtues are generated and corrupted.” ?
First Conclusion. Health and beauty, and all corporeal habits are corruptible, both per se and per accidens: per se, by reason of the subject in which they exist, per accidens, by reason of contrary causes.
Second conclusion. The habits of first principles, both speculative and practical, are incorruptible, both per se and per: accidens: per accidens because they exist in the intellect which is incorruptible, per se because they have no contrary cause. The notion of being, of reality, is not contrary to the notion of nothing, since they can coexist in the same subject, though they cannot be predicated of one and the same object. Nor is there anything contrary to the act of the agent intellect, which, since it abstracts ideas from phantasms, is the cause of the habit of first principles. Hence this habit, like synderesis, is incorruptible, both per se and per accidens.* Unassailable by forgetfulness or error, first principles are the adamantine base of our intelligence, incorruptible, indestructible, even in the minds of professed sophists, such as Hegel or Protagoras. Protagoras cannot simultaneously both exist and not exist, nor simultaneously be Protagoras and not be Protagoras.
Third conclusion. Science and opinion, moral virtues and vices, are corruptible both per se and per accidens. They are corruptible per accidens, because, though their chief subject is incorruptible, they reside secondarily in a corruptible subject, namely, in the internal sense-powers, imagination and memory, or in the sense-appetite. And sciences and moral
HABITS CORRUPTED AND DIMINISHED 369 virtues are corruptible per se by the law of contraries. A scientific conclusion can be overthrown by a sophistic syllogism, a true opinion by false opinion, moral virtue by the opposite vice,
Corollary. The modern dogma of unbroken progress is false. Regress appears in society as it does in individuals. As example, think of the downward gradation from Lutheranism to Modernism. Yet some authors seem to think that Scotus and Suarez, by coming later, perfected St. Thomas, as if Thomas were the thesis, Scotus the antithesis, and Suarez the higher synthesis. The twenty-four Thomistic propositions would merely codify an inferior period of scholastic evolution.
ART. 2. CAN HABIT BE DIMINISHED?
First conclusion. Habit can be diminished just as it can be increased. First, remiss activity reduces subjective intensity. Secondly, sciences and arts may decrease also in extension. As habits increase in a twofold way, intensively and extensively, they may also decrease in the same two ways.
Second conclusion. Decrease comes from the same causes as does corruption. Decrease is the road to corruption, just as generation is the foundation for increase. Reiterated acts are the cause of increase of infused habits. The same disparity appears in decrease. Charity can be diminished, not directly, but only indirectly: not directly because charity is not caused or augmented by human acts, but only by God. By mere cessation from act (supposing the cessation not to be mortal sin), charity is not diminished, nor is it diminished directly by venial sin, because venial sin, unlike charity, is not concerned with the last end. But indirectly charity is diminished by venial sin, which impedes the application of charity, allows evil inclinations to arise, thus making the exercise of charity difficult, and disposing the soul to mortal sin, whereby charity is destroyed.12
ART. 3. IS HABIT CORRUPTED OR DIMINISHED BY MERE CESSATION FROM ACT?
Conclusion. Cessation from act causes per accidens corruption or diminution of habit, because it removes the factors which hinder corrupting or diminishing causes. Knowledge can be overthrown, not only by error but also by forgetfulness. Friendships wither by lack of association. Let us apply this conclusion, first, to virtue.
When a man does not use the habit of virtue to moderate passions or actions, there must arise many non-virtuous passions and operations, from the inclination of the sense-appetite and other exterior attractions. The same truth holds good in the man who does not keep up the habit of mental prayer.
Second, application to knowledge. When a man ceases to use his knowledge, for instance of theology, extraneous imaginations may lead him to confuse the doctrine of charity with the tenets of liberalism.
Corollary. In the way of virtue and science, cessation means not to progress, and not to progress is to regress. Acts that are good, but remiss, although they do not cause regress are still a disposition to that regress, since they open the way to contrary inclinations.
Maritain * writes: “Progressive negation of the value of habits would need its own special history. It began in the fourteenth century among theologians, and has now descended to the lowest level.” Scotus and Occam denied specific distinction among the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Further, Scotus denied the necessity of infused moral virtues, and held the theological virtues to be supernatural only in mode. Following Occam, Luther denied all infused habits, grace, in his view, being a mere extrinsic denomination under which man remains in his corruption.
The next step was to eliminate acquired habits. Descartes denied the distinction between substance and accident, thus
4 Art et scolastique, p. 55.
HABITS CORRUPTED AND DIMINISHED 371 eliminating the accidents which we call habits, and substituting for them infallible methods of attaining knowledge. After Descartes, method becomes the almost exclusive catchword. The final step was envisioned by Leibnitz. His calculating machine, releasing mankind from the burden of thought, would create an age of light, of universal intellectual democraticism!
Footnotes
Chapter 28 of 29