Part III: The Ladder of Being
Part III The Ladder of Being Passage 7 General Overview Source: Summa contra Gentiles, 4.11. Text from Summa contra Gentiles (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. xv).
Date: 1264, Italy, aged 39.
... Different kinds of things produce in different ways, those on a higher level producing in a more interior way.
The lowest level of all is that of non-living bodies, in which production is only possible when one body acts on another: fire produces fire when some outside body is so affected by fire that it takes on the quality and nature of fire itself.
The living things closest to these are the plants, in which there is already some interior production, turning the inner juices of the plant into seed which, committed to earth, grows into a plant. So here already we have a first level of life, since living things move themselves whilst non-living things can only move things outside themselves. In plants then there is this sign of life: that something within them moves towards some form. Nevertheless, the life of plants is not perfect, for although what they produce comes from inside, still it gradually emerges from within and ends up entirely outside. For the tree's juice as it comes out of the tree first makes a flower, then later a fruit separate from the bark of the tree though joined to it, a fruit which, when mature, separates entirely from the tree and falls to the ground, there producing by virtue of its seed another plant. And if one thinks more deeply about even that, the first beginnings of production are also outside: for the inner juices of the tree
The Ladder of Being are sucked up by the roots from the earth which nourishes the plant.
There is another level of life above that of plants: that of animals endowed with sense-awareness so that they have a form of production peculiar to themselves, starting indeed from outside but ending up inside, and getting more interior the further it progresses. For something outside that can be sensed impresses its form on the external senses, and from there goes on to the imagination, ending up stored in memory. But at each stage of this process the beginning and end differ: no sense-power reflects on itself. So this level of life is higher than that of plants to the extent that it is more interiorly contained; but it is still not altogether perfect, since the production always is from one thing to another.
So the highest, most perfect level of life is that of the intellect, for intellect can reflect upon itself and understand itself. But here too there are different levels. The human mind, even though it can come to self-awareness, must still start by knowing outside things, and they can't be understood without sense-images... More perfect then is the intellectual life of angels, in which intellects know themselves not from outside but by knowing themselves in themselves.
And yet their life isn't yet the acme of perfection, for although the idea in their mind is altogether within them it isn't what they are, since in them to exist is different from to understand... The acme of perfection in life, then, belongs to God, in whom to exist is to understand ...so that in God the idea in his mind is what God himself is.
WhenI say 'the idea in the mind' I am talking of what is conceived in the mind by the mind out of the thing it is understanding. In us this isn't the thing understood itself, nor is it our own mind's substance, but a sort of representation conceived by the mind out of the thing it understands, and which is expressed externally in speech (so that the idea itself can be thought of as an interior word expressed by our exterior word). And that in us this idea we are talking of is not indeed the thing itself is clear from the fact that understanding things is not the same'as understanding ideas, which mind does when it reflects on its own workings, and that the How Elements are Present within Compounds sciences of things differ from the science of intellectual ideas.
And that in us this idea is not the mind itself is clear from the fact that for ideas to exist is nothing more or less than to be understood, whereas for our minds existing differs from being understood. But in God existing and understanding are one and the same, so.that in him the idea in his mind is his very mind itself; and because in him understanding is the thing he understands, in understanding himself he understands everything else...so that God in understanding himself is identical with his understanding intellect and with the thing he is understanding and with the idea by which he understands...
Passage 8 How Elements are Present within Compounds Source: On Compounds of Elements (complete). Text from De Mixtione Elementorum (Leonine edn., vol, xliii).
How to read: 1 have added three short headings in bold type to pick out the stages of the discussion. The elements in question are a sort of pure fire, pure air, pure earth, and pure water; their behavioural qualities (or active and passive qualities) come in opposed (contrary) pairs, of which two pairs are primary: hot/cold, moist/dry. Pure fire is hot (+ dry), pure air moist (+ hot), pure earth dry (+ cold), and pure water cold (+ moist). Though this physics and chemistry is now antiquated, the philosophical question Thomas is asking would still have to be asked today by an Aristotelian philosophy of substance: in a compound what is the substance: only the elements, or both the elements and the compound, or only the compound?
Notes on translation: For accidens 1 have used (supervening) properties; for contraria opposed properties. Elsewhere in these translations
I sometimes anachronistically call the active and passive elemental qualities the physico-chemical properties of things.
Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, book 2.
The Ladder of Being [As independent actualities?] Often people ask how elements are present within compounds. Some think elements remain present in substance but with their behavioural properties modified and averaged out somewhat; for if they weren't present in substance wouldn't that mean they had been destroyed rather than formed a compound? Again, if matter in a compound is actualized immediately by the form of the compound rather than through the intermediary of the elements' forms, the simple component parts of the compound could no longer be called elements. For an element is what things are ultimately made of, existing in the things and indivisible in its own nature;' but if the substance of the elements has disappeared the compound is no longer made up of indivisible things existing in it.
Nevertheless, this can't be how things are. For one and the same matter can't take on the forms of different elements. If then the elements are to be preserved in substance within the compound it will have to be in different parts of the matter.
Now matter can have different parts only if we think of it as already having quantitative extension (for without extension a substance would stay indivisible, as Aristotle? explains).
But extended matter that has taken on the form of a substance is already a physical three-dimensional body, so that the different parts of matter that have taken on the forms of the elements are so many several bodies. Now several bodies can't occupy the same place. So the four elements won't be present in every part of the compound, and as a result the compound will not be real but only apparent, like a mixture of particles too small for the senses to distinguish. Furthermore, each different substance, if it is to exist, needs matter specially conditioned in a way appropriate to that substance, and this is done by the modifications of qualitative properties which lead up to the formation (and destruction) of substances. However, the special conditions required for fire
| and the special conditions required for water can't coexist in the same matter, because they are opposed conditions, and opposed things can't coincide. So fire and water can't
How Elements are Present within Compounds possibly exist in the same part of any compound. If then elements remain in substance within the compound, the compound is only apparent, not real, consisting of juxtaposed particles too small for our senses to distinguish.
[In a half-existent state?] Some people, in avoiding these difficulties, fell into worse problems. In order to distinguish the compounding of elements from their destruction they said that in some way the elements remain in substance in the compound. But again, to avoid saying the compound was apparent and not real, they suggested that the elements didn't remain totally distinct in the compound but were averaged out in some way; for they said that elements could be more or less themselves and balance each other out. Now this clearly contradicts both common opinion and also Aristotle's? statement that substances don't have [balancing] substances opposed to them and don't more or less exist; so they expanded it by saying that elements exist in a very imperfect way, close to ultimate unformed matter, and so are intermediate between substances and supervening properties [in which we do find opposition and balance], so that it was this closeness in nature to supervening properties that enabled them to more or less exist.
But this is an unlikely suggestion on many counts. Firstly, because it is altogether impossible for there to be something intermediate between substances and supervening properties: it would have to be intermediate between an assertion and its denial. For the characteristic of properties is to exist in a subject, and the characteristic of substances is precisely not to do so. The forms of substances are not [like properties] forms of some [already formed] subject, but of [unformed] matter: a subject is a this thing, and the form of a substance makes it a this thing rather than presupposing a this thing already existing. Again, an intermediary between completely heterogeneous extremes is an absurdity, as Aristotle* proves.
Ends and middle must share something in common. Between substance and its properties then there can be nothing intermediate. On top of that, the substance of elements can't more or less exist. For anything that can be more or less
The Ladder of Being actual is, at least incidentally, divisible into parts, inasmuch as some subject can have more or less of it. But things that have parts, incidentally or of their own nature, are characterized by gradual change, as Aristotle' notes: thus local movement and growth or shrinkage are found where there is extension and place, which are by nature divisible into parts; and qualitative modifications are characteristic of those qualities you can have more or less of like hotness and whiteness. If then elements too could exist more or less, then their formation and destruction would be a gradual change; and that is ruled out since, as Aristotle® proves, there are only three types of gradual change: change in quantity, in quality, and in place. Further, every difference in the form of substances is a difference in kind, But in what exists more or less, the more differs from the less and opposes it, as, for example, more white and less white. If then fire's substance could be more or less, the more and the less would have to differ in kind, and then they wouldn't be the same substance but different ones. And this is why Aristotle" said substances varied in kind like numbers, by addition and subtraction.
{Virtually?] So we have to find some other way of maintaining the reality of compounds: one which doesn't involve total destruction of the elements but lets them exist somehow in the compound. Observe then that the behavioural properties of elements do oppose one another, and can exist more or less.
From such opposed properties existing more or less we can construct an intermediate property that retains a taste of what each extreme is like: grey, for example, intermediate between black and white, and tepid, intermediate between hot and cold. So then, when the extreme properties of elements have been damped down, there remains an intermediate property characteristic of the compound, differing in each compound because of different proportions of the component elements.
It is this intermediate property that specially conditions matter to the form of the compound in question, just as each element's simple quality disposes matter to the form of that element. Just as any intermediate
Soul and its Abilities retains part of the nature of the two extremes, so the characteristic quality of the compound retains something of the qualities of its elements. But the qualitative property of an element is not its substance, though it is active with the substance's power; unless that were so heat would only heat, and not by its.action also bring new substances into existence, for nothing can do what transcends its own kind of reality. So the powers of the elemental substances are preserved in the compound substance in this way. The substances of the elements then are present in the compound, but virtually—through their powers—not actually. And that is what Aristotle® says: Thus they neither persist actually (the elements, namely, in the compound) as body and white do, nor are they destroyed (either one of them or both); for their power is preserved.
Passage 9 Life, or Soul and its Abilities Source: Thomas's public disputation on Created Spirits, 11. Text from Quaestio Disputata de Spiritualibus Creaturis, in Quaestiones
Disputatae de Potentia (Marietti edn., Turin, 1953).
Date: 1269, Italy, aged 44.
Type of passage and how to read: Disputed question. Note that Objections 4 to 7 have been indented to show that they are not simply a linear sequence, but depend on one another: the bachelor respondent's answers led to new questions (see Introduction).
Notes on translation:
'Soul' translates anima, and means the animating principle of the body; it should not be given any religious overtones, 'Incidental' translates accidens, 'characteristic' proprium;
'ability' potentia. Since here, as often elsewhere, Thomas uses substantia and essentia to all intents and purposes synonymously,
'substance' and 'essence' do not always translate their etymological counterparts.
The subject for debate is Created Spirits.
... [Article 11] And finally we are asked: Do the soul's abilities constitute its substance?
The Ladder of Being It seems so:
For... {2] the De Spiritu et Anima' says everything in God is God, but in the soul some things—its abilities—are soul whilst other things—its virtues—are not.
Moreover, [3] incidental properties don't define types of substance. But abilities to sense or to reason do define types of substance. So the senses and reason and other like abilities, are not incidental properties, but must be what soul essentially is.
But it was said [by the respondent] that abilities are neither incidental to soul nor of its essence, but are natural characteristics of its substance, a half-way house between the subject and its incidental properties.
But against that: [4] substance and incidental properties differ like yes and no, since incidental properties require a subject and a thing's substance doesn't. Now there is no half-way house between yes and no. So there is no half-way house between a thing's essence and what is incidental.
Moreover, [5] to call soul's abilities natural characteristics of its substance means either that they constitute its essence or derive from what constitutes its essence. If the former then they belong to soul's essence, because a thing's essential constituents are of its essence. If the latter then even incidental properties can be called essential, since they too derive from what constitutes the subject. So, if soul's abilities are not to be incidental, they must belong to its essence.
But it was said [by the respondent] that though incidental properties derive from what constitutes substance, not everything so derived is incidental.
But against that: [6] what is in the middle must differ from either extreme. So if soul's abilities are half-way between essential and incidental they must differ from both. Now things can't differ by what they have in common: and since deriving from what constitutes substance—which was said to make abilities essential—
Soul and its Abilities applies also to what is incidental, there seems to be no distinction between soul's abilities and its incidental properties; and no half-way house between what's essential and what's incidental.
But it was said [by the respondent] that the distinction is this: that we can understand soul without its incidental properties but not without its abilities.
But against that: [7] we understand things by taking in their essence: for the object of understanding, according to Aristotle," is the what-a-thing-is. So, if A can't be understood without B, B must be of A's essence. Now soul can't be understood without abilities, so they must be of its essence, and no half-way house exists between what's essential and what's incidental . . .
Moreover, [12] if soul's abilities are not the same as its essence they must derive from its essence. But this is impossible: the effect would be more immaterial than the cause, since soul of its essence actuates a body, whereas understanding—an ability—actuates no body. So our premiss must have been faulty: namely, that soul's abilities are not its essence...
Moreover, [14] soul is joined to body not by way of any ability, but as its form, directly actuating it in some way.
Not, however, by giving it existence, for things can exist without souls; nor by giving it life, for things can be living without rational souls. So it must be by giving it understanding, which is what we say ability to understand gives.
So ability to understand must be the soul's essence.
Moreover, [15] soul is more perfect and excellent than the ultimate material of things. Now ultimate matter is its own potentiality: being potential can't be incidental to it—for then an incidental property would pre-exist in matter before it took on the form of any substance (since, as Aristotle? shows, potentiality precedes its own actualization in time); nor can it be the substance's form—for potentiality is the opposite of form; nor can it be what matter and form combine to make—for that can't precede form. Matter's
The Ladder of Being potentiality then must be matter's very essence. A fortiori then must soul's powers be soul's essence...
Moreover, [17] freedom from matter makes a substance intellectual, according to Ibn Sina.* Now soul is by essence immaterial, so by essence intellectual. Intellect then is its essence, and other abilities likewise.
Moreover, [18] in the absence of matter, Aristotle' says, understanding is one thing with what it understands. But what it understands is soul's essence; so soul's essence must also be the understanding that understands, and other abilities likewise.
Moreover, [19] a thing's parts belong to its substance. But soul's abilities are called its parts. So they belong to its substance.
Moreover, {20] the soul is a non-composite substance, as we said earlier, but with many abilities. If these are not its essence but incidental to it, then something non-composite will have a diversity of incidental properties, which doesn't seem plausible. So soul's abilities are not incidental to it but its very essence.
{1] Pseudo-Dionysius® says higher beings divide into substance, power, and activity. Much more then in souls must essence differ from power or ability...
Moreover, [4] abilities are in the middle, joining substances to their activity. Now soul's substance and activity differ. So its abilities must differ from both, for a middle must differ from either extreme.
