THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

EDITORS:

THE DOMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JOSEPH

Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C.

VOL.

XII

JANUARY, 1949

No.1

STATES OF LIFE

T

HE RELIGIOUS orders have always been a significant
factor in the life of the Church, contributing either to
her embarrassment by their failures or to her triumph
by their successes. Accordingly, a correct evaluation of the
religious state in general and an adequate appraisal of the
various types into which that state is divided are of the utmost
importance to all interested in the triumph of the Church. It
is to be regretted that by an unfortunate paradox in the history
of Christian spirituality modern thought on the religious state,
instead of being clearer and better developed than ancient
thought, is actually more confused. The varieties of the religious
state and their relationships to the development of Christian
perfection and the good of the Church have been subjected by
modern authors to confusion and distortion, whereas in the
minds of the great doctors of the past all was clear and orderly.
An example of this unhappy contrast may be found in the
remarkable lucidity of one of these great doctors of the past,
1

JOHN FEARON

St. Thomas Aquinas, and the distressing confusion of one of
these modern authors, the Trappist poet, Thomas Merton.
They are definitely at odds in the important matter of the
relative merits and the difference of function of the active and
contemplative orders.
Inasmuch as modern works on Christian morality often lack
a properly theological consideration of the special states of the
Christian life and the ordinary theological course today treats
of the religious life in a cursory and inadequate fashion, it seems
well to present the doctrine of St. Thomas on the active and
contemplative lives, and on the religious state and its formal
variants. Following this exposition we shall contrast the teaching of the Angelic Doctor with the modern viewpoint referred
to above. 1 In conclusion, we shall attempt to indicate a few of
the many practical conclusions, important to everyone, which
issue from St. Thomas' treatment of the religious life.
I

In ordinary speech, the terms "life" and " state" can have
reference to such things as magazines and civil institutions, yet
a misunderstanding of the usage of these terms is unlikely.
In ordinary speech, however, such terms as "contemplative
life" and" contemplative order," "religious life" and" religious order," or" religious state," are frequently confused. Not
so in theology. Theologically, the contemplative religious state
and the active religious state are defined and differentiated in
terms of the works of the active and contemplative lives, but
neither state is to be confused with its corresponding type of
life. In much· the same fashion, the medical profession and
the culinary profession are defined and differentiated in terms
of the works of the sciences of medicine and cooking, in terms
of health and nutrition, and yet they are not identified with
health and nutrition. Fruitful
thought on this
subject must keep this distinction clearly in mind. An under1 Cf. T. Merton, "Active and Contemplative Orders," The Commonweal. XLVII,
No.8.

STATES OF LIFE

standing of the relative merits of the contemplative and active
lives must include some idea of the thing divided, an insight
into the type of distinction involved, and knowledge of the
standards according to which the judgment is to be made.
"Life," as divided into "contemplative" and "active," is
not simply self-motion, a feature common to all living things.
The distinction between the contemplative and the active life
applies specifically to human life, intelligent and rational life.
In this sense we are accustomed to say that a man leads the life
of a philosopher or the life of .a sportsman inasmuch as his
delight and chief interest is either in thought or in
athletic accomplishments. Accordingly," life" as divided into
" contemplative" and "active" refers to the rational and
deliberate side of human life. And a form of life in this sense
is denominated as active or contemplative by what is chiefly
intended in that life. Inasmuch as some men chiefly intend the
contemplation .of truth and others chiefly intend an exterior
type of activity, human life can be conveniently divided into
active and conterpplative.
This distinction is adequate and sufficient. The thing divided
is the intellectual life of man, that type of self-motion which is
his alone, not the vegetative and sensitive life he has in common
with his pets. That intellectual life and its resultant knowledge,
from the view point of goal or end, is either an end in itself or
a means to action, speculative or practical. It is precisely from
this point of view that human life is divided into contemplative
and active. In the abstract, this distinction is obviously sufficient. In the concrete, however, no man's life is entirely one
or the other; every man's life must be a combination of both.
Even the metaphysician has to know how to tie his shoes. Yet
even in the concrete a man's principal intention cannot be
equally centered on both lives. Hence even in the concrete the
distinction is sufficient. A shoe-tying metaphysician is still
principally a metaphysician. Evaluating these two lives and
assigning a position of priority to one or the other, may be
accomplished with accuracy only upon the basis of a threefold

4

JOHN FEARON

consideration of priority: a priority of nature, a priority of
merit, and a priority in the order of generation.
From the viewpoint of the nature of the thing involved, i. e.
human life, that life will be superior in which the conditions of
human felicity are more fully realized. St. Thomas gives eight
reasons for the primacy of the contemplative life. First, the
contemplative life is an exercise of the noblest faculty of man,
the intellect, and it considers the noblest object of that faculty,
intelligible being, principally God. Secondly, the contemplative life is more continuous. Thirdly, the contemplative life
is more delightful. Fourthly, in the contemplative life a man
is more self-sufficient since he needs less. Fifthly, because it
is more true 9f the contemplative life that it is desirable simply
for itself and not as a means to something else, it is more perfect
than the active. Sixthly, the contemplative life is more quiet.
Seventhly, the contemplative life is more closely associated
with divine life, whereas the active life is more closely associated
with human life. Finally, the contemplative life is more purely
intellectual than the active life, which involves the operation of
other human faculties.
From the viewpoint of merit St. Thomas holds that in itself
the contemplative life is more meritorious than the active. He
argues to this position from the following premises: charity is
the root of merit; charity consists in the love of God and
neighbor and is more meritorious in those acts which directly
pertain to the love of God than in those which directly pertain
to the love of neighbor; the contemplative life is directly concerned with directly loving God whereas the active life is
directly concerned with directly loving neighbor. It can and
does happen however, that because of the charity of the one
meriting a work of the active life is more meritorious when done
with greater charity than a work of the contemplative life done
with lesser charity. This consideration in no way militates
against St. Thomas' objective conclusion; it is merely a question
of which visitor gets the best bed in the house, the prince or the
pauper. The answer is simple except in the case where the
L

S'fATES OF LIFE

5

pauper happens to have a special claim on one's affections.
Finally, in the order of generation the situation of primacy is
reversed. As embraced by men, the active life is a disposition
for the exercise of contemplation. Unquiet human nature must
first be brought under control before contemplation is a possibility to any great extent.
The various religious states are defined, differentiated, and
evaluated in terms of the works of the active and contemplative
lives. Yet the terms" contemplative religious state" and" contemplative life," " active religious state" and " active life" are
not to be confused. St. Thomas treats of life and state in two
distinct sections. However, it is true that an antecedent understanding of the two lives and their relative merits is essential to
an understanding of his thought on the various religious states
and their relative merits. In general, the religious state is
defined by St. Thomas as a state of perfection. Accordingly,
before approaching the question of the varieties of religious
state and their relative merits, an appreciation of the terms
state and perfection is indispensable.
In abstract terms, " state" properly signifies an immovable
condition of a thing disposed in a way suitable to its nature.
Etymologically the term comes from the word "stand," in
which position the natural disposition of one's members is
verified, 8e., head up and feet on the ground, though indeed in a
movable way. However, in human affairs the term" state" has
been transferred to signify an immovable condition in factors
which are internal, invariable, and personal. Theologically it
does not refer to such external variable factors as wealth or
The element of immobility in that condition is verified
by a permanence of personal obligation. Thus, in this restricted
sense, state is properly predicated only of freedom or servitude
whether in spiritual or civil affairs.
State is thus immediately subdivided into the state of freedom and the state of servility. In the spiritual order, each of
these' states is subdivided into that of beginner, proficient, and
perfect with respect either to good or evil, the true state of
freedom being one of virtue, the true state of servitude being

6

JOHN FEARON

one of vice. Yet it is to be noted that whereas the states of
slavery and freedom are specifically different, the states of
beginner, proficient, and perfect differ by way of emphasis.
Human perfection essentially consists in charity . Yet charity
is a virtue capable of growth. The outstanding steps in this
growth have been isolated by the doctors of the Church on the
basis of difference in emphasis. Thus they distinguish a state
of beginners in which emphasis must be placed on the avoiding
of sin and the resistence of evil inclinations. In the second
stage, that of proficients, emphasis is on the very process of
increasing in charity itself. Finally, they distinguish a third
stage, that of the perfect, in which primacy of interest is simply
that they cling to God and enjoy union with Him. When St.
Thomas refers to the religious state as a state of perfection he
means perfection in this latter sense. Just as the commandments impose obligations which remove those things contrary
to charity in the absolute sense, so too the counsels are ordained
to removing impediments to the development of charity into
the third stage, 80., that of the perfect. Yet the impediments
to the presence of charity in the human will *e things in themselves evil, whereas the impediments to the 'growth of charity
are not, e. g., matrimony, worldly business, and the like. Hence
the religious state consists essentially in the assumption of the
counsels as obligations. Since state is an immovable condition
this obligation must be permanent and solemn, i. e., one of
public vow recognized as such by the Church. For this reason
the religious state is in a special sense a state of perfection.
Thus, paradoxically, a man perfect in charity in the sense
that his prime interest is union with God, although he is not
solemnly bound by vows to the obligation of following the
counsels, is not in the state of perfection. And a religious bound
by vow to the obligation of following the counsels yet chiefly
interested in avoiding sin is in the state of perfection. For
though man's spiritual condition before God is of greater importance than obligations recognized in and by the Church,
it is this solemn obligation and not simply charity that places
him in a state of perfection, as that term is used by St. Thomas.

STATES OF LIFE

7

The question now arises as to whether there is such a thing
as variety in religious institutes and if so is it possible to grade
them in an order of excellence. In the first place, a religious
institute as an exemplification of the religious state is a school
in which men are habituated or trained in the perfection of
charity. And inasmuch as there are diverse works of charity
and diverse methods of training, it is possible to ascertain differences in religious orders. On the one hand, they can be
distinguished by their goals, that is by the diversity of works
to which various institutes are ordered, as, e. g., the care of the
sick, or the redemption of captives. On the other hand, they
can be distinguished by the diversity of practice, e. g., some
castigate the body by fasting, some by manual labor, and some
by standing in cold water. Since goals are universally significant
and, relative to societies, are in fact specificative, the prime
differences in religious institutes must be considered from the
view point of goal. Indeed it is true that there is a certain
community of goal or intention in all religious institutes and a
certain community of practice, Be., the vows. Yet both goals
and methods admit of an element of variation which constitutes
true differences. This variety has been always introduced and
conserved by the authority of the Holy See as of maximum
importance for the good of the Church as a whole.
St. Thomas holds that the varieties of the religious state are
not only defined and differentiated but also evaluated in terms
of the active and contemplative lives. And in an orderly fashion
he Jays down the standards according to which that judgment
is to be made. Differences on the part of goal are more important than differences on the part of method. Things can be
contrasted only in those aspects in which they differ, hence the
relative excellence of a religious institute flows from differences
with respect to goals primarily and to method secondarily. The
comparison from the part of goal is absolute inasmuch as goals
are sought for themselves; comparison on the part of method
is relative, for methods are good only in terms of their efficiency
in obtaining the goal.
The works of the active life to which a religious institute may

8

JOHN FEARON

be ordered as to a goal are twofold: some by their very nature
are derived from the fullness of contemplation-teaching and
preaching sacred doctrine; others, such as giving alms and
caring for the sick, are totally exterior occupations and are not
of their very nature derived from the fullness of contemplation.
The first type of work is preferable to simple contemplation by
way of addition for it is better to illumine than merely to shine.
Both the first type of work of the active life and simple contemplation are preferable to the second type of work of the
active life. The validity of this evaluation of works has already
been established in the consideration of the active and contemplative lives. Accordingly, from the viewpoint of goal, orders
which are ordained to preaching and teaching rank first. those
which are ordered simply to contemplation rank second, and
those which are occupied with exterior works of the active life
of the second type rank third. Within each of these three
classifications preeminence of various institutes is to be estimated: first, by more detailed gradations of the work involved;
secondly, by the number of works which can possibly multiply
excellence; and thirdly, by the proportionate effectiveness of the
statutes of each institute to accomplish proposed goals.
In this evaluation St. Thomas is speaking of instances of the
religious state and not of individual religious and their particular degree of holiness. All the religious orders have this in
common, that they tend toward the perfection of charity. It
would be a distortion of the text of St. Thomas to say that
simply active orders tend only toward the initial stage of perfection. Also, it is to be noted that it is not the multitude or
intensity of exercises that establishes the relative excellence of
method but their proportion to the goal, their effectiveness in
attaining the end of the order. This is not a concrete evaluation
of religious orders based upon the spirituality of their actual
members; but an objective analysis of the nature of these
institutes as stipulated in their statutes. This is a brief summary of the mind of St. Thomas on the active and contemplative lives, and on the religious state and its varieties. It has

STATES OF LIFE

9

been culled from his tract on the different lives 2 and from his
tract on the different states. 8

IT
The task of criticising Thomas Merton's article 4 is made
difficult by the fact that his sequence of thought is somewhat
perplexing. Lest this criticism suffer that same disadvantage,
we will offer: first, a general criticism of the argument as a
whole; secondly, a particular criticism of particular parts. The
author of this article proposes as his object the "argument
, action vs. contemplation' .... " Specifically he attempts" to
reconcile" an alleged contrariety between St. Thomas' teaching 5
that the" mixed vocation" is superior to the contemplative or
active vocation and his doctrine 6 that the contemplative life in
itself by its very nature is superior to the active life. This
proposed reconciliation is effected by a reference to qualifications of the general doctrine by St. Thomas himself and by an
interpretation of what St. Thomas must have meant in the light
of traditional teaching.
As regards the first article of the one hundred eighty-second
question, the author insists that the general evaluation of the
two lives must be qualified by the doctrine contained in the
response to the third objection to that article. "When he
admits that the active life can be more perfect under certain
circumstances, accidentally, he hedges his statement with half
a dozen qualifications of a strictness that greatly enhances. what
he has already said about contemplation. First, activity will
only be more perfect than the joy and rest of contemplation if
it is undertaken as the result of an overflow of love for God ...
in order to fulfil His will. It is not to be continuous, only the
answer to a temporary
It is purely for God's glory,
and it does not dispense us from contemplation. It is an added
• Summa Theol., II-II, qq.
• Ibid., qq. 183-189.
• Loc. cit.
• Summa Theol., II-II, q. 188, a. 6.
• libid., q.
a. 1.

10

JOHN FEARON

obligation, and we must return as soon as we morally can to the
powerful and fruitful silence of recollection that disposes our
souls for divine union." 7
In view of this response and in view of traditional teaching,
the author offers his interpretation of the sixth article, question
one hundred eighty-eight, which evaluates the various types of
religious orders. By active orders he says that St. Thomas here
" clearly" means orders engaged in external works of charity
or mercy for the good of others. He says that the bare statement "the religious institutes which are ordered to the work
of preaching and teaching hold the highest rank in religion"
is frankly misleading and conjures up nothing more than a
mental image of some pious and industrious clerics bustling
from the library to the classroom. Finally, he maintains that
in ranking the three types of institute St. Thomas was obviously
thinking of the traditional conception of the degrees of perfection so explicitly found in St. Augustine and St. Bernard.
Accordingly, as he sees it, by the "mixed" orders St. Thomas
must really have meant the peak of the mystical life, the
marriage of the soul to God, which gives the saints a miraculous
power and smooth and tireless energy in working for God and
souls.
By arguing that all religious, and in fact all lay people, do
(or at least should) in some sense arrive at this peak of mystical
life, the author considers that he has reconciled the contrariety
between the two texts of St. Thomas and has exposed the true
meaning of the Angelic Doctor. By way of corollary he concludes that all orders are best, that there is only one vocation
for all since all are called to the summit of perfection, and that
degrees and varieties in perfection, i. e., of religious vocations,
depend on the perfection of divine union and not on the means
the order has at its disposal for preaching and teaching.
In the first place, it is necessary to say that there is no such
contrariety as the author alleges between the two texts cited
from the SU1nma, nor is there any need for a reconciliation of
v Merton, loco cit.

STATES OF LIFE

11

them. Only on the basis of an inexcusable confusion between
St. Thomas' concepts of life and state could such a contrariety
be envisaged. The exception cited from the response to the
third objection of the first article, question one hundred eightytwo, is not "an exception to the superiority of the contemplative
life over the active life. The response merely states that in
certain circumstances the works of the active life can be
superior to the works of the contemplative life. It makes no
specific reference to types of active work done, e. g., preaching,
or caring for the sick. The assumption of such works according
to the stated circumstances would in no way vary the species of
the contemplative life which is established by primacy of
intention.
In the sixth article, question one hundred eighty-eight, St.
Thomas treats of the varieties and grades of the religious state.
Inasmuch as the religious state is a state of perfection, all
varieties and grades of that state have as a common intention
and goal perfection, in the sense of perfection in charity, without relation to the initial and proficient grades of charity. It
is common to all religious institutes that they pertain to the
religious state, and constitution in this state depends, not upon
simple intention, but upon the formal assumption of the
counsels as personal obligations. St. Thomas was not assuming
the grades of charity of St. Augustine and St. Bernard as the
"basis for his differentiation and gradation of religious institutes.
Actually he is both clear and explicit as to his foundation for
differentiation and gradation, se., the goals of the various
institutes considered in terms of the active and contemplative
lives. He indicates two types of work of the active, life: some
which of their nature flow from the abundance of contemplation-preaching and teaching, and others which of their nature
do not, i. e., the giving of alms and the reception of travelers.
Seen in this light, St. Thomas' conception of the most perfect
type of religious institute suggests something far superior to the
image of pious and industrious clerics bustling from the library
to the classroom, which Thomas Merton seems to have drawn
from it.

12

JOHN FEARON

The author appears to conclude too widely in judging that all
orders and all Christians do or should live according to a pattern
which mixes the works of the contemplative and active life,8
and thus fulfill the vocation of the most perfect type of religious
institute as described by St. Thomas. 9 For St. Thomas, to contemplate arid to pass on to others the fruit of contemplation has
a very specfic meaning. Some works of their very nature
are fruits of contemplation, se., preaching and teaching sacred
doctrine. Praying for others and being an example of contemplative perfection are not works of the active life which of their
nature flow from the abundance of contemplation. They are
part and parcel of the
life in the sense of being
solely contemplative. Indeed the abbot might strictly give to
the community the fruits of his contemplation; but he is only
the abbot, he is not the institute; his role is not the specific
goal of the institute. The Little Sister of the Poor who has an
intense interior life and cares for the aged not giving of the
fruits of contemplation in the strict sense. Such religious are
doing works of the purely active life and are merely being good
religious in the process. A religious of the most perfect type of
religious institute should engage in the works of the active
se., . preaching and teaching in conformity with the conditions
laid down by St. Thomas. 1o It does not logically follow that
every type of activity (e. g., caring for the sick, redeeming captives, being an example of contemplative perfection, praying
for others) is a giving to others the fruits of contemplation.
Strictly speaking, these works are not the fruits of contemplation. Hence it is absolutely false to conclude that there is only
one type of religious state and one vocation.
The author's corollaries as well, seem to be at variance with
the doctrine of St. Thomas. Degrees and varieties of religious
vocation (i. e., vocation in the objective sense of state) do most
certainly depend upon the works to which the various institutes
are ordained, e. g. preaching, teaching, etc. In St. Thomas, the
8

Cf. Summa Theol., II-II, q.

o Ibid., q. 188, a. 6.
10

Ibid., q.

a. 1, ad Sum.

a. 1, ad Sum.

STATES OF LIFE.

13

degree of union with God has nothing to do with this problem.
The author has completely obliterated all bases for differences
in religious institutes and has also overemphasized their common element, sc., their tendency to the perfection of charity,
but this is not the thought of St. Thomas.
Moreover, the author's division of religious institutes into
contemplative, active, and mixed is not an exact rendering of
St. Thomas' doctrine. These" mixed" orders in St. Thomas
are orders whose goal is works of the active life which of their
nature flow from the abundance of contemplation, not just
any works of the active life. The simple term "mixed" in no
way conveys this exactitude of thought. The author is also of
the opinon that St. Thomas uses the term " active life" in two
different ways, i. e., to denote (1) external acts of charity and
mercy for the good of others; (2) as the activity required for
the practice of any virtue by anyone in the purgative or illuminative ways. He thinks the Doctor changes from one sense to
the other without giving any warning when he is about to make
the change. It is true that St. Thomas uses the term" active
life" in slightly varying senses, but the opinion that this change
in sense occurs in a confusing manner is without foundation.
In the opinion of the Trappist author, the" mixed" orders
today in America realize their vocation to contemplate and give
to others the fruit of their contemplation by way of compromise,
sc., by dividing their duties between their nuns and their priests.
The nuns live in cloisters and do the contemplating and the
priests live in colleges and cities and do the teaching and
preaching.
As a matter of fact the goals and statutes of the
\
" mixed" orders in America today are the same as they were
since their foundations in Europe. Though they may fail to
realize their ideal to a certain degree, a failure that is easily
understandable considering the height of the ideal, compromise
has not taken place either legally or factually, nor has it even
been considered. In the article under 'consideration the author
makes an evaluation of the" mixed" and contemplative orders
according to two different standards. He evaluates the
" mixed" orders in America today according to what he thinks

14

JOHN FEARON

has actually happened to them, and evaluates the contemplative orders in terms of their statutes. Such a difference of standard might have the advantage of being rhetorically strong, but
it has the disadvantage of being logically very weak.
The author attempts to prove that the Carthusians are a
mixed order in the most flattering sense of the term because
they copy books, that the Cistercians are a mixed order because they once produced a school of mystical theology, and
that the nursing sisterhoods are mixed because they have a
deep interior life. In this he fails to prove his point. "Mixed"
orders are such because they have for their goal works of the
active life which of their nature flow from contemplation. Copying books hardly seems to be a work of that nature. It is
rather difficult to see how taking a sick man's temperature
with a thermometer is an operation of its very nature flowing
from the abundance of contemplation. His example of an
ecstacy of St. Bonaventure as a typical instance of giving to
others the fruit of contemplation is not an example of that fruit
at all. An ecstacy is not a work of the active life. H the aim
of this article was to convince Christians, both religious and lay,
that they subjectively had a vocation to the mystical life, then
the argument the author chose was peculiarly inappropriate.
The tract in the Summa, upon which the conclusions are based
can not lead to the author's conclusion, if the tract is properly
understood.

ill
The evolution of the Church in a given area can be divided
into three general stages. Initially, the major burden of the
missionary effort is to make the Church visible in that area.
The second phase of development consists in establishing the
Church on a more or less self-sufficient basis from the view
point of finances and clergy. The final and lengthiest stage of
that evolution is basically a matter of bringing the members of
the Church to the perfection of the Christian life and bringing
the population of that territory into the Church. These various
stages require diverse abilities and diverse agencies in the forces

STATES OF LIFE

15

which are attempting to bring about growth. This generation in
America is perhaps the first to see the day when the missionary
and second stage of development are more or less completed;
Accordingly, the Church in the United States today is at a point
when special emphasis needs to be placed on those special
abilities and agencies whose peculiar work it is to bring the
Church to perfection.
In this historical context one of the first practical applications
of St. Thomas' doctrine on the differentiation and gradation
of religious institutes is that these institutes whose special work
it is to bring the Church to perfection need to be encouraged.
For the most part the work of bringing the members of the
Church to the perfection of the Christain life is one of preaching
and teaching sacred doctrine. On the other hand the great bulk
of men outside the Church belong to the rather well-educated
but unreligious class we ordinarily characterize as secular. To
date no effective apologetic methods have been devised to
bring this class of men
the Church. But this much is clear:
the work is going to have to be done by men who are thoroughly
spiritual, in a word-contemplatives, and by men who are intellectually equipped by specialized doctrinal preparation, by men
who actually, personally, have contact with that class. In other
words one of the most vital needs of the Church in America
today is healthy and numerous institutes of the so-called
" mixed" type whose special goal is the work of preaching and
teaching, works which of their nature flow from the abundance
of contemplation.
Religious institutes of all types generally adapt themselves to
the conditions of time and place and adjust themselves to the
needs of the Church at the given moment. Thus, for example,
it happens that institutes with different goals will all engage in
missionary activity in the initial phase of the life of the Church
in a given territory. Yet in the final process of bringing the
Church to perfection it is of the utmost importance that their
particular goals and their specialization of activities be reemphasized. Hence the needs of the American Church in our
day call for a general return by religious institutes to the works

16

JOHN FEARON

for which they were originally approved and to which their
manner of life is. best proportioned.
As a further practical application of the thought of St.
Thomas on the varieties of the religious state and the standards
whereby the different institutes are to be evaluated, it might be
noted that it would be well if those actually engaged in vocational guidance would keep them in mind. Those burdened
with the duty of providing vocational advice to youth should
be perfectly familiar not only with the different types of work
done by each institute but also with the proportion the observances of each institute bear to the intended goal. A valid
judgment of a religious institute must be made from both
points of view. Vocational guidance should not be a mere
process of populating a favorite community or recommending
the institute which is most arduous in the sense that its observances are absolutely the most rigorous. In conclusion it might
be well to recall that St. Thomas maintains that the differences
in religious institutes are for the beauty and good of the Church.
Both from the viewpoint of doctrine and from tHe viewpoint
of practical attitudes, questions of difference in kind and difference of degree should be approached with that consideration
first and foremost in mind and heart.
JOHN FEARON, O.P.
CoUege of St. Albert the Great,
Oakland, California.

CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF MAN 1

I

I

N TREATING of modem man's metaphysical and religious
needs, two preliminary points require brief mention. How
do these needs compare with other human needs that are
commonly recognized? And what special weight should be
given to the word "modern " in this context?
There is a legitimate sense in which the metaphysical and
religious requirements imposed by our having a human nature
stand alongside the other requirements for the good life. At the
outset of an empirical inquiry into the human condition, it
is only necessary to observe that the human drives toward
realization are various, that the reaches of human desire extend
in many directions. Merely private wants and social ones, those
which are only momentary and those which remain throughout
a lifetime, wants which are shared with other animals and
those which seem peculiar to man, these are some of the
distinctions which come immediately to mind. It is usual to
differentiate between the technological, biological, cultural,
social and political aspects of our life. In addition, man can be
viewed-and, indeed, can regard himself-from the standpoint
of widest generality as one being among others in the world,
displaying certain traits and having certain needs in virtue of
his inclusion in the common situation. Like the rest of nature
his tendency toward the good is a search after actual goods
and hence after some share in God's perfection. He is, then,
also a metaphysical and religious animal.
What distinguishes man from the other parts of nature is
his ability to place an interpretation upon his life and to guide
his actions by the insight so gained. He is not content simply to
1 The educational
importance of these conceptions of man is borne in mind
throughout this study.

17

18

JAMES COLLINS

be implicated in the world and to be subject to certain desires.
He wishes to understand his presence in the world, to test and
order his desires, and to pursue his ends in accord with the
meaning he places upon his existence. In addition to the fact
of various human needs, there is question of the nature of the
distinction and order obtaining between them. When this comparative study inquires in a fundamental way about the nature,
existence, operations, and ends of man, one avenue has been
opened to a metaphysical treatment of human nature. Because
this approach tries to determine the most comprehensive traits
of our experience, it holds the first rank among the ways of
gaining self-knowledge.
The pursuit of metaphysical and religious wisdom is an
abiding and central need of man. Its great importance does not,
however, seal it off in proud isolation from man's other preoccupations. Investigation of the structure and dynamism of
being in general and of our human mode. of being cannot be
carried on in an intellectual vacuum; It is impossible to discover
the common pattern of human experiences unless they are
actually attended to at every level where they make their
. appearance. There are metaphysically important aspects of
our artistic, political, scientific, and economic activities. If they
are disdained, the resultant metaphysics will be an artificial and
inhumane account which fails to provide a basis for human
unity and integration. In revenge, the other sciences which
touch upon man' will try to organize human life around one or
another particularist standpoint. Some such defection on the
part of metaphysicians has led to the present state of affairs,
in which general agreement about the sense of human existence
is neither present nor held desirable.
If metaphysics is commonly regarded as a misty and irrelevant pastime or as the .scullery maid in the scientific house,..
hold, the responsibility lies primarily with philosophers themselves. Many of them have either taken scandal or taken
fright at one stubborn feature of human reality: its temporal,
historical character·. Those who have taken scandal tend to
depreciate the importance of the world of development and to

CONTEMPORARY

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OF MAN

19

overstress the timeless and changeless nature of metaphysical
principles. They retreat into a realm of immutable· essences
where all is neat, undisturbed, and thoroughly inhumane. Those
who take fright are liable to abandon all permanent truths and
autonomous philosophical thinking. Their flight leads to some
place of refuge among the physical or social sciences where the
most acute and radical questions need not be faced.
Both the eternalistic and the scientistic casts of mind are
foreign to a perennial philosophy. Perhaps this incompatibility
is less apparent in the case of the former group, but it is no less
real. A perennial philosophy is not an eterpalistic one, but one
which perseveres and grows throughout the years. It recognizes
the permanent validity of some metaphysical principles and
concepts, but also. the need for developing and correcting them
and the danger of losing sight of them. It refuses to convert
truths drawn from and referring to the real world into buildingblocks of a deductive or dialectical substitute for this world.
Metaphysics, like every other human discipline, is itself subject
to the common risks of temporal existence. It is not relativism
but awareness of the human character of philosophy to allow
that insight may increase or deteriorate, that the forms of truth
may change and its content be corrected and developed, that
the stress ought to be different in the modern age than in times
past, and that a living tradition has special oblig-ations which
are historically conditioned.
One of these obligations is to approach a problem in a way
that is familiar and pertinent to contemporaries. It is no secret
that there is a crisis today in the Western world's conception
of man himself. This is a focal point of philosophical discussion.
Apart from the Christian teaching on man, there are at least
three general attempts at providing an acceptable philosophical
anthropology: Marxism, naturalism, and existentialism. After
making some comparative remarks about these competing philosophies in relation to Catholic university education, I wish
to examine each theory briefly in its historical and doctrinal
aspects. The educational implications of this analysis should
not be difficult to draw out.

JAMES COLLINS

IT
What immediately strikes one in viewing these representative
theories is a sense of familiarity. They have all been met with
upon previous occasions. The student of the social sciences is
well-acquainted with political and economic aspects of Marxism. If we would believe the naturalists, their methods and
assumptions are held in common with the physical scientists.
In any case, the reverberations of naturalism have been felt
by those who are sensitive to the deep-running currents in
American education. Finally, one meets with sounds and
rumors of existentialism in every comer of the literary scene
today. All these positions are firmly established in our world
and solicit attention and allegiance on their several grounds.
We are not dealing, then, with systems of pure speculation,
but rather with philosophies which deliberately envisage the
practical order and the possibility of transforming it in definite
ways. Yet although a practical program affecting our cultural
and institutional life is intended, acquaintance with the philosophical background remains indispensable. It is true that a
large number of camp followers neither can master nor care to
master the philosophical foundations of the cause being promoted. This fact does not dispense others, who do not belong
to the fold, from reckoning with these underlying principles if
they hope to offer a convincing estimate and perhaps an alternative proposal. Otherwise, discussion will remain at the surface and will never penetrate to the heart of the issue.
Investigators working only with the tools of literary and
moral criticism are often so intent upon pointing out the disastrous results to which existential writings lead that they
farget to direct attention toward the theoretical sources from
which they draw steady inspiration. Granted that a sensibility
and character nourished upon the novels and plays of Sartre
will be inclined toward atheism and amocalism, this provides
no satisfactory answer to the reader who is already troubled
about the accepted views on God and the moral law. Literary

CONTEMPORARY

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OF MAN

and moral appraisal should be integrated with a properly philosophical treatment of Sartre's conception of man, freedom, and
the universe. Otherwise no answer can be forthcoming to the
inevitable retort that to depict man as the creator of his own
standards of conduct in a godless world is only to depict him
with superior realism " as he is in fact." 2
A similar lassitude steals over the mind when it is confronted
by Marx and Communism. An admirable amount of industry
may be expended on biographical research, on economic and
sociological descriptions of the nineteenth-century environment,
on detailed historical studies of the fortunes of Marxism and
Leninism, and on the discrepancy between promise and actuality in lands under a Communistic regime. Such efforts are
indispensable but not enough to constitute an adequate critique
of the Marxian view of man. Nor is the missing element
supplied merely by collecting Marx's and Engels' obiter dicta
about God, religion, and the spiritual side of man. To publicize
these sayings is not the same as to expose the taproots of their
philosophical position. Here again is an obligation to push the
discussion just as far back in the direction of fundamental commitments as Marx himself has done.
This same requirement holds all the more stringently in the
case of John Dewey because of the fact that Dewey himself is
a philosopher. His case does not stand or fall completely with
the activities of the Deweyites, and preoccupation with the
latter is a manifest instance of ignoratio elenchi. Dewey has
underlined the close relationship between his general convictions about experience and nature (including human natl.lre)
and his stand on educational, social, and artistic matters. The
latter cannot be taken meaningfully by themselves with only
a token recognition of their theoretical setting. It will not do
to skirt the philosophical concepts, since Dewey himself will
not allow his critics to make the evasion if they really mean
to be entering into discussion with him. If he is to be taken
• This is the contention, for instance, of one of Sartre's most alert literary
followers, R. Campbell: lean-Paul Sarire ou une litterature philo8ophique (rev. ed.,
Paris, 1946), especially in his polemical chapter IX.

