Man
75. Man's Soul
1. A soul is the life-principle in a living body. The soul actualizes a body as living, and it is the substantial form which makes the living body the specific kind of living body it is: plant, animal, man. The soul of a plant and the soul of an animal are called material souls not as though they were made of bodily stuff, but to indicate their dependence upon the bodily organism which they determine and actualize.
2. The human soul is a nonbodily substance endowed with intellect and will. In this life the human soul has an extrinsic dependence on the body, but not an intrinsic dependence. It can exist and operate per se even if it be severed from the body. And this means that it is truly a subsistent substance.
3. The plant soul and the animal soul are not subsistent substances. They cannot exist and operate per se without the plant body and the animal body; indeed, it is the complete body, plant or animal, that exists and acts per se. Material souls are incomplete, nonsubsistent substances.
4. The human soul is subsistent, yet, while it is a complete soul, it is not a complete human being. The complete human being is a compound of body and soul. Plato mistakenly thought that the soul is the complete man, and that the body is a kind of container or prison. But this is not true. Man is a single compound substance made of body and soul; the soul can exist and perform its proper operations even if severed from the body.
5. Therefore the human soul is a spiritual substance. It is an element of the human compound, but in itself it has no compounding or composition; there is no matter or material in it. It is a substantial spiritual form. It is a spirit.
6. The substantial and subsistent form cannot decay, break up, or cease to exist. For it has no material elements or parts to fall away; it has no intrinsic dependence on matter for existence and operation. Hence it is an incorruptible substance; it cannot perish or die.
7. The human soul is not of the same species (that is, definite and complete kind of essence) as the angels. Indeed, we have seen that each angel is a species in itself; angels are only of generic sameness. But a human soul is like an angel in the fact that it is a spiritual substance, and it is unlike an angel in the fact that it is a spiritual substance designed to be united with a body. Again, all human souls are of the same species, whereas each angel is itself the only member of its species.
76. Union of Soul and Body in Man
1. The spiritual soul of a human being is the substantial form of the living man. It is this spiritual soul which, substantially joined with matter, sets up and constitutes an existing human being. Man's soul is not in his body as a hand is in a glove or as a rower is in a boat; it is not united with the body as an organist is united with the musical instrument in producing harmonies. All these examples are instances of accidental union. And the human soul is joined with its body in substantial union; with its body it constitutes one substance, the human substance.
2. Each human being has his own soul. Some ancient teachers mistakenly believed that there is one universal soul for all men, a general soul. There are as many human souls as there are individual human beings.
3. Each human being has his own soul and it constitutes him as an existing living substance of the human kind. And each man has only one soul. Although man has the three grades of life-vegetal, sentient or animal, and human-he is only one being, one substance. The human soul is, in itself or as such, a spiritual soul; this spiritual soul, inasmuch as, in the body, it can be the root-principle of bodily functions, is equivalently vegetal and sentient. We say, in technical words, the human soul is formally spiritual, and virtually vegetal and sentient.
4. The spiritual and intellectual soul of a man is his only substantial form. For a man is one substance; he is constituted as one substance of the human kind by one substantial form. But the human kind is the intellectual kind, not merely a plant or an animal. Hence a man is constituted in his kind by an intellectual or spiritual principle, and this is his one spiritual soul, his one substantial form.
5. The human soul does not receive its knowledge with its nature when it is created, as is the case with angels. It must acquire its knowledge. And it gains its knowledge through the ministering office of bodily senses. From sense-findings the soul arises, by use of its power or faculty of mind, understanding, intellect, to supra-sensible knowledge-to ideas, judgments, discursive thought.
6. The primal matter with which the human soul is joined as substantial form is not a specially prepared or "disposed" matter, with special or superior qualities. For primal matter is not of various kinds; primal matter has no qualities and can have none; primal matter does not even exist until existence is given it by substantial form.
7. A substantial form is united with primal matter to constitute an existing body. There is no medium, no connecting link, for this union of substantial form and primal matter. It is an immediate union. Therefore, the human soul (which is the substantial form of the living human body) is joined substantially and immediately with the body.
8. The substantial form of a body, living or lifeless, is in the body it constitutes, but not circumscriptively, not dimensionally, not part here and part there. The substantial form which makes a block of marble the kind of thing it is, is found in the block and in every part of the block. The whole block of marble is marble; so is any piece you break off from the block; and the unbroken block is marble in every part. And in a plant, one life is present throughout the living substance, in root and stem, in branch and twig, in flower and fruit; the life-principle or substantial form of the plant makes it this plant throughout. Now, a perfection found in lesser substantial forms is certainly not lacking in greater ones. What is true of bodies as such and of living bodies less than man, is true of man. Man's substantial form is whole in his living body and whole in every part of that unbroken living body. But the soul does not perform the same operations in every part of the body; there are different bodily parts or organs for different bodily operations. Hence we say: the human soul is present in its entirety of essence in the body and in every part of the body; but it is not thus wholly present in every part as to specific operations. The soul is primarily related to the body; it is secondarily related to the various parts of the body considered severally.
77. Faculties of the Human Soul: In General
1. A faculty is the power of a living substance to exercise a specific life-operation. The faculties or powers of the human soul are not one with its substance. These faculties are powers which the soul has; they are not what the soul is. Only in God is power identified with substance.
2. There are various faculties of the human soul, for there are various life-operations in a man. Since man is composed of matter and spirit, powers material and powers spiritual meet in his soul, his substantial form.
3. The various human faculties are distinguished one from another by their respective operations and by the objects which these operations work on or seek to achieve. Thus, for instance, sight and hearing are not one faculty, but two distinct faculties, because they operate differently, and because sight is for perceiving color while hearing is for perceiving sound. However, accidental differences of operations do not require distinct faculties to explain them. Thus the power to walk, the power to run, the power to shuffle, the power to dance, and the power to kick, are not distinct faculties; they are only accidental variations of the one power of locomotion, that is, the power or faculty of moving from place to place.
