PERSPECTIVES IN PHILOSOPHY

VOLUME 1

A critique of an abstract

Scholasticism and principles towards replacement

by

Edward Holloway

PhL STL

PREFACE

The Church is the realization of God’s vision of man, and of the meaning of man. It is also the incarnation of our communion into God. The Second Vatican Council sought an “aggiornamento”, and proclaimed a richer perspective of that mutual communion of God and man. Unfortunately the Council offered no new synthesis of philosophy through which to frame a new vision.  The medieval Scholastic synthesis, abstract and essentialist, has become increasingly irrelevant to the philosophy of science. As a result Relativism and Secularism is disintegrating Christian life and the doctrine of the Incarnation. Yet if the principles which are truly “perennial” in the older philosophy are existentially rethought, and realigned within the recognition of a cosmic UnityLaw of control and purposive direction which culminates in the Incarnation of God in Christ, the result is startling. We are able to evoke a philosophy at once relevant to modern thought, and necessarily demonstrative of the existence of God and his Transcendence. Some principles of such rethinking we proffer with humility and hope in this first version of “Perspectives”.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. DE MATERIA ET DE ACTU

(Concerning Act and Prime Matter) A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

2. DE ENTE REALI

(Concerning the Existential Real) A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQUE

3. DE COGNITIONE

(Concerning Cognition)

4. DE IDEA UNIVERSALI

(Further to the Universal Idea)

5. DE UNIVERSALIBUS

(Concerning the Universal Idea or Form) A POSITIVE REJOINDER

6. DE INTELLECTU AGENTE

(Concerning the Agent Intellect)

7. DE SUBSTANTIA ET ACCIDENTE

(Concerning Substance and Accident) A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

8. DE SUBSTANTIA ET ACCIDENTE

(Concerning Substance and Accident) A POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE

9. THE PHILOSOPHIC REQUIREMENTS OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION

10. DE SPATIO ET TEMPORE

(Concerning Space and Time) A POSITIVE CRITIQUE

11. DE RELATIONIBUS

(Concerning the Real Relation) A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

12. DE RELATIONIBUS

(Concerning the Real Relation) A POSITIVE CRITIQUE

13. REFLECTIONS READING HEISENBERG

14. ADDENDA THEOLOGICA

A Theological Postscript

15. NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL

INTRODUCTION

These notes, Perspectives in Philosophy, date from the years 1945 to 1946. I have not changed them, although I admit to rewriting one or two ambiguous sentences. Where I have added a note or comment, I have put the date against it, as for instance 1988, or when retyping for this publication, 1993. It was in 1988 that some of my seminarian friends discovered that I had these jottings, and were anxious to have copies. The material had not been at all.” treasured", and it was very yellowed and friable (not unlike myself) with time. I had to retype some of it in 1988, because no photocopier could do anything with it. Over the years I have not changed any of the basic ideas in these notes, although I have at times yearned to have had the time and opportunities to develop them. That, I fear, will have to await another hand and other minds, if there is any usefulness in them. The philosophy in these notes is fundamental to the philosophy behind Faith Movement, and occurs constantly, although mostly in an implicit manner in my book Catholicism: A New Synthesis. It is not identical with the theology of that book, nor with the theology behind Faith Movement. That theology, as is well known, is based upon simply projected ideas and perspectives of Christ, Creation, and the Incarnation, given to my mother. She claims that they came from God and not from herself. That background is to be found in the booklet God's Master Key published by myself in 1988 and available from the same address as all FAITH publications. I myself however took full personal responsibility for its publication, and paid all expenses, because of the claim behind it, and its lack of an Imprimatur: I will not repeat material already available in that booklet.

In any case, it would not have been possible to ask for a Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur from any bishop. The sheer nature of the claim would preclude it, and in any event it had already been referred to Rome. I do not remember whether I approached my then bishop, Archbishop Amigo. I have some vague belief that I was referred to the Apostolic Delegate,  Archbishop  (later  Cardinal)  Godfrey,  my  former  Rector  at  the  Venerable English College, Rome. I do remember discussing the whole matter with Bishop Cyril Cowderoy, after his accession to the See of Southwark, in 1950, and being told most heartily that he wanted nothing to do with it and that he considered the matter to be now referred to the Holy See. I had in any case wanted to see the Apostolic Delegate about the material and the claim behind it.  I was of course very boyish and very naive. Archbishop Godfrey was very gracious to me, and very reluctant to help at all. He intimated that it would be brushed aside, would never reach the person of the Pope Pius XII~ and implied without saying so that it would drop with a thud into "the dead letter box". I remember asking him would he mind if I wrote a full description of the alleged private revelation and my own primitive, postseminary development of it, and sent it myself to the Pope.  He showed an almost indecent relief at the suggestion. I have no clear memory after now almost fifty years, but I do remember that the context of the question was whether I might try to get the letter through to the Pope in person. After all, I remember saying, if it is His will, God will look after it! His Grace enthusiastically agreed. I think he felt sorry that a thing like this should have happened to me. I had been one of his "best boys" and although it was not at all approved of, I would go to him occasionally, even when Rector, for spiritual advice. He protested at this. It was not, he said, approved of in Canon Law, what I said to him might compromise his judgement of me as a candidate for the priesthood. Nevertheless if it was a matter of peace of mind, the risk was mine. He was the best spiritual director I ever had, although I used him sparingly. He did not really like it. He was calm, sweet, objective, very deep, and possessed the gift of wisdom. He had a knowledge of ascetical and mystical theology which I think came from his own inner experience~ and not from St John of the Cross or St Theresa of Avila whom he so frequently quoted in college oratory meditations. We liked and respected each other.

He agreed that if by any chance my draft should get through to the Holy Father, he would let me know. I was an observant and rather cynical young man~ my friends aver that the latter characteristic has not faded with the years. I thought I could scheme a way of getting the papers through. According to Roman gossip, known to me as a student, Pius XII was the one Pope that the curial officials held in dread. He knew the Curia and its ways. He was alleged to have said that if any letter, so sent and packed that it was clearly meant for his eye alone, were ever kept from him, or even unsealed, the person so presuming, however high he might be, would lose his job. So I placed my labours in a very  stout,  thick  brown  envelope  and  on  it  typed  "sub  secretis:  ad  manum  Summi Pontificis solummodo". I do not guarantee the purity of the Latin but probably many episcopal secretaries did no better. I then went to Victoria Street, to a stationers of high class and price, and bought the most expensive sort of registered envelope. I returned to the  parish  of  the  English  Martyrs,  Walworth,  but  more  importantly  to  the  students' quarters St Augustine's House, attached to the parish, where I taught Late Vocations to the priesthood, before handing them over with a little more English and some Latin, to other seminaries and colleges. Some of our "familiars" as the Rector called them, were of course well educated men in very good jobs, wanting only a trial run and an opinion before surrendering very lucrative careers. I bow in recognition to the many still very much alive. Now St Augustine's House (long years closed) had a seal: a lovely seal, highly ornamental, and mystically heraldic. Its depictions, and even its superinscription around were hard to decipher, but it carried an aura of importance. Hot wax was applied to the brown envelope, and the seal came out beautifully. Likewise with the obviously linen registered envelope, a noble imprint. I wrote the address to the Vatican Secretary of State in Italian. I took the document to the major Post Office, in Greencoat Place, I think, anyway very close indeed to Westminster Cathedral and Clergy House. From this one, I argued, the correspondence of the Cardinal and other pillars of the Church would surely go. At Rome, they would be familiar with that postmark. It is written: "be ye simple as doves and wise as serpents". About a week later I had a phone call from the Apostolic Delegate: "Edward, in accordance with my promise to you, I have to inform you that your letter to the Holy Father did reach its destination". There was nothing in writing, of course. Since that time every important product of the Faith Movement has been sent to the correct destination at Rome. A copy of God's Master Key was handed by myself to Cardinal Ratzinger, who received it graciously, as always, but made no comment.

In   my own   philosophical writings there   is no claim   whatever to inspiration.

Nevertheless they do seem to me to stem from the further development of the material given me by my mother, and which I received initially with such reluctance and bad grace. They do seem to me to address difficulties in the philosophy of St Thomas and of Scholasticism in general. Such difficulties are, I think, inevitable nearly a thousand years after the physics and science of the era in which they were formalised and finalised. Indeed the basics of the philosophy, and the physics from which is deduced the metaphysics, descend from Aristotle across nearly two and a half thousand years. To me it seems that the Platonism of the Fathers of the Church, and of Augustine, has worn better in theology, than the philosophy of either Plato or Aristotle has worn as a metaphysic of the real.  The  thought  of  truly  great  minds  is  never  irrelevant  or unprofitable, but by now some new development is inevitable. The sweeping advances of modern science, and the pace increases all the time would be expected to cause, and have caused the trauma of "Future Shock" in the schools of the Church, and in the cultures of all mankind. The Second Vatican Council called for an Aggiornamento of the perspectives and apostolate of the Catholic Church. Yet the Council neither provided nor possessed any new framework of vision in theology and in philosophy, through which to frame and to fire any such new vision of Christ in the world. The result has been the contemptuous, far too contemptuous, rejection of the old, and the failure to develop anything creative which was new and of its nature a development of the old and a vindication of the orthodoxy, the full divine truth through the ages, of the Church of the Popes and the Councils. Creativity of a sort there has been, but the new syntheses of philosophy and theology, those which to be of help are based as they must be, explicitly on the more intimate modern knowledge of matter, and of its cosmic evolution through long ages, have been so far, in the major proponents of such creativity, sources of tension and corrosion rather than developments of the Faith, and its Godgiven spiritual and moral values. In this introduction we name no names. What is offered here is offered in the humble hope that it may be of some use, and capable of both development and correction without loss of its vision. It is my own and far from inspired. If as time went by it were found to be really seminal and helpful, then I remind the reader that it did not begin with me, that it was prompted by a wider but very precise vision given to an unlettered person, who claimed its power to be in God, not from herself. So in all honesty and cheerfulness I must claim that any deeper virtue would not be my own, but belong also where my mother put it. Mistakes and flaws are definitely my own part. There is nobody, not even the Basils, the Augustines, the Aquinases, of the past who wrote without any error or flaw. All things human, especially in mankind fallen, need correction as they need renewal. In myself, who lack deep scholarship and the deep holiness of the great souls of the Church, it hardly needs saying.

Concerning the material itself, it is rough and ready, and rather haphazard in presentation.  The background was almost casual.  I did indeed have this “new synthesis" of the Faith, of its philosophy and its theology burgeoning in my spirit (it was more than in my mind alone) all through the last four years of my course, at St Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst. Within fifteen months of my ordination I was restless to begin setting it down in some sort of order, even before the Second World War was quite over. I had no typewriter then, and most, if not all of the present papers were typed for me initially by my friend Alan Clark, at the moment of writing still Bishop of East Anglia, but within sight of the fated number of seventyfive years of age. It is obvious to me that I had been in correspondence with the Dean of Philosophy at the Gregorianum at the same time. My whole motive was to write up for him the basics, the very unadorned basics, of a new realignment of what I had been taught, and then to go out to Rome and talk it over with him. I am sure, although memory serves me not at all here, that as I received from Stonyhurst either in late 1945 or early 1946, copies of my longhand from Alan, I must have sent them on to George Delannoye. He was also a loved friend and a spiritual director~ after the promotion of Mgr Godfrey, he was my director of preference. The reason I am sure I must have sent them on, is that all the now horribly brown and friable originals are in fact carbon copies, also sent down to me from my faithful amanuensis. This has made the work of restoration for publication very laborious. At that time I had no thought in the world of publication, but wrote for George as innocently as the early Christians wrote their far from orderly accounts of the life and works of the Lord, for devout brothers, not carping agnostics of largely North European stock some two thousand years later! So the material is at times a little irreverent. I was then twenty eight years old. Have I grown up since? I rather doubt it! A distinguished Jesuit teaching in a Catholic university of international fame, who has read these notes, opined that they could perhaps be quite useful. He was particularly amused by the spoof entitled "The Trial of the Agent Intellect". He thought it a brilliant exposition in youth, in the tradition of the Emperor's new clothes, of the state of Catholic scholastic philosophy in its final decadence, as taught just before the Second Vatican Council. He is much younger than I, and I take leave to pick him up somewhat on his description.

In my personal opinion the Thomism I was taught at the Gregorian University was fairly true, in most aspects very true, to the logical deductions of the doctrine of Aquinas itself. It was not "decadent" in a manner that justified scorn. There were, of course, divergences. Père Boyer was a diehard Cajetanian Thomist. George Delannoye on the other hand admitted the possibility of the evolution of species but, as I remember him, without much enthusiasm and certainly without any effort to make a philosophic justification for it on his Thomist principles. The philosophy I was taught seemed to me not so much decadent as quite irrelevant. It had reached a terminus. It had rendered great service, but now it needed redevelopment and realignment. It was not utterly useless and, more importantly, I found that any new development could only be found by rethinking the universe, and the theology of the Incarnation through its original principles and perspectives. So thought, one could at once see both the inadequacies and also the very line of a new alignment. The philosophy had only to be set on its head. It was primarily essentialist and only consequentially existentialist. It had to become primarily existentialism, and then consequentially essentialist. It could be objected that such "existentialism" was precisely the "New Theology" of the moderns who came to the fore openly and boldly during and after the Second Vatican Council. Their theology has been, in so many cases, dissolvent of much in faith and morals, a consequence only now becoming apparent to many in both the lives and works of their younger disciples, and the loss of faith and heart among men in the priesthood itself. The same phenomenon, a new and quite unnecessary identity crisis, has devastated the Orders of women also. Demand for women in the priesthood is not the only factor in the female crisis, or even the main factor. A much more potent factor has been the role of Feminism, in the modern sense of the word, in undermining the identity of the woman herself, her role in the family, and her role unto her husband. It is, with the cheapening of human sexuality which goes along with the contraceptive society, the major factor in the breakdown of marriage, and the adolescent failures even to have a perspective of what human love is, let alone live it. It is always objected that if you have a philosophy and, even worse, a theology which is existentialist then the concept of certainty, of nature, of structure, and of authority goes out of the window. I discovered however, that if one meditated the existential  within  the  framework  of  a  cosmic  UnityLaw  of  Control  and  Purposive Direction, as seen through the focus of the Mind of God entirely the opposite must happen. The reality of "the nature" and all that goes with the concept against agnostic Nominalism, the nadir of modern Western society, could be seen and proven far, far below the order of mankind. It is very largely this vision which is contained, not without youthful excitement, in these papers. For all the comment "I do not believe" concerning the Thomism of my youth, and also I must admit of my reading of Aquinas, (My Summa and Contra Gentiles are falling apart with age and heavy usage,) I would claim that the resultant system is simply a modern, and orthodox development of Thomism, although it does necessarily have a more Platonic and hence Scotist unity in the vision of the relationship of the Flesh of Christ to the initial explosion of the universe, than could be developed from the final state of Aquinas' thought. I observe in these papers a comment on the tension and basic incoherence in St Thomas' thought between his Aristoteleanism and his Augustinianism. This is interesting, because it is only in very recent years that I have read Rousselot's Intellectualism of St Thomas. It could have been my own observation, or it could have come unconsciously perhaps from discussion, which I no longer remember, with George Delannoye, who was a personal pupil and disciple of Marechal. I think the latter more probable.

How did George receive my "Manifesto"? With a certain horror. There was first the problem of getting to Rome at all. It was not tourist time. Archbishop Godfrey willingly helped me with the visa. He also gave me a letter to the Vatican Bank, to help me with the exchange rate for my modest sterling reserves. It was so powerful that I remember Vatican clerics  standing  in  queue  behind  me  one  morning, observing  the  rate, and remarking "dev' essere Cardinale!", but just sour grapes. It was late May or early June, just before the referendum on the monarchy. I can recall the aura of threat and fear on the streets, the glowering Communist marches, and the omnipresence of very, very rough and tough American riot police, who made it very clear who was in charge right now, and were going to be after the elections as well. I remember the fetid train journey, especially from Milan, through a devastated, hardfought countryside. I remember it took thirtysix hours to get from Milan to Rome, that the trains were as crowded as cattle wagons. You could not get food or drink, you could occasionally shout your order to people at the window for peaches at the stations where we stopped, namely all of them. I remember the three mile an hour crawl over endless Bailey bridges, and that the putrefaction of the toilets pervaded the whole train. I remember it was impossible to move to relieve nature for the whole thirtysix hours. But, there was neither need nor desire. One was totally dehydrated. Finally, we made it. I stayed in the French College of St Louis, quite near to the Gregorianum if I remember.

The final upshot with Fr George? He was "knocked for six" as once the British, but now only the Australians say. He was also very excited. He said at once, "It is perfectly coherent. It is possible. I find no basic flaw. It is an alternative philosophy ...". Also he warned me that if I tried to publish it, I would get hurt. He himself wished me well, but wanted no hand in it. He did not think I could possibly defend it as a doctoral thesis at the Gregorianum. He said he would write a letter for me to my bishop "in most lovely Latin", for he knew that Archbishop Amigo was well, a bit of a snob in such matters, asking him to do something to advance my career in the diocese as a young Catholic thinker. He gave me a sealed, but unaddressed letter for the Archbishop. He was later amazed when I told him I had never read it, because it was sealed. But I had taken it sealed for the Archbishop~ my junior seminary training, and my constant reading of the Magnet Library, Greyfriars public school and all that ... for me the word of an Englishman was the word of a gentleman~ it was his bond! Oh tempora, Oh mores! I had an interview with Mgr Gibney the Vicar General. He had read the letter. I still have no idea what was in it. He simply remarked that, "this man of yours simply seems to think you are quite a good lad, with a good mind, who suffers a bit from anxiety and scruples. I should go and talk it over with Dr Denis Hawkins, if I were you". Dr Hawkins was a good priest, and a good mind, known to be orthodox but not trusted with teaching at the seminary. He was not noted for following the "party line" Scholasticism of the manualists. He was not really much help, being very eclectic in his thought. As for the Archbishop, I did get an interview with him for a few minutes. He growled: "I send men to do a doctorate at Rome, if I want them to teach in my seminary. I don't want you to teach in my seminary. I don't trust the way you think, you may be another Tyrell", a point he had made to me in a conversation earlier on. "I think you may have a head much too big for you" or something of that nature. I did have an "experience" on the bus going back to my parish, on that late afternoon day, when I had posted off my document, duly and dramatically sealed, and now on its way to Rome. I well remember it was a number 54 bus. It went all the way to Woolwich, my old home town. I went on the top deck. In those decadent days I smoked tobacco. As we crawled along I knew fully, perfectly and quite existentially that I had deliberately murdered any hope whatever of the slightest career in the Church. Devotees of the paranormal bring to the television screen people who say that they died, in a clinical sense, and were brought back by drastic medical intervention. They tell us how they looked down upon the white shell of their bodies, a spiritless shell, from above, from the ceiling perhaps. Well, I do not necessarily accept all that, but it is exactly how I then felt. I had murdered myself in cold blood, and was proceeding home quite another being. And it was all so coldly deliberate and happily done. It did work out that way of course. From that day to this I have never, even when the diocese was being scoured for speakers, ever been allowed to speak a word within the sacred precincts of the diocesan seminary, or give any Retreat or Day of Recollection under diocesan auspices. I really do not mind. I have never had enough time to fulfil all my engagements anyway. As for the ordinary people of God, my joy and my delight through now fifty years, well, on the number 54 bus I did realise that in them and among them alone, this is your life: I think I have always known them, understood them, and been right about what was good for them and bad for them, above the average of my academic colleagues. Now therefore, to you dear reader I commit my youthful reflections. I have not changed them. Where I have added anything, it would be in 1988, when my younger seminarist friends found out about these discards and demanded copies, or again when retyping passages which would be quite beyond our printer, when the note change reads 1993. The passages from Heisenberg, which I did not want to include as out of context are printed at the request again of younger men. They date from 1958, as also does N. R. Hanson. The Heisenberg is his Physics and Philosophy, in which he rediscovers the validity of the Aristotelian principle of potency to be and become~ a work I still think is of great value to both scientists and philosophers. I used these reflections in the early chapters of my book Catholicism: A New Synthesis. The Hanson volume is Patterns of Discovery, less important perhaps, but still most useful. I was reading these titles in 1958 because I was also reading Teilhard de Chardin, as a preliminary to getting down to my own title aforementioned, which took me some seven years to write.

I  am  now  working  on  further  pamphlet  titles  as  perspectives  in  philosophy  and theology. Some of them will inevitably develop ideas clearly outlined in these papers from 1946. Others will involve a critique of the ideas and positions of modern leading Catholic thinkers, and above all of Karl Rahner. One can and must respect a man of Rahner's intellectual brilliance and scholarship. This is unfortunately quite different from considering him as either substantially right, or on balance a blessing to the Church. I would not think so. Whether I finish these considerations or not depends on how long I live and whether my mind lasts out as other parts of the vehicle wear out. It does not really matter, because if there is any merit in my philosophical musings, the more essential is contained in these earlier pages. Everything else can be either developed from, rejected from, or be improved and corrected from these first reflections~ or so I think.

Edward Holloway St Ambrose, Warlingham, Surrey Nov 1993

P.S. I would add on proof reading that the first few sections are the hardest to read. The reader unversed in preconciliar seminary Thomism should persevere. The later sections are less arduous. Translation of Latin tags in 1993, the text unchanged. I could do better now. A second volume is now actually complete except for references etc. The reader may find it more exciting, positive, and modern in its own right, yet this volume is necessary for a perfect understanding.  If time is given, there may even be a third booklet! (May 1994)

1 DE MATERIA ET DE ACTU

(Concerning Act and Prime Matter) A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

This section which has a capital "A" appended to it in my notes of the year 1946, does yet presume some foregoing subjectmatter. I think it would be letters to, and replies from, Fr George Delannoye S.J which preceded this entire complex of jottings, originally prepared to be taken to Rome for discussion with him. There was no thought in the world of publication at that time. I will nevertheless keep to the order in which I later found this long buried material. The total complex, if the reader perseveres, comes over clearly enough.

We think that our objection to the doctrine of "Prime Matter" is one of the few points of philosophy we have sufficiently clarified. To sum it up: we agree with St Thomas that "forma est principium intelligibilitatis" (form is the principle of intelligibility) this is the reason why we reject "materia prima" (prime matter). We would go further than  St Thomas, and applying the principle so often given us in our studies by the good reader to whom we address ourself, the principle of "lex entis, lex mentis" (the law of being is the law of the mind) we find materia prima contradictory in itself. For we are told that "Act and Potency" are principia realiter distincta principles of being really distinct. While the Schoolmen  of  today  reject  with  horror  the  suggestion  that  these  complementary principles are entia quae (distinct things as real) and insist that they are entia quibus (principles which constitute the real as such) still, we are not satisfied.

A principle that is really distinct, in whatever order of reality which is independent of the  mind,  must  have  its  own  principle  of  definition.  Otherwise, it is unintelligible. Moreover, what is per se (of itself) inintelligibilis (nonintelligible) is, per se a nonentity. When a thing is "intelligible", it is merely knowable by reason of its being. If it cannot be in any way known by virtue of itself, then it does not exist. All the real proceeds from God, and what is real in any true sense, has its principle of reality by sheer "existence", or "reality": lex entis, lex mentis.

