THE THOMIST
A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

EDITORS:

THE DoMINICAN

Publishers:
VoL. XXXIII

FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH

The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017

APRIL, 1969

No. 9l

CAN SAINT THOMAS'S SUMMA THEOLOGIAE SPEAK
TO MOLTMANN'S THEOLOGY OF HOPE?

I

N AN impressive essay W. M. Conlon intimates that, with
the important exception of the canonical writers, the explication St. Thomas gives of Christian hope proves more
sensitive and more thorough than that of any other theologian
in the Church. 1 Since the article appeared in 1947, however,
Thomas's pre-eminence has been challenged, even for Catholics,
by the emergent cluster of " theologians of ' hope '." 2 Within
this group I have chosen to focus upon the major work of
just one-namely, Moltmann's Theology of Hope-as a man1

Walter M. Conlon, "The Certitude of Hope," The Thomist, X (1947), 75-119,

!'l!'l6-!'l5!'l. Though his emphasis remains on the narrower question of " certitude,"

the implications are clear also that Thomas's understanding on other matters
pertaining to hope surpasses that of other men, an intimation spelled out for
" certitude."
2 See, for example, Gerald G. O'Collins, "Spes Quaerens Intellectum,"
Interpretation, XXII (1968), 35-54.

9l15

LOUIS WEEKS, III

ageable, if not totally representative example. 3 My question
of relevance has likewise been put to one work also-Summa
Theologiae-as a representative, if not totally manageable example of orthodox apologetics. 4 In terms much too broad for
the present essay, the question is being asked, as perhaps never
before, of all Christian orthodoxy, of the entire tradition. But
for the present, the narrow query is made: does the Summa
say anything to Theology of Hope?
Moltmann himself, in a recent position paper, has seemingly
answered in the negative: the Summa can say little if anything.5 He speaks of the traditional Christian dialectic, expressed in the vocabulary of the medieval Church, as that
between sacra dootrina and prima philosophia. More recently
the same statement has been made in terms of historical theology on the one hand and dogmatic theology on the other. To
Christian theology, both gave a traditional unity. As a result
of the Copernican revolution, the modem obsession with operational questions and the rise of relativism, Moltmann, however,
has found the dialectical unity disintegrating for contemporary
man. Man is no longer asking the conventional questions o£
cosmological teleology. In his words:
The old forms, according to which God was thought of as the
absolute, the universal, that which always pertained to everyone,
are no longer accepted as a matter of course. The cosmological
proofs for God's existence which related God's divinity to world
experience accessible to everyone have lost their convicting power,
ever since man no longer understands himself as a part of a world
striving for God .... 6

That Thomas in his Summa conceived of the meaning of
human existence primarily in terms of cosmological teleology
• Jiirgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (New York: Harper, 1967), translated
by J. W. Leitch.
• Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger Brothers,
1947), translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 3 volumes.
5 Moltmann,
"Hope and History or Theology as Eschatology." Unpublished
position paper for the Duke Consultation on the New Tasks of Theology, April
4, 1968; cf. Theology of Hope,
6 Moltmann,
"Hope ... ," p.
This statement reveals that, in spite of
criticism levelled against him, Moltmann does indeed offer a teleology.

ST. THOMAS AND MOLTMANN

ON HOPE

cannot be seriously doubted. The goal of the world in all
respects remained in rejoining God who had given it existence. 7
More particularly, in the words of P. Kiinzle, what is " especially characteristic for Thomas's moral theology is that the life
of a Christian is conceived of as a return to God from whom he
has gone out." 8 According to Kiinzle, Aristotle's teleological
Ethic gave rise to this concern on the part of Thomas. Whatever its source, the dichotomy still remains; and the resultant
chasm in theological methodology between Thomas and Moltmann cannot be bridged by any simple synthesis.
Nevertheless, even after the Copernican revolution, the
technological obsession of modern man, and the ascendency of
relativism have been granted their appropriate places of importance, and after the affirmation of " meditation "-that one
heart believing can always speak to another in belief-has
been accorded due respect, I would assert that the Summa can
speak in several respects to the Theology of Hope. Before
analyzing Thomas's relevant understanding of hope, and before
enumerating some of the areas in which the Summa sounds a
warning to the Theology of Hope, I need necessarily define,
in sketchy and tentative terms at least, something of Thomas's
perspective on two terms requisite for any discussion on this
subject: hope and eschatology.

I
For Moltmann, the terms eschatology and hope approach
equivalency in their respective meanings:
In actual fact, however, eschatology means the doctrine of the
Christian hope, which embraces both the object hoped for and also
the hope inspired by it. From first to last, and not merely in the
epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and
forward moving, and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present. 9
Summa Theol., I, q. 103, a. 2.
Pius Kiinzle, " Thomas van Aquin und die moderne Eschatologie," Freiburger
Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie, VIII (1961), p. 113.
• Moltmann, Theology . . . , p. 16.
7

8

218

LOUIS WEEKS, III

The movement of God's power, as for the "exodus church
of Israel," comes from before the people in clouds of hope
and pillars of promise. God is the coming God, with futurity
as the mode of his being-for-men.
For the Summa, on the other hand, eschatology is viewed
more narrowly, as the doctrine of the knowledge of ultimate
realities, the final judgment and Parousia for eternity. 10 Bouyer
maintains that even the inclusion of the ultimate realities
themselves within the rubric of eschatology has already extended the term beyond its primary meaning, with a resultant
danger to its verbal clarity. 11 But Bouyer also declares, and
appears to echo Thomas, that the " perpetually imminent
eschatological perspective is that which communicates an incomparable intensity to each moment of the life of the church
and of the Christian." 12 In the words of Saint Thomas himself,
the principium "in practical matters which are the object of
practical reasoning is the last end; and the last end of human
life is bliss or happiness .... " 13
As R. Petry has shown, whatever the limits of the term
eschatology for Thomas, it can never be conceived of as
primarily "individual"; corporate life remains crucial in all
aspects of eschatology. He declares:
In the third part of his Summa, Thomas states even more flatly
his convictions on the Mystical Body of Christ. . . . In the case
of the Mystical Body, the end to which it moves is that of divine
fruition and blessedness. To this ultimate end, with its full sociality, both angels and men are destined. 14
10 Important
to remember is the fact that, since Thomas never finished his
Summa, this tract has been supplied by editors (and extrapolators). Cf. Summa
Theol., I-II, q. 1, a. 5, for a telescoping of his position.
11 Louis Bouyer, Dictionary of Theology (New York:
Desc!ee, 1965), translated
by C. U. Quinn.
1 " Ibid., p. 141.
13 Summa Theol., I-II, q. 90, a. 2. Cf. I-II, q. 2, a. 7; and q. 69, a. 1.
14 Ray
C. Petry, Christian Eschatology and Social Thought (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1956), p. 256. What happens to the Mystical Body in particular can
be applied to the general understanding of eschatology on the part of Thomas.
See also Petry's " The Social Character of Heavenly Beatitude according to the
Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas," The Thomist, VII (1944), 65-79.

ST. THOMAS AND MOLTMANN

ON HOPE

219

Thus, for Thomas, eschatology delineated, at least minimally,
the knowledge of final things, comparable to the " first things "
(principium), and social in all its aspects.
Hope, in contrast to eschatology, has been meticulously
defined by Saint Thomas. Among his variety of expressions,
the briefest yet encountered is the simple, " hope is movement
towards good .... " 15 As Conlon has demonstrated, this understanding of hope hardly proves to be an innovation; Hugh of
Saint Victor, among others, had already propounded it. In
addition, the theological tradition evidently provided much of
the material on the subject and object of hope which Thomas
simply collated. 16
Hope as an irascible passion has its subject in the appetite,
while the theological virtue of hope has its subject in the will.
In both cases man's activity is presupposed. 17
The four characteristics of any object of hope remain constant, though the actual objects vary with the type of hope
under scrutiny. An object of hope must always be: (1) good,
(2) in the future, (3) difficult to reach, yet (4) possible to
attain. 18 On its highest level, as a theological virtue, hope
can no longer include reliance upon one's own power of attainment. The human being finally relies totally on the power
of another (God's grace) to bring him to hope's object (God
himself) .19 Hence Thomas can formulate concise definitions
of hope, such as the following:
The hope of which we speak now, attains God by leaning on His
help in order to obtain the hoped for good ... since it belongs to
an infinite power to lead anyone to an infinite good. Such a
good is eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of God Himself.20

To such statements, which specify hope by reference to its
object, we shall return; at present, however, we shall observe
something of Thomas's dependence on its eschatological dimensiOn.
Ibid., I-II, q. 40, a. 1.
Ibid., II-II, q. 17, passim.
20 Ibid., a.

15

Summa Theol., I-II, q. !25, a. 3.

18

16

Conlon, op. cit., p. 80 ff.

19

17

Summa Theol., II-II, q. 18, a. 1.

220

LOUIS WEEKS,

III

II
The significance of the eschatological dimension of Saint
Thomas's theology of hope has been variously appraised. The
evaluation by Moltmann, already cited, contrasts vividly with
that of Kiinzle, who, according to Plafoort, holds the entire
Summa to be very basically eschatological in intent. 21 Klinzle
bases his observations on Thomas's interpretation of the resurrection of Christ, that in the empty tomb " the end of time has
begun." 22 Whatever his measure of actual, eschatological orientation, several aspects of Thomas's concern with" knowledge
of final things " strike the reader of the Summa.
In the first place, as the definitions affirm, all hope is
necessarily involved in the movement toward God. Thus the
preposition in calls for the accusative, not the ablative. 23
Again, neither the blessed nor the damned may be said to
possess hope. 24 Hope is conceived of by Thomas as motion
rather than locus, as dynamic rather than static and as some
sort of tension rather than a kind of peace.
The movement of ordinary hope, the motion towards good
in this world, can be seen to be analogous to that virtuous hope
which moves the subject, as indeed the whole person, toward
God himself. Whether the analogy is one of proportionality
or (more likely) one of attribution, the similitude evidences
Thomas's linking of the movements of emotion and virtue. 25
And whether one accepts Kiinzle or thinks him to be overstating the case, the fact remains that for Thomas " the end forms
the act." Therefore, the singular movement, whatever the
relationship among its components (virtue, passion, etc.), is,
to some degree, eschatological in orientation.
In the second place, hope as the movement in time toward
21 A. Plafoort,
introduction to a translation of the Kiinzle article into French,
"La fin des temps est commencee," La Vie Spirituelle, CVII (1962), p. 403.
22 Kiinzle, op. cit., p. 112.
23 Supra, p. 5.
24 Summa Theol., II-II, q. 18, a. 2, 3.
26 George
Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy (Chicago; Loyola,
1960), pp. 11-156.

ST. THOMAS AND MOLTMANN

ON HOPE

221

the eschaton of beatitude issues from God and not from man. 26
God both causes and allows man to hope for eternal life, by
the vastly complex concurrence of causalities so integral to
Thomas's theology. To explore this concept of "semi-determinism" would necessitate another whole study; but an illustration may suffice to illuminate in part the status of secondary, human causality. Having asked whether one can put
hope in another man, and, by extension, in oneself, Thomas
replies:
Hope regards two things, viz., the good which it intends to
obtain, and the help by which that good is obtained. Now the good
which a man hopes to attain, has the aspect of a final cause, while
the help by which one hopes to attain that good, has the character
of an efficient cause. Now in each of these kinds of causes we find
a principle and a secondary cause.... Now hope regards eternal
happiness as its last end, and the divine assistance as the first cause
leading to happiness .... It is, however, lawful to hope in a man
or a creature as being the secondary and instrumental agent,
through whom one is helped to obtain any goods that are ordained
to happiness. 27
An alternative methodology for explicating almost the same
point has been explored by de Letter, who employs the fourfold
delineation of causality-formal, efficient, material, and finalto show all virtues coming as free gifts (gratis gratia) from
God. De Letter states that God is the " last cause of charity
in the line" of singular causality, not just of final causality. 28
These words " final " and " last " appear so frequently in the
article that one is drawn, though de Letter may not have
intended such, to meditate on their meanings for Thomas.
Both " final " and " last " designate sources not in time, primarily, but in hierarchy, as Copleston has brought out relative to
Thomas's proof from motion. 29 The meditator comes to ap26 More properly " hope pertains to the movement
. . ." but the equation has
been made by Thomas.
27 Summa Theol., II-II, q. 17, a. 4, and I-II, q. 40, a. 3.
28 P. de Letter, "Hope and Charity in St. Thomas," The Thomist, XIII
(1950),
p. fl43 ff.
28 His primary
thesis is the deprecation of active hope in favor of pervasive
charity. On the proof from motion, see F. C. Cople&ton, Aquinas (Baltimore:
Penguin, 1955), pp. 110 ff.