Moreover, [5] an agent isn't the same thing as his tool. But soul's abilities relate to its essence as tools to an agent:
Anselm' says will—an ability of soul—is like a tool. So soul is not its abilities...
In reply Some people identify soul's abilities with the soul itself, the same soul as source of sense-activity being called our ability to sense, as source of understanding activity our ability to understand, and so on. Ibn Sina thinks people were led to Soul and its Abilities believe this mainly by the non-compositeness of soul, which seemed at odds with the diversity displayed in its abilities.
But the opinion is altogether impossible: firstly, because no created substance can be identified with its power to act. For clearly, distinct potentialities require distinct actualities— actualizations must match what they actualize. Now existence actualizes, so to say, a thing's essence, whereas activity actualizes its active powers and dispositions: to be actual essences must exist but powers must act.
So, since no creature's doing is its being (that is God's prerogative), no creature's power to act is its essence (that too is the prerogative of God). Secondly, this is particularly impossible in the soul's case, for three reasons: firstly, because essence is one whereas abilities must be many because of the variety of their activities and objects: abilities are diversified by their activities in the way all potentialities are by what actualizes them. A second reason is a difference between abilities, some of which actualize parts of the body (all our sense-abilities and nutritive powers) whilst others do not (mind and will).
Now if abilities were nothing but soul's essence this couldn't be so, for one and the same thing can't both actuate a body and exist separated, except by some diversity it has. A third reason is the hierarchical order of abilities among themselves, one moving another: reason moves our aggressive and affective emotions, for example, and mind will.
But if abilities were nothing but soul's essence this couldn't be so, for nothing can move itself in the same respect, as Aristotle® proves.
So we are forced to conclude that soul's abilities are not its essence.
Now some people concede this, but say abilities aren't incidental to soul either, but are its essential or natural characteristics; which is acceptable on one interpretation and impossible on another. To be clear about this we should note two ways in which philosophers use the word incidental.
Firstly, as a general description for the nine [Aristotelian] categories other than substance. In this sense the above opinion is impossible,:for in this sense there is no half-way house between what is substance and what is incidental: they differ as yes and no, since substances characteristically don't
The Ladder of Being exist in subjects, and incidental properties do. So if soul's abilities are not its essence—and clearly they are not other substances—they must belong in one of the [Aristotelian] categories of incidental property: in fact in the second [of the four] types of quality, that of natural abilities or inabilities.
But there is a second use of the word incidental as a name for one of Aristotle's? four predicables, or Porphyry's'® five types of general concept. In this sense incidental doesn't express something common to the nine categories, but a particular relationship a proposition's predicate can bear to its subject, or a class to a member of that class. In this sense incidental is contradistinguished against genus and species, so can't be used in the same sense as previously; otherwise nothing in the nine categories could ever be given a genus or a species, which is clearly false since whiteness is in the genus of colour and twoness in that of number. Now in this sense
. of incidental there is a half-way house between substance and incidentals, i.e. between predicates which define a thing's substance and predicates ascribed to it incidentally: namely, predicates characteristic of it. Such characteristic predicates
: resemble the predicate defining a thing's substance in deriving from the thing's specific nature: which is why, by appealing to a subject's definition, we can prove it to have such and such characteristics.1? But they also resemble properties predicated incidentally in being neither a thing's substance nor part of it, but something added. Incidental predicates, however, differ from characteristic predicates in not deriving from a subject's specific nature: they are incidental to individuals in the way characteristics are to species, though sometimes they accompany all individuals and sometimes not.
Soul's abilities then are something half-way between its essence and what is incidental to it: they are, so to speak, natural or essential characteristics of soul, natural consequences of its essence.
Hence:... to 2: The De Spiritu et Anima is an apocryphal work of unknown authorship'? containing more than one false or inaccurate statement. Whoever wrote it didn't understand Soul and its Abilities the words of the holy men he was attempting to make his own. However, if we must make a case for him, note that there are three kinds of whole. The first is the general, sharing itself and its potentiality with each of its subdivisions and therefore predicable of them: human beings are animals.
The second is the composite, sharing neither itself nor its potentiality with any of its component parts, and so in no way predicable of them: walls are not houses. And the third is the functional whole, midway between the other two, sharing itself with part of its potentiality to each subfunction, and so sometimes predicable of them, but improperly. And this is the way soul is sometimes said to be its own abilities and vice versa. to 3: We know the form of no substance directly, but get to know it through its characteristic properties. So often we define types of substances by such properties—two-legged, for example, or mobile—rather than by any form of substance they reveal. And this is the way ability to sense or to reason differentiate substances. Or one could say that ability to sense and to reason, when used to differentiate substances, name not the abilities but the souls that have the abilities. to 4: This argument understands incidental as a generic description for the nine [Aristotelian] categories [other than substance], and in that sense there is no half-way house between substance and incidental properties; but in the other sense of incidental referred to above, there is. to 5: Soul's abilities are called essential characteristics not because they constitute its essence but because they derive from it. That doesn't distinguish them from the incidental properties contained in the nine [Aristotelian] categories, but it distinguishes them from incidental predicates which do not derive from a thing's specific nature. And this also provides the answer to 6. to 7: Aristotle'? says we exercise understanding in two ways: firstly, by taking in what something is, and secondly, by making propositional connections and _ disconnections.
Exercising understanding in the first way we can take in a thing's essence without either its characteristic or its S.P.W.
The Ladder of Being incidental properties, since neither enter its essence (and the objection used this sense of understanding). But exercising understanding in the second way, substance can be understood without its incidental accompaniments, even when they always accompany it in fact: thus we can understand a crow to be white, since the concepts are not incompatible and the specific nature of the named subject [crow] doesn't imply the contrary predicate [black]. But substances can't be understood in this way without their characteristic properties: we can't understand human beings not to have a sense of the ridiculous, or a triangle not to have its internal angles equal to two right-angles. Here there are two incompatible concepts, since the nature of the subject implies the contrary predicate. With the first sort of understanding, then, we can understand soul's essence-—what it is—without its abilities; but with the second sort of understanding, we can't understand soul to exist without such abilities... to 12: That an ability actuating no body can derive from soul's essence happens only because soul contains in its essence more than body requires, as we said earlier. So we can't conclude that the power is more immaterial than the essence, since it derives its immateriality from that of the essence... to 14:
Soul, being essentially body's form, gives body existence (being the form of its substance) and that sort of existence we call life (being the sort of form we call soul) and that sort of life we call understanding or intellectual (being the sort of soul we call intellectual). For understanding sometimes names an activity (and then its source is an ability or disposition), and sometimes names our very existence as creatures of an understanding nature (and then its source is the very essence of our intellectual soul). to 15: Matter's potentiality is not a potential to act but potential to exist as a substance, and so can be classified as [potential] substance; but soul's powers are potentials to act and can't... to 17: It is precisely because soul's substance is free from matter that it has a power of intellect, but that power is not its substance. to 18: Understanding isn't just an ability to understand but much more a substance acting through that ability; and so what it understands is not just its own ability but also the substance. to 19: Soul's abilities can be called parts of soul's total potential, but not of its essence, just as one could say the king's officer's power is part of the total power of the king. to 20: Many of soul's powers don't have soul for their subject but the composite of body and soul, and the multiplicity of these powers matches a multiformity of bodily parts. The powers that have for subject only soul's substance are our agent and receptive mind and will. And for that multiplicity of powers the compositeness of potentiality and actuality that even soul's substance has is enough.
Passage 10 Levels of Life Source: Thomas's public disputation on the Soul, 13. Text from Quaestio Disputata de Anima (ed. Robb, Toronto, 1968), with corrections from the Leonine text in preparation.
Date: 1269, second stay in Paris, aged 44-5.
Type of passage and how to read:
Disputed question (see Introduction).
Notes on translation: For remarks on the word 'soul' see previous passage on Created Spirits.
'General root sensitivity' translates sensus communis: 'common-sense' has come to mean something else in modern English.
The subject for debate is Soul.
... [Article 13] And in the thirteenth place we are asked:
What distinguishes soul's abilities: is it their objects?
For...[2] difference in substance—as between human beings and rabbits—is greater than incidental difference— between sound and colour. Yet one and the same ability
The Ladder of Being perceives human beings and rabbits. So @ fortiori should it perceive sound and colour. No difference of objects then should need different abilities . . .
Moreover, [4] same cause, same effect: so if a difference in object were to diversify abilities here it should diversify them everywhere. But that's not what we observe: rather differences in object—sound and colour—correspond sometimes to different abilities—hearing and sight—and sometimes to only one—imagination, or mind. So differences in object don't cause diversity in abilities...
Moreover, [6] a gift is what the recipient makes of it. Now soul's abilities are received into body's organs; for abilities are actuations of organs. So bodily organs differentiate abilities, rather than objects.
Moreover, [7] soul's abilities don't constitute its substance but flow as natural characteristics from its essence. Now from unity without intermediary flows only unity, so only one ability can flow from soul's essence to begin with, and others from that in a hierarchy.
Abilities then differ by origin, not by object...
Moreover, [11] everything desirable can be either sensed or understood. Now what can be understood fulfils our understanding, and what can be sensed fulfils our senses; and since by nature everything desires its fulfilment, understanding and sense between them must desire by nature everything that is desirable. So we need no other ability to desire than our abilities to sense and understand.
Moreover, [12] desire is either willing or a feeling of aggression or affection, where will is desire of intellect and aggressive and affective feeling desire of the senses, as Aristotle! says. So we need no ability to desire other than our abilities to sense and understand.
Moreover, [13] Aristotle? proves that local movement in living things is caused by sense (that is to say, imagination), understanding, and desire. But in living things what causes their movement is called motive power. So there is no motive power other than the abilities to know and desire...
Moreover, [15] the higher a power the more extensive and yet integrated it is. But the soul's living powers are higher than the powers in nature. If then one and the same power in nature can give a body existence and proper size and preserve it in existence, it seems soul should a fortiori do all this through one power. So there shouldn't be different reproductive, nutritive, and growth functions...
Moreover, [17] every genus has its fundamental pair of opposing properties. So if we are going to differentiate sensepowers by diverse genera of passive qualities, there should be different sense-powers wherever there are diverse pairs of opposing qualities. Now sometimes this is so—sight sees black and white, hearing hears booms and squeaks—but sometimes not—touch senses hot and cold and wet and dry and soft and hard and much else. So abilities are not distinguished by their objects...
Moreover, [19] understanding knows everything sense knows and more besides. So if our sense-powers are distinguished by different objects, understanding too should be diversified into the same kinds of power as the senses, which is clearly false.
Moreover, [20] agent intellect and receptive intellect are, we say, different abilities. But both have the same object. So abilities are not distinguished by difference in object.
[1] Aristotle? says we distinguish abilities by their activities and activities by their objects.
Moreover, [2] ways of being fulfilled are distinguished by what fulfils them. But abilities find fulfilment in their objects.
So that's what distinguishes them.
An ability or potential is nothing else than an openness to actualization, so what the actuality is must define the potentiality, and potentials for diverse actualities must be distinct. Now the actuality is defined by the actuating object: and abilities to be receptive are actuated by objects that act
The Ladder of Being on them, and abilities to be active are actuated by goals.
Activities then can be defined in either way: heating is distinguished from cooling because the initiating object is heat rather than cold, or—since agents act to imprint likenesses of themselves on others—because heat is the activity's endgoal. So to distinguish abilities of soul
[i.e. potentials of living things] we must distinguish their objects. However, the distinction of objects required must be one relevant to them as objects of soul's activities, not any other sort, since a genus doesn't divide into species except by way of differences relevant to the genus as such: white/black doesn't constitute different species of animal, but reasoning/non-reasoning does.
Now there are three levels to soul-activity.
For soulactivity [life-activity] transcends the activities of nature at work in non-living creatures; and this in two ways: in manner of acting and in what gets done. In manner of acting all soul-activity transcends the action or workings of nature in non-living things, because soul-activity is life-activity and living means self-moving, so that all soul-activity comes from interior agency. But as to what gets done, not every soulactivity transcends the working of non-living nature. For bodies, whether animate or inanimate, must have existence in nature and whatever is required for that; in inanimate bodies this is the function of exterior agencies, but in animate bodies it is a function of interior agencies: and the soul's potentials for such activities we call its vegetative powers.
These comprise generative powers which bring individuals into existence, powers of growth which cause them to attain their proper size, and nutritive powers which conserve them in existence. But since all of this in inanimate bodies is brought about by external natural agents, these powers of soul are [often] called natural powers.
However, there are other higher-level life-activities which transcend the working of natural forms also in regard to what gets done: those, namely, that are based on soul's ability to give everything immaterial existence within itself, for soul as sentient and intelligent is in a sense everything.
But this immaterial existence"has different levels. At the first level things exist in the soul without their own material but accompanied by the singularity and conditions of individuality which that material has conferred on them; and this is the level of the senses, which take in individual natures without their matter but into bodily organs. A higher and more perfect level of immateriality is intellectual understanding, which takes .in natures altogether abstracted from matter and material conditions, and without any bodily organ. And just as things are endowed by natural form with tendencies to some goal and the movements and activity that pursue the goal, so too by a form sensed or understood they are endowed with tendencies towards the thing (or object of understanding) taken in, tendencies which are functionings of an ability to desire; and also here there must follow movements pursuing the desired thing, functionings of a motive power.
So at the level of sense-awareness, which suffices for animal life, five things are needed. Firstly, sense must take in the form of what it senses, and that is the function of particular senses. Secondly, the different sense-perceptions must be discriminated and distinguished one from the other, and that needs some central power to which everything sensed is brought, and which we call the general root sensitivity. Thirdly, the forms taken in have to be stored—for animals need to be aware of what can be sensed not just when it's present but also when it's absent—and that needs another ability or power: for what makes bodies impressionable is not what makes them retentive: something easily imprinted may retain imprints badly. This other power we call imagination or fancy.
Fourthly, certain notions are needed which are not the sort senses can take in, like danger, usefulness, and so on. Human beings learn these by research and discussion, but other animals by a sort of natural instinct: sheep by nature flee wolves as dangerous. So where other animals have a power of natural judgement, human beings have a sort of calculation that pieces together particular experiences and is therefore called particular reasoning or passive mentality. Fifthly, what has been taken in by the senses at some earlier time and stored internally needs to be recalled to actual consideration. And this is the function of The Ladder of Being memory, which in other animals works without enquiry, but in human beings with enquiry and study: so that human beings have not only memory but reminiscence. And this needs a power distinct from the others, since other senseactivity moves from things to soul whereas memory moves from soul to things, and different movements need different motive principles or powers.