What the mind cannot perceive by reason of the imperceptibility of its object per se, does not exist to be perceived. If "materia prima" is in any true sense distinct from form, then it has its own principle of actuality, in popular language, it is "actually" distinct. But what has a proper principle of intelligibility, ie forma (principle of "thisness" and definition) in the Aristotelean synthesis in itself even as an ens quo is not "materia prima" as taught by the modern Schoolmen.

Concerning Act and Potency

This is merely the primary issue of the former question.  We do not accept these principles as truly distinct entia quibus ens quod est (principles of reality which constitute the distinct real as "this thing"), for a potency, a "power to be" is something. We insist that  capacitas  (capacity)  follows  from  ens  capax  and  does  not  constitute  it.  The essential, the ideal, is a derivative of the existential not a component of the existential, the real. Moreover, we deny that actus est illimitatus in eo ordine in quo est actus (act, or perfection is unlimited in the order in which it is act, or form). Always, the act presumes a relation to the material, e.g. whiteness presumes and involves an immediate reference to the material~  e.g.  Angels are not white.  Moreover, I can only give an intellectual reference to the name, as the "property" or relation of being white. This act then is a derivative of the existential, a relation of the real, not a perfectio illimitata per se, an act or quality or form unlimited in its own definition.

We see no difficulty in postulating material being as an "actual in potency", in which, as we say, each term or aspect defines the other. The perfection of "dogginess" defines both what a dog can do, and what a dog cannot do, equally. Similarly "acornness", or "being an acorn", or even being this acorn, defines equally the content and those very limitations which the perfection of the content implies to be true to its own definition. Moreover, God creates, the Supremely Simple, and we see no reason why the utterly simple  should  not  have  His vestigium  ("trace")  precisely  in  the  ontological  unity  of anything created. We likewise see no power in God to "create" a principle of pure indeterminacy which is nec quid, quale, quantum, nec quidditas quaecumque (neither what, nor of what sort (quality) nor how much, nor an essence or "thingness" of any kind at all). We agree with Aristotle, that if such were the nature of materia prima (prime matter) then the Supreme Intelligence could neither "create" it nor "know" it. "Indeterminacy" is merely a defect of being, but it presumes something to be defective or "relative". Indeterminacy, by itself, even as a "principle of being" is a contradiction in terms. The radical principle of being is ens est, the real (determinate), is in any order. And if really distinct from act, potency also must, in its order realise the principle of identity: ens est, the real exists. If it does not, then non est (it has no identity).

2 DE ENTE REALI

(Concerning the Existential Real) A CONSTRUCT IVE CRIT IQUE

This section seems to be the primary section in answer to the negative criticisms of the first section in this booklet. The negative and constructive, or positive critiques are not in perfect and full order, because, as far as remembered each section (the early ones typed for me by a certain Alan Clark, now Bishop of East Anglia), were themselves largely in answer to replies from Fr George over a period of maybe twelve months.

We have refused to accept the thesis that composite Being is constituted by two principles, Act and Potency, each really distinct as an "ens quo entis" or "ens quo ens est". How then do we conceive of the composite being or indeed of all created being? We  must  deal  with  these  two  species,  "composite  and  "simple"  spiritual  being, separately of course.

Composite being is one in fact and in "principle". It is created as an "actuality", whose very actuality, in its own order, includes potency as a defining element of the act. In case this is ambiguous, the Act and the Potency are but aspects, "distinctiones rationis" of the same identical essential real. The "Act" is not a "principle" at all, neither a principle of "entelechy" (form) nor a principle of "essence" (substantia). The Act is the totality. This totality is what it is, because it is constituted in a given degree of relativity to the whole cosmos, as a part in one harmonious whole: it is defined in its content and its limitations identically by its organic relativity to the cosmos. It is, therefore, an existential actual potential, and must be conceived also as such by the mind.  It is one in principle, because one in finality. It is, however, a "relative actuality", and as "essentialed" in the process of thought, may be called a "relative act".

Instead then of admitting two really distinct principles: Act, unlimited in its own order, and Potency, unactualised in its own order, we would synthesize these elements into the one concept of the relative act. The relativity of the act springs precisely from its contingency. The Mind and the Will of God, when He creates the contingent, has defined it in a given relation to Himself (and to the cosmos in the case of composite being) which defines in the one simple Fiat of God's intelligence, the actuality and the relativity of the being. The "nature" of the being is such, because it is the extrinsic term of the Divine Operation, it is then constituted as a "relative act", and the degree of "relativity" will depend on the degree of contingency.  What is relative to God alone is less "potential" because "more being" than what is relative to grass and green fields, like rabbits, for instance.

The use made of "materia prima" to explain substantial mutation we think can be discarded nowadays. In the first place the development of science is making ever more difficulties for Scholasticism. The concept of every true "final entity" as constituted of "unica forma" et "materia prima" is, we think, exploded by the agency that destroyed Hiroshima.

Transcendental Unity Never Reductionist

We would prefer to say that the relativity which defines the primary actualities is a relativity unto "complementariness". The primary elements must not be considered as "absolutes" in virtue of their substantial form and capable of substantial mutation simply by the loss thereof. We conceive of our "limited act" as a piece of mosaic, something already "real", but "relative", to be "fitted into" something else. When a new combination is entered into, you have a "new formal pattern", a new entity, with its own finality, to which the finality of the components is relative, by a relativity which is transcendental1 not predicamental. Hence, this relativity must be called "essential" not "accidental". This type of "relativity" will not constitute "unum per accidens". We deny the whole Aristotelian thesis, in so far as it is founded upon the absolute and the univocal content of "form". We deny that "forma" is its own perfection, and as perfection relative to nothing else.

We insist that just as the component of a machine is "itself', and relative to the integration of a new finality, so also is primary being, the elements of physics. However, just in passing, let us say that we are quite justified in using the machine as a true analogy. The analogy of Being permeates all that exists. It permeates the very nature of being as God made it~ and, when we come to Man, the analogy of Being in his own "creative" work, is a truly analogous reflection of the way in which the cosmos was constructed. The very processes of thought in man are analogous to those of God, they must be, if "Ens est analogum" and that by an analogy of proportion. Therefore, when from "simple elements" men "build up" the "machine" with its own finality, received from the  intellect  and  will  of  man,  then  we  have  a  wonderful  clue  to  the  nature  and metaphysical relations of the universe. If you will, God is the "master scientist", the "master engineer" as well as the "master of theologians". We will say, then, that the primary constituents of being are in themselves the transcendental potencies of higher actualities. A modern television set is truly a wonderful machine with a truly distinct "finality" from the parts, nobody will deny that, and this finality, which can be called, or defined as "the ability to present sound and pictures over a distance truly representative of a given scene", this ability of "active potency" is conceived in my mind as one finality, one purpose, of "one thing", just as truly and "categorically" as is my concept of a dog. Moreover, just as I can conceive of "dogginess", I can conceive of "television setness" the process and equivalence of content, as a formal process is absolutely similar. There are differences, of course. The most important is that men do not create "ex nihilo sui et subjecti". This is based on their "relativity in respect of being", their contingency. As they are not "He who is" without essential relativity or dependence in the order of being, they cannot emit that "Fiat" which makes them existentially absolute with reference to another "dependent being” as creators.  They are not existentially absolute, therefore, they cannot create.  (And their constructs are “Reductionist” because without a new ontological finality of "form" 1988.)

There is too the difference that they cannot form "life". Is this a distinction also based on the sheer fact of contingency, or is the difference between "life" and "mechanism" one of degree? We think it is one of degree. It would be possible for a future age with greater knowledge, to "fashion life" even as it "fashions machines", we think. In this brief outline let the philosopher read carefully, we have to hurry, but we are not wasting words. We wish to say: God fashions when He creates, on the same principle as does the engineer. The final end of the whole cosmos, which conditions that first "creation" is in the order of the Theological as the full finality of the physical. Therefore all the sciences, philosophy and theology, are but one wisdom, without autonomy or true and adequate distinction of principle. The principle of modern engineering is the same principle as that in the mind of God creating. We, therefore, accept "mechanicismus" as the foundation of our own metaphysic of matter. The final end, however, to be attained in the one finality of the cosmos, conditioned that first fashioning into the Theological order by reason of its finality. Therefore, the intrinsic structure of the primary constitution of matter and its ultimate  intelligibility,  is  understood  only  in  relation to  Theology,  in  relation to  man, through Christ unto God. Oh, surely, what an avenue of majestic thought this opens out unto us. What a possibility of a great, continuous and satisfying synthesis of all that is, as gathered in one clasp into the bosom of God.

The Primary Constituents of being do not lose their identity in these new and later totalities to which they are relative. In the beginning, the framing of the primary was intrinsically related to the latter, even as a master craftsman will frame the foundation of a noble edifice not just as "any old foundation" but as the foundation adequate for the totality to be constituted upon it. But these new finalities are transcendental not predicamental in the mind of God. His Mechanicism" of being cannot therefore be interpreted by Reductionism.

Let us then note that it is true to say that the finality of the composite built upon the elements is both one and yet not simply one. We do not admit an "unum per accidens". That is simply not tenable by the experience of cognition, and the facts which cognition interprets. The Mind of God, creating through the atomic order makes a new complex finalism and formalism, ontologically one.

The very fact, however, that the elements do not lose their "identity" helps us to explain reality. For the Thomist, as the more complex entity is metaphysically constituted simply by "act and potency" or by "form and prime matter", we have to conceive of a creation  by God  each  time  of  a  form,  which will  cause precisely  these  relations  of interdependence within the totality. It may be true that the later form "takes over" the complexity of the previous form and improves upon it, but there is a metaphysical instant when the old has gone and the new is coming, or else a metaphysical "coexistence" to prevent the collapse of the total edifice into prime matter. It is not good enough to say that the new form "educitur e potentia materiae". It cannot be. It can only be educed from the "power of matter" through the active influence of the existing form, and yet the form as such has no such power, it is defined by perfection in its own order, not by any potentiality which is substantial. On the other hand, "matter" as "prime matter" cannot "educe" anything at all. Even if you concede the whole confusing concept, it remains true that the present form either in substantial change or in "evolution" is relative to a higher form. Very well. This new form is not selfcreated, nor is it the old form, it must be "infused", it cannot come from nowhere. The inferior old form, especially if it is conceived as "specific" cannot of its own virtue as an entelechy pass over into something above itself! Even if it does, there must be a moment of "succession" between the old and the new, when the total "materia secunda" should "collapse" into "materia prima" unless sustained in some way by a miracle.2

Nature of Elements Defined To Higher Unities

If, however, the constituents are still existing but realised in another finality another totality, there is no such difficulty. In a mosaic each piece is itself, does exist, but it has not the fullness of its actual content until it is "part of the whole" in fact. I can say "what a pretty piece of marble", but when I see it as the constituent of a nobly conceived face of Christ, then it is both itself, and something more as relative to its part of integrating the higher totality, but it has this as derived from the higher, not of itself, it is susceptible of more complete reference from the top down, so to speak. ("Top down" through a new intrinsic ontological formality and finality, yet one relative intrinsically to this elemental integration 1988.)

For us, there is a double element in the constitution of "relative elements". They are not only relative to higher entity, but are also constituted in the beginning, as "in motion" to a given end. They already have a relationship to the total cosmos, conditioned by the final end of the plan of the cosmos. Within the cosmos, we admit of "life" as already existing in the bare foundation of itself. We admit of "life" as that interrelation of matter which was to progress formally in a given combination, until finally the "amoeba", or whatever you will call the first life as we know life, emerged. This "living cell" was already conditioned in its total relation to the cosmos, to man, and therefore to Christ. For us then, this "relativity" is of a very searching kind, and conditions not merely the power to integrate higher being, but also, before man appeared, the very mode of integration.

This type of "constitution" of higher material entities, makes them, while a true finality, in and through this interpretation, relative to the nature of the elements. If a dog as existing now, is composed only of "unica forma et materia prima" then when the dog succumbs to the effects of radioactivity, I must say that the "form" contained this very conditioning in itself, I cannot blame materia prima for it. The form of dogginess, while it "wipes out" the formality of the "elements" in the dog, yet retains the powers of all the elements in itself, and can actualise them in "this dog".

It seems much more sensible to say that elements or atoms, existing in the dog in their own specific (ie "in virtute") definition, reacted to the stream of, say, alpha particles by disintegrating, and so the poor dog died. The higher activity, then, is integrated in and by the total interrelation of the primary constituents. In this relation they form a "pattern of being", a "relation of beings into a being" which is the higher synthesis, which is the "dog".

Instead of matter and form we admit only the "pattern of being" and a "pattern", or given  being,  may  be  also  a  "mosaic  pattern",  may  fit  into  a  higher  pattern  as  a substantial part. The integration of this pattern is the active and direct work of God operating through and with the initial directive of creation. It is the creative Will of God which  through  "secondary  causes"  is  the  ultimate  integrating  factor  of  ever  more complex "patterns of being". These are "real" and "final" simply because by the fiat of God they are, and their "pattern" constitutes them both as what they are, and also in their cosmic relativity. The intrinsic relativity of the "pattern", however, is the very manifestation of their "contingency", they are not "simpliciter simplex". For us then, the "composition" of being is also a fact of the metaphysical order, but not as one "simple" principle contraposed to another "simple principle", rather as an essential, intrinsic relativity which defines both the actuality and the potentiality of the entity. This "pattern of being" in living things has for us the added value that we relate the highest manifestation of life ultimately to the possible "build up" upon the most primitive pattern. It is an intrinsic development, which in its entire conditioning, had but one ultimate urge, the urge to man.4 This initial "pattern" then was relative to improvement and development, just as in the modern "radar" all depends upon the line of progress from the clumsy inventions of Marconi and Edison Bell. With God, however, Who is supreme Wisdom, the power to develop was in the very definition of the primary emergence, not merely as a power, but in the conditioning of the essence. The full intelligibility then of the primitive totality that was the first form of life, was only intelligible in reference to the appearance of Adam, only fully intelligible, that is. Just as a caterpillar can be understood as a "sort of worm" in any state of knowledge, but is only fully intelligible in relation to the butterfly.

Instead then of a "transcendental" relation of two distinct principles in the ideal order, one of which is unintelligible, and both of which are ideas (principia) not realities (entia), we would posit a transcendental relativity of the totality as relative to its substantial parts in the existential order. Just as a car is one being in many parts, one finality integrated through an existential relativity, so also are the monkey and the flower.

Primacy of The Existential

In organic matter, the mere rearrangement of elements in a new pattern constitutes the new reality, e.g. H2O is a reality with very distinct properties from H or O because this new pattern has a distinct "cosmic relation". The universe is tolerant of it, or rather "desirous" of it in a given way. "It was meant to be", therefore, it behaves as "what it is". One must say, I consider, that H and O are related on the same principle (i.e. complementaries)    as male and female elements of generation.  In the existing constitution of themselves they can fuse in a given harmony which is H2O. This is a new pattern, a new "finality", a new "cosmic relation". The intrinsic and metaphysical "reality" will be visible under the microscope (at least potentially!) as an external manifestation in which it will be possible to distinguish both elements in a new "combination". In the "living" this "relativity", this "combination", takes a higher direction, and goes on from the initial rearrangement of chromosomes to the complete organisation of the human body.

Ultimately the total process is one of degree of being in the most essential definition of the word.

To sum up. All material being is uniquely intelligible in itself~ it has not two principles, one of intelligibility, the other of pure indeterminacy. The "intelligible" or "actual" is by itself relative or potential in its very definition, in its act as act. A composite totality, then, can be integrated in a higher totality, in which its lines go out to synthesize a new and higher "real". Its definition, then, can become a substantial part of a new totality, in which it remains itself and is truly subordinate in that "selfness" as the integral part of another totality. The new totality exists by virtue of that finality to which the intrinsic relativity of the parts is "centralised". There must be a "central control" of this pattern, it must be "organised" even as the mosaic is “organised" and has a distinct "direction"!  Once integrated as this final pattern, then we have a new finality in virtue of the direction, the "cosmic relativity" of the whole. (We have also a new ontological unity, because Absolute Being creates absolutely, "out of nothingness". In his machines, however complex and electronic, man "creates" by a purposive transsignification of existing reality which remains ontologically unchanged. In the old philosophic sense of the Schoolmen this is accidental being. Some theologians have tried to apply this principle of explanation to the notion of Transubstantiation in the Holy Eucharist. It fails, because the Eucharist is a change, a "conversio" both ontic and ontological 1993).

1 And therefore this philosophy is NOT reductionist

2 "An impossible miracle as well, or perhaps just by way of a "caretaker" form?

3 Our "mechanicismus" is finalistic, that is, an ontic Transcendentalism.

4 You see, what we mean by God the Engineer in this. It is His absolute Will which

made His "machines" exist absolutely: "esse finale et reale" (formally one but an ontologically relative unity existentially speaking 1988).

3 DE COGNITIONE

(Concerning Cognition)

We reject likewise the theory of knowledge by abstraction. We admit only knowledge by "perception" or intuition. We prefer the first term since the name "intuition" has too many vague and ambiguous connotations.

Once again, the principle lex entis, lex mentis (the way being is governs the way mind is) has led us to doubt our early teaching in philosophy. I perceive in my mind that I know only the determinate, the real, the singular. The real must be determinate, the real must be existential. The real, existential determinate is this man, not "humanitas" vel "homo". God  is  real,  determinate,  personal  (in  the  sense  of  common  speech,  we  are  not discussing the Trinity here!). What is made of God, also to deserve the name of "reality" must likewise be real, determinate, and existential. Knowledge is the union of the mind with the real and existential, therefore the mind knows reality as such. Therefore it knows the real, existential 'hoc unum' (the concrete solid real). On the Thomist system only the essential is known in this way. The mind, the soul, does not directly attain the singular or individual, not at least as it exists in matter. This is opposed to: 1) experience and common sense~ 2) It means that material being as fully constituted in itself cannot be attained by spiritual creations: ratione inintelligibilitatis materiae primae, because of the fundamental nonintelligibility of prime matter.

Not at all: whatever proceeded from God is Being, and as such knowable, both by its Creator and by spiritual natures made in his image. The soul then, can and does attain matter directly. If there were a principle of pure potency St Thomas' argument would hold, but we deny this principle. There is only an actualpotential of a very low order of being, and this the soul is quite capable of intellectually "knowing" simply because it is superior to it, while yet in the one ("one" analogically not univocally) order of "being as such". If God could create matter, then the spiritual can know matter. The analogy of being is a very profound doctrine and its consequences must be accepted.

Further, the Thomist maintains that these entia quibus (beings by which concrete being is), Act and Potency, constitute the unum compositum (structured real), they have not separate existential identities, they are not entia quae (real things as such). Very well then, but how, in that case does the intellectus agens (active, or agent intellect) proceed precisely to separate these two elements? Apparently the union is such that neither element in any true sense loses its "identity". This composite seems to consist in two distinct elements, which remain distinct as principles, even while they constitute the "unum quod" the concrete "this thing". They can be separated by the mind, which "abstracts" or "takes away" the intelligible content from the material garbage in which it is "delimited". Therefore, not only do I never know the unum quod (singular real) but moreover I do know the "essence content" in itself in separation, as a true universal. How then, is it not, in all honesty an ens quod, truly a "parcel" of being, which even while substantially constituting the singular and determinate can, even so, be separated. It is irrelevant to remark that what the mind "knows" is only a species (representation), a relative impression of the personal, individual essence.  Either this impression, this species intelligibilis is a true representation of what is found in the singular, and of the way in which it is found, or we must grant Kant every one of his antinomies.

There are many things which displease us in this theory of knowledge~ to enumerate a few more:

1) The "universal" so abstracted is a "concrete" or real, or absolute "idea". We think that truly Hegel could claim to be the true disciple, the more honest disciple of the Thomist in this. This "universal" is not the mind, nor is it identified with the totality, it is only the representative species of the form. This form then is "universal" as it exists, even in the singular, or it could not be abstracted even "mediately" as such. Again, as separable from the totality as merely a substantial part of the totality it is an "idea vitalis", a principle of vitalism, as Hegel has said, "ideas have hands and feet". If it is not an absolute or real idea, then this form is of the same order as intellectual, or "intelligible per se" in contradistinction to matter, as is the soul of man. There is no intelligible order of the real but nonmaterial, save the order of spirit, beings of intellect and will. To state otherwise, is to make an assertion but to define nothing.

2) This universal essence is univocal.

This is a hard saying, and who can hear it? This content of the universal defines "that by which it is" id quo ens est id quod est. This is moreover the same in all the members of the species. If the individual essence is individualised only by prime matter or even by quantity, and retains even in that relation, a univocal content which is separated, precisely because the mind can so distinguish it when it abstracts the "intelligible species" from the phantasm (sensible impression as picture) how then can I avoid saying that there is one form, numerically the same for all individuals? Shades again of dear old Hegel! Let us remark that we do not carp simply at the "univocity" of the content of the mind. We complain that this univocal content in the mind, is made relative to the formal principle of actuality in the subject (or object) known. Therefore this  formal  principle  while  actuating  this  individual,  cannot  justly  be  denied  as identically  the  same  in  all  members  of  the  species.  If  this  dog  is  what  it  is  by "dogginess" and "dogginess" is precisely what my mind, or rather intellectus agens, abstracts from dear little Fido lying on the carpet, then I have mediately attained the actuating  principle  of  Fido,  and  it  is  in  its  own  order  irreceptus  (nonreceived) illimitatus, and quite one with the "dogginess" of Pluto next door, who often tries to eat little Fido.

We begin to suspect that Pluto and Fido are a metaphysical combine, under the original distinct trade names!  Or  perhaps  rather there  is  nothing  real  in  the same  order  to correspond to dogginess, but only dogs. And, dogginess is the degree, or state of being, the rank in creation, of being a dog! However, we will try to give our own opinion later, and we will not accept "dogginess" as univocal either, so Pluto and Fido may not be charged with having formed a metaphysical cartel after all.

4 DE IDEA UNIVERSALI

(Further to the Universal Idea)

In all these preliminary criticisms, we intend to be merely destructive, we hope afterwards to give a somewhat more coherent and constructive criticism. This hope is as always subject to the limits of time imposed upon us, and our ability to sit down to long spells of undistracted thought.

The universal idea we also reject in its present form of presentation in the Schools. This  we  realise  is  a  fundamental  and  grave  point  de  départ.  We sympathise very sincerely with the facts of the mind which gave rise to the theory of abstraction and the "universal" idea, and we will concede a great element of truth in the explanation of reality which this system implies. Nevertheless, we cannot accept this "essentialism" in philosophy as at present taught in the Schools.  We do admit a valid truth in "essentialism" but as we will, we hope, explain more constructively later, only as the generalised synthesization of the existential. And as generalised, as a system of co ordinated "statistics" it has a valuable, but only a subordinate and necessarily incomplete value in philosophy.  Thomism is a philosophy per se “essential” and only per consequens existential: we would reverse the whole emphasis.