LOUIS WEEKS, III

preciate, it seems to me, a second meaning for the words,
understanding them as the terminus ad quem of the virtues,
humanly speaking. Thus while God's creative power is viewed
as the terminus a quo for hope (as for all contingent creation),
it need include also an appreciation of God's sursum power
drawing men into the future. Since eternity is God's, man need
find the alpha and the omega of his hope in God. And since
God's grace does not change for man in beatitude, he must be
seen as " pulling " the creation toward its teleological fruition
as well as " pushing " it with his (gradually unfolding) creative
cosmology. 30
In the third place, man exists as one "on the road" (a
viator) so long as he abides on earth. More properly, in light
of Petry's insight, all men exist as communio viatoru1n. In
the words of M-M. Labourdette, " A part of the pilgrim church
[is] still here below, where the new kingdom has not yet
replaced the old world. . . ."
Hope, as all virtues, increases
along the way; 32 as other virtues, hope can be said to be
perfect in this life only in respect to its object and to its comparative position on the road. 33 It is this status of pilgrim
(status viatoris) which characterizes the men for whom
Thomas writes, as it does the author himself in writing. Their
faith, hope, and love, not to mention their knowledge of God,
all are complete, even at their fullest, only in comparison to
previous and possible places on the way (loci in via). Their
ethics, too, are those of the wayfarer, sharing simultaneously
the tentative nature of knowledge and the certainty of the
direction of truth. J. Pieper, whose work on the subject offers
more devotional than analytic assistance at this point, claims
that the" not-yet" of the status viatoris is the key to Thomas's
entire theology. 34 Regardless of its relative importance vis-a30 Though this point is difficult to articulate,
it is important because Moltmann
has here accused Thomas (et al.) of locating God's power for teleology in the past.
31 M-M. Labourdettc,
"Chronique de theologie morale," Revue Thomiste. LXI
(1961), p. S75.
•• Summa Theol., II-II, q. S4, a. 4 (on love, quoting Augustine in Joan, 3S).
33 Ibid., a. 8.
•• Josef Pieper, Uber die Hoffnung (Munich: Hegner, 1949), pp. 13-S3. Also
see Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: An lntroduetion to a Metaphysic of Hope

ST. THOMAS AND MOLTMANN

ON HOPE

228

vis other " keys " to the Summa, it is evident that " pilgrimage" does indicate the human condition, man's stance in hope.
Finally, even for the wayfarer, as was mentioned, a certainty
augments the hope of the Christian. Christ's resurrection, the
first fruits of the coming eschaton, remains the central fact
upon which all virtuous hope is: granted. 35 The event of the
empty tomb provides hope for the believer as both the example
of what is promised and the instrument of that coming accomplishment.36 Thus Thomas can assert boldly that hope is
"the certain expectation of future happiness." 87 The nature
of hope's certainty (quid sit), although a topic of current
investigation, does not pertain to our study as much as the
fact of its existence (an sit) .88 The certainty of hope, grounded
in the resurrection, is augmented within the life of the Christian
as he experiences God's continuing love. But that affirmation
also, which Thomas makes several times, is not so important
for us as the understanding that hope moves one increasingly
toward the drawing of the eschatological reality;'l9
Ch-A. Bernard, whose Theologie de l'esperance selon St.
Thomas d'Aquin is more concerned with the interaction of the
various theological virtues than with hope's eschatological dimension, has included in his summary remarks· a statement
which is pertinent for this discussion. 40 He says that God
infuses homo viator with hope; God " envelops him with divine
force to enable him to participate in the divine life." 41 " Hope,"
(Chicago: Regnery, 1951), translated by Cranford. Regrettably, Marcel confesses
in his preface that he will never write the treatise on a " metaphysic of hope "
which is needed.
•• Thomas seems to be strictly biblical here, relying, for example, on II Tinl.
1:
and on Rom. 5:5. His concern with hope's certainty appears to bear out
Kiinzle's evaluation.
•• Summa Theol., II-II, q. 18, a. 4.
•• Idem, quoting from Lombard, as iliough one has clainl on beatitude.
88 For a discussion of ilie nature of certainty, see Conlon, op. cit., and Pieper,
The Silence of Thomas (New York: Pantheon, 1957), "The Structure of Hope."
a. I.
•• Summa Theol., q.
•• Ch-A. Bernard, Theologie de l'esperance selon St. Thomas d'Aquin (Paris:
J. Vrin, 1961).
41 Ibid., p. 166.

QQ4

LOUIS WEEKS,

III

he concludes, " is the movement which comes from God and
depends on him to bring one to God." 42 Hope is also, £or
Thomas, corporate as well as individual, coming in the future
grace o£ God as it has in the past and interacting with
certainty to grow.

III
On the basis o£ this brief study o£ the eschatological dimension o£ Thomas's theology o£ hope, several areas can be
at least mentioned in which he appears to speak to the
Theology of Hope.
Not willing to equate hope with eschatology, Thomas has
addressed himself to the problem o£ precision in language.
Thus he has separated emotional hope from theological hope,
showing them to be analogous but not equivalent/ 3 In addition, although he believes that God's grace remains essentially
the same for men on earth and those in purgatory, he separates
the knowledge o£ final things which man can attain in this life
£rom that knowledge which is to come. 44 Thus, whatever the
variance in theological perspective, Thomas would appeal to
the Theology of Hope to avoid unnecessary ambiguity.
More importantly, the Summa spells out in no uncertain
terms where hope comes from and who receives it. As Cajetan
put it: " Hope considers God immediately as agent o£ the
action . . . supporting man by his aid and conducting man
to his blessedness." 45 That God is the source and the object
o£ true hope does seem to be much more significant than any
discussion o£ the direction from which hope is infused. As R.
Garrigou-Lagrange has declared, Saint Thomas's basis £or a
theology o£ hope rests consistently in the Scriptures where
God's gift o£ anticipation is discerned most clearly. 46 To the
Theology of Hope, which takes very seriously both the source
•• Idenn.
•• Summa Theol., II-II, q. 17, a. l.
.. Ibid., q.
a. 11.
'" Cajetan, in I-II, q.
a. 3; n. II, quoted in Bernard, op. cit., p. 48.
•• R. Garrigou-Lagrange, De Virtutibus lnfusis, quoted in Bernard, ibid., p.

ST. THOMAS AND MOLTMANN

ON HOPE

9!25

of hope in God and the import of the biblical witness to the
source, this area of " speaking " may well be redundant; but
the incessant popularization of the Theology ... , which does
not give due credit " where credit is due," prompts reiteration
of the authorities. 47 For Thomas, the habit of hope is a "pure
gift of grace."
Most importantly, however, Thomas incorporates the warning of Paul (I Cor. 15 : 19) concerning the limits of hope.
Indeed, with its elevation of history, Theology of Hope stands
in danger of eliminating all life but "this life." 48 Thomas
centers on man as experientially aware of this world, to be sure,
but as " wayfarer" as well. He looks to Christ as also a
pilgrim, the exemplary cause; but Christ is "arrived-man" in
addition, the instrumental cause of hope. 49 Bernard delineates
the difference:
Our hope is not a formal participation in the hope of Christ.
The head is not on the same level as the members of the body.
Our hope always springs from our point of departure as sinners ....
Our history in some sense is the presence of eternity in time, for
by faith and hope we adhere already to the plan of God manifest
in the world. But the history of Christ is the possession of eternity,
descending without repentance into time. In him, the end of
history is already present ... ,50

It appears that the Summa can speak to Theology of Hope,
as the study has shown, in terms of precision, source, and
limits of hope. But it can warn this movement in general and
the tome in particular in some other areas-realms of theological discourse only alluded to, if even that, by the body of
the essay.
In further terms of " limits " for hope Thomas provides a
brief query on whether hope can delude man; he phrases it in
terms of whether the young and the inebriated can have hope. 51
47 Cf. C. F. H. Henry, "Where is modern theology going?"
Christianity Today,
Vol. 1£ (1968), pp. 3-7.
48 Moltmann,
op. cit., p. 90.
•• Summa Theol., III, q. 7, a. 6.
50 Bernard,
op. cit., p. 88.
51 Summa Theol., I-II, q. 40, a. 6. "Utrwrn in juvenibus et in ebriosis abundet
spes? " is even more candid.

LOUIS WEEKS,

III

He concludes that both can indeed possess hope, that hope
can spring from inexperience and delusion as well as from
experience. We grant that he is here speaking of the passion
of hope and not the theological virtue; but his warning to the
Theology of Hope rings out clearly to beware the source of it
and to meditate on the relationship of hope to experience. 52
Again, another brash kind of warning comes from Thomas in
his treatment of despair and presumption as the twin sins
against hope. Theology of Hope takes much more seriously
the sin of despair than it does that of presumption. That for
Thomas the two appear equivalent in their perversion of hope
is notable. In his treatment of presumption, we note with some
relief, Thomas asserts that" presumption whereby a man relies
on God inordinately is a more grievous sin than the presumption of trusting one's own power .... " 53 Nevertheless, the
Summa speaks its admonition.
One of the recurrent questions for the "Duke Consultation
on the New Tasks of Theology" was the relationship of
Theology of Hope to science. 54 Here again the Summa, by
relating nature to hope, offers a word of significance. Nature
does not fuse hope into man; "the light of man's natural
reason " is indeed clouded by the " impulses of sinful desire."
On the other hand, Thomas asserts affirmatively that " Nature
inclines us to hope for the good which is proportionate to
human nature"; it can be verified by moral virtues. 55 If
modern science can make hopeful claims, as it seems to be
doing, then should not the Theology of Hope acknowledge
them? Does not the Theology of Hope, in accentuating the
radical break with nature by modern man, do violence to its
own argument?
The Theology of Hope does not speak often of fear; insofar
Moltmann's subsequent works, soon to be published, take cognizance of it.
Summa Theol., II-II, q. 21, a. 1.
54 The question was variously
phrased by Professors Murphy, Harvey, Gilkey,
and others.
55 Summa Theol., II-II, q. 22, a. 1. ·whether astronomy and physics in his day
offered better endorsement of this hope than they do today remains to be explored.
52

53

ST. THOMAS AND MOLTMANN

ON HOPE

227

as it is discussed, resurrection seems to argue for the " casting
out" of fear. The stance of the "exodus church "-one of
openness to God's future-replaces fear of the coming-God
with anticipation of his promises. The Summa, in vivid contrast, assumes that a discussion of fear should follow naturally
any mention of hope. In treating fear immediately following
hope the Summa offers one real possibility for enriching the
modern movement.
Thomas, as Pieper's meditation has discerned, concentrates
on the positive aspects of "God's gift of fear" when relating
it to hope. Uber die H offnung concludes:
The fear of the Lord guarantees that authenticity of hope. It
shuts out the peril that hope mistakes itself in falsa similitudo:
in the presumptuous anticipation of the fulfillment. The fear of
the Lord tells the hopeful man of the present day that the fulfillment "not-yet" is real. The fear of the Lord represents, thereby,
the recollection that human existence, although concerned with and
properly dependent upon fulfillment through the Highest Being,
nevertheless is endangered by its contingency no longer. With
amazing insight, Paschasius Radbert said, " the holy fear guards
the pinnacle of hope." And the Holy Scriptures (Psalm 113 :
say purely and simply, " Hope in the Lord, who fear him." 56

For his part, Thomas separates worldly or mundane fear
(timor mundanns) from the positive fears: initial, servile, and
filial. Without consciously employing the term, this type of
worldly fear, viz., anxiety concerning one's health, reputation,
bodily needs, etc., is the object of Moltmann's deprecation.
But Thomas spends more energy in delineating the constructive
fears than he does in exploiting the mundane fears. Initial
fear, provided from one's encounter with the gospel and its
requirements, leads to both filial and servile fears. 57 It is with
servile and filial fears, however, that Thomas is primarily
concerned.
Servile fear, regarding God as the source of punishment,
56 Pieper, Uber ... , p. 94.
(Douay and R.S.V. possess no such citation, the
closest being, seemingly, Ps. 147: 11).
57 Summa TheJol., II-II, q. 19, a. 8. Thomas wishes to avoid concentration
on
the " punishment " aspect of initial fear.

LOUIS WEEKS, III

does possess an element of evil. 58 However, servile fear coexists
with love for two reasons: first, man, in separation from God,
is already being punished, and servile fear seeks to avoid what
presently obtains for the pilgrim. Second, servile fear is the
cause of love of a master by a slave, hence it serves love. 59
Since it coexists with and serves love, servile fear must be
viewed as good.
Filial fear remains the major gift of the Holy Spirit; it
grows as one progresses along the way in love. In fearing lest
we offend God or be alienated from him, as children feel
toward a parent, " filial fear and hope cling together and perfect
one another." 6 ° Fear, the reliance on God's justice, "coinheres" with hope, the dependence on God's mercy, to bring
about, for the Summa, a deeper understanding of the " pilgrimage" than either could depict when taken by itself.
In sum, the Summa does speak incisively to the Theology
of Hope, although one cannot minimize the differences between
a medieval and a modern outlook. Because of its sensitivity
to the movement of hope, the source of hope, the stance of
man in hope, and the place of certainty in hope, the Summa
can both warn and enrich Moltmann's already refreshing and
revolutionary appropriation of that theological category. It
declares without equivocation what is the language, origin and
limit of hope. The Summa cautions concerning the possibility
of deception, the sin of presumption, the heeding of science,
and the positive use of fear, inherent in a comprehensive
Theology of Hope.

Loms WEEKS, III
3316 Swansea

Durham, N. C.

Ibid., a. 4.
Ibid., a. 6.
60 Ibid., a. 10.