Since the particular senses—the first in this range of sensitive powers—are the ones immediately stimulated and affected by what is sensed, differences in these stimulations force differentiation of these powers. And since the senses take in the forms of what they sense without matter, we order and grade these affections of sense by what is sensed by comparing them with material changes. Now certain forms of things we sense, although taken in by the senses immaterially, nevertheless also change the sensing animal materially. These are the qualities which cause change in all material things: hot and cold, wet and dry, and so on.
Because what we sense in this way also changes us by material action, and material change works through contact, necessarily such sensing is done by contact. And for this reason the sense-power that takes in all such objects of sense is called touch. Other objects of sense don't as such induce material change, but nevertheless affect us in connection with some material change: and this can happen in two ways.
Sometimes the connected material change affects what is sensed and what senses, as in taste: for though taste doesn't affect the sense-organ by making the organ itself tasty, still the affection of taste depends on change in both the tasty substance and the organ of taste, chiefly change in their wet-or-dryness. Sometimes, however, the connected material change affects only what is sensed: either by some breakdown or modification of what we sense, as in the case of smell; or simply by vibration in it, as in hearing. Which is why hearing and smell, involving material change only in what is sensed and not in what senses, don't sense by immediate contact but through an external medium; whereas taste, involving material change also in what senses, only senses by contact. Yet other objects of sense affect our senses without any connected material change, in the way light and colour affect our sense of sight. For this reason sight is sensing at its highest and most general, able to sense qualities that earthly and heavenly bodies have in common.
We must also differentiate in a similar way the ability to desire that depends on our powers of sense. This power divides into two: for things are desirable either because they themselves delight and suit the senses, and these require a capacity for affective emotion; or because they empower us to enjoy things delightful to the senses, though they in themselves sometimes sadden the senses, as when an animal fights to repel obstacles and gain access to what he naturally enjoys; and this requires a capacity for aggressive emotion.
But motive power, directed to movement, is differentiated only by diversity of movements: movements special to various animals—some crawling, some flying, some walking, some moving in other ways—or even characterizing different parts of one animal, for every part has its own proper movement.
At the level of intellectual powers there is a similar distinction into powers of knowing and powers of desiring, but motive power is something shared between sense and intellect, for the same body is moved to the same movement by both. And intellectual knowing requires two powers, as we saw above: the agent intellect and the receptive intellect.
Clearly then there are three levels among powers of soul, or living abilities: those of vegetable life, of animal life, and of rational life. But there are five sorts of ability: namely, nutritive, sensitive, intellectual, appetitive, and locomotive, some of these containing several powers under them, as we have said.
Hence: ... to 2: Colour and sound may be incidental properties, but, as we have said, they stimulate our senses in essentially different ways. Human beings and rabbits, on the other hand, stimulate our senses in an identical way, and, though essentially different as substances, differ only incidentally as sense-objects. For there is no reason why differences essential in one context shouldn't be incidental in another, as white
The Ladder of Being and black things differ essentially in colour but not in nature... to 4: Higher-level abilities extend over wider fields and are defined by a more general concept of object; so things that share a higher ability's definition of object may constitute distinct objects of lower-level abilities . . . to 6: Organs serve abilities and not vice versa; so organs are distinguished by their objects rather than the reverse. to 7: Each soul has a primary goal—for the human soul what it understands to be good—which all its other goals serve—so that what is sensed as good serves what we understand to be good. Now soul is ordered to its objects by means of abilities, so that our ability to sense exists in us to serve our ability to understand, and so on. So one ability flows from another as from a goal, according to their respective objects, and distinction of soul's abilities by origin* is not therefore opposed to distinction by object... to 11: By nature understanding desires the understandable as something to understand, for it has a natural desire to understand as the senses have to sense. But we desire what can be sensed and understood not only for sensing and understanding but also for other reasons; so we must have an ability to desire over and above our abilities to sense and understand. to 12: Will is a desire of reason in the sense of following reason: its activity belongs at the same level of ability in the soul but is not of the same sort. And the same is true of aggressive or affective feelings and the senses. to 13: Knowledge and desire move by commanding movement, but there must be motive power to execute the movement, moving limbs to implement the commands of desire and understanding or sense... to 15: Inanimate things in nature acquire form and proper size together, but living things can't do that, since they are reproduced from seed and must begin small. So their reproductive function must be accompanied by a growth function to bring them to their proper size. This can only be done by converting additional material into the substance of the growing thing, and such conversion needs heat, which not only converts external but breaks down internal material. So, to preserve individuals by continually replacing lost matter and adding matter lacking to their full size and needed to produce seed, an ability to assimilate food is needed: that serves both the growing and reproductive functions, and also preserves the individual ... to 17: Because the opposed qualities of which touch is aware don't all belong to one genus in the way the opposed visible qualities belong to the genus of colour, Aristotle' decided touch was not one sense but several, which had this in common: that they sensed without any external medium and so were all called touch, one sense generically but several specifically. But one could also say touch is one sense simply speaking, since all the opposed qualities it senses [use the same organ]® and belong in one [common] unnamed genus (as indeed the immediate genus of hot and cold is unnamed)... to 19: Sense takes the forms of the things we sense into bodily organs and is aware of them in their particularity; understanding takes in things' forms without using bodily organs and so is aware of them in their generality. As a result certain diversities of object may differentiate sense-powers without differentiating our powers of understanding. In the material world different materials are needed to receive and to retain impressions, but not in the immaterial world; and in a similar way different sorts of sense-stimuli diversify our senses but make no difference to understanding. to 20:
One and the same object—the object actually understood—is made understandable by agent intellect and then actualizes receptive intellect. And so the same object is not related to agent and receptive intellect in the same respect.
The Ladder of Being Passage 11 Inner and Outer Senses Source: Thomas's Commentary on Aristotle's De Memoria et Reminiscentia, 449°30—450°25. Text from Sentencia Libri de Sensu
(de Memoria) (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. xlv.ii).
Date: 1269—70, second stay in Paris, aged 45.
Type ofpassage: Commentary with digressions (see Introduction).
How to read: Cf. remarks on Passage 5 above.
Aristotle has already explained what memory is; now he goes on to explain what part of us remembers. And he does this in two parts: firstly [at The subject of imagination], making preliminary remarks necessary to his explanation; and secondly, at It is now clear, giving the explanation itself.
[Aristotle's text, 449°30—450710] The subject of imagination has already been considered in the De Anima, and without images understanding is impossible. For the same thing happens in understanding as in geometrical diagrams, where we draw a triangle of a certain size, even though we don't use the particular size. So likewise when we want to understand anything we conjure up before our eyes something of a certain size but the mind understands it not as having that size. And if it is of its nature quantitative but indeterminate we conjure it up as of determinate size though the mind understands it only as a quantity. It is another question why human beings can't understand except in space and time.
[Preliminary remarks] Here there are three parts: firstly [1], he states what he means to do; secondly [2], at For the same thing happens, he clarifies what he has said with an example; and thirdly [3],
[at It is another question] he indicates something needing another type of explanation: So firstly [1], he says that the subject of imagination—what it is—bhas already been conInner and Outer Senses sidered in his De Anima:' imagination is a change wrought in us by actual sensing. And in the same book? he says that without images human understanding is impossible.
Next [2], when he says For the same thing happens, he clarifies what he has just said. For it might seem absurd to say that there is no human understanding without images when images are representations of bodily things and understanding is of universals abstracted from all particular things.
So to clarify this he offers an example, saying that the same thing happens in understanding as in geometrical diagrams, where we draw a triangle of a certain size, even though we don't use the particular size in our proofs. So likewise when we want to understand anything we conjure up before our eyes something of a certain size, something particular; when we want to understand a human being there comes up the image of some six-footer, for example. But the mind understands human being as human being not as having that size.
However, because what the mind may be wanting to understand is the nature of size, he goes on to say that if what is to be understood is of its nature quantitative—a line, say, or a surface or a number—but indeterminate—that is, not in its determinate particularity—we nevertheless conjure up before our eyes an image of determinate size; when we want to understand a line there comes up the image of a line two-foot long, for example, though the mind understands it only in its nature as a quantity, not as being two-foot long.
Next [3], when he says It is another question, he declares what he will leave for consideration [elsewhere]. And he says that it is another question why human beings can't understand except in space and time.
[Thomas's first digression] Now in fact this happens because human beings can't understand in the absence of images; for images must. involve space and time, being likenesses of individual things in the here and now. And the explanation of why human beings can't understand without images would be easy enough if it was only a question of where ideas come from, since
Aristotle? makes it clear that we abstract these from images.
The Ladder of Being But experience shows that even people who already have knowledge, having acquired ideas in this way, can't actually think about what they know in the absence of images. For this is the reason why, when we damage our [brain, the] organ of imagination, we are debarred not only from any new understanding, but even from thinking about what we previously understood, as we see in cases of madness.
One might hypothesize that human minds, having acquired ideas, retain them only while actually thinking of them, and that if they stop actually thinking of them the ideas vanish from the mind like light vanishes from the air when the source of light is removed. Consequently, when the mind wants to understand something again it must turn again to images and acquire ideas afresh. But this hypothesis expressly contradicts Aristotle's words* where he says that 'as soon as the receptive mind is formed by what is able to be understood', taking in its species, 'it has the potential to actually understand it'. And it also goes against reason, since mind's actual acquisition of species must share in the sort of thing mind is, namely, something unchanging.
Now the fact that ideas persist in the acquiring mind even when it isn't actually thinking about them is not like what happens in sense-perception where, because of the bodily constitution of our organs, receiving the sense-impressions by which we actually perceive is one process, and retaining them even when we are not actually perceiving is another, as Ibn
Sina> maintains. Rather it happens due to the diverse levels on which forms that can be understood exist: as purely potential before we learn and discover, as totally actual when we are actually thinking of them, or at a level intermediate between potentiality and actuality in our habitual knowledge. So human minds don't only need images as a source of ideas, but also as something in which they can be observed: as Aristotle® puts it: 'Our mind understands the species of things in their images.'
And the reason for this is that activity must be proportionate to the acting power and nature. Now in humans mind exists within a sensing'entity, as Aristotle" says. So its characteristic activity is understanding what can be underInner and Outer Senses stood through images; just as the activity of intellect in immaterial substances is understanding what can be understood through itself. And so we have to look to the metaphysician [i.e. elsewhere] for the reason, since different levels of intellect are his subject.
[Aristotle's text, 450°10-—25] It is now clear it must be the same part of us that is aware of extension and movement and of time. Imagining is a being affected by our common root sensitivity. Clearly then these are perceived by that common root sensitivity. Memory, however—even of what we understand—doesn't happen without images, and so is an ability only incidentally intellectual, but belonging in itself to our primary common sensitivity. Hence not only human beings and beings possessing opinion and discretion possess memory, but also certain other animals. If memory was one of our understanding abilities it would not be found in many other animals and perhaps not in any other mortal creature; since even as the case stands not all animals possess memory but only those who are aware of time. For whenever someone actually remembers, as we have said, it senses at the same time that it saw or heard or learnt this before: before and after, however, characterize time. It is now clear what part of us remembers, namely, the part that imagines. And what is imaginable is memorable in itself, whereas we incidentally remember what cannot be grasped without the help of images.
[The explanation: what part of us remembers] Next, when he says It is now clear, he explains what part of us remembers. Firstly [1], he argues the point; secondly [2], at Hence not only human beings, offers some indications from experience; and thirdly [3], at It is now clear, comes to his conclusion.
So firstly [1], he says that it must be the same part of us that is aware of extension and movement and of time. These three belong together both because they are all divisible into parts, and because all are able to be limited or unlimited, as The Ladder of Being he proves in the Physics.' Now we perceive extension with our senses: extension being one of those objects common to all the senses; and we perceive changes—especially movements—in the same way, by being aware of near-andfar in extension, and time by perceiving a before-andafterness in change; so these three things we perceive with our senses.
However, sense-perception takes place at two levels: firstly, when our senses are actually stimulated by what they sense, as when particular senses perceive their own particular objects, and the common root of sensitivity in us perceives objects the senses have in common; and secondly, when that first stimulation of our senses by what they sense leaves in us a sort of secondary change, which persists even in the absence of what has been sensed, and is located in the imagination, as Aristotle? says. Imagining, then, because it emerges from this secondary stimulus, is a being affected by our common root sensitivity; for it results from the completed stimulation of our senses, beginning with the particular senses and ending up in the common root of our sensitivity. Clearly then these three things: extension, change, and time, as features of our images, are perceived by that common root sensitivity.
Memory, however, not only of what we sense (as, for example, when we remember having had some senseperception), but even of what we understand (as, for example, when we remember having understood something), doesn't happen without images. For absent objects of sense can only be perceived in our imaginations; and, as we have just said, understanding can't happen in the absence of images. So we conclude that memory is an ability only incidentally intellectual, belonging in itself to our primary common sensitivity. For we have already said that understanding, which of itself understands things in the abstract, conjures up before it images of a certain size. Now memory grasps time as a certain time in the past, this far distant from the present moment. Memory then, of itself, is a kind of imaginative appearance, though incidentally it can involve mental judgement.
Inner and Outer Senses [Thomas's second digression] What has been said here, however, could lead someone to think that imagination and memory are not abilities distinct from our common root sensitivity, but just certain ways in which it is affected. But Ibn Sind? has plausibly argued that they are separate abilities. For our abilities to sense are actualizations of bodily organs, and so our abilities to take in the forms of what we sense (our sense-powers) must differ from our abilities to retain them (imagination and memory), just as taking on and retaining bodily form require different materials: moist material to take on form well, dry, hard material to retain it well. In the same way taking in and retaining the forms of what we sense require different abilities from those required for taking in significances the senses do not perceive; these, even in other animals, are perceived by an instinctive power of judgement and retained by a power of memory, which remembers things not in the abstract but as taken in in the past by our senses or our understanding.
Nevertheless, one ability can sometimes turn out to be a root or source of others, the actualizations of those others presupposing the actualization of the first power. This is the way our ability to feed is the root of our abilities to grow and to reproduce, both of which utilize food; and it is in this way too that our common root sensitivity is the root of our imagination and memory, which presuppose the actualization of the common sensitivity.
[Return to commentary] Next [2], when he says Hence not only human beings, he illustrates what he has said with two indications from experience. The first is drawn from animals possessing memory.
