FRANCISCO SUAREZ, Metaphysical Disputations

DISPUTATION 18, SECTION 3

The Principle by which Created Substances Produce Accidents

1. The reasons on both sides for perplexity. The reason for perplexity is this: A substance produces an accident either (i) by means of an accident or (ii) by itself alone and through itself.

If the first answer is given, then an infinite regress follows. /615b/ For if one accident is produced by means of another, then I ask, concerning that other accident, by what principle it is produced. If it is produced by means of still another accident, then the same question reappears. On the other hand, if we stop the regress at some accident that is produced proximately by the substance, then the same thing should have been said about the first accident, since there is no stronger argument in the one case than in the other.

However, if for this reason one claims instead that a substance produces an accident through itself, then it follows, first of all, that no accident is a principle for producing another accident. It follows, second, that the powers and faculties for acting that exist in created substances are none other than their [substantial] forms. Or, at the very least, if, in order to avoid these problematic claims, one asserts that some accidents are produced immediately by a substance through itself, whereas other accidents are produced by means of accidents, then it will be necessary to provide some explantion for this difference and distinction and to make clear which accidents are produced in the one way and which in the other way.

In addition, it will be necessary to explain, in cases where one accident is a principle quo for producing another, whether it is a principal principle or an instrumental principle. For it seems clear that an accident can act at most as the instrument of a substance, given the fact that an accident is a being of a being (as philosophers put it) and that it has its entire esse both from the substance and also for the sake of the substance as an end. From another perspective, however, it seems that an accident should be a principal principle [for producing an accident], since the effect does not exceed its perfection.

2. In order to explicate this matter, I assume that there are two ways in which accidents can be produced. In one way, an accident is produced through a proper action, as when light is produced through illumination, or as when a "where" is produced through proper local motion. In the second way, an accident is produced through a natural resultancy, as when a relation results from its foundation once its terminus is posited (if a relation is a mode distinct from its foundation), or as when a shape results from a division or from a motion or a terminus of a local motion.1 The proper attributes of things are also thought to be produced in this way.

Now there is a third way in which accidents could be understood to be produced, viz., concomitantly with a substance but without resulting from it--in the way, for example, that quantity comes to exist with primary matter. However, I will ignore this third way for now, since (i) if it is a real mode of production, then it can be assimilated to one or the other of the preceding modes, as we will explain below, and since (ii) in this mode of production, the principle that produced the substance will also be the principle that produces the accident that comes to exist along with that substance.

First Assertion: On Natural Emanation

3. Therefore, I assert, first, that when an accident is produced through a natural emanation, its proximate principle in such a mode of efficient causality (whatever that mode might be) can be /616a/ the substance, if the accident in question is immediately connected with that substance; in some cases, however, an accident can result by means of [another] accident, if it has a closer connection with that accident.

This thesis is commonly accepted in its entirety, and it can be proved, first, by induction. For the intellect, for example, emanates proximately from the substance of the soul, and quantity emanates proximately from the matter or from the form. Hence, with respect to these properties one cannot designate any intrinsic accidental principle; therefore, the principle is substantival.2 By contrast, a shape or a "where", for example, results by the mediation of the quantity, and whiteness results from a given mixture of the primary qualities.

The thesis is also proved by the reason for perplexity stated at the beginning. For if an accident belongs to a substance intrinsically, then it cannot in all cases belong to it by the mediation of an accident as its intrinsic principle. Instead, it must necessarily be the case that some accident is immediately connected with the substance, though it does not have to be the case that all instrinsic accidents are like this. And the reason for this difference among the accidents is simple, viz., that some of them have a more immediate relation to the substance than others do.

4. I realize that one could reply that even if an accident is intimately and immediately connected with a substance, it is still not necessary that it be connected by means of an efficient emanation of the accident from the substance. Instead, it might be connected solely by virtue of a natural aptness and inseparability--in the way that, as we claimed above, we can plausibly think about quantity and [primary] matter.3 And on this view it will be necessary not that some accident should emanate immediately from the substance, but rather that some accident should be received immediately in the substance from the same agent by which the substance is produced.

Still and all, the thesis posited above assumes as more probable the contrary position, viz., that the accidental properties, especially those that follow upon or are owed [to a substance] by reason of its form, are caused by the substance not only as a material cause and a final cause, but also as an efficient cause through a natural resultancy--either immediately, if the property in question is a primary property, or mediately, if it is a secondary property.

St. Thomas holds this view in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 77, a. 6, where he is talking about the powers of the soul, but the same argument applies to any [substantial] form whatsoever and to the properties that follow upon it or are owed to it by reason of itself. And this view is highly probable. For since a substantial form exists as a first act whereas an accidental form exists as a second act, it is probable that the substantial form has a certain power for having its proper accidents emanate from it.4 Likewise, in this way one discerns more clearly /616b/ the natural connection between a [substantial] form and its properties, as well as the per se ordering that obtains between them.

This is strongly confirmed by the sensory example of water reducing itself to its pristine coldness. For this reduction can be brought about only by the [substantial] form through a natural resultancy, as was shown above.5 For the same reason, therefore, one should say the same thing about any property that is naturally connected with the form, especially if there is neither a contradiction on other grounds nor a dependence on anything extrinsic. And in this example of the water it is manifestly obvious that the posited thesis is true, viz., that some accident can result immediately, via efficient causality, from a substantival principle. For the degree of coldness in question can have no more proximate principle from which it results than the substantial form of the water.