58

59

TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

I

I

T MIGHT seem strange-at least at first glance-to develop a theology of protest just as it perhaps seems
contradictory to develop a theology of violence. I think,
however, that there is a difference, since violence is related
to the deepseated disease in the soul of man in his relationship
to God and, intrinsically related to this, in his relationship to
his brother on earth. I£ theology intervenes to relate this with
God's Word, it can only be with the vision of sin, of its heinous
manifestation in hatred, lust, avarice, selfishness and greedmade visible in the killing and maiming of violence whether
of the clenched fist or of the vituperative tongue. Theology
deals with violence as the metaphysic of the lesser of two evils,
not of the higher law of evangelical love, even of one's enemies.
The theology of protest, however, is dramatically different,
since it is, in Christianity, essentially related to the future.
The future here is the perfect manifestation of the kingdom,
the Parousia or second coming of Jesus which will be the
beginning and the end of the new eon, now incipiently begun
and thrust into history by and through the resurrection of the
God-man, Jesus Christ. We await him with joy, expectation
and holy impatience. His kingdom alone will establish among
us the perfect realm of justice, of peace, of harmony, of concord,
of that which sums up and brings these virtues to pass, of
love. Thus Christianity essentially looks to the future, looks
to the new eon of eschatological dimension and projects us
to a future of God's work and in God's time.
Yet, there is an essential tension in the pilgrim church, in
the relationship of the " now-then " and "here-not yet." That
is, the kingdom has already begun in seminal action; the new
man of all men has begun in baptism and in the Spirit to

230

PETER J. RIGA

communicate this new life, this new creation to the world of
men. Consequently, there is a tension of growth or maturity
of and for resurrection toward the future but one whose fruits of
the Spirit among us has already seminally begun in the eon o£
time. The old has passed away but not completely; the new
has appeared among us but not fully. The resurrection of
Christ and his communication of the new life of the Spirit has
begun in time among " these who are born not of the flesh or
of the will of man, but of God" (Jn. 1: 13) and must become
manifest in the works of those who claim to be his followers.
For, the essential apologetic of the New Testament is not the
rational argumentation of the philosophers. St. Paul was quite
adamant in pointing out that human intelligence had failed to
recognize and accept the " stupidity " of the cross,
We preach a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle that they
cannot get over, to the pagans madness; but to us who have been
called, whether they are Jews or Greek, a Christ who is the power
and wisdom of God. For God's weakness is stronger than human
strength. (I Cor 1

The essential apologetic is that of witness to the death-resurrection-ascension of the God-man, and this witness is essentially related to a continuation of the death-resurrection of Jesus
in his disciples. It is by the same spirit of Jesus that his
disciples must live, and if anything comes through clearly in
the New Testament, it is the Spirit of love (agape) which
relates essentially to both God and man. Indeed, these two
terminal points of love cannot be separated but are attained by
the very same act of love. Thus, love is not one virtue among
many others; it is the essential virtue, the dynamism and
fulfillment of all the others; it is the very mystery who is God
and who is man; it is the openness to life in God, to the profound realization of who and what we are.
It should be also clear that this tension of the kingdom
between the " already " and the " not yet " makes Christianity
essentially a protesting and dissenting religion against any
idolatry of any temporal structure or institution, whether
political, social or ecclesiastical. That is, God's Word, which

TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

281

alone is eternal, stands over against and in judgment upon
every human expression and manifestation precisely because
the human is always metaphysically imperfect, limited and
finite to a particular experience at any one particular moment
in history. Thus to absolutize any human institution is both
to be inhuman as well as blasphemous. No social, political or
ecclesiastical institution is so perfect that it cannot be replaced
by a better one more in conformity with man's dignity and
God's glory. That is why-at least in theory if not always in
practice-Christianity
cannot become completely identified
with any one social, economic or political system. Indeed, she
cannot become completely identified with any particular ecclesiastical system or manifestation. Christianity must be a continuous critic, protestor and dissenter from this absolutizing
tendency of human institutions precisely in function of her
absolute future, of her " not yet " of the kingdom of her
beloved spouse who is coming but who is only imperfectly
present in human history.
Yet, this love is concrete and existential. It is efficacious and
active, attaining the brother in the totality of his being, since
his mystery is love. This person is both mystery of love and
incarnation of person in flesh and bone. My love can attain
him only as human love, that is, as the concrete desire and
actualization of the conditions of human brotherhood as well
as of divine charity. I cannot have one without the other. How
can I love my brother and watch him go hungry? How can I
love my brother for whom Christ died and refuse to live, eat,
laugh and share together? How can I love my brother and
make distinctions among those whom I will love or not love,
as determined by the pure accidents of nature as race or color,
or of the accidents of man as national origin? All of these
defeat brotherhood, because they defeat the basic evangelical
witness of evangelical love which is to make mockery of the
message and life of Jesus continued in the disciple.
The fact is that the " not yet " of the kingdom sees us as
yet divided in selfishness and greed, whether it is expressed in
violence, racism, nationalism or indifference to the poverty

PETER J. RIGA

plight of hundreds of millions of men. This is the sinfulness
of the " not yet " of the kingdom, and yet the " now " of the
seminally wrought resurrection in the life and witness of the
disciple of Jesus must make its visible manifestation in the
concrete world under pain of having no Christian-evangelical
witness to that very kingdom in our midst. In other words,
if we have no visibility of Christian witness in love, concretely
manifested in any particular or universal community, the
evangelical witness has ceased to exist and the fruits of the
Spirit have failed. We then have the defeat of the Gospel
among men. If the Christian is Christian, the visible witness of
love cannot at all suffice in a form of an " invisibility " of his
faith among men, for this is a defeat for the evangelical witness
of love; this is simply non-Christianity even if all the ritual
of prayer, institution and ritual manage to exist:
So then, if you are bringing your offering to the alter and there
remember that your brother has something against you, leave your
offering there before the altar, go and be reconciled with your
brother first, and then come back and present your offering.
(Mt. 5

This is what the New Testament means when it speaks about
the " fruits of the spirit," that is, a visible manifestation before
the eyes of men of the works of justice, of peace, of hope, of
compassion and of love. There can be no living or authentic
Christian faith in God without works of faith, and among these
there is, first of all, that of caring for others " without distinction of persons": " Thou shall love the Lord, thy God, with
your whole heart ... and your neighbor as yourself." (Mt.
:36)
To love one's neighbor as oneself is not confined, by means
of various charities, to the most urgent necessities of our
brother-even though it means this also. It means above all
effectively to desire for him what we desire and work for
ourselves: civic rights, health, education, development, civilization and culture. It means to wage an effective war for him
against the evils which we fight for our own advantage, to

TOVVARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

do our best to eliminate the great economic and social inequalities and the oppression of man by man.
Thus, to be a Christian in the evangelical witness of love is
not purely to serve God, but it is also a dynamic social ethic, a
service to mankind; it is not merely a theology but also an
anthropology. And although Christianity is essentially directed
to the coming perfect kingdom of Christ, precisely because this
kingdom has seminally begun in the " now " on this concrete
earth, it must influence our actions in the realm of the earthly
city of man, of fostering science and promoting civilization,
as the imperfect but nonetheless a real beginning of the perfect
justice, peace and hope of the coming kingdom of Christ.
Christianity is the religion of the absolute future; however, its
eschatology is not projected to a distant future, rather its
eschatology has already begun here on earth. We have passed
from death to life in Christ's death and resurrection in baptism,
whose effects reach beyond us, even to the whole of the created
cosmos. We, like Christ, have already passed from the temporal into the eternal with Christ as Lord of all creation by
his resurrection. This cosmic dimension of that act is not that
we thus escape the world in a form of illusory transcendence
but rather that we return to the world as the natural habitat
of man and for man and transform it in a dynamic immanence.
Thus God's transcendence and immanence are not contradictory, but in the resurrection of Christ they are complementary
in the birth of the new man, the new creation. As Vatican II
put it:
We do not know the time for the consummation of the earth and
of humanity, nor do we know how all things will be transformed.
As deformed by sin, the shape of the world will pass away; but
we are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling place and a
new earth where justice will abide, and whose blessedness will
answer and surpass all the longings for peace, which springs up
in the human heart. . . .
Therefore, while we are warned that it profits a man nothing if
he gain the whole world, and lose himself, the expectation of a new
earth must not weaken but rather stimulate our concern for
cultivating this one. For here grows the body of a new human

PETER J. RIGA

family, a body which even now is able to give some kind of foreshowing of the new age. (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in
the Modern World, par. 39)
Thus Christ gives us a deeper meaning to our bond with the
world and with history. Solidarity with the agonies and joys
and problems of all men are also our agonies and joys and
problems. Indeed, they thus become for us the sacrament of
God's saving presence in the midst of the world: "I was naked
and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me; in prison and
you visited me" (Mt. 9l5 : 36) .

II

The Gospel and Violence
It is not strange, however, that today, when we speak of
"dissent" or "protest," we have a tendency to identify it with
violence understood in its destructive form. It is for this
reason that we must carefully analyze this concept in the texts
of the New Testament. This is the only way in which we can
distinguish political protest from Christian protest, even if
there is a correlation here. As we shall see, the difference resides
in the non-violence or rather meekness in the face of the
omnipotent demands of any human institution in relation to,
or in contrast with, the hoped-for eschatological expectations
of God.
It will be helpful, then, before we confront the Scripture
texts, to define more or less accurately what exactly we mean
by violence. Throughout, we shall use the term "violence"
in the sense of the use of force on another person in order to
make him do something against his present will. What we
mean by "non-violence" is that form of action or reaction
which refuses to have recourse to violent, physical, brutal or
other forms of internal and external pressure to bring about
a change of will in another human being or to change a
situation considered to be intolerable. This refusal to have
recourse to any violent means whatever for any purpose is
called " meekness " in the New Testament, as we shall see.

TOVVARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

We must also clearly understand that non-violence and meekness are not always the same thing. Many have and presently
do use non-violence as one means of winning over an adversary
much as one who uses violent means uses it in order to win
over an adversary. This is not what the New Testament means
by "non-violence." Indeed, it would perhaps be better to use
the word" meekness" when speaking of the New Testament's
attitude in this area. Meekness does not seek so much the
conversion or the " winning over " of the adversary as it does
the conversion of the person who is meek, of purifying himself
in order to find the truth. The whole Sermon on the Mount is
an exercise in such meekness. In Mt. 5:5 we have the beatitude of " blessed are the meek " which describes him who,
when he is hurt or despised, does not menace or threaten to do
the same to others, not because he is some form of philosophical
stoic, impassive to pain or humiliation but rather because he
follows the example of Christ who continued to love even those
who injured or insulted him: " Forgive them, for they know not
what they do." Because Christ loved men, he did not want to
nor could he force or coerce them into belief and love in
return. He is the truth and the way who must be received
in love and obedience. Therefore the meekness of Christ is
not in function of " winning over " others but was itself a
product of his love for men whom he helped to lead to himself
That is why Jesus applies the term
freely and
"meek" to himself in Mt.
:5: "Behold your king is coming
to you, humble (meek) and mounted on an ass." The relationship between " meekness " and the " ass " is significant, since
the ass was an animal of peace as opposed to a horse which
was an animal of war and worldly power. Jesus is meek, and
the sign of this is that he rides on an ass during his triumphal
entry into Jerusalem. The triumph of Jesus is not by force
or violence but by love, obedience and humility.

The Witness of the Gospels
Since the kingdom of God is at the very center of the
message of Jesus, we must seek the key to understanding

236

PETER J. RIGA

through an analysis of this central concept of the gospels. The
kingdom has both a history and an enemy.
The whole of mankind, indeed the total universe, is divided
into two contending parties. One, the sons of the kingdom or
of God or of light are confronted with those who are sons of
darkness, of the world, of perdition or of the devil himself. The
invisible kingdom is divided between those who remained
faithful to God and those who revolted. Both of these groups
attempt to enlist in their obedience or revolt human beings
of earth.
This drama knows an end, a final resolution whose focal
points have been established by God. The writers of the New
Testament were impressed by two of these: the end of time
(parousia) and their own generation in which this eschatological drama was taking place. The heralds of the New Testament
already announce and bear witness to the coming of the
kingdom, of its inception already in time, so that this message
comes to be known as " the good news of salvation." It is
their function to prepare the way of the Lord. Thus is born a
tension between the kingdom which is coming and is being
born and the present generation which is dying and passing
away.

The End of Time
The essential term of this mortal combat is the parousia or
second coming of Jesus. This end is divided into two periods,
one being the parousia or the manifestation in glory of the
Son of God, the other in relation to this the spectacle of the
Last Judgment which will be characterized by violent change
produced by the divine anger against sin and disobedience. It
is at this time that sinners will be totally excluded from the
kingdom into a " second death " where there will be weeping
and gnashing of teeth (Apoc. 20: 1-6).
The kingdom, as we have said, is in the process of birth and
as such is characterized by pain and suffering before the final
parousia. These sufferings are premonitions of the coming of
the kingdom which were given in the final discourses of Jesus

TOVVARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

before his passion. Jesus prepares his disciples for this by
telling them to be vigilant and guarded during these painful
trials and above all to persevere in faith in the midst of this
suffering and pain. They are to be on guard against false
prophets. In other words, they will escape the divine anger
but not the violence of Satan who will seek them out in a very
special way because they bear witness to him. In the face of
such danger and suffering, there are only two possible attitudes
for the disciple of Jesus: one of flight from such suffering or
one of acceptance of this suffering in meekness and patience.
These disciples of Jesus must not use violence in order to
escape this suffering. If they are persecuted, their only arms
must be the witness of the Spirit and their nonresistance. This
meekness of the disciples of Jesus will bear witness against
these evil men before the tribunal of God on the last day. This
triumph of God (and with him, of his faithful) will come
only on that day and hour decreed by God which will also be
the vengeance of God against his enemies (Rom. 12: 19; Apoc.
6: 10).
In the meanwhile the announcement of the good news of
salvation, of the coming of the kingdom, continues what was
first begun by John the Baptist (Lk. 16 : 16). Indeed, the
difficult words of Jesus to describe the coming of the kingdom
are not very clear: " From the days of John the Baptist
until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and
men of violence take it by force" (Mt. 11 : 12) . The prophecies concerning the coming of the kingdom have ceased in
Jesus, and all must now take a position with regard to Jesus.
There are those who accept this without hesitation and with
full acquiescence in the combat that is before them for accepting Jesus (Lk. 14:
These disciples of Jesus must " be in the world," that is,
among men everywhere in order to bear witness to Jesus. They
cannot flee to the desert or to a place by themselves but must
be in the midst of men to bear witness among them to the good
11). They cannot be "of the
news of salvation (I Pt.
world," that is, of the attitudes and thinking of other men,

238

PETER J. RIGA

but they are sent " into the world " which is entirely under
the power of the evil one. Thus there is a confrontation between the disciples of Jesus and the power of the devil,
exercised by his disciples who are the children of darkness (I
Jn. 5: 19). The combat is now enjoined. The faithful ones
are loyal to God, and they are those who accept from Jesus
the laws of the kingdom (the Sermon on the Mount and
Jn. 17: 15-18). The others on the outside neither recognize
nor obey these laws of the kingdom (I Cor. 5: 12).
Those who are " outside of the kingdom " are essentially
characterized by violence and coercion both in their relationship with Christians and with each other.
In the relationship between the sons of darkness this violence
goes as far as to enslave each other and to prostitute themselves
with idolatrous practices (I Cor. 1!2: 2). Slavery is recognized
by the Scriptures as the result of violence among men (I Tim.
6: 1) and is a perfect expression of the human violence exercised by those who are outside the kingdom. The secular power
habitually uses violence in its task of ruling. Governments
usually weigh heavily on those whom they rule. Indeed, the
Apostles themselves appeal to such power against those who
are evil among pagans and unworthy Jews (Rom. 1: 29; II
Tim. 3 :3).
Secondly, this violence is also exercised against Christians
themselves, for example, exercised by government against
Christians who were in fact slaves. But there is another form
of violence exercised against Christians insofar as they were
Christians. The Lordship of Jesus over all of creation is rightfully his by and through his resurrection, but in the meantime,
between the resurrection and the parousia, Christ's kingdom
has not as yet been fully established; during this period, the
power of Satan is still exercised, above all against the disciples
of Jesus. Those outside the kingdom often use the power of
the secular authority against Christians (Lk. 10: 18; I Cor.
10: 11; II Tim. 2: 26). This was so common that Christians
considered persecution to be the normal state of affairs.

TOVVARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

289

Conduct of Christians
In the conduct of Christians we must carefully distinguish
between their relations with each other and those with persons
who were " without the kingdom."
Between Christian brothers conduct must be such as to lead
to a greater fraternity. It is true that even among the disciples
of Jesus there can be injustice and difficulties can divide
them (James 2: 1-4), but the truly spiritual must continuously
pardon and forgive, reject the law of talion, be reconciled
and even allow themselves to be deprived rather than demand
what is theirs (Mt. 18 : 22; I Cor. 7: 7) . The fruits of the
Spirit must be born out in the disciples' relationship with each
other; these fruits are meekness, kindness, moderation, peace,
humility, compassion, the control of passions (which are at
the source of much violence), and in all things the dominance
of liberty by the supreme virtue of love.
There are two forms of constraint among the disciples of
Jesus which appear to be beneficial and salutary. The first is
that of the Holy Spirit when He moves the Church to change
or to move in a certain direction, even when this seems to go
counter to the plans of the Apostles themselves. The other
form of restraint, which also comes from the Spirit, is manifested more regularly in the consensus or pressure of the
fraternity or of authority. It is true that authority has above
all the duty to serve and to preserve itself at all times from
arrogance and vainglory. Yet, when the essential interests of
the community are put in danger, such as the truth of the
Christian message, the reputation of the Church, good order
and unity, then this authority can have recourse to the ways
of law even to excommunication (Mt. 18: 17; Acts 5: 1-11; I
Cor. 5 :5; I Tim. 1 :20).
With regard to those who are " outside of the kingdom "
the relationship of the disciples must be of another form. The
powers of the world are controlled by Satan and, as such,
persecute the disciples of Jesus. The struggle is long and hard,
without cessation or pity. The Christians are assisted by the
angels of God and the Holy Spirit. It is this Spirit who uses

240

PETER J. RIGA

the disciples in order to deliver men from the power of the
evil one (exorcism) . This is the sign or sacrament of the
presence of the kingdom, as are the remission of sins and the
consequent good life of these men.
With regard to human institutions the Christian attitude is
more complex and should be analyzed in greater depth. There
two series of problems which interested these Christians and
which entailed specific responses: the problem of constraint
which was exercised on them as members of society, and the
problem of violence which came to them precisely because
they were Christians.
In the first case, God appeared to Christians to authenticate
the legitimate power of civil authority from the fact that God
has put such authority in a ruling position. Therefore God is
indirectly present and served in the restraints which these
authorities impose in the service of the common good which
they serve. St. Paul was very sensitive to this. Therefore, the
Christian, remaining in the state where God has called him,
must pay his just debts, be subject to the king, the slave to
his master, even the soldier to the publican (Lk. 3: 12-14).
The Christian sees a certain presence of God in these men
and affairs; yet, this presence is provisional and very different
from that which will be manifest-soon-in the kingdom of
the glorious Lord Jesus where God shall be all in all (I Cor.
15: 27-28). Indeed, the Christian prays for the peace of the
City of Man (I Tim. 2 : 2-8) . This terrestial peace can aid
men to come to the truth and God is the God of peace of all
men (I Tim. 4 : 10).
What should the response of Christians be to the civil
authority when it persecutes them because they are Christians?
Violence in any form is forbidden, even if certain passages of
the Scripture are difficult to explain:
And he said to them, " When I sent you out with no purse or bag
or sandals, did you lack anything?" They said, "Nothing." He
said to them, " but now let him who has a purse take it, and
likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and
buy one." (Lk. 22 : 25-36)

TOVVARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

Perhaps this is a form of irony, since later on in the same
passage he says in response to the disciples who actually have
a sword, that " that is enough." Christ intended the metaphorical sense, but the disciples understood him literally (cf.
Mt. 10: 34). Christ wanted to emphasize the crucial character
of the situation. In any case, other Gospel texts (Mt.
:
Jn. 18: 1.1; Apoc. 13: 10) show clearly that violent resistance
is forbidden to the Christian. The supreme example is that of
Jesus himself who repudiated all violence, even when it was
patently unjust (I
He accepts an angel to console
him during his agony, but he refuses the sword of Peter (Mt.
53).
Thus, if it is true that the Christian cannot resist violence
by violence, what can the Christian do to resist or to oppose?
The Christian who was also a slave was oppressed by the
prevalent authority, as indeed Christians in general were con··
tinuously persecuted for their faith by the civil authorities.
Their only response could be that of meekness of the beatitudes
(Mt. 5 : 4) . This meekness of the Gospel is not a form of
weakness or lack of conviction. On the contrary, such an
attitude required the greatest courage and, indeed, the very
strength of the Holy Spirit. There is always the essential duty
to bear witness to Christ in the midst of the world, even in
the midst of violence and police action. The meek and humble
of heart must react with strength and eloquence, even with a
certain form of just anger (Mt.
: 13) . This testimony of
theirs will be met by violence on the part of the civil authority.
The disciple will not resist them, even giving up his goods to
them (Jn. 18 :
Apoc. 16 : 35; I Peter 3 : 15) . This evangelical meekness is not prompted by some form of stoical indifference to matter or material goods'-as indeed some forms of
non-violence in fact demand.
This evangelical meekness is found in the very spirit of the
Gospels, in the Sermon on the Mount where the word "meekness " can also be translated by the words " poor " or " humble." These meanings find their full signification in the other
characteristic of the Sermon such as merciful, peacemaking,

242

PETER J. RIGA

in the disciples' relationship to the public authority and to
those "outside of the kingdom." Thus we have a general
spirit throughout the Sermon on the Mount which is the
attitude of the poor in spirit, of the poor of Yahweh, in the
Old Testament. The anawim of the Old Testament find their
description in the second book of Isaiah. The servant of
Yahweh is humble or meek before his adversaries and killers
for the purpose of redeeming them from their sins. The suffering servant of Yahweh has the same characteristics of those
whom Jesus describes in the Sermon, characterized above all
by suffering unjustly at the hands of evil men (Is. 42: 2-3;
50: 6).
This form of mediatorship taught Christians how futile it
was to trust in purely human means either to solve the problem
of suffering or to alleviate it. Even at the time of Christ we
have the example of the Zelots who were trying to free their
country from the invasion of the Romans and who used violent
means to accomplish this end. Even the Essenes o£ Qum Ran
attempted to accomplish the end o£ the " restoration " by
means o£ purification, prayer and penance (c£. Acts 1 : 6) . Yet,
finally, it can only be God who can do this by his decisive intervention in history. The kingdom can become the object of
longing prayer for the Christian but not a project or endeavor
to be brought about by the artifice of man (Lk. H: 54). The
Christian knows that the kingdom is pure gift, descending
from above, into which he must enter; it is not the accomplishment of Yogi, o£ learned men or of the construction and
philosophy of man. It is in this sense that the poor affirm
the discontinuity of the kingdom with all human endeavors and
thus keep their distance from the artifices and constructions of
man. That is why the Zelots were rejected unequivocally by
Christians, since they wanted to introduce the kingdom of
God into the world by the sword.

The Promised Land for the Meek
Thus this evangelical " poverty " is less a social condition
than a spiritual attitude, even if the New Testament does in

TOVVARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

fact establish a form relationship between the two. The poor
man in the New Testament (whether socially indigent or not)
is directed with all of his soul to the kingdom which only God
alone can make appear among men at the time decided by him
(Lk. 17:
Here on earth this kingdom has appeared but
only partially and imperfectly, and that is why the Christian
on earth feels like a pilgrim and stranger as he traverses time
toward the full coming of the kingdom. The promised land is
not the material land of Palestine but the truly holy land which
is the kingdom. The happiness of the Christian is secondary to
this great expectation.
In the meanwhile, while he is still in exile, the essential task
of the Christian is to be obedient to God's will and commandments given to him by Jesus and the prophets. The poor man
accepts the trials of suffering which this will bring him, sacrificing all that he has and is in meekness, not in the spirit of hope
for an immediate victory over his enemies. He does this not to
disdain the goods of this world nor to be impassive by injustice,
since he will see God's wrath and anger finally bring about
perfect justice in the full manifestation of the kingdom.
It is this evangelical meekness which will be the most visible
facet of this poverty of the Christian. It has no meaning in
and of itself but seeks in hunger and thirst for true justice
which is that of the kingdom (Mt. 5 : 6) . Such meekness by
Christians works among men insofar as they are moved by the
Spirit to accept this testimony, but, in the final analysis, the
Christian hopes in nothing human; he hopes only in God. God
is meek and can exercise anger, but it is only he who can
exercise this anger and violence. The cause of the poor man
is in God as well as his hope, and he will not be deceived or
disappointed.
This teaching on violence is very clear in the texts of the
New Testament, and yet, this teaching raises still further
problems for Christians. We know in fact that Christians have
taken the message and that it has influenced their lives,
thought, philosophies, cultures and civilizations in the terrestial
city of man. What shall we say of such a traditional response?

PETER J. RIGA

When the New Testament considers the relationship between
the socio-economic organizations of the world with the kingdom, it usually underlines only the polemical, and other aspects
are passed over in silence. It has no word of encouragement
for those who wish to revolt against unjust structures. One
would almost say that, for the New Testament, these injustices
are almost normal, a fatal part of human life, which can be
corrected only by God at the last judgment. It cares as little
for non-violence as it does for absolute pacifism. The revolution of Christianity from on high actually turns them away
from other revolutions in the sense that the first actually is
so great that the latter are inconsequential. Neither the" social
gospel" type of Christianity nor the "integral traditional"
form of Christian expression would make any sense for the New
Testament. We simply cannot attach any ideology onto the
texts of the New Testament.
We call this a clear case of abstention from judgment on
worldly revolution because of the power, revolution and overwhelming fact of Christianity. We must certainly attempt to
demythologize many of the historical reasons which confronted
the New Testament; yet, there are certain aspects of the
problem which we would do well to examine and meditate on.
First, the New Testament relativizes every organized political, social, economic human community. God's presence is
contained in them to a certain degree insofar as they promote
peace and justice. Yet-and this is very clear in the textsevery political power must be seen by the Christian as absolutely relative. This is just the opposite of what human and
political communities try to do when they are in power. They
tend to make themselves gods which no one can question with
impunity. Indeed, as past history has shown, they want to
become "Christianized" so as to become absolute on earth.
The Gospel is a perpetual rebuke against such an attitude,
and that is why the Gospel often is an enemy to civil authority.
This applies to forces of " law and order " as it does to the
mystique of " revolution."
Secondly, if the Christian has become Caesar (he is today

TOVVARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

9l45

democratically orientated) , it must follow that the use of
violence is a possibility for him. The texts of the New Testament were written during an autocratic rule and the question
was never really posed as we have it today. Therefore we
are in the presence of a whole new problem, indeed a form of
dualism. Perhaps this can be a healthy form of tension between
the demands of the kingdom and the demands of human institutions. It is a new problem for each generation of Christians
and cannot be solved by simply consulting the solutions of the
New Testament for our problems. Certainly, the ends and the
means of human organization must be influenced by the
Gospel; but this cannot be a simple deduction and conclusion
from situations solved in the New Testament to solutions to
problems today. There will be a dialectic, an influence, but, in
the final analysis, we must find our solutions for our problemr.
for today.