JAMES COLLINS

seriously as an educationist, then he begs that he be taken
seriously ·as a philosopher who claims to justify his educational
theories in terms of philosophical naturalism.
In the university community, separatism should tend to disappear and the gap between the various disciplines to close not
by way of amalgamation but by more ready communication
and tighter integration of the sciences. The study of man is a
joint undertaking which needs the contributions of students
working at various levels and standpoints. The success of the
venture at any stage depends upon two prime conditions. No
single discipline should consider its own report to be sufficient
without the others, but each should try to co-ordinate its findings with the rest of the available evidence. Secondly, the work
of co-ordination and synthesis is facilitated when an intellectual
principle of order is admitted. The primacy of metaphysical
and religious aspects is expressed educationally when the metaphysician and theologian take the trouble to inform themselves
exactly about the state of studies in other fields and also when
workers in the more particular sciences recognize in practice
the decisive bearing of metaphysical and religious considerations upon the final result. The ultimate judgment about the
three conceptions of man under consideration is a philosophical
and theological responsibility.

III
Like many other minds of an innately academic sort, Karl
Marx took delight in ridiculing the bookish dons, especially the
professors of philosophy. In later life, he looked back to his
university days with none of the customary affection. He
seemed to have been ashamed of his academic past, but
although he depreciated it, he cannot be said ever to have
escaped beyond its influence. It has often been remarked that,
for all his celebration of action and the concrete manipulation
of forces, Marx himself was pre-eminently the theoretician, the
student of social affairs from a relatively safe distance. More
significant for our purpose is the fact that his theorizing about

CONTEMPORARY

THEORIES

OF MAN

political economy was conditioned not only by his associations
with the French radicals and by his factual studies in the
British Museum but also by his early training in speculative
philosophy. This filiation is sometimes simplified to the point
of merely repeating the famous quip that Marx's aim was to
set the Hegelian dialectic back on its feet. It is nearer the
truth to say that he accepted and improved upon Feuerbach's
reversal of the dialectical top and bottom. A study of this
mediate relationship of Marx to Hegel by way of Feuerbach
(as far as critical appraisal is concerned) brings into relief the
attitude of Marx towards humanism. 8
Several times in the course of his writings, 4 Hegel presents a
synoptic view of modern philosophy as it leads up to his own
system. He took his own major accomplishment to be the
synthesis of an idealistic and monistic notion of the absolute
with a dialectical mode of philosophical thinking. This is an
accurate judgment, for Hegel did all in his power to make such
a view of God and philosophy reasonable. He regarded the
absolute in a quasi-Aristotelian way 5 as pure thought or mind,
but as mind involved in the dialectical process which comprises
the finite world of categories, physical nature and the spiritual
achievements of man. The purpose of this development is to
make explicit and actual all the latent powers of spirit, so that
it can come to know itself in and through its antithetic forms
and historical phases. Yet Hegel also seeks to persuade us that
spirit embraces the finite process within its own perfect, selfsame and eternal actuality. This actuality, being a living consciousness, is by nature thoroughly dialectical.
To be one of Hegel's immediate successors was a trying lot,
since one had to choose between the safe mediocrity of J;llerely
filling out the paragraphs of his system with secondary details
• This approach has been made successfully by F. Gregoire: Aux sourcea de la
pensee de Marx: Hegel, Feuerbach (Louvain, 1947).
• See, for instance, The Phenomenology of Mind (Eng!. tr. by J. Baillie, rev.
second ed., London, 1981), PP .. 80, 802-04.
• Hegel's interpretation of Aristotle poses the major comparative problem in G.
Mure's An Introduction to Hegel (Oxford, 1940), chs. I-VI.

J.AMES COLLINS

and the· audacious task of challenging the major principles
themselves. Ludwig Feuerbach wished to choose the better part
and proceeded to make radical suggestions about the key
concept of the absolute. The controversial point concerned the
nature of the relation between the absolute and man. Hegel
had looked upon man as a necessary manifestation of the
divine idea, as the being in whom the divine idea comes into
conscious possession of itself. Man's perfection, therefore, consis-ts in working out dialectically his identity with the absolute
mind. The philosophy of the absolute reveals to man his true
essence as being the absolute itself. Feuerbach challenged this
assertion that the divine mind or spirit was the inmost core of
human nature. In order to reach the state of divine selfcontemplation, man would have to lose his characteristic proportions and mode of being. The Hegelian philosophy is a
kind of crypto-theology and must be replaced by what Feuerbach liked to call a thorough-going anthropology. Only when
the philosophy of the absolute is converted into the philosophy
of man can_there be a vindication of the concrete human being.
In order to found his new version of humanism, Feuerbach
found it necessary to repudiate not only absolute idealism but
also the ordinary religious belief in God as an entity independent of and superior to empirical men. 6 Both viewpoints result
from a failure to organize human life around a completely
human ideal. Feuerbach declaredthem both to be instances of
what Hegel himself referred to as the state of estrangement or
alienation from oneself. If the absolute mind were the true
substance of man, as Hegel avers, then men in their ordinary
condition would stand toward such an absolute much as slaves
stand toward the master who determines the meaning and disposition of their lives. A similar relationship of lord and
bondsmen characterizes the religious attitude of worship. The
worshippers fail to appreciate and cultivate their own powers
when all attention is paid to glorifying a transcendent God.
• Cf. The Essence of Christianity (Eng!. tr. by M. Evans, London, 1858), and
the anti-Hegelian essays collected in vol. II of Feuerbach's Siimtliche Werke, ed.
by Feuerbach (10 vols., Leipzig, 1846-66).

CONTEMPORARY

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OF MAN

What is the real import of the ineradicable religious tendencies of mankind, especially in their noblest Christian form?
Hegel had taught that the same insight was present in religion
as well as in the philosophy of the absolute, although it stood
forth in its true conceptual form only in its philosophical
expression. Feuerbach agreed that the content is the same in .
both cases, but maintained that only an anthropocentric philosophy can interpret the religious impulse correctly. Its message
speaks in favor of man himself rather than of an absolute
subsistence apart from man. Human individuals, aware of the
disproportion between their actual shortcomings and their deepest aspirations, are inclined to keep the latter feelings pure and
to lend them greater sanction by attributing the perfections to
an objective being set over against themselves. Feuerbach
denies that he is an atheist in the opprobrious sense of one who
has no regard for man's sublimest ideals. But he does wish to
dissociate these ideals from a being foreign to man, and in this
sense he denies the existence of God. All the attributes which
are usually objectified in God are returned by Feuerbach to
man himself in his essential nature and tendency. In this
recognition of the divinity and communal oneness of man,
human individuals attain the concrete unity and freedom .for
which they have always been striving under various metaphysical and religious guises. Thus Feuerbach declares the essence
of religion and Christianity to be man himself as a self-founded
being.
Marx read this critique of Hegel and orthodox religion with
great enthusiasm, for it opened a way for him to pass beyond
me_re left-wing idealism to a more independent position. He
liked Feuerbach's repudiation of a metaphysical absolute, his
replacement of the science of the absolute by a theory of man,
his vindication of feeling and his hints about the social factor
in human nature. On the other hand, there was plenty of work
left for Marx himself to do. 7 The Feuerbachian analysis of
• Marx's early criticisms of Hegel and Feuerbach are gathered in the first volume
of the first section of the Marx-Engels Historisch-kritische Gesamt-Ausgabe, ed.

26

JAMES COLLINS

religion was true as far as it went, but it had not ascertained
the cause of the religious projection of an ideal world into a
subsistent region of its own. This cause Marx found to lie in
the social and economic conditions under which men were
living. Feuerbach had successfully reversed the relation between the ideal and the real, revealing the former to be a
derivative of the latter .. But his realism was not sufficiently
dialectical and critical, since it left untouched the actual condition of flesh-and-blood men. This reluctance to engage in
social as well as religious criticism was attributed by Marx to
the passive view Feuerbach held of sense perception and,
ultimately, to his remaining in the theoretical sphere where
thought does not issue in action of a revolutionary sort.
It seemed clear to Marx that the critique of religion is only
a preface to the more basic critique of political economy. For
why are men led to objectify their aspirations if not because of
the intolerable social conditions under which they are forced to
exist? Religion is both the expression of this miserable state and
a protest against it, a protest which yet is quite ineffective since
it leads men to dream about an illusory happiness coming from
on high. The radical cure for the religious_sickness is not the
reduction of theology to anthropology but the surpassing of
all ologies in favor of a revolutionary transformation of the
social and economic order. Hegel had said· that we can speak
of man properly only when he is regarded as a member of civil
society and as having certain needs and functions in that
society. Marx admitted that man is properly human only as a
unit of society. But he pointed out that the established order
within which Hegel sought to define man (and against which
Feuerbach did not rebel) was itself inhumane and hence no fit
matrix for the total realization of human potentialities and
hopes. As modern society has developed, the vast majority of
men are reduced to the inhuman status of means of production
D. Riazanov (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1927 if.). The mature position of Marx is
reflected in F. Engels' Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of German Claaaical
Phil080phy (Engl. ed. by C. Dutt, New York, 1984). See S. Hook's From Hegel
to Man (New York, 1986).

CONTEMPORARY

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OF MAN

and pawns of the impersonal demands of the market. Some
way must be found to confer personal dignity upon empirical
individtialsand so to emancipate man simply as man.
We may leave Marx at this intermediate stage in his journey.
His theories about history, class warfare, the proletariat, and a
classless society constitute his more definite proposals for ushering in the era of Marxian man. He employed the dialectical
method for materialistic ends, believing that religion, the conflict of classes, and the misery of self-alienated societies would
disappear when and only when his view of man as essentially a
collective and economic being prevailed in a concrete way. His
critique of religion is integral with, but also subordinate to, his
more basic critique of political economy. If man is to find any
salvation on the face of the earth, Marx looked for it in a
quickened appreciation of the dignity.of work as a union of
theory and action, insight and sense, freedom and discipline.
His socio-economic interpretation of man is in many ways the
strict outcome of Hegelian philosophy and the bourgeois, view
of life. It goes a long way toward making understandable the
attraction which some men of good will have felt, at least
momentarily and in theory, toward Marx and Communism.
Here, then, is one modern attempt to provide a satisfactory
account of man and his vocation.

IV
Another answer is proposed by American naturalism. This
movement is still subject to growing pains and perhaps cannot
as yet be given a rounded description. It reckons Frederick
Woodbridge, Morris Cohen and (satta voce) George Santayana
among its forbears, and still benefits from the vigorous aid of
John Dewey. One attempt at stating compendiously the common convictions binding naturalists together reads thus:
Naturalism can be defined negatively as the refusal to take" nature"
or " the natural" as a term of distinction. . . . It is opposed to all
dualisms between Nature and another realm of being-to the Greek
opposition between Nature and Art, to the medieval contrast of the

28

JAMES COLLINS

Natural and the Supernatural, to the empiricist antithesis of Nature
and Experience, to the idealist distinction between Natural and
Transcendental, to the fundamental dualism pervading modern
thought between Nature and Man. For present-day naturalists
" Nature" serves rather as the all-inclusive category, corresponding
to the role played by " Being" in Greek thought, or by " Reality"
for the idealists .... Naturalism thus merges in the generic activity
of philosophy as critical interpretation-the
examination of the
status of all these varieties of " stuff" in Nature-or in Being, or in
Reality-and the discovery of their various relations to each other
and their respective functions in man's experience. Positively,
naturalism can be defined as the continuity of analysis-as the
application of ... " scientific methods" to the critical interpretation
and analysis of every field.s

One further general point is to be noted. Naturalism is not only
antidualist but also antireductionist, i. e., it does not wish to
deny the presence of various levels or modes of being, provided
that they are all included within nature and are susceptible of
treatment by the method of physical science.
Naturalism as so defined owes its greatest debt to John
Dewey, a debt, it will be noted, which is primarily philosophical
rather than educational. Dewey's philosophical development
during the last two decades of the nineteenth century is decisive
for the whole later course of American philosophy, especially
for the naturalism which is its direct outgrowth. 9 Like most
American thinkers of that period, he turned for philosophical
guidance to Hegel. The present decline in serious Hegelian
studies is a handicap to the historical appreciation and criticism
of Dewey and the naturalistic movement in America. It was
natural for Dewey to follow the lead of Hegelian masters like
George S. Morris in regard to the continuity of all modes of
thought and being and the embracing character of universal
mind. Dewey sought to show
logical theory the organic
correlation and underlying sameness of all entities and poles of
• J. Randall "Epilogue: The Nature of. Naturalism," in Naturalism and the
Human Spirit, ed. by Y. Krikorian (New York, 1944), pp. 857-58.
• Dewey's earlier standpoints have been chronicled by M. White: The Origin of
Dewey's Instrumentalism (New York, 1948).

CONTEMPORARY

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OF MAN

29

tension in the universe. He sided with the Hegelian denunciation of hard-and-fast dualisms in method and reality. This
antidualism placed him in simultaneous opposition to Kant
(who set off the transcendental from the empirical, the theoretical from the practical) and to the British empiricists (who
regarded the knowing subject as passively and nonorganically
related to an independent object) .
Dewey's study of Darwinian evolutionism and the psychological theories of William James affected his outlook as radically
as had Kant's reading of Hume. lO Darwin re-enforced the conviction about man's continuity with the rest of nature, but
did so in biological terms rather than idealistic. For his part,
James suggested a way of interpreting intelligence and the
cognitive process according to a biological pattern. If knowing
can be taken as but one instance of the vital and purposive
adjustment of organism to environment, then a synthesis can
be made of the best elements in the older idealisms and empiricisms. This was the aim of Dewey's experimentalism and his
adoption of the pragmatic view of mind and truth for his own
use in logical and social inquiry. Whereas Hegel had understood science to be the dialectical method used by philosophical
reason in gaining knowledge of the absolute, Dewey restricted
the meaning of scientific method to the procedure followed by
the physical sciences (with the biological sciences questionably
included under this heading). These sciences display the common type or pattern of inquiry which must be followed in all
fields where warranted knowledge is to be obtained. Dewey's
plan is to empty the method of the physical sciences of all
definite metaphysical import, erect it into the sole universally
.valid scientific method-because of its admitted success in its
10 Dewey gives his own account of this transition in his essay, "From Absolutism
to Experimentalism," in Contemporary American Philosophy, ed. by G. Adams and
W. Montague (2 vols., New York, 1925), vol. II. Here Dewey reealls that the
reading of a text on physiology written by T. Huxley gave him his first interest in
philosophy. Admiring the interdependence and interrelated unity found in the
human body, Dewey "was led to desire a world and a life that would have the
same properties as had the human organism" (p. 18). This organismic prejudice
has operated throughout his later speculations.

30

JAMES COLLINS

original application-and extend it to all subject-matters of
inquiry.ll
More recent naturalists are attempting to execute this program in detail, especially in the case of those specifically human
areas which were formerly reserved for the Geisteswissenschaften. Men like Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook, and John
Randall stress both the polemical and the constructive interests
of naturalism. A favorite object of attack is the Catholic
Church, which upholds a real distinction between the natural
and the supernatural orders and the reality of the latter order.
Along with Catholicism is attacked Scholastic philosopbw,
which is accused of rending the seamless robe of human experience by admitting a transcendent God and personal survival of
an immateriaJ human soul after death. The list of recusants is
extended to include Plato, Kant, John Locke in certain aspects
and, generally, all philosophers who have recourse to "transcendental" causes and principles of explanation. Their common fault is to have supposed some entity beyond nature,
whether this transcending being be God raised above His
creation or man in contradistinction to the physical universe
or reason operating according to a method distinctively its own.
On the other hand, the naturalists also profess opposition to
the" nothing-butters "in philosophy, the simplistic thinkers
who would reduce the universe to nothing but cosmic mind or
nothing but matter in motion. This disqualifies a crude materialism as well as metaphysical idealism.
Such wide negative criticism would seem to leave only a
scanty group of acceptable thinkers in the past who can survive
the naturalistic separation of sheep from goats. However,
admiration is expressed for what is termed the naturalistic
spirit of Aristotle, Spinoza, and Hobbes. What wins approbation in these philosophers is not their peculiar sets of doctrine
but their application of the same categories to man as well as
to the rest of nature. Even Aquinas is commended for this
11 Consult Experience and Nature
(Chicago, 19U), ch. Ii Logic: The Theory of
Inquiry (New York, 1988), pt. IV.

CONTEMPORARY

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31

trait as well as for his insistence upon the unity of the human
composite. 12 Hegel is looked upon with favor insofar as he
advocated the unrestricted use of a single method, although the
warning is issued that method must now be taken in the more
empirical sense suggested by successful operations in mathematical physics and biology. If scientific method is adequate
for studying all phases of 'reality, then at least in principle
there is assured a continuity of analysis. This means that the
same notions and principles can be applied to all sections of
experience. No exceptions are allowed, and whatever cannot
be treated in terms of the common categories and method
cannot claim the status of reality.
Francis Bacon described the purpose of his Instauratio
Magna to be the restoration of the fruitful commerce and unity
between the mind of man and the nature of things. John
Dewey, who pays homage to Bacon as a kindred empirical
mind/ 3 declares this to be also the goal of the naturalistic
reconstruction in philosophy. It wishes to restore man to nature
and thus to guarantee a single world of experience untroubled
by an infinite God or a kind of " spiritual" aspect peculiar to
man. Certain phases of human nature have been successfully
submitted to scientific analysis. There is no obstacle in principle against interpreting the rest of human experiece in the
same way. Whatever reality is contained in man's artistic
works, his moral character and his religious attitude can be
determined empirically and incorporated within the naturalistic
context. Notonly human bodily activities and cognition. but
also the pursuit of beauty, virtuous living, and self-sacrificing
devotion are natural events and come within the scope of intelligence as naturalistically construed. Naturalists have hope of
closing the gap between the descriptive and the so-called normative sciences, between fact and value, isness and oughtness.
They look to a future situation in which human life and society
12

J. Randall, loco cit., p. 870.

18

cr. the remarkably uncritical pages devoted to Bacon in Dewey's Reconstruc-

tion in Philosophy (New York,

ch. II.

JAMES COLLINS

will be just as effectively explored and organized for man's
benefit as is nonhuman nature under scientific dominion.

v
Perhaps as a dialectical counterbalance to the Baconian sort
of optimism and confidence in the future accomplishments of
science is the widely popular existentialist reading of man's
nature and destiny. This interpretation of man is a kind of
revenge taken by the private individual against the standard
of public verifiability and operationalism when they do not
allow for the insight of the individual human mind into
self-evident truths Of being. It is a kind of protest of human
inwardness and" the underground man" (as William Barrett
suggests 14) against the universal claims of the objective
method. A reminder and even a threat are tendered that there
are regions of human personality which are not only irreducible
to the other elements in nature but also at times in revolt
against them. The terrible capacities of human freedom are
again brought to the attention of those who have been lulled
into treating themselves and their actions in exactly the same
way as all other natural things and events.
One cannot speak indiscriminately about" the existentialists," since the widest differences separate thinkers like Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel and Sartre. For our present purpose,
only the views of Jean-Paul Sartre will be considered. His
version of existentialism belongs on the extreme left wing, is
avowedly atheistic and antireligious, and has been spread far
and wiqe through novels, plays, and pamphlets.· Furthermore,
Sartre has insisted upon the humanistic conseq:uences of his
doctrines. Another point of comparsion with the philosophical
standpoints previously considered is the close dependence of
Sartrean existentialism upon certain movements in the nineteenth century.
In this latter respect, the role of Hegel as a fountainhead of
later thought is again emphasized, but from a new angle.
14

What is Existentialism? (New York, 1947).

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Hegelian philosophy is truly ambiguous. It has been hailed
and exploited by Marx and Dewey for its defense of scientific
knowledge, method and rationality. From this standpoint, it
is a great essay in panlogism. But other students of this system
have pointed out its radical irrationalism, its sheer positing of
the idealistic absolute and its helplessness before the genuine
instances of otherness present in human experience. 15 A strain
of hopeless tragedy is injected into even the most optimistic
flights of the dialectic. An "unhappy consciousness" 16 pervades Hegel's thought as he reflects upon the universal need
for negativity, alienation from self, and clash with the irreducibly other. Hegel
tried to incorporate unhappy consciousness as but an integral moment in the triumphal progress of
the absolute idea. Marx grasped at the identification of unhappy
consciousness with the romantic and medieval religious attitude,
proclaiming that the religious consciousness would disappear
once the material grounds for a diremption of self were removed.
Dewey could not find any scientific· grounds for entertaining
this foreboding state of mind and so banished it to the limbo
of private emotions and public superstitions.
But the· pessimistic note was sympathetically received by
some philosophers. Hegel had written prophetically that he
and his nineteenth century were standing in the shadow of a
speculative Good Friday. The sense of living in a world without a God or an idealistic absolute filled the mind and sensibility of Friedrich Nietzsche. He tried to present the death of
God as the good news of human liberation. 17 Yet the moral
15 R. Kroner: Von Kant bis Hegel (2 vols., Tiibingen, 1921-24), vol. II, p. 271; I.
lljin: Die Phil080phie Hegels als kontemplati·ve Gotteslehre (Bern, 1946), pt. IV.
For a hall-hearted attempt to assimilate the irrationalistic element in Hegel to the
rationalistic, cf. J. Royce's Lectures on Modern Idealism (New Haven, 1919),
lect. X.
16 A thorough study of the role of das ungliickliche BewU8stsein in Hegel's thought
is found in J. Wahl: Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel
(Paris, 1929); for a commentary on its .classic development in the Phenomenology
of Mind, cf. J. Hyppolite: Ge-nese et structure de la Ph6nomenologie de L'Esprit de
Hegel (Paris, 1946), pp. 184 li.
n Typical passages are furnished in Thus Spake Zarathustra, prologue to pt. I,
and pt. IV, ch. 73, #2.

3

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JAMES COLLINS

and even intellectual values of the modern world had a religious
attachment and would be cancelled by a thorough-going
atheism. Nietzsche accepted this consequence and spent himself in the attempt to make a godless world a human and
hopeful one. His myths about the Dionysian man, the laughing
genius, Zarathustra, U ebermensch and the eternal return of
the same are his desperate substitutes for God as the foundation of moral and intellectual life. Our contemporary world,
although fascinated by these myths, perfers either to rediscover
the living God Who had been lost sight of by many nineteenthcentury proponents of religion or to explore the possibilities in,
a world without either God or any myth of the absolute.
Sartre stems from this latter option in favor of a "lucid
atheism." He has learned with Heidegger to J;"egard Nietzsche's
anwr fati as an acceptance of the finitude aJ).d contingency of
existence without the prospect of founding this existence upon
any principle outside of man. Heidegger was content to confine
his analysis to the structure of human existence, without taking
any overt stand on the religious implications of his metaphysics. 18 Yet these implications were there to be worked out.
If the results of a study of human existence are universally
valid, then every real being must be subject to contingency,
temporality, and limitation. Heidegger himself admitted that
questions about an eternal, infinite God and a creation outside
of time are not legitimately posed in an existential philosophy.
Sartre is more forthright in maintaining that the very notions
of God and creation are absurd.
To understand his position on these matters, his ontological
doctrine on man must be grasped. 19 Man is set off by his
ability to reflect upon his own nature. In certain moods of a
primitive kind, he is overwhelmed by an impression of the brute
givenness of his own existence and of all things. This existence
is simply there in its complete gratuity: it is underived from
18 For Heidegger's most recent
remarks on humanism, see his "Letter ,on
• Humanism '," - appended to: Platona Lekre von der Wakreit (Bern, 1947).
1. This view is given technical formulation in the Introduction to L'Etre et Ie
N eant (fifth ed., Paris, 1943).

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any other principle and cannot be explained in a deductive way
by any prior set of premises. Taken by itself, this mode of
being-in-itself is so opaque and closely pressed together that it
leaves no room for consciousness. The latter takes its origin in
the bosom of bcite existence after the manner of a void, a
distance, a questioning process. Because man can, as it were,
place his own existence off at arm's length so as to scrutinize it
and raise doubts about it, he enjoys the mode of being-for-itself.
Thus man shares in two modes of being: as a given thing
subject to determining laws, he is a fact of existence; as a
questing consciousness, he can inquire about the meaning of his
life and of his world.
Consciousness is by nature intentional, i. e., it intends or is
directed toward an object. The object toward which the human
intelligence is directed is an other, and the pursuit of the other
constitutes the process of transcendence. Among all the goals
of human transcendence, one is supreme and specifies man's
nature in a special way. The ideal which arouses the deepest
response is a mode of being which would combine the solidity
and plenitude of given existence with the .lucidity and· selfpresence of consciousness. Were there such a being, it would be
the equivalent of God. But Sartre denies even the possibility
of God's existence, since brute existence and consciousness are
never found as one. 20 They establish a duality at the heart of
being which cannot be bridged by any movement of transcendence. To seek forever to realize their synthesis is, however,
the most ingrained drive of man. He is truly a religious animal,
but the passion by which he is moved is in principle a futile
one. It is his doom to seek an ideal that can never be made
actual.
Faced with this hopeless prospect, what ought a man to do?
What he ought to do and what he usually does do never
coincide. Ordinarily, he finds a way of evading the bitter truth
either by drowning his critical spirit in a multitude of everyday
tasks or by pretending that the law of his life is inscribed some20

Ibid., pp.

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JAMES COLLINS

where in unfaltering script. What he ought to do is to confess
the bad faith behind these dodges and to embrace his human
situation with fortitude and ingenuity. Sartre's kind of humanism calls for a frank recognition that no values or laws exist
before the individual creates them through his unconditioned
freedom. What his existence is to mean for the individual is a
work solely for his own free decision and effort. He is called
upon by loyalty to himself to organize his own world according
to a self-imposed pattern of intelligibility order and values.
As best he can, the Sartrean man is also required to correlate
his world with the projects of other selves. Conflict is the
ineluctable
of our efforts at forming a domestic, social,
or political community. We may regard as typical the fate of
Orestes, in Sartre's play, The Flies. Having killed the king and
queen without remorse and without concern over the imprecations of Jupiter, he finds in the end that even the people, for
whose sake he had slain the tyrants, fail to discern in his act the
true mark of liberty. Disillusioned but sustained by his own
sense of freedom,
betakes himself to the solitude which
befits the one free spirit on earth. Orestes has been called the
only" authentically humanistic" figure in Sartre's imaginative
writings. His brand of humanism is solipsistic, histrionic, and
destructive of human life.

VI
What general observations, relevant for Catholic education
today, can be drawn from an examination of these three
approaches to the problem of man? Some results of the study
may be ·set down in this final section.
A thorough sifting and weighing of the needs of modern man
cannot be undertaken unless the problems singled out in various
special fields are replaced in their general philosophical setting.
The modern philosophical mind has been no less preoccupied
than the medieval with the relation between God and man,
despite the wide descrepancy in the respective solutions of the
problem. In one of his occasional essays, Professor Gilson
observes that the,Renaissance differed from the Middle Ages

CONTEMPORARY

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37

not because it added a new emphasis on man's dignity but
because it subtracted belief in God from our common heritage. 21
And, Gilson adds, the tragedy was that in losing God the
Renaissance went on to lose man as well. What holds true of
the Renaissance holds with at least equal force of subsequent
intellectual history. Perhaps the most critical phase in
progressive dehumanization of human kind was entered upon
in the nineteenth century. More philosophical research needs
to be devoted to this period from which our own situation has
grown. 22
There is need to grasp and try to undo a disastrous misunderstanding. All three representative thinkers agree that the loss
of belief in God and of membership in the Church, far from
spelling the destruction of man, is the necessary condition for
all further improvements in our human condition. This conviction was a main factor in justifying and fostering the
alienation of great masses of working people from the Church.
The remedy for this separation is not. wholly or mainly ecollomic, but philosophical and religious. Criticism must be
directed toward the treatment accorded to religion by absolute
idealism. On the one hand, the assumption of Hegel and
Feuerbach that religion and an absolutistic philosophy have the
same content can be challenged, especially in the case of
Christian revelation which is not assimilated to a philosophical
system simply because its conceptual equivalent can be loosely
expressed in terms of that system. On the other hand, neither
the existence of God nor the spiritual principle in man's nature
is inextricably bound up with the explanations of Kantian
philosophy. The dualisms of the latter are its own and are
not transferrable to a realist philosophy of God and man.
A Christian humanism finds a place for social betterment,
scientific method, and personal freedom, without absolutizing
anyone of these factors in human experience. Because it will
21

Les ifUes et les lettTes (Paris, 1932), p. 192.

Recent studies have been made by K. Lowith: Von Hegel bis Nietzsche
(Zurich, 1941), and by H. de Lubac: Le Drame del'humanisme athee (rev. third
ed., Paris, 1945).
22

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not be satisfied with anything less than an integral conception
of man, perennial philosophy is required to set forth the historical and methodological reasons for the inhumanity of so
much 'current philosophizing about man.
Marxism and naturalism have abused the historical argument
to the point of forgetting that every philosophy must stand the
test of intelligence as well as of time and the cultural drift.
Marx likes to settle irritating questions by an appeal to the
larger impersonal verdict of the dialectical movement. But in
actual fact, it is the historical individual rather than history
which makes judgments. The habit of looking upon his own
conception of man ·as the culmination of the entire movement
of history came all too easily to Marx for having witnessed
Hegel's claims for his philosophy. Although repudiating any
final issue to history, Dewey is similarly inclined to spin an
apocryphal tale about the development of the Western mind
much in the manner (although not in the doctrinal spirit) of that
other philosophical raconteur, Leon Brunschvicg. It is an abiding temptation to substitute a counsel that we move along with
the times for an examination of data that are publicly accessible
not only as between contemporary individuals but also as
between men in different ages. Much of the fostered disagreement in A.merican life today can be traced to this substitution
of myths about intellectual and social history for philosophical
discussion.
Another source of deliberate disunity is the generalization of
a method which has proved workable in a restricted sphere.
Only one who is not already convinced that the triadic method
holds good in a rigid way outside the field of logic will agree with
the Feuerbachian account of the religious attitude. One of the
main themes in Christian revelation is the overcoming of the
master-slave relationship not by abandoning religion but precisely by entering into closer religious friendship with God. To
replace absolute mind by man and then by the socio-economic
collectivity is a tour de force whose success is limited strictly to
the realm of systematic concepts. There is no reason to believe
that the Marxian plan for man will be any more favorable to

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the enrichment of actual human lives than were the recommendations of its dialectical antecedents.
On his own reckoning, method is of key importance in the
writings of John Dewey. This is only to be expected in any
essay at philosophical thinking. No intrinsic requirement of
sound inquiry, however, obliges him to single out one method
as the prototype of valid investigation in all fields and problems. 23 This is an uncriticized residue from Dewey's idealistic
period. Because he now prefers to formulate this presupposition
in biological terms is no warrant that it has been critically
re-examined and found to be sound. In actual practice, the
naturalistic interpretation of the continuity of analysis is suspiciously pliable. It tends at times to confuse univocity and
continuity of method. There is certainly a common pattern of
inquiry displayed by intelligence at work in various fields and
upon various problems. Aristotle sought to characterize science
in this broadest sense. Just as important as the likeness is the
presence of differences arising from the readjustments needed
in order to deal with the various areas of experience. What
naturalism fails to do is to determine in any precise and open
way the nature of these methodic differences and their significance for defining the standard of warranted assertibility.
We are shown the gravely sober, antidualistic side of naturalism whenever there is question of other uses of intelligence and
other perspectives on the universe than its own. Because operationalism cannot but be the mode of verification in physical
science, it is concluded that only in this way can men discern
truth from fancy and superstition. 24 And because truth-seeking
in the practical order does bear some resemblance to organic
adjustment, only those solutions of problems which can be
stated biologically as a resolution of an indeterminate situation
merit our respect. The danger is that these pronouncements
.a A critical treatment of Dewey's methodology is attempted in my article,
"Metaphysics in an Empirical Climate," Giornale di metafisica, vol. II, nn. 4-5
(1947) :
•• On the limitations of the method of physical science, d. V. Smith: The Phflo80phical Frontiers of Physics (Washington, 1947).