4. The human faculties are not a haphazard collection of powers, unrelated and unco-ordinated. There is order in them and among them. In man, for example, the plant or vegetal operations serve the sentient operations, and these, in turn, serve the intellectual operations. The vegetal power of nutrition enables a man to exercise his senses, and from sense-findings the intellect gains concepts, and so the will is won to choose. Thus there is order and arrangement in and among the human faculties.
5. The subject of a faculty is the precise reality that exercises it. A man himself is the subject of all his faculties, but his human nature as such is not the immediate subject of them all. The soul is the subject of the intellective faculties of understanding and willing. Further, the soul-body compound is the subject of all other human faculties. The body alone is not the subject of any human faculty, for the body alone lacks life and all vital operation.
6. All the human vital operations, whether their subject is body-and-soul or soul alone, are rooted in the soul as in their basic principle.
7. Some human faculties operate through the medium of other faculties. It is, for example, through the operation of sense-faculties that the intellect operates to form its ideas or concepts.
8. When the soul is separated from the body by death, its own faculties remain in it. It is still formally an intellective operator; it still exercises intellect and will. But the soul is only virtually vegetal and sentient, and, when it is severed from the body, it has no need or ability actually to exercise the operations of vegetal and sensitive life.
78. Faculties of the Human Soul: In Particular
1. A plant takes food and is nourished; it tends to grow to maturity, and to reproduce its kind. Thus the plant faculties are the nutritive faculty, the augmenting or growing faculty, and the generative faculty. An animal has all the plant faculties; in addition, it has the faculty or power of sensing (that is, knowing by the use of senses), the power of tending to go after what the senses grasp as good or desirable (and away from what the senses grasp as harmful), and the power of moving in accordance with that tendency. Thus an animal has, in addition to the vegetal powers or faculties, the faculties of sensing, appetizing, moving locally. Man has all the vegetal and the sentient (or animal) faculties; in addition, he has the specifically rational faculties of understanding and choosing in the light of understanding; that is, he has the faculties of intellect (or mind, or understanding) and will.
2. It is manifest that the vegetal functions or operations are three; for plants (and all living bodies inasmuch as they have vegetal life) tend to take food, grow to maturity, and reproduce their kind.
3. The sensitive faculties are the exterior and interior senses. The exterior senses have their organs, that is, the special body-parts that serve their operation, in the outer body. These exterior senses are five: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and feeling or touch. Sight is the noblest of these sense faculties, and hearing is next to it in excellence; these two senses are often called the superior senses. The other three, or inferior, senses are more sheerly material in their operation than sight and hearing.
4. In addition to the exterior senses, there are four interior senses: consciousness (often called the central sense, or the common sense), imagination, instinct (or the estimative sense), and memory.
79. The Intellective Human Faculties
1. The intellective faculties of man are powers of the soul. They are the intellect and its appetency called the will.
2. The intellect (or mind, or understanding) is, first of all, a passive power; that is, it receives its knowledge and does not make it up. But the intellect is not passive in a lifeless fashion as marble is passive under the chisel of the sculptor. It does not act to make knowledge, but it re-acts to the impression of knowledge. It receives knowledge and expresses it within itself in its own way.
3. Now, in this life all human knowledge begins with the senses. Man's intellect must therefore receive knowledge from the senses. But the sense order is the order of material and singular reality, whereas the intellect is a spiritual power to grasp things in universal. Hence there must be a power, belonging to the order of intellective faculties, which prepares sense-finding for the intellect proper; there must be an intellectual agency which renders sense-findings intelligible. This is the special intellectual faculty called the intellectus agens or active intellect. Therefore, man has these intellectual or intellective faculties: the active intellect, the intellect proper or passive intellect (called intellectus possibilis), and the will.
4. The active intellect is a faculty of the soul. It belongs to the intellective order, not the sentient order.
5. It is not true (as some have taught) that there is only one active intellect for all men, which renders things intelligible for everyone even as one sun renders things visible for everyone. The active intellect is a faculty of each soul.
6. The intellect proper, the intellectus possibilis, is the intellect which actually understands. Now, it retains what it understands, and in this function it is called the intellectual memory. Hence memory (in the intellective order) is not a faculty distinct from intellect; it is the intellect in a definite service or function. The recalling of things experienced in the past is rather the work of the sense-memory (one of the interior senses) than of the intellect.
7. Therefore the intellective memory is an act or operation of the intellect, and not a special faculty. It belongs to understanding to retain as well as to receive.
8. And the intellect often grasps or understands by a connected series of points or steps. It can think things out. In this operation the intellect (that is, the knowing intellect, the passive intellect) is called reason. The work of reasoning, of moving in connected steps of thought to reach a conclusion, is called discursive thought. The human reason is not, therefore, a special faculty; it is the act or operation of the faculty called intellect. {-Sometimes the term reason is used to signify man's rational nature, including both intellect and will. Thus we speak of a person's "coming to the use of reason," and of keeping the passions "subject to reason."-}
9. St. Augustine draws a distinction between the higher reason which contemplates eternal truths, and the lower reason which thinks on temporal things. This is an accidental distinction of reason, not a multiplication of faculties. Reason itself is not a faculty really distinct from intellect; hence no types or varieties of reason can be distinct faculties.
10. In its actual operation of knowing, of understanding, of pronouncing true judgment, the intellect is called intelligence. Whether the judgment expresses a self-evident truth, or a truth known by immediate inference, or a truth reasoned out by discursive thinking, the very act of judging is called an act of intelligence. Hence intelligence is not a faculty distinct from intellect; it is intellect in a precise operation or action.