III
Thus Christianity is a protesting religion by its very nature
but in an absolutely non-violent way. The tension between the
imperfect presence of the kingdom in the " now " and the
perfect and final coming of the kingdom in Christ Jesus necessitates a continuous act of protest against the natural selfishness,
egotism, hatred and their by-products: nationalism, racism,
militarism and world poverty. This continuous struggle between the " old man " and the " new man " resides precisely
in this. It was the example of the Hebrew prophets. It was
this God who revealed himself through a slave people's striving
to achieve freedom and dignity for themselves. It was a
continuous action of purification, lost again, found again,
throughout Israel's sinful and repentent ways. This same God
called upon men to deal justly with the widows and orphans,
the poor and the weak, for it is he who pleads their cause and
provides them hope beyond their greatest hopes. It was this
God who protested through the prophets against the injustices
and insensitivity of the brotherhood of not only the chosen
people but the pagan peoples as well. For God's law speaks not
only about matters of prayer, rite and ceremony, but it also

246

PETER J. RIGA

defines our ethical obligations to each other and society. So
the prophets made it clear that no society that remains corrupt
and iniquitous could long endure. In the name of God the
prophets inveighed against wealthy landowners who stole property, judges who accepted bribes, and perverted nations that
failed to honor treaties and ruthlessly exploited military power.
The religion of the Old Testament was not only concerned
about sin and grace, atonement and salvation-it also speaks
pointedly and specifically to the problem resulting from maldistribution of property, the organization of state machinery
and the exercise of political and military power. Justice had
to be fulfilled before any sacrifice could be offered to God.
The New Testament did not abrogate the ancient law but
simply fulfilled it. Christ gave the Old law a new spirit, a
new orientation and all pervading guiding force: love.
This aspect of fraternal charity appears in John 13:35. The
charity of the community becomes the sign whereby one is able
to recognize the true disciples of Christ. This aspect is also
found in the Synoptics (Mt. 5: 14-15). The community, by
the quality of its fraternal charity, will be a sign to the world.
This sign would be the prophetic action which should provoke
surprise among the peoples of the nations. The most important
aspect of fraternal charity is its source, for this charity does
not have a human but rather a divine origin (17 : 21-23) . The
source is the life of God which is the love uniting the Father
and the Son. Christ has established the community of the
Church to which he has communicated this love and in which
there should be an exchange of love which exists between
Father and Son. This love is the origin for the love that the
members are to have for each other, and this characteristic of
unity in charity will show the world that the Father has sent
the Son. Thus the fraternal charity of Christians has its
source in the love of Christ and in the love of the Father for
the Son and the Son for the Father. The manifestation of
fraternal charity will be a source of revelation to others of the
love of God. There must first be the manifestation and experience of this charity, even before the word is preached, for the

TOVVARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

247

Gospel stresses that charity teaches it. One must preach first
by his acts before he preaches in words. The life of charity is
necessary in order for the preaching to be effective. In the
measure that one sees the charitable life of the community
will he be drawn to God. Active love expresses the ever-present
reality of the Gospel. Inversely, where there is no charity,
the essential sign is missing. In this perspective John is not
considering the witness of the individual but stressing the
importance of the witnessing that must be given by the community. Although there may be other characteristics of the
community, charity is the principle one and the source of the
others.
It is through the experience of the love of God in Christ that
Christians thereby can communicate with God and by him
with each other. This is the radical basis for the divine life
in the community as detailed in the fourth gospel. It is from
this radical source that any divine communion is even possible
in the Christian dispensation.
Christ throughout the gospels, repeatedly protested in the
name of love and of brotherhood. The parable of the Good
Samaritan showed the essence of love in concrete and not
nationalistic jingoism; he emphasized the aspect of forgiveness
of real injustices done to us by the brother such that, if we do
not forgive them, we will not be forgiven by God. He protested
the substitution of ritual for mercy and compassion. He protested the hypocrisy of the status seeker, the wealthy who pile
up goods for their damnation, the unconcern for the brother,
where he so identified the poor and destitute with himself
that those who do or do not do good for them do or do not do
good to him. He protested against the pomposity and show
of the rich, of the official, and bade his followers to be always
honest, serviceable and humble. He protested the violence of
men, telling his disciples to turn the other cheek and-the
greatest manifestation of love-to love their enemies; he tells
them that those who live by violence will perish thereby. He
protested against the phoniness and the " better than thou "ism by purposely eating and drinking with the archtypes of

248

PETER J. RIGA

sin, the publicans, and the prostitutes. He protested against
the rich roan-the parable of Dives and Lazarus-whose sin
was not richness but his lack of brotherhood, his failure to see
the reason for his material wealth (fraternal love). He protested against phony religion which made a ritual (the Sabbath) more important than fraternal charity, than helping
one's brother in any time of need, inclusive of the Sabbath.
He protested so much that the main charge made against
him at his trial was that " he disturbs the people with his
teaching all over Judea; it has come down all the way from
Galilee, where he started, even to this place .... We have
found this man inciting our people to revolt ... " (Lk. 23: 2-4).
And yet, even the most " realistic " of us are uneasy over
this whole mental construct. As one religious author once put
it: " If the religious mind of our time does not allow man
to defend what is noblest in him, will there by any future
faith which is based on the possibility of freedom? " Indeed,
as it stands, the conclusion is blasphemous. The whole of the
New Testament, its inception as well as its growth, was under
a complete totalitarianism. The real theological question for
our time is perhaps just the opposite of what the above quoted
author concluded: Is any future faith possible-or its understanding-in a regime of democratic freedom such as we enjoy
in the West? It is those Christians behind the " Iron Curtain "
who are beginning to understand the true meaning of Christian
faith after the Church has been stripped of her traditional
political and economic power of privilege and pride. Thus
humiliated by God, the Church can thus (possibly) come back
to her pristine moral witness in poverty and in suffering. It
was Albert Camus, an atheist, who said that the two great
virtues needed today by the Church are poverty and boldness.
If she is bold in her moral witness, then she is most certainly
going to be poor. When the Church becomes rich and esteemed,
the ancient hubris cannot be long withstood, and she is in
grave danger of forgetting that her Savior triumphed in humiliation and death in order to live in obedience. We so strangely
absorb the views of success, pride and power of the world, even

TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF PROTEST

249

its definitions of" freedom." Christ's freedom was to obey the
Father in death to life by humiliation and suffering. How can
it be that his Church which is his body could hope to triumph
in any other way? How else can she understand the words of
Christ: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat
falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; if it dies, it bears
much fruit " (Jn. 12 : 24) .
The Church must manifest her preferential love and prophetical witness for the poor in concrete ways in order to
benefit the great masses of poor all over the globe. The world
today expects more from the Church than mere expressions
of love or enunciations of general principles; it asks for tangible
and concrete proof of this love. The whole Church must take
a stand, clearly and courageously, in favor of the poor every
time they are victims of any injustice. This evidently implies
a more forceful stand on racial discrimination, medical aid for
the aged, urban renewal in all of its forms. Thus her solicitude
for social justice in concrete examples will become a proof of
her love for the poor. She must rebuke public authorities when
they fail in their obligations to take the necessary measures to
solve or alleviate the most urgent social problems of the day.
The Church must continuously remind herself and all men
that the rich have no special claim among the people of God,
except that they have been given a special obligation, by virtue
of their wealth, to be servants of God's poor. They themselves must be poor in spirit, and this attitude should characterize their actions. The Church has a heavy responsibility to
remind the rich that, unless they are poor at least in this sense,
their chances for salvation are very slim indeed. The poor
belong to the Church in their own right, as born citizens of
God's kingdom who have a first claim to his mercy and love.
In the Church of God, they have the primacy of honor. The
Church must always uphold this hierarchy of spiritual values
not only because her Divine Founder did so before her but
also in order to neutralize the idolatry of riches which in so
many ways dominate modem society.

250

PETER J. RIGA

In such protest she reminds men of the inescapable and
essential truth of Christianity: God has loved us in Christ,
has touched us so radically, so completely, so profoundly, that
we are radical brothers responsible for each other in love and
solicitude. Any human condition which substracts from the
universal brotherhood, is the mortal-and only-enemy of the
Christian.
PETER

Saint Mary's CoUege
Saint Mary's, California

J. RIGA

THE PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF THE
ORIGIN OF SPECIES. PART TWO

VI.

THE ERROR OF UNIVOCALLY

ONTOLOGIZED

KIND-ESSENCES

From the title of this section one might expect it to develop
the contention that the specific structures causally accounted
for by contemporary science are contrarily related to the texture
and sense of the traditional principles governing the recognition
of specific distinctions in the world of bodies. Perhaps unfortunately, we must develop a rather more complex contention.
The contention to be developed at this point is that an
ontological survey of the landscape of Darwin's world shows
that, so far as its metaphysical structure is concerned, the
knowledge of evolutionary species has not altered the structure
of the traditional species problematic but has, on the contrary,
clarified its secondary implications so as to make its options
clearer and their alternatives more definite. In showing this,
the survey in question shall have, on the one side, to clear away
the morass of philosophical perplexities in post-Darwinian
thought due not to the accumulation of evolutionary data (as
Dewey thought and as commonly supposed) but primarily and
directly to those ambiguities and uncertainties latent in Classical Antiquity's notion itself of species, whose features the labor
of evolutionary research has forced to the fore. This will be
the direct concern of the present section. On the other side, it
will remain to show that the forthright acknowledgment and
philosophical resolution of these no longer latent ambiguities
and uncertainties render the evolutionary data themselves more
intelligible in their own line of explanation which is not mathematical (species are not numbers) but that of natural philosophy, wherein are assigned reasons for the changes that never
cease around us. This will be the concern of Section VIII
below, where the problem of the criterion of evolutionary progress at last comes into view.

JOHN N. DEELY

Mortimer Adler was perhaps the first to see clearly and
perhaps the only one to state clearly that " most of the philosophical perplexities in post-Darwinian thought are due to
ambiguities and uncertainties in the notion of species itself
rather than to the discovery of any radically significant
facts." 153 The ambiguities and uncertainties in question, I
think, can be traced to seven sources, four of which are matters
of properly philosophical argumentation, one socio-·cultural, one
psychological, and one theological.
1) Most fundamentally, it was the enculturated conception of the eternal heavens which deflected even the
most penetrating of the classical and medieval analyses
of the ontological character of the natural kinds encountered in common experience. 154 Since the unchanging
Tke Problem of Species, p. 10.
••• For Aristotle and St. Thomas, it was the eternal space-time of the celestial
spheres which determined the place and order of sublunary bodies, and so tile
rigid necessity and formal immutability of their natures. The Aristotelian essences
of material beings do not have their cosmological reference to what we understand
today by the physical environment but to the unchanging heavens which, as
instruments of the separated intelligences, were regarded as the causa regitiva,
the governing cause, of tile physical world. E. g., cf. St. Thomas, In Ill
Met., lect. 11, n. 487: " ... in the twelfth book [1078a14-1078b17; in Comm., lect.
9, " The Number of Primary Movers "] . . . the Philosopher shows that tile first
active or moving principles of all things are the same but in relation to a certain
order or rank. For first indeed are tile principles without qualification incorruptible
and immobile. There are, however, following on tllese, the incorruptible and
mobile principles, to wit, the heavenly bodies, which by their motion cause generation and corruption in the world." In Bk. VII, lect. 6, no. 1408, in connection
with the question of spontaneous generation, reference is similarly made " to the
power of the heavens, which is the universal regulating power of generations and
corruptions in tllese lower bodies. . . ."
For a full discussion, see Thomas Litt's study of Les Corps celestes crons
l'univers de saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Nauwelaerts, 1968), from the "Introduction " and " Conclusion " to which the following observations indicate the
justice of my own allegations in this matter: "L'opinion courante, dans le monde
des specialistes de S. Thomas, est que la theorie des corps celestes reste parfaitement
extrinseque a l'enseiguement philosophique ou theologique du saint docteur. Et ce
qu'il y a d'etrange, c'est que cette opinion, non seulement est adoptee communement
sans preuves, sans examen, mais qu'elle ne se formule meme pas. Non seulement on
escamote les corps celestes sans demontrer qu'on a le droit de les escarnoter, rnais
on les escamote sans meme le dire. . . ." (pp. 5-6) "Mais il y a au rnoins
188

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

253

spheres determined and governed the place and order of
sublunary bodies, guaranteeing the rigid necessity and formal immutability of their natures, there could be no
question of a speciation process altering across the ages
the visible features of the natural world.
deux points de l'enseignement de S. Thomas ou les corps celestes ... entrent
vraiment dans la doctrine elle-meme, ou, par consequent, on altere ladite doctrine,
si on les escamote ... d'abord quant a la theorie de la matiere et de la forme."
(p. 6) Deuxiement, quant "ala doctrine des series de causes subordonnees essentiellement." (p. 9) Mais aussi "il y a un troisieme point ou Ia theorie des corps
celestes a eu une influence intime sur la doctrine philosophique de S. Thomas, et
c'est, ni plus ni moins, la tres generale et tres fondamentale theorie de l'acte et de
la puissance. L'univers de S. Thomas etait fait d'etres qui passaient de la puissance
a l'acte, c'est-a-dire, de !'imperfection a Ia perfection correspondant a leur espece .
. . . lei encore, par consequent, une adaptation est necessaire, si l'on veut transplanter la theorie de Ia puissance et de l'acte dans notre univers a nous." (pp. 1112) "Les ... chapitres de cet ouvrage montrent [que] ... Ia metaphysique "-ou
bien, la cosmologie ou "scientia naturalis "-"des corps celestes ... est incontestablement une piece constitutive de la synthese philosophique du Docteur
commun et elle porte la marque de son genie propre: ses conceptions sur la nature
et !'action des spheres celestes prennent place dans une vision grandiose de l'ordre
universe!; tous les aspects de cette cosmologie typiquement medievale se completent
d'une maniere rigoureusement coherente et revelent !'esprit de synthese si caracteristique de la pensee du maitre." (p. 367) " La cosmologie des spheres celestes
joue egalement un role dans Ia synthese theologique de S. Thomas." (p. 370)
" Une . . . question, capitale pour les thomistes actuels, se pose aussitot: le
systeme philosophique de S. Thomas peut-il etre ampute, sans inconvenient serieux,
de la pseudo-metaphysique [pseudo-cosmologie] des spheres celestes? lei une distinction importante s'impose. n est impossible de comprendre et d'exposer fidelement le
systeme elabore par S. Thomas au XIII• siecle en passant sous silence sa cosmologie
celeste. • . . Mais le mouvement de renaissance thomiste ne peut. pas etre et ne veut
pas etre une restauration servile du thomisme medieval. L'ecole thomiste contemporaine entend s'inspirer des enseignements du Docteur commun dans la mesure
ou ils s'averent capables de promouvoir l'essor d'une philosophic authentique,
repondant aux requetes de la pensee critique. Dans une telle entreprise, il est
possible de reprendre a s. Thomas les theses essentielles de sa metaphysique tGut
en sacrifiant les conceptions pseudo-metaphysiques et pseudo-scientifiques de sa
'physique celeste'. Celles-ci, en effet, sont des applications erronees ou imaginaires
des principes metaphysiques, elles ne conditionnent pas ces principes.
"Mais il ne suffit pas de supprimer, ii faut remplacer. Les philosophes thomistes
d'aujourd'hui se trouvent devant la tache redoutable de mettre sur pied une
nouvelle cosmologie, une nouvelle philosophic de l'univers materiel, et notamment
une reponse valable au probleme de Ia finalite dans l'univers materiel en meme
temps qu'une epistemologie et une critique des sciences. L'oeuvre est a peine
commencee. L'enquete qui s'acheve ici montre combien cette oeuvre est necessaire."
(p. 872)

