Chapter XXIX. Hasits, how distinguished (q. 54)

IN THESE four articles we deal with habits as related to the subject wherein the habit exists, to their objects, and to the goal toward which they tend.

ART. 1. CAN MANY HABITS EXIST IN ONE SUBJECT?

First conclusion. Many entitative habits, at least many corporeal habits (such as health, beauty, and strength) can exist in one and the same subject. Corporeal elements serve nature in diverse ways. Good proportion in the non-solid elements constitutes health. In the solid parts (bones, muscles) it constitutes strength. Harmony of members and countenance constitutes beauty.

Second conclusion. Many operative habits can coexist in one power. One power can be moved to act by many objects specifically distinct, and habits are proportioned to the acts by which they are generated. As matter is moved by agents specifically distinct into forms specifically diverse, so, for instance, the intellect is moved to act by objects specifically distinct, physical, mathematical, metaphysical, and these acts generate corresponding habits. And, whereas matter cannot simultaneously receive many substantial forms, one power can simultaneously receive many habits, because habits are accidents,

Difficulties Analyzed

1. Whereas generic diversity creates distinction of faculties, specific diversity is the source of acts and habits. Thus our intellect ascends, step by step, from reality in general to changeable reality (natural science), then up to quantitative reality (mathematics), and ultimately to the divine reality (theology).

2. Although the intellect cannot understand many truths simultaneously and actually, it can still simultaneously and habitually be master of many and diverse branches of knowledge.

ART. 2. ARE HABITS DISTINGUISHED BY THEIR OBJECTS?

Preliminaries

To attain a supernatural goal we must have a supernatural habit. Thus Thomists in general maintain that our infused faith and the acquired faith of the demon do not rest on the same formal motive. Infused faith rests on the authority of God, the Author of grace; acquired faith rests on the authority of God, the Author of nature and of miracles. They also hold that natural love of God the author of nature is distinguished from love of God the author of grace, by its objective goal, whereas Molina and other Jesuit theologians teach that an infused habit (e.g., theological faith) needs no formal object that surpasses the powers of reason, since they deny the principle of St. Thomas, namely, that habits are differentiated by their formal objects.

Difficulties. It seems that habits are not distinguished by specifically different objects: 1. One and the same science reaches out to contraries, such as health and sickness. 2. One and the same knowable truth, for instance, the earth is round, is demonstrated in diverse sciences, in physics and in astronomy. 3. One and the same object, as related to different goals, can belong to different virtues. To illustrate, money given for love of God belongs to charity, while money given to pay a debt belongs to justice.

General conclusion. Operative habits are distinguished by diverse objects. Since acts differ specifically by their objects, and since habits are simply dispositions to act, habits themselves must be distinguished by their objects.

To explain. Operative habits are essentially ordained to produce acts: knowledge, to produce demonstration; virtue, to bring forth virtuous acts. This principle leads St. Thomas to consider habits, in their relation first to their active principles, secondly to the nature of the subject, thirdly to their objects. Difficulties arise from the caviling of the nominalist, and the false interpretation of the Molinist.

Molinist interpretation. Molinists 1 hold that, according to this article, an infused operative habit is specifically distinct from an acquired habit only by reason of the effective principle, not by reason of its formal object, since infused faith is immediately produced by God, whereas acquired faith is not. Thomists commonly reject this interpretation. Why?

1. Because thus we should abandon the fundamental principle of St. Thomas,’ that operative habits are differentiated by their formal object.

2. If infused faith had the same formal object as acquired faith, it would be infused only per accidens, would be supernatural only in the mode of its production, like infused geometry or the gift of tongues, or like an eye given miraculously to a blind man, which would not differ specifically from an eye given by generation. Thus the essential supernaturalness of infused virtues would be destroyed.

This doctrine of Molina comes from nominalism, which maintains that we do not know the essences of things, the essence of grace or of virtues, but only facts, for instance, that this man has faith. Nominalists say further that sanctifying grace is not intrinsically supernatural, but gives a right to eternal life only by divine institution, by an extrinsic denomination, like a written note which promises money. Nominalism thus prepared the way for Luther’s tenet, that grace is not an infused gift of God inherent in the soul, but only an external imputation of the justice of Christ.

1See Molina, Concordia, ed. Paris, 1876, pp. 34-38. Also Billot, De virt. infusis, 1905, pp. 84-87. 2 Tabula Aurea, s. v. Objectum.