11. The intellect is called speculative inasmuch as it knows what is so; it is called practical inasmuch as is it knows what to do. Hence the speculative intellect and the practical intellect are not two faculties, but two functions of one faculty.
12. By his rational nature (that is, by his human essence equipped with understanding and will), a person comes early in life into possession of certain items of knowledge that enlighten and guide him in thinking and acting. These items of knowledge amount to first truths and first laws; we call them first principles. (a) First intellectual principles are: a person's direct awareness that he exists; that he can think straight; that what he thinks about cannot be what it is and, at the same time, something else. (b) First moral principles, or will-principles (that is, laws of conduct), are drawn from the direct awareness that there is such a thing as right and good, such a thing as wrong and evil, such a thing as obligation or duty. And thus first moral principles are, "Do good," "Avoid evil." And, since the knowledge of good and evil is not wholly abstract, it involves certain manifest objective instances of what is good and what is bad. This fundamental moral equipment of a human being, achieved as a person emerges from infancy to an age of responsible conduct, is called synderesis. Now, first principles, intellectual or moral, are habits, that is, enduring qualities, of intellect and will. Knowledge of first truths (that is, intellectual principles) is an intellectual habit; so is synderesis in so far as it is knowledge; synderesis in so far as it is a habitual guide and influence upon the will is a moral habit.
13. When a person reaches a reasoned conclusion about his own duty, the conclusion is a practical judgment. This judgment is called conscience. Hence conscience is not a special faculty; it is an act of the faculty of intellect as reason. Sometimes people confuse conscience with synderesis, and call synderesis itself by the name conscience. This is an inaccurate use of terms. Synderesis is a habit; conscience is an act; neither is a faculty. Reason draws upon synderesis in forming the conscience-judgment.
80. The Appetitive Human Faculties
1. Everything has an inclination towards what accords with its nature; this inclination or tendency is called appetency or appetite. Things that lack knowledge have natural appetency only; this is exampled in the tendency of a plant to grow, of a body to cohere, of a stone to fall to the ground. Living bodies that have knowledge (animals and men) have, in addition to natural appetency, tendencies that are roused in them by their knowing, by their cognition; these are cognitional appetites. Cognitional appetency is of two orders: the order of sense, and the order of intellect. Sentient or sensitive appetency inclines animal or man towards what is sensed as good or desirable, and away from what is sensed as evil or harmful. Intellectual appetency inclines intelligent creatures (angels and men) towards what is intellectually understood as good, and away from what is understood as evil. The intellectual appetency or appetite is called the will.
2. The will is a faculty distinct from the sentient appetite, for it belongs to the intellective order, not the sensitive order. These two appetites sometimes conflict, as, for example, when a Catholic has hunger (i.e., sentient appetite) for meat on Friday, but wills not to eat it.
81. The Sensitive Appetite in Man
1. No appetite is a knowing power, but cognitional appetite is aroused by knowing. Knowledge lays hold of its object; appetite only tends to its object. Hence knowing is sometimes called rest, and appetizing is called movement.
2. Sentient or sensitive appetency is of two kinds. A concupiscible appetite is a simple tendency towards what is sensed as good and away from what is sensed as evil. An irascible appetite is a tendency to overcome difficulty or hindrance in attaining good and avoiding evil. Thus sentient desire is a concupiscible appetite; courage or daring is an irascible appetite. These two types of appetite or appetency in the sense-order are species of one genus. They cannot be reduced to one specific kind, for irascible appetency tends to grapple with difficulties from which concupiscible appetite tends away.
3. Reason, that is, the thinking mind, can exercise a controlling influence upon the sentient appetency; by thinking, a person can stir up desire or courage; by fixing the mind on pacific things, a man can allay anger. The will controls the lower appetites by directing the mind's attention to objects other than those to which the appetites tend. Reason and will (and these two faculties together are most frequently called by the simple name of reason) have no absolute or despotic control over the lower appetites; they exercise a politic and persuasive influence.
82. The Intellective Appetite in Man: The Will
1. The will is the intellective or rational appetency. The will tends of necessity to the end for which it is made; it tends towards what is intellectually grasped as desirable or good and towards its own happiness or repose in the possession of good. The will is necessitated in its tendency towards good in general, good in its common aspects. But the will is not necessitated with respect to particular things presented by the intellect as desirable.
2. The will, therefore, is not necessitated in its particular acts. Many of the things towards which the will tends have not a desirability of their own, but are understood as things by which good may be obtained. That is, many things are willed as means to the good desired, not as the good itself which is the end. Now, just as a person who is forced to seek a certain city but is free to choose the roads by which he hopes to reach it, so the will is necessitated and not free in its quest of the good, but is free to choose, wisely or unwisely, in the light of intellect, what particular means it shall use in its quest of the goal.
3. The intellect is, in itself, a more excellent faculty than the will; for the intellect attains its object by knowing it, and the will only tends toward its object. But, under certain aspects, the will is superior to the intellect. For when a good is greater or nobler than the soul itself, it is better to will it (that is, love it) than merely to know it; thus it is a better thing to love God than simply to know God. But when a good is less noble than the soul, intellect, with respect to this good, is superior to the will; thus to know material things is better than to love them.
4. The intellect moves the will by showing it what is attractive; thus intellect moves will in the manner of a final cause. The will, in turn, moves the intellect in the manner of an active or agent cause, an effecting cause. For the will can apply the intellect to the study of this object or that; it can turn away the attention of the intellect from one thing and fix it on another. The will also exercises an active control over other natural faculties of a man, but it has no control over the vegetal powers in themselves.
5. The will is an appetency or appetite. But it has no departments of concupiscible and irascible tendencies. These belong to the sentient order, and the will belongs to the intellective order. The sentient appetites are in the body-and-soul compound; the will belongs to the soul.