To return to the "universal idea". We reject this conception of knowledge because in the first place it is not true to common sense facts. However true and useful a function the "universal idea" fulfils in cognition, and we must concede the "universal idea" in some sense, it is not the real and primary factor of knowledge. The knowledge and love of friendship, the joys of natural beauty, the appreciation of the harmony of nature or of art, the really deep things of life are not just aggregates of undifferentiated "mathematical" universals. They are loves which spring from knowledge, true intellectual perception, and perception is not abstraction.  We perceive what we know and love.  We do not "dehydrate" them into thin "essential" contents we could very justly call Thomism a "dehydrated philosophy".

The universal moreover is not the reality, the existing totality. If we know merely by "universals" in the "formal" of intellection, then we never know the real. We will insist that as all reality in all that defines it as reality, derives from the spiritual, then also a spiritual creation can “know” and attain all reality.  It is a saying of the Schools “anima quoddamodo facit omnia" (the soul in a certain manner makes all things come to be) and yes, in that case "anima quoddamodo cognoscit omnia" (the soul in a certain manner also knows all things). Because spiritual it is competent to penetrate both the order below the spiritual, and the order of the spiritual. Simply because the order of the material is so "low" an order of being, we would say that the spirit in man can much more easily understand the material order as such, than the very order of the spirit: therefore, there are many more good scientists than true mystics in the world!

Nevertheless we accept "lex entis, lex mentis", the order of the real is the law of the mind. The mind must be able to attain reality as it is. The species intelligibilis which the "intellect as agent" rescues from the sensory phantasm, is not an adequate medium to the attainment of the real. The "reflexio in phantasma" (reflection back upon the data of sense) by which St Thomas explains the recognition of the singular real, is an assertion only. It says nothing definitive, and it explains no process. Either you do, or you don't, directly, intellectually, and cognitively attain the singular real as it is. If knowledge is by abstraction you do not, and Professor Immanuel Kant is waiting on the doorstep to usher us into his domestic categories.

Further love is the response of being to possess as good, the true. Again, volition is not a blind process of the soul, volition is a spiritual faculty, possessed by angels, and by God himself. The will is the complementary response to the integration of the process begun by knowledge. The process is, knowing, desiring, love in possession. It is again a scholastic cliche, and very true, nil volitum nisi praecognitum nothing is loved, except first it be known. But I ask, does any man seriously love a universal?  The possession of love is certainly in the singular, the determinate~ the real~ the existential. Nil volitum nisi praecognitum, and again quidquid recipitur secundum modum recipientis recipitur (whatever is received is received according to the manner of the recipient in receiving). Am  I asked to believe that the one natural and  essential operation of a spiritual substance    knowing,  terminates  at  the  universal  or  ideal. While the other operation which necessarily succeeds it, the complementary operation of willing of the thing "known" terminates only at the real, determinate singular? How can you love as the good in the existential, as this determinate, what is presented for possession as this indeterminate universal?

The Primacy Of The Real In Knowing And Loving

As we have said, intellect and will are but transcendental "somethings" (to avoid detailed controversy about what they really are) which define all spiritual beings, including God, in their essence. Is it conceivable that one of these processions of the spiritual nature should terminate at the universal, the "partial" of the real, while the other terminates at the determinate and full totality?

Again:    verum,  bonum,  ens  convertuntur  (the  true,  the  good,  and  being  are convertible terms). But yet when I know and love my friend Peter, verum is only a universal "abstracted" form in my mind, while bonum is a particular determinate and singular content, terminating at all that Peter is. So in this case at least, "verum" and "bonum" are not convertible "quoad nos" (in our condition  here and now) and they should be, or else verum and bonum in our condition of reality, are never covertible and hence the mind does not attain the real, or "ens uti est" being as it truly exists. Moreover, this universal univocal formcontent is susceptible of the same charge  of numerical identity as we made before, because no amount of distinction between the mode of existing "in singulari" and "ut abstracta" (in the singular, and as abstracted by the mind) can rid us of the fact that precisely this principle of act, which is the energy (taleitas, suchness) the entelechy (finality) of the singular, is capable when abstracted by the agent intellect of bearing this universal, univocal, indivisible content. Ah, you say, yes, but as abstracted only. But, we reply, the intellectus agens does not physically abstract the actual form, only its species representativa, but this is a faithful copy of the entelechy (form) as it is and as it determines the phantasm (sensory brain data). You cannot deny that the data of the mind which reflects the reality, gives one a content which however much in the singular in the real, and even in the phantasm, yet retains a definition which always must be "universal" and "univocal", even while it expresses the entelechy of this singular.

You reply, "There you go again, making the universal an ens quod (thing in its own right) did I not tell you....?" Yes, you did, but all the same you contradicted yourself, because if in any true sense it can be abstracted from matter, even "by proxy" through the phantasm, if it is really distinct from the purely material, if it has a principle of definition distinct from materia prima, then it is an "ens quod", and I shall continue to say so, even though you cry your eyes out.

Thomist Theory Of Cognition Is Idealist

This  is  we  suspect  the  fundamental  point  de  départ,  and  it  falls  into  two  distinct categories of condemnation. In the first place, even if we accept this "formal element" as an ens quo (part principle of singular real) nevertheless the fact remains that we do not attain the real, but only a principle of the real: not the totality, the ens ut ens (real as subsistent singular). Then secondly, we deny the attributes given to this ens quo~ while by definition it may avoid the difficulties and inconvenience of an ens quod, in practice it is treated as such, and is selfrevealed as such. If it has its proper definition, which it never loses  as  a  real content,  even  in  the singular  thing,  and  by which  it  can be "abstracted" from the very singular itself, then it is an "ens quod". The mode of being in the singular we know is claimed as distinct from the mode of being in the mind. Only in the mind is it universal, while in the singular said to be coarctata (narrowed, restrained). Even here it is treated as accidentally modified (incidentally, nonsubstantially) despite the denials. Either this mode of determination in the singular prevents it from being actually apprehended in any way really independent of the singular, or it does not. But it does not, and that precisely in its very definition, in any state of reality. It must then remain either "an objective real idea" or else be a creation of the same order as the soul. The former was the teaching of Plato, in whom the whole doctrine finds its inspiration. The anomaly of prime matter also, was not concealed from Aristotle, its guardian and foster parent, even though not its begetter. Hegel and Kant seem to be far more honest in the logical acceptance of the consequences of their teaching, than do our own philosophers, who  are  prevented  from  going  to  these  logical  consequences  by  the anxious eye of Mother Church. If we may use a very vulgar analogy, justified only by its exactness, we consider the mating of Aristotelianism and the Christian tradition of St Augustine, as the union of horse and ass the offspring is a static compromise, without power of generation, without élan vital, but not without sometimes that obstinacy which characterises the castrated offspring of those two useful animals.

We  consider  the  Thomist  philosophy  then,  to  be  essentially  "idealist",  and  will therefore not accept it. Let the real attain the totally real. Let the idea be realised as the content in its full bearings of the determinate singular. Let philosophy begin from the real, and lead to the idea~ but let not philosophy start from the apparent requirements of the idea to become the category of the real.

We now fire our last volley before leaving this affray. It is idle to maintain that the "forma" as the principle determining intellection is not an ens quod when it is not only in logic, but even "sub rosa", in fact treated as such. The relation of Act and Potency must be, and is transferred by strict correlation to the relation of "esse and essentia" (subsistence and nature) as really distinct principles in the real. The triumphant and unabashed application of this “principle philosophy” according   to   its   ens   quod usefulness, which was ever latent within it, is seen very exactly in the theories of those very respectable members of the Thomist school who make the human nature of Christ "essentia humana", "natura humana", but then proceed to actualize it, in its own human order solely by the "esse Divinum" (Being or subsistence of God). If this is not to be the naked admission of the "ens quod" value of the "essentia" then what is? We insist that the correlation of Act and Potency, Matter and Form, Essence and Existence, are all one order of Act and Potency, and that what is valid as a possibility in the explanation of the hypostatic union, is valid of the same principle throughout Thomist philosophy.

5 DE UNIVERALIBUS

(Concerning the Universal Idea or Form) A POSITIVE REJOINDER

The criticism of the Universal Forms Unlimited has occurred already in the discussion of the knowledge of the real and the nature of human understanding. In this section one attempted to give an alternative and not simply criticize in a negative manner.

We have made it abundantly clear that we do not accept the doctrine of universals. We must however give some validity to the mental fact~ that is obvious. What shall we say? Shall we, in the best English tradition, say it is only a label? We have four choices before us. There is extreme empiricism, the "only a label" school of thought. There is extreme realism,    "Ideas have hands and feet” of Hegel. There is the socalled “Moderate Realism" of Thomism, which we think tries to sit on both stools and falls between them: and there is "conceptualism".

We do not think we can fit exactly into any of these pigeonholes. If we must join any of the philosophical political groups, then we are a "conceptualist" we suppose.

For us, the "universal" is in no real sense whatever distinct from its "fundamentum". Ah then! at last we are a conceptualist. But we wonder, are we a conceptualist if we say that the fundamentum is the universal in at least the "first degree" of abstraction No, oh horror!, now we are a pure idealist! Yet if we say that the universal is not an "idea" objectively but only the percept of the relations of a singular, what are we then?

When we came to consider universals some time after leaving the Eternal City, we were disturbed by certain considerations in the following order.

1) As a Thomist, and we were then very wholeheartedly a Thomist, though but an unlettered one, I do not know the real. The real is constituted by form and matter. The actualisation of the real by existence required matter, or else somewhere there is Plato's "ideal lion" etc etc. I came to see that if I were a very honest young man, and indeed I never stole more than stamps in those days, if then I were really honest, I must consider myself an idealist. True I could perform a "reflectio in phantasma": but like poor Int:agens when the police got him 1, I had to admit that the more my intellect "reflected" on the phantasm as such, the less it saw. No, I was an idealist, and I could not bear it, it just was not common sense.

As I looked around my poverty stricken room I knew no chair, no table, no meagre ration of coal, no books, no dirt!  All  I really  knew,  intellectually and  therefore self consciously in that part of me which is the source of life, my soul, all that was most fully me  knew  in  that  little  bit  of  a  barracks,  was  "chairness,  tableness,  meagreness, rationness of coalness, bookiness, and far too much dirtiness". So I said to myself, said I "Come off it, chum!", and so I came off it, and a rebel bold was I.

2) I also perceived that I must give even a principle a meaning in its own order of reality, and the more I thought of "materia prima", the more I thought what honest men Plato and Hegel were when they called it "me on" and made it equally real with "to on"2. I then perceived that the Manichees were not such fools as they looked, and I felt very sympathetic to St Augustine as a young man.

3) I began to realise that the mind must apprehend the real, and as a Thomist the real ultimately apprehended through the medium of the "species inteligibilis" was the form. Therefore it was "ens quod" even while it might yet be the "ens quo".

4) Then I painfully admitted that this real was the same in all members of the species, that it was real or it could not be apprehended, and also univocal and one in essential content. When I said "This" about it, I merely dragged along its noxious little friend, Master Materia Prima. I then began to suspect that Hegel, Averroes, Spinoza and quite a lot of antisocial characters were not quite such addled idiots as my textbooks said they were. I even began to think the good Fathers of the Society were addled idiots, and all these "venenosi"3 rather honest and likeable fellows.

The Idea the Ghost of the Existential

But when I found that I never did, or could, attain in this life, The Real, to whom I had devoted my life, then I just picked up a bit of my meagreness rationness of coalness, and let the good Fathers have a vicarious pelting. I admit however it merely lowered further the temperatureness in my hearthplaceness.

I noticed also one more curious anomaly. If in truth the universal was all we could truly know, then at least all the joy of wisdom and love, all the beauty of being, all the "pride of life" should be centred round these universal concepts. I found however that nobody cared a damn about them, that nobody loved them, and, certainly, though at that time men could be watched every day in the skies over London dying with superb gallantry, they never died for a universal. They died for "this England", or "our Mary" or "My God". Yes, men loved and died for the determinate, the real. Men thought in truth "greater love than this no man ('not humanity') hath than that he lay down his life for his friends, “not "for friendship". Certainly then love cleaved to the singular, and love was determined by the known?  Then True knowledge, and True love were both of the determinate real, the singular "in which is all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge".

And the analysis we made then, to that we still keep, only yet more insistently. There is of course the most obvious fact that far from the form, as abstracted, being all the life, vigour and power of being, it is the most mathematical, colourless and ethereal content possible. You would have thought that the entelechy, the "energia", the "id quo ens est id quod est", would be a much more attractive property. If it truly represents the "quid substantialiter constitutivum", then indeed the only things worthwhile in being are the "accidents", the substance is merely the concretebound rubble at the base of the foundations. This is not good enough as a metaphysic of the real.

We came therefore to formulate a conception of the universal which we have never yet got really clear in words. We came to suspect that the universal expressed the singular "extensive" but not "intensive"~ or rather, the full content of the universal would be all that the singular is in its total relation to the cosmos, in its "worldrelativity" if you will. We confess that Leibnitz's doctrine of the "monad" which contained a universal cosmic reference considerably influenced this line of thought. We do not however, with Leibnitz, identify the universality as universal with the singular, so as once more to make the "monad" an "objective idea".

We noticed in everyday life how, so to speak, "universals" were born. Soldiers were everywhere, most of our friends were being called up, we found it hard to believe that simply  because  they put on uniform  and  took up  a  rifle,  they had  acquired  a new "perfection" which "inhered" in their substance. We noticed also the relation of "captainness” to “soldierness".  The singular captain was defined by his relation as controller of a given body of men. We noticed also that "one soldier does not make a captain", any more than "one swallow makes a summer". The perfection of being a captain involved a real relation, a real selfdetermination to many individuals in a given mode. Similarly "soldier" was so related to "captain". We noticed that many men in a given relation were necessary to define a captain, because the operations which his rank implied involved a cooperative action much beyond the power of one soldier. By reason of "contingency" then, many soldiers were necessary to make the "form" of captaincy possible. Many soldiers could effect a relation in the order of operation which one by virtue of his intrinsic limitations could not. We noticed also, how much more true was this of" generals" which implied all the lower ranks in their mutual order of subordination. We noticed also that you could predicate actions and properties of an "army" which could never be predicated of the individuals in it. It seemed to take on a "personality" quite analogous to a living being. It became very like our conception of complex life as built upon  less  complex substantial  integrants,  it  became  something  with  a  distinct  and sometimes vivid personality, like the "Eighth Army of Africa". Although this "body", the "army", had no true intrinsic finality as "ens per se", yet the likeness thereunto existed also in that it had a controlling head, a "Supreme Commander" who gave the whole its one finality, which was truly one, while every division, battalion etc retained its own definition while integrating the higher finality. We therefore began to suspect that all these new universals of many types which the war was bringing about, were but the relations of individuals, of singulars, among themselves in a mutual dependence of function and "reality". We came to suspect that there are "universals" because we are all members "one of another", that even while fulfilling our own end and purpose in life, we are mutually related to the other intrinsically, both as "givers" and "receivers".

The Concept of the Real Cosmic Relation

Instead then of basing the universal on the notion of "pure perfection" perfect in its own order "and unlimited", we turned more carefully than ever to the analysis of the singular to find the explanation. We decided that far from being a "realisation in many individuals through  "matter"  of  one  "essential  form",  we  could  conceive  the  universal  quite otherwise.

We could explain the "potentiality of the singular", not necessarily by a distinct limiting principle with all the "inconvenientiae"4 that followed, but from one concept of the "limited act",  the  totality defined  in  its  actuality by an  intrinsic  relativity,  the concept  of  the constitutively one "actualpotential".

The actuality of the singular then was defined by the mind of God, when He made the universe a harmony of many parts, an organic whole a "cosmos"! The singular, then, was not limited by an intrinsic principle of indeterminacy, a sort of "nonens" principle, but simply by its definition, its finality in a cosmic whole. We noticed how the definition of any one entity involved the whole cosmos, not just a neat "abstraction".

We looked out of the windows of St. Mary's Hall, at the dear little bunny rabbits, busy eating the young lettuces we had just planted, and we wished there were a moral sanction for wickedness in bunny rabbits. Then we did more. We noticed their long ears and bright shifting eyes. We considered those ears as defined by sound in their reality, and  sound  by waves,  and  waves  by the  air,  and  air  by geological  evolution,  from nebulae, and  the  present atmosphere  as  the nicely poised balance  of all the  solar systems. We watched them mopping up pockets of resistance among the bigger lettuces in a sternly methodical way. We considered how they were relative to grass and unfortunately to lettuces: how lettuces involved a "family of plants" which faded down the path of history to undifferentiated cells: how these involved the sun, and the sun was energy, and energy was related to nuclear fission, and we came up against the buffers of the Terminus somewhere in the mists of ignorance about atoms and protons, etc. We saw that "being a bunny rabbit" was a "cosmic relation". We came to conceive of the singular as so limited because God willed to define its nature with a certain range of operation, and with a certain relation to "environment"~ a certain cosmic relation that is. One bunny could not do the wicked work of ten million bunnies. Indeed, if you could have a great big bunny like Plato's "ideal bunny" (which being ideal would not leave lettuces alone) which had the "perfections" of ten million bunnies, the environment could not, and would not, "tolerate" it~ it would be a cosmic disharmony, it would do awful damage and end up by being divebombed.

No, the singular was "defined" in relation to the cosmos as having a certain finality, which also was relative to the finality, the power to be, of other entities. After all, foxes are very glad about bunnies, even if gardeners are not. The singular was made relative then to a cosmic function, and further defined by its relativity of "pattern" to a given span of life in a given environment. It is relative to an actuality which so defines its limitations, in the respect of "mortality", that it contains also in its very definition the power and the need of "generation". The "universalness" of universals was also related to the cosmic harmony, the "Universal Law" or "Cosmic Law" of the world. You can have millions of lower animals because of the vastness of the "earth", but you could not have as many "suns" or "planets". You can multiply bunnies fiftyfold, and have an annoying plague and no lettuces. If you multiplied the stars fifty fold in the same cosmic harmony, there would be no cosmos.

The singular then was defined in its total cosmic relation, in which it needed "others" to fulfil the total plan, while it gave its own contribution. This was "rabbitness", the "function", the cosmic relation of being a rabbit, the relation of a singular to every other singular in the cosmos, in its total finality in the total plan of all that is, or will be. If you could have known that little bunny on the allotments at St Mary's Hall in all that the perfect definition of itself implied, you would have known also everything else in the universe in its full organic relationship. You would also have known every other bunny in the world, and the total world contribution of millions of toiling, sweating, hardworking and hardeating bunnies. You would have known every determinate singular in the world in itself, and as having brought about, and being related to, this animal. You would also, of course, have known in equally full detail the whole past history of the world and all that was to come.  Then,  and  only  then,  would  you  fully  know  this  bunny.  Then, moreover, you could totally dispense with every "ness", every "universal" concept, for you would know the singular fully as it is, "totum, et totaliter ". Only God knows that way, and God does know that way, therefore in God there are no "universals". God attains all the real, totum et totaliter, but He does attain the determinate real. We also, like God, must and do attain the determinate real. God attains it because He knows what it is, what the thing exists as. If we are truly intellectual beings we must do the same. Like God we start from the determinate, the singular, the "ens finale", or "ens definitum". Unlike God we cannot attain its full cosmic relations and the further out we go, the more "universal" we get. That is why the universal becomes increasingly vague. "Bunniness" is not exciting, but "rodentness" is less so, "animality" more vague, "life"   "material" "being" each one has less content, as we widen out. We find that "cosmic" relations broaden into other classes until we approach the hardly differentiated state of creation. The universal then is the perception of the singular as what it is in a cosmic relation, but imperfectly. The mind seizes on the singular in its operations and defines it in this "co operative" and  "organic"  relation,  defines  the  singular  as  a  "member",  as  a  "world relative" which indeed it is~ but unlike God it cannot know all, in all. If it could then it would possess the singular in all its richness, all its full reality, without dimness or "cloudiness".  It  can  however  perceive  only  so  far,  and  then  it  "universalizes".  This however is not abstraction, but perception, the immediate apperception of the singular in its totality, not of "a form".

The Universal as Defect of Total Knowledge

Do all men universalize equally? No, they do not. The great Saint, the great Mystic, will universalize somewhat less. According to St Thomas, when I love my good friend, I only intellectually,  in  the  sense  of  pure  cognition  truly  such, know  his  "Peterness". This content is the same in 1946 as it was in 1936. Yet I know that this is rubbish5. We have both of us tried to grow in the love of God. Our Love is now, oh so much more deep, tranquil, unjealous~ unimpassioned and sweetly satisfying. We also know each other in a "contemplative" way; our plumbing of our mutual "content" has gone much deeper. We know each other more "fully", "simply", "existentially". The concept "Peter" has for me a content it did not have 10 years before, an intellectual content, known in the same sweetness of love in which I know my God, it is a spiritual thing, utterly real, not a "reflexio in phantasma". This is to "universalize" less. Before I said, "Peter is a good fellow, he has kindness, he seems to have wisdom, I think he possesses chastity, he has cleverness, he is quite useful on the typewriter" etc etc. Years ago indeed these were much more obviously conceived as "attributes of Peter". But now I just say "Peter" and in that, all is known as Peter in all selfrelations. As the soul grows in stature in God, so it knows more as God knows, loves more as God loves, and the process can be experienced, but only in the Saints do we get a degree high enough to be philosophically useful. Yet even the Angels, at least before they were given the Beatific Vision, would need to "universalize". The "universal" is the singular in much the same relationship as the immediate foreground of a noble view. As you look over the noble hills of Surrey in all the beauty of middleMay, the foreground is clear and beautiful, but as the view stretches out, it becomes vague and indistinct, the full relation of every part is lost, until in  the  distance  but  a  blue haze  that veils  the  sweeping  hills  that  flank  the sea. A universal is like that, if you had telescopic eyes you could see all and appreciate all in a mutual relationship of beauty which would be ravishing. Even so, you can, in comparison with others, get something distantly similar~ my own appreciation of this beauty will probably be more real and determinate, less "universalized", than the young friend who says, "Jolly posh, not at all bad, where do we camp down for grub, Father?"

"Rabbitness" then, is to this rabbit what the blue haze beyond the viewline is to the Surrey hills. It covers an awful lot, but only in the broad sweep in which total value is not penetrated. In respect to this rabbit then, it is "totum" but not "totaliter" (the whole, but not wholly). It is however a reaching out to totum et totaliter. Like "faith" there is a real attaining of the real, but per speculum et in aenigmate (as in a mirror and with indistinction). That is to say dimly and without full comprehension. As then the singular is possessed more determinately, it comes to mean more and be less universal. The less you know, the more you universalize. That is why in Physics, at the beginning of the modern era, all sorts of "laws" and "forces" were invoked which are now seen to be but derivatives of one law. Similarly, when philosophers invoke all sorts of "modes", "principles", "distinctions" etc, they know less, and so make more "nesses", more universals, because as yet they cannot synthesize what they can more ably analyse.