40

JAMES COLLINS

may be taken in a literal and heavyhanded way by incautious .
minds. Their conclusion will be that since a good deal of what
was once taken to be among man's" highest" achievements
cannot be verified after this manner, whole areas of human
personality and activity have no standing before naturalistic
intelligence. This would undoubtedly impair the caSe for
naturalism as a champion of man and human culture.
The other face of naturalistic method is exposed in order
to cope with these charges of levelling and antihumanism.
Naturalism then expresses its abhorrence of reductionism and
all its works. Stress is now laid upon the various levels of
experience and the incalculable capacities of the human spirit.
Only a " certain" continuity is claimed for scientific analysis,
leaving room for various techniques and uses of scientific
method. Religious and moral aspects of experience, for instance,
are honored-with the one proviso that they cannot be taken
as testimony to the existence of God or of a natural moral law
which shares in His eternal wisdom. While the pattern of
scientific method is admitted to be the same, generous allowance
is made for variety in techniques and procedures and ways of
testing because of differences in the subject-matters of inquiry.
Even the meaning of experiment is so liberalized that" looking
to the consequences of action" approaches the classical meaning of speculare. Educationally, this permits a naturalist like
Sidney Hook to take a broadly balanced view of educational
content and aims. 25
What is not allowable is to show only the one aspect of naturalism or the other as the turn of controversy would seem to
dictate. For this leads now to an excessively narrqw interpretation of scientific method and now to an excessively capacious one. Unless the ambiguity is cleared up, there will remain
2. Education for Modern Man (New York, 1946). In his criticism of Professor
Demos' remtlrks on the philosophical aspects of the Harvard Report on General
Education, Hook makes a plea that operational logic be "intelligently understood
and not identified with the specific techniques of physics" (" Synthesis or Eclecticism?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. VII, n. 2, 1946, p. 216).
This is a sound suggestion and one which would help to appraise this logic apart
from the misleading appeal to the successes made by physics.

CONTEMPORARY

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41

a dilemma 'facing the naturalists. Either their theory will have
no way .of dealing with all human experience or it will be
of determining what is warranted belief and what is
non-warranted. When a restrictive appeal is made to scientific
method, there is passed an effective prejudgment of what
content or subject-matter of experience is " real" and of what
type of problem is "soluble." This is a reductionism of method
leading indirectly to a reductionism of experience and content.
But if a quite commodious sense is attached to naturalism, then
no convincing rebuttal can be made to the extravagant arguments of a Professor Northrop. The latter simply attaches the
eulogistic term" scientific" to a number of procedures he favors
and to a number of plans he would like to see carried out. 26 To
become humanistic in practice, naturalism must renounce its
reductionism of method; to avoid equivocation and undisciplined speculation, it must specify more closely the kind of
adaptation followed by reason in pursuing various sorts of
problems. The condition for arriving at a humanistic understanding of science is the development of a theory of method as
having an analogical unity throughout its various uses. With
the aid of such a methodology, the existence of God, His
presence in the world, the created character of the finite world,
and the presence in man of an immaterial principle can be
admitted without falling into what naturalists call the" dualist"
view of experience. The ground is then cut away from the
assumption that belief in God and an immortal soul is detrimental to man's welfare.
Methodological questions are of prime concern to Sartre also,
leading him to make a close study of phenomenology. But
phenomenological analysis is no adequate tool for constructing
an ontology and a theory of morals. It hypostasizes the objects
of consciousness, misleading the unwary investigator into
identifying the results of his analysis with real entities. This
96 This is Northrop's procedure in The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities
(New York, 1947), a book which recall§ the equivocations in the Hegelian use
of Wissenschaft.

JAMES COLLINS

accounts for the intermixture of fantasy and verisimilitude in
Sartre's descriptions of familiar human situations. Brute existence and consciousness are never opposed in man as irreconcilable things. Another drawback to a method adapted primarily
to a discrimination of the modes of conscious content in human
experience is its unsuitability for characterizing nature as a
whole. These two defects are joined together when Sartre
discourses about God and human community. The failures
which he records are due not to an inherent contradiction in
the ideas of God and human love and unanimity but to the
unwarranted extension he has made of his method. 27
It may be asked what genuine needs of modern man help to
explain the prevalence of these philosophical doctrines. Marx
voiced the need for criticizing unregulated capitalism and for
reorganizing social and economic life on a more humane basis.
He rightly deplored the dichotomy between one's rule of action
as a private person and as a public functionary or member of
society. In addition, he saw in an ennobled attitude toward
work a powerful mean!) for improving our social lot. A similar
urgency to vindicate the dignity of practical life and intelligence
is felt by Dewey in reaction against a one-sided stress on speculation. He has reminded us both of the nobility of the practical
order and of our responsibility to bring insight to bear in a
relevant way upon our own situation. His discontent with
dualism has a sound basis insofar as it seeks to reinstate the
unitary being of man and his placement in the general order of
nature. Body and soul ought not to be regarded as independent
and only extrinsically related entities, nor should the temporal,
finite condition of man be glossed over or depreciated. The
naturalistic insistence upon common terms for the description
of all parts of experience is a condition for any renewal of metaphysics. It is as though the first stage on the long road to a full
appreciation of human nature is a reminder about our common
finitude and implication in nature. The sentiment of contin.7 For further discussion, cf. my study, "The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Bartre,"
Thought, vol. XXII, n. 88 (1948).

CONTEMPORARY· THEORIES

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48

gency also permeates the thought of Sartre, along with an
intimation of the dignity and strength of human freedom.
Yet the vision of man needs to be seen in its wholeness. The
promise of community must be fulfilled at every level of human
personality and society; our naturalness and finitude should be
allowed to reveal themselves further as signs of the creatureliness which we share with all the works of God; our freedom
strains to follow its proper inclination, transforming us from
things and vain passions into free men living in free solidarity
with God and our fellows. In a word, instead of aiming to be
orthodox Marxists, naturalists, or existentialists, we should try
simply to become men, men of full stature. The scattered
fragments of the image of man can be reunited provided that we
come to see ourselves for what we really are: men of God and
fellow workers in His world. The nihilistic altemative--also
suggested by the nineteenth century-is expressed by Dostoevsky's protagonist, Kirillov:
To recognize that there is no God and not to recognize at the same
instant that one is God oneself is an absurdity, else one would
certainly kill oneself. For three years I've been seeking for the
attribute of my godhead and I've found it; the attribute of my
godhead is self-will! That's all I can do to prove in the highest
point my independence and my new terrible freedom. For· it is
very terrible. I am killing myself to prove my independence and
my new terrible freedom.
lOB

But what steps can Thomists in particular take toward the
resolution of the humanistic crisis? In order to bring out more
2. The Possessed (Engl. tr. by Garnett, New York), pp. 58!l-88. These lines from
Dostoevsky have been the center of a controversy concerning Marxism in particular. They are quoted by Jacques Maritain: Humanisme integrale (Paris,1986),
p. 70, as evidence of the radical inviability of the atheistic outlook. But Sidney
Hook (Reason, Social Myths, and Democracy [New York, 1940], pp. 97-98)
takes Maritain to task for using these sophistical sentiments as proofs of God's
existence. The text of DostoevskY and the context of Maritain's quotation make it
clear that a Kirillov embodies the attitude of a deeply-felt denial of God's existence and affirmation of man's will to the absolute. He shows the nihilism bordering
on madness to which atheistic hummanism leads, when it becomes the mainspring
of a man's life. I agree with Hook, however, that Dostoevsky himself assumes a
much more dialectical position to his characters than Maritain allows.

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sharply and definitely the relevance of the Thomistic conception
of man for these problems, only the case of Dewey will be
considered. On at least three major counts, the Thomistic
theory stands in paradoxical relation to that of Dewey. Although not naturalistic, it satisfies certain legitimate demands
made by naturalism; yet it also contradicts the negative aspects
of naturalism without
the fearful consequences predicted for any such disagreement. The three stumbling blocks
concern St. Thomas' method, his doctrine on human nature and
his doctrine on human cognition and contemplation. The main
lines of criticism may be suggested very briefly.
First of all, St. Thomas challenges the assumption that the
philosopher must choose between continuity of being and
analysis on the one hand and hierarchy and causal explanation
on the other. His own approach indicates that there is a nonnaturalistic way of regarding lower and higher modes of being
as belonging to a single world or integrated situation. This is
not incompatible with a persistent search after a sufficient
causal explanation of the different kinds of organization, which
Dewey is content to leave unexplained. Dewey rightly criticizes
. Hume for being satisfied with calling the associative laws of
mind primitive and irreducible facts. In the same way, Dewey
himself is open to criticism for merely labeling the differences
between inorganic, animal, and human structures as irreducible
general traits which do not perroit'of further analysis. To say
that causes cannot be interpolated." suddenly from without"
is to evade a difficulty by calling upon the imagination. It is
not a matter of arbitrary metaphysical preference or " supernatural intervention" when Aquinas concludes that the formal
nature of man is superior in kind to that of other animals. This
superiority is based not upon some ideal scale of values but
upon the operations, cognitive and otherwise, which contribute
to human experience and reveal something of the distinctive
character of human nature.
Significantly enough, St. Thomas avoids positing gaps in a
universe of many modes of being precisely because of his views
on divine causality and the graded ordering of finite causes

CONTEMPORARY

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under God's government. Instead of stipulating in an a priori
way that any transcendent being would disrupt, the continuity
of nature, he asks how it can be that the universe is operationally and telically continuous. He agrees with the pseudo-Areopagite that a lower grade of being in its most perfect form
makes ontal and causal contact with the lowest instances of.
a higher grade. The continuity need not derive exclusively
from a surge upwards on the part of less perfect beings, as the
evolutionists suppose. There is a reciprocal and constructive
influence stemming from more perfect agents as they help to
establish order in the world which constitutes their environment
and field of action. All' finite causal power is regarded by
Aquinas as sharing in God's causal power. Hence the actions
of creatures bear the mark of the divine wisdom as it orders
all agehts and their operations to each other and to a common
end of all nature. The world of finite causes is pre-eminently
a con-crete world, one in which things cooperate in the joint
task of making existence available variously and with ever
increasing richness. God's wisdom and love are the principles
of this dynamic continuity and process.
A second challenge is offered to naturalism when Aquinas
treats the human substantial essence as a composite of an
immaterial form and prime matter. He is just as solicitous as
the naturalists to avoid a dualism which would jeopardize the
human person as a single integrated being. Against those who
would place the' human soul in only a kind of extrinsic or
accidental association with the organism, the essential and substantial nature of their union is urged. At the risk of scandalizing contemporaries who were indeed inclined to a dualistic
view, Aquinas held that the human soul is by nature ordained
to substantial union with matter and that the human person
is neither the one principle alone nor the other but rather the
composite whole. He did not overlook the difficulties attendant
upon this position, but the instructive point is his refusal to
rule out beforehand an essential union between material and
spiritual principles of being within our natural world. It is at
least more reasonable to explore this possibility thoroughly than

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to block the path of inquiry by dubbing it non-naturalistic at
the start. Nature does not wait upon the decision of naturalism
before determining what can be and what cannot be. Philosophy must look to the clues provided by human nature in
its actual operation rather than to cautionary tales about
Ptolemaic cosmology.
Finally, a reading of Aquinas forces one to reconsider critically one of Dewey's despised trinities: Reason, Intuition, and
the A Priori. This combination of human knowing powers is
supposed to cover-in some impossible way-systems so widely
divergent as those of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Hegel. The
inference is that all thinkers who do not subscribe to Dewey's
own version of intelligence must fall into either gross empiricism
or a kind of mystic and idealistic exaltation of Reason as a
"pure," separate power of contemplating eternal objects.
Dewey's account is a bewildering historical scramble in which
one gets a fleeting glance now at Aristotle's Noesis, now at the
Plotinian One, now at Hegel's Vernunft and now at some
pseudo-mystical leap in the dark. The student is also left
wondering how to account for St. Thomas' long polemic against
ascribing to man a separate intellect, a superior reason different
in kind from ordinary reason, and a state of perfect beatitude
in this life. There would be no explaining the Thomistic teaching on the proper object of the human intellect, the close workings of intellect and sense, the distinction in kind between
angelic and human intellect, and the analogical analysis of intellectual cognition as one among other sorts of vital operation.
These salient points in Thomistic philosophy give the groundwork for a valid inclusion of man in a continuous universe.
They suggest that Dewey has set up an artificial triad in
counterdistinction to his own theory of mind. They also suggest
the need to rehabilitate reason against the mythic excesses of
idealism and the narrow vision of instrumentalism.
Dewey occasionally makes grudging acknowledgment of the
good which is reflective knowledge sought for its own sake. But
by a kind of sophistical distinction (dictated by his own social
doctrines) between self-centered activity and socially respon-

CONTEMPORARY

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47

sible action, he erects an opposition between the latter and
contemplative activity. Here again, his reaction against a
genuine evil has led him to the contrary excess. A selfish' cultivation of the intellectual life in disregard of the claims of
society is an attitude deserving condemnation. But it should
be understood that the truly contemplative person is the first
to denounce such a perversion of the search for truth for its own
sake. St. Thomas set forth the theoretical foundation for the
precept which governed his own life in religion: to convey to
others the fruits of one's own contemplation. It is not out of
distraction, senseless sacrifice, or capitulation before the exigencies of life that the contemplative person is zealous for the
welfare of others, the communication of truth and the direction
of society to proper ends. By its own weight, contemplative
activity prompts a man to have regard for the wider sharing
of the most important goods in life and of all goods in due order.
Bergson in our own time brought forward empirical testimony
to the immediate connection between loving contemplation,
practical good sense, and social influence.
With this observation, the present study can be concluded.
There is need today in education as in public life for great
contemplative strength of mind making itself felt widely and
fruitfully. Otherwise, the partial and warring contemporary
theories of human nature will complete their work of dismemberment. And their common premise about the incompatibility
of God and man will have worked itself out to its suicidal
finish.
JAMES COLLINS

St. Louis University,
St. Louis, Mo.

THE BASIS OF THE SUAREZIAN TEACHING
ON HUMAN FREEDOM
[Fourth Installment]

.II. THE METAPHYSICAL

BACKGROUND

I. POTENCY AND ACT IN THE ORDER OF BEING
1. The Metaphysical Order: Created Essence and Existence.
In discussing the essence and existence of things one is talking
about their very being; Suarez begins, therefore, by pointing
out what "to be" can mean. It can be taken in four ways:
as the being of (1) essence, (2) existence, (3) subsistence and
(4) the truth of a proposition. The first, if we distinguish it
from being of existence, adds nothing real to created essence;
"being of essence" does not imply something real having being
outside its causes. "Being of existence," however, means actual
being outside its causes by which a created thing is outside
nothing. "Being of subsistence" is, unlike being of existence,
proper to substances. It is distinct and separable from the
substantial existence of a created nature; it does not constitute
the nature in the ratio of actual entity as existence does. The
" being of the truth of a proposition" is not of itself something
real and intrinsic but is objective in the intellect composing.271
The fundamental question is the relationship between being
of essence and being of existence; are they one reality or really
distinct? Suarez' own solution is written large in the very first
section of his discussion of this question; created essence and
existence are not really distinct, and the foundation of this
opinion is that nothing can be intrinsically and formally constituted in the ratio of real actual being through something
distinct from itself. If created essence and existence are distinct,
071

Disp. Meta., disp. xxi, sect. 1, n. 2.

48

BASIS OF SUAREZIAN TEACHING ON HUMAN FREEDOM

49

by the very fact that each is really distinct as being from being
each has this that it is a being and distinct. Consequently
neither can formally and intrinsically be through the other.272
But a penetration of that requires some preliminary discussion.
Being can be considered in two states: (1) in potency and
(2) in act. A created essence in potency of itself, and before
it is made through God's free, efficient act, is nothing. It is not
a real thing having being distinct from God's being. What is
not made by God (and these things are· not yet made) is
either God or it is nothing. It follows that being-in-act and
being-in-potency are immediately and formally distinct as being
and non-being, simply. Being in potency bespeaks no positive
state or mode of being but includes, besides denomination from
the agent's power, a negation of the things having actually
come forth from potency. So, a thing ceases to be in potency
. when it is created.273
It follows that being-in-act, or an essence-in-act does not add
existence to essence-in-potency; the latter is nothing and to
nothing one cannot, properly, add anything. Even if one means
that essence-in-act can add a distinct existence to an essence
which is already an actual being but is potency with respect to
existence one is involved in difficulties, for it follows that an
actual essence differs from a potential formally and precisely
not in the act of being but rather in its very essential entity.
n2 Et sic affirmat haec sententia existentiam et essentiam non distingui in re
ipsa ... Et hanc sententiamsic explicatam existimo esse omnino veram. Ejusque
fundamentum breviter est quia non potest res aliqua intrinsece ac formaliter constitui in ratione entis realis et actualis per aliud distinctum ab ipsa, quia hoc ipso
quod distinguitur unum ab alio tanquam ens ab ente utrnmque habet quod sit
ens, ut condistinctum ab alio, et consequenter non per illud formal iter et intrinsece
(Ibid., n. 18) .
... Essentiam creaturae seu creaturam de se et priusquam a Deo fiat nullum
habere in se verum esse reale ... essentiam ... omnino esse nihil (Ibid., sect.
nn. 1-8). Principium ... statuendum est nimirum in rebus creatis ens in
potentia et in actu immediate et formaliter distingui tanquam ens et non ens simpliciter . . . quod illud esse in potentia seu illIL potentia objectiva non possit esse
res aliqua vera et positiva in se ipsa . . . est evidens . . . Relinquitur ergo ens in
potentia ut sic non dicere statum aut modum positivum entis sed potius praeter
denominationem a potentia agentis includere negationem ... cum res creatur,
desinit esse in potentia (Ibid., sect. 8, nn. 1-4).

4

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

A being in objective potency is nothing; so, necessarily, any
actual entity formally differs from the potential through that
which constitutes the former in its genus of actual entity-in
this case, the. very essential being of an actual essence.274
It is clear that a real essence which in itself is something
actually distinct from its cause is intrinsically constituted by
some real actual being, for all real entity must be constituted by
real being. 275 Yel this constitution is not through the composition of such being with such entity but through identity for
(1) an actual essence differs from a potential essence immediately through its very entity. Therefore through that entity it
has actual being and is constituted, and
a real essence is
distinct from existence either (a) not really, and in that case,
clearly it has no being distinct from existence by which it is
made actual or (b) in nature, and in that case while the being
of an actual essence is distinct from the being of actual existence
it is not distinct from the actual essence;
we proceed
to infinity. Hence the constitution of the actual essence is not
through composition with the being which constitutes it.276
Sf< Observandum est . . . frequenter ab auctoribus dici essentiam in actu addere
existentiam ipsi essentiae. Qui modus loquendi juxta sententiam eomm qui affirmant
essentiam existentem non distingui ex natura rei a suo esse intelligendus est necessario de additione secundum rationem . . • quia additio realis non fit proprie nisi
enti reali ... diximus autem essentiam in potentia nihil habere entitatis ... ex
hoc tamen necessario sequitur quamvis essentia actualis non difi'erat a potentiali nisi
dum est . . . formaliter tamen ac praecise non difi'erre immediate in actu essendi
sed in sua entitate essentiali (Ibid., nn. 5-6).
915 Our division of the remainder of the matter in this section is our own, yet
justified. When from Disputation XXXI the parts pertinent to our point had
been selected and reassembled under their respective headings, the matter quite
naturally fell into four main divisions: .(1) what created existence is, and what it is
not-the formal cause; (2) what things exist-the material cause; (8) what agents
can proximately efi'ect some existences--the efficient cause; and (4) the efi'ects of
existence. We have unhesitatingly used a division natural and obvious, yet it is a
division to which Suarez would perhaps object. The implications of the term,.
"The Material Cause of Existence," would seem particularly inaccurate to him.
He expressly teaches that existence as such requires no material cause; some existences do require one, but only when the actual essence does (Disp. Meta., disp.
XXXI, sect. 8, nn. 4-5). Even the notion of formal cause of existence would seem
inappropriate to him (Ibid., n. 6). However, we use these terms in a wider sense
than that in which Suarez would deny their acceptability.
a.s Diap. Meta., disp. XXXI, sect. 4, nn. l-S.

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Suarez' next proposition is the fundamental one: this being
by which the essence of a creature is formally constituted in
the actuality of essence is true existence. He offers these
arguments:
(1) For the truth of proposition, "essence is" when in the
proposition there is only subject and capula (locutio de secunda
adiacente) this being, precisely taken, is sufficient. Therefore
this being is true existence. The consequence, Suarez adds, is.
clear for according to the common concept of men "is" in a
proposition of this kind (de secunda adiacente) does not
abstract from time but signifies actually being in nature, which
is what we all mean by existence. The antecedent is shown
by this that through this being of an actual essence precisely
taken such an essence is a being in act and distinct from beingin-potency; by reason of it then the essence is for to be a
being-in-act does not have less ratio of being than is included
in the verb "is." 217
(2) To the being of actual essence convene all those things
which are attributed to existence. It is, therefore, true existence. As for the aQ.tecedent:
a) This being is temporal not eternal
b) This being convenes contingently
to the creature
c) This being is conserved in the
creature by the Creator's efficiency

existence is temporal
existence convenes to
a creature so
existence is proximately conserved through
God's efficiency

Thus no condition necessary to existence is unverified of the
being of an actual essence unless one says: "One condition is
lacking, namely, that it be distinct from the essence." That
2 .. llIud esse quo essentia creaturae formaliter constituitur in actualitate essentiae
est verum esse existentiae. . .. Hoc esse praecise sumptum satis est ad veritatem
hujus locutionis de secundo adjacente. . . . Essentia eat; ergo illud esse est vera
existentia. Consequentia est clara: nam juxta communem significationem . . •
hominum eat, de secundo adjacente, non absolvitur a tempore sed significat actu
esse in rerum natura quod omnes intelligimus nomine existentiae (Ibid., n. 4).

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

begs the point; it is also illogical since a distinction is a result
of,not a condition for, being.278
(3) Existential being is that by which, formally and immediately, a thing is constituted outside its causes, ceases to be
nothing, and begins to be something. But the being by which,
formally and iinmediately, a thing is constituted in the actuality of essence is that by which it is constituted outside its
causes, ceases to be nothing, and begins to be something. The
major is clear from the immediate and formal opposition
between being-in-act and being-in-potency. Actual being is
existing (else there would be a medium between possible and
existing); hence what constitutes a thing actual in itself and
outside its causes constitutes it existing. The minor is almost
per se known; through this being an essence is constituted outside its causes and outside possibility. This being of the actual
essence if it he understood to remain without any other distinct
being (whether that be possible or not) is sufficient to distinguish an actual being from a possible and so constitute it
in a new and temporal state and so terminate the action of
the agent. This being, then, is existence. 279
Suarez also puts his argument in these words: In reality it
is the same for man to be and for man to be man, if in both
propositions" to be " indicates act and not merely aptitude or
the truth of a proposition. Likewise it is the same for man to
27. Huic esse actualis essentiae conveniunt omnia quae tribui solent existentiae
... ergo est verum esse existentiae ... nam esse essentiae actualis non est
aeternum, sed temporale . . . hoc esse convenit creaturae contingenter . . . huic
esse actualis essentiae convenit, ut conferatur creaturae per efficientiam Creatoris.
. . . Esset ergo voluntaria petitio principii inter conditiones necessarias ad esse
existentiae ponere hujusmodi. distinctionem . . . distinctio cum sit negatio vel
relatio quaedam non est conditio per se requisita ad esse rei, sed est quid resultans
ex tali esse rei (Ibid., n. 5) .
••• Esse existentiae nihil aliud est quam illud esse quo formaliter et immediate
entitas aliqua constituitur extra causas suas, et desinit esse nihil, ac incipit esse
aliquid; sed hujusmodi est hoc esse quo formaliter et immediate constituitur res
in actualitate essentiae; ergo est verum esse existentiae. Major videtur esse per se
nota. . . • Item . . .
actu idem est quod existens . . . Minor autem . . . fere
est per se nota . . . ostensum est per hoc esse formal iter constitui essentiamextra
possibilitatem (Ibid., n. 6).

BASIS OF SUAREZIAN TEACHING ON HUMAN FREEDOM

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be man and to be rational or animal etc., for all these, in reality,
are the same. Therefore all these predicates are taken from the
same actuality and the same thing whether that thing is called
actual essence or actual existence (esse). In one thing therefore there is only one being by which it is constituted a beingin-act, and that is the being of existence. 28o
More briefly we can phrase the argument: being-in-act is
formally the same as existing; but the latter as such is formally
constituted only through existence. It is really the same to say
that man is as to say that man is man if is in both cases
bespeaks act.
Negatively Suarez supports his teaching by arguing that a
really distinct "being-of -existence" is both superfluous and
impossible. It is superfluous, for if there were any necessity
or utility for such imagined existence it could be shown by some
reasonable and probable argument, and no formal effect can be
assigned to this" entity of existence." To say it formally constitutes the essence as existing begs the question. The notion
" existing" cannot add any ratio distinct from that of an actual
being outside its causes; so there is no existence distinct from
the being which constitutes each thing in the actuality of its
essence.
It is impossible for it is unnecessary, and nature never postulates the superfluous. Also, where there is no possible formal
effect there is no form possible, but there is no formal effect that
a distinct existence could give. 281 To the argument that not all
actuality comes from existence but that within the very essence
280 Secundum
rem idem est hominem esse et hominem esse hominem si in
utraque propositione esse dicat actum et non solam aptitudinem aut veritatem
propositionis . . . reipsa idem est hominem esse hominem et esse rationalem vel
animal, etc. quia haec omnia in re idem sunt. Quapropter ab eadem actualitate et
ab eadem re haec omnia praedicata sumuntur sive illa res vocetur essentia actualis
sive esse actuale ejus .... Non est est in una re nisi unum esse quo constituitur ens
actu, et illud ipsum est esse existentiae (Ibid., sect. 5, n. 15) .
• 81 Omnis alia entitas vel modus realis est superfluus et sine probatione confictus.
• . . Et hinc satis etiam constat hujusmodi entitatem vel modum esse superfluum .
. . . Quid confert alia existentia? Inferimus hujusmodi entitatem existentiae ...
esse ... impossibilem ... quia ubi efl'ectus formalis nullus est vel non est possibilis neque forma est possibilis (Ibid., nn. IO-U).

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

there is actuality (for the inferior grade is actual with respect
to the higher and the form with respect to matter) Suarez
answers that the actual can be taken as opposed to (1) objective potency (so taken all actuality does intrinsically and
formally come from existence) ,or (2) receptive potency (and
it as so taken in the objection) .
The act opposed to objective potency (entitative act) is
sometimes really distinct from the act opposed to receptive
potency (formal act) for the former, as participated by a
receptive potency is really distinct from that potency's formal
act. Sometimes however, the entitative act is only rationally
distinct from the formal act. For the form to be the act of
matter (at least aptitudinally) and actually to be such a thing
differ only in concept. Hence (1) actual being distinct from
being-in-potency is formally constituted through existence,
(2) all formal actuality or actuation as it comes from some
partial essence, comes too from a partial existence, for a form
does not actuate matter unless it is such an actual entity, and
it has this through its existence. 282
From this teaching that the being of an actual essence is
existence certain propositions are bound to come. As corollaries
we shall treat her:e Suarez' notions of (1) the distinction
between created essence and existence; (2) their composition;
and (3) their inseparability.
(1) We certainly conceive created essence and existence as
distinct. The question is, what distinction is there, in reality,
between the two? Suarez proceeds methodically and discusses
and judges three different opinions .
•• 2 [Actus] potest enim sumi vel ut opponitur potentiae objectivae vel ut respicit
potentiam receptivam ... in priori sensu ... verissimum est omnem actualitatem
entis ... provenire ab esse existentiae. . . . Objectio autem procedit in posteriori
sensu. . . . Actualitas autem prior seu entitativa ita comparatur ad actum . . .
formalem ut interdum reipsa distinguantur, interdum sola ratione ... participatur
non solum ab actu formali sed etiam a potentia receptiva cujus entitativa actualitas
realiter distinguitur a1 actualitate formae; in ipsa autem forma, esse actum materiae,
saltern aptitudine et esse tale ens actu sola ratione distinguuntur .... Non solum
verum est, ens actu ... constitui formaliter et intrinsece per esse existentiae sed
etiam est verum omnem formalem actualitatem ... sicut provenit ab aliqua essentia
••• ita provenire ab aliqua existentia (Ibid., n. 15).

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(a) A real distinction between actual essence and existence
is excluded; a created essence constituted in act outside its
causes is not really distinguished from existence. Suarez argues:
(1) From the authority of Aristotle saying that being joined
to things adds nothing to them; it can be gathered from
Aristotle himself that this is proportionately true of a thing in
potency and act. 283
Such a distinct entity of existence (1)
added to an actual essence cannot formally give it the first
actuality by which it is separated and distinguished from being
in potency (for nothing can be constituted in its very entity
through something distinct from itself) and
it cannot be
under any ratio of cause in order that an essence
have its actual entity of essence, as has been shown. The
position that existence is a necessary condition is unproven.
In any case there are many conditions necessary for a thing to
be; all of these conditions would then be existence. 284
He considers the argument that a formal cause has a two-fold
respect: (1) to the composite-it intrinsically composes the
effect;
to the matter-for if the form, by informing or actuating the matter, confers to its being it can rightly be called its
formal cause; therefore in the same way the entity of existence
can be called the formal cause of the essence, and with the
essence, it constitutes one existing thing; existence actuates the
essence and formally makes it remain in being. To this argument Suarez replies that there is no composite to be composed
of essence and a distinct existence. An existing thing and a
being in act (an actual essence) are the same; the essence is not
potential for existence but it has identical with itself some real
existence constituting it outside its causes. Even if existence
were a distinct act an actual essence could be conserved without
it, by divine power at least (for while God can not supply for
0.8 [Aristotelesl ubique ait ens adjunetum
rebus nihil eis addere . . . hoc autem
cum eadem proportione verum est de re in potentia et in aetu (Ibid., sect. 6, n. 1) •
•• < Talis entitas addita aetuali essentiae nee potest illi formaliter eonferre primam
... aetualitatem (potentia non eonstituatur intrinsece et formaliter in sua entitate
per alteram, quae est actus) neque etiam potest esse necessaria sub aliqua ratione
causae ... ut essentia habeat suam entitatem actualem essentiae (Ibid., nn. 2-8).