83. Free Will
1. The will is free with the freedom of choice of means. If a man's will were not free, all counsels, exhortations, commands, rewards, and punishments would be meaningless things. Man does not always act from necessity. He weighs and considers a course of action; he seeks advice; he judges that this way is to be followed, then perhaps changes his judgment and decides on that way. Nor does a man act with the mere sense-judgment of an animal, an instinctive judgment; he works on understandable motives. Man acts with the unhampered judgment of an intellect which shows various courses open for choice and makes practical and nonnecessitated decision. In a word man has free will. In the fact that man is rational is involved the fact that he has free will.
2. The term free will, strictly understood, means the act of the will making a free choice. But the term free will is commonly used as a synonym for the will itself. And thus free will is the will in its character as a faculty for tending to or choosing, without being necessitated, goods upon which the intellect is capable of making various practical judgments.
3. Free will is an appetitive power, not a knowing power. It operates in the light of knowledge furnished by the intellect. Knowledge is, of course, necessary for the act of free will; choice cannot be made without knowledge of the field of choice. A traveler cannot choose a road in total darkness which prevents his seeing any roads at all. But the characteristic act of free will is the act of choosing, and therefore it is a faculty of the appetitive order, and not of the cognitional or knowing order.
4. Free will as an act is the will exercising its connatural tendency towards good and resultant beatitude by choosing, without being forced, some particular object apprehended by the intellect as good or desirable.
84. Man's Knowledge of Bodily Reality
1. Man's spiritual soul is the life-principle and the substantial form of the human living being. It is the root-principle of all vital activities in man. Its own proper faculties are the intellect and the will. But the soul is the substantial form of a body, and even its spiritual faculty of intellect must attain knowledge through the body and its senses. Therefore, in this present life, the proper object of the human intellect is the essence of material things which the senses lay hold of. The process by which the intellect gets its knowledge may be thus illustrated: A boy looks at five pictures of a triangle, drawn in different colors and in various sizes. The sense of sight takes in the pictures; the inner sense of imagination or phantasy expresses within itself these sight-images, and they are now called phantasms. The active intellect (the intellectus agens) focuses on the phantasms and, disregarding differences of size and color and location of the pictures themselves, reveals what it is that they represent; this action of the active intellect is called abstraction. By abstraction, then, the active intellect, throwing its light on phantasms, de-materializes them, de-individualizes them, and renders them intelligible. It does not matter, therefore, that there are five or fifty pictures of triangle, or that they are drawn here or drawn there, that they are in this color or that; by its operation of abstraction, the active intellect disregards all these individualizing things and thus shows up the essence of triangle itself, triangle as such. This abstracted essence is called the intelligible species (that is, the understandable essence) of triangle. Thus sense-findings are prepared for the grasp of the spiritual power of the intellect proper (the intellectus possibilis). The active intellect impresses the abstracted essence or species upon the intellect proper, and the intellect proper reacts to the impression by expressing the essence within itself as a concept or idea. The intellect now knows in idea what triangle is; it knows in universal, for it can now define triangle as such, and not merely this or that individual triangle. Thus does man rise from the individual findings of the senses to intellectual concepts and ideas which represent things in universal, or by definition of essence.
2. The intellect of man does not know things by its own essence, but must acquire its natural knowledge by its operation as just explained. Only God knows things by his own essence.
3. Nor has the human soul any knowledge born in it, or imparted to it with its nature as is the case with angels. All man's natural intellectual knowledge begins with the action of the senses. From sense-findings, intellectual knowledge is derived by abstraction. And the intellect may rise from concepts or ideas, by a further abstraction, to higher concepts or ideas. But no ideas are naturally inborn in man; there are no innate ideas. All man's natural knowledge is acquired.
4. And, as we have seen, all ideas are, in last analysis, acquired by abstraction from phantasms, that is, imagination-images of sense-findings. Even ideas acquired from other ideas have to be traced back to the action of senses to start with. No ideas are impressed on man's mind from outside by "forms" that subsist, as Plato taught. No other process than that described above accounts for man's natural intellectual knowledge.
5. Man's intellect may be described as a kind of light given man by the Creator, a sort of participation of the divine understanding. Therefore it may be said that the human intellect has, in its imperfect creatural way, ideas that are in God eternally as archetypes and exemplars.
6. Sense-knowledge supplies what may be called the material from which the active intellect draws out or abstracts understandable forms. Hence, by metaphor, sense-knowledge may be called the material cause of intellectual knowledge.
7. Just as the intellect acquires ideas from phantasms, so it turns to phantasms when it uses knowledge already acquired. We know that this is so, for sometimes a bodily injury or disease may prevent a man from understanding what he previously understood. And when we wish to think a thing out, we use examples to help ourselves understand, and such examples are phantasms; we also explain things to others by use of examples. While the intellect is a spiritual power and understands in universal, it is never, in this earthly life, wholly divorced from material things and individual sense-grasp. The intellect of bodily man acquires knowledge through phantasms, and uses acquired knowledge by recurring to phantasms.
8. Therefore when the senses are impaired, the judgment of the mind or intellect is hampered. This does not mean that the intellect depends essentially on the senses, but that, in this earthly life, there is an extrinsic dependence of intellect on sense.
85. The Manner or Mode of Man's Understanding
1. In this life, the human intellect rises from sense-findings to concepts. The human intellect is contrasted in this operation with the angelic intellect which descends from the knowledge of nonmaterial things to the knowledge of material things.
2. Man's intellect, by its concepts, knows reality. The ideas are that by which reality is known; they are not that which is known. For the intellect is not directly aware of its own ideas, but of what the ideas represent. The intellect, however, by reflecting upon itself, can become aware of its concepts as such, and aware of the way in which these concepts are formed. But by its direct operation the intellect knows things, not its own knowing of things.
3. Even though intellectual knowledge in man is acquired from individual and material phantasms, it is at first general and indefinite and afterwards more special and distinct. So at first a child might call all men father, but later learn to specify one.