The Universal of the Mind Not Fully Univocal

We also find that this doctrine of ours of the universal is not strictly univocal. We admit it, it cannot be. This may be less neat, but it is the more true. We are not embarrassed at the continual discoveries of science that interrelate ever more and more the branches of "the tree of life". When we find that roses and apple trees are only stirps, a "family", and not two species for instance. After all, who would have thought it? They are both clear and distinct sorts of "nesses", to my innocent mind. Then too, how annoying to find that the tomato and the potato are the same stirps, almost first cousins. It would seem that the "pure perfection" of tomatoness was quite a long way distant from that of the potato. At any rate you would never have said that the turnip and the cabbage were closely related "stirps"? Where does the true species begin? If Padre Boyer tells me that the rabbitlike progenitors of the modern horse, with donkeys, zebras etc etc, are all the one species "horse", all defined by "horsiness" as a univocal content, then I reply that to me at least "donkeyness" and "horsiness" in my mind are just as "univocal" and "distinct" as "donkeyness" and "treeness"!

No two beings even in the same species are altogether alike, it is their total cosmic relation which defines their finality, and which makes them distinct. There must however be a degree of "compatibility", of "similarity" between them if they have a certain type of function as “cooperative” in a given relation of cosmic operation.  This for us is admittedly a "univocity" which is not univocal but analogous. Indeed if we put analogy as the root of being, we must follow it through right to the very individual. We cannot describe fully our conception here until we come to treat of what we would put in the place of the present doctrine of "substance and accident". We will however just briefly say that the "relation" of singulars even in the same species, is one of degree, and that the  "compatibility",  the  power to  generate  within  the species  etc, are, so  to  speak, qualities which admit of degree, things can be "more or less compatible". The functions which St Thomas attributes to "prime matter", the facts of "passive potency" and "mutability", we too must explain, and we must put the onus upon our "actualpotential". Since "relativity" or "mutability" was included in its formal definition, we are not afraid to make of it an "elastic substance", a thing which admits of degrees of "likeness". We notice that horses and asses which are specifically one 6, yet produce an offspring which is unable to generate. We would say the "specification" was beginning to diverge too widely. We do not agree that horses and asses are univocally all "equine" or "horsy", but only analogously so, and the analogy in the metaphysical order was getting distant enough to be unstable and not “cosmically tolerable", in the Physical order.  In the analogy of Being, Angels are more like God than men, men more than animals, animals more than molecules.  There are degrees of relation to the “princeps analogatum". Similarly horses7 and asses are fairly close in the cosmic relation of "one species", but their distance is evinced, among other things, by the sterility of the mule.

St  Thomas would  say:  univocal  essence,  but  every  one  distinctive  as  a  totality constituted with all its "properties", or "accidents". We would say: analogous essence, admitting  of  degrees  of  compatibility or  otherwise,  defined  by  the  total  plan  of  the Universe, the cosmic plan in the mind of God. Only on something similar do we think we can reconcile the facts of geology and the "universal". Otherwise the atom and the gorilla are in the same biological species, and the whole philosophic value of the concept in psychology is useless. In point of fact, we would say that the concept is useless. The only "species" we would admit in the Thomist sense of the word, would be: 1. Material~ 2. Man~ 3. Angels. For us that exhausts every possible "species".

These three "orders" can be "distinctly" and "irreducibly" defined, and only these. The whole Thomist species rest on Aristotelean physics which are nonevolutionary. The whole value of the distinction of the species as relative to the "substance"' and the "stirps" to "accident" has gone, with modern knowledge of biology and genetics. Much more disastrous, the correlation of these "substances" with the "form" that determines cognition by abstraction has also gone, unless indeed it is the identical form of the atom and the highest mammal, and of everything else in the universe. However immature our own analysis and synthesis, we do think that "we have got something here"!

1Reference to a "spoof' section to follow as no. 6

2i.e. "not being" and "positive being"

3i.e. "poison spreaders"

4Inconvenientiae = difficulties

5No offence meant, brother Thomas!

6In the Thomist system as we were taught it.

7Princeps analogatum = Primary source or pattern of likeness

6 DE INTELLECTU AGENTE

(Concerning the Agent Intellect)

This of course is a "spoof" on the concept of the function and background of the faculty called "The Agent Intellect" in Thomistic philosophy as it came over to me. A Jesuit teaching at a university of international prestige has lately called it "an interesting and very funny depiction of Scholasticism in its very last decadent stages before the Second Vatican Council". However, I myself think it a rather fair spoof not only on what I was taught, but on what in fact must be deduced from the doctrine itself in the pages of Aquinas and the tradition of the Schools.

We have been so harsh already to this unhappy agent that we will not bring in any further charges against him. We need not delay him, for he stands already dismissed, we have "nationalised" his functions, he was a "middleman" under the old order, but he must perforce find himself redundant in the new.

If we reject cognition by abstraction, then automatically he is on the dole, we bring him now into court very largely to give implicit evidence against his employers, namely, "Universal Forms, Unlimited".

The Judge: Let the prisoner declare his functions and status in the transactions under the review of the court.

Prisoner: I was, your Worship, employed by the said company Universal Forms, Unlimited, to act as an agent or intermediary between them and our mutual Lord, the Intellectus Passibilis, hence my name, the Agent Intellect.

Prosecution: What claims, Prisoner, had the said Intellectus Passibilis upon yourself and Universal Forms?

Prisoner: The claim  of Justice and Truth, they and I did but supply the household necessities of the noble Lord, whose right it is to possess and to command the entire tribute of nature.

Prosecution: Why was it necessary for you to deal with this company, could you not supply your master by your own efforts and initiative?

Prisoner: I am but a simple fellow, and the company informed me that the products of nature were not suited for so exalted a person as my Lord in their raw condition. It was to be my duty to sift from the materials supplied by my employers the useful from the unbecoming, and so to take it to my master.

Prosecution: Did you inform my Lord of this presumption? If he has claim over all that is in nature, what right had you and your employers to deprive him of the total products of his stewards, in the name simply of his dignity? Did you ask his permission?

Prisoner: No, I simply did my work. I gave him the best I sifted, I chose what delighted me and sent it on to him. I did not tell him it was but a part of his harvest.

Judge: A monstrous deception. You gave him but a part and told him it was all?

Prisoner: I told him it was all that was worthy of him, that the rest was beneath his notice.  I  gave  him  the  pure  gold  of  cognition,  the  universal  form  provided  by  my employers,  how  they came  to  gather  it  in  such  impure condition  I know  not, but carefully did I sift the product of nature in their name, and took the well refined article to my master.

Prosecution: What did you do with the remainder, how did you dispose of it?

Prisoner: I am a simple man, I could make nothing of what was left, but sure it is that something was left. I put it in a heap in my back yard where I used to pile up all discarded phantasms. I made an account of it, and sometimes I would reflect back upon it, but for all my reflections I made nothing of it.

Judge: Why could you do nothing with it, nor anything about it?

Prisoner: I am a poor man your Worship, I have no schooling, but this I know, that the nearer I approached this residue, the less I saw, until when I touched it, I was blind, and nothing could I ever know of it, save that darkness seemed to linger round it.

Prosecution: A most unlikely story. How then did you sift from it the pure gold you spoke of in the beginning?

Prisoner: Ah, that I can explain easily. I am a short sighted man it seems but the gleam of gold I can perceive, that I could pick out, and hide. For the rest, I knew not what I handled.

Prosecution: Have you not heard that all that glitters is not gold? Yourself and your employers, Universal Forms, are under the stricture that what you gave your Lord was but the flash and glitter of ideas, the gold of full reality you left within the garbage you rejected.

Prisoner: Worry me not, I was born out of due time, I was fathered by a philosopher, and mothered by Necessity. I have never been a clever man and have always had my head in the clouds, I beg you confuse me not with too many facts, my head was made but for daydreams, and pure ideas.

Judge: Nevertheless you have grossly deceived your Lord, the Intellectus Passibilis, for he thought that he had all that his rich possessions yielded him~ and now he knows not what he has, save that it is not the fullness of his rights.

Defence Counsel: I beg your Worship, dismiss the fellow. He is but a simpleton, and the blame is with the company which employed him as their agent. What they have done with their tribute to my Lord, I do not know, but let a writ be served upon them, and let this poor man go. It is a dreadful thing to be begotten of a Philosopher by an illicit union with Necessity. The man was mentally defective from the beginning, let him go his way.

Judge: I think he may go. He has been a gross deceiver, but he knew no better. It is however a sad loss to our Lord Intellectus Passibilis. He has lived so long upon the sickly sweets of pure ideas, poor man, he is so thin and ghostly for want of solid food. He has suspected robbery by his servants, but he trusted them too well for many a year. We dismiss this village idiot to his home, let him live out his time chasing and holding sunbeams, he is fit for nothing else. Lead him away. The case against him is closed. As for  Universal  Forms,  Unlimited,  they  have  embezzled  property  not  their  own,  it  is obvious. They have arrogated to themselves rights they did not possess. What is worse, they have risen above their station, and claimed to be what they were not. Let them be charged with obtaining credence, under false pretences, and when they are found bring them in to me.

We are not so sure however that Intellectus Agens is as simple as he seems. We have since heard that Intellect is but one power of the soul, the power of comprehending what can be known. Agens has claimed to be but the servant of Passibilis. Yet there seems no room for two of them. What one could do in the name of Intellect, why not the other?

We suspect that Intellectus Agens is not intellect at all, sure it is he never knew anything properly~ either he deserves not the name of Intellect at all, or else he has usurped his master's functions. It is well for him that he has left the court!

7 DE SUBSTANTIA ET ACCIDENTE

(Concerning Substance and Accident) A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

Another section almost certainly in reply to "deplorations" from the Gregorian University, Rome and Fr George. I have tried to string the most relevant sections along together, so that the following two sections will not need an introduction, although they should be printed as separate sections.

By this time the sweet friend to whom we address ourself has resigned himself to the sad realisation that all Englishmen are empiricists and ever were and will be. Let him but stay, the cup of woe is not yet drained. We must leave him in his sorrow, for he will not believe us when we say we are not an empiricist. Just as we rejected matter and form, so also will we proceed to reject the real distinction of substance and accident. We cannot claim here a strict correlation between act and potency and "substance and accident": else had we straight away the most glaring evidence of the "ens quod" which would  masquerade  as  but  a  humble  partner,  without  personal  ambitions,  in  the composite work.

Here indeed, in substance and accident, we have an admitted ens quod (being in its own concrete right) indeed thousands of entia quae (plural) in any one entity. Our first reason for rejecting this teaching was that we saw no necessity for it, but that aspect we leave to a more constructive criticism later.  In any case, we are appalled at the conception of so many "realities" which must be metaphysically "peeled off" before we reach the pure substantial gold. We asked ourself, what criterion have we for deciding this substantial content, the "dogginess of dogs", if indeed, as Père Charles Boyer S J would assure us, there is this content, and a content which is for him the main argument against the evolution of species? Just what is its norm? In reality there is none. There is only an arbitrary decision in the mind. When we were told by Père Boyer that the rabbit like creatures which were, and are, graciously admitted by him to be the progenitors of the modern horse, were but "stirpes" (races) accidentally modified, but yet substantially across vast ages but one "horsiness", we did thereupon gravely ponder. To me they could just as well be "bunnyrabbitness". How can we make arbitrary distinctions of content in that which the mind attains as but one "ness"? One can think of "toy soldierness". Are there then layers within being, metaphysical layers, which involve also some real physical contradistinction?

Dear Edward, sighs the Philosopher, how sadly have you forgotten all you ever knew

of philosophy, while exiled in the metaphysical deserts of the North! But yet observe, in the explanation of the Blessed Sacrament we have once more in naked beauty this same principle of "separability" which we deplore. We are told that in the Host which the priest elevates over the altar there are, and those we see accidentia panis physice praesentia (incidental or nonsubstantial qualities of bread in their physical presence) but "held up" or "sustained" by the human substance of Christ. What is possible by a miracle, must reflect upon the metaphysical roots of the philosophy whose principles of the real allow just that absolute possibility. Every "accident" inheres in the substantial subject: every "accident" is defined by its own formal principle, and so I find myself a mass of mainly disreputable, I fear, formal accidental contents. This is indeed a horribly clumsy metaphysics.

A Meagre Metaphysic

Yet much more serious, when in search for the substantial content of the essential species I climb along the boughs of the tree of life, I find indeed a tree. Every manifestation of life fades into another in strict continuity~ if there is a "specific content" for Père Boyer's horse, then it must be the guarded secret of the amoeba. For nowhere have I met the metaphysical chapter heading: "Hic incipit species equineitatis secundum Boyer" (Here begins the true species of horsiness, according to Fr Boyer). I am told moreover that the acorn in my hand, and the tree from which it fell are but one in specific content, just one univocal substantial reality, according to the same degree of reality. My mind will not accept this. My mind insists that the oak tree is  a greater ontological content, a fuller essential content, that it is more, and bigger in its very "beingness".

When I look across the lovely hills of Surrey to the beauty of middle May, what shall I exclaim? Oh wondrous accidents, oh incidentals so full of being. Oh substance, so mean, so poor, so bare, so stark, so abstract, and so elusive! I see no need for this philosophy. What is existential manifests the full content of the real. What is explained by accidents to the substance does not lack validity, but can be explained another way.

Yet this damning principle, which puts at the heart of being a real content which is the only definitive content of the being, to which all the richness, beauty, grandeur of the being is incidental, is nothing but metaphysical mathematics, a science which also treats reality in much the same way, but on more acceptable grounds, for it does not claim that these symbols are the measure of what alone the real essentially is. I shall continue to say that the oak tree is essentially more perfect than the acorn, that it does but realise a potential which defines the very seed in all that it now is. I shall say that the acorn is defined in ordine ad (as a partial to a final formality) to the oak tree, but that as a substantial content, it is less in the same order, less in the same essence even as the stature and maturity of the new born infant is less than that of its father, though in the same order of content.

As to the Blessed Sacrament, with an eye to which we suspect the Thomist notion is largely framed well, the good Master may look after Himself.

I will not impose a category upon nature to justify to myself a Mystery much more beyond my mind than is nature. The Son of God was well able to effect this Sacrament, without  any  need  of  theologians  to  save  Him  anxiety concerning  His  metaphysical responsibilities. Yet, we do think we can offer an alternative explanation of Transubstantiation, though it will be much different from the present concept, and will have real differences also of practical appreciation of the Host that is offered. Certainly we will not admit "accidents of bread" which persevere in their physical reality outside of their natural subject of inherence.

8 DE SUBSTANTIA ET ACCIDENTE

(Concerning Substance and Accident) A POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE

It will be already more than probable to our good reader just what we are going to say on this point, it follows of course from our opinion of the "actual relative".

We will deny of course the "real distinction" here also. We will say quite simply that the totality is one, is wholly itself, both essentially and accidentally.

We conceive however of our "totality" as defined by a cosmic relation. It is created as just this in one universal plan in which it has its finality and functions. The entity is relative to its environment. Its actuality is defined by potentiality. It is a “more or less" substance, an "elastic substance", a "potential perfection" without any nice distinctions.

It can therefore, as a totality, adapt itself to the environment to which it is relative. This is all part of its "cosmic relativity". This is precisely why species have "evolved" from the single cell, or even, as we would say personally, from nonliving matters1. Is there then no validity in the Thomist concept of substance and accident? How much can you "strip" the accidental from the substantial? We would say as follows: From the viewpoint of "philosophic" species all material things are "substantially" one species. From the viewpoint   of   species   in   the   more   usual   Thomist   sense,   e.g.   "cattiness"   and "cabbageness", we prefer to consider the determinate as an entity capable of adaptation to a certain degree, but then no more.

To  give  an  example:  when  severe  conditions  of  environment  first  starve,  then disease, then kill an animal, how do we regard the process? St Thomas would say the dog was accidentally modified in these ways: starvation, disease, leanness, etc. We would say substantially modified.

For us, the totality is truly capable of being itself and of maintaining itself within limits, as an example, a piece of elastic can be stretched so far and then no further, without snapping. So also our totality, our substance, can be modified so far and no further, always it is an "actual potential". Can we give any real principle that defines these limits? Yes,  we  can,    the  definition  of  the  totality,  as  relative  to  the  cosmos,  to  the "environment" once again, and we think that good Father George saw that one coming!

If the entity is defined as such because it is relative to this sort of universe, then it is capable of adaptation within the limits that its "cosmic relation" will tolerate. It is in its nature to be so relative, it is actualpotential.

Therefore all  the  joy,  beauty,  life  of being  is  not  the  role  of  "accidents"  merely "inhering" in the substance but, as the mind by common sense realises, the fullness of the substance, the fullness of the totality as one finality. This finality, like the entity which is final, is conditioned by intrinsic relativity. Only God is "absolutely absolute". We thank God that we have no longer to analyse the birchtree outside our window as follows:

1) "leaves": accidents, not there in winter, therefore not "substantial".

2) "green": accident, some trees have yellow leaves.

3) "drooping branches": accidents, some do not droop.

4) "branches": accidents, the seeds have none of the foregoing.

5) "silver bark": the seed also is substantially a tree, therefore more accidents~ we nearly said "casualties"!

6) "the whole blooming tree": just a great big accident, we nearly said a "metaphysical smashup"!!

No, the totality in all its finality is relative, with an intrinsic relativity which has myriad manifestations as the environment also changes, within degrees, cosmic degrees, once more. There is however a limit. To give an example, the actuality of this totality has a definitive relation to water. If there is a drought for too long, the totality will: languish, will truly diminish, will become "less itself' and finally die. A thing can be "less itself" because it is intrinsically relative in substance. Only God can never be "less or more" Himself. We say the acorn and the oak are not "essentially the same, accidentally diverse". We say the acorn is a "potentialoak", an oak not yet fully defined actually in its substance. When it is an oak tree in its prime, it will be fully itself, fully intelligible. While an acorn, it is a lesser degree of the same substance. Does that mean to say that if by the mercy of God I save my soul I shall be more myself, intrinsically? Yes, please God, it does. I shall be more truly me. What I am I know~ what I shall be, that I know not. Only God knows, Who is the measure of what I am, and what he means me to be, if I will let Him effect it. My content will be more. The "unity of consciousness" is no argument against us here. There is a unity of consciousness, a unity of the same conscious being. Nevertheless, I cannot remember anything I did at one year old, and very little at seven years. Certainly I do not "realise" either God or the world as I did then! Nor could I return to that state, or put myself in that frame of mind, any more than the oaktree can once more become an acorn! God has filled me out, in the continuance of my creation, may He fill yet more, that I may forget yet more what I am  in becoming what I shall  be. This  is not an "accidental" change, this is substantial growth, the lessening of "potentiality" if you will, the becoming more like God and therefore more real. My soul grows, the content grows, the past is lost, it is remembered but not remembered as then I experienced it. Indeed, how often do I marvel that I did such foolish things in good faith ten years ago, how I marvel at my folly sometimes. Yet then I thought it not folly. Yes, the big oak tree can marvel at the immaturity of the little oak tree, and the littleoaktree is the teacher of the acorn!

Growth In Finality Unto The "Form" Of God

Totalities deepen and grow, their metaphysical unity consists in the progress in finality through mutation, that finality unto which they were defined in the beginning. The acorn can be and will be in fifty years a great oak, because it is defined as relative in that way to the environment, it is "defined developing", as "something becoming more".

In like manner, if God grants mercy, I am defined unto what I know not, even as the caterpillar to the butterfly. I am not now "fully intelligible" in myself, my content, my "comprehensibility" is like an express train rushing through the countryside. It is "defined as moving". So also now, what I am is relative to what I shall be, intrinsically. That is why what I am is not enough, I long for more, and in becoming more in wisdom and in love, the whole me will be filled out, and I shall "forget" what I am, even as I have "forgotten" what I was. No man can truly “relive" the past because the whole perspective has changed. No man can be a baby once again in mind, any more than in reality, he can only try to envisage what he used to be, but certainly he cannot relive it as it was in the content of what he now is.

We are then real, yes, this reality, yes! This reality however while remaining the one, becomes more fully itself. It is not created "itself" when it begins, in a univocal sense. It is less itself at six years than at thirty six years. What it was, included the orientation to be yet more. Wherefore I love God but desire beyond what I am, to be more. To have more?  Yes,  but  to  have  more  will  mean  to  be  more,  because  "quid  quid  recipitur secundum modum recipientis recipitur", and I know that if I stay exactly what I am, univocally, then I could never receive the Beatific Vision, because I would not be "big enough" to receive it, any more than at six I could have been thinking the thoughts I think now, even if I had been told them. Have you noticed how perfect is the analogy of being? The withered tree  (Our Lord also speaks of a "withered branch") is  like the damned  soul,  everlastingly  becoming  "less  itself',  more  and  more  deficient  in  its definition, less and less "good".

The  soul  that  grows  in  God  is  also  like  the acorn  that  realises  its  meaning,  its definition when made. Both I and the acorn are but "incomplete" in our formal definition. Yet what now is, is relative to what will be~ and what will be, will be so because of what was. Unity is retained, but the unity that subsists in space and time and aeons, the unity that is one, but actualpotential. "Dearly beloved brethren, we know what we are, but we know not what we shall be~ yet we know that we shall be like Him~ because we shall see Him as He is". (1 John 3:2) "The whole created world indeed groaneth and travaileth unto now. And not only the created world, but we also ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the spirit, we also groan within ourselves, desiring to be clothed over with immortality". (Romans 8:2223) So writes St Paul. Brother Thomas, Brother Thomas, consider how these things are at the root of the living, and admit that this is substantial, not accidental to the nature of the contingent.

1 Why do we say this? What is utterly determined by environment, and "unfree" what is utterly "fatalistic" in its nature as is the molecule is of one specific order: but the molecule and monkey convene in these notes of determinism: ergo.

9 THE PHILOSOPHIC REQUIREMENTS OF TRANSUBST ANTIATION

There are many things we are forced to leave out in this sketch. We would like to treat of Cosmology, of the meaning of Space and Time, but we doubt if we will have the time 1. As however we do not admit the real distinction of substance and accident, perhaps we ought to treat at least of how we will regard the Blessed Sacrament.

To begin with, we cannot of course admit "accidents really distinct" which physically conceal the substance of Christ beneath them~ a concept which is metaphysically extremely "gauche", however beautiful the reverence of mind which thought it out to explain the dearest treasure of the Faith.

When, as a Thomist, I elevate the Host at the Consecration, do I see Christ? No, I do not. I say "This is My Body". Doubtless the Apostles thought they saw Christ when they perceived that material "bread", and to this day the Greek Church thinks the same, but we know better. We see only the physical accidents of bread, but we know that the reality which defines the totality is Christ. Nevertheless we do not see Christ.

My reply will be guessed. One thinks that what I see is Christ, what I handle is Christ. If I ask the Thomist, do you immediately touch Christ? he must say "No", only the accidents of bread. But I must say that I do immediately touch Christ, "et Domine, non sum dignus". "Under the appearance of bread" for us means the "appearance" indeed, but not the reality of the accidents of bread.