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

an intrinsically composing formal cause He can supply for the
dependence of one composing part on the other) and an entity
so conserved is truly existing. Hence whatever this distinct act
adds it is not existence, or necessary to the formal effect of
existence. By the very fact that we understand an actual entity
made by God we conceIve it as existing. Since there is nothing
false in that objective concept we can conclude that no other
superadded thing is necessary for the formal effect of existing. 285
(b) A modal distinction between essence and existence is
not to be admitted, for a modal distinction which is positive on
the part of both extremes can only be between a thing and its
mode, so that the thing even without the mode is a positive
real actual being. Hence an essence without the mode would
already be actual, i. e., existing; so the mode cannot constitute
it in that actuality. In any case the modally distinct existence
would itself be modally distinct from its actual being, and the
distinctions could go on to infinity.286
(c) In creatures a rational distinction with a foundation in
reality is to be admitted between an actual essence and existence, and such a distinction is sufficient for us to say absolutely
that it is not of the essence of a creature actually to exist. God
alone has entity from Himself (ex Se) which includes a negation of having it from another and through efficiency. In this
sense the statement "Existence
of the essence of God but
not of the essenCf;l of creatures" is true; even to have the actual
lI.& Concludimus nullum posse assignari constitutum
propter quod talis entitas
necessaria sit . . . existens . . . et ens actu id est non in potentia, idem omnino
sunt . . . essentia ilia ut jam est actualis entitas per effeetionem suae causae non
est in se . . . pura potentia in ordine ad esse sed . . . omnino identice habet
aliquod esse reale et actuale quod esse est vera existentia ... saltem per divinam
potentiam posse conservari actualis entitas essentiae sine ilIo ulteriori alio actu
formali ... si autem Deus conservet essentiam sine actu existentiae distinctae ilia
entitas seu conservata est vere existens et . . . quidquid ilIi addi fingitur non potest
veram rationem existentiae habere (Ibid., nn. 5-8).
".6 Ipsa essentia praeeise concepta . . . esset verum ens actu; ergo . . . non posset
intrinsece constitui in tali entitate actuali per ilium modum . . . resolvi posset
in aliam entitatem et ilium modum; et ita procedeur in infinitum donee sistamus
in simplici entitate actuali (Ibid;, un. 9-10).

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entity of essence is not of the essence of a creature. 287 Yet when
we say that it is not of the essence of a creature actually to
exist, "creature"· is not to be understood as a real created
entity, for, as an actual entity, it does demand to exist. As
whiteness is of the essence of a white thing, existence is of the
essence of an actual thing. The creature can lose existence, but
not without being destroyed. Therefore the creature does not
have existence" of its essence" in the sense of having it independently of anything else; it does have it "of its essence·"
in the sense that that phrase means the primary and formal
constitutive of a thing. 288
(2) In view of what Suarez has already written, his answer
to the question "of what kind is the composition between
created essence and existence? " is easily predictable. 289 We can
summanze that answer in these propositions: (1) This composition is called composition only analogously; it is not real
but merely rational, since it is not between really distinct terms.
(2) It is metaphysical composition since it is common tq all
creatures. (3) It is not the basis of corruption but abstracts
from corruption. (4) Though only composition of reason it
has a foundation in creatures, namely that creatures do not
have existence from themselves but participate it from another.
The fundament then includes imperfection which is repugnant
to God; hence this composition is llroper to creatures. 290
".. Dico . . . in creaturis existentiam et essentiam . . . solum distingui ratione
cum aliquo fundamento in re quae distinctio satis erit ut absolute dicamus non
esse de essentia creaturae actu existere (Ibid., n. 18).
".. In hoc sensu, sicut albedo est de essentia albi· ut album est ita existentia est
de. essentia creaturae ut res actu creata est . . . prout dicitur esse de essentia id
quod est primum et formale constitutivum rei . . . existentia vere dici potest de
essentia creaturae in actu constitutae (Ibid., n. ft4). Suarez adds that existence
convenes contingently to a creature considered absolutely, that is, as it is precised
from this that it be created or only creatible, but that it convenes necessarily to a
creature taken for an actually created thing, namely, the conditional necessity that
a thing be when it is. For Suarez' account of how reason arrives at its distinction
between created essence and existence, cf. Diap. Meta., loco cit., n. 15 and ·11.
28. Ibid., sect. 18 .
•• 0 Dicendum est compositionem ex esse et essentia analogice tantum compositionem appellari, quia non est compositio realis sed rationis • . . [quia] hic . . .

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

It does not follow that created existence, as unreceived in a
potency, is therefore unlimited and infinite, for in any class of
creatures existence is somehow limited. The existence of accidents is received in the subject; material substantial form is
received in matter; matter is limited by its respect to form; a
whole composed' substance is limited by its parts; angels can be
said to be received into the supposite; subsistence is limited
since subsistence is only made; the whole supposit is limited
because it is composed of limited extremes. 291 Created existence
is, in fact received by, though not in, something for a thing can
be unreceived in either of two ways: (1) unreceived both in
something and by something-such a thing is infinite; (2)
unreceived in something (a subject) but received by something
-such a thing does not imply infinity since it subsists through
composition with. subsistence and is not pure act. It must not
be thought that because it is participated existence, it is participated by a subject, which is really distinct from it; rather
one and the same thing is a reality in a participated way.292
A being which is not received by anything, -Suarez points
out, is limited by itself, by its own nature, for it is of just so
much perfection. That existence be limited it is enough that
it be received by another in such a measure of such perfection
even though it is not properly received in any passive potency.
Likewise a created essence (even though it be its own existence)
extrema non sunt in re distincta ... haec vero est metaphysica ••• haec ••• ex
se abstrahit a corruptione vel transmutatione physica (loc. cit., n. 7) . . • in re
habeat aliquod fundamentum . . . hoc autem fundamentum non est aliud nisi
quia creatura non habet se actu existere (Ibid., n. 9).
,., Non oportet ut esse creaturae illimitatum sit quamvis sit irreceptum in
subjecto. (Ibid., nn. 14-15) .
••• dupliciter intelligi esse irreceptum: uno modo quod sit irreceptum tam in
aliquo quam ab aliquo . . • et de tali esse recte dicitur esse infinitum . . • Alio
vero modo dici potest esse irreceptum in aliquo quamvis sit receptum ab aliquo et
hoco modo conceditur esse creatum posse esse irreceptum; ... Nego tamen inde
sequi quod sit ... infinitum. Tum quia, ... est subsistens per compositionem .••
cum ipsa subsistentia; tum etiam quia non esset purus actus sed per participationem
. . . non est imaginaudum quod una res sit quae participat . . . et alia quae
participatur . . . sed quia una et eadem res est realitas modo participato et per
vim alterius (Ibid., n. 17).

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can yet· be limited, namely, by its own intrinsic difference. For
Suarez it has not yet been proved that an actual thing can be
limited only by composition with potency; for an absolute thing
which has no potency to terminate it can yet be terminated by
reason of this alone, that it has such a grade of being. Extrinsically it is limited by God either effectively or as an exemplary
cause. 293
(3) By reason of his fundamental thesis Suarez is forced to
conclude to an absolute inseparability of essence and existence.294
He teaches briefly:

(a) It is impossible that existence be separated from its
essence in such a way that existence is preserved, the essence
destroyed. Those who hold for a real distinction teach this too,
but they can give no reason why God could -not separate the
created existence and preserve it alone, for essence is not its
cause through intrinsic composition; for such extrinsic causality
God can supply.295
(b) Even by absolute power it cannot be that a created
essence is conserved in nature and outside its causes without
any existence. Suarez adds that the defenders of a real distinction can give no adequate reason why God could not conserve
one without the other.296
(c) Created essence and existence cannot be so separated
••• [Esse] seipso et ex vi entitatis suae esse limitatum et finitum neque indigere
aliquo limitante vel contrahente in re distincto a seipso sed intrinsece natura sua
esse tantae perfectionis •.. essentia actualis per seipsam vel per sua intrinseca
principia est formaliter limitata (Ibid., nn. 18-19). Nulla enim sufficienti ratione
adhuc probatum est rem non posse finiri nisi ilIo modo [i. e. per potentiam] (Disp.
Meta., disp. XXX, sect. 2, n. 19) .
••• Ibid., disp. XXXI, sect. .
••• Dico . . . impossibile esse ita separari existentiam ab essentia ut conservertur
existentia, destructa essentia .... Qui putant existentiam esse rem omnino realiter
distinctam ab essentia creata ... vix possunt sufficienem hujus diciti reddere
rationem in ordine ad potentiam Dei ahsolutam (Ibid., nn.
.
••• Fjeri non potest etiam de potentia absoluta ut essentia creata conservetur in
rerum natura et extra causas sine ulla existentia. . . . Cum dicant essentiam et
existentiam esse res condistinctas nullam rationem addere possunt cur non possit
Deus conservare ilIam entitatem essentiae nudam (Ibid., nn. 5-6).

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that each is really preserved while the union between them is
dissolved, for between them there is not union but identity.297
(d) By God's absolute power a created existing essence can.not be conserved through some existence other than its own.
(According to Suarez all theologians agree to this, for they all
affirm that there is in Christ's Sacred Humanity its created
and proper existence). The argument is that as an actual
essence cannot be conserved without itself, neither can it be
conserved without its own existence. The very conservation
of the essence is an affection of it; and every affection is a communication of some being which is existence. Here again Suarez
sees an indication of the weakness of the theory of a real distinction; for, he asks, if essence and existence were really distinct why could not God supply for existence and conserve
the essence without its existence? 298
(e) Actual existence is separable from a created essence only
in such a way that each perishes or is destroyed; and essence
deprived of existence is nothing. 299
Having considered the nature of existence we now come to
the question of its subject: What things exist? 300 The principles governing Suarez' answer have already been indicated
quite fully, so here we only briefly indicate the conclusion he
reached,·
(1) To common natures abstractly conceived existence in
the singulars (even partial existence) does not convene; for
actual existence is repugnant to anything abstract. sol
(2) To a supposit alone (as distinct from an undeterminated
Ibid., nn. 7-8.
Non potest de potentia Dei absoluta eonservari creata essentia existens per
alienam existentiam absque propriam. Ita sentiunt omnes Theologi qui affirmant
in humanitate Christi esse existentiam ereatam et propriam, et non existere formaliter humanitatem illam per existentiam Verbi ... sieut eonservari non potest
[essentia ereata] sine seipsa, ita etiam nee sine propria existentia ... lSi essentia et
existentia distinguuntur realiter] nulla posset (ut saepe dixi) sufficiens ratio reddi,
cur non posset Deus aetualem essentiam sine existentia eonservare (Ibid., nn.
299 Ibid., nn. 34-37.
800 Loc. cit., sect. U,
297

29.

801

Ibid., nn.

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nature) convenes substantial existence which is in every way
complete. Yet there is substantial existence which convenes
to things not supposits, since suppositality presupposes a nature
already actual and therefore existing. Substantial existence
then is two-fold: per se and complete (composed of the existence of the nature and the existence of the supposit) and
incomplete. In the order of nature a nature can, by incomplete
existence, exist before the subsistence. 302
(3) The existence of the nature generally speaking is not
an act of the complete essence only but is total or partial,
complete or incomplete according as the nature is such. Partial
existence convenes to parts of the essence, integral existence to
the complete essence, for the parts are themselves actual beings
not really distinct from their own existence. Matter and form
have partial existences through which the integral existence of
the whole is completed. sos
(4) Accidents, since they have their own essence distinct
from the subject, have their own existence. ll04
(5) Modes of things, as subsistence, figure, etc., have their
own existence.
It is clear then that in that statement that essence and existence are really identical the existence meant is that through
which the essence is constituted in its own proper and precise
reality; the essence is not altogether indentical with any other
existence. 805
00. Reete divisa est existentia:
quaedam enim est omnino eompleta in genere
substantiae . . . quae includit non tantum aetualitatem essentiae . . . sed etiam
modus talis naturae . . . Talis ergo existentia est solius suppositi . . . alia vero
.est existentia substantialis non omnino eompleta, quia adhue potest per subsistentiam
terminari. . . . Potestque talis natura praeexistere subsistentiae ordine naturae
(Ibid., nn. 6-7).
003 Bieut distinguitur
essentia in totalem et partialem seu eompletam et ineompletam ita etiam distinguendam esse existentiam intra illum ordinem .... Existentia
ergo partialis immediate eon venit parti essentiae ... sequitur ex fundamento posito
quod existentia non distinguitur in re ab essentia aetuali . . . Item . . . materia
prima ... habet propriam existentiam partialem (Ibid., n. 8).
304 Dieendum ... est, formam aeeidentalem
habere suum proprium esse existentiae

(Ibid., n. fl5).
806 Ibid., nn.

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

There remains the question of the efficient cause of created
existence. We shall confine ourselves to a discussion of the
proximate efficient cause and that relative only to things which
are generated or come about through a change of some presupposed subject, not with things which are through creation
alone. Suarez' doctrine is this:
(1) Secondary causes are true efficient causes of the existence of their effects, according as these effects are from them.
His direct arguments are these: (a) By one action is made an
existing thing and its existence. But secondary causes do effect
their real and existing effects. Therefore. (b) All real efficiency
terminates at some existence. But secondary causes are truly
efficient causes of something. Therefore. (c) Essence and
existence are not really distinct. But secondary causes give to
their effects the entity of actual essence. Therefore. 80G
(2) Secondary causes can be principal and not merely instrumental causes of existence. The existence of these effects proceeds from their causes just as their essences do. But the
secondary cause is a principal cause with respect to the effect,
(i. e., with respect to its essence). Therefore. No cause, Suarez
notes, can be both principal and instrumental with respect to
one and the same action and term. Even if we suppose a real
distinction between created essence and existence the latter
does not exceed the power of the second cause. 807
The position that secondary causes bring about the determination to such being, not being itself, Suarez dismisses on the
ground this proposition can mean either (a) the secondary
cause effects some difference or intrinsic mode in being which
306 Existentiam quando per generationem fit, a causa proxima fieri ut a propria
et principaIi causa in suo ordine, subordinata (Ibid., sect. 9, n. 5) ... quia unica
et eadem actione fit res existens et existentia ejus sed causae secundae vere
efficiunt Illiquid. Ergo efficiunt existentias eorum. Secundo quia omnis vera
efficientia teiininatur ad aliquod esse existentiae ... sed causae secundae vere
efficiunt aliquid. Ergo, etc. (Ibid., n. 18).
307 Existentiae rerum quae generantur et corrumpuntur non solum fiunt a causis
secundis ut ab instrumentis sed etiam ut a causis principalibus proximis ... etiam
posita distinctione reali inter existentiam et essentiam non video qua probabilitate
possit haec assertio negari (Ibid., nn.

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determines being, which is impossible because physical action
attains a thing itself as it is in itself, and not a mode or a
metaphysical difference; or (b) the secondary cause determines
being merely on the part of the subject, by preparing a subject
which is receptive of this being, not of any other. Two actions
are supposed, one of the creature inducing a form according to
the being of essence, another an action of God alone conferring
being. This (1) multiplies acts uselessly, (2) ignores the fact
that some existence must be given through the creature's action
since by that action is given some real being making the thing
to be outside its causes. The action attributed to God alone is
superfluous. Why could not God suspend this action? If we
suppose He did the effect would be existing by reason of the
action of the creature alone. The action of the creature effects
some real being else it is not real action. The real being effected
can be either existence or essence. If the former, Suarez' point
is conceded; if the latter it is either in potency or in act. If in
potency it is nothing made in reality; if in act then there is
something temporal and new, therefore something existing. 80s
From the side of the action attributed to God alone, too,
Suarez thinks this position unacceptable. That action is either
creation or the eduction of an act of existing from the potency
of the subject (essence). The first is impossible, for it would
follow that every created existence would be subsisting, independent of any receiver; the latter is not to be admitted for such
an eduction does not exceed the power or proportion of a
created agent. S09
308 Vel est sensus quod causa secunda efficit in ipsomet esse aliquam difi'erentiam
. . . et hoc est impossible nisi efficiendo totum ipsum esse . . . vel est sensus quod
solum ex parte subjecti causae secundae determinant esse praeparando subjectum
susceptivuni talis esse.... Hoc autem falsum esse ... demonstro .... Secundo quia
si consideretur praecise illa actio causae secundae . . . necesse est ut propter illam
detur aliquod esse existentiae quia per illam datur aliquod esse reale.... Non
repugnat Deum suspendere omnem aliam actionem quae Be solo facturus erat; . . .
nihilominus intelligimus ex vi hujus primae actionis rem actu esse genitam (Ibid.,
nn. 1!2-l8).
309 Talis actio neque ex modo quo fit neque ex termino ad quem tendit superat
vim agentis creati (Ibid., nn. 16-17). Yet Suarez adds that in the efi'ecting of
existence and essence there is something proper to God in which He surpasses

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

A final word about the effects of existence will be helpful to
complete our account of the Suarezian teaching about created
existence.81O (1) Actual existence is altogether necessary for
exercising material and formal causality. It is required both in
the order of time and in the order of nature: (a) in the order
of time: for such causality consists in actual and intrinsic composing and in sustaining and actuating. But for these existence
is needed; (b) in the order of nature; for existing causality must
proceed from an existing cause. Again the actual existence of
matter and form is necessary in the instant in which they cause.
But it is not necessary as a consequent of its causality (it
would then cause itself) so it must be required as antecedent
in the order, of nature.8l1 (2) The existence of matter (and this
holds true proportionately for form) is that through which
matter, in its genus, causes. S12 (3) What has been said of
material and formal causality applies to efficient. The existence
of an active form is the ratio or per se principle of its acting,
for (a) it is the actual essence of the form which certainly the
principle of acting, and' (b) God is, in the highest way, effective
because He is being (existence) through His Essence. Created
existence therefore can very well be the principle of effecting.
To argue that it is finite proves nothing. The essence is finite
also.sls
2. The Physical Order: Primary Matter and Substantial
creatures for with regard to existence: (1) The adequate object of Divine Power
is created being as such; that of the created power is this being;!i!) God alone gives
the total being totally, the creature completes and perfects being already begun;
3) God pJ:oduces existence from no pre-existing creature; The second cause gives
being only from the presupposition of other being. The same excellence and
singularity convenes to God in effecting essence (Disp. Meta., loco eit., nn. !i!I-!i!4).
810 Ibid., sect. 10.
811 Existentia
actualis est omnino necessaria ad exercendam causalitatem materialem et formalem non solum in duratione temporis sed etiam in antecessione
seu ordine naturae (Ibid., nn. 8-11).
812 Existentia materiae
(et idem proportionaliter est de forma) in re ipsa est id
per quod materia causat in suo ordine (Ibid., n. l!i!).
818 Nam quae
diximus de materiali et formali causa possunt et debent ad
efficientem applicari nam majori ratione in ea locum habent ... ipsamet existentia
formae activae est ipsamet ratio seu principium per se agendi (Ibid., nn. 16, 18).

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Form. Since we are interested in matter and form in as much
as they are physical potency and act we shall consider them
here together under that precise aspect rather than separately
according to all that Suarez has to say of them.
Primary matter is the first subject out of which something
is made. In general matter is usually divided into three classes:
matter out of whic.h, matter in which, and matter about
which.314 Matter is called first both through negation of any
prior matter and through respect to second matter. Since
matter bespeaks a subject, that is first matter which supposes
no previous subject. It is under this aspect that the Aristotelian
definition of primary matter (given above) considers matter.815
Second matter (and a substantial composite is called such with
respect to accidents) is that which supposes a prior subject.
Even proximate matter, i. e., matter disposed by accidents for
a form, is called second matter since the reception of such dispositions precedes in the order of nature, and constitutes the
subject proximately capable of such a form.
Supstantial form, for Suarez, is a certain incomplete and
simple substance which, as the act of matter constitutes with
matter the essence of a composed substance. It is a substance;
this is the genus of the definition which distinguishes this reality
from accidents and from substantial modes. It is simple-to
distinguish it from composed substance. It is incomplete-to
distinguish it from separated substances (angels). The rest of
the definition distinguishes it from that other simple, incomplete
substance which is primary matter, Suarez admits, too, that we
can call substantial form, as Aristotle did, the act of a physical
body:'l16
In exposing the nature of matter Suarez begins by ruling out
certain unacceptable notions. Primary matter is not, he indi814

Disp. Meta., disp. XIII, sect. 1, nn. 1-2.

"5 I Phys. 9, 1. 82.
818 FOrma est substantia quaedam simplex et incompleta quae ut actus materiae
cum ea constituit essentiam substantiae compositae (Disp. Meta., disp. XV, sect. 5,
n.l).

5

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

cates, a simple body,311 nor a complete and integral substance,81s
nor a composite of substantial potency and some incomplete
form. 81.9
Yet -the matter of generable things is essentially constituted
in an ultimate species, an ultimate species of
retained
under every form, invariable or at most accommodated to various forms merely through added accidents. It is specific yet
communicable to essentially diverse substances so that while the
concepts of generable substance is generic
is not such by
reason of matter. S20 What kind of' entity then does matter of
itself have? This much, Suarez is sure, is agreed on: matter
actually under a form, and which with the form constitutes a
corporeal substance has some entity which is real, substantial,
and really distinct from the entity of the form. 821 It is real, for
if it were nothing matter would have no real function in nature.
Corruption would be a resolution to nothingness, generation a
production from nothing. It is substantial; matter essentially
composes a substance and substance cannot be composed by
nothing; it requires at least incomplete substances. It is really
distinct from the entity of form; it is really separable from any
particular, determined form. The distinction cannot be merely
modal for substantial form is not a mode as is clear from the
fact that any form can be conserved in being, by God's absolute
power, without matter. Matter, moreover, is perpetual and
prior to form; it must, then, have a distinct entity.822
au Ibid., disp. XUI, sect. 8, nn. 5-6.
• ,8 Ibid., nn. 8-11.
81. Ibid., nn. U-16.
Suarez argues here that (1) nature gives no indication of
such a form; (2) such a form could not be composed with subsequent forms
since of two actual beings a thing which is per S8 one cannot be made; (8) no
form can give "quasi-generic" being without giving specific being as well, for
a form is precisely that which is distinct .
••• Materia prima rerum generabilium ... essentialiter est constituta in aliqua
ultima specie.materiae quam retinet sub omni forma, nec variare illam potest sed
ad summum per accidentia superaddita potest ad hanc vel illam formam accommodari .... Conceptum substantiae generabilis ut sic non esse genericum ratione
materiae (Ibid., n. 18).
821 Materiam quae actu est sub forma . . . habere aliquid entitatis realis et
substantialis distinctae ab entitate formae (Ibid., sect. 4, n. 2).
aaoIbid., nn. 8-5.

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Granted the entity of matter the question is, does matter, of
itself, have entity which is actual? (Here the phrase" of itself "
is meant by Suarez to signify a negation of a formal, not of
an efficient cause). Suarez gives an account of the Thomistic
answer to this question,328then sharply differs from it insisting
that matter has its own actual entity of essence and of existence
not intrinsically from the form, but of itself, though always
with an intrinsic regard to form.
Matter created by God and existing in a composite must have
some essence, else it is not a real being. But the essence of
matter is not ci:mstituted intrinsically, in its essential being
through form. Therefore of itself it has some essential entity.
The minor premise Suarez upholds with these arguments:
(1) Form does not intrinsically constitute matter except by
composing it. But matter is essentially a simple not a composed
Every simple thing (because simple) m:ust have
thing.
its own essence through itself. But matter is simple. (3)
Matter is essentially incomplete. It cannot therefore be intrinsically constituted through form, for if it were it would be a
complete essence,324 Matter can, in fact, lose one form and
acquire another, while preserving numerically the same entity.
This essential entity and perfection then is different from that
given by the form. B25
Yet since matter is essentially potency and all potency bespeaks an intrinsic respect to form, matter does not have its
own entity of essence without transcendental relation to form.
This respect, however,' is to form absolutely, not to this or that
form; another clear argument, Suarez adds, that matter does
Ibid., n. 7•
••• Materia creata a Deo et in composito existens habet aliquam essentiam realem
alioquin non esset ens reale; sed essentia materiae non constituitur intrinsece in suo
esse essentiae per formam; ergo per seipsam. . . . Minor probatur quia forma non
constituit intrinsece aliquam naturam in suo esse essentiae nisi componendo ilIam
per modum actus; forma autem non componit essentiam materiae ... quia materia
essentialiter est entitas simplex . . . omnis entitas simplex necessario habet per
seipsam intrinsece .... suam entitatem ... materia essentialiter est entitas
incompleta ergo intrinsece non constituitur per formam (Ibid., n. 9) •
••• Ibid., n. 10.
8'8

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

not have its essential entity from the information of a form.
Matter, he has already pointed out, has its own species (the
ultimate species of matter) even apart from form. 826
Matter has its own entity of existence. This proposition
must follow since in Suarez' theory, existence adds no real thing
or real mode to the entity of essence as this latter is actual and
outside its causes. By the very fact that a thing is conceived
as actual, as outside its causes, it is conceived as existing. This
doctrine that matter has its own existence Suarez confirms with
these considerations:
(1) Matter under a new form has
numerically the same entity it had under the old. Consequently
it has numerically th,e same being by which it is constituted in
actual existing entity. (!2) The subject of generation (matter)
since it is not nothing is a created entity. But creation terminates at an actual, existing entity. Therefore the subject of
generation (matter) is actual, existing. (3) H matter did not
really exist it could not be a real subject. (4) As the essence of
a corporeal substance is composed of the partial essence of
,matter and form, so its existence is composed of the partial
existences of matter and form.321 Yet the existence of matter
depends on form and on the information of form, for matter is
so imperfect that, unaided, it cannot be.828 Matter then is
through creation; its entity is incorruptible. God can destroy
matter only through annihilation. 829
••• Haec autem habitudo non est per se primo ad hanc vel illam formam sed ad
formam absolute. . . . Quod etiam est c1arum argumentum materiam non habere
entitatem essentiae ab informatione formae (Ibid., nJ 11) ... responsum est
materiam . . . constitutam esse in ultima specie materiae in, qua specie non
constituitur per eam formam qua informatur (Ibid., n. 12) .
• 2. Materia prima etiam habet in se et per se entitatem seu actualitatem existentiae distinctam ab existentia formae . . . materia eamdem numero entitatem
actualem habet sub forma geniti quam habet sub forma corrupti; ergo etiam habet
idem numero esse . . . materia ut praesupponitur formae . . . non est omnino nihil;
est ergo aliqua entitas creata; ergo entitas actualis et existens . . . sicut ergo
essentia substantiae corporeae componitur ex partialibus essentiis materiae et
formae ita etiam integra existentia ejusdem substantiae compositur ex partialibus
existentiis materiae et formae (Ibid., n. 13) .
• 2. Ibid., n. 14 .
••• Ibid., nn. 16,-17.

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What causal influence, then, does form have on this entity of
primary matter? 330 Suarez answers that form is not a proper
cause of matter, formally giving to it that proper being by
which matter exists. Matter, already has its own partial
essential entity which entity it retains under all forms. That
entity includes its partial existence distinct from all existence
coming from a form. Suarez' fundamental reason he has already
treated; matter is a real subject; therefore of itself it has actual
being. 331
Matter to be sure is pure potency but this does not exclude
that it have its own actual entity.332 A fuller understanding
of this depends on a knowledge of what is meant by saying that
matter is pure potency which we shall consider in the next
section.
From Suarez' concept of the independent actuality of matter
there follow many corollaries. For the sake of indicating how
far he was willing to go with this doctrine we shall point out a
few that are explicitly and formally taught by Suarez himself.
(1) Primary matter can be conserved without any substantial form at all, not in the ordinary cause of nature but by
God's power. 3SB From Suarez' principles this must follow since
matter of itself has true actuality of being. But even if created
essence and existence are really distinct (so that matter would
not have existence of itself) , Suarez thinks that there would be
no reason why God could not give existence to matter alone.
By the connatural order existence is in the supposit, admittedly;
but by Divine power it could be in one part of the supposit
alone, as God can make accidental existence remain in accidents
separated from any subject. Matter has a partial, substantial
Ibid., disp. XV, sect. 8.
Forma, non est propria causa materiae dans iIIi formaIitel' proprium esse, quo
materia existit ... quia forma non dat materiae illam partialem entitatem essentialem quam in se habet ... sed ilIa entitas includit suam parlicularem existentiam
distinctam ab omni existentia proveniente formaliter a forma (Ibid., n. 7).
33. Quod
enim dicitur pura potentia non excludit actualem entitatem ipsius
materiae (Ibid., n. U).
333 De potentia
absoluta potest conservari materia sine ulla forma (Ibid., disp.
XIII, sect. 9, n. 1; d. also disp. XV, sect. 9).
330

331

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THOMAS U. MULJ ..ANEY

essence; any essence"in so far as it is, can be actuated through
its act, namely existence. Nothing indicates that the order
between substantial form and existence is so essential that it
cannot be changed by God. 334
On Suarez' own principle that essence and existence are
really identical his conclusion is even more apparent. Matter
has its own partial entity of essence; therefore it has its own
partial entity of existence too. Hence it can be conserved by
God even without form. Any partial nature is capable" of a
proportioned existence; in that existence then it can subsist,
even alone, through Divine power. The partial existence of
matter, Suarez repeats, does not flow from form as from an
intrinsic ca1,lse, so God can supply for the function of the form
and so conserve matter alone. Even if form be a cause of the
being of matter it certainly is not a cause which intrinsically
composes it; so God's efficient causality can supply for such
causality as this. It is not of the ratio of existing matter nor
does the essence of matter demand that it have form; matter
consists in aptitude for form. Hence it can be actual (entitatively) and yet in potency to formal act. 335
(2) In the conservation of any body there is a separate
action by which the matter is conserved; in the conservation
of man there are three actions, one conserving the body, the
second the soul, and the third their union. This follows logically
enough from the doctrine of matter's actuality. Matter, Suarez
thought, is created by one act; a form is induced in it by another
". Quamvis teneremus existentiam esse rem distinctam ab essentia nulla reddi
posset sufficiens ratio cur non posset Deurn ilIum acturn ponere" in sola materia
... per divinam potentiam posset [existentiam] constitui in una parte ... posset
[Deus] conservare esse substantiale in sola forma ... ergo etiam posset in sola
essentia materiae ponere actum existentiae, quia ... revera est quadam partialis
essentia substantialis; quatenus ergo aliqua essentia est, poterit per existentiam
actuari; nam existentia est actus essentiae (Ibid., disp. XV, sect. 9, n. S).
"5 Ex propriis [principiis] ratio a priori hujus sententiae est quia materia sicut
habet suam
entitatem essentiae, ita et existentiae; . • . ideo . . . potest
Deus ... materiam sine forma conservare ... existentia partialis materiae non
manat intrinsece a forma . . . non est de ratione partis essentialis actu existentis
quod sit forma, vel habeat formam . . . solum consistat in aptitudine ad formam
(Ibid., nn. 5-6).