4. The intellect cannot understand many things at one time except in so far as they are included in one concept or intelligible species. Our knowledge may include many things, but we understand and think of the items of knowledge one at a time. As the eye cannot see more than one view at a time, but can behold the many visible things that belong to that view, so the intellect cannot think of more than is contained in the one concept on which its attention is fixed, but it can understand many things that belong to that concept.
5. Intellect compares ideas, pronouncing upon them by affirming or denying their agreement as subject and predicate. In making an affirmative judgment, such as "A plant is a living body," the intellect puts together or composes subject-idea and predicate-idea. In making a negative judgment, such as "A plant is not a sentient body," the intellect divides subject-idea and predicate-idea by its denial. Thus the intellect knows things by composing and dividing. And the intellect proceeds from judgments to further judgments by reasoning or discursive thinking. The elements of intellectual knowledge in man are ideas or concepts which are formed upon sense-findings. The actual items of human intellectual knowledge are judgments, whether these be made directly by composing and dividing, or arrived at by inference from other judgments, that is, by reasoning.
6. The intellect cannot be false in itself. Error in intellectual knowledge comes from something accidental to the intellect, not from the intellect itself. For example, error may come from careless use of the intellect.
7. One human intellect cannot understand a thing more than another, but one intellect can understand better than another. Just so, two men, one with clear eyesight and the other with imperfect vision, look upon the same scene; one does not see more actually than the other sees, but one sees better or more clearly than the other.
8. Confused knowledge regularly precedes distinct knowledge. We know things first in a general way, and later in a more detailed and distinct way. We first know a thing as undivided before we advert to its divisions; we know a whole object before we have knowledge of its various parts and their relation to one another.
86. What the Intellect Knows in Material Things
1. In this fife in which man's soul and body are substantially united, the object of the human intellect is the essences of material things. The intellect knows such essences in universal by acquiring ideas or concepts in the manner already described. By a second act which is a kind of reflex act or reflection, the intellect knows material things in individual. The intellect inquires, in this bodily world, "What kind of thing is that?" When it knows the kind or essence, it can advert to the individual things and say, "Yes, these are things of that kind." Primarily and directly, the intellect knows universals; secondarily and reflexly, the intellect knows singulars, that is, individual material things.
2. The human intellect is a created and finite power. Therefore it cannot perfectly know the infinite. The intellect can know potential infinity, which means unlimited possibility. The intellect itself has potential infinity inasmuch as it is never filled up, but can always know something more. But the intellect cannot know perfectly actual infinity.
3. Contingent things (that is, changeable things; things that have not in themselves a necessity for existing) are the direct object of sense-knowledge. The intellect, by its secondary and reflex act, can know singulars; hence the intellect can know contingent things. The intellect also knows the necessary and universal principles that are back of contingent things, such, for instance, as the truth that movement always requires a mover.
4. The human intellect cannot know the future except in cause. To know a thing in cause is to foresee the effects which will come from existing and necessitating causes. Thus astronomers know, even centuries before the event, the exact time at which an eclipse of the sun is to occur. To know the future, not merely in cause, but in itself, is beyond creatural power; such knowledge belongs to God alone. The human intellect has an abundance of conjectural knowledge of the future; such knowledge is a reasonable guess or supposition; it is usually founded upon experience of what has happened in the past.
87. Man's Knowledge of Himself
1. The more a thing is freed from the limitations of matter, the more knowable it is. And the more independent a knowing-power is, in its being and its operation, from the hamperings of matter, the more perfect a knowing-power it is. Therefore we say, "Nonmateriality is the root of knowledge and of knowing." Since God is infinite spirit, he is wholly nonmaterial; therefore God is supremely knowable, and supremely knowing. God knows himself by his essence, by being God. The angels are spirits, unhampered by matter; they know themselves in their essence, for God gives them knowledge as he creates them and gives them their essence. Man's intellect knows itself, not by or in its essence, but by its operation. The mind directly knows essences abstracted from phantasms (that is, it knows the essences of material things), and, by reflection, the mind can know that it knows; it can know itself by knowing. Of intellectual beings, God knows perfectly; angels less perfectly; man least perfectly.
2. Habits, in the intellectual order, are: (a) truths acquired, retained, and ready for use in our reasoning; and (b) the practiced facility to acquire knowledge by using these acquired and permanently retained truths as mental equipment. Our grasp of first principles (see above, 79, art. 12), whether intellectual or moral, is a habit; the intellectual first principles constitute a habit fundamental to our thinking; the moral first principles make a habit basic to all our responsible conduct. The mind or intellect is not directly aware of habits as such; it knows them by reflection.
3. The intellect, exercising its connatural operation of knowing the essences of material things, knows these essences in its own way, that is, in universal. And, as we have noted, the intellect can reflect, or turn its attention back upon itself; thus it can know things in singular, thus also it can know itself as operating, and can know its operation.
4. And the intellect can know the will. Knowing itself and its operations it knows the tendency of man to follow knowledge, to tend after what knowledge presents as desirable. Thus intellect knows will.
88. Man's Knowledge of Nonmaterial Things
1. Since the proper object of intellect, in the present earthly life of man, is the essences of material things, the intellect understands by using phantasms, that is, sense-images of material things presented in imagination. Now, there are no phantasms of nonmaterial things. Therefore, in this life, the human intellect cannot know nonmaterial things directly or per se. It cannot know, for example, what nonmaterial substances, such as angels, are in themselves.
2. We know material things by turning the light of the agent intellect on phantasms; this is a sort of intellectual X-ray which penetrates what is individual in the phantasms and shows up their essence. We call this process abstraction. We say that the intellect abstracts its ideas from phantasms. This is a kind of process of de-materializing and de-individualizing material things. And we can continue this process, refining more and more, drawing ideas from ideas, and reaching more and more abstract ideas. But we can never attain by such a process to the perfect idea of spiritual substance as such. Spirit is an essence altogether different from matter; hence no process of de-materializing can reveal spirit as it is in itself.