And he says that, because memory of itself is an ability of our primary sensitivity, not only human beings and beings possessing opinion (which can refer to theoretical understanding) and discretion (which refers to practical understanding) possess memory, but also certain other animals. If memory was one of our understanding abilities it would not be found in many other animals that clearly do possess memory but not understanding; and perhaps it would not The Ladder of Being be found in any other mortal creature but humans, since humans alone among mortal creatures possess understanding.
He says perhaps because of people who wonder whether intelligence shouldn't also be attributed to some non-human animals—monkeys and animals of that sort—because of their apparently rational behaviour.
He gives a second indication at even, drawn from animals that don't possess memory. And he says that what makes clear that memory is in itself a sense-ability is that since even as the case stands, when we are supposing that only human beings among mortal creatures possess understanding, not all animals possess memory but only those who are aware of time. For certain animals perceive nothing except in the presence of something they can sense; certain animals, for instance, are immobile and therefore have fuzzy imaginations, as Aristotle says,' and so are unaware of beforeand-after, and therefore of time, and as a result have no memories. For always, whenever the soul actually remembers, as we have said, it senses at the same time that it saw or heard or learnt this before: before and after, however, characterize time.
Next [3], when he says It is now clear, he comes to his conclusion. And he says that it is now clear what part of us remembers, namely, the part that imagines; and what is imaginable is memorable in itself, namely, what we can sense, whereas we incidentally remember what we understand, which cannot be grasped by human beings without the help of images. And this is why things which need subtle spiritual consideration are less easy to remember than the gross things we can sense, and why, as Cicero'? teaches us, if we want to remember intellectual things more easily we must as it were tie them to some other images. However, there are people who regard memory as intellectual, understanding by memory all habitual retention of things intellectual.
Mind [Summa Theologiae] Passage 12 Mind [a] Source: Summa Theologiae, 1a.79.2—3. Text from Summa Theologiae (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. v).
Date: 1266~8, Italy, aged 42.
Type of passage and how to read: Modified disputed question (see Introduction).
Notes on translation: Where intellectus must have a special meaning I use 'understanding', where the meaning is more general 'mind'.
'Receptive mind' translates intellectus possibilis.
Parallel reading: For a similar treatment of the word 'passive' cf.
[Question 79] We are asking about Our Intellectual Powers...
[Article 2] The second question [If mind is an ability, is it a passive ability?] we approach as follows:
It seems that mind is not a passive ability:
For [1] matter is what makes things passive, and form what makes them active. But mind is an ability belonging to things immaterial in substance. So mind it seems is not a passive ability.
Moreover, [2] minds are imperishable, as we have said. But Aristotle! says that intellect, ifpassive, is perishable. So mind is not a passive power.
Moreover, [3] Augustine" and Aristotle? say acting is a more excellent thing than being acted on. Now the lowest-level powers of living things—vegetative powers—are all active powers. So a fortiori the highest-level power of living things—understanding—must be active.
Aristotle* says understanding is being acted on in some way.
The Ladder of Being In reply:
The word passive [patient, suffering, undergoing] is used firstly, in the strictest sense, to describe things undergoing loss of something natural or congenial to their inclinations: human beings undergoing sickness or sadness, or heated water undergoing loss of its [natural] coolness. It is used secondly, and less strictly, of things altering or changing in any way, undergoing loss of anything, congenial or not: in this sense one can be patient not only of sickness but also of health, suffer the passion not only of sadness but also of joy. And thirdly, and most broadly of all, it is used when anything acquires what it had a potential to acquire, without Josing anything at all: in this sense every potentiality can be said to undergo the actualization that in fact brings it to fulfilment. And in this last sense understanding is a kind of undergoing.
This is shown by the following argument. We said already that the object of mind's activity is what exists in general. So to find out whether mind is something actual or something potential we must ask how it relates to what exists in general.
For there is a mind related to what exists in general as actualizing everything that exists: God's mind, identical with his substance, in which originally and virtually as in its primal cause everything that exists pre-exists. So God's mind is not a potential but sheer actualization. But no created mind can be related as actualization to everything that exists in general: for that it would have to exist without limit. So every created mind, by the very fact of being what it itself is, is not an actualization of everything that can be understood, but is related to every such thing as a potential which they actualize.
Now potentialities are actualized in two ways. The potentiality of some things—the matter of heavenly bodies, for example—is always perfectly actualized. But the potentiality of other things—things that are born and die—is not always actualized but moves from potentiality to actuality. Angelic minds are always actualized by what they understand, because of their closeness to that first understanding, the sheer actuality of which we have spoken. But human minds,
Mind (Summa Theologiae] being the lowest and furthest away from God's perfect mind, are sheer potentials of understanding—what Aristotle® calls blank pages on which nothing is written. And this is clear from the way we start with only a potential to understand and later become people with actual understanding. Human understanding then is clearly a being acted on in some way, an undergoing in the third sense above. And so mind is a passive ability.
Hence: to 1: This objection understands passive in the first and second sense, characteristic of matter. But anything potential of actualization is passive in the third sense. to 2: Some people understand passive intellect to refer to the seat of our passions, the sense-appetite, which elsewhere®
Aristotle says shares in reason by obeying reason. Others take it to mean the native cunning sometimes called particular reason. And on both interpretations passive has its first two meanings since intellect in those senses is an actualization of a bodily organ. But mind as potential of what it can understand, which Aristotle" calls, for that reason, receptive, is passive only in the third sense, not being the actualization of any bodily organ. And so it is imperishable. to 3: Acting is a more excellent thing than being acted on if the acting and being acted on relate to the same thing, but not always if they relate to different things. Now mind is passive in relation to all that exists in general, whereas vegetative powers are active in relation only to one particular existent thing, namely, the associated body. So there is no reason why that passivity can't be more excellent than this activity.
{Article 3] The third question [If mind is a passive ability, must we also acknowledge the existence of an agent mind?] we approach as follows:
It seems that we need acknowledge no agent mind:
For [1] the mind relates to what it understands as the senses to what they sense. But because the senses are potential of S.P.W.
The Ladder of Being what they sense we don't posit an agent sense but simply receptive ones. So because mind is potential of what it understands it doesn't seem we ought to posit an agent mind, but simply a receptive one.
Moreover, if you say that in sensing too there is an agent, namely, the light, then against that: [2] seeing needs light only to make the intervening medium actually transparent, for colour itself as such then acts through the transparent.
But there is no such medium in mind that needs to be actuated. So there is no need for an agent mind.
Moreover, [3] what is acted on receives the agent's imprint in the way suited to it. Now the receptive mind is an immaterial ability, and so its own immateriality suffices to ensure that forms received in it are received immaterially. But immateriality of form makes it actually understandable. So there is no need to posit an agent mind to make the received forms actually understandable.
Aristotle® says that in the mind, just as in the rest of nature, besides what is receptive of existence there is what makes things exist.
In Plato's view there was no need for an agent mind to make things actually understandable, but only perhaps to give us light to understand by. For according to Plato the forms of things in nature exist on their own account outside matter, constituting objects for our understanding, since immateriality is what makes things actually intelligible. He called them forms or ideas, and said that both bodily matter and mind were formed by participating in these ideas: matter being formed into particular things having their own specific and generic natures, and mind into knowing such species and genera. According to Aristotle, however, the forms of things in nature don't exist on their own account outside matter, but in matter; and since forms as they exist in matter are not actually understandable, it follows that the natures and forms of the things we sense and understand are not actually
Mind [Summa Theologiae] understandable. Now only something actual can actualize a potential: only what is actually there to be sensed can actualize our senses. So our minds need to have a power to make things actually understandable by abstracting their forms from their material conditions. And this is why we have to acknowledge the existence of an agent mind.
Hence: to 1: Things outside us are already actually able to be sensed, so we don't need an agent sense. So we see that our nutritive powers are all agent powers, our sense-powers all receptive powers, and our intellectual powers part active and part receptive. to 2: There are two opinions about what light does. Some people say that seeing needs light to make the colours actually visible; and if that is so understanding needs an agent mind in the same way and for the same reasons that seeing needs light. But other people like Ibn Rushd? say that light is needed for seeing, not to make the colours actually visible, but to make the medium actually transparent. And if this is so, Aristotle's'° comparison of the agent mind with light is true to the extent that understanding needs one as seeing does the other, but not for the same reason. to 3: Given an agent, of course its imprint will be received into different things in ways determined by their different dispositions. But if there's no agent there's nothing disposition in the receiver can do. Now the natures of the things we sense don't exist as actually understandable anywhere in nature, since those things exist in matter. So the immateriality of a receptive mind is of no use to understanding without an agent mind to make things actually understandable by a process of abstraction.
The Ladder of Being Passage 13 Mind [6] Source: Summa contra Gentiles, 2.77. Text from Summa contra Gentiles (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. xiii).
Date: 1264, Italy, aged 39.
That it is is not impossible to combine in the one substance of soul both receptive mind and agent mind.
Now to some it may seem impossible that one and the same substance, namely, our soul, should be both a receptive mind, potential of everything we understand, and an agent mind, making everything actually understandable, for agents must be actual not potential. So it might seem impossible to combine in the one substance of soul both an agent and a receptive mind.
But if we examine this aright, there is no difficulty or inappropriateness. For there is no reason why A can't relate to B in one way as potential and in another as actual; we see it in nature, where air is actually damp and potentially dry whereas earth is the reverse. Now this is how our understanding mind relates to images. For in one respect the mind is actually what images are potentially; and in another images are actually what the mind is potentially. For the substance of the human soul is immaterial and consequently, as we saw, is of an intellectual nature: all immaterial substances are. But this doesn't yet make it a mind representing determinately this or that thing, which it must be if it is to know determinately this or that thing: for all knowledge arises from a representation of the known in the knower.
So the mind is still potential in regard to determinate representation of the sort of things we can know, namely, the natures of things sensed. Now it is exactly these determinate natures of things sensed that are presented to us in our images. And yet there they are not yet understandable, since they represent things sensed in the materiality of their individual properties, and exist in our own material sense-organs.
Mind {Summa contra Gentiles] So they are not yet actually understandable.
However, because the human being represented to us in these images possesses a nature common to all human beings when divested of features individual to this one, the images are potential of understanding. And so the images are understandable potentially and determinate representations of things actually; whereas exactly the reverse is true of the mind. So the mind is able to act on our images to make them actually understandable, and this ability of mind is called the agent mind; and it is also capable of being determined by the representations of things sensed, and this capability is the receptive mind.
But there is a difference between what we find in mind and what we find in nature, where one thing can potentially be what another actually is in an identical way—the material of air can take on the form of water in exactly the way water has the form—so that bodies in nature, because they share matter, act on and are acted on by each other at one and the same level. But the mind is not potentially able to assimilate representations of things in images in exactly the way they exist there, but needs them raised to a higher level, that of being abstracted from all individual material features so as to be actually understandable. So the agent mind must act on the images before they can be received by the receptive mind.
For this reason the primacy of activity is ascribed not to the images but to the agent mind, so that Aristotle' says it is related to the receptive as craft to its material. A perfect parallel would be an eye that was not only a transparent medium for receiving colours, but itself possessed enough light to make those colours actually visible, as certain animals are reputed to have light enough in their own eyes for them to see better at night than they see during the day (for they have weak eyes that a little light stimulates but much light dazzles). Our minds are like that, related to what is clearest as owls' eyes are to the sun,? so that the little light our understanding has by nature is enough for our understanding.
That our mind's natural light of understanding is enough to do what the agent mind has to do is clear if we examine why we need the agent mind. For mind is potential of what it
The Ladder of Being understands in the way the senses are potential of what they sense: just as we aren't always sensing so we aren't always understanding. Now the things the human mind understands were thought by Plato to be understandable in themselves
(the Platonic Ideas), and so there was no need to postulate an agent mind to make them understandable. But if this were true, the more understandable a thing was in itself the more we would understand it, and that is clearly untrue. For we find things more intelligible the closer to the senses they are, yet those things are less understandable in themselves. It was this that led Aristotle to say that the things we understand are not things existing as understandable themselves but things we sense and then make understandable. And so he had to postulate a power to do this: the agent mind. So the agent mind is there to make things proportionate to our understanding; and since this is something our own natural light of understanding is enough for, there is no reason to ascribe the action of the agent mind to anything else than the natural light of our own mind, especially since Aristotle himself compares the agent mind to light.
Passage 14 Mind [c] Source: Thomas's public disputations on Truth, 8.6. Text from Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. xxii).
Date: 1257-8, first stay in Paris, aged 32-3.
Type of passage and how to read: Disputed question (see Introduction). This passage is included to redress the balance of the previous two passages: they describe something incidental to understanding as such but characteristic of human understanding—the existence of agent and receptive mind; this passage crucially distinguishes understanding as such from the activity of either of these.
Notes on translation:
'Action' translates actio, and 'activity' operatio.
Mind {Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate] [Question 8] The subject for debate is Knowledge in Angels.
... [Article 6] And in the sixth place we are asked: Do angels know themselves?
For... [3] the same "thing can't both actively cause and passively undergo a change, except in the way Aristotle' says animals do, one part of them actively causing a change and another part passively undergoing it. But understanding and understood are like what acts and what it acts on. So an angel can only understand a part of itself...
Moreover, [6] for an angel to understand itself by its own substance, its substance would have to be in its mind. But this can't be! Rather, its mind is in its substance; and since things can't be mutually inside each other, an angel doesn't know itself by its substance.
Moreover, [7] an angel's mind is potential in some way, and nothing can actualize its own potentiality. So, since it is what a mind knows that makes it actually knowing, no angel can possibly understand itself. . .
Moreover, [11] activity lies between an agent and what it acts on. Now understanding and understood are like agent and acted on. Since then nothing can lie between a thing and itself, it doesn't seem angels can understand themselves.
{1] What lesser powers can do, greater can too, as Boethius" says. But we know ourselves, so how much more angels?
Moreover, [2] as Ibn Sina? says, the reason mind knows itself and senses don't is that senses use bodily organs and mind doesn't. But angels' minds are even further divorced from bodily organs than ours. So angels too must know themselves...
Moreover, [5] in the book of Causes* we read: Everything knowing knows its own nature and reflects completely on it.
Angels too then, since they are knowing.
The Ladder of Being In reply:
Action is of two sorts: one sort—action in a strict sense— issues from the agent into something external to change it (to illuminate it, for example), but the other sort—properly called activity—doesn't issue into anything external but remains within the agent itself perfecting it (glowing, for example). What both have in common is that they issue only from things actually existent precisely as actualized; a body neither illuminates nor glows unless actually alight.