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action. These same distinct actions continue as conserving
actions. 336
Matter, then, according to Suarez, has its own entity; yet
it is also pure potency. In what sense is this latter statement
true? Suarez gives various opinions on this question but his
own opinion is basically this: matter once created cannot be
said to be in logical or objective potency; while it is pure
receptive potency (in its essence it includes no formal act) it
yet has entitative act. B37
To clarify: (1) Matter is not called pure potency with
respect to all metaphysical act, for: (a) it can be understood as
composed of genus and difference; (b) by nature matter has
some goodness, some appetible perfection which means that it
has some actuality. (c) it has a partial and proportionate act
of subsistence. (£) Matter is not pure potency in such a way
that it is not some entitative act, under some aspect. Since it
is a real subject it receives something else; and what receives
something else is itself something. (3) Matter is called pure
potency with respect to act informing and actuating it, and that
with respect to act absolutely and simply so called. Since
matter itself is simple it does not include the ratio of informing
act; whatever there is of entity in primary matter is ordered to
the function of receptive potency of substantial form. To call
it «pure potency" excludes from it the ratio of complete act,
act simply so caned, but not the entity and actuality necessary
to real potency.338 (4) Matter is, metaphysically, a composed
thing, composed of genus and difference of essence and.
886 In conservatione
ignis vel alterins rei simiEs duae actiones interveniunt . . .
in conservatione hominis tres interveniunt actiones .... In creatione rei corruptibins . . . intervenire duas . . . actiones (Ibid., sect. 8, nn. 6-7). Materia non
producetur per unam et eamdem actionem qua creatuf totnm (Ibid., sect. 8, n. 18).
837 Materia prima qURmvis sit pura potentia receptiva atque ... nullum includit
actum formal em, nihilominns . . . recte dicitnr esse vel habere actum entitativnm
(Ibid., disp. XIII, sect. 5, n. 4; cr. also n. ll).
'38 Dicendum
est ergo primo materiam non creari puram potentiam respectu
omnis actus metaphysici. Dico secundo materia non est ita pura potentia quin sit
aliquis actus entitativus secundum quid .... Dico tertio materia dicitur esse pma
potentia respectu actus informantis seu actuantis, et respectu actus absolute et
simpliciter dicti (Ibid., !ill. 9-11).

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ence, of nature and subsistence, but physically simple. Such
composition as it has argues, not to a potency prior to matter
but to this, that in matter one ratio is prior to another, though
the prior ratio always includes somehow the potentiality of
matter. S39 The being of matter can be said to be from form
because form in some way terminates its dependence. But
Suarez rejects the argument that matter cannot be in act
because of two things in act (and form certainly is in act) a
thing which is per se one cannot be made; for the principle he
says is true only of things complete in actual being. Only
incomplete actual beings can compose a complete being, for
what is not being cannot really compose. 340
Primary matter then is at one time entirely act and entirely
potency, not by reason of any composition but through identity,
for receptive potency essentially includes an incomplete, entitative act.341 It is potency not with respect to the whole substance
(since it is actually its own substantial entity) but with respect
to the form and to the being of the composite. It is impossible
that there be a real receptive potency for the whole latitude and
genus of substance, complete and incomplete, for such a potency
could not be accidental (accidents suppose a substance) and
it cannot be substantial i. e. in potency to itself.342
In delineating the mutual inter-play and causality between
matter and form, Suarez is not too precise and firm in his own
opinion but inclined (as he. often is) to fall back on probabilities.
Yet the following seems a fair and accurate statement of his
VIews.
•• 9 Metaphysice vero concedi debet materiam componi ex actu et potentia
(Ibid.,
n. 14) .
••• Axioma ex duobus entibus in actu non fit unum per Be non potest intelligi de
quibuscunque entitatibus actualibus; nam potius impossible est ens per se ac
completum actu componi nisi ex entibus actualibus incompletis; nam quod nihil
est . . . non potest realiter componere. . . . Debet ergo intelligi de entibus in actu
completis in §luis generibus (Ibid., n. 17).
841 Materiam totam esse potentiam et totam esse actum, qualem nos explicuimus
... per identitatem (Ibid., n. 18) .
•• » Materia non est potentia ad totam Iatitudinem substantiae. . . . Repugnant
enim dari potentiam realem et receptivam respectu totius generis et latitudinis
substantiae (Ibid., n. lW).

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(1) The being of matter depends on form not as on a proper
cause but as on a necessary condition. This is not surprising
in view of what Suarez has already said about the separate
creation of matter, etc. 343 He supoprts his view as follows: (a)
Matter depends on form in some way for: (x) The matter of
corruptible things is not more independent of form than celestial
matter. But celestial matter depends on form. (y) Matter
does not seem to be more dependent on accidental forms than
it is on substantial form. But matter cannot naturally be
without accidental form, at least of quantity. (z) Whatever,
in physical things always happens in the same way and not in
another way seems to be naturally necessary. But it always
happens that matter is under some form. This therefore is
from natural necessity. But this necessity is not from the form,
nor from the extrinsic agent (the efficient cause) , therefore it
is from the necessity of the matter and its intrinsic need. 344
(b ) Yet this dependence is probably dependence on a necessary condition, not dependence on a pI:oper cause; for the former
is both possible and sufficient: (y) Possible: for in this way
the form or its union depends on certain accidental forms as on
necessary dispositions in the way of conservation; for an even
greater reason then matter can have such dependence on form
as on a necessary condition. Just as matter depends on quantity
in this way, so it can depend on form. (z) Sufficient: for such
dependence as this preserves all that has already been said
about the dependence of matter on form; this is an easy, clear
mode of dependence. 345 As a matter of fact to understand
the dependence of matter on form as dependence on a proper
cause is, for Suarez, difficult. It can hardly be reconciled, he
says, with the fact that matter is p:resupposed to form, and to
its eduction. Again matter comes about through a true creation
and is conserved through the same act. Clearly then, in its
becoming it does not depend on form as on a cause for if it did
••• Quod sit dependentia a posteriori et a conditione necessaria videtur probabiliter
persuaderi (Ibid., disp. XV, sect. 8, n. 17) .
... Ibid., nn. 14-15..
•,. Ibid., n. 17.

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the created form would concur to the creature act. Since matter
becomes without stich dependence, it is without such causal
dependence on form. 846 Suarez admits however that there are
probable arguments for the other side. 841
(2) Matter and form are, nevertheless, causes of one another,
though not altogether in the same way. (a) Matter causes
material forms both as to their being and their causality (since
their information also depends on matter). (b) Form causes
matter; it informs and actuates it. But it is a cause rather of
informed matter than of the being of matter for this latter is
distinct from the perfection which form brings to it. Matter,
on the contrary is a cause of form, simply speaking.
(3) Matter and form are causes to one another of the retention of being, and in this they can be said to cause one another
in the same way. Matter through its being causes form; it can
be said to be caused by form in as much as it cannot have being
without form. Yet there is a difference even in this; matter
through its being, directly and per se causes the being of the
form; the latter cannot be presupposed to the causal influence
of matter, but is caused by it. On the other hand the being of
matter must simply be conceived as presupposed to the being
of such a form since it is the principle of that material influence
without which such a form cannot be made. The being of
matter is from form only as from a condition and added actuality without which it cannot naturally be.s48
A few final words are necessary to determine Suarez' ideas
••• Juxta alium modum [dependentia a propria cauaa] difficile intelligitur haec
mutua dependentia; nam cum materia simpliciter supponatur formae . . . vix
intelligitur quomodo a priori possit materia a forma dependere . . • non pendet in
suo fieri a forma ut a vera causa (Ibid. n. 18) .
••• Ibid., n. .
• 4. Materia et forma sunt sibi invicem causae .... Haec assertio primo declaratur
in materia prima et substantialibus formis materialibus de quibus certum est
causari a materia et quoad esse suum, ... et quoad suam causalitatem .... Materia
est causa formae simpliciter et secundum esse ejus, forma vero est causa materiae
solum quatenus formata est • . . esse materiae solum est a forma pendens ut a
conditione et actualitate superaddita. . . . Materia per suum esse directe et per se
nn. 4-5).
causat ipsum esse formae (Ibid., disp. XXVIII, sect.

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of the relation of this matter and form to the composite which
results from their union. The question is whether a composed
substance is something distinct from its parts and from their
union. Suarez' answer is that such a substance is not something
really or modally distinct from its essential parts taken together
and united, but, at most, rationally distinct from them. 849
He explains: (1) A composed substance is really distinct
from its single parts, not adequately and by its whole self, but
through the inclusion of the other part, for the whole includes
something really distinct from each part separately taken. Yet
this distinction is not greater than that which comes from the
inclusion of a distillct thing. 350
A composed substance is
different in reality from matter and form taken together, for it
includes them and adds something, viz., their real substantial
union, which is modally distinct from them, for there can be an
aggregation of the parts by merely local propinquity to· one
another without the substance existing. (8) Yet the total
differs from the parts taken as together and united only rationally.351 (4) Since the whole is a distinct thing from the form
and from its union but is not distinct from the total reality of
matter form and union collectively taken the composite seems
to be a sum of these parts (though Suarez denies that essential
parts are integral) .352 (5) Matter, though it includes a transcendental respect to form preserves its own proper entity in
any composite and form intervenes as a merely extrinsic
cause. 358 The union therefore is brought about through something distinct from the component parts, viz., a substantial
mode. 854
••• Tota substantia non distinguitur a partibus simul sumptis et unitis realiter
aut ex natura rei seu in re ipsa, sed solum ratione (Ibid., disp. XXXVI, sect. S,
n.9) .

••• Ibid., n. 7.
851 Substantia
composita distinguitur in re ipsa a materia et forma simul . . •
sumptis, tanquam includens utramque earum, et addens realem unionem substantialem ... quae est aliquid in re ipsa distinctum ab eis (Ibid., nn. 8-9) .
••• Non vero recte inferre partes integrales esse essentiales vel e converso (Ibid.,
n.17) .

••• Ibid., disp. XV, sect. 9, n. 5.
It seems that Suarez should have concluded that the union in a composite is

8 ..

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II. POTENCY AND ACT IN THE ORDER OF OPERATION
I. The Conditions Requisite for Efficient Operation. 355 We
have seen the Suarezian doctrine about potency and act in the
order of being. We begin now to see the same teaching in the
order of operation. Here again our treatment is two-fold. We
shall consider first some of the general conditions requisite for
efficient operation, secondly those proximate principles of operation which are potencies (in the predicamental sense) and
their relation to act. Accepting the fact of efficiency and even
of the truly efficient causality of creatures 856 we shall give here
on Suarez' teaching about efficient causality as this bears on
his teaching on potency ana act, pausing only to clarify what
efficiency meant to Suarez.
Suarez repeats Aristotle's definition of the efficient cause
as that " whence is the first principle of change and of rest."
He sees many flaws in the definition and, a need for much
explanation, but finally finds it acceptable in the sense that it
really means the first principle whence is action or the first
principle whence the effect is, through the medium of action,
a description which distinguishes this cause from all others.858
The efficient cause can.be. (a) per se:that on which the effect
directly depends according to that proper being which it has' in
as much as it is an effect; (b) per accidens: not a true cause
but it is called one because of some respect to or similarity, or
union with a per se cause; 859 (c) ,physical: that which truly
and really effects (influit in effectum); (d) moral: this is twofold; it can mean a cause which: (y) acts freely: so taken it
is not altogether distinct from a physical cause; (z) does not
trUly effect, but so acts morally that the effect is imputed to it.
accid,ntal, for he says (Disp. Meta.., disp. IV, sect. S, n. 19) that unity which
convenes through something else is accidental .
••• Cf. Disp. Meta., disp. XVIT and XVill.
···Ibid., disp. XVIIT, especially sect.!.
an Ibid., disp. XVIT, sect. 1.
•• 8 Aristoteles causam efficientem .' . . definit . . . unde primum principium
est mutationia aut quietia (Ibid., n. 1; cf. also nn. 4-5) .
••• Ibid., sect. !t, ,n. !to

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This is always a per accidens cause; 860 (e) principal: that
which flows into the very action through which the effect is
produced, by its own principal (even though secondary) power;
(f) instrumental: which concurs, or is elevated, to making an
effect more noble than itself, which is beyond the measure of
this agent's perfection 'and action. 861 (The principal cause,
needs no elevation to achieve its effect since it has its own
intrinsic power which is per se proportioned to the effect. The
instrumental cause on the other hand helps achieve the effect
only through a power of a lower ratio or perfection than the
effect. Its own power is not sufficient or not proportioned to
the effect, so in addition to it, it needs an instrumental power
from the principal agent.) 862 (g) first: which is altogether
indepepdent in acting; (h) second: is dependent in acting, even
if it acts through its own principal power; 868 (i) equivoc'al:
produces an effect which is not similar to its own form; (j)
univocal: operating through the power of its form it makes
an effect similar to it. 864
Given the nature of efficient causality, then, the question of
interest to us is whether an efficient cause must be really
distinct from the recipient of its causality, whether, in other
words a thing can reduce itself from potency to act. 865 Since
Suarez' answer to the question lies in the distinctions he makes'
we must proceed with him step by step.
Suarez lists three propositions' as evident and essential pre
notes for this matter: (1) It is not necessary that the agent
be distinguished as a supposit from the patient which receives.
This is clear from examples and from the fact that a thing can
move'itself if it is distinguished into a part per se moving and
a part per se moved. (2) Within a supposite the agent can
be distinguished from the patient in various ways, (a) according to different integral parts, (b) according to different substantial and essential parts, (c) one is a faculty of acting, the
other of receiving. (3) Suarez distinguishes three kinds of
••• Ibid" n. 6.
••, Ibid., n. 16.
••• Ibid., nn.

••• Ibid., n. !W•
••• Ibid., n. !U .
• •• Ibid., disp. XVIIT, sect. 7•

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action: (a) natural dimanation, (b)
and material
movements under which are included alteration, augmentation, local motion and, in some ways the local motion of
spiritual things, (c) immanent acts of sense powers (cognitive
and appetative) and intellectual powers (cognitive and volitional) .866
In natural dimanation, though it happens that the proximate
efficient principle is not distinct from the recipient yet, simply
speaking, the effect is reduced to an efficient cause which is
distinct from the patient.
The proximate cause is not distinct; for example, consider
the faculties of the soul as flowing from the soul. The soul is
their principle, but it also receives them, and the distinction in
the soul between its ratio as agent and its ratio as receiver is
a distinction of reason only. The same is true, Suarez adds,
of the substance and properties of angels; but in corporeal
things it is not so for almost always, such
flow from
the form and are received into matter, or into the composite
by reason of the matter.861
Yet the effect is always repuced to a really distinct efficient
cause for the property in question flows from the substance or
essence not as from a principal agent but as from an instrument
of the generator; the effect is attributed to the generator as to
its principal cause; and the generator is of course really distinct
from the thing generated and from its potencies. s6g
In physical motion and action: Every cause which is efficient
through physical motion and transient action is somehow really
distinct from the material cause which receives the effect. (a)
8 •• Statuendum
est non esse necessarium agens distingui supposito a passo
recipiente . . .' supponendum est in eodem supposito agente in seipsum variis
modis posse distingui agens a patiente ..• distinguere oportet varias actiones
. . . naturalis dimanatio . . . motus physici ac materiales . . • efficientia per
actiones immanentes sensus aut appetitus intellectus aut voluntatis (Ibid., nn. 6-8).
8.7 Dico . . . in resultantia naturali quamvis contingat proximum efficiens non
esse distinctum a recipiente !amen simpliciter ilie effectns reducitur in efficientem
causam distiuctam a passo. . ... In anima distingui possit ratio agendi et recipiendi
... potentias ... tamen .•. ilia distinctio rationis tantum sit (Ibid., n. 9) •
. 8." Ibid.,

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As to alteration, Suarez argues by induction that there is found
no proper alteration made by an agent in itself" per se prima"
i. e., according to one and the same part. a6S (b) In augmentation one thing does not act on itself through itself: there is
no motion of augmentation except by a previous alteration.
Suarez assigns as the a priori reason for this the truth that one
thing cannot at the same time and under the same aspect be
in act and in potency.
This principle, Suarez points out, can seem invalid, even as
applied here, since an agent can have a virtual quality, and
lacking the formal act, can act in itself to acquire that formal
act. 370 But here the objection is dismissed on the ground that
the formal act must be either natural to the agent, or violent,
or neither. H the formal modification is natural the agent will
always have it, unless violently impeded, but will have it
.through natural dimination by action principally reduced to
the generator. H the quality is violent it is impossible that the
agent by a virtual quality should formally reduce itself to a
violent state. 871 The third member, the quality, is neither
natural nor violent, is impossible, for it cannot be that an agent
by its own virtual quality reduce itself to a form which is
neither natural nor violent. The quality will find in the subject
dispositions which are either repugnant to it (and then the
formal act is violent) or it finds no repugnant disposition (and
then the formal act is natural) /172 Suarez concludes then that
the Aristotelian principle involved here is true even with regard
to a virtual act, but with two limitations: (1) Immanent and
••• Ibid., n. 11.
870 Non potest esse idem secundum idem simul in actu et in potentia.
Cui
rationi valde obstat objectio ... quia procedit haec ratio ad summum .de alteratione
univoca . . . non vero de alteratione equivoca quae procedit a qualitate virtuali
seu superioris rationis. . . . Nam tunc nulla esset contradictio quod eadem pars
haberet qualitatem virtualem et careat formali et ideo ageret in se (Ibid., n. 12) .
• 71 Si qualitas est naturalis semper habebit illam .... Si autem illa qUalitas sit
violenta impossibile est ut eadem res per qualitatem virtualem coloris seipsam
formaliter calefaciat. calefactione violenta (Ibid., n. 14) .
... Alteratio autem indifferens, i. e. non violenta, nec naturalis, esse non potest
in eo qui habeat qualitatem virtualem ad talem alterationem faciendam (Ibid.,
n.18).

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vital acts are excluded (what Suarez has said holds only when
it is a question of an act which is a principle of physical and
merely natural motions); (2) It is to be understood of a thing
in as natural state, not in a preternatural one.873
(c) As to local motion, a body can be moved only violently,
indifferently, or naturally. In the first two cases the motion is
clearly from a distinct agent. In the third case Suarez distinguishes two motions, animals moving themselves, or the
motion of inanimate things tending to their own place. In both
the agent is distinct from the patient; in the case of animals,
they are distinct as part from part; the inanimate bodies are
moved by their generator. 374
With regard to the motion of animals there is some difficulty,
Suarez admits, since while one part moves another, we cannot
admit any infinite process but must arrive at a first moving
part which is also moved. In this part then there seems to be
no distinction between mover and moved; it seems to be both.
The same difficulty, Suarez points out, is to be found in explaining the perpetual motion and quiet of the heart. It seems
simply to move itself.375 After some discussion Suarez concludes that one defensible answer is that the soul as informing
the first part moved and moving through itself or through a
potency, moves that part,so that the integral part moving and
moved is not distinct, but the essential part is.376 Essentially
the same is his final answer to the question of the motion of
the heart; it is moved and moves according to the same integral
part, so that the motion is not to be attributed to the generator:
373 Dicendum est illud principium non pote8t e8se idem simul in potentia et in
actu esse verum etiam de actu virtuali adhibita duplici limitatione. Una est ut sit

sermo de actu qui est principium motus physici et mere naturalis ut excludamus
actiones immateriales et vitales. . . . Alia est, ut intelligatur de re existente in suo
naturali statu (Ibid., n. 19) .
... Ibid., n. 20.
875 Ibid., nn. 29-80.
376 Responderi poterit . . . non distingui partem integrantem
per se moventem
et per se motam sed solum partem essentialem. Neque id esse inconveniens (Ibid.,
n.81).

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it is enough that in the one part the rationes of acting and of
receiving be diverse.371
(d) As to immanent actions, in which we are most of all
interested, Suarez teaches that not only are the principles quod
of acting and receiving not always distinguished, but it is not
always necessary even that the principles quo be distinguished.
The first part is clear: immanent action is received in the very
thing operating so it is not necessary that the active supposit
be distinct from that which receives, nor that it act and receive
according to diverse parts, since (a) often it has no diverse
parts, (b) the act is received into the potency which elicits it.
The second part, Suarez argues, is true, because the act
remains in the _eliciting potency: so nothing prohibits that
there be no distinction even in the proximate principle quo of
acting and of receiving. 318 These acts all pertain either to
knowledge or appetite. In acts of sense knowledge or appetite
it is true that the chief principle quo of acting is the soul; the
principle of receiving is the body. In intellectual acts, however,
the chief principle quo of acting is only rationally distinct from
that of receiving.
Suarez indicates this difference however, that of cognitive
acts the proximate active principle is distinguished from the
principal of receiving as the including is distinguished from the
included; for the former principle is faculty plus species; the
latter is the faculty alone. 879 For appetative acts no species is
needed, so the one faculty is the principle quo of both acting
and receiving. Some argue that the principle of act is faculty
.n Non existimo inconveniens hunc modum attribuere ipsi animaIi et asserere
secundum eamdem partem integralem movere et moveri; satisque esse quod rationes
agendi et recipiendi sint diversae (Ibid., n. 85) .
•• 8 Necesse non est ut suppositum agens [actione immanente] distinctum sit a
recipiente neque etiam ut secundum diversas partes agat et recipiat • . . nil vetat
quominus etiam in proximo principio quo agente et recipiente illam non inveniatur
in re distinctio (Ibid., n. 45) .
••• In his ergo actionibus . . . in parte sensitiva facile distingui potest principium
quo principale agendi et recipiendi; nam illud est anima ... hoc vero est corpus ...
in actionibus cognoscendi . . . principium [proximum] agendi est potentia ut
informata specie; principium autem recipiendi est sola potentia (Ibid., nn. 46-47).

6

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

plus appetition of the end (which is attributed to the author
of nature) and the act of willing means to the end ,is received
in the will alone, and so they find even here a distinction
between active and receptive principle. But Suarez rejects this
and states that the will through itself is the proximate principle
both of act and reception. The inconvenient conclusion is of
course that, one thing is. under the same aspect, agent and
patient; therefore under one aspect, one thing is in act and in
potency. But this is no real difficulty for Suarez; he points out
that there is no repugnance in this that one faculty be in first
act, and in potency to second act for first act does not formally
include second act but a power to elicit second act. Hence the
faculty can at one time be in virtual act and in formal potency.
As by one action a thing can be constituted actually acting and
receiving so by one faculty a supposit can be constituted in the
ratio of acting and receiving, in potency. There is no inconvenience in one thing's being, under one aspect, both agent and
patient if it is taken with proportion, i. e., both in potency or
both in act.S80
From all this Suarez concludes: (1) It is not necessary to, or
of the ratio of, an agent cause as such to be distinguished from
the patient. (2) Neither is it of the ratio of an efficient cause
as such that it be distinguished from the patient according to
diverse substantial parts, either essential or integral. When
either of these distinctions mentiOned (in supposit or in substantial part) is necessary the necessity arises from the peculiar
exigencies of this cause not by reason of efficient causality as
such.ssl (3) Nor is it necessary to an efficient cause as such
that the ratio of acting and of receiving be really distinct either

.8.

Fatendum est eamdem omnino potentiam per seipsam esse principium proximum agendi et recipiendi talem actum . . . eamdem facultatem esse in actu
primo et in potentia ad actum secundum immanentem nulla est repugnantia quia
actus primus non includit formal iter secundum, sed virtutem ad eliciendum ilium
. . . in hoc sensu non est inconveniens quod idem secundum idem constituatur
agens et patiens si cum proportione sumatur (Ibid., n. 51) .
• 81 Sequitur non esse de necessitate
aut ratione causae efficientis ut sic quod
distinguatur a patiente secundum diversas partes substantiales sive essentiales sive
integrales (Ibid., n. 58).

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as to subject or as to entity, integral or partial, for this distinction is sometimes lacking; therefore it is not per se and universally necessary by reason of efficiency. The distinction is
always necessary in univocal action, and of that action the
axiom "One thing cannot be· at the same time in potency and
act," is true. (4) When the proximate principles of acting and
of receiving are not different in subject or integral entity the
ratio of agent cause as of immanent action does not require
even that they differ as including and included i. e., that the·
principle of acting include something which the passive principle
does not have. In immanent actions which do not require an
assimilative .process the two principles are not distinguished
even in partial entity. This way of acting is consonant with the
will both on account of its liberty, and on account of its nature
as an appetite. The faculty which receives immanent action,
can, by its very self be sufficiently constituted in first act as a
sufficient, proximate, effective principle of the same action
which it receives.1I82 (5) We might add here in large letters a
proposition which while it is not enunciated by Suarez in speaking of efficient causality, is basic to his treatment of that
causality. It is this ". . . that principle . . . everything which
is moved is moved by another has not yet been sufficiently
demonstrated in every kind of motion or action; for there are
many things which through virtual act seem to move themselves and reduce themselves to formal act as can be seen in
the appetite or will and in water reducing itself to its pristine
frigidity; the same therefore can happen in local motion ... " 388
8.2 Sequitur ex dictis non esse de ratione causae efficientis ut sic ut ratio agendi
et patiendi sint in re distinctae vel subjecto vel entitate integra aut partiali •••
praetera quod principium proximum agendi et patiendi • . . saltem differant in re
aliqua quam includit principium agendi et non patiendi ut sic.... Non ... provenit
ex communi ratione agentis ut sic neque etiam ex communi ratione actionis immanentis ut sic •.. in actione immanente quae ... assimilationem non requirit .••
non oporteat principium agendi esse in partiali etiam entitate distinctum a
principio recipiendi (Ibid., n. 54).
8.8 Principium illud . . . omne quod movetur ab alio movetur adhuc non esse
satis demonstratum in omni genere motus vel actionis; nam multa sunt quae per
actum virtualem videntur sese movere et reducere ad actum formalem ut in

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On the question, of the dissimilarity between agent and
patient Suarez says at the outset;8S4that it is a question of the
dissimilarity between efficient cause and its recipient at the
beginning of the action, not at its end; and it is moreover a
question of antecedence of nature, not of time. 8s5
An agent cause, Suarez states, can have an effect on the
patient only in so far as "the latter is dissimilar to the agent, in
form or in the term of the action. To substantiate this, Suarez
appeals both to the authority of Aristotle 3S6 and to the following argument from reason. An agent acts in as much as it is
in act, and in order to act it requires a patient which is in
potency. But what is in potency as such is unlike that which
is in act as such. Therefore. The major is shown by this that
to act is to communicate being, therefore (1) The communicated being must be supposed in the agent, so the agent acts in
When the agent communicates
as much as it is in act;
being it reduces the patient from potency to act, hence the
patient, as subjected to such action is supposed as in potency.381
The dissimilitude which is per se required for action is only
such as is found between a habit and its privation, or between
a thing constituted in act or existing in potency. The patient
must lack the form it is to receive; but positive opposition and
contrariety is not necessary by reason of efficient causality as
such.
Univocal causes, introducing in the patient a form of the
same ratio as that through which the agent acts supposes in
the patient a lack of that form, i. e., formal unlikeness. 8ss
Equivocal causes suppose not formal unlikeness in the patient
but unlikeness as the patient is subjected to and perfected by
the action. It supposes therefore a lack of that similitude
appetitu sen voluntate videre licet et in aqua reducente se ad pristinam frigiditatem;
idem ergo accidere potest in motu locali (Ibid., disp. XXIX, sect. 1, n. 7).
8.4 Ibid., disp. xvm, sect. 9.
8.5 Ibid., nn. 5-6.
8.6 I de Generatione, c. 7, text. 46.
8.7 Disp. Meta., disp. xvm, sect. 9, nn. 7-S.
8 •• Ibid., n. 9.

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85

which can be between a form formally taken and another which
eminently contains it, This is true in all immanent action, for
such action produces something not of the same form as that
of the agent, but a proportional thing, i. e., second act consonant with first act, which second act is the perfection of first
and contained in it not formally but virtually and eminently.ss9
It is per se required for efficiency that the agent have power
in the patient and with respect to its capacity. Suarez adds that
his resolution does not go against the principle that a thing
cannot be dissimilar to itself with respect to one and the same
part; for one thing can be in first act and in potency to second
act (or in virtual act and formal potency) and so have a certain
dissimilitude to itself, a dissimilitude which is not formal but
eminent, virtual.

2. The proximate principles of operation. Suarez begins this
discussion by pointing out that while Aristotle never defined
potency as a species he did define each of the kinds of potency;
(1) active potency as the principle of. changing another in as
much as it is other; and (2) passive potency as the principle
of being changed by another.3g0 Suarez immediately goes into
the question as to whether this division of potency into active
and passive is adequate and sufficient. He shows that it is (1)
from the authority of philosophers; (2) from the nature of
potency which as first act bespeaks a regard to second act, and
the proximate and immediate second act of any potency can be
only either action or passion, because an act can only regard a
389 Causa equivoca
. . . supponit dissimilitudinem inter passum ut actioni supponitur et ut per actionem perficitur ... supponit in passo carentiam Hlius similitudinis quae inter formam aliquam formaliter sumptam et aliam quae eminenter
continet iliam, intercedere potest. ... Et idem est ... in actibus immanentibus in
quibus semper actio potentiae aequivoca est de quo communiter did solet, non tam
tendere ad producendum simile quam ad producendum proportionale, i. e. actum
secundum consentaneum primo, et qui sit perfectio eius in quo non formal iter sed
virtute et eminenter continetur (Ibid.).
390 Definit,
dicens potentiam activam esse principium transmutandi aliud in
quantum aliud; passivam yew, principium transmutandi ab alio (Ibid., disp. XLIII,
sect. 1, n. 1).

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TltOMAS U. l\:IULLANEY

potency as either principle from which the act is, or in which
and out of which the act is.891
Granted the division of potency into active and passive do
the two members of the division differ really, or sometimes only
rationally? There are, Suarez answers, purely active powers
really distinct from passive potencies, all powers, namely, which
are per se and primarily ordered to acting through transient
act, as the principles of such acts complete in their own order.
Examples are the active intellect, the motive power of living
things, the attractive and impulsive power in some bodies.
These potencies are not receptive; they never suffer by receiving
their own act (for they are not principles of immanent acts)
nor by receiving anything as first act by which, as active
powers, they are completed, for they are complete in their own
order and require no further act by which they are intrinsically
completed for acting. The fact that such faculties sometimes
need application, or the motion of another power to exercise
acts proves nothing against this, for this motion is not through
physical action and passion but through a sympathy of powers
of the one and the same souI.392 As is clear from its task, such a
faculty is really distinct from a passive potency for if the latter
is active it is so through immanent, not transient,action. 398
Are there, contrary to such purely active powers others which
are purely passive? In the whole latitude of being there are
purely passive capacities such as primary matter, but are there
any such faculties which constitute a species of quality? Suarez
answers that he has not found any quality which is instituted
891 Actus secundus proximus et immediatus alieujus potentiae non est nisi aut
actio aut passio; ergo etiam potentia tantum potest esse aut activa aut passiva
(Ibid., n. 6).
892 Suppono dari aliquas· potentias pure activas . . . hae namque potentiae sunt
principia agendi, ut constat, et non sunt principia patiendi quia . . . neque etiam
patiuntur recipiendo aliquid per modum actus primi quo compleantur in ratione
principii agendi; quia ... sunt principia eompleta in suo ordine ... et non requirunt
ulteriorem actum quo intrinsece compleantur ad agendum. Nee refert quod hujusmodi faeultates interdum indigent applicatione vel motione alterius potentiae . . .
haec enim motio non fit per physicam actionem et passionem . . . sed fit per
sympathiam potentiarum ejusdem animae (Ibid., sect.
n. 1).
893 Ibid., n.

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87

solely for this purpose of only
qualities or accidents. m
He adds that we must not confuse the ratio of material or
passive disposition with a receptive potency. The former consists in information with a certain proportion to the effect of
some other form but is not a potency receptive of it, as
quantity, for example is in its way, a material disposition td
substantial form; yet it is not a power receptive of form. Of
natural qualities none, Suarez says,· seems to be per se and
primarily a passive power; of vital powers some are passive but,
not purely passive. There is therefore no potency which is
purely passive.895
One faculty can be both active and passive, (1) with regard
to diverse things, as the passive intellect is active with respect
to the act of understanding, and passive with respect to the
active intellect; (2) even with regard to itself, for one power
can have the power of eliciting its act and yet be the principle
of receiving the act it elicits, as immanent acts are received
in the faculties which elicit them. The reason is that this
quality in as much as it has the actual perfection of such a
species can be a power (virtus) eminently or virtually containing another act, and formally actuable through this act.a96
Yet since in reality there is no· distinction between the twofold ratio of such a faculty it is not to be placed in a two-fold
species of quality. Both rationes are essential, neither is accidental. The one potency includes in a united way the aspects
of being active and passive; per se it is each. Suarez notes that
such potencies are found only in the cognitive and appetitive
orders for only in those orders are there immanent acts.
89.