Nevertheless,  what  formal  explanation  will  we  give?  Are we going to say with Rosmini that the "bread" is united to the Body of Christ as the term of His substance, much as food is united to the human body? No, we do not think this an adequate explanation. At the same time we cannot in our ignorance be sure that it deserves to be condemned2. It would, however, seem true to say that on Rosmini's opinion it would not be quite right to say "This is My Body", but only "This is part of My Body". In like manner the Priest does not elevate Christ but only a part of Christ. You may say that everything else is explained on the notion of "concomitance", but nevertheless a substantial assimilation does not seem to verify the notion of transubstantiation. This would seem to mean the replacing of a substance by a substance as the term of an operation, rather than merely an assimilation.

We have another conception. We can best explain it by analysing so to speak the "cosmic relation" of the Body of Christ. The Soul and Body of Christ were both the vehicle of the Divine SelfExpression to men. Therefore the vocation, mission or finality of the Body of Christ is relative to the expression of the Divine Word for What It is to men.3  We have seen how the normal figure, shape and constitution of "man" in Christ was necessary that The Divine Logos should be Teacher, Master, Lover~ should be Theologian, Philosopher, King, Good Shepherd, God with us, etc. All this he could do with the "usual" body of man, all this could be given through the five senses.

Yet all this does not fully define the finality of the Body of Christ in its relation through His Soul to the Divinity. Also as Christ, as "God and Man", He is the True Bread, the Food of Life, and this also must be expressed through the material, through His Body. I notice that in my own body there may be many relations or operations which are distinct but yet all are defined by I. The one I can through my body effect different objects in a different relationship. I may be advising Peter with my words, while I bind up the wounds of Paul who is deaf with my hands. Peter says I am acting upon him~ Paul says I am acting upon him, but the relationship is different. The two relations are quite consistent with the finality of my body. It is the same body that both perceive but in different operative respects. Again, if I address a crowd of a thousand persons who are standing round me in a circle, I am in a different real relationship to all of them. I actively influence them all, I am the same to all but in a different perspective of place. Some see my back only, but the rest is there by concomitance. The others see my chest, but the body which speaks to them also has a back, even though they do not perceive it. It would be impossible for any one person to combine in his apprehension the relation in which I stand to all of them, to see me in all my relationships to a thousand persons in different positions front and rear.

The Sacramental Relationships of Christ

We think this is a very poor analogy of the nature of the Eucharist. We cannot find any analogy that is adequate at all, and indeed for the unique fact of God made Man possibly we cannot.

Nevertheless, we view the Blessed Sacrament in the following manner.  The expression of God through human nature, through a soul informing matter, gives us Christ. This body and this soul of Christ from the moment of conception were relative to express, were potential to express, in their own way, the fullness of the Divine manifestation to men. Therefore when Christ says, "This is My Body", He fulfils the finality of his material body4. This piece of bread is no longer such. It is Christ in the flesh5 in the relation, the real relationship to man of food. For this, to be food, He did not need the senses and stature of His manhood. These were neither necessary for, nor adequate to, that relation. The "Host" is truly Christ, the whole Christ, in that relationship~ and the form, figure and stature of "man" as we all possess it and Christ possessed it, that  was  there  by  "concomitance".  Christ did not unite His Soul to new matter irrespective of His Body. Through the fiat of His Divinity through His existing Soul and Body, He merely realised another real element till then potential in his created nature, He fulfilled the finality of his human nature. The finality of our bodies is simply to be "human" in the common sense perception of the word~ to be "animal", if you prefer the word. The finality of the Body of Christ was to be that, but also more than that, also to be the Eucharist. At the Last Supper then, the Man who reclined at table, and the Bread He broke and passed round, and the Chalice in like manner, that total was the One Christ, One God, One Soul, One Body. This Body, however, was in the existential fullness of its relation to men. The multiplication of hosts does not multiply Christ. There is but the One Body in many real and personal relations to the individual souls whose Life He is. Spatial distance matters nothing. Even our own body is a "solar system" of wide open spaces. It is the intrinsic finality that makes an entity one. Just as we are very willing to admit bilocation as possible if the finality or "mission" of a man requires it, as apparently with some of the Saints, 6 so also with Christ, the same body may have many spatial relationships and yet be the same, but these relationships are as real and personal as the number of distinct hosts. Just as if I grasp the hand of one friend, and talk to another at the same time I have two distinct personal relationships, so when I give Communion to two people, Christ is presented in two distinct personal relations of His One Body. Is the substance of Christ present in the Host? The Host is Christ existentially and wholly. Where is His human stature? present by concomitance, for Christ is indivisibly one. Each Host then is the whole Christ existentially real in that determination of the finality of His Body which makes it the food of man. Just as when I grasp a man's hand in the dark I merely perceive his hand by touch, yet I know the rest of him is also there, and that he has a voice and can hear me, though neither of us speaks. So when I perceive Christ in the Host, I know that His human figure is one with what I see, though I do not perceive Christ in that other aspect of His reality. Nevertheless, I attain to Christ even as I attain my friend and not just his hand when I grasp it in the dark. If I could perceive Him Who sits on the right hand of God and every Host in every tabernacle in the world, then I would perceive Christ as He is "totum et totaliter", in the fullness of His finality, and the fullness of that finality as it attains to every soul of whom He is to be the food, through the Blessed Sacrament. This is possible for God. In Christ, Who is God, His Body has this worldrelation of food to every individual soul. This defines the very manifestation and reality of His Body, this defines the fullness of His Body, which in this is above ours7, though of the same order as ours. In this He is the man who is also the "Son of Man"~ the Man made intrinsically the Bread of every man, not merely as God, but also through His manhood. The simultaneous attainment of the fullness of Christ is not necessary to attain Christ, any more than it is necessary for a thousand listeners who attain a speaker by hearing, also to see and to touch Him. It is moreover the finality 8 of a being that determines its spacetime manifestations, not viceversa. If it were necessary for my finality that my head should be in England and my heart in America, it would be possible. I should still be one, because I should still have one intrinsic finality~ a finality which involved this may be actually an impossibility for my body, but, we ask, is it impossible for me to be simultaneously in six different places? We think not. Finality determines space and time, not the other way about9. For us space and time are the correlatives and derivatives  of being, not an extrinsic or accidental modification, but an  intrinsic quality of real things which is manifested as space and time, the relations between realities in their mutual interaction. We would have it so with Christ, the myriad Hosts upon a myriad tongues is but the one loving Lord in the full manifestation of Himself, as the Lover of a myriad souls, personally, distinctly, and individually. What He is in the material as their Life they perceive, what He is in the material as Master, Teacher, King, they do not perceive but yet they receive Him wholly according to one determination of Himself in their regard, and the rest is concomitantly present as it must needs be.

The Host then that the Priest raises, that is wholly Christ, appearances, quantity, all that it is. It is totally Christ, but of course, "under the appearances of bread and wine".10

1 In fact there is a brief section.

2 We know it is condemned, though not in a very "definitive" manner.

3 At least as "Cibus Viatorium" as to the next life "transeat".

4 Fittingly, on the day when "having loved His own that were in the World, He loved them unto the end", or (better) "to the utmost".

5 "flesh" = materia per animam informata.

6 We understand that most Thomists deny this possibility.

7 Extensive et manifestative virtute finalitatis~ non virtute ordinis essentiae. (Translation: According to quantitative extension and manifestation in the sensible order, in virtue of the intrinsic finalism and "meaning" of the entity, not in virtue of the "essence" or "nature" as such).

8 Intrinsic Finality = Definition of "what it is" as God knows it to be.

9 We deeply regret we have not time to treat of Cosmology! but there is a "mission" on in the Parish.

10  When  the  "appearance"  of  bread  through  which  the  determination  of  the  Divine

through  the  human  in  Christ  is  expressed  as  "food"  ceases,  then  it  ceases  to  be hypostatically united with the Divinity through the human nature. It then ceases to be the Body of Christ, just as the drops of blood that were dry on the streets of Jerusalem before Our Lord expired, had ceased to be the "Blood of Christ".

10 DE SPATIO ET TEMPORE

(Concerning Space and Time) A POSIT IVE CRIT IQUE

In more than one section I deplored that there would be no time to write anything on Space and Time, before I used my summer holiday in 1946 to get to Rome and Fr Delannoye. Obviously I did manage to get this much off.

Notwithstanding the few lines we intend to write upon this subject there will be neither time nor opportunity for us to write at any length upon Cosmology.

We  pen  these  lines  solely  because  we  consider  that  ultimately  there  may  be  an important difference between our concept of spatialtemporal relations and those of St Thomas. As far as we remember from our now dimming days of philosophy, and the few textbooks upon which we can lay hands~ for the Thomist school, though not it would seem by any means unanimously, space and time are considered extrinsic and "accidental" denominations: of course, the radical potency which determines the fact of time is not extrinsic, but to be "localised" in space and time and place, if you will, to be "quantum, quando, et ubi" 1, these are extrinsic denominations.

Well, in the first place, while our concept of the "relative essence" runs parallel to the Thomist distinction of "substance" and "accident" for a considerable distance, here is yet another of those occasions where a difference of principle involves a real difference of interpretation. As we do not admit the "real distinction" of substance and accident, we cannot admit of time as an “accidental determination".  We note with interest two definitions of time we have found. The first is “numerus  motus  secundum  prius  et posterius"2. Well, in as much as this is relative simply to the individual subject, in as much as it is entirely "localised" in this definition, we will grant that in a sense this is "accidental time". However we notice that this is a description rather than a definition of time. Much more fundamental is the wellknown definition, "actus existentis in potentia, quatenus in potentia"3. We have no quarrel with this definition, save that we prefer to delete the "quatenus in potentia". We prefer to say simply "actus existentis in potentia". We will also identify the "actus" with the "existentis". We will therefore say ultimately, "existens  in  potentia".  Fundamental time then is the act of being potential, with its correlative of "determination" or "mutability". In this sense there is a personal time which exists  even  among  the  Angels,  aye,  even  among  the  Blessed,  if  they  can  further increase in knowledge and love. There is, however, in the material universe a much more "factual" time, which follows the analogy of being, and corresponds to the greater entitative relativity and contingency of material creation. As we have said, the material entity,  though  a  finally constituted  being,  exists  in,  and  by,  and  through,  a  cosmic relation~ in a more obvious sense, the material or matterconditioned entity, such as man, is  a  "member one of another". The development and fulfilment of its intrinsic finality, or its "energia", is utterly, or partly, relative to the cosmos in which it lives, breathes and has its being4. This development necessitates space and time5. Space is but the manifestation in one aspect of increasing, expanding finality. Time is the inter relation of mutually dependent things according as they attain their finality in mutual dependence. The "Relativity" of which certain celebrated physicists speak in the physical order, is capable of a higher interpretation in the metaphysical order. Time is indeed one and absolute because the cosmos is one interrelated harmony of relative and inter active entities. Time is also relative, in as much as the organic relation of the parts is again dependent, and the universe may be "universalised" in the time notion from any given perspective, very much as it can be in the "universal idea". It is relative also in that any timerelationship now existing will involve the mutual relation of the whole cosmos for its proper understanding, even as did the rabbit that we analysed in an earlier reference. Space and Time are then correlatives of the mutual "cooperative" or "inter related" entity. Time is the condition of development, nothing more than the harmonious and ordered effectuation of environmental requisites for greater finality. Space is but the manifestation of material being in a given final relationship. Space, since it is such a manifestation, must needs "change" its personal and cosmic perspective with the nature of development throughout the universe.

It will therefore be seen that it is idle for us to ask with St Thomas "an creatio ab aeterno repugnat?"6 Of course it is. Time is the potency, the intrinsic potency of created being as it manifests itself in development. Time then follows, or rather is simultaneous with creation, because identified with the created being. Only God is "eternal" in any true sense. The Absolute does not develop, nor grow, nor is it relative to anything save itself.

The Absolute then is "timeless". The highest Angel as well as the lowest animal is in "time", but a "time" which is determined and differentiated by the analogy of being. When Thomas  asks  whether  or not  "creatio  ab  aeterno  repugnat?", quite  obviously  he  is regarding time as in some sense independent of the created entity. If you identify time with the created entity, then you cannot say "No, we do not mean that, what we really mean is, could it be possible that there always was created being?". The answer is no. If time is merely defined by created existence, then if it is truly created "ex nihilo sui et subjecti"7, then time was not "always", since, used in this meaning, "always" becomes identified with "eternal" which is identified with "Esse simpliciter Simplex"8. If we identify Eternity with the Esse of God, and Time with the Esse of creatures, both denominations, "eternal" and "temporal", become defined as metaphysical determinants of being in these two orders, and just as "contingent" and "absolute" are irreducible and exclusive connotations, so also are "eternal" and "temporal".

As soon as you begin even to speak of "creatio ab aeterno", you are considering at least "eternity" as in some way the "container" of the temporal, something, however conceived, in which and through which the temporal has duration. This however is impossible. All qualities, all names are relative only to reality. The only true "eternal" which “contains” the temporal is the Divine Esse.  As moreover this eternity is synonymous with Immutable and Absolute, it cannot be in any sense shared by the temporal. The temporal is not even truly "created in time". The created is, and because it is, time is. The act of creation is not relative to time. The created entity begins to be by the Divine Fiat, and when created, it is "created in time" by its very definition.

Time And Space Real Relationships Of Energy

Time and Space, then, are but the perception of entities in a cosmic relation, as dependent upon the cosmos for their definition and their finality. There is a "personal" time and "space" of course, which is one's own selfreality as potential, but in the sense of common speech, "space" or "extension of bodies" is the perception of the real relation of universal "membership" in which one has one's reality.

For us, then, there is no sense in speaking of a "cosmic ether" to fill the wide empty spaces. There are no "wide empty spaces". There are only real relations of entities among themselves which are manifested in that way. An energy relation has "blown away" the moon to the existing relation of 240,000 miles distant from the earth. Very well, to attain the moon then will require an "energy relation" of the same degree. If I walk six miles away from Peter, I have not traversed "wide open spaces", I have put myself in a new relation to the universe by the purposive use of energy. For Peter then to meet me, he will need to realise a similar relation himself. We say "similar" because he can never realise the  identical relation, except he were me, on  the same principle, except that here it is more obviously exemplified, as we laid down before when we maintained that "dogginess" did not qualify univocally any two dogs. We say it is more obvious here because apart from anything else, Peter would need to "compensate" my body exactly in every respect, to be in the same relationship of space and time as I am.

It  will  mean  for  us  that  all  time  (and  all  true)  physical  determinations  are  also metaphysical determinations, since "metaphysical" is merely the interpretation of entity at the penultimate highest level. We do not say the ultimate level, since only Theology gives the synthesis which embraces in unity all the relationships of reality. Perhaps better say, all the interrelationships of reality.

The remarks with respect to the Blessed Sacrament will now be more obvious we hope. If Space and Time are but the entitative manifestations of reality, then the intrinsic finality  of  an  entity  determines  its  spacetime  relationships  in  its  "personal"  and "subjective" space and time. If the Body of Christ has a "universal" reference then it can be everywhere according to the definition of that reference. If that reference does not define its complete finality, then it will be "everywhere" in that reference only which is relevant, and the rest of its totality (i.e. nonSacramental and nonEucharistic 1993) will be present to it "concomitantly" by reason of its one entity. The multiplication of these references will be but the  multiplication  of the real relations  of the  One  Christ, not multiplications of the "Body of Christ" (i.e. the place definition is through the Person, not the human nature 1993) . There is but one total body of Christ, one intrinsic finality of Christ, one Me, applicable through the material which is the one Body in many distinct and real relationships as the food and life, as individual of every individual person. After all, Christ does not feed us with Himself after the manner of a communal centre. He made each of us personally for Himself, and personally and individually conducts each one unto Himself. The whole Christ then, is made relative to each one of us in the Sacrament, but in a different real relationship physically to his Blessed Self. These different relationships are made a unity in His own Self, the source of all, and the determinant of our mutual vocations as "members of the Body of which Christ is the Head".

We realise that we have treated most inadequately of space and time, especially in as far as we deny the "wide open spaces" of the solar and galactic systems and substitute instead "entity in a given energy relation". We think however we have said enough to give an inkling to the Rev George Delannoye of what we are talking about. As we are interested only in presenting the idea of space and time as the intrinsic manifestations and derivations of a created finality, and of these creations one to another and among themselves as complementary to one another, we need not pursue the matter too far. We desire to present the "guts" of this concept, and simply to clarify the metaphysical basis of our solution to the Blessed Sacrament along a new line. We would wish to add as relevant to Cosmology, which we can hardly find time even to touch upon, that we define corporeal relativity by quantity9. We do not consider it an accident, but a substantial element, even in the Aristotelean and Thomist sense of substance which we have rejected. The reason? I cannot conceive of corporeal being, except in relation to sensuous perceptibility in some order, and I will not be so rash as to make it a "spiritual" thing.

1 Denominations of extension, when, and where.

2 The numbering of movement, according to before and after.

3 Act or perfection of an entity in potency to further, in as much as it is thus potential.

4 In stealing this phrase from St Paul, we note that what the Cosmos is to the body, so, by perfect analogy, deriving from the very analogy of Being, God is to the soul.

5 "Energia" was originally written in Greek characters in script, but the printer will not be able to deal with it. It means the principle of both definition (act) and drive or degree of being through which it fulfils itself.

6 "Whether creation from all eternity is a contradictory concept?"

7 From nothing foregoing of itself, nor any causal presubject.

8 Literally: "Being which is utterly and totally Simple in all respect and concept".

9 In the handwriting and oldfashioned ink of 1946, there follows as footnote: "Not exclusively in any Cartesian sense, but as an integral, defining element". In 1993, I would add that as matter and energy are reducible to the common definition of "energy" in a composite nature and world, it is not matter as perceptible as quantity, but energy which is metaphysically related to sense perception, which seems to me to be essential to the definition of material substance. In the Thomism I was taught, the "physical" in its substance was not intrinsically related to senseperception for intelligibility.

11 DE RELATIONIBUS

(Concerning the Real Relation) A NEGATIVE CRITIQUE

This tract again, is really a carping criticism. We will quote however, because of the wickedness  of  our  heart,  a  choice  passage  from  Pére  Boyer,  from  Metaphysica Generalis, vol II., P289. It runs as follows: "Datur relatio praedicamentalis realis. Atqui si relatio praedicamentalis non distingueretur a suo fundamento, non esset realis: Ergo ..." (The  real  predicamental  relation  does  exist, but  if  it were  not truly  distinct  from  its fundament as foundation, it would not be real in itself). Very true Father Charles! "Minor (of the syllogism) est manifesta (oh yeah Father?). Relatio enim qua talis, est ipsum ad aliquid, ipse ordo ad aliud. Fundamentum autem relationis pertinet ad aliud praedicamentum non relativum, sed absolutum etc. etc." (The relation indeed, as such, is the very "unto somethingness", the very ordination unto the other. The fundament of the relation however pertains to another predicate (category of the real) which is not relative, but is absolute.)

Quite frankly we think that the whole teaching here is absurd. You can have a real thing whose whole essence is to be an ad aliud an "unto the other", a "something", which is not some thing, except that it is a concrete reference back. Once more we have the concretized idea, the "objective" or real idea, which is always cropping up in Thomism. I ask, is a relation real? They tell me, Yes! Is it a composition of matter and form? No Father. Is it a substance, well yeah, but of course as a predicamental relation, its whole substance is to be an “accident". Alright, we do  not object to  the latter half of the proposition. It is however, a substance, essence or reality? Yes, because real and really distinct from its fundament, and not identified with the mind which perceives it as "relation". To corroborate, here is a wise thought taken from the response to the "difficulties". Aliae difficultates supponunt relationem esse aliquid absolutum, solventur negando suppositum (Other objections suppose a relationship to be something definite existing on its own, they are dealt with by denying the presupposition). Compare this with:

1. A real relation is distinguished really from its term.

2. The Fundament of a relation is really distinguished from its terminus.

3. A real relation is distinguished really from its subject.

4. The Fundament of a relationship is ordered to the relation itself, as cause to effect. And to crown it all, we have if the "relation" were not so distinguished, it would not be real. Nevertheless, some fools among the "adversarii" actually think we make it out to be something "absolutum"!

Dear friend Charles, you cannot have it every way, just because you must get the Blessed Trinity out of a mess somehow! If a relation is distinct from subject, terminus, and fundament of the relationship, then it is absolute in relation to the "relata" (subject and term of the relation). Its whole reality is  to be an "ordo ad aliud" (ordination to another) because as you so wisely say (of filiation), "Peter was before he became the father of Paul, and what can thus be separated, are not in reality one and the same thing".

So, a relation for you is a little packet of reality, all by itself, whose whole purpose is to "hold hands" between A and B if you wish. I do not see any way over the dilemma. Precisely "holding hands" keeps the "relation" what it is. If either A or B should let go, then it would vanish into the fairyland from which it came. No Sir! We do not believe in this sort of "relation". A relation is really distinct neither from its subject nor from its terminus, it consists in the mutual interdefinition between them both deriving from the

"fundament" of that interdefinition. But of all that, more later.

12 DE RELATIONIBUS

(Concerning the Real Relation) A POSIT IVE CRIT IQUE

The reason for the importance given to this tract was probably sheer fury at what seemed to me folly or sheer dishonesty in the analysis of Pére Charles Boyer, an analysis which had an eye much more on his scholastic explanation of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, than honesty of thought or observation. But I think there was more. I had already realised that if I rejected the Thomist thesis of substance and accident, I could no longer regard intellect and will as "faculties" separable from the essence of the soul as such. In a parallel manner, I could not regard the Essence of God (nor would I want to!) as "Common" but in some real way separable from the Persons of the Trinity as "subsistent Relativities" Apart from my own theory of the intellect and will   defining   the very nature of spirit, I was much influenced and helped by the Greek notion of the Circumincession of the Divine Persons or Powers of God.

In a former chapter we were rude, in a very friendly way, to a well known manualist in respect of the doctrine of the real relation. We must insist and we will insist that whatever is real, if words are to have any meaning at all, must exist by itself, in order to be capable of a "proper" definition1, however dependent or relative its manner of being may be.

In the light of this fundamental principle, that words must have the meaning they imply, we refuse to accept the Thomist doctrine, by which the relation is both real, and yet not "absolute". An entity capable of a proper and personal definition, however essentially "ad aliud" it may be, yet is nevertheless absolute by reason of its own "propriety" otherwise we are guilty of a gross "impropriety" in words.

In our "destructive" criticism we made our "point de départ" in this matter as clear as we consider it necessary within the limits of this sketch. We must now proceed positively to substitute what we consider to be a far more rational alternative.

The "relation" does not exist absolutely and by itself as an entity "ad aliud", any more

than does the "universal idea". The relation therefore is merely a denomination of the singular.  We  therefore  will  altogether  identify  the  relation  with  its  fundament,  a fundament which necessarily implies both subject and term of the relation. For it takes two at least to make a relation just as much as it takes two to make a quarrel. The relation defines the finality of an object in an ordering of cause and effect in varying degrees.