Now activities like desiring and sensing and understanding are not activities that issue into external matter but activities that dwell within the agent itself, perfecting it. So, though understanding when understanding must be actualized, it needn't be related to what it understands as an agent to something it is acting on, but the understanding and what it understands, having become one thing (the actualized understanding), constitute a single source of the activity we call understanding. By constituting one thing
| mean that what we understand is joined to what understands it either in substance or by some likeness. So understanding is an agent or is acted on only coincidentally, in so far as the joining of what is understood to what understands presupposes acting and being acted on: acting, for example, in so far as our agent mind makes actually understandable the species [of what is to be understood], and being acted on, in so far as our receptive mind takes in that understandable species (as sense-powers take in perceptible appearances). But the activity of understanding is something that follows on such acting and being acted on, as an effect following on its cause.
So, just as bodies that can glow, once actually alight, will glow, so understanding, once something understandable is actually present within it, will understand it.
Note then that there is no reason why something can't be actually one thing and potentially another, as transparent bodies are actually bodies but only potentially coloured. In the same way things can be actually existent but only potentially understandable: for just'as in the realm of existence there are degrees of actuality and potentiality—ultimate
Mind [Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate] matter entirely potential, God entirely actual, and everything between both actual and potential—so too in the realm of understanding—God's nature being entirely actual, but our own receptive mind entirely potential (for, as Ibn Rushd* says, our mind in the realm of understanding is like ultimate matter in the world of the senses). And all angelic substances lie in between, part potential and part actual, not only in the realm of existence but also in the realm of understanding.
Now ultimate matter can't exercise activity until it takes on a form (and then the action is the form's doing rather than matter's), whereas things actually existent can exercise activity to the extent that they are actual. In the same way then our receptive mind can't understand anything until it takes in the form of something actually understandable (by which it then understands things of that form), and so can't understand itself except when it has such an understandable form present in it. The mind of an angel, on the other hand, has its own substance present in it—as something actually understandable—and so can understand its nature—present in it as something understandable—not through the medium of a likeness but immediately by way of itself.
Hence:... to 3: Understanding and understood are not like what acts and what it acts on—even if grammatically we seem to treat them as active and passive—but both together make up one agent, as we have said... to 6: There is no reason why things can't be mutually inside each other in different senses of inside, as a whole is in its parts and its parts are in it. And the present case is similar: the angel's substance is in its mind as something to be understood by its understanding, its mind in its substance as a power of that substance. to 7: The angel doesn't potentially understand its own substance; though it potentially understands other things, it always understands itself actually. And in any case a mind in' potentiality doesn't always need an external agent to actualize it, but only when it is essentially potential, before The Ladder of Being it has learnt anything; when the mind is only accidentally potential—possessing knowledge it is not attending to but is able to consider—then it can actualize itself, unless you prefer to say it is actualized by the will that moves it to actually consider... to 11: The activity of understanding doesn't really lie between understanding and what it understands, but issues from both conjoined.
Passage 15 Feelings Source: Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae. 22-3. Text from Summa Theologiae (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. vi).
Date: 1269-70, second stay in Paris, aged 45.
Type of passage and how to read: Modified disputed question (see Introduction).
Notes on translation: 'Feeling', 'passion', and 'emotion' all translate passio.
Parallel reading: For a similar treatment of the word 'passion' cf.
Our first consideration [feelings in general] divides into four: first, [Question 22] What in us is subject to feelings? second, [Question 23] the classification of feelings...
[Question 22] The first question [What in us is subject to feelings?) divides into three:
Can soul be subject to passions?
Are passions desires rather than perceptions?
Are they desires of the sense-appetite rather than of the intellectual appetite we call will?
[Article 1] The first question [Can the soul be subject to Passions?] we approach as follows:
It seems that the soul can't be subject to passions:
For [1] passion means being acted on, which characterizes material. But we showed in book 1 that the soul is not constituted of formed material. So it can't be subject to passions.
Moreover, [2] passion is change, according to Aristotle.' But in the De Anima? he proves that the soul is not subject to change. So it can't be subject to passions.
Moreover, [3] passion leads to decomposition, for Aristotle? says that as passion intensifies substance decays. But the soul can't decompose. So it can't be subject to passions.
Paul says [Romans 7: 5] that while we still lived in a fleshly way the sinful passions law aroused were at work throughout our bodies. But sins affect our souls, properly speaking.
So the passions here called sinful affect our souls.
The word passion [being a patient, suffering, undergoing] is used firstly, in a broad sense, to describe any acquiring, even if the acquirer loses nothing thereby, as if we talked of the atmosphere undergoing illumination, though being fulfilled by would be the better term in this case. It is used secondly and properly when something is lost in the acquiring, and that can take two forms. Sometimes what is lost is uncongenial to the thing—an animal body undergoes healing, acquiring health, and losing sickness; but sometimes the opposite happens—we undergo a sickness, acquiring ill health and losing health—and this is passion in its strictest sense, since passion implies being drawn by some external agent, and this is most apparent when a thing is drawn away from some state congenial to it. Aristotle* makes a similar point: generating higher forms of life from lower forms is called generation without qualification, even though in a sense it is also decomposition; and the opposite terms are used when lower forms are generated from higher forms.
Now the soul can be subject to passions in all three senses.
In the sense of simple acquiring, sensation and understanding are passions of a sort. Passion with loss, though, is a charThe Ladder of Being acteristic of bodily changes, so that passions in the strict sense characterize the soul only incidentally in so far as the whole animal, body and soul, is subject to them. But here too a distinction should be made: exchanges for the worse are more properly passions than exchanges for the better: feeling sad is more properly passion than feeling pleased.
Hence: to 1: Passion with change and loss characterizes material, and occurs only in wholes constituted of formed matter, but passion which is simple acquisition occurs wherever there is a potentiality of some sort, whether that be material or not.
So although the soul is not constituted of formed matter, it has potentiality to acquire and undergo the sort of passion
Aristotle' says understanding is. to 2: Though the soul as such is not subject to passion and change, it is subject to them incidentally, as Aristotle® says. to 3: This argument holds for passion that changes for the worse. The soul is only incidentally subject to such passions; as such they affect the whole animal, body and soul, and that does decompose.
[Article 2] The second question [Are passions desires rather than perceptions?] we approach as follows:
It seems that passions are perceptions rather than desires:
For [1] Aristotle' says the first in any field seems to be supreme in that field and cause of the others. Now passions occur first in perception and then in desire, since we can't undergo desire until we have undergone perception.
So passions are perceptions rather than desires.
Moreover, [2] the more active the less passive, it would seem, for action and passion are opposites. Now desire is more active than perception; so passion, it would seem, is more characteristic of perception.
Moreover, [3] sense-desire and sense-perception are both located in organs of the body. Now passion of soul in the strict sense requires bodily change. So desires can no more claim to be passions than perceptions can.
Augustine® says the movements of soul the Greeks called pathe and Roman authors like Cicero agitations, some call feelings or affections and some—following the Greek more explicitly—call passions. So passions, feelings, and affections are all identical. Now affections are clearly desires, not perceptions. So passions are desires rather than perceptions.
We have already said that passion implies being drawn towards some agent. Now things draw us through desire and affection rather than through perception; for desire is attraction to things themselves existing in their own reality
(Aristotle? says good and bad, the objects of desire, exist in things), but perception isn't attraction to something in its own reality, but awareness of it through some representation of it in the mind, innate or acquired depending on the type of mind (so that Aristotle'® says that true and false, objects of awareness, exist not in things but in mind). So passions are desires rather than perceptions.
Hence: to 1: Perfections and deficiencies behave in exactly opposite ways. Things get more perfect the closer they approach some first starting-point, as a thing gets brighter the nearer it gets to some supremely bright light-source. But things get more deficient not by getting closer to something altogether deficient, but by getting further away from something perfect; for this is what lack and deficiency mean. So the closer to the starting-point the less deficient, which is why we find big mistakes grow from small beginnings. Now passions are a sort of deficiency due to a thing's potentiality. So the closer a thing is to the first and most perfect of things, God, the less potentiality and passion it displays, and vice versa. And this holds also for the higher powers of soul—its perceptive powers—which are less passive in nature. to 2: Desire is thought more active because it motivates our external activity; but this characterizes it precisely because it
The Ladder of Being is more passible and responsive to things as they exist in their own reality; for external activity pursues things. to 3: In book 1 we said that bodily organs can undergo two kinds of modification. The first is non-physical, the acquiring of a representation or intention of something, and characterizes sense-perception: for the object of sight doesn't induce colour in the eye but representation of colour. The second is physical modification of the organ affecting its natural constitution: heating or cooling it or some change like that. Such modifications are incidental to the act of sense-perception
(eye-strain from excessive concentration, for example, or the dazzle of a bright light), but are essential to emotion, so that every passion is defined as involving materially physiological modification of an organ: being angry is the heart's blood boiling." So clearly acts of sense-desire are more truly passions than acts of sense-perception, even though both are acts of bodily organs.
[Article 3] The third question [Are passions desires of the sense-appetite rather than of the intellectual appetite we call will?] we approach as follows:
It seems that passions belong as much to our intellectual appetite as to our sense-appetite:
For [1] pseudo-Dionysius'? says that Hierotheus was taught by a certain divine inspiration that brought him not only knowledge but a passion for divine things. Now a passion for divine things can't be a matter of sense-appetite, which responds only to good that we can sense. So passions can affect our intellectual as well as our sense appetite.
Moreover, [2] the more powerful the action of the agent the greater the passion of the patient. Now good in general— the object of our intellectual appetite—is more powerful than particular goods—the objects of our sense appetites. So passion is more truly found in intellectual appetite than in sense-appetites.
Moreover, [3] joy and love are called passions, and they are found in our intellectual' appetite as well as our senseappetites; otherwise scripture would never ascribe them to Feelings
God and spirits. Passions then characterize our intellectual appetite as much as our sense-appetites.
John Damascene™? describes soul's passions as movements of sense-appetite towards what is imagined, good or bad, or, translated differently, movements of our non-logical soul caused by awareness ofgood or bad.
As we have said already, passions properly belong where there is bodily change, and that is found in the acts of our sense-appetite where there is not only the non-physical kind of modification found in our powers of sense-perception, but also physiological modification. But the acts of our intellectual appetite require no change in our body at all, since this kind of appetite doesn't act through a bodily organ.
Clearly then passion more truly exists in acts of sense-appetite than in those of intellectual appetite, as also emerges from Damascene's definition above.
Hence: to 1: The passion for divine things mentioned here is a desire for divine things and a union with them through love, all of it happening without physiological change. to 2: Greatness of passion depends not only on agent-power but also on patient-passibility, since what is very sensitive is greatly affected by even small active stimuli. So although the object of intellectual appetite is more active than the objects of sense-appetites, our sense-appetites are more passible. to 3: When we talk of God and spirits or our own human wills loving and enjoying and so on, this is a metaphorical description of pure acts of will lacking passion but having a similar [external] effect. Thus Augustine'* says: The holy angels punish but without feeling anger, and help us without feeling compassion. But our ordinary human language applies these passion-words to them too, because what they do is similar though without the weakness of feelings.
The Ladder of Being Next [Question 23] we consider the classification of feelings; and that divides into four:
Should we distinguish affective from aggressive feelings?
Are the antitheses between aggressive feelings always antitheses between good and bad?
Has every feeling an antithetic feeling?
Within each division of feelings, affective or aggressive, is all difference of kind due to antithesis?
{Article 1] The first question [Should we distinguish affective from aggressive feelings?] we approach as follows:
It seems that there is no distinction between affective and aggressive feelings:
For [1] Aristotle'> says feelings are accompanied by joy or sadness. But joy and sadness are affective in nature. So all feeling is affective in nature, and there is no distinction between affective and aggressive feelings.
Moreover, [2] Jerome glossing Matthew 13: 33: The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, etc., says: Reason is given prudence, our aggressive spirit a hatred of vice, and our affective a desire of virtue. But Aristotle' tells us that hatred is as much an affective feeling as its antithesis, love. So the same feelings are aggressive and affective.
Moreover, [3] passions and actions are differentiated in kind by their objects. But aggressive and affective passions have the same objects, namely, good and bad. So there is no distinction between aggressive and affective feelings.
Actions realizing different abilities to act are different in kind: seeing and hearing, for example. But as we said in book 1, the sense-appetite consists of two abilities: the affective and the aggressive. So, since feelings, as we have said, are movements of sense-appetite, feelings exercising our affective ability will differ in kind from those exercising our aggressive ability.
Aggressive and affective feelings do differ in kind. For, as we said in book 1, abilities differ because their objects differ, so that feelings that realize different abilities must have different objects. As a result feelings that realize different abilities must be more than normally different in kind, since greater difference of object is needed to differentiate abilities than to differentiate acts or passions. It is like the situation in nature: there generic differences depend on different material capabilities and differences in species within a genus on one and the same material taking on different forms. In the same way when the acts of living things exercise different abilities they differ not only in species but also in genus, whereas acts or passions that have different specialized objects within the one common object of some ability differ as species within that genus.
So to find out which feelings are affective and which aggressive we need to know the object of these abilities. In book 1 we said the object of our affective ability was anything sensed as straightforwardly good or bad, pleasurable or painful. But sometimes the animal has a hard struggle attaining such good or avoiding such bad things, because they are not within its immediate power, and then good or bad, seen as challenging or requiring effort, becomes an object of our aggressive ability. So any straightforward feeling for good or bad as such is an affective feeling, like feeling joyful or sad, loving or hating, or the like; and any feeling for good or bad as something challenging, the attaining or avoiding of which will require effort, is an aggressive feeling, like feeling bold or afraid or hopeful, and the like.
Hence: to 1: As we said in book 1 the function of aggressive feelings in animals is to remove obstacles preventing affective feelings from pursuing their objective, obstacles that make good difficult to attain or bad difficult to avoid. So all aggressive feelings end up in affective feeling, so that even aggressive
The Ladder of Being feelings are accompanied by the affective feelings of joy or sadness. to 2: Jerome locates hatred of vice in our aggressive ability, not because it is hatred—for that is an affective feeling—-but because it involves struggle and aggressiveness. to 3: As pleasurable the good attracts our affections, and as hard to attain it repels them, so we had to have another ability called our aggressibe ability, enabling us to pursue such good and avoid such bad. So affective and aggressive feelings differ in kind.