5. The notion of natural resultancy is clarified; Cajetan's opinion. But before we proceed further, we must first explain what this natural resultancy is and, more specifically, whether or not it is true efficient and active causality.

For if it is true efficient causality, then a proper accidental action will occur here, since efficient causality consists in an action, as we will see below.6 And so in that case the substantial form will be the immediate and unique principle of some accidental action, and actions will be multiplied in the production of the form and its properties, and there will be a per se action with respect to each of the entities co-produced or co-created with the others--all of which seems contrary to the common teaching of philosophers.

On the other hand, if it is not true efficient causality, then it cannot be called efficient causality, since what is not true gold is not gold at all and cannot be called such except by virtue of some similarity or analogy. But no such similarity or analogy is evident in the present case; indeed, it is impossible to imagine what this resultancy might be if it is not efficient causality.

On this point, Cajetan, in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 54, a. 3, suggests that the emanation in question is a natural consequence without any mediating operation. However, he does not explain what this `natural consequence' is or how it might occur in the absence of a mediating action or operation. And in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 77, a. 6, ad 2 & 3, he says explicitly that this resultancy occurs through efficient causality in the absence of any mediating action, and he claims that this is St. Thomas's opinion in the same article, ad 3. However, in that place St. Thomas does not say that the emanation of the accidents from the subject occurs without an action; rather, he says, "It occurs not through any transmutation, but through a natural resultancy."

6. Therefore, if we are to speak precisely, I take it to be closer to the truth that this resultancy does not occur without a real action, even though it is not always /617a/ counted either as a distinct action per se or as a proper change.

As I see it, this claim is sufficiently proved by the argument given above. For either this resultancy is true efficient causality or it is not, since there can be nothing in between. Thus, if it is true efficient causality, then an action occurs. If it is not efficient causality, then neither is it a resultancy or a natural causal consequence; instead, it is merely a logical consequence by reason of the fact that when the one is posited, the other is posited because of a natural appropriateness--in the way that there is a natural connection between the matter and the form of a celestial body, but no emanation of the one from the other.7

Some authors seem to posit something in between these two [sorts of consequence], claiming that the resultancy in question is not efficient causality but a quasi-efficient causality that consists solely in the fact that the cause that produces the substance is determined, by reason of the substance, to give it the properties that are appropriate to it.

In the first place, however, this is no true efficient causality but merely a connaturality of the sort that also exists between a natural passive power and its act. Second, the example of the reduction of water [to coldness] forces us to countenance a more robust and more genuine efficient causality. Finally, even given the claim made [by these authors], it is necessary to maintain that, as far as the point in question is concerned, even if the cause that produces the substance also concomitantly produces a distinct property, it nonetheless does not do so in the absence of a concomitant action. For it is contradictory for a distinct thing to be produced without a distinct action if that thing is not included in the primary terminus itself of some other action. For an action is just a certain mode of the formal and per se terminus itself, as I will show below.8 I will explain this argument more fully in a moment.

7. The two modes of natural emanation. I argue further as follows: The natural resultancy in question occurs in some cases by itself alone and separately from the production of the entity from which it results. However, in other cases it is conjoined with that production in such a way that it is never posterior to it but is altogether simultaneous with it. For example, when water reduces itself to its pristine coldness, this is a natural emanation, as Cajetan admits in the aforementioned q. 54, a. 3, at the end, where he also says the same thing about the motion of a heavy thing that has been generated in a higher place, a motion which, when the impediment is removed, naturally results from its gravity. Now whenever a resultancy occurs in this way, it is absolutely evident that it does not occur without efficient causality or without a true action and change, as is manifestly obvious from the examples just given. The reason is that in such a case something that did not exist beforehand begins to exist in the subject, and it begins to exist per se without the de novo production of any other thing. Therefore, it begins to exist through some efficient cause and through a proper action and change. Hence, that action is a proper cooling [in the one case] and a local motion [in the other]. And the same argument applies whenever an accident /617b/ comes de novo to a preexisting subject by itself alone, i.e., in the absence of any other prior accident. (For if several accidents that are connected to one another come to a subject simultaneously, then the one that is the first and the source of the others is judged to come by itself, whereas the others are judged to come concomitantly.)

You will object: In that case, when a relation comes to a foundation because of the positing of its terminus, a new per se action occurs there, since this relative accident comes de novo to the subject by itself at that time.

Some reply by conceding the inference. Others deny it on the ground that it suffices that the relation should [merely] result from the positing of the terminus. Still others claim that no action occurs at all, since a relation of this sort is not an entity or a mode that is distinct in reality from the foundation. We will investigate this question in its proper place.9

8. Now it is on the basis of the latter sort of resultancy, which is separated in time from the production [of the substance], that one should judge concerning every other sort of resultancy, even if it is conjoined at the same instant. For simultaneity in duration does not destroy the distinction [between the production of the substance and the emanation of the accident], especially given the fact that even though they are naturally simultaneous, they can be separated supernaturally--which is a sufficient ground for a distinction.