3. We cannot, therefore, have a perfect knowledge of infinite spirit. By reasoning we can know God's existence, and many of the divine attributes. But to know God directly in his spiritual essence is something we cannot have this side of heaven with its light of glory. Therefore, here on earth and exercising natural powers, man cannot know God directly in himself, but indirectly by reasoning back to the First Cause of creatures. Therefore those teachers are much mistaken who hold that the first thing known by the human intellect is God.
89. Knowledge in the Separated Human Soul
1. When the soul is separated from the body by death, it does not lose its faculties of intellect and will; nor does it lose its knowledge. But the intellect cannot, as it must in this life, turn to phantasms in using its acquired knowledge. For phantasms are sense-images, and the separated soul has no senses. Therefore, in the state of separation, there is a change of mode or manner in the operation of intellect.
2. The separated soul grasps things that are in themselves understandable by a direct grasp. For the soul, being separated from matter, is the more perfectly knowing and knowable; "nonmateriality is the root of knowing and of knowledge." Thus the soul knows other souls perfectly, and knows angels less perfectly.
3. The separated soul is suffused with light from God which gives it the intelligible species of things knowable, and thus it knows natural things. Angelic knowledge is more perfect than this knowledge of the separated soul, for angels are naturally constituted for knowing without using phantasms, and the separated soul is not naturally so constituted.
4. The separated soul knows individual things by its retained knowledge, habits and affections, under the divinely imparted light which both supplies intelligible species and compensates for the lack of phantasms which the intellect naturally requires for its operation. A soul with no retained knowledge, such as the soul of an infant, has all its knowledge by divine ordinance and divine light. The separated soul does not know all individual things; it knows to the extent established by the divine order.
5. The habit of knowledge, such as the grasp of first principles, remains in the separated soul. Sentient knowing habits, of course, are not there, for the senses are not there. The soul cannot forget any longer, nor can it now be deceived by fallacious reasoning.
6. Thus the mode of intellectual operation in a separated soul is one in harmony with a spiritual being; it depends upon the help of God through the ministration of supernal light.
7. Distance from the object known cannot hinder knowledge in the separated soul, for it knows through species imparted or preserved by divinely bestowed light in which local distance makes no difference at all.
8. Separated souls are naturally ignorant of what takes place on earth. But it is likely that the souls of the blessed in heaven are aware of what goes on among people on earth. Angels have this knowledge, and the souls enjoying the beatific vision are on a par with angels.
90. The First Production of Man's Soul
1. The human soul is not an outpouring or sharing of the substance of God. God is pure actuality and absolute simplicity. His substance, therefore, cannot be divided or parceled out. The human soul is not a thing eternally existing in God's being. It is a creature. It is a thing made.
2. The soul is made by God's creative act. It is created; it is made out of nothing. It is a spirit, having in itself no material element nor any essential dependence upon what is material. Now, such a spiritual being can have no possible origin but by the direct creative act of God.
3. Since creation is an act proper to God alone, in which no creature can serve as a medium (such as an instrumental cause or a ministering cause), the soul must be created immediately by almighty God.
4. The human soul is not created and held in readiness for union with its body. For every soul is the soul of one definite human being, and not just a soul, suitable for any one of a number of bodies. The soul bears a definite real relation to its own body, that is, the body which it is to constitute as the living body of one individual human being. There is no pre-existence of human souls. Soul and body together make one substantial thing, one essence and nature; the soul begins to exist when this one nature begins to exist. Therefore, the human soul is not produced before the body.
91. The Production of the First Human Body
1. Holy Scripture (Gen. 2:7) says: "God made man of the slime of the earth." Earth and water mingled make slime. Thus the first human body has elements that belong to lifeless things, and also to plants and animals. And man's soul is a spirit, like the angels. Hence man is called "a world in little," a microcosm, for he has in himself something of all creatures in the universe: mineral, vegetal, animal, spiritual.
2. The first human body was produced by creation. {-The slime of the earth was not really material for making a human being, and did not become human until the soul was joined to it. The human body did not exist as the human body until God's creative act produced and infused the spiritual soul.-} Creation is an act which precludes any medium; hence the first human body was created immediately by almighty God.
3. Man's body is admirably suited for its connatural operations. God gives to every nature the best constitution and equipment for the purpose it is to serve. This is not absolutely the best, but relatively the best-that is, best in relation to its purpose and use.
4. Scripture fittingly describes the production of man, and indicates that other earthly creatures are made for man's use and benefit.
92. The Production of Woman
1. Woman is necessary to man for purposes of generation according to God's plan for the propagation of the human race. When the first man had been created, God said (Gen. 2:18): "It is not good for man to be alone; let us make him a helper like to himself."
2. It is entirely fitting that woman should be made from man. This fact shows the likeness of man to God; for as one God is the principle of the whole universe, so one man is the principle of the whole human race. Further, the fact that woman is derived from man should make a man love his wife and cherish her as "bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." Again, this fact indicates the order of domestic life, with man as the natural head of the household. Finally, the origin of woman from man has a holy allegorical meaning, and foreshadows the origin of the Church from Christ.
3. The first woman was formed from a rib of the first man: "God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman" (Gen. 2:22). Woman was suitably taken from man's side, to indicate social equality and companionship; she was not taken from man's head to rule him, nor from his feet to be his slave.
4. Only God can produce a man from the slime of the earth and a woman from the rib of a man. Therefore the woman, as well as the man, was formed immediately by almighty God.
93. Man as the Image of God
1. Scripture (Gen. 1:26) tells us that God said, "Let us make man to our own image and likeness." An image is a kind of copy of its prototype. Unless the image is in every way perfect, it is not the equal of its prototype. Finite man cannot be a perfect image of the infinite God. Man is an imperfect image of God. This means that man is made to resemble God in some manner.