[Article 2] The second question [Are the antitheses between aggressive feelings always antitheses between good and bad?] we approach as follows:
It seems that antitheses between aggressive feelings are always antitheses between good and bad:
For [1] aggressive feeling serves affective feeling, as we said.
Now antitheses between affective feelings are antitheses between good and bad: loving versus hating, feeling joyful versus feeling sad, and so on. So the same will apply to aggressive feelings.
Moreover, [2] passions are differentiated by objects in the way movements are by destinations. Now Aristotle!" shows that what differentiates antithetic movements are antithetic destinations. So what differentiates antithetic passions must be antithetic objects. Now good and bad are the objects of our appetite. So all antitheses between passions in appetitive powers will be antitheses between good and bad.
Moreover, [3] Ibn Sina!® says that every emotion approaches or retreats. Now approach is attraction to good, and retreat is repulsion from bad; for just as Aristotle'? says that good is what everyone desires, so bad is what everyone recoils from.
So all antitheses between animal passions must be between good and bad.
Aristotle? makes an antithesis between feeling afraid and feeling bold. But this isn't a difference of good and bad: both are reactions to something bad. So not every antithesis between aggressive feelings is an antithesis between good and bad.
Passions, says Aristotle,2! are changes of a sort. So antitheses between passions must be modelled on those between changes or movements. Now Aristotle"? distinguishes two sorts of antithesis between changes or movements: sometimes the antithesis is between moving towards or away from one state, as in changes of substance where birth moves to existence and death moves away; and sometimes the antithesis is between movements that lead towards antithetic states, as in changes of quality where getting whiter moves from black to white and getting blacker moves from white to black. In our animal passions too then we find these two sorts of antithesis: one due to antithetic objects, in this case good and bad, and another between tending towards or away from the same object. In our affections we see only the first sort of antithesis—the antithesis of object—but in aggressive feelings we see both sorts.
The reason is that affections, as we have said, respond to what is sensed as straightforwardly good or bad. Now good as such cannot repel but only attract, so as such can only be moved towards, not away from; and bad as such cannot attract but only repel, so as such can only be moved away from, not towards. Consequently, all affections related to good (like loving or desiring or enjoying it) tend towards it, and all affections related to bad (hating it, rejecting it, or being sad at it) tend away from it. Affections cannot be antithetic in the other way of moving towards and away from the same object.
Aggressive feelings, however, as we have said, react to what is sensed as good or bad not straightforwardly, but as challenging and requiring effort. Now challenging difficult goods can both attract us as goods (so that we feel hopeful) and repel us as difficult (so that we feel despairing); and challenging evils can both repel us as evils (so that we feel afraid) and attract us to face up to the challenge and thus
The Ladder of Being : escape the evil (so that we feel bold). In aggressive feelings then we find both types of antithesis: the antithesis due to the antithetic objects of good and bad that distinguishes hope from fear; and the antithesis between confronting and shunning one and the same object that distinguishes boldness from fear.
And these considerations are enough to answer the initial objections.
[Article 3] The third question [has every feeling an antithetic feeling?] we approach as follows:
It seems that every feeling has an antithetic feeling:
For [1] every feeling is either affective or aggressive, as we have said, and each of these have their own kinds of antithesis. So every feeling has an antithetic feeling.
Moreover, [2] every animal passion has either good or bad for its object, since these are the objects common to appetite as such. But to any passion for good there must be an antithetic passion for bad. So every passion has its antithetic passion.
Moreover, [3] every emotion either approaches or retreats, as we just said. But every approach has its antithetic retreat, and vice versa. So every emotion must have its antithetic emotion.
Anger is a feeling, and Aristotle"> says it has no antithesis. So not all feelings have antitheses.
Anger is peculiar in being the only feeling that can't have an antithesis, whether on the model of approach—recoil, or due to the antithesis of good and bad. For anger is provoked by evils already done to us and hard to repel. Either we yield to such evils sadly (an affective feeling) or we are impelled to confront the harm done us angrily. But no feeling can impel us to avoid the evil, since the 'evil is already present or past.
So anger has no antithetic feeling on the approach—recoil Feelings model. Nor any based on the antithesis of good and bad. For evil already done to us is like good already achieved: it can't any longer be thought of as challenging or difficult. Once good is achieved the only movement remaining is resting of desire in the achieved good, that is to say, its affective enjoyment. So the movement of anger can't have any antithetic movement, but simply absence of movement: as Aristotle"* says the only opposite to being angry is calming down, which is not its antithesis but its absence or lack.
And these considerations are enough to answer the initial objections.
[Article 4] The fourth question [Within each division of feelings, affective or aggressive, is all difference of kind due to antithesis?] we approach as follows:
It seems that within each division all difference of kind is due to antithesis:
For [1] animal passions are differentiated by object. Now the objects of passion are good and bad and they differentiate passions by antithesis. So unless the feelings within each division of feeling are antithetic they will not differ in kind.
Moreover, [2] difference in kind is difference of form, and Aristotle" says all differences of form involve antithesis. So feelings within the same division which are not antithetic will not differ in kind.
Moreover, [3] since every emotion is an approach to or a recoil from good or bad, differentiation of emotions must come either from the difference between good and bad, or from that between approach and recoil, or from that between more or less approach and recoil. Now the first two differences do introduce antitheses between feelings, as we have seen; whilst the third doesn't differentiate kinds of feeling, for then there would be unlimited species of feeling.
So one can't differentiate species of feeling within a genus except by antithesis.
Loving and feeling joyful are both affective feelings and differ in kind, yet they are not antithetic; rather one causes
The Ladder of Being the other. So some feelings within the same division differ in kind but are not antithetic.
Passion [being acted on] is differentiated by the agent acting, which is the object in the case of the soul's passions. But active agents differ in two ways: in nature or kind, as fire differs from water, and in strength of activity. This difference of movers by their power to move offers a natural model for the differentiation of animal passions, for agents that move things either attract or repel them. Now attraction has three effects: first of all, the agent gives an object an inclination or bias towards itself, as, for example, light bodies whose place is above generate light bodies, that is to say, bodies with an inclination or bias upwards; secondly, if the generated body is not already in its proper place the agent moves it there; and thirdly, when it is there, the agent brings it to rest, for the cause of a thing's rest in a place is the same cause that moved it there. And a similar analysis applies to causes that repel.
Now in movement of appetite good attracts and bad repels. So good first provokes an inclination or bias or affinity to itself, called loving (having an antithetic movement, hating, in regard to evil); then secondly, if the good is not yet possessed it provokes a movement towards getting it, called desiring (opposed to aversion or disgust, as regards evil); and thirdly, when the good is finally achieved, it provokes a repose of desire in the good achieved, called feeling pleased or enjoyment (and opposed to pain or feeling sad, as regards evil). And aggressive feelings presuppose the same bias or inclination towards seeking good and avoiding evil that underlies affective feelings directed straightforwardly at good and evil. And if the good is not yet acquired this provokes hope or despair and if the evil is not yet upon us fear or boldness. But good acquired provokes no aggressive feeling because, as we have said, it no longer offers a challenge; while evil already upon us provokes anger.
So we see that there are three groupings of affections: loving and hating, desiring and aversion, feeling pleased and Will as Rational Desire feeling sad; and three of aggressive feelings: hoping and despairing, feeling afraid and feeling bold, and feeling angry
(which has no antithesis). That makes eleven distinct species of feeling—six affective and five aggressive—which comprise every animal feeling there is.
And these considerations are enough to answer the initial objections.
Passage 16 Will as Rational Desire Source: Summa contra Gentiles, 2.47—8. Text from Summa contra Gentiles (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. xiii).
Date: 1264, Italy, aged 39.
Notes on translation: In this extract 'desire' translates appetitus; 'freedom to decide' translates liberum arbitrium.
[Chapter 47] That substances with understanding must have wills.
There is a desire for good in everything: good, the philosophers tell us, is what all desire. In things without awareness this desire is called natural desire: the attraction a stone has for downwards, for instance. In things with sense-awareness it is called animal desire, and divides into capabilities of affective and aggressive feeling. In things with understanding it is called intellectual or rational desire: will. So created intellectual substances have wills. . .
In addition, a thing's activity originates in the form by which it actually exists: behind activity always lies actuality.
So the way agents have form determines the way they are active. Thus, from forms that are in agents but not from them, there issues activity of which its agent is not master.
But if there could be agents acting through a form they themselves produced, then such agents would also be masters of the consequent activity. Now the natural forms behind natural changes and activities aren't produced by the things
The Ladder of Being they form but by entirely external agents, since in nature things exist by such natural forms and nothing can cause its own existence. So things that move by nature don't move themselves: heavy objects don't move themselves downwards but are moved downwards by what produced them and gave them their forms. In the lower animals too the sensed or imagined forms that move them are not thought up by the lower animals themselves, but received into them from external things acting on their senses and there evaluated by an instinctive judgement of nature. So although we say they move themselves—meaning one part is moved and another does the moving—that very moving comes, not from them, but partly from the external things they sense and partly from their nature: we say they move themselves inasmuch as their appetite moves their limbs (and this is an advance over non-living things and plants), but inasmuch as that appetite itself is necessitated by forms received from their senses and subject to an instinctive judgement of nature, they don't cause themselves to move themselves; and so are not masters of their action, But the understood form by which intellectual substances are active issues from the intellect itself, as something conceived and in a sense thought up by itself: as we see in the forms that craftsmen conceive and think up and operate according to. So intellectual substances move themselves to activity, and are masters of their own action. They therefore have wills...
[Chapter 48] This shows that those substances are free to decide their own actions.
...Moreover, things lack freedom to decide either because they lack all judgement, like stones and plants which lack awareness, or because their judgements are fixed by nature, like non-reasoning animals. For sheep judge wolves harmful and consequently flee by instinctive natural evaluation, and similarly in other cases. But wherever judgement of what to do is not fixed by nature, there is freedom to decide. And all creatures with understanding are of this sort. For understanding takes in not only this or that good but the notion of good as such. So, since will is moved by forms taken in by Free Will understanding, and what moves and what is moved must be proportioned to one another, the will of creatures with understanding is not fixed by nature [on any particular good] but only on good as such. The will, then, can tend towards whatever is presented to it as good, with no fixed opposed tendency of nature prohibiting it. So all things with understanding have freedom of will deriving from understanding's judgement, and that is freedom of decision, which is defined as free judgement of reason.
Passage 17 Free Will Source:
Thomas's public disputations on Evil, 6.
Text from Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo (Opera Omnia, Leonine edn., vol. xxiii).
Date: 1270-2, second stay in Paris, aged 46.
Type of passage and how to read: Disputed question. Note that some objections have been indented to show that they depend on one another: the bachelor respondent's answers led to new questions (see Introduction).
(Question 6] The subject for debate is Human Choice; and we ask: Can human beings choose their actions freely, or are such choices compelled?
And it seems that they are compelled, not free:
For [1] we read in Jeremiah 10 [23]: No one's ways are his own, nor can he guide his steps as he goes. But whatever a human being is free to do is his own, of which he is master.
So it seems human beings have no free choice over their ways and actions.
But it was said [by the respondent}: this refers to the implementation of a choice, which is sometimes not in our power.
[2] Paul says in Romans 9 [16]:
It (namely, willing) does not depend on who wills or running on who runs but on God having mercy. Now running is The Ladder of Being the external implementation, but willing is internal choice.
So even internal choices aren't in a human being's power but come to him from God.
But it was said [by the respondent]: God himself moves us to choose by a sort of internal stimulus, infallibly but without compromising our freedom.
[3] all animals move themselves by their appetites; but the lower animals can't choose freely, because that appetite itself is moved by something outside them, the power of the heavens, for example, or action by some other body. If then human will is infallibly moved by God, humans can't choose their actions freely either.
Moreover, [4] violence is defined as exercise of power from outside without the victim's co-operation. If then choice in the will comes from outside—from God—it seems that our wills are moved violently and under compulsion, and cannot freely choose their own actions.
Moreover, [5] human will can't diverge from God's will, as Augustine' says, for even if it does not will what God wants,
God implements what he wants by way of what it wills. But God's will can't be changed. Neither then can human will. So all human choices derive from an unchanging choice.
Moreover, [6] no power can act except in pursuit of the object that defines it: sight can only direct its activity at what can be seen. But will's object is what is good, and so it cannot will anything but what is good. It is compelled then to will the good, and can't freely choose between good and bad.
Moreover, [7] any ability to be acted on by its object is a passive ability, the activity of which consists in being affected. The senses, for example, are acted on by their objects and are therefore passive abilities, and the activity of sensing is a kind of being affected. Now will's object acts on it, for Aristotle? says that what we desire moves but is not moved, whereas our desire moves and is moved. So will is a passive ability, and the activity of willing a being affected.
Passive abilities, however, can be compelled to change by something sufficiently active. So will it seems can be compelled to change by what it desires: humans can't freely will or not will.
~ But it was said [by the respondent]: our will is compelled by our ultimate goal {since we all compulsively will total happiness), but not by the means of achieving it.
But against that: [8] goal and means are both objects of will, being both goods. So if will moves to its goal compulsively, it seems it should move to means compulsively too.
Moreover, [9] when what is moved and what moves it are the same, then the way of being moved must be the same.
But in willing goals and willing means what is moved— will—is the same, and also what moves it, since means are willed by willing the goal. So the way of being moved must be the same: and just as our ultimate goal is willed compulsively, so must the means be too.
Moreover, [10] will, like mind, is an immaterial power. But mind is compelled by its object: we are coerced into assent to a truth by reason's violence. In the same way then will must be compelled by its object...
Moreover, [13] will's love moves us more ardently than mind's knowledge, since knowledge assimilates but love transforms, as pseudo-Dionysius® says. So will is more able to be moved than mind. If then mind can be compelled to move, a fortiori will.
But it was said [by the respondent]: mind's activity is movement into the soul and will's a movement out, so that mind is more passive and will more active and less under compulsion from its object.
[14] mind assents and will consents, assent yielding to the thing it assents to and consent yielding to the thing it consents to. So will's movement is no more a movement out from the soul than mind's.
Moreover, [15] if there are things will is not compelled to move to, we shall have to say it is open to conflicting The Ladder of Being possibilities, since what ntedn't be can possibly not be. But what is potential of conflicting alternatives can realize one of them only if something already actualized actualizes its potential, and what actualizes it we call its cause. So if will is to determinately will anything it must be caused to will. But, as Ibn Sina proved,* given a cause the effect follows; for if a cause was given and it still remained possible for the effect not to exist, something else would be needed to actualize that potential, and the first cause wouldn't have been a sufficient one. So the will is compelled to move towards what it wills...