Since being, at least created being, is necessarily "cooperative" or "relative" in its very definition with respect to other entities, a relation is merely the definition of the determinacy, or power of effect that a being has relative to its term. In like manner, the term stands in the relation of "being effected" or "affected" as the result of the operation of the subject. There will then always be a causal order in the relation, as its name implies. By its etymology the relation "bears back" one entity unto another. Wherever then there is an order of operation, effect, determination, cause, there must always be a "relation". This conception must be taken in the widest sense of the word "cause". In Thomist philosophy four causes are distinguished formal, final, efficient and material. All  the  causes  are  yet  susceptible  to  the  radical  definition  of  cause,    "id  quod aliquomodo influit esse"2. Wherever then an entity "influit esse" there is a cause, whether this "esse" be in the existing terminology "accidental" or "substantial". The relation then simply defines a being in its order towards another entity as a determiner of what the affected entity is, in some degree. Equally we may assert that even where there is no active determination in the term relative to the subject, there is still a mutual relation. The reason is obvious~ a relation may be  an active determination  on  both sides, as for example the complementary but mutually active roles of husband and wife as joined "in mutuum   adjutorium".   A   relation   may   also   exist   without   any   correlative   actual determination of the term back upon the subject thereof, as for example between God and creatures.  In  the  second  case,  the  entire  activity  or  "causal  influence"  in  any "efficient" sense is in God. Nevertheless, simply because the "caused" cannot in this case be truly defined except in continuous and eternal reference to the "causer", there is a mutual relation, valid on both sides. God indeed, in a perfectly true sense, is actively determined by creatures through His creative Fiat. As the effect of His own Free Act God can and must be "asked" what his creative act implies, such as the gift of greater grace. God in "hearing prayers" etc is determined by the creature through and because of himself in a real predicamental relation by reason of His own "Fiat". This "relationship" can be seen as a reality, because it puts in God an "ordo ad aliud" which He could never have unto Himself alone.  He  is  then  "defined" or  "determined"  in  a  given  order  of relationship by reason of creation. For this cause we can truly say "Our Father", but in order to be true, the term of this relation must be found in God in the echo of "my children". The mere fact of effecting anything, even without a mutual determination of physical efficacy, must still therefore involve a "relation". The entity which "effects", in virtue of that action alone, would always be "defined" or "connoted in its entirety as the "causer" of the effected term.

A relation then, in any sense, involves a determination of one entity to another which is mutual, in whatever of the myriad possibilities of causal order this real ordering, or "real relation" may be. The relation however, let us note, is real simply because there are two realities so mutually determined, and defined as "being such" either essentially or accidentally as coordered.

The Term Relation and the selfrelativity of God.

The term "relation" can upon this notion be reasonably used in respect also of the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity. We would, however, admit that we do not altogether like the name "relatio realis" in this subject matter. Perhaps the reason is simply the jejune content always given to the notion of "relation" by the school of St Thomas3, with an eye towards keeping the "relation" in the Trinity ever distinct from the "essence", which is conceived of as something altogether "a parte rei" in its bearing to the distinction of Three Divine Persons.

Upon the analysis of the existential "selfrelation" of the Soul with the Trinity that we earlier expounded, we could accept the term "relation", by giving it a richer content as a "subsistent" or "substantial", relation. We might however with greater profit, prefer to keep to the Greek term "dynamis" as more expressive and true in this selfdefinition of the Trinity, and its analogy in the human soul. It will, of course, have been noticed that in any case we term the "Relations" in the Trinity "transcendentales" simply because a "phenomenon" which in God is a metaphysical necessity, and which defines Him as He is, "simpliciter simplex", cannot rationally be named anything else. We notice also that while the Thomists, or those few of them rather whom we have attained through their "textbooks", deny the "relation" to be "quid absolutum", once more the essential fact that it has the properties of "quid absolutum" appears from their application of their principle in Theology. In the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity, they tend to do precisely that: to make the Essence of God a reality, an "absolutum" from which there arise three "relationes ad aliud", or rather "ad invicem per oppositionem", which are also "absolute" with respect to the Divine Essence, which is "common". This follows from the inevitable and essential illogicality4 at the root of Thomism, by virtue of the effort to be true at once both  to the  false  principles  of a  pagan  Philosopher,  and  the true  principles of  the "AugustinianThomist" synthesis of Christian Theology.

For us as we have tried to show, the "Essence" of God, since one with His "Esse", defines the Three Persons, and the Three Persons existentially define the Esse or Essence, that is all there is to it, there is no room in the Divine Essence for any subtle distinctions at all, and would that Theologians might be humble enough to acknowledge the fact. It is the office of the Theologian to realise that while he is made in the image of God, God is not made univocally in the image of the Theologian! God subsists in a Trinity of Three Real Relations, and Three Real Relations define God. There is no room for any "ad aliud" which abstracts from the Divine Essence, neither is there any sense in the  essentially  absurd  mode  of  speech  which  talks  of  the  Essence  of  God  as "communis" almost like a financial account with Three trustees, all of whom must "sign" for any one "common" action in their name5.

In God then this "Relativity" defines the Absolute as Absolute~ defines it as "Being Itself" in every sense of the phrase. In creatures a relation defines entities in their causal ordering  one  to  another  as  "quod  influit  esse"~  defines them  as  "members  one  of another". The "ad aliud" then is contained in the definitions of entities, not in a sort of "go between" existing among themselves.

1 In Latin "definitio propria".

2 Literally That which "makes inflow" being into another.

3 More truly those we have read.

4 An "illogicality" however, which calls for a new resynthesis, rather than a rejection.

5 NB: "Communis" of course is "common" as "common" property"~ "ad aliud" is "unto another".

13 REFLECTIONS READING HEISENBERG

This section is not connected with the main body of comments and reflections. It was jotted down twelve years later, in 1958. The book concerned is Heisenberg's   Physics and Philosophy (Allen & Unwin, 1958), in which he rediscovers the Aristotelean and Thomist concept of potency or "power to be and become". To me the work seems to be still important as an example of the necessary bridge between science and philosophy, a bridge of the mind which must exist at all times. It is included at the request of certain younger theologians.

1 Statistical laws and the higher organisms: the statistically "very high" probability which in practice concurs with the laws of classical physics, and chemistry, and perhaps biochemistry, reflects, in its element of "uncertainty" only the intrinsic relativity, the contingency of the being. The stability and repetitiveness of patternofbeing reflects the "nature", the principle of stability and unity. We seem here to be in the presence of the principles of Act and Potency, with the existent, a stable unity, but remaining "potential" and  "contingent".  Nothing  here  to  worry  the  classic  concept  of  causality  in  the philosophia perennis.

2 The degree of instability and unpredictability, lessening for the greater number of atoms etc, seems to reflect only the degree, distinct for the organisation of the nature, of its intrinsic dependence. Just as "materia secunda" in scholastic philosophy is drawn from "materia prima" remaining extremely potential, i.e. approximating to pure indeterminacy, the less so the more organised by form or entelechy, so also the formulation of the "higher statistical average" seems to follow an analogical principle.

3 If the uncertainty principle must remain in some degree in all being composed of matter, this will reflect the intrinsic relativity in being of every act raised upon this potential. It will not exhaust the passive potential, or capacity to be dissolved or cease in being. For the complex being as a higher unity has its own intrinsic relativity within the higher order, i.e. lions eat lambs, men shoot lions, and motor cars hunt men. The indeterminacy of the microscopic order will remain as one of many features of the contingency of complex material being. While the principle of form remains however, is clearly apparent, and is transmitted by combination or generation, then we are once more back in the recognition of matter as a compound of potency and act, and this in no way worries a scholastic philosopher.

4 The lower the form of being, the less statistically "certain" must be its intelligibility. Relate then to the "enormous probabilities" found on quantum laws for the synthesis which is the pattern of the individual compound  elements, and  then, taking into  account the stability and unity of the definition of these elements, indeed of their identity apparently one with another, i.e. all atoms of oxygen 16 are equal etc, one must say that without a principle of UnityLaw working through these syntheses of material energies, there would be  no  intelligible principle  of statistical synthesis  to  explain  the regular and  uniform growth of probability. Note also the need for a UnityLaw to operate from the beginning of the equation of evolution from a centre of poise, i.e. God.

5 The  importance  of  the  organic  causal  interconnection  and  linkage  in  the  chain  of evolution. All this process is intelligible ultimately in terms of relative motion, substantial and local, or "accidental" if you will. Even if we cannot trace the history, it must be a history  of  natures  emerging  in  synthesis  through  movement,  and  this  must  be  an equation of values,  although the mathematical expression as a  relativity of material causes, does not equally, and under the same respect, express the formal cause, i.e. the  new  nature  as  a  unity,  acting  as  a  unity  in  its  immediate  and  macroscopic environment.

6 In this respect, from the electron to the anthropoid, or even to the molecule complex immediately in line to the lowest form of selfpropagating life for that matter, if there is no UnityLaw in, through, and over evolution there can not be any intrinsic determination through motion, any organic connection of law, which is continuously repeated and expressible as an exact formula, whether in quantum mechanics, or often, in quantum and in classical mechanics.

7 Suggest that every improvement in the formulation of natural law, say from Kepler's laws of motion, to Newton's synthesis, on to Relativity Theory has meant a simplification of principle within a wider unity. More, not less, diverse phenomena have been correlated within unity:  indeed within a unityequation.  One is saying that the mind of God sees all being within a unityequation. Note too that the successive syntheses which unify and explain diverse phenomena, explain them as functions one of another, as correlates, as complements, one of another within the UnityLaw. This is essential to all evolution,  and  all  development  within  matter  nonliving  and  living.  The  control  and play of the "environment" is just one other aspect of this UnityLaw and of the principle that nothing within this relative universe is its own cause and its own control (principle of sufficient determination). The emergence through evolution of higher and higher syntheses of being within a stable unity of cosmic and local environment, and in natures which are selfperpetuating as unities, is the very opposite of an "uncertainty" principle in the sphere of intelligibility.  We have the balance of a principle of meaning, or intelligibility, the nature, the Act, and a principle of lower intelligibility through which, in composition, the entity is built up. Matter and Form in the traditional sense it seems to me.

8 In the higher synthesis there remain lower components which retain "virtually" (i.e. in subordination to the activity imposed through the organising force of the higher form), their own natures, laws, and limitations. There is thus always a principle of possible dissolution within the higher unity, of which the   uncertainty principle operating within the individual basic element is but one aspect. All of this is the recognition of metaphysical "passive potency" or "contingency" in material being. It does not however deny the principle of "form", that is of Evolution. On the contrary it emphasises that the higher synthesis is not contained within the formintelligibility of the lower, and if the synthesis  is  present  in  active  potency at  the beginning  of  evolution  some  9  or  10 thousand  million  years  ago,  you  must  appeal  outside  the  closed  circle  of  material energies for the principle of sufficient reason.

9 An aside "intra scholam": The existence of an atom or of a molecule is not as "necessary" as its formula. Is this the basis of the "real distinction" between "esse" and "essentia"? In God His formula, or essence, is in all respects one in necessity with his "esse" or actual being. Creation has a necessary formula because its intelligibility is a reflection of its possibility in the Eternity of the Divine Mind, the "esse" however is a reflection both of the Divine will to create, which is not "necessarily" given, and also of the limits within which, in time, that formulation in the real is "given", again by the divine will.

10 In metaphysics the principle of analogy of proportionality seems to imply that beings differ in degree of intrinsic intelligibility, of meaning, of unity that is, taking God as the touchstone of comparison.  In  nature  too  the  advanced  organisms,  say  the  higher animals, offer the same picture of a higher and higher synthesis of unity, a personal principle  of  entelechy  which  unites  in  the  definition  of  the  one  being,  of  say  "this ape",  a myriad  of material forms  from  free  electrons  to atoms, molecules, complex chains of molecules, interrelative organs, etc etc.

Note also that when one says "entelechy" or "form" one is presuming here that the entelechy is derived through and with, the material organisation, and is not a principle of form or soul distinct from matter, as Aristotle and St Thomas would presume. One is saying that the unity of the form which organises the primitive elements is all given in the original unityequation and its movements, in relativity intrinsic and local. There is no sort of soul in any sense of the word, except in man. I do not believe in vegetable and animal souls distinct in metaphysical principle from matter, i.e. which by a miracle of divine omnipotence could be kept in being apart from their subject of inherence. This test, what God could do, is the best test of what a metaphysic really means in its statements.

11 Heisenberg in "The Physicists Conception of Nature" (p161) speaking of de Broglie says: "bold theories are required". Note the relevance between mind discovering and matter yielding up its secrets. Impossible to put all the emphasis, with Kant, on "laws of thought impressing themselves on matter". The matter was there, organised within these laws before mind came into being, and before the first anthropoids walked the earth. Mind therefore  has  evolved,  or been made, for mind  in  this  context  is  a combination  of materially evolved powers and nonevolved nonmaterial powers, able and suitable for the  interpretation  of  what  was  already  there  to  be  known.  The  modern  scholastic approach here then is right, against the Positivist or the Idealist, in positing an equation of  correlation  between  the external  real  and  the  mind  knowing  and  explaining  and exploiting that real. Note how mind here must cover both the sensory impression, and the soul which interprets that impression in terms of "meaning" or "being". In terms of origin however, it is the external reality which has the priority as the determiner of mind and not viceversa. Once again the correlation of mind and the natural laws embedded in matter for mind to interpret and use, bring one back to a unityequation, working through the universe  in evolution with such necessity, through statistical law, that it explains the natures of things that are, living and nonliving, in one continuous unbroken process.

12 The very word "synthesis" from the coordination of basic particles into atoms, up to the body of man, and the relation of that body to the soul, expresses the fundamental fact of a unityequation which holds matter "in equilibrium", both as an individual "it" and as "cosmos" of relative events.

13 "Chance". By rejection of "chance" I do not mean that all is fully determined, intrinsically, within its own formality, with a definiteness which is fully explicable in the terms of classical mechanics, or in some system directly analogous with classical mechanics. That may be so, it is for the scientist to discover this~ the philosopher cannot do so. But it is not necessary to view the world so, to defend the thesis I am putting forward. All that is required is the tracing of a final state of synthesis from primal potentiality, and that is the only intelligible interpretation of evolution as one cosmic process, in all the different degrees of knowledge and of science, whether Bohm is right, or Heisenberg and Von Neumann. It makes no intrinsic difference to me.

Chance for me means acausal, and acausal is synonymous with "nonrelative", not "influencing being to be", and this would make nonsense of science, of evolution, or indeed of any movement at all.

14 What the scientist calls “chance" usually means “not predictable", either within any known frame of reference, or within any frame of reference subject to empirical experiment.  Unfortunately he often goes further and then identifies “chance” in this restricted sense with "chance" in the philosophic sense, which is a denial of intrinsic relationships in being between events. What they call "chance" I would call "potency" the indeterminate made for determination through a unityprinciple, and this correlation of indetermination and determination through movement obviously must exist in the individual, in the history embedded in the being of the individual, and in the total cosmic interrelativity of matter in being.

15 A man's finality is not actively disposed by the order of his atoms, molecules etc in any conscious sense. He is not conscious of them, only recently did he know they existed at all. They take care of themselves without his conscious intervention. On the level of consciousness, where man is man in terms of moral achievement, etc, he is aware of his unity, his oneness, his need for truth and love, passions, fears, etc. To fulfil himself in unity on this level of being he must think, reason, learn, decide wisely etc, in terms of conscious knowing and loving. Hence the sage, the priest, the prophet, they necessarily precede  the  scientist,  and  they  are  a  more  basic  necessity  than  he.  Scientists themselves must accept the facts of themselves, something even more primary than their certainty of the elements, and their uncertainty principle. For the achievement of knowing and plumbing the natures of the elements depends on that unity you knew as a unity in the primary school, before the universe of the physical world meant much to you at all ....

Note too how the motions and stresses, the fulfilments and sorrows of that higher man, above the molecular motions through which he is in part composed, that "super ego" if you like, which is you, can directly influence the formality of being of the lower elements through which he is composed. He can influence them through movement, dissolution of compounds, energy emission etc, without any conscious knowledge. All this is involved when blood pressure rises through anxiety, when nervous palpitations occur, when duodenal ulcers loom, and is not this all the effect, in the microcosmic universe which is man, of a UnityLaw working in reverse, to breakdown? But equally it can be that happiness builds up good health and mental balance, itself producing exactly analogous  changes  in  the  motions  and  combinations  of  the  lower  world  which constitutes a man, this time in the interests of the higher unity, unto happiness we would say.

Note too how the higher formality can, and does, directly influence the mode of being of the lower, (although in order of time they preceded the higher nature within which they are reduced,) while constituting this man, to a "virtuality" rather than a formality, in the strict sense.

14 ADDENDA THEOLOGICA

A Theological Postscript

This section merely continues an increasing unease with the concept of any "natural order" of fulfilment intelligible for man. Man is made for love, not admiration of God. Any love of communion must be effected from God and within union with God. In whatever order of degree, such a fulfilment cannot be due to man from any debitum placed upon God. God is not capable of being intrinsically "obliged" by any creature. The postscript ends with a suggested development of the doctrine of baptism of desire applicable to all human life conceived in the womb. This Theological Postscript is elaborated more fully in the  following section  15  on  "Nature  and  the  Supernatural",  which  is  supplementary chapter 15 of the 1950 prototype "Matter and Mind: A Christian Synthesis. "

The breathless speed with which we have cast our ideas upon paper, has forced us to omit, deliberately, a number of considerations which could well have a place in our synthesis. Among these, there are two in particular which we feel it impossible to omit.

In the first place, we have a qualification to make concerning our continual reference to the supernatural order and its relation to "nature". Though we think that it is true to say the supernatural destiny of man is, and was, the motive and primary end of the created nature of man (i.e. as a truth of philosophy), there is one question we must answer in all honesty. We have maintained that this gift of the Beatific Vision is the completion of the one act of creation, a continuation of, and the term of, creation. We have asserted moreover, that since it is the "growth unto God" of the soul, it cannot be attained by any "natural” means or endeavour.  As  the  continuation  of  the  creative  act,  by  a  strict continuity, it is moreover as incorrect to speak of it as "due to man", as to speak of the gift of "being" as due to man. Yet we may well be asked, You place the final end of man in a real union of knowledge and the love of God, which personally attains God in a true fruition, do you not? Yes that we do.

You would say moreover that the union attained by at least some of the great Saints, the "mystics", that union which perfects the "Unitive Way" as described by St John of the Cross, was a truly immediate and fulfilling love of God in this manner? Yes, we would say that as well. But now, that possession of God, most true and full of joy, was not the Beatific Vision. Could you say that it is unthinkable, or unworthy of the Divine Wisdom, to allow men to reach that state, or even one less sublime, and then to leave them there?

We  do  not  see  that  at  present  we  have  any  conclusive  reason  to  deny  this hypothesis. For us, the Beatific Vision is the term of the soul's journey to God in perfect fruition, but to the question posed, we have no principle of absolute denial to offer. If some such state, one even less sublime, but which yet was the supreme fulfilment of the soul as experienced, and in which every lesser love or joy were harmonised in perfect wisdom, were given to man, and that measure alone, we do not see how we could claim that the measure of creation had not been filled up. After all, we do insist that what we have, and are, is God’s gift, and not man’s desert.  Therefore we must admit this possibility as a possibility.

Beatific Possession Fruit Of Grace As "Germen"

We can  however  be  further asked  or queried,   You  seem  to make  the  distinction between the highest fruition of the soul in this life, through grace, and the Beatific Vision one of degree, not of kind. Yes, we do, salvo ulteriore judicio Ecclesiae1. If we admit in this life a true love and knowledge of God, if we admit that the soul can attain the Divine Essence in a degree however low, then indeed we do this. There is no halfway, either God is known and loved, or we attain merely an idea, a representative idea, some highly exalted conception, which in some way represents Him but is not Him2. We cannot tolerate the thought that the cry which the Holy Spirit effects in our hearts "clamantem Abba, my Father", as St Paul writes, is not "Our Father" but merely a phantasm, a "species" demanded of material references in man, as far as it is within the power of the soul to do this. We do not wish to believe that though we may not worship idols of matter, in the Name of God, yet when we say "I love Thee Jesus, my love, above all things" the term of this knowledge and love, even in the prayer of the highest contemplative union, is but an "idol of the mind" only representative of our Father. We believe that when St John leaned on the breast of Christ, he worshipped and loved God, and what he knew through the senses in his body, he perceived also in the term of his soul's wisdom and love. If we admit then, a true knowledge of God, then truly and inevitably the beatific vision is a deeper, final degree of this union. This degree however can only be attained by development of soul, not by the opening of the door into heaven.

Purgatory is a growth of the soul, by which it is purified, and the "pain" is the same in principle and cause as the "Dark Night" of St John of the Cross, here below. The cause of the pain and the defects, are in man: God causes it accidentally in the philosophical use of the word, he does not "send" it.

Concerning Human Fulfilment

In the matter of the "possible" final end of man, even if it could terminate at a degree of knowledge and love below the beatific vision, we make these comments. The final end of man as a spiritual creation must be in God as known and possessed in truth, not in any image or analogy. Spirit was born of Spirit, lives by the spirit in the Holy Spirit. It must terminate as intellectual in the True, it must terminate as volitive in the Good. If then it must terminate in God, it must possess Him by intellect and will as good and true. (Not as goodness and truth EH, 1993). We maintain that this can be only by God's manifestation of Himself. If the soul must unite with God, God first must unite Himself to the soul. The soul cooperates with the Giver, God reaches down: alone, the soul could not reach up. Love is given by a mutual consent, and God must consent to give, that the soul may receive. This would mean an influence of "Grace" in any order, even if this grace did not terminate in the beatific vision as the Faith defines such. For us however, the measure of the "nature" of the soul, is the measure of God's intention and will in creating. He would seem, if He willed to create according to that wisdom which defined his gift, not our deserts, to have willed to communicate "Himself". When the Deity is made to say "Let us create man to our own image and likeness", surely the corollary is   "Let  us  create  man  for  Ourself".  The  motive  of  creation  was  Divina  Bonitas communicanda (the communication and communion of the Divine Goodness of God) in an act of perfect liberty, but Divine Love. When therefore God says "Let the spiritual creature be for us", then surely that "Us" is the Beatific Vision, because as God was the efficient cause, so also He made Himself as He is also the Final cause and the Formal cause. We therefore incline to think that in this sense the Beatific Vision is the only end for man, because of the nature of that act in the Divine Essence, the act we mean of creation. Perhaps too, even clearer light will be thrown on how really according to us, our creation is incomplete, one related process from alpha, to omega. The "damned" for us, since they reject the fullness of the Divine gift, are not fully created, and therefore we are prepared to say they do not realise the fullness of their definition. They will remain an unfulfilled, and actually, an unfulfillable potential for ever. They will be a diseased seed, a blighted bud. St John says that we "know not what we shall be", and St Paul likens our life here to that of a seed. "Not all flesh is the same flesh……that which thou sowest is naked grain etc," but the ear of wheat is the fulfilment thereof. We are in this life but "silkworms" as St Theresa says in an analogous passage~ only in the next life will we be "butterflies",  but  all  our  time  here  we  make  progress  unto  that  state,  and  the "environment" of our souls to quicken this development, is that dim light of the Immutable Sun, which is Grace. Truly then, Grace is the principium or "germen" for us of everlasting life.