The assumption is confirmed as follows: When God creates the substance of the soul, He could [at first] suspend the emanation of the powers from it and after a while permit that emanation, i.e., give His concurrence for such an emanation. And in that case, by the very same argument that was adduced above concerning the cooling of water that reduces itself to its natural state, this later emanation would be an instance of proper efficient causality and a true action. Therefore, even when the emanation occurs simultaneously [with the production of the substance], it is a proper and distinct action.

Further, there is an a priori argument that was touched upon above: Accidental forms of the sort in question, i.e., properties, are entities distinct from the substance; therefore, even if they are produced along with the substance or result from it, it is necessary that they be produced through a distinct action, whether this action is concomitant with the other action or subsequent to it.

The consequence is evident from the fact that the two entities in question, viz., the substance and the property, are not produced equally primarily as two parts of one composite terminus. Instead, the substance is, absolutely speaking, produced prior in nature, and then the proper accident results from it or is added to it. For example, when the soul is created, the creative action terminates per se in the substance alone. For the substance alone is produced ex nihilo and terminates that action per se. Therefore, in order for some distinct entity to be added to it, another instance of efficient causality, and hence a new action, is required, even if this new action necessarily accompanies the other action because of a natural connection. Moreover, the proximate principle of this latter instance of efficient causality is also, according to our position, a distinct principle, since this principle is the inward substance itself, /618a/ which is the terminus of the prior action. Likewise, it is often the case that the material principles are diverse. For instance, in the aforementioned example of the creation of the soul there is no material principle, whereas the substance of the soul is itself the material principle of its own powers.10 Also, the proper termini, we are assuming, are distinct in reality. Therefore, an action that is distinct in reality occurs there--even though physically and in the common manner of speaking they are counted as one action by reason of the fact that they have an intrinsic connection and consecutiveness.

9. A noteworthy difference between the aforementioned modes of natural emanation. In this regard one should note a difference between the two modes of natural resultancy that we distinguished above. When an emanation is such that it can never occur by itself and separately, but instead can occur only insofar as it is connected to a prior action and to the terminus of that action, then that emanation is judged not to be a proper and per se action, and even less a change, but is instead judged to be a sort of accidental completion of the prior action. And this is why it is said that there is no per se action or motion with respect to accidents or properties of this sort. By contrast, when such an instance of resultancy occurs by itself and separately, as in the reduction of water [to its pristine coldness], then the resultancy is judged to be a per se action and a proper change that tends per se toward an accidental terminus of the sort in question. This difference is not so much a difference in reality as a difference in the denominations that are derived from the separation of the actions in the one case or from their concomitance in the other case.

Three Corollaries of the Above Doctrine

10. From the arguments just adduced one may infer, first, that the resultancy in question occurs with real efficient causality and real action only when that which results is distinct in reality from that which it results from. For if it is only conceptually distinct, then even if it might be said to follow `metaphysically' from the other, there cannot in such a case be any real efficient causality or physical emanation. Instead, there is only a metaphysical consequence--in the way that we say that a form's being a principal principle of acting `results from' its being a formal principal of esse. And the same thing holds for all the similar attributes which, given our manner of conceptualization, are attributed to a thing as its properties despite the fact that they are not actually distinct from it within the thing itself. For in none of these cases can there be any real efficient causality, since real efficient causality exists not among concepts but among things themselves; hence, it necessarily requires a distinction in reality between the principle and the terminus.

11. Which accidents result from a substantival principle. Second, on these same grounds one may infer that /618b/ this natural resultancy from a substantival principle occurs only with respect to those accidents that are connatural to such an extent that they absolutely presuppose [the existence of] the very substance whose properties they are. The reason I draw attention to this is that according to a probable opinion which asserts that (i) the dispositions that temporally precede the [substantial] form are at the instant of generation intrinsically terminated in the grade [of being] required by such a form, and that (ii) numerically the same dispositions remain [after the generation]--according to this opinion, I repeat, these accidents do not emanate from the [substantial] form at the instant of generation even if they are properties that are maximally connatural to it, as in the case, say, of heat with respect to fire or of coldness with respect to water.11 This is so not because such a [substantial] form would not be sufficient for effecting [the quality in question] by means of resultancy, but because the quality is presupposed as already having been produced per se by the agent via the whole of the transmutation that temporally precedes [the generation] and is terminated at the instant of generation, naturally prior to the [substantial] form's being introduced.

12. A subordinate question is resolved. But, you will ask, even if this resultancy does not occur at the instant of generation, does it not occur immediately afterwards in the mode of conservation?

I reply that this question is not peculiar to those qualities that exist beforehand in the order of nature. Rather, with respect to all the properties that result from [substantial] forms at the very beginning one can similarly ask whether the resultancy in question occurs only in the mode of production at the first instant or time at which the thing is produced or co-produced, or whether instead it perdures in the mode of conservation for the whole time during which the property itself perdures, with the result that just as, in the case of illumination, it is not just the light but also the action of illuminating that perdures, so too, in a soul that has an intellect, it is not only the intellect but also the emanation of the intellect from the soul that perdures--and similarly, in the case of fire or water, it is not only the heat or coldness that perdures but also their actual emanation from their forms.