JOHN N. DEELY

This socio-cultural background made it all but inevitable that the metaphysical notion of essence as a
radical kind should be directly applied to all the natural
kinds which are intuitively recognized, such as birds and
fishes and oysters, even though each of these groups combines a multitude of differentiae and cannot be classified
by a single difference as in a dichotomy; and even though,
according to the metaphysical definition of an essential
difference, things are constituted as distinct in kind only
if they differ by a single ultimate difference or formal
factor-differ the way traditional philosophy could distinguish only between corporeal, living, sensitive, and
rational.
3) This equivocation in the application of " essence " to
the natural kinds inevitably led to a focal reduction of
ontology to logic, to the extent that it was necessary to
predicate essential differences and thus to distinguish the
species of nature not on the basis of properties in the strict
sense but on the basis of a syndrome of accidents interpreted as extrinsic and empirical signs of the property
convertible with the essence (see fn. 157 below) .
4) Just as in order to maintain the equivocal use of the
notion of essential kinds it became necessary to supplant
the ontological notion of property by the logical notion,
so as a result of
ambiguous criterion of specific differences the ontological problem about species (how many
" essential " species or radical kinds are there?) entered
into a circular interdependence with the epistemological
problem (how many " essential " species or radical kinds
do we know?) .155 For a long time this covert and unnatural symbiosis of ontology with logic went unnoticed;
it seemed to entail no more than the fact that our knowledge of nature is imperfect and that, so long as observing
and thinking men are at work, there is always the possibility that new species may be discovered. But, as the
155

See fn. 16 supra.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

255

investigation of nature progressed, it not only became
clear that new species in the sense of natural kinds were
there to be discovered, it also became clear that none of
the natural kinds were fixed in form 156 and that there was
156 " Pla<;ons-nous maintenant
au point de vue de Ia nature prise au sens strict
de ' principium et causa motus et quietis ejus, in quo est primo et per se, et non
secundum accidens.'-Natura determinata est ad unum. Voila un priucipe dont
on ne cesse d'abuser. On se fait d'habitude une idee trop homogene de Ia nature,
comme si toute nature etait egalement nature. Ne faudrait-il pas dire plutOt qu'il
n'y a nature que dans Ia mesure oil Ia matiere et Ia forme sont determinees? Si Ia
forme avait d'elle-meme une determination parfaite, elle ne serait plus nature.
Remarquons que nature se dit non seulement de Ia forme, mais aussi de Ia matiere
du compose." Charles De Koninck, " Rkflexions sur le probleme de I'indetermiSee John of St. Thomas,
nisme," Revue Thomiste, XLIII (1937), pp.
Cursus Philosophicus, II, pp. 180 ff. (Reiser ed.).
This point is important and difficult enough to require a decisive clarification.
Such is achieved, I think, in the following text from Adler, where in the form of
objection and reply he is defending the view that there are a small number of
ontological or essential species (radical kinds), definitely less than ten, against
objections raised by those of the view that there are a very large and undeterminate
number of such species. The former Adler refers to as the " first position " or
theory, the latter as the "second." (From The Problem of Species, pp. 195-8)
"Objection 4. In addition to those already cited (Obj. 3 contra 1) [see fn. 157
below], there are other well-attested facts which are difficult to explain according
to the theory of the first position. The facts of procreation in the sphere of living
things amply testify to the production of like by like. It is not simply that plants
reproduce plants, and animals animals, but that this kind of plant uniformly tends
to procreate organisms of the same kind, and similarly in the case of kinds of
animals. Such uniformity in generation, furthermore, is connected with the aggregate of traits which constantly and peculiarly typify a kind of plant or animal;
in other words, if a given kind is distinguished by an aggregate of traits found
among all its members and only among them, the offspring will manifest the
same traits in aggregate, and this is what is meant by like producing like. Thus,
Monaco defines a species as ' a collection of individual living things which preserve
the same powers and the same type through the generation of one from the other •
(Praelectiones Metaphysicae Specialis, Pars II: de viventibus seu psychologia, Cap.
I, Art. V, Th. XXIV; Rome,
pp. 174-6); and his definition would hold for
other accidents than power which, taken together, constitute the type.
" Now, it can be learned that Monaco and others, who take genetic uniformity
as a sign of specificity, are right, by applying a fundamental principle to the facts
cited. According to St. Thomas, ' the likeness of the begetter to the begotten is
on account not of the matter, but of the form of the agent that generates its like'
(Summa Theologica, I, 119,
ad
Furthermore, the substantial form is the
term of generation (i. e., substantial change) . Hence to say that like generates like,
in the reproduction of living things (Summa Theologica, I, 118, 1), is to say that
the likeness between the begetter and the begotten must be in regard to substantial

256

JOHN N. DEELY

no reason to believe that the syndrome of typifying traits
by which the natural kinds could be classified were the
form. Wherefore we must conclude that if this kind of plant or animal generates
its like in kind, i. e., if roses generate roses, and potatoes potatoes; if camels generate
camels, and sparrows sparrows,-then all of these many kinds, which preserve their
type throughout a series of generations, must be species. Otherwise, the term of
generation would not be a substantial form, which is impossible. So it is shown
that plant and animal are not infima species, but extensive genera including many
specifically distinct kinds.
"Reply Obj. 4. Here as before the facts are readily admitted, but not the
interpretation which the objection puts upon them. The interpretation is rejected
for reasons which have already been made clear, namely, the role of signate matter
in generation (Reply Obj. 3 contra 1). The signate matter, which is determinate
not only in dimensions but in other accidental respects, is the source of racial and
familial accidents, as well as individuating ones. Hence, the uniformities in biological
reproduction are due partly to the substantial form, in so far as the offspring are
like their ancestors in species, and partly to the signate matter, in so far as the
progeny resemble their procreators in merely accidental respects.
" This will be seen at once if the facts are re-considered. There is uniformity in
the generation of men of different races; thus, caucasians generate caucasians, and
negroes negroes, if the breeding is restricted to individuals of the same stock. But
we know that these are races, not species, and hence we must admit that this
generation of like by like cannot mean that the term of generation is a substantial
form, taken simply. It must rather be regarded as a substantial form (the principle
of specific human nature) subject to further accidental determinations of a racial
order. There is no more difficulty about this than that one individual should
procreate another which is individually different because the substantial form which
is alike in both begetter and begotten is, nevertheless, individuated differently in
each, i.e., subject to further accidental determinations of an individuating sort.
Nor need the begetter and the begotten always differ in their individual traits;
they may also resemble each other in various accidental ways; but this cannot be
due to their likeness in substantial form, since contingent accidents do not follow
from the form. Hence it must be due to the condition of the signate matter in
generation.
" In short, both racial a.nd individual similarities between ancestors and progeny
can be explained in the same way by reference to the role which signate matter
plays in generation; in fact, they cannot be explained in any other way, because
these similarities are with respect to contingent accidents, and they cannot be due
to the substantial form. It does not follow, therefore, because roses generate roses,
or camels camels, that these ' kinds ' are species. If there were other and
independent evidence that rose was a species, there would be no need, of course,
to have recourse to uniformity in generation to prove the point. But since such
evidence is either lacking or not relevant, the facts of generation by themselves are
totally insufficient because they can be, and must be, otherwise interpreted.
" The error which the objection makes is to suppose that form is always the
principle of sameness and matter of difference; whereas, as we have seen (Reply
Obj. 3 contra I), things may be specifically different in respect of form, and alike
because of material accidents. And this applies also to the like and the unlike

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

257

signs of a single specifying difference, of a property in
the strictest ontological sense. 157
in the process of generation: matter, as signate, is the source of both differences
and similarities of an accidental sort, whereas substantial form is the principle of
essential sameness and distinction. Furthermore, the authority of St. Thomas in
this connection may be disregarded, for what be says in the text cited is explained
by his unavoidable ignorance of facts about generation which modern researches
have discovered. In that same text (op. cit., I, 119, 2, ad 2), he writes: 'In order
for a man to be like his grandfather, there is no need that the corporeal seminal
matter should have been in the grandfather; but that there be in the semen a
virtue derived from the soul of the grandfather through the father. . . . For
kinship is not in relation to matter, but rather to the derivation of the forms.' But
we know that there is a continuity in the germ plasm which is transmitted from
generation to generation, as well, of course, as variability in its microscopic structure. It is, thus, in terms of the matter that relations of kinship are to be
explained, and not simply through the derivation of forms. Both principles are
required if we are to account for both specific nature and accidental traits, racial
or individual, whether we are considering the similarities or the differences of living
organisms. Error results from ignoring either principle, as the ancients from
excusable ignorance neglected, in part at least, the contribution made by signate
matter; and as some moderns from culpable neglect of philosophy, fail to take
account of substantial form and hence either deny true species or else futilely seek
to explain all uniformities in generation by reference to material dispositions.
" Finally it must be acknowledged that, in answering this objection and the
previous one, we have presumed to speak about the nature of generation and the
role of signate matter therein, without undertaking a complete analysis of these
matters. The presumption seems justified, however, in the light of the traditional
discussion of such problems."
157 This point is the very hinge of the issue. Its importance and the range of
misunderstandings centered on it make it impossible to avoid citation in order to
remove all equivocation and ambiguity in a decisive fashion. The text which
achieves this is from Adler's early work on The Problem of Species, pp. 188-195; we
shall cite only pp. 189-91.
" The fundamental error . . . is a confusion of the logical and ontological
meaning of ' property,' similar to the confusion of the logical and ontological meaning of 'species,' which has already been pointed out (vd. Obj. 5 contra II).
Convertibility in predication is the logical criterion for calling an accidental term a
property of a substance. The formula ' quod soli et semper et omni convenit '
merely states this criterion; this criterion or formula is a necessary, but not a
sufficioot, condition of something's being a property in a strictly ontological status.
It is true that every accident which is a property is, in logical discourse, represented
by a term convertibly predicable of its substantive subject; but not every term
which is so predicable is ontologically a property. There are three other criteria,
which must be satisfied: 1) The property of a substance must directly signify the
substantial difference which cannot be directly apprehended; thus, rationality as a
property signifies the substantial difference constitutive of human nature; 2) the
property itself is never directly apprehended, but always known by the observation

258

JOHN N. DEELY

At this point the problem was further vitiated by
Darwin's denial not only that all or many of the natural
kinds were distinct in the philosopher's sense of essentially or " radically " so but even distinct in kind at aU.
In other words, Darwin set up a three-sided issue in terms
of a two-sided option: either the beings of nature differ
in kind, or they differ only in degree, and specific distinctions are entirely of human making (quoad nos). We have
seen how subsequent researches in science proved Darwin
wrong about the metalogical status of species and how
subsequent analyses in philosophy proved him wrong
about the modes of difference. We can extend this to
much of what Adler says concerning the dispute about
the uniqueness of man to the dispute about the nature of
the difference between the living and the non-living and
between plants and animals:
of other perceptible accidents, especially operations, actions or passions; 3) the
property must not only follow necessarily from the substantial form, but it must
be due to the form alone, and neither to the signate matter nor to the objective
circumstances of the thing's existence or operation. By these three criteria, power
and power alone can be the property of a substance. Not even the natural habits
of a substance,-those constant and peculiar modifications of its powers which arise
from its normal operations,-are properties. That risibility is traditionally said to
be a property of man indicates how prevalent in the tradition is the confusion of
logic and ontology; risibility, like the ability to speak grammatically, or to make
things artistically, are certainly properties, in the logical sense; but when examined
ontologically they are merely aspects of rationality in relation to the variety of
objects with respect to which man operates. A sense of humor and grammatical
speech are ' natural arts' of man, constant and pecutiar modifications of his
rational powers functioning, as they must, in cooperation with sense and other
bodily powers. If these are not powers, and hence not properties, how much less
so are modes of operation which depend merely upon peculiarities of bodily arrangement or objective circumstance; and even less are such things as figure, color,
duration, place, etc. For all these are directly observable accidents; they obviously
do not follow from the substantial form alone; nor do they signify a substantial
difference directly, as the intellectual powers of man, the proper accident of human
nature, signify rationality, as the substantial difference, united with animality, as
the generic nature, in the constitution of the human essence. Although we have
discussed the essence and property of man, because the second position admits
man to be an infima species, what has been said here applies universally to the
relation of essence and property. Therefore, we must conclude that none of the
so-called constant and peculiar accidents mentioned in the objection are properties
(necessary or proper accidents). They are all contingent or adventitious accidents,"

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

259

Most, if not all [modern authors] have approached the question
with too few distinctions explicitly in mind. They use the words
" degree " and " kind " without qualifying them by such critical
modifiers as "real " and "apparent," " superficial" and "radical."
The reader will find that the philosophical and scientific literature
on the subject of man's difference is simply not intelligible without
these distinctions, especially the distinction between a radical and
a superficial difference in kind. 158