Ergo ve:t:t> hactenus non inveni qualitatem aliquam quae solum instituta sit

ad hoc munus recipiendi tantum alias qualitates vel accidentia (Ibid., n. 5) .
895 Non est autem confundenda ratio materialis seu passivae dispositionis cum
potentia proprie receptiva . . . simpliciter loquendo nulla est qualitas essentialiter
spectans ad secundam speciem, quae sit pura potentia passiva (Ibid., nn. 5-6) .
•0. Verum ... est eamdem facultatem secundum rem esse sirnul potentiarn activam
et passivam respectu ejusdem actus et respectu suiipsius . . . quia illarnet qualitas
quatenus habet actualem perfectionem talis speciei potest esse virtus eminenter vel
virtute continens alium actum et potest esse formaliter actuabilis per eumdem
actum (Ibid., n. 14).

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

Through our inadequate concepts such a thing can be distinguished into active and passive aspects, yet it is, in reality only
one thing; for by its ultimate difference as a vital and perfect
power it comprehends the ratio of receiving and eliciting. The
fact that our concepts can prescind two different respects is not
enough to distinguish two species.s91
Speaking more physically, then, active and passive powers
in general are not so distinct in reality that all actuality is
excluded from the latter. A passive faculty is receptive of its
act even if it also elicits it. S98 This does not argue against
Aristotle's definition of such a power as that which is changed
by another in as much as it is other; this note of " other" does
not exclude the very faculty from concurring. For the note
of "other" a formal distinction is enough, a real one is not
always necessary. So if a power which receives its act is also the
principle of the act there is no difficulty; it can have both
aspects in as much as it virtually or eminently contains the
act. S99
Suarez' own definition of potency is this: "a proximate principle of some operation for which [operation] it is, by its nature,
instituted and ordained." Operation is understood to include
both action and reception so as to include both kinds of
potency; or if there is no purely passive potency then operation
is to be taken in the sense of actyhich either (1) comes from
a potency (a purely active potency) or (9l) remains in the
potency (the receptive and active potency). A potency is by
its nature ordered to operation. 40o
.91 Existimo nullam esse distinctionem actualem et ex natura rei inter potentiam
ilIam ut activam et passivam, quia ilIa qualitas essentialiter includit utramque
rationem (Ibid., n. 15; cf. also n. 16, 1) .
••• Dicendum est ilIa duo membra [potentiae activae sc. et passivae] esse in re
distincta ita tamen ut a potentia quae passiva dicitur non excludatur in re ipsa
omnis activitas . . . potentia vera passiva [dicitur] quae est receptiva sui actus
etiamsi ilIius sit etiam elicitiva (Ibid., n. 18) .
••• Significatur non semper requiri distinctionem in re, sed formalem vel virtualem
interdum satis esse, . . . Quod si aliquando ilIa eadem res est principium activum
talis actus non est sub ea ratione sed quatenus illa res virtute aut eminenter
continet talem actum (Ibid., n.
4 •• Potentia est principium proximum oJicujua operationis ad quam natura 8Ua
inatitutum et ordinatum est (Ibid., sect. S, n. •

BASIS OF SUAREZIAN TEACHING ON HUMAN FREEDOM

89

The next question to claim our attention is whether there
responds to each potency its own act. Suarez in answering
immediately points out that it is one thing to compare a thing
in potency to a thing in act, and quite another to compare
potency to act. The first compares one .and the same thing as
possible to itself as actually existing; there is here involved only
logical or objective potency. We are treating here rather of
real potency, active and passive, both as transcendental and
predicamenta1. 401
To every real potency, both active and passive, then, its own
act corresponds but in different ways. To the passive there
always corresponds some formal act actuating and perfecting
it, and to the active potency there corresponds an action which
does not formally actuate it but which flows from it. Suarez
prove; his dictum about the passive power from its very nature.
Such a thing is certainly ordered to receiving. But proper and
physical reception consists in the adhesion or union of some
formal act; therefore the act of
a power is a formal actualizing thing either aptitudinally or actually (for such a
such a power
need not always be under its act). The act
can be considered according to two aspects distinct in nature,
viz., that of actual passion and that of a form in being. Under
each aspect it is the formal act of the potency; the two rationes
are ordered among themselves as becoming to being. 402
Since an active potency is ordained not to receive but to act,
the act corresponding to it is not as something which informs
and is received but which comes from it. Clearly the effect of
,01 Suppono aliud esse comparare rem in potentia ad rem in actu aliud vero esse
comparare potentiam ad actum. In priori . . . confertur . . . eadem res passibilis
ut passibilisad seipsam ut actu existentem (Ibid., sect. 5, n. 1).
40. Cuilibet potentiae
... respondet proprius actus sed diversimode: Nam
potentiae passivae correspondet semper aliquis actus formalis actuans et perficiens
ipsam; potentiae vero activae ut sic non respondet actus formalis actuans ipsam
sed ab ea manans ... receptio autem propria et. physica consistit in adhaesione vel
unione alicujus actus formalis . . . potentiae passivae correspondeat proprius actus
actuans formaliter. . . . Quod Vlero sub utraque ratione [actualis passionis sc. et
formae in facto esse] sit [actus potentiae passivae] formalis actus potentiae passivae,
patet (Ibid., nn. 2-4).

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

such action is not an act informing the active potency; neither
then is the action. While this is most clearly true of transient
action it is true also of immanent for while the latter is the
formal act of its potency it is not such because it is action,
but because it at the same time the passion of the potency
as the latter is passive. The effect, too, of immanent action is
the formal act of its potency, not because it is the effect of the
power, but rather because it is a form regarding the passive
capacity of such a power. Action rather than the effect is the
act corresponding to' any active potency (one point of difference between it and the passive); for while the action is
ordained to the effect the latter. does not formally regard the
agent with any intrinsic and transcendental respect as action
does. In passion even the term does have a transcendental
regard to the passive power and actuates it.408 Not all power
then is to act as subject is to form; the act of only a passive
power informs and actuates it. Transient action is not in the
active potency. In general action as action is not received in
an active power as such. 404
Though to each potency there corresponds an act proportionate to it, the act is always something in reality, essentially and
specifically distinct from the potency. The real distinction is
clear, for the respect of potency to its act is real. An active
potency is an effective principle of its act, and true efficiency
things really distinct. A passive potency
can only be
on the other hand is the material· cause of the act, and the act
is its formal cause intrinsically effecting it; these two also must
be really distinct. Again, separability is a real sign of real distinction and a potency is separable from its act. Aristotle is
0.3 Actus illi [i. e. potentiae activae] correspondens non debet esse per modum
receptionis vel informationis sed per modum emanationis tantum . . . ostendemus
formaliter id [actionem sc. non esse actum formalem agentisl esse verum de omni
actione ut sic, quia licet actio immanens sit formalis actus suae potentiae activae
non tamen id habet ex eo quod actio est, sed ex eo quod simul est passio talis
potentiae ut passiva est (Ibid., n. 5) .
0.< Solus actus potentiae passivae est actus informans et actuans ipsam . . .
supponimus . . . actionem ut actionem non recipi in potentia agente ut sic (Ibid.,
n.8).

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to be interpreted in this sense when he says 405 that potency and
act make not many but one; he meant not that they are one and
the same but they (i. e. a passive potency and its act) compose
one thing. When he says that what was in potency is afterwards
in act he does not mean that potency becomes act but that
something which lacked act is later constituted under act. It
can be understood not of potency and act but of a thing as it
is in logical potency and then later in reality.406 The real
distinction is sometimes a real distinction sometimes modal
but it is always essential for potency and act are distinguished
in reality (secundum rem) and have respects which are altogether diverse and opposite. 407 The two are not necessarily of
the same genus. Action, the proper immediate act, is of a
diverse genus from its principle which is either a substance or a
quality. If the effect of an active power is called its act it will
be of the same or of a different genus according as the agent
is univocal or equivocal. Passive potency transcendentally
taken is of the same genus as its act only when it is per se
ordered to act. Predicamental passive potency is of the same
genus as its act, for it is active through immanent act.
There remains the question of the relative priority of potency
and 'act, which question can be understood with regard to
duration, perfection, and definition and knowledge. Suarez
again distinguishes a two-fold comparison: (1) the comparison
of a thing in logical potency to the thing in the act of existing;
the comparison of real potency to real act. In the first way
it is clear that act is prior .to potency in perfection; for anything it is Detter to be in act than in potency since without act
Cf. VIII Metaph., c. 6.
Dicendum est quamvis unicuique potentiae respondeat actus ilIi proportionatus
semper tamen esse aliquid in re et in essentia et specie distinctum ab ipsa. . . . Cum
Aristoteles . . . ait potentiam et actum non facere multa sed unum non est sensus
ipsa esse unum et idem, sed componere unum. . . . Et . . . ait quod prius erat in
potentia postea esse in actu, non quia ipsamet potentia receptiva fiat actus sed
quia eadem, quae prius carebat actu postea sub ilIo constituitur (Disp. Meta.,
disp. XLll, sect. 5, nn. 10-11).
,.7 Distinctionem hanc . . . interdum est proprie et in rigore realis, interdum
sufficit modalis (Ibid., n. 12).
4.5

4.6

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THOMAS U. MULLANEY

there is no real perfection. 408 It is prior also in knowledge for,
comparing diverse things, the more actual of them is in itself
prior in knowledge; and comparing one thing in potency to
itself in act (of existing) is the principle of our knowing each
thing. Properly understood it is true even of God for He has
all His knowledge primarily and per se about a thing actually
existing or from an actually existing thing for first and
per se He knows Himself Who necessarily exists; even possible
creatures He knows through Himself and His known power.
Act then is also prior in definition since potential being cannot
be defined except through actual being or relation to it.
As to duration it is not simply necessary that potential being
precede actual being or vi.ce versa, either in one individual or
in different individuals of the same species, for an eternal
world is not, on every part, impossible. In all things outside
God, being in potency does precede; yet, necessarily, being in
the virtual or eminent act of God Himself precedes in nature
any potential being. Hence in the whole latitude of being act
precedes potency, but not in duration; for immediately the act
is, other things are possible from its power. 409
Comparing real potency and act, the act of an active potency
is not, ex genere suo prior in perfection for to the potency it
adds no perfection since it is either (1) action, which is imperfect or (2) the term of the action, which does not exceed the
active virtue of the potency (unless this latter be instrumental) .
From its very genus the potency is more perfect though in a
particular case the term might be of equal or even greater
perfection. It cannot be urged that the act perfects the potency
by the term of action for this term is extrinsic to the active
power and not properly its act. It is not more perfect for God's
408 In priori ergo sensu ... clarum est actum esse priorem
quam potentiam perfectione, quia unicuique rei melius est esse in actu quam in potentia (Ibid., sect.
6, n. 2).
409 In hac
comparatione non esse simpliciter necessarium ut esse in potentia
praecedat duratione esse in actu neque e converso ... de facto tamen in omnibus
rebus extra Deum esse in potentia praecedere duratione esse in actu ... necessal'io
esse in actu virtuali seu eminenti ipsius Dei antecedat non tempore sed natura
quodlibet esse in potentia (Ibid., n. 7).

BASIS OF SUAREZIAN TEACHING ON HUMAN FREEDOM

93

power to act than not to act; for a created power transient
action is not its formal act but only that which extrinsically
names it actually acting. To neither therefore does act give real
perfection. Immanent act is the perfection of its potency but
in as much as the latter is receptive not active. It is not action
as action which perfects it but reception. Hence potency rather
perfects action than the other way around.41O
The action of an active power is not, per se speaking prior in
knowledge or definition to its potency (except in predicamental
potency which, per se, is instituted for such action) , for potency
more eminently contains the action. If the former is perfectly
known, the very action can be known. By nature the active
potency is simply prior to its act; in duration, the potency is not
always necessarily prior (for it can act in its very first instant
if there be no resistence and the act does not intrinsically
include succession) but it can be since it does not depend on
act per se. Certainly it cannot be posterior to the act, since
it is presupposed to it as a principle. 411
Of passive power it is also true that it cannot be posterior to
its act, that it need not be prior, but that there is no repugnance
to its being prior even to any individual act or to its acts taken
collectively. In the order of perfection the passive power as
such is posterior to its act not because it is always simply a
less perfect being but because it is better with the act than
without it. Without act it is unformed and actuable hence less
perfect than act; yet this aspect does not consider the thing
410 Dicendum est aetum potentiae agentis ut sic, ex suo genere non esse priorem
perfectione quam potentiam imo neque tali potentia ut sic addi perfectionem ex eo
quod exerceat talem actum .... Necesse est ut ex suo genere [potentia] sit perfectior (Ibid., n. 10). Si vero loquamur de actione immanente illa quidem est
perfectio formalis ejus potentiae ... non tam est perfectio ejus ut agens est, quam ut
recipiens est .... Atque ita fit, ut potentia agens ex ratione sua non perficitur actu
suo sed potius ipsa perficiat effective actionem suam et per- illam perficiat vel
passum vel effectum (Ibid., n. 11).
411 Dicendum est potentiae activae operationem per se loquendo non esse priorem
cognitione aut definitione ipsa potentia sed potius e converso, nisi solum in potentia
praedicamentali quae per se primo instituta est ad talem actionem, . . . quia virtus
aetiva ex suo genere est eminentior actione sua (Ibid., n. 12).

94

THOMAS U. MULLANEY

simply hence we cannot simply conclude that potency is less
perfect, although that is always true in the order of substantial
passive potency, for its act gives being simply.412 As to passive
potencies for accidental acts we must distinguish; if the power
is not per 8e primarily ordered to such an act there is· no
universal rule for determining their relative perfection since
the perfection of the potency is then measured by its own
principles, not by its capacity for such an act. If the power is
per 8e ordained to this act it is more perfect than the act for it
is also, eminently and equivocally, the active principle. Yet
it is better with act than without it because the act of a passive
power is its formal perfection which adds to the power a perfection which, of itself, it does not have; not that the simple
entity of the power increases in its essential perfection but there
is added to it some intrinsic perfection as its complement,
which constitutes it in a perfect state.413 As to the order of
knowledge and definition a passive power per 8e instituted for
its act is posterior to its act since the act is the specifying
principle of the power; the power is for it and therefore defined
through it.414
THOMAS U. MULLANEY, O. P.
Dominican House of Studies,
Washington, D.C.

(To be concluded)

tantum est secundum quid; unde ex ilIa non licet
<12 Haec vero comparatio
colligere passivam potentiam in sua entitate simpliciter minus perfectam actu suo
(Ibid., n. 19) .
.. 3 Posterior autem potentia propria et praedicamentalis
. . . ut opinior, semper
est perfectior illis (loquor de actibus naturalibus ... ) tanquam principium eminens
et aequivocum illorum (Ibid., n.
.
... Ibid., n.

BOOK REVIEWS
The College Seeks Religion. By MERRIMON CUNINGGIM. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1947. Pp. 327, with index. $4.00.
Religion in the Twentieth Century. Edited by VERGILIUS FERM. New
York: The Philosophical Library, 1948. Pp. 489, with index. $5.00.
One would be justified in saying that the books which are the subject
of this review are akin to the horns of a dilemma, because one· sets forth
the need for religion in contemporary collegiate life and concludes that
only a non-sectarian religion can fill that need, while the other volume is a
practical demonstration of the fact that it is impossible to arrive at any
satisfactory and effective non-sectarian religion.
Dr. Cuninggim's book shows that he is a man of ideas as well as of
ideals. The purpose of his book is ". . . to analyze the association of
religion and higher education since 1900" (p. 1). His analysis leads him
to express a thesis which may be stated briefly: The roots of American higher education are struck deep in the soil which is religion. Around
the turn of the century, the religious complexion of higher education began
to fade and changed to the pallor of secularization which reached its peak
at the time of World War I. Since that time there has been a change
in the attitude of administrators, which change has been reflected in a
renewal of respect for religion and marked by a widespread and serious
effort to restore religion to collegiate life. Whereas the religion from
which the colleges apostatized at the turn of the century was a sectarianism. that to which they are returning is interdenominational and
non-sectarian. Both this return and the non-sectarian goal thereof are
very desirable, and should be fostered.
In the analysis that leads to the construction of fLpis thesis as well as in
application of its principles to the contemporary collegiate milieu, Dr.
Cuninggim gives evidence of painstaking scholarship combined with a
sincere desire to improve the spiritual lot of a generation which another
author described as " gutted of inspiration, rinsed of morality and robbed
of belief." The development of the thesis leads the author into many
areas of inquiry which range from a carefully documented historical investigation of the status of religion on the American campus and the varying
attitudes which religion meets on the part of college administrators, to
detailed studies of present religion programs on the campuses of a select
group of schools. The volume concludes with the author's plan for a
revival of religion in the colleges and three highly informative surveys of
religious programs and provisions obtaining in a large group of colleges.
These surveys are included as appendices.
'

95

96

BOOK REVIEWS

It must be noted that Dr. Cuninggim makes no attempt to discuss religion in the Catholic colleges whose "religious attitudes and practices are
fixed and certain" (viii). Nor does this volume express a majority opinion,
as can be learned by reading Religion in Public Education by V. T. Thayer
(New York: The Viking Press, 1947), which represents a contradictory
attitude. Also, the author's views on the separation of church and state
(Chapt. VIII) which are opposed to those of John Dewey and the naturalists, have been set at nought, at least in their application to state-supported colleges, by the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court
ein the Champaign School Case.
With these few limitations noted, it is possible to examine certain fundamental truths which are concerned in any discussion of religious education. There is a certain lack of precision in the term " religious education,"
and this is true whether ethe term be used by Catholics or others. For
Dr. Cuninggim, religious education includes "a discipline of the mind
which gives meaning to matter (and) can furnish a basis of unity for the
curriculum ... an appreciation of high values, including the supreme value,
God ... a motivation for ethical living, personal and social ... an atmosphere (which) can suffuse the whole life of the college with love of truth,
of beauty, and of good will" (p. 268). This concept is manifestly very
extensive, and includes a variety of goals which are distinct, if not separate. This extension and inclusion demands that a certain order be put
into the various values and objectives if the concept " religious education"
is to be susceptible of complete understanding.
In the first place, "religious education" is a part of the totality which
is "education" simply. Moreover, since this is a question of religious
education in the schools, it must be noted that schooling is but a part of
the educational' process in the broad sense of that term. Consequently,
schooling is not coextensive with education, nor is religious education in
the schools the totality of man's effort to perfect the educable in respect
of religious doctrine and practice.
The total process oteducation is a combination of artistic activities by
which man is perfected according to the twofold capacities of nature and
grace. This process of education is a potential totality-totum potentiale-in the language of the Schoolmen, which is divided into potential
parts. The totality is present in each of the parts according to the
totality of nature, but not according to the totality of power. St. Thomas
points out that one and the same human soul is the subject of the vegetative, sensitive and intellectual functions in man, but that the total power
of that same human soul is not realized and actuated in each of the single
functions. Thus schooling is truly education because it partakes of the
totality of education .according to its nature, but schooling does not demand the 'complete activity of all educational agents, and is, consequently,

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distinct from education in this respect. To put the matter simply: all
schooling is educaiion, but not all education is schooling.
It is reasonable to expect that distinct agents should have distinct
activities that are specified by distinct objects. The school must make
a distinctive contribution to the educational process if it is to enjoy existence as a dynamic part of that process. The distinctive activity of the
school is to perfect man according to the intellectual virtues and the
liberal arts. If the school fails to perfect man according to the pattern
of art, science and wisdom, then it ceases to discharge its proper function
in the educational process and thereby forfeits its right to a place in that
process.
On the other hand, the school must be regarded as participating in the
more general work of education which is the task of perfecting man not
according to a limited formality (e. g., according to the pattern of art,
science and wisdom), but rather of perfecting man simply as man, as reason and Divine Revelation manifest him to be. From this aspect, the
school must blend perfectly into the totality of the educational environment which includes the home, the church, the state and the social milieu.
All of these agencies of education are subject to the norms of morality, in
the attainment of which they cooperate in creating and maintaining the
proper atmosphere for the education of youth.
In view of these fundamental principles, it is possible to draw some
valid conclusions regarding religious education in the colleges. First, the
atmosphere of the college must be governed by the laws of morality, so
that the educational environment is in complete accord with the rights of
God, of the student, the home, the church and the state. Secondly, the
school as school must make a contribution to the spiritual development of
the student which is primarily. intellectual. The student attends college
for the sake of learning, the equipment of the college exists for the sake of
learning, and this distinctive (although obviously intermediate) goal must
be attained by and through the academic process or it will
be
majority of cases.
attained in the
A further
of this point is not out of place. It is accepted
as axiomatic, at leitst in the practical order, that the undergraduate is
capable of beginning truly scientific learning. A glance at any college
courses are demanded even for Freshmen.
catalogue shows that
Dr. Cuninggim remarks that courses in religion should be intellectually
acceptable and presentable. The simple fact is that many religion courses
are not intellectually presentable. This is manifest in the catalogues and
text-books of many Catholic colleges which offer religion courses which
appear to be, and are, the counterparts of impoverished and unwanted relations when viewed in comparison with the other courses of the curriculum.
A specious defense is offered for this deplorable condition when it is main-

"I

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tained that provision must be made for" Christ's intellectually poor."
However such nomenclature might appeal to sentimentality, one cannot
refrain from thinking that these same poor will soon be removed from any
campus that pretends to academic competency by inability to digest the
excessively rich diet of science that is served up in the other courses of
the curriculum. If the course in religion is designed to be naught but a
plank in academic shipwreck, then that course will do more harm to the
competent students than it will accomplish good in respect of those who
should never have cumbered the academic processes with their incom.
petency in the first place.
The third point is that religious instruction at the undergraduate level
should be scientific in its content, method and order. In other words,
this instruction should be theological. For the Catholic college, such a
conclusion presents certain difficulties that are both speculative and practical, but mainly practical. It is demonstrable according to the Catholic
theology of education that theological courses are necessary in the colleges
and due to the students at this level. The problem in regard to the statesupported institution is no longer real, because the Supreme Court has
placed an effective barrier to the introduction of any such courses by
making the public schools of this republic legally indifferent, if not positively opposed to religious education. There remains then, the problem
of the church-related (Protestant) and independent colleges, to use the
divisions of the author.
Any college that is serious about providing effective religious training
for its students must certainly offer adequate instruction in religious truth.
That is a primary obligation incumbent upon the college precisely as college, the proper and immediate object of which is to perfect the student
according to the pattern of art, science and wisdom. Over and above this,
the college-considered now as a part of the general educational environment must safeguard the right of its students to worship their Creator in
a fitting manner. This obligation engenders another which is negative, in
that it is fulfilled by barring from the collegiate environment whatever
persons and circumstances constitute an obstacle to the proper appreciation and just fulfillment of the student's obligations to Almighty God.
There is little point in instituting a course in religious truth on a campus
where every shade of materialism, pragmatism and atheism is imbibed in
other disciplines. This responsibility cannot be discharged by a sentimental and pietistic approach to God and revealed truth, for such an
approach is a ready victim of scoffers and sophists. What is clearly needed
is a strong department of theology, for theology is the only science capable
of judging the subordinate disciplines and refuting whatever errors they
might advance against the veracity of revealed truth.
On the positive side, the college must offer adequate opportunities for

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the exercise of the virtue of religion through the medium of prayer,
munal worship and the use of the sacraments. This is a function which is
distinct from the scientific and academic presentation of religious truth l!Jld
is the province of the chaplain rather than of the Department of Theology.
In providing religious activities for the student, the college is not
tioning under it.s proper formality as an institution of learning, but rather
under· its common formality as a part of the totality of the educational
process. Nor is the college performing any charity in so acting, but it is
rather acting in strict justice to discharge its debt to its students and their
parents by making it reasonably convenient for the former to discharge
their debt to Almighty God.
Both in providing adequate religious instruction and in offering proper
religious activity, Dr. Cuninggim's principles encounter a serious obstacle.
He maintains that sectarianism is practically non-existent, even in denominational (Protestant) colleges. He is convinced that a religion program can be Christian, denominational and non-sectarian all at once
(p. f266). This is indeed a startling kind of religion. When one contemplates the fact that there are nearly three hundred Protestant sects in
this country, it is difficult to see what would remain of their religion if
all the conflicting tenets were removed. Those who favor Dr. Cuninggim's
solution must end by making a new sect of non-sectarianism. A doctrine
which offends no one will satisfy no one. Each concession begets another,
while indifferentism grows apace. Dr. Cuninggim states that religion must
be a vital force (p. f267) if it is to merit attention from the colleges, and
throughout the entire volume he decries secularism as the great enemy of
religion. But his thesis must rest on the divisive principles of Protestantism and his conclusion must of necessity hold for a compromise religion that begets indifferentism, fosters naturalism and, ultimately,
nourishes secularism which is the very enemy he would oppose. The
author's manifest sincerity cannot surmount that obstacle. There is, after
all, an inherent unity in truth. God cannot be personal and not-personal;
Christ cannot be God and not-God. The failure of the conclusion· is contained in the contradiction of the principles, to the analysis of which the
author's scholarly ability could well be turned with profit to his thesis.
The practical impossibility of arriving at a truly non-sectarian religion
such as is demanded by the thesis of Dr. Cuninggim is manifested in the
symposium, Religion in the Twentieth Century. This volume is " a chronological arrangement of essays on the larger divisions of religious ideologies
and practices, not on denominations or cults" (pp. vi, vii). As a source
of information about the twenty-seven such divisions represented, the
volume has value as a work of ready reference. To offer adequate criticism
of such a compilation as this woufd require a volume of greater length
than the book itself, because it contains every shade of religious opinion

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and error known to history. Consequently, no such criticism will be
attempted.
On the credit side, there is brevity and a rather high level of readability
together with the flavor of authority because all of the essays were written
by men competent to discuss the respective religions. Each essay is preceded by a brief biographical sketch of the author. The net result is a
book that will tell you something of the tenets, the practiCes and the history of modern religious groups, told for the most part by one who subscribes to the religion lie describes. A' select bibliography at the close of
each essay furnishes a guide for further research. Polemics are conspicuously lacking.
On the debit side, the introductory essay by the editor could well have
been restricted to a statement of purpose and the acknowledgment of
debts of gratitude. His attempt at expressing an interpretative judgment
is very confused. This ill not surprising when one considers that he attempts to discover a
note in the gamut of religion beginning
with Hinduism and continuing through to
Such an
attempt is like that of a chameleon trying to maintain his reputation for
changing colors on a swatch of Scotch plaid. The entire flavor of the
introductory essay is relativistic and indifferent.
Catholics will take exception to many things in this book. To single out
a sample, "Catholicism (is covered by its division) into its three-fold
expression, Roman, Greek and Anglo-Catholic" (p. vi). Such reference
to the " Branch Theory" is altogether unacceptable. On the other hand,
Catholics will be glad to learn that the essay on their own faith was written
in a forceful and unmistakable style by Father Charles A. Hart of the
Department of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America. Father
Hart's presentation is worthy of high praise as a strong and uncompromising statement of Catholic history, faith and practice.
It is not clear why there is no article on Orthodox Judaism in this compilation, whereas three essays are devoted to the various m,odern departures
from the ancient faith of the Jews.
Religion in the Twentieth Century offers a demonstration that a truly
non-sectarian religion is practically impossible because it is speculatively
unattainable without a principle of unity, and there is no such principle
admitted among various sects. On principle, the Protestants who collectively represent a majority, must admit the equality of all religions because of their affection for the doctrine of private interpretation of revealed
truth. Now if all these dissident groups are equal, and equally true, how
holds to be false without thereby admitting falsehood in itself and imputing it to others? What is needed is an intrinsic principle of unity, a
"unity of the Spirit which is the bond of peace,"and no such unity can

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be discovel,"ed among incompatible elements as they are represented in this
book. Such true unity derives only from the God Who is Truth, and
Who, being Truth, is One and Indivisible. It is only when God is recognized and worshipped, not as men would make Him to be, but as He
is Himself and as He has revealed Himself to men, that there will exist
that true fraternity which is vivified by the Spirit and preserved in the
bond of peace.
It would be interesting to learn Dr. Cuninggim's estimate of Religion in
the Twentieth Century. It would be interesting to know what kind of nonsectarian religion he would offer to a campus having Hindus, Shintoists,
Islamites, Catholics, Mormons, Swedenborgians, Jews, Christian Scientists
and adherents of the Ramakrishna Movement.
How long will the spiritually hungary of this day seek their longed-for
unity on the circumference of religious manifestation and change? When
will the sincere seekers of truth cease to search for the answers in terms
of change and look rather in the direction of the unchanging and dynamic
eternal? Truly, a slight error in the principles leads to a great error in
the conclusions. It is time to look back to the beginnings-to the terminus
a quo of the endlessly divisive movements; it is time to look to the rock
whence they were hewn.
THOMAS C. DONLAN, O.P.
Fenwick High School
Dale Parle, Ill.

Figures for an Apocalypse. By Thomas Merton.
Directions; 1948. Pp. 111. $2.50.

Norfolk, Conn.:

New

About ten years ago Thomas Merton with a companion communistminded student signed up for a course in medieval philosophy at Columbia
University. From prospective hecklers, they became listeners, and
listeners, disciples. At the end of the semester they asked for a continuation
of the course. Their teacher gave them Duns Scotus. Before the semester's
end, Merton had asked his teacher to direct him to a priest for instructions.
Presently, he was baptized. Sometime later he returned to his professor of
philosophy to ask about monastic orders and the religious life. He was
directed to the Father Superior of Saint Bonaventure College where shortly
he found himself teaching literature and learning the science of the saints.
The sequel was his entrance into the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady of
Gethsemani, Kentucky.
As Brother Louis and under the constraint of holy obedience, Thomas
Merton has published since 1944 three slender volumes: Thirty Poems,
Man in the Divided Sea, and Figures for an Apocalypse. They stand in the

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temporal center of our century and will perhaps mean for this period what
the three small first books of Francis Thompson, published between 1893
and 1897, have come to mean for its beginning.
Immediately, other comparisons spring to mind: with Hopkins, with
Eliot, with the disciples of these. Merton moves easily in the same intellectual orbit and in a rarer spiritual world. Other essentials being equalas they are, and more-this in itself underwrites his future as a poet. It is
not unlikely that another generation ",ill appraise him in superlatives. This
review will content itself with considering very simply his idiom, technic,
themes, vision, beauty, these being the obvious factors out of which these
twenty-seven least obvious of poems arise.
Nothing defies the diction of the poet so completely as the slang, the
vernacular, the current idiom of the day. Yet, Merton whips these unruly
outlaws into complete subservience to the disciplined line as:
And the cops come down the street in fours
With clubs as loud as bells

or
All night long we waited at the desert's edge,
Watching the white moon giggle in the stream:

The age itself submits to this summary:
Tomorrow is the millenium,
The golden age!
The human race will wake up
And find dollars, growing out of the palms of
their hands,
And the whole world will die of brotherly love
Because the factories jig like drums
And furnaces feed themselves,
And all men lie in idleness upon the quilted
pastures,
tuning their friendly radios and dreaming in
the sun!

The epitaph for New York City illustrates the language of the hour put
to worthy work and lifted to singing strength by a poet:
This was a city
That dressed herself in paper money.
She lived four hundred years
With nickles running in her veins.
She loved the waters of the seven purple seas,
And burned on her own green harbor
Higher and whiter than ever any Tyre.