As I see it, on this question nothing can be established by a conclusive argument; instead, each of the two positions can be rendered probable on the basis of reasonable conjectures. For once the property in question has been effected by a natural emanation, there is no reason why it should need continuous conservation, since it already has perfect esse and exists in its connatural subject. On other grounds, however, it seems probable that this actual emanation does not cease, since its principle remains present and conjoined to it to the highest degree, and it always retains the same power to sustain the emanation. Likewise, it is necessary that the property in question be actually conserved by God; therefore, since there is in this case an intrinsic and proximate principle by which /619a/ it could be conserved, it is more natural for it to be conserved by the mediation of that principle.12 Further, one can better explain in this way why, other things being equal, it is possible for there to be greater resistance in the expulsion of a property from its proper subject than there is in its expulsion from some other subject.13

Hence, the second position seems more probable. And if this position is presupposed, then one must as a result claim that (i) at the first instant of the generation of water, for example, the coldness does not emanate from the form of the water, since the water at that moment acquires a coldness that has already been produced by the generating thing, but that nonetheless (ii) once the action of the generating thing ceases, the coldness is conserved by the intrinsic form [of the water] by means of a natural emanation, in just the way it would have been conserved if it had emanated from the form of the water from the very first instant.14

13. The distinctness of the natural resultancy. Third, one may infer from what was said above that the emanation or natural resultancy in question is something distinct in reality from (i) the form that results, from (ii) the [substantial] form from which it results, and also from (iii) the actual informing [by which the resulting accidental form informs the substance from which it results]. For these latter can all exist in the absence of a natural resultancy; therefore, the natural resultancy is something distinct from them.

The antecedent is evident from the fact that coldness exists in air as actually informing it and is accidentally conjoined to the form of air, and yet it does not emanate from the form of air. By contrast, heat, too, is conjoined to and informs air and, in addition, it emanates from the form of air.15 Therefore, emanation adds something.

You will object: Even though this appears to be the case when one compares a proper accident to an extrinsic accident, nonetheless, in the case of a proper accident itself the resultancy or emanation does not seem to be something distinct from the accident itself as actually informing [the substance].

But against this I reply, first, that it is one thing to inform and another to emanate; the former falls under the notion of a cause, the latter under the notion of an effect.

Second, in the example posited above concerning a last disposition,16 which does not emanate from the [substantial] form at the first instant [of the generation], one finds a proper accident which, [at the instant of generation], actually informs and is conjoined to its proper form and does not result from it, and yet which, in the time following [the generation], does result, i.e., is conserved. Therefore, the resultancy in question is distinct from the proper accident as [actually] informing [the substance].

Third, this is proved as follows: Because the resultancy in question is a certain kind of efficient causality, it does not occur without the concurrence of the First Cause. Therefore, it is possible for God at first to suspend this concurrence and prevent, say, the intellect from emanating from the soul and afterwards to posit the intellect in the soul through His own efficient causality alone. For if one considers just the concept of efficient causality, there is nothing contradictory in His doing by Himself alone that which can be done by the mediation of the soul. Therefore, in such a case we have the substance and being of the soul, along with the actual inherence of the intellect [in the soul], /619b/ without the actual emanation of the intellect from the soul (which is instead from God alone). This, therefore, is an indication that the emanation in question is something distinct, since whatever is separable in reality must also be distinct.

And on this basis the claim we made above is confirmed, viz., that the natural resultancy in question does not occur without an action. For what the resultancy adds, over and beyond the being of an inhering accidental form, is just the intrinsic property's mode of dependence on its [substantial] form as on an active principle. But, as we will see below, dependence on an active principle is the same thing as action.

14. An objection arises. But you will object: It follows that every action that is effected naturally and without freedom is a sort of natural resultancy. For just as, once the form of water is posited, a given property results through a real action and dependence, and later on another property results from that one (as St. Thomas teaches in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 77, a. 7), so too, once the sun, say, is posited, light naturally results in the air by means of an act of illumination.

I reply that on this point there is indeed some similarity. But there is a difference as well, since a natural resultancy is wholly intrinsic and in a certain sense has to do with the completed production of a thing, since it tends solely toward constituting the thing in the connatural state which is per se owed to it by dint of its generation. By contrast, an action, speaking properly and in the sense in which an action is normally distinguished from a natural resultancy, is instead extrinsic; and, speaking per se, it presupposes that the thing has already been constituted in its complete and natural state. That is also why it is commonly claimed that a natural resultancy is attributed to the generating thing and that it does not proceed from the [substantial] form, or from an intrinsic property, except to the extent that the [form or property] takes the place of the generating thing and is, as it were, its instrument. From this we have the axiom, "That which gives the form gives whatever follows from the form." For it is the role of the generating thing to constitute the generated thing along with the properties owed to it, whereas in other, proper, actions the thing is already operating by its own power and an action is attributed to it as to a principal agent within its own genus. This is the source of another difference that we will touch upon in a moment; for we believe that enough has been said [for now] about natural resultancy.

