Chapter 37
Chapter 37 Solution of the Arguments Drawn from the Creative Action Our remaining task is to show that none of the arguments derived from the viewpoint of the production of things imposes the same conclusion.42
The position common to philosophers who contend that nothing is made from nothing, which is the starting point of the first argu ment, is true with regard to the kind of making they had in mind.
Since all our knowledge begins with sense perception, which has to do with individual things, human speculation mounted from par ticular to universal considerations. Hence they who investigated the origin of things considered only particular instances of production, and inquired how this fire or this stone came into being. And so they who came first, limiting their consideration of the production of things to an excessively superficial examination, maintained that a thing is made merely according to certain accidental modifications,^ such as rarity, density, and the like, and asserted in consequence that "to be made" was nothing but "to be altered"; that is, they thought that everything was made from something actually existing. But their successors, who entered more deeply into the process by which things are made, advanced to a consideration of the production of things in terms of their substance; they taught that a thing need not be made from actually existing being, except in accidentals, and that in its essentials it is made from potential being. Yet this sort of pro duction, which is that of a being made from some other being, is the making of a particular being, one that is made inasmuch as it is this being, such as a man or a fire, but not universally, inasmuch as it simply is; for there existed previously a being that was transformed into this being. Penetrating, then, still more deeply into the origin of things, they considered at last the procession of all created being from a single first cause, as is clear from the arguments listed above to prove this truth.43 In this procession of all being from God, it is im possible for anything to be made from something else previously existing; otherwise it would not be the making of created being in its entirety.
This kind of making eluded the early naturalists, who shared the common opinion that nothing is made from nothing. Or, if any of them did arrive at the notion, they did not think that the term "making" properly expressed it, since the word "making" implies motion or 42 Cf. chap. 34. 43 Cf. chap. 16.
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change, whereas in this origin of all being from one first being, the transformation of one being into another is inconceivable, as we have shown.44 For this reason, the investigation of this kind of origin of things is the concern, not of the philosopher of nature, but of the metaphysician, who studies universal being, including such things as are dissociated from motion. By virtue of a certain similarity, how ever, we transfer the term "making" even to such origin, and so we say that those things are made whose essence or nature takes its origin from other beings.
Consequently it is evident that the second argument, which is based on the nature of motion, does not lead to a necessary conclusion.
Creation cannot be called change except metaphorically, so far as a created thing is regarded as having existence after non-existence. In this sense one thing is said to issue from another even when no change from one thing into another takes place, for the sole reason that one of them succeeds the other, as day comes forth from night. Nor can the nature of motion that is here alleged be of any avail, for what does not exist at all is not in any particular state; hence we cannot conclude that, once a thing begins to exist, it is in a different state now from what it was before.
Therefore it is also plain that no passive potentiality has to pre cede the existence of all created being, as the third argument attempted to prove. Such a necessity does, indeed, obtain in things that originally come into being by way of motion, seeing that motion is the act of a being existing in potentiality. Before a created being existed, its existence was possible, because of the power of the agent that initially endowed it with existence, or by reason of the compatibility of the terms, in which no contradiction is found. Possibility in this latter sense involves no reference to potentiality, as the Philosopher asserts in Book V of his Metaphysics.45 For the predicate, "to be," is not in compatible with the subject, "world" or "man," as "commensurate"
[predicated of the side of a square] is incompatible with "diagonal."
And thus it follows that the existence of the world or of a man is not impossible, and consequently that before they existed their existence was possible, even in the absence of potentiality. But things that come into being by way of motion must previously be possible by reason of some passive potentiality; such are the things the Philosopher has in mind when he employs this argument in Book VII of the Meta physics.*6 44 Chap. 17. 40 Aristotle, Metaph., VII, 7 (1032a
45 Aristotle, Metaph., V, 12 (1019b 15).
34).
This also explains why the fourth argument fails to prove its point.
For in things that are made by way of motion, to be made and to be [41]