3- This Molinist interpretation does not preserve the true meaning of the present article, which rests on the doctrine that every habit implies relationship to the nature of the subject. The following is a synopsis of the article.

Habits are differentiated:

A. As forms passively received by their proximate principle, whereby they are either

1. infused habits (from God as agent); or

2. acquired habits, which are either branches of knowledge or moral virtues (guided by reason).

B. As dispositions related

1. to the nature of the subject: infused habits (from God); or acquired habits, which are either good (in harmony with nature) or bad (contrary to nature);

2. to the object of the act to be performed: infused habits (object supernatural); or acquired habits (object naturally attainable),

This synopsis shows that the three modes of distinguishing infused habits from acquired habits are convertible. An operative acquired habit would not suit our nature, and would not be acquired under the direction of right reason, unless it had an object that is true, good, and naturally accessible. But all such habits are distinguished by their special harmony with our nature, under the special directions of reason. And this harmony and direction depend finally on the differentiating goal and object.

Similarly, a habit essentially supernatural, that is, infused per se, would not per se belong to participated divine nature, to sanctifying grace, and would not be infused per se, if it did not have an object essentially supernatural. Hence relation to the object is the primary differentiating element. Whatever Molinists say, our assertion is this: habit can be specifically and simultaneously differentiated by its object, by the nature in which it is, and by the active principle. But, object removed, no habit remains.

First conclusion. Habits, as forms, are distinguished by their proximate and diverse active principles. To illustrate. Every proximate agent makes an effect specifically like itself. A transitive action (e.g., the act of heating) is distinguished specifically by the principle of action from which it proceeds. Thus we admit that an entitative habit, (e.g., sanctifying grace) is distinguished from acquired habits by its active principle, which is God. The same truth holds good of infused virtues and of the seven gifts, which flow from sanctifying grace, though all these habits, as operative, are differentiated by the goal and object to which they are proportioned.

We are dealing here, not with the supreme active principle, but only with the proximate active principle. Thus the proximate principle in the appetitive field is the cognitive power which represents the object. Moral virtue, in the sense-appetite, is a participation in reason. In sciences, demonstration is the active principle. The following are illustrative texts.*

1. We learn the nature of faculty from the act to which it is ordained.

2. The object is compared to the act of a passive power as principle and moving cause. Color is the principle of vision.

3. To the act of an active power (e.g., augmentation) the object is compared as terminus and goal.

4. From these two, principle and terminus, every action gets its species: heating, for example, from an agent that is hot, cooling from an agent that is cold.

5. Diverse demonstrative media + are the active principles of diverse scientific habits. But these active principles, since they are objective, coincide with the formal motive (with the objectum quo) by which the object is constituted as knowable.

6. In the virtues, too, the proximate active principle is the goal intended.® Goal in the field of activity is like principle

in the field of demonstration. Diversity in goal diversifies virtues, just as does diversity of active principles. As the demonstrative principle is the formal motive quo of the conclusion, so the proximate goal is the formal motive quo of choice. Money for God’s sake belongs to charity, money to pay a debt belongs to justice.

Second conclusion. Habit, as disposition, is specifically distinguished according to the agent’s nature. Things that are relative are distinguished by their relation to different termini. Habits, in particular entitative habits, are good or evil according as they are or are not in harmony with nature. Health in man belongs to one species, health in the horse to another species, because man’s nature is not the nature of the horse. Acquired human virtues are specifically distinguished from infused virtues, since the former dispose us for an act harmonious with human nature, whereas the others dispose us for an act harmonious with grace, that is, for participated divine nature. And, we repeat, this distinction by relation to nature is always found in union with the distinction by relation to object.

Third conclusion. Habits, as disposing for operation, are differentiated by objects and goals specifically different. Operative habits, being related to distinct operative termini, must be differentiated by those termini. This conclusion is universal, holding good of all operative habits. Since infused geometry and acquired geometry have the same formal object, they are not specifically distinct, and the infused habit is infused only per accidens. But in virtues per se (e.g., divine faith) the proper motive is the First Truth, the authority of God the Revealer, the Author of grace, whereas the formal motive of acquired faith is the natural evidence of miracles. The following texts are illustrative.

1. Acquired faith is not a special gift of God, but the result of natural intellectual perspicacity.*

2. But since a man who makes an act of faith must be elevated above his nature, he must have within him a supernatural principle, moving him to this act.’