Second Assertion: On the Proper Efficient Causality of Accidents

15. The thesis is proved for the actions of bodies. The second assertion is this: When an accident is effected by a proper action that is distinct from a natural resultancy, then the proximate principle for effecting that accident is always some [other] accident.

This assertion /620a/ raises the familiar question about the distinction, among created things, of an active power from a substance, a question that is usually discussed with respect to (i) an angel's substance and his powers, (ii) the soul and its powers, and (iii) other forms and their active powers. And the thesis just posited is consonant with the teaching of St. Thomas, who everywhere draws the distinction, within all creatures, between a proximate faculty of acting and the substantial form, as one can see in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 54, a. 3 and q. 77, a. 1. This distinction is defended by Cajetan in the places just cited; by Capreolus in Sentences 1, dist. 3, q. 4; by Soto in Logica, chap. On Properties, q. 2; by Giles in Quodlibeta 3, q. 10; and by Hervaeus in Quodlibeta 1, q. 9.

The assertion is proved, first, by an induction made over all the effects that we experience. For, in the first place, we see that the elements exercise efficient causality only by means of the primary qualities, which, it is obvious, are true* and proper accidents. Next, the elements do not have even natural local motion itself except by the mediation of the qualities. For even though such motion pertains to natural resultancy, an a fortiori argument can nonetheless be derived from it.

Further, as far as we can tell from experience, a celestial body acts through qualities that are distinct from its substance, viz., through light or brightness; and from this we derive the argument that other, more hidden, influences are brought about proximately by the mediation of accidental qualities. For if the influence that is seen to be the greatest and most perfect of all is brought about in this way, then other influences will a fortiori be brought about in this way.

Again, when inanimate compound bodies (e.g., metals, precious stones, and others of this type) have actions of the sort in question, they seem clearly to exercise those actions through accidental powers. One indication of this, among others, is that these powers can be intensified, weakened, or destroyed, and in this they depend on the disposition of the primary qualities.

The same argument can also be made in the case of herbs and plants, which have powers directed toward various remarkable actions of attracting and expelling. In addition, some of them have heat-related powers, others have cold-related powers, and these powers are weakened in them by the passage of time or by changes in their disposition, despite the fact that the substance remains the same. This, then, is an indication that the powers in question are accidents.

The mystery of the Eucharist has also confirmed this same point for us. For we see that even after the substance [of the bread and wine] has been removed, the whole power of acting that previously existed in the accidents is conserved.

16. The thesis is proved for the actions of spirits. From here we ascend further to the actions of the soul in each of its grades. As far as we can tell from sensory experience, the principles of the accidental operations /620b/ are themselves accidents. This is evident in the case of vital or nutritional heat and in the case of the absorption or expulsion of excrement and similar things. For, first of all, the very diversity of such actions seems to be a sufficient ground for a distinction among the powers. And, further, there is also room here for the argument adduced above, viz., that these powers are intensified and weakened.

Next, the same point seems obvious in the operations of the senses. For over and above the diversity of the operations, the diversity of the organs is itself a sufficient indication that the proximate powers for these actions are per se distinct from one another and are thus accidental powers. And in the case of a human being these [sensory] powers must surely be necessarily distinct from the soul. Otherwise, they would be spiritual entities--which seems implausible, as will be proved at more length in its own place.17

Now as regards spiritual actions themselves and their principles, we cannot have as clear an experience. Nonetheless, since we can philosophize about them only on the basis, mutatis mutandis, of the things we do experience, we may justifiably infer that the same judgment should be made concerning them.

17. Every active power is really distinct from the substance. Therefore, from this induction St. Thomas infers with sufficient probability that in every created suppositum a proximate power of acting and operating is distinct from its substance and is consequently an accident.

It should also be added that in cases other than that of substantival generation, every instance of a substance's efficient causality is an instance some accident's efficient causality. For a substance can effect a substance only through generation. And so if a substance effects anything other than a generation, that whole thing is an accident. Therefore, the proximate principle for effecting an accident is always another accident.

This is confirmed by the fact that an accident is the proximate principle for effecting even a substantival generation, and this in a twofold manner: first, by preparing the way for the substantival generation by means of some previous accidental action; and, second, by cooperating instrumentally with the substance itself in the eduction of the [new] substantial form--as we saw in the preceding section. Therefore, an accident will a fortiori be the proximate principle for effecting every accidental action, either as a principal principle or as an instrumental principle--as we will see in a moment.

The consequence is evident from the fact that a substance is less proportioned to an accidental action than it is to a substantival generation; and, conversely, an accident is a more proportionate principle for an accidental action than it is for a substantival generation.