Moreover, [17] sometimes our will starts to choose after not previously choosing. Either then its previous disposition has changed or not. If not, then it must still be as it was before, not choosing, and so something not choosing is choosing, which is impossible. If, however, it has changed its disposition, something must have caused that; since everything that is moved is moved by something else. But a mover compels what it moves to move, otherwise it wouldn't be sufficient to cause movement. So will is compelled to move.
But it was said [by the respondent]: such arguments apply to natural powers in material things, but not to immaterial powers like will.
But against that: [18] all our knowledge comes through the senses, and so nothing can be known unless it or its effects can be sensed. But we can't sense the power itself, open to conflicting ways of acting; and among its effects which can be sensed we never find two conflicting activities existing together, but always see determinately the one or the other. So we have no way of judging whether such a power of acting in conflicting ways exists in humans...
Moreover, [20] Augustine' says that nothing causes its own existence; and for the same reason nothing causes its own movement. So will doesn't move itself but needs to be moved, For it starts into activity from inactivity, and that needs movement (which is why we don't say God starts into willing things when previously he hasn't, because God doesn't change). Will then must be moved by something else; and since what is moved by something else is placed under compulsion by it, will must will under compulsion and not freely.
Moreover, [21] the variable depends on the constant. Now human actions' are many and variable, and must depend causally on the constant movement of the heavens. But what the heavens cause happens under compulsion, for all natural causes compel their effects unless interfered with. But nothing can interfere with the effects of the heavens' movement, since the interfering factor also causally depends on that movement. So it seems that human movements are compelled, and not freely chosen...
Moreover, [24] Augustine® says that unless one resists habit it compels one. So it seems that at least the wills of people acting out of habit are acting under compulsion.
[1] We read in Ecclesiasticus 15 [14]: God made human beings in the beginning, then left them to their own deliberations. But that means they had free choice, which Aristotle" defines as a deliberated desire. So human beings can choose freely.
Moreover, [2] Aristotle? says that reasoning powers can entertain opposite objects. Now will is a reasoning power, a power in reason as Aristotle? calls it. So will can entertain opposites and is not compelled to embrace one of them.
Moreover, [3] Aristotle! says human beings are masters of their own actions, able to act or not to act. But this can only be so if they can freely choose. So human beings can freely choose their actions.
Some have suggested that human will is compelled to choose what it does, though not coerced. For not all compulsion is violent, only external compulsion: the movements of nature are compelled but not violent, since violence—originating outside—is incompatible with both the natural and the willed—both of which originate inside. The suggestion,
The Ladder of Being however, is heretical since it destroys the notion of human action as deserving or undeserving: somebody so compelled to act that he can't avoid it doesn't seem to be doing anything deserving or undeserving. The opinion is also philosophically anarchic, not only opposed to the faith but destroying the foundations of ethics. For if we are not in any way free to will but compelled, everything that makes up ethics vanishes: pondering action, exhorting, commanding, punishing, praising, condemning. Opinions like these, which destroy the foundations of a branch of philosophy, are called anarchic: the opinion that nothing changes, for example, which does away with natural philosophy. People are led to embrace them, Aristotle'! says, partly by brinkmanship and partly by sophistical reasoning to which they can't find the answers.
To clarify the truth in this matter let us note firstly that like other things human beings originate actions. The active or motive principle peculiar to them is, as Aristotle'? says, mind and will, which is partly like the active principles in nature and partly unlike. Like, because action in nature originates from things' forms, which give them natural tendencies (called desires of their nature) leading to action, just as in human beings from forms taken in by mind there follow willed tendencies leading to external activity; but also unlike, because forms in nature are forms taken on and made individual by matter, so that the resultant tendency is fixed
' on one course, whereas forms taken in by mind are general forms covering a number of individual things, so that the willed tendencies remain open to more than one course of action—actions being individual and none matching the generality of the power. The architect's concept of house, for example, is general enough to cover many different houseplans, so that his will can tend towards making the house square or round or some other shape. The active principle in lower animals lies somewhere in between: the forms their senses take in are individual like the forms of nature and give rise to tendencies to react in fixed ways as in nature; yet the form taken in by their senses is not always the same as it is in nature (where fire is always hot) but varies, pleasant at one moment, painful the next, so that the animal flees at one moment and pursues the next, behaving like a human being.
Secondly, note that abilities can be affected in two ways: subjectively and objectively. Sight, for example, is affected subjectively when a change in the eye's disposition affects our clarity of vision, and objectively when we see white one moment and black the next. The first kind of affection relates to exercising an action (whether you do it or not, or do it well or badly), and the second to what sort of action it is (for actions are defined by their objects). So note that in nature classification of action comes from form, but its exercise comes from an agent causing the action in pursuance of a goal, so that the first source of an activity's exercise is some goal. And if we take note of the objects of mind and of will we will find that mind's object is what holds first place in the world of form—namely, being and truth—whilst will's object is what holds first place in the world of goals— namely, good; and that good applies to all goals just as truth applies to all forms mind takes in, so that good itself as taken in by mind is one truth among others, and truth itself as goal of mind's activity is one good among others. If then we think of the way soul's abilities are affected by the object that defines them, the first source of such affection is mind; for this is the way even will itself is affected by good: as taken in . by mind. But if we think of the way soul's abilities are affected in the exercise of their action, the first source of such affection is will; for it is always the ability pursuing the goal that activates abilities that pursue the means (the military man puts the manufacturer of bridles to work). For this is the way in which will puts itself and all other abilities to work: I think because I want to, I use all my other abilities and dispositions because I want to, so that Ibn Rushd' defines a disposition as what is ready to be used when wanted. If then we are going to show that will is not compelled to act, we must consider acts of will both as to their exercise and as to their determination by some object.
As to the exercise of acts of will, clearly will moves itself just as it moves our other powers. This doesn't mean will is potential and actualized in the same respect, for, just as The Ladder of Being mind in knowing moves itself to discovery, progressing from known to unknown, from what it actually knows to what it can come to know, so by way of actually willing one thing we move ourselves to actually willing another; from willing health, for example, to willing medicine, since, because we want to be healthy, we start to deliberate about what will make us healthy, and eventually, coming to a decision, want to take our medicine. The willing of the medicine is thus preceded by deliberation, which has itself issued in turn from the willer's will to deliberate. Now, because will moves itself by way of deliberation—a kind of investigation which doesn't prove some one way correct but examines the alternatives—will doesn't compel itself to will; but, since it hasn't always been willing deliberation, something must have moved it to will deliberation, and if that was itself, then deliberation must have preceded that movement too, and preceding that deliberation, yet another act of will. Now this can't go on for ever; so we are forced to admit that, in any will that is not always willing, the very first movement to will must come from outside, stimulating the will to start willing.
So some people think the outside stimulus comes from the heavens; but that can't be. For will is a power in reason, as Aristotle'* calls it, and reason or mind is not a bodily ability; so the bodily power of the heavens can't directly influence will as such. To think the heavens can affect human will as they can the appetites of animals is to think mind no different from sense-awareness, as did the people to whom
Aristotle! attributes the quote that human will follows the lead of the father of men and gods, namely, of the heavens or the sun. We are left then with Aristotle's conclusion in the De Bona Fortuna*® that what first moves mind and will must be something above mind and will, namely,
God, who—just as he moves everything in the way natural to it, light up and heavy down—moves will in the way will is disposed to be moved, not compelling it to one course, but as . open to more than one possibility. Clearly then, as far as exercising will is concerned, will is not compelled to move.
If now we turn to consider the way will is moved by the object that determines what it is we will, note that the object moving will is something apprehended as both good and appropriate. Goods proposed as good but not apprehended as appropriate will not move will. And since decisions and choices bear on particular circumstances—where actions take place—what is apprehended as good and appropriate must be seen as good and appropriate in these circumstances and not just in general. Something apprehended to be good and appropriate in any and every circumstance that could be thought of would, to be sure, compel us to will it; and this is the reason human beings compulsively will total happiness, which, according to Boethius,'" is the perfect state in which every good is collected together. (And I am talking of a compulsive determination of what is willed so that one can't will the opposite; not a compulsive exercise of that will, since someone can will not to think of total happiness just now, since even acts of mind and will take place in particular circumstances.) But something not found to be good in any and every circumstance that can be thought of will not compel the will, even as regards determination of what to will; because then, even when thinking about it, someone can will its opposite, because of some other particular circumstance in which the opposite perhaps is good or appropriate, as, for example, when what is good for health is not good for pleasure. And here there are three ways in which will can be attracted by one particular circumstance of what is offered rather than by another: firstly, because it is of greater weight, so that reason moves the will towards it: something that serves health, for example, is preferred to something that serves pleasure;!® secondly, because one circumstance is thought of and the other not: and this often happens when some chance occurrence, external or internal, draws attention to the circumstance; and thirdly, because of some disposition in the one willing, since, as Aristotle'? says, what you want depends on what you are. The will of an angry man won't agree with that of a peaceable one; the same thing is not appropriate to both, just as the same food won't appeal to the sick and the healthy. When the disposition to see something as good and appropriate is innate, not subject to will, will is compelled to prefer it in the way everyone
The Ladder of Being naturally desires existence, life, and knowledge. But if the disposition is subject to will and not innate—some acquired disposition or passing emotion disposing us to see something in these particular circumstances as good or bad—then will won't be compelled by it since the disposition can be removed and things seen differently; for example, someone can calm down his own anger so as not to judge something while still angry. Though emotions are easier to get rid of than habitual dispositions.
So then sometimes the will can be compelled by an object, but not always; but to exercise its act it can never be compelled.
Hence: to 1: This authority is open to two interpretations. One is that Jeremiah is talking of implementation of choice: for it is not [always] in a human being's power fully to implement what he has in mind. The second is that even our internal willing is stimulated by a higher source, God. So that St Paul is saying [in argument 2 above]: willing does not depend on who wills or running on who runs for its first stimulation, but on God having mercy. And that is an answer to 2. to 3: Lower animals are moved by the higher agent's stimulus towards something determinate, in accordance with the particularity of the form they conceive and which draws their sense-appetite; but God moves wills—though infallibly because his moving power can't fail—freely and without compulsion, in accordance with the nature of what he is moving, which is open to more than one possibility. Just as his providence works infallibly in everything, yet in such a way that effects follow contingently from contingent causes; for God moves everything proportionately, each in its own way. to 4: Will does in a sense co-operate when moved by God, since it itself does the willing under God's influence. So though the movement is from outside as regards its first source, it is not violent.
. to 5: Human will can diverge from God's will in a sense, by willing something God doesn't will it to will—sin, for Free Will example (though God doesn't will human will not to sin either, since the Lord does whatever he wills, so that, were he to will no sin to be committed, none would be). But though actual movement of will can diverge from God's will in this way, the final outcome can never diverge, for the outcome human will always brings about is that God's will for humans gets done. But as to mode of willing, human will can't be expected to conform to God's will, since God wills things eternally and infinitely and human will can't; and so Isaiah 55 [9] says: But as high as the heavens above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways. to 6: Because will's object is the good it follows that nothing can be willed except as good. But many and various things are good, and you can't conclude from this that wills are compelled to choose this or that one. to 7: Active objects compel change only when they are more powerful than what they act on. Now will is an ability to be moved by good in general; so no good will be powerful enough to compel will to will unless it be good in every respect, the only perfect good, total happiness. This our wills cannot not will, if that means willing what conflicts with it; but they can avoid actually willing it by avoiding thinking of it, since mental activity is subject to will. In this respect then we aren't compelled to will even total happiness, just as one is not compelled to get hot if one can shut down the heat when one wants. to 8: The goal is the reason for willing the means, so will doesn't relate in the same way to both. to 9: When there is only one way to achieve a goal then we will the means for the same reason we will the goal; but this doesn't apply in the case being considered. For total happiness can be reached by many paths; so though a human being may compulsively will total happiness, none of the paths to it are willed compulsively. to 10: Will is like mind in one way and unlike it in another.
As regards the exercise of its act it is unlike, since will moves mind to act but is not itself moved by any other power than itself. As regards object it is like, for just as will is compelled
The Ladder of Being by an altogether good object but not by objects that can appear bad in some respect, so too mind is compelled by necessary truths that can't be regarded as false, but not by contingent ones that might be false... to 13: Love is said to transform lover into beloved because it moves a lover towards the actual thing loved, while knowledge assimilates by bringing a likeness of what is known into the knower; the former is the way agents seeking goals move, the latter the way forms move. to 14: Assent names a movement of mind not so much towards a thing as towards a conception of it present in the mind, to which the mind assents when it judges it a true conception. to 15: Even a sufficient cause doesn't always compel its effect, since it can sometimes be interfered with so that its effect doesn't happen: natural causes, for example, produce their effects not always but more often than not, being occasionally interfered with. And so what causes us to will need not compel us to will, since will itself can interfere with the process either by refusing to consider what attracts it to will or by considering its opposite: namely, that there is a bad side to what is being proposed as good... to 17: When a will starts to choose it is changed from its previous disposition of being able to choose into actively choosing, and that is caused by will moving itself to act and by movement from an external agent, namely, God. But [in neither case] is it compelled to move, as we have said. to 18: All our knowledge comes through the senses, but that doesn't mean that everything we know is sensed or known through some immediate sensed effect: mind itself is known to itself through its activity and that can't be sensed. In the same way will's interior activity is known to mind, as something put in movement by mind's act, and, in another way, as something causing mind to act, as we have said: as effects are known through causes and causes through effects. But even granting that a power 'of will open to conflicting possibilities has to be known by effects we can sense, the Free Will argument still doesn't hold. For just as universal notions which hold always and everywhere are known to us through here-and-now particular things, and just as the ultimate material of everything able to take on diverse forms is known to us by the succession of forms it can take on (though not simultaneously), so we can know that the power of will is open to conflicting possibilities not by opposing actions occurring simultaneously but by the way they follow each other yet derive from the same source... to 20: A thing can't move itself unless it moves and is moved in different respects. Mind, for example, by actually knowing premisses actualizes its own potentiality for knowing conclusions; and will by willing a goal actualizes its own potentiality for willing means. to 21: The many varying movements of will have a single constant source, and that, as we have said—if we are talking of what directly moves the will—is God, not the heavens. But if we are talking about those willed movements occasionally stimulated by some external thing we sense, then their ultimate cause is the heavens. But the will is not compelled to move, for it doesn't have to want the pleasant things set before it. Nor is it true that what the heavens directly cause happens under compulsion. As Aristotle?° says, if every effect had a cause, and all causes compelled their effects, then everything would happen under compulsion; but both premisses are false. Some causes, even sufficient ones, don't compel their effects, because they can be interfered with; and all natural causes are of this sort.