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103

She was as callous as a taxi;
Her high-heeled eyes were sometimes blue as gin,
And she nailed them, all the days of her life,
Through the hearts of her six million poor.

No slang is too racy, no provincialism too local to give itself up in
unique service to his line. Place names, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky,
Lexington bring him the vigor of their rhythms and their musical staccatos.
What he does with words he does more extensively with metaphors, with
similes. Such figures as "The Trees have all torn up their programs," or
"The cruel algebra of war" move clearly outside the pattern of conventional rhetoric. Merton sees his world in the light of common day and of
the calendar day at that, but always by a comparison, as the poet must.
So he says:
November analyzed our bankruptcies, but now
His observations lie knee-deep beneath our
Christmas mercies,
While folded in the buried seed
The virtual summer lives and sleeps;
And every acre keeps its treasure like a kingly secret.

Perhaps this series of sustained figures will serve to ill1,lstrate, one
, example for many, the quality and power of the Merton metaphor. It is
the conclusion of his Letter to America:
Down where the movies grit
Their white electric teeth,
Maybe the glorious children have rebelled
And rinsed their mental slums
In the clean drench of an incalculable grief.
But oh! the flowering cancers of that love
That eats your earth with roots of steel!
No few fast hours can drain your flesh
Of all those seas of candied poison,
Until our long Gregorian cry
Bows down the stars' Samaritan
To rue the pity of so cruel a murder.

If Merton errs in his elected style, it may be in the overuse of simile.
His lines bristle with astounding comparisons, all so good that the reader
would protest the loss of any. Just what they do to a poem can be judged
by this:
Your most learned, mad
And immaculate indignation

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Severs our midnight like a streak of flying pullmans
And challenges our black unhappiness
Loud as the lights of an express.

Not
Patmore has the ode known a better master. All these new
poems employ this form. All enjoy the liberties, the rich variety, the
complete discipline and tacit form of its formlessness. Contemporary poets
can well be taught by their freedom and their orthodoxy. Every poem in
the volume is autobiographical, looking outward from the Trappist Monastery to the world of New York City, America, the universe; inward, to
the world of the monastery, the contemplative life, the ultimate city of
God. Here is such surrender as one finds everywhere in the book:
Why are we all afraid oflove?
Why should we:;'ho are far greater than the grain
Fear to fall in the ground and die?
Have you not planned for minds and wills
Their own more subtle biochemistry?
This is the end of myoid ways, dear· Christ!
Now I will hear Your voice at last
And leave the frosts (that is: the fears) of my
December.
And though You kill me, (as You must) more, more
I'll trust in you.

The early allegiance to Duns Scotus is celebrated and the poet's love for
the two Desert Fathers. These lines to Saint Paul indicate their power:
Because God, God
The One I hunt and never capture,
Opened His door, and 10, His loneliness invaded you.
Alone, alone
Sitting in the sunny den-door
Under that date tree,
Wounded from head to foot by His most isolated
Trinity,
Asking no more questions,
Forgetting how to spell the thought of scrutiny
And wanting no secret
You died to the world of concept
Upon the cross of your humility.

After this, there is small need to speak of the vision, the essential insight
of this Trappist monk. Here is a brave confession of it as

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For we are sunken in the summer of our adoration,
And plunge down, down into the fathoms of our
secret joy
That swims with indefinable fire.
Closer to the experience of the average reader is the world of Natural

History. His comments on the irrational world are unforgettable:

o Savior! How we learn Your mercy and Your
Providence,
Seeing these creatures in their tiny tremendous
labor:
Measure the quality of the obedience
With which their natures hear Your thought and
come.
Each worm hastening as best he can
To die here in this patch of sun.
Walk we and ponder on this miracle
And on the way Your creatures love Your will,
Oh, we, who know from faith and Scripture
All the scope and end of the metamorphosis,
Run we like these creatures in their glad alacrity
To our far sweeter figurative death,
When we can learn such ways to God from creeping
things
And sanctity from a black and russet worm!
The title poem says and sings the tremendous apocalypse of New York
City, its destruction and its ruins, with for a triumphant epilogue the
vision of the heavenly city. With the invocations of Isaias and Solomon,
the fierce invectives of the Baptist John, the theme of the Evangelist,
Merton foretells the fall of our present Babylon, with its "rich women,"
"thin unprofitable queens," its "dendric bridges," its "black boils of
Harlem and the Bronx."
Against the long survival of the wickedness of our metropolis the poet
prophesies that:
Tomorrow and the day after
Grasses and flowers will grow
Upon the bosom of Manhattan.
There shall be doves' nests, and hives of bees
In the cliffs of the ancient apartments,
And birds shall sing in the sunny hawthorns

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Where was once Park Avenue.
And where Grand Central was, shall be a little hill
Clustered with sweet, dark pine.

This vision which has come to pass of other cities and other cultures may
some day be our history as well as poetry.
It is almost impossible to discuss or to describe Merton without quoting
him. But here the word or epithet or line is so integral a part of the
whole that to detach it is to do it harm. However, in the most fragmented
readings one cannot miss the power, the spiritual intensities, the poetical
promise of this young monk. His essay on Poetry and the Contemplative
Life, with which his book concludes, presents his theory of the two arts
under which his own form of perfect living will be conditioned.
SISTER

M. MAnELEVA, C. S. C.

Saint Mary's CoUege,
Holy Cross, Indiana

Meaning and Necessity. By Rudolf Carnap. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1947. Pp. !tIO, with index. $5.00.
The chief concern of Professor Rudolf Carnap in his latest book in
symbolic logic (the third volume of the series" Studies in Semantics")
is the development of a "new method for analyzing and describing the
meanings of linguistic expressions." This method is called "the method of
extension and intension." In his preface, Professor Carnap says: "The
method will be contrasted with various other semantical methods used in
traditional philosophy or by contemporary authors. These other methods
have one characteristic in common: They all regard an expression in a
language as a name of a concrete or abstract entity. In contradistinction,
the method here proposed takes an expression, not as tiaming anything,
but as possessing an intension and an extension."
One other main point is covered in the book. It is concerned with modal
logic, and presents a theory of modalities, such as necessity, contingency,
possibility; and impossibility. The author's intention is to construct a
system of modal logic or, more properly, systems of modal logic which
will combine modalities with quantification. However, in the present book,
there is ouly a preliminary discussion of meanings and problems of
modalities.
Any detailed consideration of the problems with which Professor Carnap
is concerned does not fall within the province of a review. Furthermore,
they are problems which. in part, are peculiar to the technique of the
symbolic logician and are therefore not of direct interest to us. But there
is a fundamental point which needs consideration and which is related to

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Professor Camap's book as a whole. This point concems the relation
between Aristotelian logic and symbolic logic. We shall try to show,
though briefly, the necessary priority of Aristotelian logic to symbolic
logic. We shall try also to indicate that the symbolic logician cannot
safely ignore this priority of Aristotelian logic and that, to a certain extent,
symbolic logic itself must depend upon Aristotelian logic for the validity
of its own procedure. This admittedly cannot be done too satisfactorily
within the limits of a review, but perhaps enough can be indicated to
manifest the point in a general way. At the same time, it will become
evident, we believe, that the more specialized problems with which Professor Carnap is concerned within the procedure of symbolic logic have a
real connection with this fundamental relation.
Weare aware also that there is, to a certain extent, an excessive opposition between Aristotelian logicians and symbolic logicians. The Aristotelian
logician and the symbolic logician have pursued separated and even somewhat hostile paths far too much. The Aristotelian logician has contributed
to this by neglecting to grasp the purpose and role of symbolic logic and
consequently has criticized it on irrelevant grounds. On the other hand, the
symbolic logician has let himself be blinded by wrong presuppositions about
Aristotelian logic and philosophy. This blind spot has prevented the
symbolic logician from examining more critically the presuppositions within
symbolic logic, where the relation to Aristotelian logic is made evident.
By way of illustrating this latter point, we shall quote a passage from
Professor Camap's book. We shall also use this passage to introduce the
positive point of manifesting the relation of symbolic logic to Aristotelian
logic. This passage occurs on page twenty-two in the context of explaining
the meaning of some basic terms to be used in the book:
The preceding remarks are meant merely as an informal terminological clarifica-'
tion. They should by no means be regarged as an attempt toward a solution of the
old controversial problem of the universals. The traditional discussions concerning
this problem are, in my view, a rather heterogeneous mixture of different components, among them logical statements, psychological statements, and pseudostatements, that is, expressions which are erroneously regarded as statements but
do not have cognitive content, although they may have noncognitive--for instance,
emotive--meaning components. My remarks on the interpretation intended for
the term • property' are admittedly rather vague, chiefly because of a lack of a
clear and generally accepted terminology about matters of this kind. Nevertheless,
I hope they will give sufficiently clear indications for all practical purposes and,
above all, may help to avoid certain typical misunderstandings.
I wish to emphasize the fact that the discussions in this book about properties,
and similarly about relations, concepts in general, propositions, etc., do not
a hypostatization. As I understand it, a hypostatization or substantialization or
reification consists in mistaking as things entities which are not things. Examples
of hypostatizations of properties (or ideas, universals, or the like) in this sense

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are .such formulations as 'the ideas have an independent subsistence,' 'they
reside in a super-heavenly place,' 'they were in the mind of God before they
became manifested in things,' and the like, provided that. these formulations ,are
meantliteraly. and not merely as poetical metaphors. (We leave aside here the
historical question of whether these hypostatizations are to be attributed to Plato
himself or rather to his interpreters.)
These formulations, if taken literally, are
pseugo-statements, devoid of cognitive content, and therefore neither true nor
false. Whatever is said in this book about properties may be wrong, but it has at
least Cognitive content. This follows. from the fact that our statements belong to,
or can be translated into, the general language of science. We use the term
, property' in. that sense in which it is used by scientists in statements of the
following form: 'These two bodies have the same chemical properties, but there
are certain physical properties in which they differ '; 'Let us express the property
• . . , which is exemplified by the one but not by the other of these two bodies,
by'P'.'
The term 'entity' is frequently used_ in this book. I am aware of the metaphysical connotations associated with it, but I hope that the reader will be able
to leave them aside and to take the word in the simple sense in which it is meant
here, as a common designation for properties, propositions, and other intensions, on
the one hand, and for classes, individuals, and other extensions, on the other.

We could manifest here, at some length, the very fa.ulty notion Professor
Carnap has of what constitutes metaphysics, the false a priori idealistic
presuppositions about the subject matter of metaphysics, and the naive
characterization of philosophical distinctions as pseudo-statements,. a
,position logical positivists, habitually and uncritically assume. But such
matters are beside the immediate point.
Let us recognize, first, the l!ense in which Professor Carnap is justified in
maintaining that his "terminological clarification" is not to be regarded
as a solution to the problem of universals. His clarification of terminology,
insofar as it falls within the technique of'symbolic logic, has no more to
do with universals than the remarks of the experimental scientist concerning
<llectrons and protons
to do with substances and accidents. The
reason for this is basically simple. Substances as substances do not fall
within the method of experimental science, which can deal only with
operations on things. Likewise, symbolic logic as such is not concerned
with universals in any rigorous sense or' the term because no universal is
ever attained directly through experimental verification, with which symbolic logic is concerned. The universal in the traditional sense (the aptitude
for being in many and being said of many) can be obtained only by abstraction. If we tried to get a universal through the experimental method
we would see, by the very fact that more than one observable case is
necessary, that the true universal could never be obtained. This is the
situation for the symbolic logician who, since he is not dealing with universals (in the traditional sense), does not have a predicationallogic which

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109

rests, ultimately, upon obsflrved connections between experimentally
observed phenomena.
All this emphasizes the distinction between the Aristotelian logic and
symbolic logic. Some Aristotelian logicians have failed to appreciate this
sufficiently when considering symbolic logic; as a consequence, they do not
discern a justified difference between the two. Nevertheless, despite this
difference in aim, a fundamental relation of dependence still exists between symbolic logic and Aristotelian logic. This is a relation of priority
of Aristotelian logic to symbolic logic, which the symbolic logician usually
ignores.
By way of illustrating briefly how symbolic logic must rest upon'
Aristotelian logic for its own intelligibility, we can examine the way in
which Professor Carnap explains his basic terms. As a necessary preliminary point to this, we should recall the underlying reason for predicability in Aristotelian logic, which rests upon the universal. That is, what
justifies our making a predication or a proposition is the universal and,
more specifically, that the more universal term can be predicated of the
less universal term all the way down to where a universal term can be
said of the singular. Accordingly, it is universality, or the aptitude of one
being in many, which permits the formation of a proposition at all by the
human intellect, and any specialized type of proposition must presuppose
this common proposition, as a basis.
We shall thus presume in this review this dependence of the proposition
upon the universal such that to deny the universal is to deny the validity
of all propositions and of all consequent reasoning based on propositions.
Now, it is customary to speak of symbolic logic as "relational" logic by
way of distinguishing it from predicational logic. This distinction has
validity, as we have noted above. But we wish to emphasize now that, from
the standpoint of logical analysis, a relational proposition, cannot be
justified unless a prior predicational proposition as a basis is admitted,
explicitly or implicitly. In other words, any relation of terms in a proposition must presuppose an original identity or sameness between the terms
obtained only by the act of predicating, just as accidents must presuppose
substance in order to exist. One term cannot" imply" another term unless
both are somehow one.
By way of illustrating the necessity of this, let us· note how Professor
Carnap treats such terms as "property" or "class." He recognizes, first,
several ways of stating the following expression in ordinary language:
"Scott is human "; "Scott has the property human "; "Scott belongs to
the class human." These differ, he points out, .only in that the latter two
add the" more explicit sense" of "property" or "class." He also adds
another example in the mode of symbolic logic to show the same thing:
"(x) [Hx:> Bx]"; "The property Human implies materially the property
Biped "; " The Class Human is a subclass of the class Biped."

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Professor Carnap's question becomes, in this formulation, one of determining the difference between "property" and "class." He finds that the
. fundamental difference is in the condition of identity. Thus he writes (p.
IS): "Classes are usually taken as identical if they have the same elements.
Thus, for example, the class Human has the same elements as the class
Featherless Biped. . . . Under what condition properties are usually regarded as identical is less clear. It seems natural, and sufficiently in
agreement with the vague customary usage, to regard properties as
identical if it can be shown by logical means alone without reference to
the facts that whatever has the one property has the other and vice
versa .... "
The immediate point here is that what Professor Carnap takes as an
" assumption" or as "vague customary usage" or as a "condition of
identity" rests upon nothing else than the act of predication made by the
human mind, which is made explicit in Aristotelian logic. If the symbolic
logician examined such presuppositions as this more critically, along with an
analysis of Aristotelian logic, he would find this confirmed for himself. For
actually, the symbolic logician is constantly assuming (with no reason at all
for granting the assumption) principles which in fact are in Aristotelian
logic and which would give him an intelligible justification for what he
seeks to do in symbolic logic.
Otherwise, why should we accept, on the basis of what we learn from
the symbolic logician, the legitimacy of asserting that "Scott is human"?
There is not the slightest logical ground in symbolic logic, as it is in fact
constituted by logical positivists at least, for the legitimacy of such an
assertion. How and why can we make such an assertion? How and why
can we say " human " of "Scott"? The symbolic logicians do not manifest this for us and, insofar as they claim to give a complete system of
logic, they are obligated to explain the most common and most necessary
type of proposition. We could accept their assumptions if we knew they
meant them as an indirect reference to the basic process of the human mind,
which is only another way of referring to Aristotelian logic. But they tell
us, instead, either that Aristotelian logic is outmoded or that it is somehow
included within symbolic logic. In such circumstances, we then have the
right to demand an adequate explanation for such assertions as "Scott
is human." And when they cannot give such an explanation, they should
be disposed to see the justi,fication for any proposition in the act of
predication.
To indicate this in another way, we can raise the same questions about
the" condition of identity." Why should we accept the" condition of
identity" in symbolic logic? As far as the procedure of symbolic logic
is concerned, there is every reason not to accept it since, in the light· of
what we learn from them, there is no such identity possible. For their

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presupposition is the radical difference of all individuals (otherwise they
would admit the proper universal). But under such a presupposition, there
cannot be a real identity or sameness. And without such ail identity, the
theoretical justification for symbolic logic falls. If, however, the symbolic
logicians accepted the identity made by the mind in predication, which
is only the natural development of the human mind making a judgment,
they could go on to treat of the more specialized, relational proposition
consistently and intelligibly. Without accepting this, they cannot sufficiently
establish the very foundation of symbolic logic.
We have been led in this review to consider briefly only one or two very
basic points and to attack, in one sense,' the presuppositions of symbolic
logic. We have proceeded in this way for two reasons. The first is a
negative one, to offset the constant attack Professor Carnap--and logical
positivists in general-make upon philosophical principles. As one example
of this, in the quotation given above, Professor Camap asserts: "The
traditional discussions concerning this problem (of the universals) are, in
my view, a rather heterogeneous mixture of different components, among
them logical statements, psychological statements, and pseudo-statements,
that is, expressions which are erroneously regarded as statements· but do
not have cognitive content, although they may have noncognitive-for
instance, emotive-meaning components . . ." etc. Since Professor Carnap
thus chooses to introduce philosophical matter, we have to point out that
this purely rhetorical approach to the problem not only does not dismiss
the problem, but undermines, as we have suggested, the position of the
symbolic logician as well.
This leads into the second and positive reason, for it is in this "old,
controversial problem of the universals ,. that the present vulnerability of
the logical positivist can be removed. As we have remarked, the theoretical
justification of symbolic logic collapses unless the universal is acknowledged.
There is no primary concept, nor property, nor class unless there is the
original universal with the relations of genus, species, property, etc., from
which the "property" and "class" of the symbolic logician ultimately
derives.
The logical positivists suffer from an "anti-metaphysical" blindness of
their own creation. In this they are to be distinguished from symbolic
logicians in general. The logical positivists, in fact, have harmed the development of symbolic logic because of the unsound philosophical presuppositions they have assumed under the name of logical positivism. For
the good of sYmbolic logic itself, they should discard the imaginary battle
they wage against a false notion of metaphysics and discover that in
Aristotelian logic and a sound metaphysics they will find exactly what they
need to support and make intelligible the method of symbolic logic. Without this basis of sound philosophical penetration, they will continue on in

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an unending circle of "new" problems and temporary resolutions, so
far as their theoretical foundation is concerned. There are, of course,
genuine and important problems within symbolic logic; Professor Carnap
treats some of them quite thoroughly. But in this book, and in the texts of
logical positivists generally, a good deal of unnecessary work and untenable analysis would be saved if they made use of a logical analysis
already achieved and available for them. To mention one instance: an
application of the doctrine of supposition would aid Professor Carnap
immeasurably in treating "extension" and "intension" as he wishes to
use this in symbolic logic.
Finally, we insist again that the Aristotelian logician has an obligation
to penetrate the method of symbolic logic, to recognize its worth and
application, and to assist in its theoretical justification.
JOHN

A. OESTERLE.

Oollege of St. Thomas,
St. Paul, Minn.

Selbstkritik der Philosophie und vergleichende Philosophiegeschichte im
Umriss (A Self-criticism of Philosophy and Outlines for a Comparative
History of Philosophy). By Alois Dempf. Vienna: Herder, 1947. Pp.
357, with indexes. s. fro 18.00; S 46.80.
Shortly before the Germans occupied Austria, Professor Dempf had
been appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna, coming
there from Bonn. He was immediately dismissed, as a Catholic and
persona non grata. He devoted the years of involuntary leisure to a
comprehensive study of basic problems, especially to a detailed survey of
the whole history of philosophy. He had written previously on many
subjects, particularly on the political philosophy of the Middle Ages
and contributed to the Handbuch der Phi(Sacrum Imperium,
losophie the parts dealing with the medieval philosophers; he also published
studies on Donoso Cortes, on Kierkegaard, and several others.
The fruits of all this work and the years of research are presented in
this volume. The presentation is unusually compact; it presupposes on
the part of the reader a good acquaintance with many things. There is no
bibliography and, unfortunately, some of the philosophers who are credited
with important influence are not well known, at least to the average student
of philosophy. Dempf envisions as outstanding figures some who are usually
given but scant notice in textbooks and even larger treatises. The brevity
of the references sometimes leaves a doubt in the mind of the reader
regarding the justice of the characterization of one or another writer. A

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further difficulty is created by the author's inclusion of Eastern philosophies, of Arabia, India, and China, of which at least this reviewer has but
a very poor knowledge.
The main difficulty, however, results from the width of the plan and
the brevity of the text. Moreover, diagrams, tables, and indexes consume
pages 313 to the end of the work. Further, pages
to 312 contain, as an
appendix, the comparative history of philosophy. It is evident that either
of the two subjects mentioned in the title would have been sufficient to
fill a much larger volume.
This density of presentation renders a criticism particularly difficult.
It is impossible, in view of the limitations of space, to present the ideas
of the book with any adequacy. The reviewer has to content himself
with indicating some few fundamental conceptions and strive to point out
that a careful study of the work itself is necessary to arrive at an evaluation of the author's endeavors. It seems, therefore, best to refrain from
any extensive criticism and to limit this report to an objective, if very
incomplete, listing of the author's tenets. His position is new and unusual;
it will indubitably arouse controversy, as it has already in Europe.
The main part comprises an introduction and three sections: I. Philosophy as a realm of spirit (Geistesreich) and critique of historical reason;
II. Philosophy as science and critique of constructive reason; III. Philosophy
as anthropology and critique of human reason. This division corresponds
to the notion that the" style of philosophy depends on the developmental
height of the civilization out of the crisis of which the philosophy emerges."
Philosophy achieves its independence in cultural crises. In the Western
world may be observed two periods of theological, two of civic (biirgerlich) ,
and two of juridical nature. The theological style arose out of the conflict between the knightly and the sacerdotal estates; the civic, out of that
between the knights and the commoners; the juridical, out of that between
the imperialistic and the nationalistic estates of the community (StaatssUinde). Each of these periods manifests a tendency to make its peculiar
approach absolute, but the typical currents remain nonetheless effective.
They are indeed perennial in virtue "of the dialectic of philosophical
characters according to the division of psychic powers." Each single period
begins as a philosophy of culture, becomes cosmological, and ends as
anthropology. This view, conceived first on the basis of an analysis of
Occidental philosophy, the author finds confirmed by a study of the
Oriental schools, so that he disposes of six theological, two civic, and five
juridical styles. The steps mentioned above are paralleled by and, if this
reviewer understands the author correctly, dependent upon a shifting from
a mode of thought based on social organization in estates, to a mode of
thought mirroring the differences in work or calling, with a culmination in
personal thought.

8

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Dempf distinguishes, furthermore, seven types of philosophy, elaborating
on Dilthey's typology. He enumerates: moral realism (Socrates); mystical
realism (Plato); critical realism (Aristotle); subjective idealism (Parmenides); objective idealism (Heraclitus); naturalism (Anaximenes); materialism (Democritus). He further enumerates as corresponding exemplifications among medieval authors: Petrus Hispanus, Bonaventure, Aquinas,
Amalric (why Amalric should be viewed as a " subjective idealist" is not
clear), Alfredus Anglicus, Roger Bacon (a materialist?-one might perhaps
have accepted William of Conches, though with reservation; but Bacon,
Oresme, or even Nicholas d'Autrecourt seem doubtful).
, The notion of philosophy as a " realm of the spirit" is connected, in the
mind of the author, with the political conception of an universal empire.
He coins the term "imperiology" and outlines its propositions: victorious
invaders found the " old empire" against which arise the hitherto leading
strata of civilization and the old religion; in this war of authorities lies the
opportunity for the emergence of a theological philosophy. Feudalism is
overthrown by the recuperating city-states, and thus is born the first
democracy; in this time the civic spirit gives birth to a laic philosophy. A
new centralization, the "middle empire," expands so that nationalities
begin to playa decisive role, at least in regard to civilization; nationalistic
ideologies develop, and the jurist becomes the representative of philosophy.
The idealogy of the empire finds another antagonist in universal religion
(as in Christianity, the higher form of Buddhism, or Islam) which may
extend over several " circles' of culture" and bring forth a new theological
philosophy. The second democracy or the" new empire" have been itssociated with new philosophies ].Intil now only insofar as the restoration of
the empire-ideology was accompanied by a renewal of traditional philosophy
in India and China.
It has seemed advisable to summarize
particular set of ideas because
they are strongly reminiscent of some proposed by other writers. Dempf
himself refers, though critically, to the theories of Spengler. He seems not
to be acquainted with the work of A. J. Toynbee. The
of
<and,th?se
the latter's ideas (although one cannot speak of any
of the author is not devoid of interest. The observer of recent devefupments might find therein an indication of certain trends which, perhaps, are
common to and characteristic of our days. Dempf believes that his
analysis of " historical reason " allows a " higher consideration of ,history."
Previous attempts were based on a more or less onesided emphaJis on one
or the other cultural aspect. One has, however, to take account /of the fact
that religious, political, and spiritual cultures always coexist anA that there
are still further differentiations; as, within religion, into liturgic and mystic,
theology and gnosis; C?r, in politics, into conservative,
and
liberal trends; or, in philosophy, into mystical, critical, ot moral realism.

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"Generalhistoriology" appears as it continuation and expansion of " sophiology"; to carry out a thorough critique of human reason "imperiology"
and " ecclesiology " would have to be added.
There is no possibility to summarize, in however imperfect manner, the
second part on philosophy of science. The critique of "constructive
science" rests on the idea that cosmology results from the attempt to found
law; notwithstanding
a principle of the development of mankind on a
the emphasis on scientific analysis of the universe; cosmology remains
primarily a philosophy of life, destined to enable man to retain his place
in nature (Selbstbehauptung). Cosmology appears in four main forms:'
spiritual, political, medical, and technical. The tendency for a monistic
preference for one definite kind of cosmology is reinforced by the vocational differences (the physician, the ruler, etc.) and, within these frames,
by human types, so that predominance of will creates a disposition or
predestination for subjective idealism, predominance of intellect one for
objective idealism, predominance of imagination one for naturalism, and
the type of " calculating rationalists" a disposition to materialism.
What has been said may give a faint idea of Dempf's approach. His
goal is no other than a reconstruction of all philosophy and a new vision
of the place philosophy holds within the framework of human existence and
man's endeavors for an understanding of himself and his history. This
intention of the author becomes particularly clear in the third part of the
book and in its conclusion. Here, as in many of the preceding sections, it
must be realized that the author's enterprise is directed against two antagonists, contemporary positivism and historicism. Dempf opposes to
the latter and its conception of a mere relativity of human knowledge, in
dependence upon historical circumstances, his idea of a regularity in the
sequence of stages. He emphatically denies, however, that his conception
is comparable to that of the "materialistic interpretation" of history
(Marx) and differs therefrom in replacing economic conditions by those of
socio-political development as determinants of all "superstructures." Yet,
even though political situations, like the domination by a conquering
people, or social factors, as the battle for internal supremacy between the
two prior estates and the third, determine the stage of philosophi'cal insight, they leave sufficient freedom for the choice of this or that particular
view of reality, man, and God. The same applies to the determination of
certain types of philosophy by the individual, psychological make-up or
predominant mental powers notwithstanding.
Positivism appears to the author not as a final achievement. Contrary
to the well known view of modern positivists, he considers this approach
as belonging to the "empirical interval between the beginning of the
modern late phase in the evolution of philosophical thought and the latter's
final consolidation." Positivism stresses the hopelessness of all philosophical

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enterprise which, Dempf admits, has started twelve times in the history
of mankind without arriving at definite answers. To the positivist, this
failure is one reason more for relying exclusively on the data and methods
of "science." Hitherto, however,
way of philosophy has been chosen
involuntarily, without a clear vision of the issues at stake. When philosophy
understands itself, as Dempf feels it will by viewing its nature and history
in the light of his interpretation, things may develop differently. History
is determined in its march by three factors: God, Spirit, and Power. Yet,
history is intelligible notwithstanding the supra-rationality of Divine Providence and the irrationality of so many human decisions. "The way leads
from the order of the family and the history of tribes in pre-cultural stages
through the history of states during periods of high culture (Hochkultur)
to the history of states and of philosophy in the age of fulfilled civilization
(Vollkultur) , and also to the nationalistic-reactionary secondary civilizations. But, the final goal remains firmly the same: one world-religion,
perennial philosophy, and the federation of all peoples."
The belief in the power of science as sole remedy, characteristic of the
nineteenth century, has suffered shipwreck. The recent progress in biology
has pointed out anew the existence of inescapable metaphysical problems.
The "human studies" (Geisteswissenschaften) have demonstrated the
fallacies back of rashly constructed monisms. The comparative history of
philosophy results in a systematic exposition of the main ways to ensure
truth: by starting from intellect and the natures of things, from spirit and
values" from reason and principles. (The distinction of intellect and reason
is, apparently, that of Kant between Verstand and Vernunft.)
All monistic interpretations prove insufficient because they make one of
the strata into an absolute. The differentiation of being into several strata
must be considered in each of the branches of philosophy. In epistemology',
one cannot separate the theory of the objects from that of the powers, nor
treat logic without considering the phenomenology and metaphysics of
natures, structures, and principles.
Dempf sees in language and its primordial coinings a proof for the
capacity of the human mind to attain a true view of the world. The cosmological realism of all periods has brought forth a true idea. It has,
however, been falsified subsequently under special social conditions (predominance of certain " callings ") .
Dempf's work culminates in a program and a prophecy or a call for a
new orientation of all philosophical and cultural endeavors. There is no
doubt that this work is the expression of serious and penetrating reasoning,
based on an amazing wealth of information. It should be given full
attention. It is obviously written with the honest will to stay within the
boundaries of Catholic faith. Whether all its basic notions are truly compatible with these tenets will have to be shown by careful analysis. It

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should not be overlooked that for Dempf the philosophia perennis is not a
static thing but a living and dynamically unfolding process. A criticism,
therefore, which would be satisfied to point out the differences between
Dempf's views and the teachings of Aquinas would not be, in the first
instance, appropriate.
This work is obviously the precursor of further studies. It would be
prudent to reserve a final judgment until these other texts are available.
Yet, the present work deserves careful study. Even were it nothing more,
it is highly provocative and stimulating. The approach is original, the ideas
worthy of serious consideration. Unfortunately, the book will hardly lend
itself to translation; it must be read as it is. Anyone so doing will not
fail to derive great profit.
RUDOLF ALLERS.

Georgetown University,
Washington, D. C.