2. The image of God in man makes him superior to other earthly creatures. St. Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. vi 12), "Man's excellence consists in the fact that God made him to His own image by giving him an intellectual soul which raises him above the beasts of the field." It is true that all creatures have a likeness to God, some by the fact that they exist, some by the further fact that they live, some by the still further fact that they have knowledge. But only intellectual creatures (angels and men) have a close likeness to God; only such creatures have the spiritual operations of understanding and willing. Of earthly creatures, man has a true likeness to God; other creatures have a trace or vestige of God rather than an image.
3. The angels are pure spirits, that is, they are unmingled with matter, and they are not intended for substantial union with matter. Therefore they are more perfect in their intellectual nature than man is, and, in consequence, they bear a more perfect image of God than man does. In some respects, however, man is more like to God than angels are. For man proceeds from man, as God (in the mysterious proceeding of the divine Persons) proceeds from God; whereas angels do not proceed from angels. And again, man's soul is entirely in the whole body and entirely in every part of the body; thus it images the mode of God's presence in the universe.
4. The image of God is in every individual human being. It shows in this: that God perfectly knows and loves himself, and the individual human being has a natural aptitude for knowing and loving God. Man, by grace, can love God on earth, although imperfectly; in heaven, by grace and glory, man can love God perfectly. Hence the image of God is in the individual man. {-It is important to ponder the fact here presented in a day when more and more importance and value is ascribed to society as such.-}
5. The divine image in man reflects God in Unity and also in Trinity. In creating man, God said (Gen. 1:26): "Let us make man to our own image and likeness."
6. The image of God in Trinity appears in man's intellect and will and their interaction. In God, the Father begets the Word; the Father and the Word spirate the Holy Ghost. In man, the intellect begets the word or concept; the intellect with its word wins the recognition or love of the will.
7. Thus the image of the Trinity is found in the acts of the soul. In a secondary way, this image is found in the faculties of the soul, and in the habits which render the faculties apt and facile in operation.
8. The image of God is in the soul, not because the soul can know and love, but because it can know and love God. And the divine image is found in the soul because the soul turns to God, or, at any rate, has a nature that enables it to turn to God.
9. Man is created to the image and likeness of God. The image of God is discerned in the acts and faculties and habits of the soul. The likeness of God is either a quality of this image, or it is the state of the soul as spiritual, not subject to decay or dissolution.
94. The Intellect of the First Man
1. The first man in the state of innocence had a perfect human intellect. It was unclouded and unhampered by any disorder in the lower faculties. Yet this perfect intellect did not enable the first man to see God in his essence. Had the first man seen God so, he would have instantly adhered changelessly to the divine will, and could never have sinned. The first man's knowledge of God was vastly superior to our own, both because of his unimpaired natural faculties, and because of God's gifts and graces. Yet this splendid knowledge was not the knowledge of vision.
2. Nor could the first man directly and perfectly understand the essence of angels. For man, even in the perfection of his sinless nature, was still man; his intellect operated by turning to phantasms (sense-images in imagination). But angels cannot be perceived by means of sense-images. Angels cannot be perfectly known, as they are in themselves, by the human intellect even in its state of pristine perfection.
3. Man was created in the state of natural perfection; he was supplied with all knowledge necessary for the proper conduct of his life, for the instructing and ruling of offspring. The first man was supplied divinely with knowledge of all things that man has an aptitude to know. Further, since man is made for a supernatural end, the first man was endowed with supernatural faith, and with knowledge of supernatural truths necessary for the supernatural direction of his life and his efforts. But the first man was not given knowledge of things needless to know, which he could not know naturally, such as the secret thoughts of others, or knowledge of events to occur contingently in future time.
4. The good of the intellect is truth; its evil is falsity. The perfect human intellect of the first man had no tendency whatever to admit its evil. Hence the first man, so long as he retained the state of innocence, could not be deceived. He might lack knowledge of particular truths that he had no need to know, but he could not possibly accept a false statement as true. When Eve was deceived by the serpent, she must have already sinned inwardly by pride, and so lost the first innocence which is immune to deception.
95. The Will of the First Man
1. Man was created in grace. The subjection of his reason to God, and of his lower appetites to his reason, were gifts of grace, not merely natural perfections.
2. The lower appetites of man are the tendencies of his bodily nature. Now, that which experiences appetency or tendency undergoes something. The Latin word for an undergoing is passio. Hence the experience, the kick-back, of sentient appetites (concupiscible and irascible) is called passion. We distinguish the passions, according to the appetites which they follow upon, as concupiscible and irascible passions. And, although the passions belong to the sentient order, we call them the passions of the soul because they exercise an influence which rises into the intellective order and affects the faculties of the soul, especially the will. The passions of the soul are: (a) the concupiscible passions: love-hatred, desire-aversion, joy-grief; (b) the irascible passions: hope-despair, courage-fear, anger. Our first parents, in the state of innocence, were not subject to the passions that have reference to evil, for they had to face no evil, present or threatening; hence they were not subject to fear, grief, despair, anger, or inordinate desire. They had only such passions as refer to present and future good: joy, love, hope, orderly desire. And these passions of our first parents were, before the fall, perfectly subject to their reason, that is, to their intellectually enlightened will.
3. Virtues are habits (that is, stable qualities) which steadily dispose the soul to act in accordance with reason and God's law. The first man had all the virtues that suited his state, and he had the habitual aptitude for those virtues which had no place in the state of innocence, such, for instance, as the virtue of penance.