And it is not true that every happening has a natural cause, for chance happenings have no active natural cause, since they don't actually exist as unified things. So interfering occurrences which happen by chance are not caused by the heavens, since the heavens act as natural causes do... to 24: Habit doesn't altogether compel one, but mainly when one is taken unawares; for however habituated you are, given time to ponder you can go against a habit.
The Ladder of Being Passage 18 Soul in Human Beings Source: Thomas's public disputation on the Soul, 1. Text from Quaestio Disputata de Anima (ed. Robb, Toronto, 1968), with corrections from the Leonine text in preparation.
Date: 1269, second stay in Paris, aged 44-5.
Type of passage and how to read:
Disputed question (see Introduction).
Notes on translation: For remarks on the word 'soul' see notes on translation to Passage 9. The phrase 'itself a thing', frequently repeated during this passage, translates Thomas's Latin phrase hoc aliquid (literally, a this-thing), itself a translation of Aristotle's tode ti.
The subject for debate is Soul.
[Article 1] And in the first place we are asked: Can the human soul be both a form and itself a thing?
For [1] if human soul is itself a thing, then it subsists and has complete existence in its own right. Now anything attached to something after it has a complete existence is attached incidentally, as whiteness or clothing is attached to human beings. So body joined to soul will be joined to it incidentally.
If then soul is itself a thing, it isn't the substantial form of the body...
Moreover, [4] since God made things to manifest his own goodness in their various levels, he instituted as many levels of being as nature could carry.
If then human soul can subsist—as it must if it is itself a thing—it follows that separately existing souls constitute one level of being. But forms, without their matters, are not a separate level of being. So soul, if it is itself a thing, is not the form of any matter...
Moreover, [7] if the soul is itself a thing able to subsist in its own right, it doesn't need a body except as some sort of perfection. Such perfection would either be essential [to the soul] or something supervening. Now not essential to it, since the soul can subsist without a body. And not supervening, for the chief perfection body might seem to offer in that way is the soul's knowledge of truth, drawn from the senses, which require bodily organs. However, people say that the souls of children who die in the womb have a perfect knowledge of things, and this they certainly can't have drawn from their senses. If then the soul is itself a thing, it has no reason to unite to a body as its form...
Moreover, [9] what is itself a thing subsists in its own right, whereas it is characteristic of forms to exist in something else, which seems the opposite. So it seems that a soul which is itself a thing won't be a form.
But it was said [by the respondent] that when the body decomposes, soul remains as itself a self-subsistent thing, but its formhood is lost.
But against that. [10]: whatever is lost to something of which the substance remains is incidental to it. So if soul, remaining after the body, loses its formhood, formhood must be incidental to it. But it is as form that it is joined to body to constitute a human being. So its unity with body is incidental, and human beings exist only incidentally, and that is unacceptable.
Moreover, [11] if human soul is itself a thing existing in its own right, it must have an activity of its own peculiar to it, since everything that exists in its own right has its own activity. But human soul has no activity of its own, since even understanding—the most likely candidate—is not an activity of soul but of human beings because of their souls, as Aristotle! says. So the human soul is not itself a thing.
Moreover, [12] if the human soul is the form of a body, it must depend in some way on the body, for form and matter are mutually dependent. But what depends on something else is not itself a thing. So if the human soul is a form it is not itself a thing.
Moreover, [13] if soul is body's form, body and soul must share one existence, for matter and form make one existent The Ladder of Being thing. But body and soul can't share one existence, since they belong to different genuses: soul to the genus of the nonbodily and body to that of the bodily. Soul then can't be body's form.
Moreover, [14] body's existence is decomposable and made up of extended parts, whereas soul's existence is nondecomposable and non-composite. So they can't share one existence.
But it was said [by the respondent] that the very existence as body of the human body comes through soul.
But against that [15]: Aristotle? says soul is the actualization of an organized physical body. So what relates to soul as matter to actualization is already an organized physical body, which it can't be unless some form is already constituting it a body. So the human body has its own existence apart from that of the soul...
Moreover, [17] existence actualizes soul's substance and is therefore soul's highest point. But lower-order things don't join up with higher-order things at their highest point but at their lowest, for pseudo-Dionysius® says God's wisdom links the ends of first things to the beginnings of second things.
Body then, which is of a lower order than soul, doesn't join soul in its existence, its highest point...
[1] what decides a thing's species is the form characteristic of it. But what makes human beings human is reason, so their characteristic form is a soul that reasons. But since, as Aristotle* says, understanding needs no bodily organ, the human soul can act in its own right, and so must be able to subsist in its own right as itself a thing. So the human soul is itself both a thing and a form.
Moreover, [2] the human soul's ultimate perfection consists in knowing truth with the mind. But to achieve this perfection soul needs to be joined to a body, because it understands by way of images which only the body can provide. So even if soul is itself a thing it has to be united to a body as its form.
By itself a thing is properly meant an individual substance: for Aristotle' says that without a doubt substance primarily means what is itself a thing, though secondarily—even if it seems to mean what is itself a thing—it rather means the sort of thing that thing is. Now an individual substance not only subsists—i.e. exists in its own right—but does so as a whole instance of some species and genus of substance.
Thus Aristotle® adds that hands, feet, and suchlike don't so much name substances, primary or secondary, as parts of substances: for though they don't need something else as a subject to exist in (thus possessing one characteristic of substances), they aren't complete instances of any specific nature of thing, and so belong to a species and genus only indirectly.
Now certain people deny to the soul or life-principle of human beings both of these requisites for being itself a thing, saying the principle of life is equilibrium (Empedocles) or complexity (Galen) or something similar. In this case the lifeprinciple could neither subsist in its own right nor be a whole instance of some species or genus of substance, but would simply be a form of matter like all others. Yet this is already impossible for the life-principles of plants, the activities of which—like digestion and growth—must spring from a source transcending the physico-chemical reactions those activities employ as tools, as Aristotle? shows. Complexity and equilibrium don't transcend the physics and chemistry of the elements. It is equally impossible for the life-principles of things living lives of sense-awareness, the activities of which stretch to taking in the appearances of things without their matter, as Aristotle? proves; physico-chemical behaviour can't stretch beyond matter and arrangement of matter. And it is a fortiori impossible for the life-principles of things which reason, the activities of which involve abstracting the species of things not only from matter but from every material condition of particularity, so as to know them in general. And there is something further still to consider, which is peculiar to reasoning souls: not only do they take in species that can be understood without their matter and material conditions, but, as Aristotle? proves, they cannot
The Ladder of Being share that special activity of theirs with any bodily organ, in the sense of having a bodily organ for thinking as an eye is the bodily organ for seeing. And so the life-principle of a thing with understanding has to act on its own, with an activity peculiar to itself not shared with the body. And because activity flows from actuality, the understanding soul must possess an existence in and of itself, not dependent on the body. For forms that depend for existence on the material or subject [they form] don't have activities of their own: it is not heat that heats but hot things. For this reason then later philosophers have judged that the understanding part of the soul is something that subsists of itself. Thus
Aristotle!® says that mind is a sort of undecomposable substance. And Plato's saying that soul is immortal and subsists of itself because it moves itself amounts to the same. For he is using movement broadly to mean any activity, and the mind moving itself must be interpreted to mean that it is active of itself.
Plato, however, went further, saying not only that the soul subsisted on its own but that it possessed a complete specific nature of its own. For he thought the whole nature of human beings resided in their souls, defining them not as body— soul composites but as souls using bodies, as though souls inhabited bodies like sailors do ships, or people their clothes.
But this is impossible. For clearly the life-principle is what gives life to the body. But being alive is existing as a living thing. So the soul is that by which the human body actually exists: in other words, it is the sort of thing a form is. So the human soul is the form of the human body. Further, if soul inhabited body like a sailor his ship, it wouldn't give body or its parts their specific nature; yet clearly it does since when it leaves the body the various parts lose the names they first had, or keep them in a different sense; for a dead man's eyes are eyes only in the sense that eyes in a picture or a statue are, and the same goes for other parts of the body. Moreover, if soul inhabited body like a sailor his ship the union of body and soul would be, accidental, and when death separated them it wouldn't be decomposition of a substance, which it clearly is.
So our conclusion is that soul is itself a thing in the sense of being able to subsist by itself, but one which does not possess a complete specific nature of its own; rather it is something which completes a human being's specific nature by being the form of a human body. So that the soul is at one and the same time a fotm and itself a thing.
And this fits with the hierarchy of forms in nature. For forms of lower-order bodies are higher the closer they approximate and resemble higher causes. For consider the activities peculiar to forms. The activities of elemental forms—the lowest and closest to matter of all—don't transcend the physico-chemical level of expanding and contracting and what seem other ways of arranging matter. But above these come forms of compounds, which, over and above such elemental activities, display behaviour specific to their own natures derived from heavenly bodies; as, for example, the magnetic properties of iron, which derive not from heat and cold and properties like that but from sharing the powers of the heavens. Above these again come plantforms or plant-souls, which resemble not simply the heavenly bodies but the [spirit] movers of those heavenly bodies, inasmuch as they too cause movement: moving themselves in certain ways. Above these again come the souls of lower animals, which resemble the substances that move the heavens not only in moving themselves around but in having knowledge of their own, though such animals know only material things in a material way, and so require bodily organs.
Above these further still are the life-principles of human beings, which resemble the higher substances even in their kind of knowledge, since they can know and understand immaterial substances. But they differ from them still in that human souls by nature acquire immaterial intellectual knowledge from knowledge of material things through the senses. And in this way then we can know the mode of existence of the human soul from examining its activity.
Inasmuch as it has an activity transcending that of material things, it has a higher existence than the body and doesn't depend on it. But inasmuch as by nature it acquires immaterial knowledge from material it clearly needs to be
The Ladder of Being united to a body in order to have a complete specific nature; for nothing has a complete specific nature unless it possesses everything required for the activity that characterizes that species. In this way then, inasmuch as the human soul is united to a body as its form and yet also has an existence transcending that of the body and not dependent on it, clearly it exists on the boundary between bodily and separate substances.
Hence: to 1: Even if soul has a complete existence it doesn't follow that body is joined to it incidentally. For one reason, soul shares that very same existence with body so that there is one existence of the whole composite; and for another, even though soul can subsist of itself, it doesn't have a complete specific nature, but body is joined to it to complete its nature... to 4: Although a human soul can subsist by itself it hasn't a complete specific nature of its own. So separate souls don't constitute one of the levels of being... to 7: The soul is joined to a body for its own perfection, both its essential perfection—the completion of its species—and a supervening perfection—the knowledge it draws from the senses, for this is the human being's natural mode of understanding. If separated souls of children and other human beings use another method of understanding, that's no objection: for that belongs to them as separate, not as having a human nature... to 9: To exist in something else in the way incidental properties exist in a subject is against the nature of what is itself a thing. But existing in something else as a part in a whole, in the way soul exists in human beings, doesn't altogether exclude what exists in something else from being called itself a thing. to 10: When body decomposes, soul doesn't lose the nature that enables it to be a form, though it is not actually perfecting matter as a form. to 11: Understanding is an activity which as regards its source is the soul's alone: for soul doesn't use a bodily organ to understand, as it does the eye to see. Body, however, shares in the activity by providing its object, since the images we understand can't exist without the bodily organs. to 12: Even soul depends somewhat on body, since it can't achieve its complete specific nature without body. But it doesn't so depend on body that it can't exist without it. to 13: If soul is body's form, body and soul must share one existence in common, the existence of the thing they compose. And the different genus of soul and body is no obstacle to this: for neither body nor soul exists in a species or genus of its own, but belongs as a part to the species or genus of its whole. to 14: What decomposes, properly speaking, is neither form nor matter nor existence, but the composite of formed matter, the thing. We talk of body having a decomposable existence inasmuch as body through decomposition loses the existence it shared in common with soul, an existence which remains in the subsistent soul. And to that extent the body's existence can also be said to result from the coming-together of its parts, since the coming-together of its parts make it into something that can receive existence from soul. to 15: When defining a form we include its subject, sometimes as unformed—as when we define change as the actualization of what can come to be—and sometimes as formed—as when we define change as the actualization of what is changing and light as the actualization of what is lit.
And this is the way soul is defined as the actualization of an organized physical body, for it is soul that gives body its organized existence just as it is light that makes something lit... to 17: Though existence is of everything the most formal, yet it is also of everything the most shareable, though not shared in the same way by things of lower and higher order.
So body shares soul's existence, but not as excellently as soul...
The Ladder of Being Passage 19 My Soul is not Me Source: Thomas's commentary on St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, 15: 17-19. Text from Super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli
(Marietti edn., Turin, 1953).
Date: 1269-73, second stay in Paris, aged 45.
Type of passage and how to read: Commentary (see Introduction).
(St Paul's text] If Christ has not been raised your faith is pointless ...If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are of all people the most pitiable.
... But is what Paul says here altogether true? Can Christians hope only for this life [if there is no resurrection]? Body may have to be content with the goods of this mortal life, but can't soul still hope for many goods in the life to come? To this there are two answers. Firstly, if we deny the resurrection of the body it isn't easy—indeed it becomes very difficult—to defend the immortality of the soul. The union of body and soul is certainly a natural one, and any separation of soul from body goes against its nature and is imposed on it. So if soul is deprived of body it will exist imperfectly as long as that situation lasts. Now how can a normal situation in accord with nature come to an end, having lasted no time at all, and a situation imposed against nature then last for ever! But this is what must happen if the soul is to go on existing without its body for ever. It is for this reason that the Platonists who believed in immortality believed also in reincarnation, though that is heresy. And this is why Paul says: if the dead don't rise we have only this life to hope for.
Secondly, what human beings desire by nature is their own well-being. But soul is not the whole human being, only part of one: my soul is not me.*So that even if soul achieves well-being in another life, that doesn't mean
I do or any My Soul is not Me other human being does. Moreover, since it is by nature that humans desire well-being, including their body's well-being, a desire of nature gets frustrated.