The Fall of the Spanish American Empire. By Salvador de Madariaga.
New York: Macmillan, 1948. Pp. 450, with index. $5.00.
Mr. Madariaga has done the English-speaking world a service by devoting
his talents to the interpretation of Spanish civilization-a great task, to say
the least-in terms that are meaningful to people of Anglo-Saxon mentality.
Spain has been treated very shabbily in the past, as Mr. Madariaga is well
aware, and the Anglo-Saxon bias against Spain, which probably stems from
religious and political considerations, is taking a long time to die out.
Needless to say, Mr. Madariaga has not alone been responsible for the
healthier climate of opinion that now exists toward Spain in England and
the United States, but his books, because of their widespread appeal, and
because they are withal the work of a man of uncommon intellectual
stature, have contributed greatly to that end. His contribution, it should
be observed, has not been made within the accepted academic tradition
of historical writing, nor has it added anything significant to the reservoir
of material in the field of Spanish and Spanish-American history; Mr.
Madariaga is not a research scholar as the term is understood today. Yet
he has the rare facility of interpreting and explaining history very well, and
his books, however unacademic they may be, richly deserve a place on the
shelf of even the old-fashioned, ponderous scholar (for whom, incidentally,
they were not written) .
Like the one which immediately preceded it, Mr. Madariaga's present
book is designed to serve as an introduction to a proposed study on
Simon Bolivar, the commanding figure of the independence movement in
Spanish South America. The first two parts are devoted to "The Soul
of the Indies" and "Internal Origins of the Secession." In these sections

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the author analyzes better than I have seen it done elsewhere the sociological elements of colonial life, particularly from the point of view of race,
and he includes a chapter on the spirit of criticism which developed in
the eighteenth century among Spaniards and Creoles alike. Part III is
entitled" External Origins of the Secession." There is an excellent chapter
on the influence of the four philosophers of the movement for independence:
Rousseau, Voltaire, Raynal, and Montesquieu. In other chapters the Jews,
Freemasons, and Jesuits (as the result of their expulsion in 1767) are
treated as factors
the disintegration of tM Spanish Empire, the Jews
least convincingly. There are still other chapters on the influence of the
American and French Revolutions and of the revolt of the Negroes of
Haiti against their white masters. Part IV, "Beggars for Independence,"
is largely a spirited account of the career of Francisco de Miranda, the
greatest precursor of independence in Spanish America. In an epilogue the
author blames the Bourbons and their exaggerated centralization for
contributing to the break-up of the empire, as did the late Cecil Jane, and
blames also the Spanish character, which, in the case of the Liberators, will
explain, as he says, why their actions were more passionate than realistic.
Although the author has exposed the interplay of forces that made
possible the overthrow of the Spanish empire, one hardly feels that the
Spanish character as a factor in the debacle deserves as much attention as
he has given to it. We are willing to agree that the Creoles who won
independence were, in a sense, victims of their own Spanish character, but
what of the men of the same character, conquerors and colonizers of
Spanish America, who achieved a difficult job with exceeding competence?
If it is true that the play of Spanish character led to disaster at a critical
moment in the history of the empire, the phenomenon is in itself significant.
And it poses questions whose answers might better be found in Spain herself, rather than in the colonies and France. Mr. Madariaga shows clearly
that the Pyrenees were ineffectual as a barrier to hold back the subversive
doctrines of France, but one wonders whether the barrier was pierced by
the philosophes or by the unsatisfied spirit of the Spaniards themselves.
Why was Spain a willing prey to French thought? Had Spanish genius
dried up to the extent that it no longer had anything to say? Had Scholasticism gone to seed? Liberalism, it is true, played havoc with the Spanish
mind, in Europe as in America, but it must be admitted that the new
ideas fell like rain ona soil that thirsted for water. Mr. Madariaga does not
tell us what went wrong with traditional and Catholic Spain. He is content
to give us a glimpse of a so-called Catholic country ruled or influenced in
the eighteenth century by Freemasons, Regalists, Jansenists, Physiocrats,
and the" New Philosophy." Was the Church partly to blame? The Bourbons? The Inquisitionr The economic policies? If Mr. Madariaga had
speculated more on these things he might have been able to tell us more

in

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dearly just how the shattering of the unity of Spanish "soul" in Spain
paved the way for the acceptance of the ideao£ independence on the part
of the colonies.
Although Mr. Madariaga (and we think unfortunately) does not dwell
at length upon these problems, he does make public, in his dramatic and
fascinating way, what the esoteric circle has known right along, that the
Spanish empire did not break up as the result of the ignorance of the
Spanish Americans, or the blighting effect of the Inquisition, or the repression of the authorities, or the cruelty of the Spaniards to the Indians, or
any of the romantic reasons advanced by the Creole leaders of the independence movement, who were trying to gain sympathy in England and
France even at the risk of having to tell patriotic lies. In The Fall of the
Spanish American Empire, Mr. Madariaga has in this regard done for
England and the United States what M. Marius Andre did for France i.n
his La Fin de l'Empire Espagnol d'Amerique, but Mr. Madariaga has done
it in a more exciting manner.
Even so, the results are at times uneven. Mr. Madariaga has blind spots
in his love for Spain, and these color at times his objectivity. His Castilian
imperialism, of the kind so well described by Fidelino de Figueiredo, leads
him at times into the absurdity of wishful thinking. He would like to see
the map of the Iberian Peninsula of one color, a thing which Castilian
imperialists have at various times tried to achieve; he is
at what
he calls Portuguese "separatism," and begrudges the independence of
Portugal as though the Portuguese were recalcitrant relatives cheating
Castilian heirs out of what rightly belongs to them. Toward Spanish
America his feelings are mixed. He admires the fecundity of Spain in the
New World, but regrets the circumstances that kept Spain's American
children from forming part of a great Spanish commonwealth. He laments
the fragmentation of the Hispanic world and, by extension, its ineffectualness; he believes that the shattering of the " Spanish pomegranate" was It
mistake. The book suffers here and there from these personal attitudes, yet
the author's disciplined mind does not allow them to get out of bounds.
MANOEL S. CARDozo.
Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.

Society as the Patient. Essays on Culture and Personality. By LAWRENCE
E. FRANK. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1948. Pp.
395.

$5.00.

This is a collection of essays which appeared in various journals from
1916 to 1946. The essays range over the field of economics, law, sociology,
mental hygiene, and education, emphasizing what their author cans "the

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psycho-cultural approach" to the problems of man in society. The dominant ideas are those of Darwin, Freud, and Dewey.
Man is seen as nothing more than a product of organic evolution who
rose above the level of other animals through the development of a large
brain which made it impossible for him to be content with the mere satisfaction of his organic drives. This condition coupled with the experience
of boredom impelled humanity to develop cultures and socialized patterns
of living that distinguish man from the other animals and gave him an
area of freedom and control over the compulsions of his biological nature.
Culture and institutions, according to Frank, are human creations, products
of historY, whose only justification is their ability to satisfy human needs
and desires in a completely this-worldly perspective. Science has made
all the older views of man's nature and destiny (including the Christian)
obsolete, by showing that the earth is not the center of the universe and
man-not a rational animal but a descendant of mammalian ancestry, chiefly
impelled by feelings and emotions. Frank believes there is no longer any
room for the traditional concept of man as an individually responsible
agent, since man has no "fixed " nature and his "personality" is itself a
creation of
inculcated ways of thinking and behaving. He expresses the Freudian view that very many of the pr9blems of society are
to be traced to the warped personalities produced by harsh childhood training in eating and elimination habits. Such childhood training produces
resentment, a desire to " get even" with others and to exploit them, and
accounts for the competitive behavior of the business and political leaders
of our society. The author will surprise some readers by his contention
that Freud's theory of human nature is not pessimistic and that" his
portrayal of the process of personality development in infancy and childhood has provided the most effective support for the ethics of Jesus: the
injunction to love little children" (p. 105).
Frank subscribes to the naively optimistic faith in human progress which
for many of our contemporaries contmues .(despite repeated and cruel deceptions, one would think) to replace the Christian view of human life.
He admits that" a short time perspective means only eat, drink, be merry,
for tomorrow we die" (p. 855), yet two pages later he states the view
that man's highest objective is to live in a timeless present such as can
be achieved through the experience of sex and through esthetic enjoyment
(p. 857 f.). He sees that a free society needs self-discipline and a high
standard of ethics but considers the Christian "epic" outmoded by science. He is aware that men who discard the Christian creed need something to take its place. For him as for many other "post-Christian"
intellectuals there is the problem of how to maintain most of the Christian
code of behavior despite the rejection of Christian belief which he mistakenly identifies with Ptolemaic astronomy and a Fundamentalist under-

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standing of the Bible. A truer understanding of what Christian belief
really is would dissipate that problem. Frank believes a substitute for
the Christian creed can be found in "a statement of the meaning (his
of scientific knowledge in terms of its emotional significance for
living, so that modern astronomy, geology and biology will provide the
equivalent of 'now I lay me down to sleep,' in which the traditional
cosmology, biology, and psychology were expressed" (p. 284).

EVA J. Ross
Trinity College,
Washington,D. C.

Between Man and Man. By Martin Buber(translated by R. G. Smith).
New York: Tl1e Macmillan Co., 1948. Pp. 218, with index. $8.50.

Martin Buber, formerly of Frankfurt University, is presently Professor of
Social Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The English
version of his I and Tlwu appeared in 1987. Its theme is amplified in
Between Man and Man, which is a collection of five works, brought together
for English 'readers and felicitously translated by Ronald G. Smith.
The works cover the years from 1925 to 1989 and include Dialogue
(1929), The Question to the Single One (1986), two addresses on problems
of education, one given in 1925 and the other in 1989, and finally Dr.
Buber's inaugural course of lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(1988). Between Man and Man is not likely to dim the reputation of this
foremost Jewish philosopher and mystic; whether it fulfills the expectation
of clarifying his thought is another question.
The unifying thread of the collection is what Dr. Buber calls the
" dialogical principle." Its gist seems to be that in trying to fathom the
significance of man, one must begin with neither the individual nor with
the collectivity of human beings, but " only with the reality of the mutual
relation between man and man." Dr. Buber insists that this relation
cannot be expressed'in words. Yet it is not of the mystical order, nor
explicable in terms of tenderness of eroticism. In fact, the author says it
cannot be conveyed in ideas to a reader, but only illustrated by examples
drawn from personal life. The success of his examples may be judged
from his concluding words: "No more knowing is needed. For where
unreserve has ruled, even wordlessly, between men, the word of dialogue
has happened sacramentally." (p.4)
The author's thought is perhaps clearer when, more concretely, he speaks
of the Word of God. "We expect," he writes, " a theophany of which we
know nothing but the place, and the place is called community. In the
public catacombs of this expectation there is no single God's Word which

BOOK REVIEWS

can be clearly known and advocated, but the words delivered are clarified
for us in our human situation of being turned to one another. There is no
obedience to the coming one without loyalty to his creature. To have
experienced this is our way." (p. 7)
In such a process differences of faith are inherent. They are lodged,
according to Dr. Buber, in the ever-changing human scene. Dogma, even
when its claims of origin are certain, proves itself highly effective armor
against revelation. For revelation tolerates no perfect tense. So the author
declares that as nothing can so hide the face of our fellow-man as morality,
so religion can hide from us as nothing else can the face of God.
Yet even in the face of such relativism and subjectivism Dr. Buber clings
firmly to truth-understood, of course, in his own unique way. He traces the
ills of the time to persons being collectivized and to truth being politicized.
"There is need of man's faith in the truth as that which is independent of
him, which he cannot acquire for himself, but with which he can enter into
a real relation of his very life; the faith of human persons in the truth as
that which sustains them all altogether, in itself inaccessible but disclosing
itself, in the fact of responsibility which awaits test, to him who really woos
the truth." (p.
Between Man and Man rejects collectivism which swallows the individual just as trenchantly as it criticizes the individualism of Kierkegaard's
"Single One." Creatures, as Dr. Bubereloquently explains, are not hurdles
on the road to God. They are the road itself, ". . . placed in my way so
that I, their fellow-creature, by means of them and with them (may) find
the way to God. A God reached by their exclusion would not be the God
of all lives in whom all life is fulfilled." (p.
Dr. Buber carries the" dialogical principle" into his philosophy of education. Here the aim cannot be merely the training of the instinct of
origination but rather the building of true human life through the indispensable forms of learning to share in an undertaking and to enter into
mutuality. Otherwise man· stands "wholly without bonds in the echoing
hall of his deeds." And only" if someone grasps his hand not as a ' creator'
but as a fellow-creature lost in the world, to be his comrade or friend or
lover beyond the arts, does he have an awareness and a share of mutuality." (p. 87) Genuine education of character is education for community. In this is man's unity, and" the educator who helps to bring man
back to his own unity will help to put him again face to face with God."
(p. 116-117)
Significantly Between Man and Man opens with a dream; unfortunately it
seems never to escape entirely from that atmosphere. Dr. Buber postulates
a real world. But his " real" appears a far cry from the rationally vindicable
of his classic progenitors. In Dr. Buber's work there is no appeal to formal
demonstration. The author rests his case in capable criticism of opponents

BOOK REVIEWS

and in multiplying assertions of the "dialogical principle," or the real
relation between men.
Since relation is indeed a category of real being and the union of human
beings one which deserves most loving study, there is much in Between Man
and Man to win respect and admiration. But the author's preoccupation
with this one category produces a distorted view not only of man but of
the universe and his relations to it.
A partial eXplanation of Dr. Buber's position is his dissatisfaction with
Kant and Kierkegaard and contemporary fallacies which sacrifice man's
social nature to his individuality or lose his individuality in some collectivism. Likewise, although Dr. Buber may be a mystic, he has been energetic
for years in the cause of Zionism. The essence of such a movement is
cohesion, and Dr. Buber's efforts to foster close human relations undoubtedly
colored his metaphysics.
On this score Dr. Buber has waged a brilliant and persevering crusade.
Yet it is regrettable that he evidences so little of the perepatetic rationalism
of such Jews as Gabirol and Maimonides. Possibly, however, the author has
an intimation of a vision undreamed of by Aristotle and the" philosophers."
Between Man and Man may leave some readers with the impression that
Dr. Buber is groping for a truth found nowhere else than in the Christian
doctrine of the Mystical Body.
JOSEPH B. MCALLISTER
Catholic University of America,
Wallhington, D. C.

BRIEF NOTICES
Natuurwetenschap en Wijsbegeerte (Science and Philosophy). By A. G. M.
VAN MELSEN.
Bibliothek v. Thomistische Wijsbegeerte. Spectrum,
Utrecht-Brussels: Spectrum, 1946. Pp. fe04, with index.
The subtitle of this volume reads: " General consideration of the relation of philosophy and science, the philosophical consequences of modern
physics." The author states at the very beginning of his discussion, that
he takes his stand with Thomistic philosophy; but he wants to present his
ideas without presupposing any particular views. He intends his work
mainly for the scientist who might be curious to know about the philosophical relevance of his own doings and theories. Many scientists and
philosophers today believe that philosophy ought to revise all its tenets
in the light of recent developments in science and that the former has no
more urgent task than that of taking account of the new discoveries and
ideas. It has been pointed out, however, by some thinkers that no discovery in the field of science can disprove any fundaX:U:entaltenet of metaphysics nor force the philosopher to alter any of his general propositions.
Those who claim that philosophy must change because of discoveries made
by the physicist are still under the impression aroused by the attitude
philosophy assumed at the time when the " new science " appeared on the
stage. At that time, the philosophers were indeed, almost without exception, unable to distinguish between the truly philosophical problems and
proposition.s and those which depend on the state of scientific knowledge.
Those philosophers believed that by abandoning the view of physics as
proposed by Aristotle one would abandon also the whole of Aristotelian
philosophy. When science apparently proved victorious, both sides-the
scientists and the philosophers-came to believe that speculation depends
on physics. Today too, we are told by many that the new physics,
the theory of relativity, or the mechanics,of quanta, or the latest developments in nuclear investigations will force the philosopher to rebuild his
systems.
The author of the book under discussion, however, arrives at a very
different conclusion. In his summary he declares in so many words that
" the importance of modern physics does not lie in the field of philosophy
but in
of science." He realizes that he thus opposes two parties:
the positivistic school by denying the relevance of scientific data for the
basic questions of philosophy, and other philosophers, among whom a
certain group also of Thomistic thinkers who refuse to recognize the scientific relevance of the new developments and hence the necessity to modify,

U4

BRIEF NOTICES

not of course the tenets of metaphysics, but some doctrines in the philosophy of nature or in cosmology.
The book is divided into two parts, the first of which deals with the
general relations of science and philosophy, emphasizing the peculiar nature
and the inevitability of metaphysical speculation (man is " born a metaphysician ") . The second part reviews the recent developments in physics,
first the theory of quanta and its eventual bearing on philosophy. The
alleged relevance of this chapter in modern physics is seen by many in
its contradicting or even abolishing the principle of causality and in the
introduction of statistics, whereby the infallible laws of classic physics
appear as replaced by statistical laws. The author points out that the
changes in the system of concepts and categories, used by science and
imposed thereupon by recent developments, concerns only science and
does not attain the level of metaphysical problems. To this reviewer it
has seemed always a rather curious fact that a remark made by one of
the fathers of both modern physics and positivistic philosophy, namely
E. Mach, has been given so little emphasis in all these discussions. Mach,
speaking of causality, remarks that this is in no way a question to concern
the scientist, who does not deal with causes at all, but only with mathematical functions, stating the concomitant variations of several sets of
phenomena. Retaining the causalistic terminology in science is, in fact,
something of an " anthropomorphic " attitude, similar to that which Heisenberg justly critisizes when referring to the problem of the so-called primary and secondary ·qualities. No change of principle or of categories,
eventuating in physics, can have any bearing on the philosophy of causation, because science is incapable, in virtue of its methodology, to make
any statement on causation.
The author then proceeds to discuss the problems related to the theory
of relativity. The mode of evaluation corresponds to that employed in the
analysis of the theory of quanta. The relativization of time is, so to say,
an affair of physics; it has nothing to do with metaphysics. The author
might have added that the time which is truly relevant in human existence
is not even that of pre-relativistic physics, not that which is measured by
chronometric devices, but the " lived time," the temps vecu, as the French
aptly call it. This time lacks some of the fundamental characteristics of
chronometric time; the time in which each of us lives is not of constant
velocity, because it may slow down in expectancy or boredom, and become accelerated when we are amused or interested, or by other factors,
as e. g. by some drugs; nor does this time, secondly, flow in an uninterrupted, continuous manner, since in experience there is an extended
"now "--:something analogical to the nunc stuns-whereas chronometric
time knows of no extended present; the present in chronometry is a dimensionless point where the future is continuously swallowed up by the past.

U6

BRIEF NOTICES

All statements on relativity, however important they be within physics,
are without importance when we try to apply them to our personal experience and existence.
This little book deserves study. One regrets that the author is sometimes all too brief in his demonstrations, and particularly the absence of
an index. But, as it stands, this work is a very good introduction into
the problems discussed and might, perhaps, deserve translation. To this
reviewer, at least, no comparable work is known in English.

The Canticle of Canticles. By WILLIAM PouGET, C.M. and JEAN GuiTTON.
(Translated by Joseph L. Lilly, C. M.) New York: The Declan X.
McMullen Compl!Jly Inc., 1948. Pp.
Up to the present there has been no entirely satisfactory solution to the
problems conneCted with the interpretation of the Canticle of Canticles.
Perhaps there never will. Among the more serious recent attempts to
consider all the problems involved and to blend into a consistent whole all
the available data must be numbered the work of Pouget and Guitton,
of which Father Lilly now gives us a good translation. The original French
of this volume appeared in 1934 and proved itself provocative and useful.
However it cannot be said to be a definitive solution. Other solutions retain
their plausibility.
The first part of this volume (pp. 19-166) considers in turn the literary,
historical, moral, and mystical problems of the Canticle. With commendable restraint the authors present or suggest arguments of different degrees
of clarity and probability for their points of view. The following are some
of their conclusions. The Canticle was probably composed by an unknown
author between
and
B. C. (p. 89.) But" philological and historical
research may lead to a revision of the date we have proposed, since this is
the most debatable point in our argument." (p. 165.) The Canticle is not a
collection of songs, but a unit. Specifically it is a drama, though probably
never produced. There are three main characters:· the Shulamite, a
country maiden; the King (not the Solomon of history), who seeks to win
the Shulamite's love; the Shepherd, who is the Shulamite's spouse, and to
whom she remains faithful, despite the blandishments of Solomon (pp.
17-69.)
The proper literl;ll sense, intended by the human author, was a moral
lesson on matrimony. "The precept which the Canticle illustrates is the
indissolubility of marriage and the duty of conjugal fidelity. The counsels
which it suggests are of two kinds: that the social rank of the contracting
parties agree, and that the consent be entirely free." (p .. 97.) However,
although the literal sense is unique (p. 136) , other senses, which seem to be

BRIEF NOTICES

127

literal, are possible. "We are inclined to believe that its interpretation
passed through three stages, which were virtually present from the beginning as a germ planted by inspiration. In its first phase it was a work of
the imagination, an historical and lyrical drama, designed to give a lesson
on conjugal fidelity. It soon became a parable whose chief aspect was to
illustrate the love of Yahweh for his people. And finally it was an allegory,
when the literal sense was neglected, and when the parabolic sense was forgotten, and a treatise on spiritual mysticism was drawn from the sacred
verses." (p. 124.) The authors consider the traditional interpretation of the
Canticle, the union of God and His People: Israel and the Church (the
Blessed Virgin, Virgins), to be the spiritual sense of the Canticle (p. 141 ff.)
The second part of the book (pp. 167-196) contains the text of the
Canticle, arranged in the form of a drama in twelve scenes; with suitable
annotations. This arrangement will probably prove itself the most definitive
part of the book for those who consider the Canticle a unit.
This is the first publication of The Catholic Scripture Library, a new
enterprise of The Catholic Biblical Association of America. The purpose
of the series is to make available in English translations Scriptural works
written in other languages. This is an auspicious beginning. We look
forward to the forthcoming volumes.

The Poetry of History. By EMERY NEFF. New York: Columbia University Press, 1947. Pp. 266, with index. $3.50.
The person who follows the tantalizingly elusive figure of Clio through
academic halls is apt to be cautioned, here and there in his pursuits, that
he must avoid two pitfalls: he must refrain from presenting the account
of his labors in a dull, dry, factual volume, and he must guard rigorously
against introducing too much interpretation and imagination into any
written accounts. As a natural result, the average historical writer falls
into one or other of the errors against which he has been cautioned, usually
into the former one. Some writers resent the assumption, induced by a
plethora of the factual-history type of volume, that this approach to historical scholarship is inevitable. In an attempt to express the possibilities
which may be found in other approaches, Emery Neff has written a series
of essays about great authors whose preoccupation was with The Poetry
of History, as he has titled this volume.
The essays include considerations of Voltaire, Herder, Goethe, Gibbon,
Vico, Carlyle, Burckhardt, and Green, to mention the most familiar names.
With these, as well as with the half-dozen or more others who are treated,
Professor Neff has given very useful outlines of the careers and writings
of each. In many cases his treatment presupposes some slight familiarity
with the author considered, but for the most part this familiarity could
be acquired by referring to an encyclopedia article or two. Readers who

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BRIEF NOTICES

have even this much knowledge of the writers treated would not need any
further introduction than Neff's concise, beautifully phrased ,biographies
and brief appraisals of works. These appraisals are too well done and
evince too much familiarity and affection for the authors and their works
to be dismissed cavalierly as capsule criticism.
In form the book is all that might be desired. The type-face is attractive; the margins are just comfortably wide; the index is excellent, and
there is a brief, helpful foreword. The volume is dedicated to those who
believe that knowledge is one and indivisible, and because the book seems,
from its title through its last sentence, to belie this dedication, some few
remarks must be made after these words of praise have been indited.
There is, in the first place, a certain lack of fitness in Professor Neff's
title. History surely is poetic; it can be so in the hands of great historians, but what Neff means by history is not what the bewildered seeker
of Clio means at all. To explain his viewpoint, then, the essayist adds an
overlong subtitle which declares that the book is concerned with the contribution of literature and literary scholarship to the writing of history
since Voltaire. Such contributions certainly ought to be investigated, and,
if found, ought to be evaluated, but not under the title chosen for this
work. Nothing in the title would indicate that the work is not concerned
with history proper; almost nothing in the table of contents would indicate
that history was being considered. Clearly the title, though a happy
choice on grounds of euphony and meter, does not live up to the first
requirement of good titles.
No one could doubt Mr. Neff's qualifications for evaluating most of the
persons he has chosen to consider. In the case of Carlyle he had already
written two volumes, and his investigations of English and European literature have been extensive. Whether he knows equally as much about historical scholarship and its problems is, however, extremely problematical.
To assess the value of Voltaire to French or world literature is one thing;
to determine his contributions to historical writing demands critical apparatus of a much more specialized kind. In this group of essays, then, one
has frequently the feeling that mere impressions are substituted for considered ju'dgments, that a genuine feeling for the color and richness of
words is expected to supply for a deficient knowledge of facts.
Nineteenth-century
English history was hampered considerably in its
development by an amateur interest in antiquarian research. Intuition
was thought to compensate for lack of careful training, and enthusiasm for
the failure to make reasonable hypotheses.
Mr. Neff's insistence upon
regarding contributions of literature to history as constituting the latter's
poetry are much like this earlier attitude.
A far more serious defect to one who has devoted an appreciable time
to the study of history is that the really poetic approaches of Guizot and
Thiers, of Adams and Mommsen, even of Toynbee at the present day, or

BRIEF NOTICES

129

the stylistically hampered but poetically minded Acton, are totally ignored,
and such a major figure as Ranke is relegated to a few brief mentions,
almost all of them merely names. The regrettable feature of this series of
omissions lies not in the failure of the names to appear, but in the complete and insular ignorance that these people belong to literary history as
well as to history proper, just as the ones. considered belong toliterary
history and to literature proper. In a book which has such a promising
title and such a soundly expressed dedication, not to mention the famous
dictum of Trevelyan to act as a colophon, there is -displayed much erudition, but in the wrong cause. The votary of Clio will never be helped
by Mr. Neff's work unless he ignores its pretensions, and concentrates
upon its pleasantly presented facts.
Die Kriaia des Fortschrittsglaubens (The Crisis of the Belief in Progress).
By ALms DEMPF. Vienna: Herder, 1947. Pp. 40. S 3; s fr. 1.80.
The subtitle of this pamphlet is: " Aphorism on the spiritual situation."
Progress, in the analysis of Dr. Dempf, as it has been achieved and exclusively appreciated during the nineteenth century became possible because the inner tension or dialectic of Christian faith had been forgotten, and
man either trusted himself and believed in self-redemption, or relied on
grace alone. The effect was the predominance of materialistic atheism, hom
out of science and the belief of its universal applicability. Scientific and
technological advance was in no way paralleled by moral progress. In
recent times there have been fundamental changes in physics, biology,
medicine, and sociology. There is a rebirth of philosophy which twenty
years ago seemed doomed to disappear.
Yet, progress, especially in science, carries with itself the danger of
increasing license for evil. Insecurity and greater responsibility are the price
mankind has to pay for progress. The complacency of bourgeois intellectualism has given way to a sentiment of dread. Progress in the old sense
became questionable and was replaced by the belief in an inevitable law
of historical development. Those who did not accept this doctrine began
to doubt the reality of any progress, to discredit everything related to the
older conception, to preach violence and appeal to such irrational powers
as those of the race.
Today, some real progress becomes noticeable. Liberals, socialists, and
Christian democrats have learned to criticize .their own. views, to abandon
narrow party programs. Dempf considers Lippman 8s the outstanding
representative of a neo-liberalism, together with Hayek and Ropke; whereas
the nco-socialist movement is best studied in Schumpeter's work, and the
new Christian democratic doctrine, best to be characterized as neosolidarism, finds its spokesman in Christopher Dawson. Dempf visualizes
a restoration of Christian unity, wherein the modem sociology of religion

130

BRIEF NOTICES

will prove helpful. A thorough understanding of Professor Dempf's ideas
is possible only in the background of his peculiar theory of the dependence
of philosophical and cultural developments on social developments. (He has
devoted to the exposition of his view a larger volume, reviewed on page
fi.)

BOOKS RECEIVED
--, The Holy Bible: Book of Genesis. Paterson, N. J.: St. Anthony
Guild Press, 1948. Pp. 136, with notes. $.85.
Acton, Lord, Essays on Freedom and Power. Boston: Beacon Press, 1948.
Pp. 518, with index. $5.00.
Albert, A. G., Un Mystere d'.Amour et de Souffrance. Montreal: Les
editions du Levrier, 1948. Pp. 220. $1.50.
Barnes, H. E., Historical Sociology. New York: Philosophical Library,
1948. Pp. 196, with index. $3.00.
Bonthius, R. H., Christian Paths to Self-Acceptance. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1948. Pp. 265, with index.
Bryson, L. et al., editors, Learning and World Peace. New York: Harper,
with index. $6.50.
1948. Pp.
Claudel, P., Poetic Art. New York: Philosophical Library, 1948. Pp. 150,
with index.
Conant, J. B., Education in a Divided World. Cambridge: Harvard Uniwith index. $3.00.
versity Press, 1948. Pp.
Corwin, E. S., Liberty Against Government. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana
State University Press, 1948. Pp.
with index. $3.00.
Cronin, J. F., Catholic Social Action. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1948. Pp.
with index. $3.50.
Deferrari, R. J., ed., Philosophy of Catholic Higher Education. Washington:
Catholic University Press, 1948. Pp.
De Madariaga, S., The Fall of the Spanish American Empire. New York:
Macmillan, 1948. Pp. 451, with index. $5.00.
Dockx, §. I., Fils de Dieu par Grace. Bruges: Desclee de Brouwer, 1948.
Pp.
80 frs.
Drinkwater, F. H., Catechism Stories. Westminister, Md.: Newman, 1948.
Pp. 515. $3.50.
Dunney, J. A., The Mass for Boys and Girls. New York: Macmillan,
1948. Pp. 177.
Fedotov, G. P., Russian Spirituality. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1948.
Pp. 517, with notes and bibliography. $6.50.
Grazia, S., The Political Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
with indexes. $4.00.
1948. P.
Harmon, F. L., Understanding Personality. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1948. Pp.
348, with index. $3.50.
Hue, Abbe, High Road in TartarY_. (Edited by J. Bedier) New York:
Scribners, 1948. Pp.
with index. $2.75.
Keller, J., You Can Change the World. New York: Longmans, Green,
1948. Pp. 406. $3.00.

131

132

BOOKS RECEIVED

Kocourek, R. A., An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature. St. Paul:
North Central Publishing Co., 1948. Pp. 180.
Liebman, J. L., ed., Psychiatry and Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1948.
Pp.
$3.00.
Lief, A., The Common Sense Psychiatry of Dr. Adolf Meyer. New York:
1948. Pp. 694, with index. $6.50.
Luce, A. A., The Works of George Berkeley. (Vol. I) Edinburgh: T.
Nelson and Sons, 1948. Pp.
30 s.
McKeon, C. K., The Summa Philosophiae of the Pseudo-Grosseteste. New
with index.
York: Columbia University Press, 1948. Pp.
Miller, P., Images or Shadows of Divine Things. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1948. Pp. 159, with notes.
Miller, R. J., Forty Years After: Pius XI and the Social Order. St.
Paul: Radio Replies Press, 1947. Pp. 344, with index.
Moore, T.V., The Driving Forces of Human Nature. New York: Grune
and Stratton, 1948. Pp. 469, with index. $6.50.
Morris, C., The Open Self. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1948. Pp. 190, with
index. $3.00.
Paton, H. J., The Categorical Imperative. Chicago: University of Chicago
with index. $4.00.
Press, 1948. Pp.
Pingel, M. M., An American Utilitarian. New York: Columbia University
with index. $3.00.
Press, 1948. Pp.
Ramuz, C. F., What Is Man? New York: Pantheon, 1948. Pp.
Renard, H., The Philosophy of Man. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1948. Pp.
with index.
Roy, L., Lumiere et Sagesse. Montreal: L'Immaculee-Conception, 1948.
Pp. 301, with index. $1.50.
Ryan, J. K., The Reputation of St. Thomas Aquinas among English Protestant Thinkers of the Seventeenth Century. Washington: Catholic
University Press, 1948. Pp. 135, with index.
Sarton, G., The Life of Science. New York: Henry Schuman, 1948. Pp.
with index. $3.00.
Sartre, J-P., The Emotions-Outline of a Theory. New York: Philosophical
Library, 1948. Pp. 97, with index.
Seeshortz, A., Saint Elizabeth. New York: Philosophical Library, 1948.
Pp. 136, with index.
Thomte, R., Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Religion. Princeton: Princeton
with index. $3.50.
University Press, 1948. Pp.
Vann, G., The Two Trees. London: Collins, 1948. Pp. 48.
6d.
--, Awake In Heaven. New York: Longmans, Green, 1948. Pp. 159.
$2.50.

Wilcox, C. J., A Study of Reflections of the Peace Proposals of Pope Pius
XII in the Writings of David Lawrence. Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1948. Pp. 106.