4. Considering the full and unimpeded flow of grace to the sinless soul, we find that the actions of man in the state of innocence were of greater merit than those performed after the fall. But considering the difficulty which fallen man experiences in performing good works, we may discern a greater merit in good actions performed after the fall. A small thing done with difficulty may mean more than a great thing done with ease. Our Lord said that the poor widow who gave only two small coins in charity, which were all she had, gave more than the rich people who, out of their abundance, made large contributions.
96. The Ruling Power of Man in the State of Innocence
1. The first man had absolute rule and command over the animate creatures of the earth. For God said (Gen. 1:26): "Let him [man] have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the beasts of the earth." Now dominion means lordship, mastership, even ownership. All sentient creatures obeyed innocent man and none disobeyed him. When, however, man disobeyed God, these sentient creatures were no longer subject to man's absolute control or mastership.
2. Man was created as master of all earthly creatures. And he was master of his own powers and tendencies, finding in them no rebellion against his reason, that is, against his intellectually enlightened free will.
3. Human beings are all equal as images and children of God. But, as we plainly see, there are otherwise many inequalities among human beings. They differ in sex, size, age, tastes, manners, abilities, health, strength, skills, and in countless other ways. Now, in the state of innocence there would have been some of these inequalities, but none that involved defect or fault, whether of soul or of body.
4. In the state of innocence, man could not have been master of other men in the sense of holding them in thrall or slavery. But there would still have been need of a social order; there would have been rulers and subjects. Parents, too, would have ruled and guided their children. But there would have been no harshness of rule, no injustice, no resentment in those ruled against their rulers.
97. The Preservation of Man in the State of Innocence
1. Man, in the state of innocence, was immortal; he was not to die. But immortality was a supernaturally bestowed gift; it was not merely a perfection of man's nature. And man lost this supernatural gift by his rebellion against God. It was by sin that death came into the world.
2. In view of the supernatural gift of immortality or deathlessness, man was to be free from the ravages of age, sickness, injury, breakdown, decay. To this extent, man was to be impassible, that is, not subject to suffering or harmful influence. Man could have undergone normal and nonharming experiences, such as appetite for food and the tendency to sleep. Man's impassibility was lost, with his immortality, by the original sin.
3. In the state of innocence, man needed food; God told our first parents (Gen. 2:16) to eat of the fruits of all the trees of Paradise except that of one certain tree. Food will always be a requirement of living man until the body is spiritualized at the general resurrection; then there will be no need whatever of bodily sustenance.
4. Scripture indicates that fallen man might have gained immortality again by eating of the "tree of life" (Gen. 3:22). But this would not have been an absolute immortality such as man had lost. The "tree of life" could have rejuvenated man, but it would not have given man permanent youth and unaging perfection; it would have had to be eaten again and again; it would save man from age, but age would come on anew.
98. The Preserving of the Human Race in the State of Innocence
1. The human race is preserved by propagation. When there were only two human beings, they received God's command (Gen. 1:28), "Increase and multiply and fill the earth." Hence, in the state of innocence, there would have been generation.
2. And this generation would have been accomplished as it is now accomplished, but with orderly tendency, and with full subjection to reason, without any unruly passion.
99. The Bodily LIfe of Offspring in the State of Innocence
1. There is no reason to suppose that children born in the state of innocence would have been perfectly strong and able to use their members (to walk, for instance) right from the moment of their birth. The tender weakness of infancy is not a defect of nature consequent upon sin; it is a normal and natural condition; for nature tends to develop its perfections, moving from a less perfect to a more perfect state. Children born in the state of innocence would have possessed strength and power suitable to their age, and advancing with their age.
2. Nor should we suppose, as some have done, that, in the state of innocence, there would have been no distinction of sex. Distinction of sex was present in our first parents in their innocence; it belongs to the rounded completeness of human nature; it is a requirement for the propagation of the race according to the Creator's plan; it manifests, in its order, the graded variety and perfection of the universe.
100. The Righteousness of Offspring in the State of Innocence
1. In the state of innocence, children would have been born in righteousness or grace. Just as the children of fallen first parents inherit the original sin, so the children of sinless first parents would have inherited the original righteousness.
2. But children born in the state of innocence would not have been confirmed in grace. They would have been capable of committing sin. Man is never confirmed in grace until he beholds the beatific vision.
101. The Knowledge of Offspring in the State of Innocence
1. It is in accord with human nature to acquire knowledge, not to be born with knowledge already in the mind. The fact that man, at birth, is unequipped with knowledge, is not a defect; it is a normal condition of nature. In the state of innocence, children would doubtless have had a perfect aptitude for learning without difficulty, and would have acquired knowledge readily as they advanced in age and experience. But they would not have possessed knowledge from birth.
2. And therefore children in the state of innocence would not have had the use of reason from earliest infancy. They would have come to the use of reason more readily and perfectly than do children in the fallen state of mankind.
102. Paradise
1. The name paradise means a garden. Some have thought that the Paradise in which our first parents were placed was their spiritual state, enriched as it was with supernatural graces and gifts. Others maintain that Paradise was a place. St. Augustine thinks that Paradise means both the spiritual condition and the local habitation of our first parents.
2. Paradise must have been a place perfectly suitable for man, a dwelling place in exquisite accord with his state of innocence. It is reasonable to suppose that Paradise was a place of great beauty, a bright place, temperate in climate, and with purest atmosphere.
3. Man was placed in Paradise to work therein and to keep it (Gen. 2:15). Man's labor there would have been a most pleasing activity, not burdensome nor fatiguing. This task was given to man as a blessing. It was to engage his attention, to keep him from idleness which might engender pride and sin. Laboring in Paradise, man would have been increasingly aware of its beauty and precious character; he would have been moved to love and thank God for it, and would thus have tended to continual watchfulness lest by sin he should lose so great a treasure.
4. Adam was placed in Paradise after he had been created (Gen. 2:15). But Eve was created in Paradise itself. Had these two remained faithful and innocent, their children would have been born in Paradise.