18. Arguments in support of the foregoing line of reasoning. However, an a priori proof /621a/ is difficult here, even though in the places cited above St. Thomas adduces several probable arguments--arguments that Scotus and others impugn with many arguments. Now subsequent to Capreolus, Cajetan defends these arguments rather extensively and copiously; but I take this defense to be both arduous and useless, since the arguments in question are not in fact demonstrations and there is no reason why, on such an obscure matter, they should be welcomed by a prudent philosopher. For unless one proves that it exceeds the perfection of a created substance to be the proximate and sole principle of an accidental action, we cannot give an a priori proof for the claim that the creatures that now exist and are now operating always require an accidental principle for operations of the sort in question. For we do not grasp the proper natures of these creatures in such a way that we might derive from those natures the specific reasons for this requirement or necessity. Therefore, if we proceed a priori, we will necessarily have to base our argument on the general concept of a creature, as St. Thomas astutely observed. But if the foundation for the argument is taken from the general concept of a created substance, then one will necessarily have to claim that it is impossible for God to create a substance that acts immediately through itself alone. However, this may be difficult to prove or to argue for persuasively, since the relevant mode of operating does not seem to require an infinite perfection in the genus of being or substance. But every perfection that does not require a lack of limitation seems to be communicable to a creature. And if it is indeed communicable, then on what basis is it clear that it has not in fact been communicated? Or how can the aforementioned requirement be proved from the general concept of a creature?

19. An induction over actions ordered toward substantival generation. Nonetheless, one should claim that even though the point in question cannot be demonstrated, one may infer with sufficient probability, on the basis of the induction made above, that a created substance is such that because of its own limitations it cannot by itself be the total and proximate principle of an accidental action or form.

The ostensible reason for this is the disproportionateness and distance that lie between such a principle and such an action, with the result that they cannot be conjoined except by the mediation of some proportionate means such as an accidental faculty or power. And so only an infinite substance, which surpasses every proportion and is able to overcome every disproportion, is sufficient by itself for all effects or actions of the sort in question.

And we can confirm this as follows: Every operation of a substance other than a substantival generation is such that either it tends toward effecting a substantival generation or it does not. It is fitting that an action /621b/ of the first type should require a proximate accidental principle, since it is an accidental disposition ordered toward a substance. For if the substance that is generated is such that it cannot be effected in the absence of antecedent accidental dispositions, that what wonder is that the substance that generates it should also require accidental dispositions that are at the same time powers of acting and of disposing with respect to the generation of a similar substance?

You will object that this argument is straightforwardly successful for the case of an agent that is univocal and of the same type, but not for the case of an equivocal agent, whose power can be of a higher type.

One may reply that if an equivocal agent is finite (and this is the sort of agent we are now discussing), then one should think about it by analogy with a univocal agent. For if an equivocal agent, through its own substantial form, contains eminently the substantial form of the thing that is going to be generated, then it will also contain eminently, through its own more noble accidental dispositions or properties, the accidental dispositions for that form. For since a substantial form is limited and fixed within its own genus, it cannot by itself alone contain eminently the perfections of diverse genera, and it cannot per se be capable of both the [substantival and the accidental] actions. This is sufficiently clear from the mode of acting that belongs to all bodies, both lower bodies and celestial bodies, as was shown by the induction made above. For just as there is no substantial form, of whatever order or perfection, which does not have within its own matter dispositions or properties that are proportioned to itself, so too there is no form which, in disposing another matter toward some substantial form, does not use its own accidental dispositions or properties as proper principles of acting--regardless of whether [this new form] is equal to or lower than it.

20. An induction over operations that are not ordered toward substantival generation. On the other hand, to the extent that we can tell from our experience of things, all operations that are not ordered toward a substantival generation are either operations of sentient and intellective life or else various and diverse local motions.

I am leaving to one side acts of illumination as well as the intentional actions of sensible species, since in their case it is sufficiently clear that they are effected by sensible accidents. Nor am I taking account of the operations of vegetative life, since they all tend per se toward a certain substantival re-generation. The same argument holds for this re-generation as for the original generation, since re-generation is likewise effected by means of an antecedent accidental alteration and disposition, as well as by certain intervening local motions, viz., motions of attraction and /622a/ expulsion.

On the other hand, other transeunt actions and operations, even if they are effected by means of eminent powers, are always either such that (i) they are effected by means of an alteration that is per se and primarily terminated in one or another of the primary qualities, whose proximate principles have already been shown to be certain accidents, or else such that (ii) they consist solely in a local motion of attracting or repelling, etc.

Now an argument for the claim that accidental faculties are required for the operations of cognizing and loving in the sentient grade [of soul] can be derived, first of all, from the very diversity of the operations and from the various dispositions that those operations require in their organs.

Likewise, an argument can be derived from the fact that immanent actions of this sort exist in the proximate principles themselves by which they are elicited. Hence, if those powers [i.e., principles] were nothing other than the substantial forms themselves, then all the operations in question would remain in the substantial forms alone. From this it would follow further that [sentient] operations of this sort in a human being are spiritual operations, in the same way that the [substantial] form itself is spiritual. In fact, it would also follow that such operations have to be spiritual without exception and in all [subjects], since every form that has an operation that is both proper to it and independent of matter as a subject must be per se subsistent as well as independent, in its own esse, of matter as a subject. For an independence in operation indicates what sort of independence there is in esse. This is the most powerful premise from which to infer the subsistence and immateriality of the human soul, viz., that its intellectual operation does not depend on the body as on a subject, even though it does depend on the body to supply the [sensible] species. Therefore, if the sentient operations [of the human soul] were independent of matter in the same way, then it would also be the case that every sentient soul is independent, and so both [the rational soul and the sentient soul] would be immaterial and spiritual. Therefore, it is from the mode of such material operations that one may best infer that a substantial form is not per se capable of exercising a [sentient] operation without a mediating faculty which must itself also be material and which must be present to the matter as soon as the latter has been informed by a substantial form of the sort in question.