Yet in fact traditional philosophy and evolutionary science
are generally considered to be antipathetic, notwithstanding this double advance. Here we are at the fourth and
principal source of the still prevailing ambiguities and uncertainties surrounding the traditional notion of species as
essentially distinct kinds: what started out in ancient
times as a temporary dependence in ontology upon logical
criteria for the determination of species, ended up in
modern times as an abandonment of the principle of
parsimony in the analysis of natural kinds. I think that
when and if the history of neo-scholasticism is written, it
will have at its disposal in the writings of Maritain,
Garrigou-Lagrange, Rousselot, Gredt, Brennan, Maquart,
and Phillips so far as they treat of species a classic illustration of the ancient adage, parvus error in principia magnus
est in fine-a small initial mistake is a colossal error in the
end.158a
If it is true that no theoretical constructs should be
resorted to that can be dispensed with in explaining the
phenomena, and if there is no evidence that any of the
natural kinds recognized as species by modern biology
exhibit the " infima specific " construction of traditional
philosophy, then, by the stated principle which obliges us
to judge in the light of the available evidence, we are
Adler, The Difference of Man, p. 32.
St. Thomas, De ente et essentia, " Prooemium." See also Aristotle, De caelo,
I, c. 5, !l71b8-13; St. Thomas, In I de caelo, lect. 9, n. 97. Averroes has the clearest
formulation, In Ill de anima, cap. IV, Lyons 1542 in 16, f. 112•, comm. 4:
" minimus enim error in principio, est causa maximi erroris in fine, sicut dicit
Aristoteles."
158

118 •

260

JOHN N. DEELY

forced to acknowledge that the metaphysical analysis of
essence as constituted by a genus together with a unitary
formal difference cannot be applied directly to the diversity and hierarchy of natural kinds so far as they are
constituted by groups discriminable as such only by virtue
of a syndrome of observable traits, so far, that is, as they
are constituted by groups which " we must define at the
outset by a multiplicity of differentiae." 159
The alternative, to whatever extent the principle is
abandoned, is to engage in myth making. The point is
that, in the present state of evidence, it is impossible to
simultaneously respect the regulation of the principle of
parsimony and appeal to principles proper to epistemology
on questions concerning the metalogical
(ontological)
status and number of the radical kinds of being. This
was illustrated in the famous distinction scholastics drew
between " natural " and " systematic " species (Maritain
speaks of " the ontological species, not the taxonomic
species dealt with in botany, zoology or genetics " 160 ) :
Three things must be distinguished: a) varieties (races); b) types
now sharply distinct within the same species, i. e., systematic
species; c) natural species.... The stability of systematic species
is only relative; of the natural species, absolute. Nor can there be
so much diversity introduced into the natural species through the
systematic species as would obliterate their specific type, i. e., their
specific organization. The only difficulty now is to discriminate
between the natural and the systematic species. . . . It is clear
that we must consider brutes and plants as supreme genera, which
are further divided into diverse natural genera and species. It
belongs to biology, however, not philosophy, to determine what
these genera and species are. 161
Aristotle, De partibus animalium, Bk. I, ch. S, 64S b !l5.
Jacques M!ll'itain, "Substantial Forms and Evolution," in The Range of
Reason, p. S7.
161 Josephus
Gredt, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae,
editio
decima tertia recognita et aucta ab EuchaJ'io Zenzen (Barcelona: Herder, 1961),
n. 611, p. 541. It should be noted here, however, first, how close Gredt's "tria
distinguenda " aJ'e to the notions of apparent, superficial, and radical kinds; second.
that since Gredt's time, the great advances in the knowledge of heredity and in
169

160

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

261

Such a conception is truly a curio of history, inasmuch
as it predates the " family quarrel ' between Linnaeus and
Darwin. Such a conception also belongs to the class of
entia multiplicanda sine necessitate, of myth in the philosophical sense, inasmuch as the mass of data gathered in
both the paleo- and neo-sciences favors a denial of these
"natural species." Such a conception dialectically belongs
to the order of non-argument, inasmuch as it posits an
ontological distinction which it admits cannot be verified
in a single known case and defends the validity of the
distinction on the grounds of our ignorance, thus making
the ontological problem a function of the epistemological
problem. 162 Finally, such a conception contradicts itself;
the analysis of the genetic code (DNA/RNA) have seriously undermined the
foundation on which Gredt rested his entire argument: "Ex organisatione stricte
essentiali, quae rationem habet proprii stricte (quod soli et semper et omni convenit
[notice here the confusion uncovered in fn. 157 supra between the logical and
ontological meaning of property], cum certitudine cognosci possent omnes species
naturales. Sed haec organisatio nos latet; consistit enim in ilia microorganisatione,
quae jam habetur in cellula germinali (fecundata) , uncle incipit evolutio viventis
(cf. n. 406; 449; 452, 2). Cum incipit evolutio viventis, anima seu forma substantialis specifica viventis jam adest, quae essentialiter concectitur cum hace microorganisatione. Haec enim microorganisatio est dispositio proxima ad earn. Evolutione viventis, quae divisione cellularum fit, haec dispositio stricte essentialis communicatur cum diversis cellulis. Sed haec microorganisatio fugit etiam investigationem microscopicam. Necesse est igitur discamus essentiales corporum viventium
differentias ex typo externo, ex proprietatibus, quae in individuo vivente in clecursu
evolutionis suae extrinsecus apparet, ut jam indicavimus. . . ." What has already
been discussed in sections IV and V above justifies, I think, the contention that, if
one grants the validity of Gredt's premises here, then it is necessary in the light of
now available evidence to draw from them conclusions not compatible with what
Gredt himself contended. See the remark of Maritain cited in fn. 163 below.
162 The confusion
of logic and ontology in the Aristotelian-Thomistic
species
problematic perhaps reached its greatest depth at the time that Gredt could write
(a passage not edited, be it noted, as late as 1961 in Zenzen's edition): "Evolutionismus ille, qui rerum distinctionem specificam tollit (darwinismus), arborem
Porphyrii destruit" (op. cit., n. 160, p. 143). As Adler early pointed out, "the
famous Tree is not purely a logical representation of the arrangement of concepts,
but a confusion of logical with ontological ordering. Wherever the philosophical
tradition has followed or been influenced by Porphyry, this confusion appears."
Not only is " the error a characteristic consequence of the platonizing of Aristotelian
science," but " one wonders whether the confusion of logic and ontology in the
Porphyrian tradition is also a confusion of the orders of substance and accident."
(The Problem of Species, p. 68 fn. 86, p. 70, respectively), See The Problem of

262

JOHN N. DEELY

for the philosopher who entertains it, " while confessing his
dependence on the scientist for knowledge of distinctions
below plant and brute, he transgresses the sphere of his
competence-violating the autonomy of science-by deciding what scientific evidence he will accept or reject." 163
What Mortimer Adler noticed in this regard thirty years
ago, curiously, continues to be true today: "The problems
which result from such errors and transgressions are false
and ungenuine; yet, for the most part, these are the
matters discussed when philosophers and scientists engage
in controversy about ' evolution.' " 164
Species, pp. 64-70. These pages must be read, however, in the light of the rectified
theory of an ontological common genus as presented in "Solution of the Problem
of Species"; and in this latter work, see also the "Historical Hypothesis," pp. 360378, which essays to circumscribe in the Aristotelian writings the root sources of the
ambiguities and uncertainties which have plagued the philosophical species problematic from the beginning.
See also Maritain's non-argument that " the true character of matter demands "
that we shcruld not be able to know, by essential definitions, any specific natures
inferior to man ("Preface" to The Problem of Species, p. x), which objection is
thoroughly rebutted by Adler in " Solution of the Problem of Species," pp. 345-50.
163 Adler, The Problem of Species, p. 269. Here then one may cite Maritain
contre lui-meme: " Given that philosophy is in its own right independent of the
sciences . . . nevertheless . . . the sciences may indirectly reveal the falsity of this
or that philosophical doctrine . . . if and when a philosophical doctrine happens to
encroach upon science itself or to have, as a necessary consequence, a certain
scientific conception, or rather a certain general framework imposed on science,
(The Degrees of Knowledge, p. 59, my
whose emptiness is demonstrated."
emphasis) . Such has almost certainly been the case with the traditional philosophical doctrine of the infima species.
1 "' Ibid. And sometimes these pseudo-problems underlie the discussion of larger
matters as well. For example, I think that Maritain's way of subdividing " empiriological knowledge of nature " into " empiriometric " and " empirioschematic " can
be shown to depend in part on the position he adopts over the issue of the number
and constitution of specific natures (e. g., see The Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 80-50,
esp. pp. 81, 38, and 45; pp. 173-181, esp. p. 176 fn. 2, pp. 176-8, esp. p. 178; p. 205
text and fn. I, pp. 206-9). Thus the philosophical dimensions of the problem of
species have a definite bearing on the philosophy of science; and moreover, once
the necessary corrections in the formulation of the species problematic have been
achieved, I think it is possible to formulate a solution to the problem of the
distinction and relations between science and philosophy which not only meets the
requirements of the problem on both sides, but which also reconciles the views of
Ashley, Adler, and Maritain in a higher synthesis (formaliter emlnenter) to which
each of them could give unqualified assent. This, of course, would have to be
shown, for it constitutes a study in its own right.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

268

5) Inescapably linked with the question of specific
transformations is the problem of the assignation of causes.
To some philosophers, the possibility of individuals giving
rise to more perfect individuals seems a violation of the
necessary proportion between cause and effect. We shall
return to this in a later Section (VIII) .
6) The two final sources of ambiguity and uncertainty
in the traditional species problematic are closely linked.
The philosophical tradition of Aristotle became in St.
Thomas a theological tradition as well. The static view
of natural kinds, originally rooted in the immutable
heavens, seemed to the theologians of medieval times to
be indicated in the scriptural texts as well, at least to the
extent that the origin of any new specific form was an
event involving a special divine creative act. In this way
the immutability of specific natures came to mean that
the individuals of one species " cannot be generated by
or generate [individuals of] another species through the
operation of secondary causes alone." 165
7) The final source of difficulty is a psychological one.
Whatever one may think about a science, the architectural
structure of which is authority and the foundation of
which a text, it is not a mode of knowledge foreign to
human nature. Man is by nature an authority acceptor
as well as a reasoner. 165 a It is impossible to admit the
185 See Adler, The Problem of Species, pp. 202, 221, 228 fn. llO, 229-30, 251
et alibi. In fn. llO, p. 228, Adler wrote: " in the first occurrence of any new
species, Divine causality must intervene," since generation by equivocal causality
would be " impossible." (Although in fn. 285 on p. 275 he quotes De Koninck
approvingly as saying that "when a superior nature is produced from the potency
of an inferior nature by equivocal generation, this production remains natural.")
From a recent telephone conversation, however, I am glad to say that he now is in
agreement with the view that will be expressed in Section VIII below, namely,
that it is impossible to demonstrate the impossibility in any case of the origin of
an (ontologically) higher material form from an (ontologically) lower causal series,
by reason of the reciprocal repercussion of the causes.
165 • See C. H. Waddington's
important study of man as The Ethical Animal
(Atheneum, 1960). Thus, not only in the matter of specific natures but in a great
many other problem areas as well, " Thomists, in principle, state that one should not

JOHN N. DEELY

natural origin of the natural species and reconcile all the
traditional texts with the admission. 166
Such then are seven of the major sources of ambivalence and
equivocation in the traditional problematic of species: the
notion of an unchanging causa regitiva keeping the relation of
generator to generated within fixed limits; an insufficiently
critical appraisal of the order of natural kinds in the light of
the metaphysics of essential constitution; an abandonment of
the autonomy of ontological principles in the effort to systematize the diversity of nature in terms of morphology; a partial
abandonment in the face of evolutionary data of the methodological principle of parsimony; a tendency to conceive of
causal interrelations reductively rather than factorially; the
theological argument that God " intervened " at the origin of
every species; a respect for authority which has blunted the
thrust of much of the traditional analyses. It is their cumulative and mutually reinforcing effect that is denoted in the
expression, "the error of univocally ontologized kind-essences."
No one, in my reading, has better summarized the current
and long-standing failure of traditional philosophy and contemporary biology to communicate in the area of species-notwithstanding their common logic and common set of questions,
formally speaking-than has Raymond Nogar. 167 In a symposium on The Species Problem (1957), Nogar notes, Ernst
Mayr, the editor, deplored the wide variety of species concepts
and says:
I believe that the analysis of the species problem would be considerably advanced if we could penetrate through such empirical terms
as phenotypic, morphological, genetic, phylogenetic, or biological to
rest on authority in matters philosophical, and yet de facto they have been doing
precisely this," observes William A. Wallace in an article on "Thomism and Modem
Science," The Thomist, XXXII (January, 1968), pp.
166 For example, it does not seem possible to save all the theological texts of
Aquinas if one admits that natural origin-!. e., origin in which the proportioned
operation of secondary causes is undisturbed-applies below man even in the case
of beings which differ in grades of being as well as in degrees of perfection. See
The Problem of Species, pp.
167 In The Wisdom of Evolution, pp.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

the underlying philosophical concepts. A deep and perhaps widening gulf has existed in recent decades between philosophy and
empirical biology. It seems that the species problem is a topic
where productive collaboration between the two fields is possible.166

Commenting on this text, Nogar considers Mayr's position to
be perfectly correct. He then points out the obstacle to such
collaboration that must first be overcome:
But the difficulty with the species problem is that the biologist
and the philosopher are usually looking for different things. Hence
the difference in the meaning of terms. The biologist is seeking a
workable field definition of species which will enable him to classify
all animals and plants. The philosopher, on the other hand, has
been attempting to find a sic et non division of cosmic reality which
will, by a single characteristic, manifest what a given natural
species is and how it differs from every other natural species.169

The indispensable step, therefore, in achieving the collaboration Mayr calls for is that the philosopher put aside for the
moment his preoccupation with discriminating between irreducible grades of being, in order to attend to the genetic and
causal explanation of natural kinds secured by modern evolutionary science. At the level of individual substances as members of adaptive populations structured intrinsically through
interaction, what are the" underlying philosophical concepts"?
What is the ontological status of species so considered?
The question is proper and possible inasmuch as the ontological order bases all modes reality takes at every existential level.
It is necessary if the real nature of Darwin's influence on
philosophy is to be made explicit. And it is a distinctively
contemporary question inasmuch as its answer is the basis for
108 Ernst Mayr, The Species Pmblem (Washington: American Association for the
Advancement of Science, 1957), p. 11.
169 The Wisdom of Evolution, p. 828: " The latter group has followed, in the
main, the lead of the logician or dialectician who attempts to view things in their
ideal perfections. The logician uses as his model the logical instrument invented
in the early centuries called the Porphyrian tree after the Greek neo-Platonist
Porphyry (A. D. 288-804). By means of this classic diagram, the world of reality
is arranged according to an ideal bipartite division of being.
"It has been shown in great detail that nature and natural species cannot be
viewed with this perfect logical or dialectical arrangement."