We do not then deny the possibility we posed to ourself, but we incline to dismiss it, no more than that.

Concerning The Salvation Of The Unbaptised Infant

There is also another point, so bold in its originality that we did not wish to treat of it as an organic part of our consideration. It is this, how can we say that Original Sin is not an arbitrary curse, since certainly the unbaptised child who dies is excluded from the Beatific Vision? Nay more, there are further difficulties. Were we not taught that Christ "triumphed over sin and death", over the "Prince of this world"? Were we not told that this victory was utter and plenary in its essential content, the full restoration above measure in the second Adam of what the first Adam lost? Were we not taught that "where sin abounded, Grace did superabound"?

Yet how is this victory complete if through the original agency of the Devil, through the ruin effected against the antecedent will of God, still, the Prince of darkness will have his grave and heavy measure of triumph for ever? Surely in all honesty the victory of Christ is not complete, only "largely so". Are we to presume that He did not desire also this fullness~ that He who bled upon the Tree, quite arbitrarily dismissed the inculpable babe~ He who forgave His murderers? Could He not have won this final victory, or did He just, quite inexplicably, not care. How did he die for "all men" whose death precisely forgave Original Sin, but who excluded this large class of souls? Why did He make for the undeveloped child the stern condition of "water and the Holy Spirit", who for the adult allowed the sufficiency of the "Holy Spirit" alone "per baptismum in voto" ("Baptism of desire")?

Surely the pious soul must wonder here, and surely it is a grief to believe that His "victory over death" is not a final victory. It is a grief to us, why not to Him who "loved us with an everlasting love", and who could so easily have fulfilled His victory? 3

We suggest that He did fulfil His victory. We find it defined not that the "unbaptised do not enter Heaven", but only that "Those who die in original sin" are excluded from Heaven. We think, most greatly daring, that upon our theory of the Sacraments, there is a new development of knowledge which will "save" also the unbaptised. The love of God which creates the soul, and which follows the soul always, is a love in the supernatural order only, there  is historically, factually, no other order, nor ever was. (We note "Limbo" is in the "natural" order!) This love which creates us is also the love of Christ the Redeemer, who is God. This is the whole explanation of "baptismus in voto" for which there is not the slightest warrant of Scripture, but only of tradition. When the soul co operates genuinely with that External Redemptive Love which is ever seeking it, then it is justified not "per sacramentum  Fidei" but  "per fidem  sacramenti"~4   we would  simply extend this principle. We would say that from the first moment of existence the soul is "seeking" for God~ it was made "Theocentric" indeed "Christocentric"~ sin is a denial of this initial orientation given by creation. Even before the use of reason, before even the formation of a developed body, we believe that this "seeking" finds some degree of "union" however we may, or may not, be able to conceive of it. We think this true of the moment of development after conception, but much more positively would we affirm it, once the brain is fully formed after 4 or 6 months. This would constitute "baptismus in voto" and would save a man. Baptism is "necessary" in the same sense as it is for him who has it only "in voto", it is only the leading up to the plenary union with Christ in the sacrament.

The principle we expound at least is clear. The sacrament is the plenitude of the divine relation of personal forgiveness, given through matter, in the one economy of Christ the Incarnate. Baptism of desire is but the formal element of this process, the partial union with the divine as spirit to spirit, but not yet the plenitude in Christ. Nevertheless it justifies, for grace and love reach to a degree the soul which cooperates with it. Could not the same also be true of the soul in the beginning of its life, by a further extension of this principle? We would not even say that the hopelessly mentally handicapped are baptised without any cooperation of the personal soul. It is enough to be "in grace" that the soul seek and find God according to its measure and its mode (even in the mentally handicapped, the soul is, and is active), whatever its present possibilities, for always it is real and spiritual and active. In this first orientation then of the creation, it may benefit by that very feebleness of action which forbids it, incidentally, to sin gravely. By that initial orientation by which it spontaneously "seeks" God according to its measure, it is justified "in voto Christi", "in voto, id est, sacramenti". If the soul is real, active, with spiritual powers in the instant of creation, then, we say, as it is created unto Christ, by Christ, orientated to God, not just "neutral" in relation to its end, then according to its measure, however difficult for us to express or conceive, it seeks and it finds. It is created seeking Christ, for its creation is relative unto the Beatific Vision as one process. Therefore because it seeks, it finds the pardon of the Redeemer, who created it surely in an act of Redemptive Love since Calvary~ not one of dismissive forbearance.

This we know is very bold, but we suggest it in all humility, for most truly it would seem that Satan has a measure of triumph over Christ otherwise, and that seems most utterly  opposed  to  Tradition,  and  especially  the  whole  tone  of  St  Paul,  and  the Apocalypse of St John, besides witnesses throughout the scriptures equally valid, if less emphatic, concerning the perfect restoration of the essentials of the order of grace and glory. We dare to hope that the economy of the Incarnation will show that the seed of Mary saved the seed of Adam to the plenary possibilities of everything that the first Adam lost. We dare to think that the analogy between the first and second Adam is complete, the full victory.

1 Subject to the further decision of the Church.

2  This, as I understand it, is at the basis of Rousselot's challenge of a fundamental incongruity in the "Intellectualism of St. Thomas" (1993)

3 These arguments are acknowledged quite explicitly in the postConciliar Catechisme de

L'Eglise Catholique: that book aspires that Christ knows of "some way" by which these babes can be fully redeemed. Here we offer a direct principle of development for that aspiration. (1993).

4 Not by the Sacrament of the Faith but by faith in or unto, the Sacrament.

15 NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL

This section is included in these   Perspectives in Philosophy at the suggestion of Fr Roger Nesbitt, because it belongs to the same period of time as the rest of the material. It has a history. By 1947 I began to write, and probably by then to type, an outline book of what much later became Catholicism:  A New Synthesis.  It resulted in a commercially made up 'book' of duplicated pages, quite sizeable.  Only ten copies were made. One went to Rome, and unless it long ago went into a disposal bag, or a shredder, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it is still there. One went to Fr Nesbitt. One I kept. The others went to various people at various times and were lost for ever. My own suffered disgraceful and ultimately mortal cannibalism, being carved up with a razor blade for various articles, during my long editorship of FAITH magazine. Fr Nesbitt alone has an original, which he guards sedulously, and which he will not lend out to anybody. He maintains that while more limited in scope it is in many ways more readable and assimilable to the average man than is   Catholicism .  This is supplementary chapter 15 from that prototype, "Matter and Mind: A Christian Synthesis". The reader will notice the almost startling change of style. This was not written for "George" in Rome. This was written for any serious philosopher or theologian who might take my ideas seriously, and in the style one might use for the dissertation, I believe it is called the "Tesina" now, at the Gregorianum, for the Licentiate in philosophy or theology. I would still, I think, hold the same opinions. It was written incidentally, without any knowledge of the writings of Rousselot or De Lubac, basically from the impact of my mother's "things shown to me" in the context of theology, especially the Greek Fathers and Augustine. I did however at that time, 1950 or earlier, (the book went to Rome in 1950) have some useful knowledge of Augustinian theology, and still have a very ancient edition, some two hundred years old, of all the works of St Augustine. They were bought for,£5 sterling, the fruits of my twenty first birthday, from home, when a student in Rome.

It will have been obvious to the professional theologian that we diverge sharply in our synthesis of theology, philosophy, and science, from  the concept of "nature" usually presented today in theological manuals. It will have become clear that for us nature is not accidentally, but intrinsically related to the supernatural order, and that we do not accept the presumption, essentially Aristotelean, that every created nature, spiritual or material,  has  a  "natural"  sufficient  finality  in  the  same  order as  its  perfectibility,  or potency. There is no need for panic at this divergence, it represents only a return to the substantial teaching of a much older tradition than the present dominant theology, for the school of thought which at present prevails most widely among theologians, goes back only to the seventeenth century, and has always been the stormpoint of acrimonious disputes in the theology of grace.

The tradition to which we return, and there are many retracing their way back along the same path at present is beyond any doubt the tradition of St Augustine, of the more important mediaeval schoolmen, and in particular of St Thomas Aquinas. The more usual concept today of the relation between the natural and the supernatural orders, would make of man a "pure nature", selfdefined within a created order to a connatural end within the same order of act and potency. To this natural end the nature is held to possess a true “exigency” upon God, after its creation.  The relation between this "natural" order, and the  "supernatural" order of man's  de  facto destiny, is  therefore "accidental", i.e. incidental, and is taught explicitly as such.

Created in Grace, or Constituted in Grace?

Close to this view, it is interesting to remark a less important, but significant controversy among  modern  theologians,  which  arises  from  the  same  school  of  thought,    the question whether, in strict propriety, they should speak of man as originally "created in grace", (creatus in gratia) or rather "constituted in grace" (constitutus in gratia). While the majority prefer, and defend the traditional formula "created in grace", it must be obvious that the logicians among them who raised the point, have really won the day. If the supernatural order is merely accidental to the nature and its substantial order, then man could  only  have  been  "constituted  in  grace",  for  the  nature  must  first  exist  in  its essentials in order to be capable of receiving any "accidents", whether natural or supernatural.

This controversy is significant because it marks the complete dichotomy between nature and the supernatural taught by so many modern theologians, and points also to the stresses between the traditional ethos of Catholic thought, and the development of this postreformation "liberalism" in theology, which have increasingly manifested themselves. For such theologians, while we live in a "supernatural" order, and while man at no time existed under any other order, this supernatural destiny of man is simply an external accident in relation to his essential being, so that the whole economy of God, and the majesty of  Christ the King, rests upon an "accidental order", which is only another example of how the facts and life of the Church sit uneasily together with this type  of theology. They teach moreover, that this "pure nature" which  is man  in  his essence as a man, is the status, undamaged and entire in all essentials, in which men are born today, so that "concupiscence" however privative a factor in the order of grace, is good, because natural, in this basic state of "pure nature".

The physical "integrity" of man's nature is for them something which is entirely a gratuitous gift of grace, nonrelative to the relation between matter and spirit in man as such. They teach this not merely of integrity in that comprehensive sense in which it means the total content and end of man's powers, vivified by grace, and directed to the Beatific Vision, if they were speaking only of this comprehensive connotation of man's original integrity we could not disagree, save perhaps to challenge the philosophical grounds on which they based their analysis of what is otherwise of Faith.

Most  modern  theologians  however  go  much  farther,  and  make  integrity,  in  that restricted sense in which it means the harmonious obedience of matter to the spirit in man, also a purely gratuitous gift of grace in such a way that such integration between the natural complements of man's nature is again nonessential and nonrelative to the definition of human nature as substantially good. In this we must entirely disagree with them.

The Concept of a "Pure Nature" From Aristotle Not Aquinas

In the first place, the very concept of a "pure nature" which begins, and ends, in the created order with a finality proportionate to that entity in justice, is not an element of Catholic tradition as it has come down to us from the Fathers of the East, or the West. It is not the common doctrine of the Schoolmen, and in the Eastern Christian Church is still today unknown  and  unconsidered.  It  is  a  purely extraneous  element of speculation borrowed from Aristotle, a development of his philosophy altogether valid, in Aristotle, but out  of  keeping  with  the correction of  that philosophical system  in the  Christian schools, introduced by Aquinas. Perhaps, but we do not concede it, this concept may be defended as a development of St Thomas' own philosophy in so far as his fundamental definitions of substance, of act, and of potency, are those of Aristotle, but the remarkable fact  remains  that  St  Thomas  teaches  exactly  the  opposite  for  very  clear  reasons, reasons  which   introduce   a  basic  correction  into  Aristotle's  philosophy  which  is overlooked by many modern Catholic theologians.

The fault seems to us  to  lie not with St Thomas, the Master, but with  his later disciples. It has become so customary among modern theologians to claim a foundation in St Thomas for anything at all they wish to present, that we may be pardoned if we suspect that they have also been in the past more anxious to wear the Thomist colours, and thus guarantee their theological respectability, than to examine the thought of the Master on its merits.

Of one thing we are certain, and we will defend our position very strongly out of the works of St Thomas, namely, that concerning the final end of man, and the nature of Original Sin as an intrinsic lesion, St Thomas taught the same doctrine as we are here defending.

The theological speculation of today concerning the relation of nature and the supernatural, was developed only after the bitter theological controversies with the Calvinists and the strict Lutherans. It represents an exaggerated answer to what was found to be a troublesome dilemma. The postReformation Catholic theologians, already heavily infected with a Nominalist outlook since the decline in the schools of the prestige of Scholasticism, failed to see how they could admit that nature was "intrinsically wounded" by sin, without being forced back and back, by the stern logic of Calvin, to the point where they would have conceded a "total corruption" of man already defined at Trent as heresy. It was natural in the circumstances that they should reexamine the philosophical  definition  of  man's  "nature",  and  should  seize  upon,  and  exploit,  any element  which  offered  a  more  complete  answer  to  their  adversaries.  As so often happens in human affairs, a movement of the extreme "left" prompts a reaction towards the extreme "right", and truth is slain in the strife.

Catholic/Protestant Controversy on Nature and Grace

For the theologians of the seventeenth century, Aristotle's concept of nature was a blessing in their controversies with the Protestants. The more so, because in him one sternly coherent logician could be counterpoised against another, against Calvin. Theologians could now bypass the treacherous defiles of Augustinianism, where many a wouldbe champion of orthodoxy, like Jansens, had so easily lost his way. The dispute could be so simply resolved by the concept of a created nature, a "pure nature", which had no possible claim on the actual destiny accorded men by God, and a "supernatural order" into which man was "accidentally" elevated. These two states stood opposed as an order of natural justice, against an order of supernatural charity. After sin, the nature of man remained substantially as good as before, if it was "wounded" at all, and in deference to ancient formulas, the not very happy expression had to be accepted, the "wound" was extrinsic and accidental. It consisted in the deprivation of a state which, in the intention of God, man was meant to enjoy with its proper privileges and supreme end. It still remained true after the fall, that while man was thereby robbed of a state of holiness due to him in the original intention of God, he had merely lost, relative to his nature, an "accident"~ his nature was as good as ever, and it was impossible to speak of man being "corrupt by nature". It was all very neat, though not very traditional, and it was full of loopholes which did not much worry an age when all monarchs were absolutists, and legalism and formalism dominated every aspect of life.

This  theory made  the descent  of  Original  Sin  simply an  arbitrary curse  of  God.

Whether theologians held the  "Pact" theory, or the "Moral Imputation" theory of the descent of Original Sin by generation, it was still an arbitrary curse put upon a man for something he had never had any part in. He was "condemned" to inherit Original Sin, even though his soul, the only element capable of responsible imputation in any way, was  only  now  created  pure  by  the  pure  Being  of  God!  There  was  added  to  this contradiction the teaching that man, body and soul, was "naturally" pure in the state of nature at birth, and so why, in an order of Redemption, always claimed by universal Christian tradition to be in Christ the complete victory over "sin and death", men should be born without the "accident" of grace and the supernatural order, born so that the fate of unbaptized babies worried the theologians more than a little, simply did not, and could not appear. God had so decreed it~ and that, without any softening whatever, was the only answer they could give. The more recent theory that original justice was to be in the beginning an "inheritable accident" which Adam lost, and we in consequence could not inherit, is equally open to criticism. If nature is not wounded intrinsically, there can be no direct, and real, relation between the material seed, and the "accident" of God's grace. Matter cannot be a factor which receives directly "supernatural" graces, until it has been informed by the soul.  A  material  element,  of  its  own,  is  only  capable  of  material accidents, ie qualities, not of spiritual ones. Once more the theologians meant that Original Sin was to be regarded "as if it were" an inheritable accident, but in effect they taught only an arbitrary imputation of sin by God. Indeed, once they agreed that man was a perfect and integral "pure nature", what connection Original Sin could have at all with natural generation, directly, simply does not appear~  neither positively,  nor privatively, has matter, or generation, anything entitative and real, to do with the incurring of this state of sin.

The Aristotelean concept of nature should not have been so incautiously lifted bodily into  theology.  Aristotle  erred  concerning  God,  the  relation  of  the  creature  to  God, creation in time, and the destiny of a spiritual nature in itself. Aristotle knew nothing of God as revealed in Christ, and it was inevitable that the whole orientation of the spiritual nature to its end, should be deficient in his philosophy. The mind of God measures the nature of man, and without Christ, no philosopher can avoid grave errors. God is a "supernatural end" in his very definition as the Supreme Being, and any nature whose end terminates in a union the object of which is God, in any degree, is in a "supernatural order". The modern scholastics should have remembered their own principle of "the object specifies the act"~ God is a supernatural object, the supernatural object, He is never capable of being the "natural" end in any way of a created nature. God is not divided against Himself, He is not able to be in two really distinct objectivations, the "natural" and the "supernatural" end, of a spiritual being. If God were the "natural" end of a  "pure  nature"  in  any sense  which was  a  real  end  in  God,  an  end  which  in  act terminated  at,  and  in,  the  Divine  Nature, a created  thing would  have  a  necessary, substantial exigency upon God, which is against the Faith, as well as against reason. The only alternative is to say, if a state of "pure nature" is the minimum substantial end of man, that the end of man, as a nature, is not really and actually in God in any sense, a thesis so contrary to the whole of Christian teaching, and Christian theological thought, that no man would dare to propose it.

The Final End of a Spiritual Being is God, and Only God

It  is  impossible  for  a  spiritual  being  to  have  a  "natural"  end  in  God  as  Aristotle's philosophy would  insinuate,  or  to  be  a  "pure nature"  in  the  sense  which  so  many theologians presume. The final end of any spiritual being is God, and only God. The concept of a "pure nature" presumes that spiritual beings can have a natural end, to which they possess a natural exigency, proportionate to their nature. This is not so, a created being of intellect and will has only one intelligible finality, the possession of God in fruition as its final cause, and such an end can never be proportionate to any created nature, nor within its natural powers to attain.

Do we therefore state a paradox? We say that the only ultimate end of a spiritual nature is God, and at the same time that such an end always exceeds the powers, exigencies, or proportion of its nature and natural powers? Yes~ we say precisely that. We are saying that God makes spiritual beings for Himself, and that man has no claim upon that end, the only conceivable end of his being, and that this end totally exceeds the powers of his unaided nature to achieve. If this paradox seems absurd, we beg for patience, for we believe it can be shown that the consequences for any other view are ultimately absurd, and that the view  we propose will alone stand philosophical, and theological, scrutiny.

The  underlying presumption  of  the  theory of a  "pure nature"  with  a  concomitant natural end, is that any nature at all has an intrinsic exigency upon its proportionate end, once actualized~ an exigency in the order of necessity, and therefore of justice. This implies  reductively  that  once  a  being  is  actualized  by  God,  it  has  upon  Him  a necessitating claim to its proportionate end. This is not a tenable proposition, for the entire order of created being, spiritual and material alike, is  at all times, and  in all respects, relative to God only in the order of His own charity, or freewill. Created being is always nonnecessary intrinsically before God, neither can it oblige Him at any time in any sense.

The profound Thomist teaching of the real distinction between "esse" and "essentia" in created things implies just that: the created is intrinsically nonnecessary relative to God, and a substantially nonnecessary entity can never intrinsically determine the alone Necessary.

An exigency can only exist when two entities are mutually, and entitatively inter defined in one order. The one "must" receive of its nature, the other either "must" or "ought" to give, of its own nature~ whether it be "must" or "ought" there remains an intrinsic obligation, and intrinsic obligation entails subjective potency.

In the purely material order, because it is not free, all exigencies are of physical, substantial interdetermination, in the order of "must". There is, within the "closed" order of the purely material, which can have no personal end in God Himself, a true order of natural  exigencies  among  themselves,  because  to  material  causality,  and  material finality they are substantially defined~ this is within one same order of act and potency.

God and his spiritual creatures are not thus related as cause, and as end, in the same order of act and subjective potency. When God creates the  nonnecessary spiritual entity, it is a distinct nature, within, as a substance, a "natural" order, but its material and its final causality are not in the same order, for its end, and its orientation to that end, is the "supernatural order" which is objectified in God Himself as a Being possessed by the created spirit. God cannot be susceptible of any necessary determination, any obligation of "ought" in respect of any creature, for there is nothing in the nonnecessary which can necessitate God, nor is there any sort of subjective potency whatever in God.

Man is Naturally Ordained, in Charity, to the Supernatural

An entity which does not admit of subjective potency, the principle of intrinsic relativity, cannot be determined in justice by an exigency of a created nature in either a natural or a  supernatural  order.  God cannot will anything but Himself with intrinsic necessity~ otherwise He would not be God. God wills to create in his own free charity, and He wills, in  so  creating  in  an  order  of  charity,  to  bring  created  beings  to  their  determined perfection within the same one order, in one continuous process. The created natures of angels, or of men, are created, in the order of a gift, of freedom, of charity relative to God as their destiny~ this order is totally one of love, not one of natural exigencies. When God creates a being made in his own image and likeness, made substantially like the nature of God through the powers of intellect and will, that being can have no other natural finality but God Himself. Because that being is not necessary to God, but willed to be through love, therefore it is naturally ordained, in charity alone, to the Supernatural, ordained to God who totally exceeds its nature, and upon whom it has at once a total dependence, in that order of charity for being, and for intelligibility, but no intrinsic claims.

Theologians agree that man is made in the "image of God" because as a being defined through intellect and will, he participates, though contingent, powers which in God are synonymous with Necessary Being.  It is only because of this substantial analogy of being that man can be united with God in the beatific vision at all. God is the Supernatural, by definition of his Being, and a creature which is related only to God as its final end, is substantially relative in the order of charity to the supernatural, for charity, not justice, defines its nature. The error of du Bay, of Pelagius, and of every other heretic who has denied the gratuitousness of the historic end of man, consists radically either in the attribution to a creature of a natural or supernatural exigency upon God in the order of God's own being, or else in a theology, essentially legalist, of justification by the "imputation" of merit upon a legal title. The theologians whom we criticize rebut this dangerous error by denying any exigency in a "supernatural" order, but admitting a "natural" exigency to a "natural" end which does not exist, never did exist, and because it still attempts to bind God with a created chain, we say never could exist. God is not bound by chains of intrinsic obligation whether fashioned in heaven, or upon earth.

The Witness of St Thomas Aquinas

At this stage we can well hear St Thomas Aquinas upon the subject~ there are several passages which would serve our purpose, but if one only must be selected, we choose,

2a. 2ae. Q3. art.1. ad 2.

"A debt can be understood in a twofold manner. The one is the debt which derives from merit, and which is referred to a person to whom it belongs to perform works meritorious of themselves of due reward~ according to the text of St Paul (Rom 4.4) : 'To him who labours, wages are imputed according to debt and due, not according to grace and favour'. The second meaning of the word 'debt' concerns what is due according to the condition of a nature itself, as, for example, when we say that it is due to man that he have reason, and whatever else pertains to human nature. But in neither case is something said so to be due because God is under obligation to a creature, but rather in the sense that the creature must be subject to God, so that His divine plan (ordinatio) may be fulfilled in it~, and this means that a given nature should possess definite conditions, and properties, and that if it posit a given action, given consequences should ensue. The gifts of nature therefore, are not due in the first meaning of the word 'debt', but they are due in the second. Supernatural gifts however, are not 'due' in either manner, and hence, in a special connotation are they called 'graces'."