21. An induction over intellectual operations. Now this last argument, which is taken from the materiality of the relevant action, does not go through in the case of intellectual operations. However, the other argument, the one from the diversity of the operations, does go through.

Also, in the case of the rational soul there is another, distinctive, argument: The rational soul informs the body through its substantival being, but it does not inform the body through its intellect or will, since these powers are non-organic precisely because they do not inform matter.

This argument does not apply to angels, and so, as Durandus claimed and as we will see in the proper place below, the matter is more doubtful in the case of angels.18 /622b/ Nonetheless, the general argument taken from the diversity of the operations is sufficiently effective even in the case of angels. For wherever an intellectual operation is accidental, there is a great diversity in the operations of the relevant grade [of being], especially in acts of understanding and affection. Therefore, since a created substance is of itself indifferent with respect to eliciting and receiving operations of this sort, it is very likely determined to and, as it were, accommodated to those operations through their own proper faculties and powers.

Likewise, every intellectual substance, by the very fact that it is created, necessarily has an accidental intellectual operation--as is obvious in the case of human beings and as we will show below in the proper place for angels. Such a substance also requires other accidental principles, e.g., intentional species and habits. What wonder is it, then, that it should require an accidental power that is proportioned to its operation? This is so especially in view of the fact that every intellectual nature must have within itself a power that is per se and primarily ordered toward the operation of understanding or the operation of loving. For since an intellectual nature is institued for the sake of these operations, it ought not to be instituted without a power that is per se and primarily ordered toward them. But since a power that is per se and primarily ordered toward an accidental operation takes its own species from that operation, it, too, is accidental.

And this seems to be the thrust of St. Thomas's argument that (i) the essence of a created substance is, as such, ordered only toward its own esse, whereas its power is ordered toward an accidental operation, and thus that (ii) [the essence and the power] are distinguished from one another in the way that powers are normally distinguished from one another by reference to their diverse acts. For even though this argument seems to presuppose that a created essence is distinct from its esse and is related to its esse in the way that an active or passive power is related to its act, nonetheless, if one abstracts from this question, the argument can be accommodated in the way just explained.

22. Powers with respect to local motion are really distinct from the substance. And on this basis, finally, one can be readily persuaded that the powers that exist in created things for effecting various local motions are accidental.

For, first of all, if the most important operations and the operations that are more intrinsic and vital require faculties of this sort, then a fortiori local motions require them.

Second, we know from experience that in natural things local motion, especially natural local motion, is effected by the mediation of an accidental faculty, e.g., gravity or lightness. Therefore, a fortiori, when a magnet attracts iron to itself or when rhubarb expels bile, they do so by means of accidental faculties. Therefore, the same thing will hold for all similar cases.

Third, even though local motion is more perfect than other motions /623a/ in the sense that it changes the substance or subject less, it nonetheless seems distant from the substance especially by virtue of the fact that it is not ordered per se toward the substance and that it has almost no agreement with or similarity to it. And so it is no wonder that a substantial form is not by itself capable of effecting this sort of motion without an accidental faculty.

Therefore, it is clear in general that created agents effect accidents through proximate accidental principles.

23. Authors who have contested the aforementioned line of reasoning, and their arguments. There has been no shortage of philosophers and theologians who have at least in part contradicted this thesis in their discussions of either the powers of the soul or the powers of angels. This is evident from Gregory, Sentences 2, dist. 16, q. 3; Scotus, Sentences 2, dist. 16, q. unica, and Sentences 4, dist. 45, q. 3; Durandus, Sentences 1, dist. 2, q. 2, and Sentences 2, dist. 3, q. 5; Marsilius [of Inghen], Sentences 1, q. 7, a. 7, and Sentences 2, q. 17, a. 2; and from other philosophers in [their commentaries on] On the Soul 2. These last will be dealt with [in our commentary on On the Soul 2], and we will say a few things below about angels.19

For now I only want to call attention to the fact that there is a difference between Scotus on the one hand and Gregory and his followers on the other. For Gregory does not posit any distinction at all in reality between forms and their faculties. From this it follows that he grants that it is through one and the same principle that the soul understands, wills, sees, hears, etc.--which is quite absurd.

By contrast, Scotus, in order to avoid this absurdity, posits a formal distinction between the powers and the forms. However, if by a formal distinction Scotus means a distinction that does not actually exist in reality but that at most exists virtually and "foundationally" and is brought to completion by the mind, then he differs from Gregory and the others only in his manner of speaking. On the other hand, if he means a true and actual distinction--at least a modal distinction--that exists in reality, then, first of all, he does not contradict the thesis posited above. For the mode in question will be a certain sort of accident--which is sufficient for the truth of the aforementioned assertion. Second, he is incorrect to deny that there is a real distinction in the most proper sense. For, as I will explain in a moment, a proximate faculty of operating is not a mode but a proper entity and real form. And so if the faculty of operating is distinct in reality from the substantial form, then it is distinct not as a mode but as an entity, and so it is really distinct in the proper sense. This is so especially in light of the fact that if there are any arguments that prove that there is a distinction in reality, then they prove a real distinction no less than a modal distinction; and, conversely, if the arguments adduced by [Scotus] and the others against St. Thomas's position carried any weight at all, they would work just as well against a modal distinction. /623b/

24. However, I do not consider it expeditious at this point to lay out the relevant arguments one by one--because (i) they do not seem troublesome to me, because (ii) they are sufficiently answered by Cajetan and others, and, finally, because (iii) almost all of them are aimed at showing that entities should not be multiplied without necessity, but that in this case there is no sufficient necessity--a claim they [try to] prove either by replying to St. Thomas's arguments or by arguing that because a substance is more noble [than an accident], it is fully capable of causing anything such that an accident might be added in order to cause it.