3. The expression “to believe” is equivocal when used of faithful men and of demons. He who lacks infused faith and has only acquired faith is like a man who hears materially the sounds of a symphony, but does not hear the soul of the symphony because he lacks musical appreciation.

Summary. Proportionality governs the relations of habitual grace and infused faith to their acts, and to the objects of those acts. In the doctrine of Molina we do not find this proportionality. According to him, habitual grace and infused faith have the same object as the nature of the soul and acquired faith. But it is clear that infused faith cannot be per se proportionate to habitual grace, unless it is addressed to an object which is per se in harmony with habitual grace. For the operative habit, like the operation itself, is differentiated by its formal object.

This principle is absolute. It gives light to the whole treatise on habits and infused virtues. It is strange that many Molinists reject it, or retain it only in relation to charity which remains in the fatherland, and do not retain it in treating of hope and faith. But surely faith and hope and moral virtues are all supernatural in substance, otherwise we destroy the sublimity and homogeneity of the spiritual organism.

Molina objects. “The necessity of a supernatural habit of infused faith resides in this: acts of faith must be elicited as suited to a supernatural end, to salvation. Hence the acquired faith of the demon would be distinguished from infused faith, not by its formal object, but only by its ultimate goal.” Answer: This ultimate goal, in the Molinist theory, does not rise higher above natural powers than does the for-

mal object of faith or of hope. If therefore the formal object of faith and hope can be attained naturally, by historical knowledge of the Gospel confirmed by miracles, we cannot see why the ultimate end, and even the object of charity, God loved above all things, cannot be naturally attained. And thus we would return to the Pelagians, who held that charity was necessary only in order to love God more easily.

Corollaries. 1. Sciences are specifically distinguished by their formal objects quod and quo, i.e., by the objective motive and active principle. Virtues, too, are distinguished by this twofold formal object, quo and quod. Entitative habits alone are not distinguished by their object.

Difficulties Analyzed

1. Habits are specifically distinguished, not by their material object, but by their formal object. Thus medicine deals with contraries, namely, health and sickness, by one and the same formal object.

2. Sciences, too, are distinguished, not by their material objects, but by their formal objects, namely, by their different demonstrative principles.

3. Nor is virtue distinguished by its material object, since, for example, money can be given for a motive either of charity or of justice.

ART. 3. ARE HABITS DISTINGUISHED AS GOOD AND EVIL?

Conclusion. Good and evil distinguish habits essentially, not only accidentally. Virtue is contrary to vice, and contraries belong to different species. Habits are specifically distinguished, not only by their objects and active principles, but also by the nature in which they are and with which they either are or are not in harmony. This truth is against Spinoza, who holds that vice comes solely from mental confusion. The following texts are illustrative.

Acquired virtue, and divine virtue per se infused, are dis- tinct specifically. The first arises from harmony with human nature, the second from harmony with divine nature, of which grace is a participation.®

Is human virtue specifically distinct from heroic virtue? Yes, if by heroic virtue you understand virtue that is per se infused; no, if by heroic virtue you understand acquired virtue.

Many evil habits may exist in one field of activity, since lack of harmony with right reason may arise either from excess or from defect.

ART. 4. CAN ONE HABIT BE COMPOSED OF MANY HABITS? Preliminaries

It may seem that one habit can be composed of many habits: for example, geometry is constituted by many different conclusions, and one and the same virtue has many parts. But the conclusion runs thus: Habit is a simple quality, not constituted by many habits. Habit is an operative principle which, however far its extends, has but one formal object. A science, reaching out to a new conclusion, does not develop a new partial habit.

Thomists commonly defend this view against those who maintain that theology is not one simple science, but an aggregation of many particular habits, dogmatic, moral, and so on. This adverse view is radically opposed to the spirit of science. It maintains, with Vasquez, that a man who loses infused faith may still preserve the theological science whose root is faith. But in truth, when faith, the soul of theology, is taken away, theology itself has been destroyed.

Question. But are not the cardinal virtues composed of various habits? Answer: Without being composed, the cardinal virtues are divided, either integrally (into various functions), or subjectively (into various fields of labor), or lastly potentially (into conative adjuncts).

Thus terminates the treatise on habits, in their essence, in their subject, in their cause, and in their distinction. On these foundations depend all questions concerning virtues and vices. Habit is the common genus of all of them. Neglect of generic treatment often creates insoluble difficulties in treating of species, difficulties that can be solved only by metaphysical study of the genus in itself.