We call the attention of the theologian to the statement that in neither sense of the word "debt" which here might well be translated "exigency" is God under any obligation, any relation of justice, to the creature. St Thomas states carefully that even in the sense in which the integrity of natural powers is due to a nature, it is due only "in as much as the creature must be subjected to God, that it may realise his divine ordinance in itself". In other words, in so far as the nature must, in its substance, be equated with the intention of its exemplar, the creating Intellect and Will of God. In this second sense only, is there any question of a "due" and even then, not a due arising from the created which obliges God, but a necessity in the creature, as totally subject to God for its being, to realise in its actuality the ordinance of its essence in the Intellect of God. Supernatural gifts, because they do not constitute the entity as a being outside of its cause, but draw it towards an end which overpasses nature, are not "due" in either sense. If supernatural gifts  were  due  to  the  integrity  and  substantial  definition  of  an  entity,  they  would necessarily belong to it, constitute it, and could never be lost unless it were annihilated. In the last analysis, such an intrinsic claim upon the Being of God would equate the creature with God, as, in the last analysis, does the error of du Bay. We quote this passage to indicate how carefully St Thomas removes from God any relation of "justice", "obligation" or "exigency" in any meaning of the word "debt" when he discusses the relation between God and creatures.

At the same time, a spiritual creation can, and must have, an end in God. A "must" in the order of its nature, and in the order of charity, for God made that substance relative to such an end, and this relativity stands revealed in its substance, powers, and final orientation~ it must have such an end, not by exigencies of nature, but "in as much as the creature must be subjected to God, that it may realise the divine ordinance (manifest) in itself".

A  creature  must  exist  before  it  can  attain  its  ultimate  finality~  and that  created existence, or  "esse",  is  not  identical with  God.  Neither is the fact of being created necessarily conjoined with the realisation of its created finality. If supernatural gifts were "due" to a created nature as constitutive and integrating powers, neither angels nor men could be damned. The essential distinction between “nature” and the “supernatural order" rests not on a twofold possible order of created end, but on two other twin factors. The first is the real distinction between God and creatures~ the second is that the created is not necessary to God in its nature nor able to determine Him, and, inversely, because God is not an element of the created substance, nor necessary to its created being in its nature as such, God, from the very powers of that nature, although He is the perfecting principle of that nature, can be rejected. Damnation, as well as fulfilment, is possible to the created spirit. Once constituted in its "nature" created only relative to the "Supernature", God must offer, and the creature must accept. God offers Himself, in charity, but the creature is not necessitated to accept, for to be, and to be perfected, are neither one thing, nor the same one order.  Nature is a distinct order from the supernatural, but relative, as a thing made imperfect, and expecting perfection, only to the supernatural: the cooperation of the created is essential to the continuance of the economy of creation unto consummation, and the free nature can refuse, can rebel, even to the limit of substantial loss of the perfection to which God made it relative in charity: even, that is, to hell.

Man's Natural Desire for God

There are too many passages in which St Thomas clearly makes the nature of man relative  as  a  nature  only  to  a  supernatural  consummation  to  admit  of  exhaustive quotation, nevertheless a few places, quoted only in part, will suffice to show that St Thomas  thought  in  a  mental  ethos  quite  different  from  that  of  so  many  modern theologians (1a. 2ae. Q.5. art.3) :

"Likewise, our desire of the good cannot be sated in this life~ for a man naturally desires the good he possesses to be permanent. But the goods of this present life are transient, they pass even as life passes away, that very life which we love, and would have last forever~  for a man  naturally  shrinks  from  death.  Therefore it is impossible to have true beatitude in this life. And the argument is confirmed if we consider that in which above all, beatitude does consist, namely the vision of the essence of God, to which a man cannot come in this life, as we have shown above.

From all of which consideration, it is manifest that in this life a man cannot lay hold on true, and perfect, happiness."

It will be seen that man's natural desire for happiness is related by St Thomas to the one permanent good. It is because there is no permanent good given to man in this life, not even mortal life itself, that St Thomas relates the natural desire of man for his perfect happiness, to the next life, and to the Beatific Vision. Let us also take such passages as these (1a. 2ae. Q5. art.4. ad.lam et 2 am):

Objection: (Art.4.ad.lam.): "It seems that man can reach beatitude by natural means, for a nature does not lack what is necessary for it, and nothing is more necessary to man than the means of pursuing his ultimate end. Therefore human nature cannot be deficient in this~ a man must be able to obtain true happiness by his natural powers."

Reply: "I answer that even as nature has not failed man in his necessities because it has not clothed him with natural hair, and organic weapons, like other animals, for it has given him a head, and hands, by which he can acquire these things for himself, so also man is not naturally lacking in what he needs, because nature has not given him any principle by which he might reach his true happiness: for this was not possible. But nature itself, has given him freewill by which he might turn himself to God, who would render him happy. "

And again (ad. 3.am):

Objection: (substance of in brief) "To be truly happy is the perfect operation of any nature: but it belongs to one and the same nature to begin any vital operation, and to perfect the same. Therefore it belongs to man to perfect the operation of acquiring his happiness through, and in, those same powers by which he begins it."

Reply: "I answer that when the potential, and the perfect to which it is directed are of the same order, they can be effected by the same causative principle~ but this need not apply when they are of different orders. For not everything which can effect some disposition in a potential, towards its end, can also confer the final perfection of the potential inception. Now that imperfect operation which is within a man's natural power, is not of one order with that perfect operation which is the ultimate beatitude of man, since the genus, or order, of any active operation depends upon the object to which it is directed (i.e. God)."

The whole passage should be read here, not merely our two brief transcripts. It will be seen that St Thomas relates the nature of man directly, and from its essence, to an end in the supernatural, above its natural created order. If St Thomas had thought in the mental climate of so many modern theologians, that acute and concise genius could so much more easily, and correctly, have answered all the difficulties by saying: "If man's nature were directed to his natural and proportionate end in a state of pure nature, I concede the objection, but man's being is directed to a supernatural end which inheres as an accident, in relation to his nature, and is above his natural order, therefore, etc." In fact however, St Thomas says nothing even remotely akin to this. St Thomas clearly believes that there is no "alternative" natural end for man, other than a union with God which attains to the essence of God, and is "comprehensive"~ a "laying hold on" God, which is not the fruit of reasoning or the contemplation of abstract ideas. (v.g.la. 2 ae. Q.4. art.2.):

"Therefore, in true happiness three things must concur, namely vision, which is the perfect cognition of man's intelligible end: comprehension, which implies the presence of that end: and delight, or fruition, which means the abiding of the lover, in his beloved."

God is the Final End of Man

Can any theologian, considering the nature of the soul, and its powers, deny that these three elements must concur in any final happiness "natural" to man? If God is the final end of man in any order of nature, how could these elements be realised even in a union much  less  than  the  intuitive  fruition  of  the  Divine  Essence,  without  their  being nevertheless in a "supernatural order"? How can God communicate Himself to man in any order, unless that created nature be lifted up by God to Himself? Whatever degree of these three attributes listed by St Thomas exists between God and man, the relationship remains in the supernatural order, for it is specified by fruition in God Himself. Upon this we must hear St Thomas again, from the corpus articuli of 1 a. 2ae. Q.3. art.8:

"I say there is no ultimate, and perfect happiness, save in the intellectual vision of the Essence of God,……First indeed, because a man is not perfectly blessed while there remains to him something to be sought and desired……Now the understanding of a man, is the 'quiddity', the essence of a thing, according to the usual term. If then, any intellect knows the essence of some effect, but from it cannot know the essence of its cause, cannot that is, know what exactly the cause is in its own substance that intellect is not said to know the cause wholly, and without qualification, although from the effect itself it knows the cause as existent. And therefore there remains naturally in a man, the desire, since he knows the effect, and that it has a cause to know also concerning  the cause, exactly what  it  is  in  itself……If  therefore  human  intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows of God only that He is, the perfection  of  his  human  knowledge  does  not  attain  the  First  Cause  in  itself (simpliciter), but there remains still within him a natural desire of seeking the very cause~ from whence his happiness is incomplete. For perfect happiness therefore it is required that the intellect attain to the very essence of the First Cause, and so will a man have his perfection through union with God as the object of his soul, in which alone the blessedness of a man consists, as we have said above in the preceding article, and in the first article of this third question."

Also, in 1a. 2ae. Q12. art.1. dealing with substantially the same matter, St Thomas is even more devastatingly clear:

"Since the final happiness of man consists in the operation of his highest power, namely intelligence, if no created intellect could ever attain the Essence of God, a created intellect will either never attain beatitude, or else its beatitude consists in something other than God~ which is alien to the Faith. For in Him is the final perfection of the rational creature, who is the source and principle of its existence as actual. For a thing is perfect only in so far, and in as much as, it approximates to the principle of the perfection which it participates……Now there is innate (inest) in man a natural desire of knowing  the cause, when  he perceives  the  effect,  and from  this  there derives wonder, and curiosity, in man.

If then, the intellect of the rational creature cannot attain the first cause of things, then the desire of the nature remains without purpose. So we must concede, without quibble, (simpliciter) that the Blessed see the very essence of God."

This  is  a  very  striking  passage,  because  St  Thomas  quite  obviously  does  not envisage any other end as possible for man except the beatific vision of the essence of God, if indeed the end of man is God Himself. This is reasonable truth, for God is the most pure and most simple of spirits, and either He is attained as an end, or He is not attained~ there is no intermediate state of comprehension of God which, while not in any degree a true union with God in Himself, will yet suffice to justify the proposition that God is directly the end of man. In this passage St Thomas rejects all knowledge about God as a satisfactory end for the spiritual creature~ he requires an actual union which entails vision, comprehension, and fruition.

In other passages, not quoted here, but commonplace texts of quotation, he rejects as insufficient a knowledge obtained through an "infused species", which would be the only  intelligible  alternative  left  to  the  advocates  of  a  "pure  nature"  and  an  end  in essentially a "natural" order. We do not consider it necessary even to quote these passages as references, partly because they are so well known, and partly because any such alternative is ruled out of court for St Thomas when he requires for true happiness what no deep philosopher could fail to require: vision and comprehension of the object of fulfilment, from which arises fruition, the abiding of the lover in his beloved. Nobody can abide in an "infused species", it is not a thing, only representative of a thing, and in the unique case of the Divine Nature, there can be no adequate "species infusa" or "representativa", for nothing created adequately represents God.

This Natural Desire for God is Innate

Lastly, St Thomas relates man's natural desire of knowing God to the essence of God "simplicter"~ he does so straightforwardly here, and in many parallel passages, and it is impossible to gainsay what so precise a Doctor makes so clear. We must not be presented with the plea that when St Thomas clearly speaks of an "innate natural desire" he really means a "supernatural desire which is not innate". There is no Doctor of the Church in either the East or the West who is the superior of St Thomas in clarity and in accuracy of exposition. It would be a derogation from St Thomas' genius to imply that so profound  a  thinker  failed  in  this  context  to  make  a  distinction  of  the  very greatest importance,  but  rather  wrote  many passages  which  are  grossly  misleading  in  their import. If many modern Thomists do not follow their master in this part of his theology, for reasons they consider good and weighty, let them say so honestly, for no man, neither they, nor St Thomas, can write at length of the most recondite things of God without some human errors. Whatever they do, they should not suggest that in the pages of St Thomas "white" is to be interpreted as if it meant "black".

We well remember, how, in our student days at the famous Gregorian University at Rome, a professor of that wellloved Alma Mater of ours, once spent three lectures explaining that one short line, "the desire of the nature remains without purpose," (remanebit inane desiderium naturae) in everything except the plain meaning of the words. When one needs to do that in any branch of knowledge, there is a strong presumption that the explanation is untrue to the mind of the author.

There is only one sincere interpretation of St Thomas' teaching upon the relation between the natural created order and the supernatural order to an end in God, one namely, which makes nature  relative solely to a supernatural order, and one which recognizes no "dues" or "exigencies" at all in the creature upon the Creator. St Thomas concedes, as we have proved, that nature not only is, but must be unable to attain of its own principles the only end intelligible for it in the light of those principles. One must say that a wisdom, and a providence, born solely of charity defines the very essence of man, so that man is not fully intelligible except in the light of God's supernatural order of charity.  At  once  of  course  we  deny  in  this  the  strict  autonomy  of  philosophy  and theology, but we do not intend to weep any tears over that: when God created all things in one total economy of creation, one "communion of saints", one communion of love from angels to atoms, He had never even heard of Aristotle, and that, we think, explains a lot of things.

Is Immunity from Concupiscence Natural to Man?

Another important matter in which we cannot concur with the dominant school of modern Western   theology,   concerns   of   course   the   relation   between   "nature"   and   the "supernatural  order  of  grace"  in  respect  of  the  physical  integrity  of  man's  nature originally. When our concept of the relation between the natural and the supernatural is so different from definitions developed from the Aristoteleanism of St Thomas divorced from his Augustinianism, it is hard to present the case simply. Once we deny any sort of exigency upon God in created natures, and relate the created nature in an order of gratuitous charity to a supernatural end only, every natural created attribute in man, especially one like immunity from concupiscence, which entails the freedom from sin that man could never have maintained without habitual grace, everything in man is within, and depends upon, the supernatural order.

Perhaps we can make a beginning of the presentation of our point of divergence, by asking   whether   or   not   immunity   from   concupiscence,   or   physical   integrity,   is constitutively natural to man, "due" to man, "that the nature, as in all things subjected to God, may realise in itself the divine ordinance of its substance" (St Thomas cited earlier)~ or  whether  such  integrity  is  something  beyond,  beside,  and  "accidental"  to  the constitution  of  man's  nature  as  created.  If  we  put  the  question  in  this  way,  then undoubtedly we will reply that perfect substantial harmony between body and soul, in the order of the finality of man's person is, in any and every hypothesis, a constitutive necessity of his being.

We remark that many theologians presume that the "blind" or "spontaneous" reaction of physical desire to an object of appetite, irrespective of the proportion of the desire or its object to the general good of the whole of a material substance, is perfectly "natural" to man, and follows the nature, laws, and material relativity of matter. This is crudely wrong, and if unreasoning animals acted thus in their natural lifestyles, the whole order of animal life below man would collapse in chaos. These theologians have failed to observe that the living organism does not find the total law of its being within itself, innately, but is subjected to the environment, naturally, and that it is equally natural in all forms of material life below man to respond to such laws which diminish pleasurable appetite, as to respond to those stimuli which excite it. It is remarkable how closely in material life, the sexual appetite especially, is controlled in a direct relation to the life cycle of the species~ there is none of that irresponsible lust, and seeking of pleasure divorced from responsible function, which makes so many men monsters of iniquity. It is not correct to think, with certain theologians, and many materialistic scientists, that because material life is determined and mechanistic, it is a chaos of wanton lusts. It is true that left to itself, or removed from its proper environment, these determined physical mechanisms will react irregularly and with unbalance to stimuli, simply because they are mechanisms of nature, and their full determinant is lacking. One cannot judge of the response of material nature to its proper good in its proper environment, from what can be  seen  of  the  behaviour  of  the  artificial  race  of  the  dog,  living  in  the  artificial environment of the street! Any elementary study of biology suffices to show, over the balanced realm of the animal kingdom, that there are strong material determinants of countless types by which the organically determined body of the animal is held within the functional round of the cycle proper to its species.

Disordered Nature is the Fruit of Original Sin

Before man was man, this rule was true of the animal flesh through which his body derived.  It was not only sinless flesh, but wholly good, conditioned to a good end contained in the intention of God, and realised in the actual existent. Nothing is wanton in Nature, the body and its environment are complementaries, and active complements, of wise determination to end. The body of man was not suddenly abandoned to a state of indifference to physical determination when it came under the princely rule of the soul! The soul is the natural control and direction of the flesh, even in a hypothetical state of "pure nature". The determining force of the Law of Finality expressed through other material determinants upon a given living thing, was much more adequately replaced by the intelligent soul, and it was both natural, and necessary, for the material element to respond. It had always responded fully to God's control, God's wisdom, embodied in material laws, and on what possible principle could it have refused to obey such wisdom, and law, personified in the soul, unless sin had intervened?

These theologians define concupiscence not indeed as a resistance of the flesh to reason intrinsically, but rather as an indifference of the flesh to the mandates of the soul. But this "indifference" is reductively a positive contradiction, for it always shows itself as a positive response of fleshly desire against the will of the soul, even in the state of grace. Can we really believe, even as philosophers, let alone as theologians, that God, with  whose  Being  wisdom  and  perfect  good  is  synonymous,  can  will  to  make  a composite nature which is only one person, with one finality, but in whose nature one element is "naturally" indifferent to that finality, and reductively a principle of antithesis to that finality~ whatever order that finality is in? God cannot create a nature divided against itself,  and  against  His  Wisdom:  to  urge  otherwise  is  to  violate  the  principle  of contradiction in metaphysics. We respectfully suggest to all theologians, that apart from contexts which were heretical, or suspect, this objection to the presumption that a being with only one finality, realised through intelligence, can admit of an indifference, or a contradiction to that finality of its essential nature, is a metaphysical contradiction, and violates the definition of being and its convertibility with "one", "good," and "true". On grounds of metaphysics alone, we contend that our objection is unanswerable. We have found here also, that St Thomas does not differ one iota from the thesis we defend, he writes (1a. 2ae. Q82. art. 1.):

"I reply that the word 'habit' has a twofold meaning. There is the habit by which a power is directed to its acts, and in this sense the sciences and the virtues of both mind and body are called 'habitual'. The other sense of the word 'habit' is that in which it means the disposition of a composite being in relation to its parts, according to  which  it  stands  well,  or  ill,  in  respect  of  something~  above all, when such a disposition is expected of the nature, as for instance in the dispositions which are health and sickness~ and in this sense, original sin is a 'habit'.

For it is a certain disordered disposition, which derives from the rupture of that original harmony in which consisted the condition (ratio) of the state of original justice~ just as likewise bodily illness is a certain disordered complexion of body by which is ruptured that balance in which the essence of good health consists. For this reason original sin is called a 'sickness of the nature' (languor naturae).

To the first objection, I say then, that just as physical sickness has a negative side, because it takes away the balance in which health consists, and a positive side, to wit, the disorganisation of the physical properties of the body, so also original sin manifests both the loss of original holiness, and together with this a disorganised disposition of the powers of the soul as principle of life (partium animae) from which this state is not a sheer privation, but is a certain state of degeneration (habitus corruptus)."

An Intrinsic Lesion in Human Nature

Who  can  read  this  crystal clear  passage,  and  honestly doubt that,  for  St Thomas, Original Sin was as much an intrinsic lesion of man's nature, as the bodily sickness to which he likens it in a perfect analogy of essential proportion, is a true intrinsic hurt? He is careful to make sure that we cannot understand his words to mean merely a "privation of original justice", no, he states explicitly that Original Sin has a positive side, which consists in the disorder of the "parts of the soul". These powers can only, in St Thomas' philosophy, be referred to the powers of the body and soul alike, for St Thomas admits of only one substantial act, or form, in man, the spiritual soul. Moreover, the rarely used phrase "partium animae" would not be accurate unless St Thomas was speaking of the soul as the "act" which informs the total powers and functions of a man. For the theologians whom we criticise, Original Sin is nothing more than a "sheer privation". They fall into two classes, those who teach that human nature is "extrinsically wounded" (vulneratio extrinseca) by sin, in as much as the loss of the supernatural "accidents" of grace and its consummation in glory has lowered the actual historic condition of man, and those who, insisting upon the identity of "pure nature" as substantially the same in Adam as in us, prefer not to use the term "extrinsically wounded" with any real content, and only mention it sometimes out of deference to tradition. This latter class openly teach that the substance of Original Sin consists merely in a privative factor. At bottom both groups teach the same thing, but the extremist minority is more consistent. An "extrinsic lesion", connected with an accident of a totally different order, the supernatural order, is a meaningless phrase. If a nature is truly wounded at all, it must be damaged in the content of what it is, intrinsically therefore. No nature, remaining whole and entire in its substantial content as such, as a "pure nature", can be said to be "wounded" by the nonpossession of what is not necessary to it, nor directly relative to it. The historic pedigree of the phrase "natura vulnerata" goes back beyond Trent, to the Schoolmen, and St Augustine, and everybody knows quite well that in that ancient context it meant a true lesion of the nature. Many modern theologians have emptied all meaning out of the phrase, but although they have abandoned the traditional speculative teaching, they are embarrassed by the obvious break with the past that the abandonment of such once coherent phrases would clearly manifest.

This Sickness Calls for Redemption and Interior Healing

What we have taught in the previous chapter, and in this specialised supplement, is the unambiguous doctrine of St Augustine, of all the prominent schoolmen, and, above all, the clear teaching of St Thomas Aquinas. We teach an intrinsic lesion of the nature, negative and positive alike, according to its aspects~ a disorganisation of human nature from which arises the privation of original justice, which in every man conceived calls for the pardon of God, and the reacceptance given back in baptism. Nevertheless, the nature is not, cannot possibly be, “corrupt". A "languor naturae", a sickness of the nature, is not a death.

It is because the nature of man, though sick, is still capable of purification and interior healing, that it admitted of redemption, and of an increase of sanctification towards its original end. This is the most ancient, most traditional, and, we think, most reasonable concept of the detailed nature of Original Sin, its consequences, and its connexion with natural generation.

The Pastoral Experience of the Church

It is what, in sheer fact, is actually taught, and has always been taught, by us parochial clergy from the pulpit, and within the confessional, and we, with the Faithful, under the Bishops, we are the "teaching Church" (Ecclesia docens). The priest about the parish forgets the speculations which he could never truly make real in any event~ he always teaches the facts of the Faith, the "Adam historicus" of the Church (man as God made him). He teaches the people that in Adam all men fell, that the fall produced concupiscence, that we are thus a fallen and unworthy nature, redeemed by the loving mercy of Christ. He never even mentions "states of pure nature", he attempts no nice distinctions between "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" wounding~ and in this, according to many theologians, he leads the people gravely astray, because they naturally interpret him according to the simple, common sense, meaning of his words, and that spontaneous understanding is far removed from an "extrinsic" wounding of an "intact pure nature."

Our ordinary good Christian people, as every experienced missionary priest knows full well, have, in their struggles and in their sins, a very keen awareness that their nature is fallen, and that they are far from "naturally intact". They are willing to concede with the universal tradition of two thousand years of the Faith, that they are fallen indeed, in every sense that the theologians have, within orthodoxy, proposed. Their parish priest too, made wise, deep, and merciful, by many years of living among human sorrows in the likeness of the crucified Master whom he serves, is well content to agree with his flock in this wellfounded attestation of the "sense of the Faithful" (sensus fidelium).

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