And, in particular, an argument taken from the first assertion above can be urged against us: If the powers flow from the essence by means of a true efficient causality, then the essence contains those powers eminently; therefore, the essence will be sufficient to effect through itself whatever it is able to effect through the powers.

However, one may reply that there is a sufficient necessity for a created substance to have principles accommodated to accidental actions, a necessity that is sufficiently proved by the inductions and arguments adduced above. For it is not the case that there can be demonstrations with respect to everything. Nor does it matter that a substance is more perfect [than an accident], both because (i) it is not always the case that what is more perfect is able to effect anything that a less perfect thing is able to effect, and also because (ii) from [the greater perfection of a substance] one may infer at most that the substance is a principal or root principle but not that it is also a proximate principle. But to be a principle in both of these ways is something more than to be a principle in just one of them. In this sense we can even claim that what is more perfect is the substance together with its powers rather than the substance by itself. And, finally, it is also the case that a hand is more perfect than a pen, and yet one cannot write without a pen.

To the last objection one can reply, in the first place, by appealing to a sensory example. For water is sufficient through its own form for coldness to result from it, and yet in the absence of the coldness it is not sufficient to make other things cold. Therefore, the consequence should be denied. The first reason that can be given is that it is possible for the power of a [substantial] form or principle to be limited both to perfecting its own suppositum and to a given mode of action or emanation. For instance, gravity moves the heavy body in which it exists but no other body. Second, in some cases a formal power or faculty is accommodated to an action in such a way that no virtual power suffices. For example, the agent intellect, either by itself or together with the phantasm, virtually contains the intelligible species. And yet [the intellect and the phantasm] cannot concur by themselves alone for an intellective act; rather, they can do so only by means of the species that they effect. Third, and most importantly, I do not think that an essence contains its properties eminently; rather it is only /624a/ insofar as it is an instrument that it contains them. This is why, as I explained before, the effect is attributed to the generating thing.20 But it is possible for something to be an appropriate instrument for effecting another thing, i.e., another faculty, and yet not to be an appropriate instrument for immediately effecting the action of that faculty--as is manifestly clear in the case of the instruments of a craft.

NOTES

1. Suarez discusses the hotly disputed question of the ontological status of relations in Disputation 47. Also, see the discussion of the shape of an artifact at Disputation 17, sect. 2, § 11.

2. Suarez is here using the term `property' (or `proper accident') in a technical sense for an accident that is apt to flow or emanate from a substance's essence. Thus, not every characteristic or accident a substance has counts as a property.

3. See Disputation 14, sect. 3. The question, then, is whether the relation of a proper accident to its substance is properly a causal relation.

4. The `first act' of a given entity involves its existing and having its characteristic causal power, whereas its `second act' consists in the exercise of that causal power.

5. See Disputation 15, sect. 1. As for the example, water has coldness as one of its natural properties. So when, after being heated, a quantity of water becomes cold again, this reversion to its natural state must be attributed to its own nature or form as a principle quo, and not to any extrinsic principle quo.

6. See Disputation 18, sect. 10. By calling an action a `proper accidental action' Suarez means to designate its ontological status as an entity in the accidental category of action. This category is discussed at length in Disputation 48.

7. In Disputation 13, sect. 11, Suarez argues at length that celestial bodies are neither generable nor corruptible. Hence, their forms can in no way be thought to be educed from--or in that sense to emanate from--the potency of matter.

8. See Disputation 48, sect. 2.

9. See Disputation 47.

10. The intellect is the `material' principle of its powers in the sense that it is the subject `from which' the powers flow.

11. The discussion which follows is predicated, then, on the disputed assumption that the accidents of the matter prior to the generation are numerically identical with those that inform the newly generated substance. For more on this, see Disputation 18, sect. 2, note 25.

12. Just as there can be secondary causes of a thing's production, so too there can be secondary causes of its conservation. An interesting further question is whether there can be secondary causes of creation as well. For Suarez's treatment of this question, see Disputation 20, section 2.

13. A standard scholastic example is that it is easier to heat air (which is naturally disposed to be hot and moist) than it is to heat water (which is naturally disposed to be cold and moist).

14. As should be clear, this argument presupposes that the disposition in question, viz., coldness, existed prior to its inhering in the generated substance.

15. Once again, according to the background theory being presupposed here, air is apt by nature to be hot and moist.

16. See § 12 above.

17. See § 20 below.

18. See Disputation 35, sect. 4.

19. See Disputation 35, sect. 4.

20. See § 14 above.