266

JOHN N. DEELY

the prior possibility of integrating through their respective
ramifications the traditional and contemporary species problematics.
It is useful in seeking to come to terms with this question
to place ourselves explicitly in the evolutionary context, that is
to say, in the context of history as structured causally, in order
to bypass for now the preoccupation of certain temperaments
with projecting the disproportion formally involved in the
causal succession of complex from simple beings, and with
introducing God into the development of nature.
The configuration of the living, as of any other, world depends; from
instant to instant on its last previous configuration and on how the
immanent processes, the "laws" of nature, tend to act on any given
configuration. Involved is historical causation, which includes
everything that has ever happened and which is thus an inherently
nonrepeatable accumulation. In application to evolution, these
rather abstract considerations mean that the actual course of evolution is determined not only by its processes but also by the
cumulative total of all previous events. 170

Just as in the traditional problematic of species, so in this
one, the philosophical problems raised by the causality involved
resolve radically into the question of the reality or meaning
behind the term essence (essentia) -but with a difference. In
the traditional problematic, the species " has only intentional
being, except as a constituent in the individual nature, through
which it, too, participates in the act of existence," m inasmuch
as the species "is that essence which can receive no further
determinations except those of individuation." 172 "From this
it will be clear that the word ' species,' " as used in the traditional problematic, " never refers to an existent thing, for in
the domain of material beings only individuals exist, and
never species." 173
170 George Gaylord Simpson, " The Study of Evolution:
Methods and Present
Status of Theory," in Behavior and Evolution, edited by Anne Roe and George
Gaylord Simpson (New Haven: Yale, 1958), pp.
171 Adler, The Problem of Species, p. 19.
179 Ibid., p. 18.
178 Ibid., p. 14. See p. 88 of Simon, The Tradition of Natural Law (New York:
Fordham, 1965), middle paragraph.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

When we speak of two substances as belonging to the same species,
we mean that they communicate in the same specific nature,
though, of course, what is common to them is not identically the
same in both, because the specific nature is differently individuated
in each, according to the individual differences which constitute
their twoness or numerical diversity. The specific nature they
share in common is the same only in the sense indicated by the fact
that a third substance of different species would differ specifically
as well as individually from the two things first considered. The
specific nature of the third would be different. In short, the fact
that a specific nature can exist in its purity, i. e., in its absolute
unity apart from individual multiplications and differentiations, in
its unrestricted universality, only in an intellect which abstracts
the form from the individuating conditions of matter, does not
mean that "species" signifies only the concept (second intention)
rather than that which is conceived (first intention). That which is
conceived is the specific nature as an ontological principle, commonly present in a number of individuals which are truly apprehended as belonging to the same species. The potential universality
of the specific nature,-a potentiality actualized only by intellectual abstraction,-is identical with the actual commonness of the
nature as participated in by a number of individuals. Although
apart from the mind, the specific natures of composite substances
do not exist as universals, they do exist commonly,-i. e., as the
same nature in two or more individuals,-and this fact is the
ontological counterpart of the universality of the idea achieved by
abstraction. 174
In this new problematic, by contrast, " the species is constituted by a substance incorporated in a mass," and " the masses
formed by these substances are not unitary entities but collective ones," 175 functioning entirely independently of our
mental constructs in patterns of distribution conditioned by
ecology or geography.
This indicates at once the altered sense of the term
"essence " as it occurs in the two problematics: " If the word
' essence ' be used to signify what is the proximate subject of
the act of existence, then, in the case of composite substances,
170 Ibid., p. 13.
See also John V. Burns, "The Problem of Specific Natures,"
The New Scholasticism, XXX (July, 1956), pp. fl86-309.
17 " Beaudry, art. cit., p. flfl5.

268

JOHN N. DEELY

essence as the subject of existence must be the individual
nature rather than the specific nature." 176 At the same time it
also indicates, from the traditional viewpoint, the fundamental
reason why species in the second or modern sense do not constitute an arbitrary schema nor circumscribe a reality too dark
to be illumined in a properly ontological way: since, " in the
case of composite substances, essence as the quiddity or principle of intelligibility, and essence as the proximate subject of
existence, are not the same nature" 177 (the former being but
potentially individuated, the latter actually so) , and since in
the case of natural populations " the distinctness of the individuals does not destroy the reality of the mass" 178 or "natural grouping," it stands out clearly that " the proper task for
the philosopher, with respect to evolution, is primarily the
analysis of the principles of substantial change, as bearing
on the production of the unlike, both accidentally," or with
respect to the diversification of superficial kinds, " and essentially," or with respect to the establishment of the radical kinds,
"in the process of procreation." 179 Inasmuch as the latter is
possible only in the light of the former, however, it is clear both
that and how the two problematics require interarticulation,
and it is just at that point that the celebrated " influence of
Darwinism on philosophy " is felt.
This will suffice to indicate why and in what sense a hylomorphic analysis of the structure of interaction in terms of
what can be said at the level of existence exercised and prior
to any analysis of the pure line of essence taken in itself
(whereon alone arise the questions about the constitution,
order, and number of radically distinct kinds) is the region
of mediation between the primary concerns of the differently
oriented species problematics of traditional philosophy and contemporary science. We may turn at once to the delineation of
this region.
Adler, The Problem of Species, p. 18.
Ibid., fn. 6, p. 18.
178 Beaudry, p.
170 The Problem of Species, p. 274, fn. 284. See fns. 156 and 157 supra.
176
177

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN

OF SPECIES

269

That which makes a thing to be what it is, or, more precisely,
that by which a thing is such a thing as it is ("id quo ens est
tale"), is said to be its essence. 180 Such a characterization,
however, never signifies at the level of first intention (of "the
organism as a describable object") a class of objects, but
rather does it signify essence as the inward condition of the
fact of this concrete existent. Here then, for our purposes, is
the starting point from which alone must be determined the
primary meaning of essentia, i. e., the meaning to which all
other essentialist notions must be derivatively referred. Precisely in attaining explicitly to this determination can we
effect the destruction of essence as a specific kind-concept of
univocal predication, thus clearing the way for the authentic
influence of Darwin on philosophy and removing the obstacle
to productive collaboration between modern biology and traditional philosophy at a single stroke.
Historically, we have already indicated a number of critical
considerations relevant to this line of inquiry; without pretending to develop thoroughly the analysis required to complete the
proposed destruction, we can sketch at least in an indicative,
preliminary way the lines which it must follow if it is to be
carried through successfully.
180 ". • • it is things,
subjects, existents that we experience. From these
existents our intelligence disengages by abstraction essences-' suchnesses ' or
intelligible 'structures'. These are the object of its first operation (simple apprehension) and of eidetic vision. Though these essences are found in a state of
universality in our mind, where they are known as such, they exist really in
things-in a state of singularity, as individual natures. To deny or to put in doubt
this extramental reality of (individuated) essences would be to put in doubt the
noetic value of the human intelligence. But for a sufficiently attentive analysis
what is the absolutely precise and ' pure ' data of the intelligence as far as
essences are concerned? Because they are derived from existents by the operation
of the intelligence, they do not appear as the existents themselves made present
to us, but quite precisely as something immanent in the existents and which
determine the existents to be what they are. The ·intelligence seizes them and
gives them to us as that by which the things, subjects, or existents, are such or
such. Hence, in its very notion, essence is a principle quo." Jacques Maritain
The Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 435-6. Cf. A. G. Van Melsen, The Philosophy of
Nature (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne, 1961), "The Species-Individual
Structure of
Matter," pp.

270

JOHN N. DEELY

Fundamentally, the question evolution poses in terms of our
understanding of essence is the question of being-as-possible:
Essence within this existent as a subject capable of existingactualized points to the question of how was this essence
actualizable? What was its pre-subjective reality as such?
Here we must realize at once that in applying the concept of
possibility at the level of essence so considered we make a
transcendental transference, so that the meaning of our term
becomes simply different from what it denoted at the existential level. We cannot ask about possible essences as such in
terms of a determinate positive content, not even by limiting
such a content to intelligibly prejacent "essential notes." In
other words, in itself, essentia, as the capacity to be, cannot
be conceptualized: as a potentiality or subject " out of which "
and considered apart from actual existence or " esse," the word
essence retains no intelligible content.
It is necessary to repeat in this connection that we are
making no statement here concerning " the line of essence
considered in itself," i. e., as an a priori of historical causation,
which, precisely as a purely eidetic consideration, would pertain
most properly to considerations of second intention (i. e., to
phenomenological research and to logic), or derivatively and as
a constitutional question, or question of formal intelligible constituent sine qua non, to metaphysics; we address ourselves
rather and with full reflexive restriction to structured exercise
of existence which is exactly the meaning of " essence " in terms
directly and immediately of first intention.
It is for this very reason that our concern shares the intentional content of the traditional efforts at an elaboration of
the sense o£ subsistere: " i£ existence is seized by the essence
as act by potency, it is by (the existence) itself holding (not
certainly [through] efficient causality, but by formal or intrinsically activating causality) the essence outside the realm of
simple possibility, since the esse is not received by the essence
as in a pre-existing subject which would thus already be in
existential act. The essence which receives existence holds from
it-in what concerns the existential order-absolutely all its

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

271

actuality, in short is nothing without it"; 181 from which it
must be inferred that " since existence is by its very notion an
exercised act, the essence can be so held outside the realm of
simple possibility only on condition of being at the same time
carried by subsistence to the state of subject or supposit
capable of exercising existence." 182 Hence the conclusion: " the
proper effect of subsistence . . . is simply . . . the promotion
onto a new plane of the incommunicability which defines
singularity." 183
It is not therefore just a matter of one metaphysical dimension in the structure of being but of the primordial dimension
enclosing all others. By attempting to place ourselves ontologically at the level of natural kinds as such existing in order to
" penetrate through such empirical terms as phenotypic, morphological, genetic, phylogenetic, or biological to the underlying philosophical concepts," we find ourselves at one and the
same time located outside the order of essence considered in
itself (the order of intelligible a priori for the possibility of a
material order of being) and within a region of shared concern
constituted by the pattern of interimplications between the
traditional and the modem problematic of species, but a region
181 Jacques Maritain,
"On the Notion of Subsistence: Further Elucidations,"
in Appendix IV to The Degrees of Knowledge, p. 437.
180 Ibid., p. 438.
188 Ibid.:
" And so the proper effect of subsistence is not . . . to confer on
the individuated essence or individual nature an additional incommunicability
(this time in relation to existence) or to make it limit, appropriate, or circumscribe
to itself the existence it received, and hence prevent its communicating in
existence with another essence or receiving existence conjointly with another
essence: it is simply to place it in a state of exercising' existence, with the incommunicability proper to the individual nature. The individual nature does not
receive a new incommunicability from the fact of subsistence. Facing existence as
a subject or supposit capable of exercising existence, it is enabled to transfer it
into the existential order, to exercise in existence itself the incommunicability which
characterizes it in the order of essence and as an individual nature distinct from
any other. This is not a new kind of incommunicability, but the promotion onto
a new plane of the incommunicability which defines singularity. Subsistence renders
the essence (become supposit) capable of existing per se separatim (cf. Summa,
III, q.
a. 2 ad 3), because it renders an individual nature (become supposit)
capable of exercising existence."

JOHN N. DEELY

till now undisclosed as shared from the standpoint of the
primary concerns of either problematic. Herein we may suspect
is a crucial area wherein not only are the evolutionary species
reduced to their underlying ground of intelligible possibility but
wherein also careful reflection upon the data of evolution opens
the way to a decisive reformulation of a question "disputata
inter doctores" for literally centuries. And just as the value
of this former penetration frees the proper influence of Darwin
on philosophy (an influence altogether different from what
Dewey envisaged "in anticipating the direction of the transformations in philosophy to be wrought by the [putatively]
Darwinian genetic and experimental logic " 184 ) , so is the value
of this latter reformulation inestimable to the Aristotelian philosophical tradition, for all will agree that-de jure at least" a problem (not a mystery) is the one thing which should not
be perennial in philosophia perennis." 185
It appears, then, that subsistence constitutes a new metaphysical
dimension, a positive actuation or perfection, but under the title
of a state (according as a" state" is distinguished from a "nature"
[i. e., specific nature au sens traditionelle]) . . . . Let us say that
the state in question is a state of active exercise, which by that
very fact makes the essence pass beyond the order of essentiality
(terminates it in this sense) and introduces it into the existential
order-a state by reason of which the essence so completed faces
existence not in order only to receive it, but to exercise it, and
constitute henceforth a centre of existential and opemtive activity,
a subject or supposit which exercises at once the substantial esse
proper to it and the diverse accidental esse proper to the operation
which it produces by its power or faculties.l 86
Dewey, " The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy," p. 18.
Adler, " Solution of the Problem of Species," p. 341.
186 Maritain,
"On the Notion of Subsistence," p. 438. See Etienne Gilson,
Being and Some Philosophers (2nd ed., corrected and enlarged; Toronto: Pontifical
Institute, 1952), p. 183: "Finite essences always entail both limitation and determination, because each of them is the formal delimitation of a possible being.
Yet, if such a possible essence actually receives existence, it is a being, owing
to its own act of existing, so that, even in the order of finite being, the primacy
of existence still obtains. Its act of existing is what insures the unity of the thing.
Matter, form, substance, accidents, operations, everything in it directly or
indirectly shares in one and the same act of existing. And this is why the thing
184

185

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

Gilson considers that "this intrinsic dynamism of being
necessarily entails a radical transformation of the Aristotelian
conception of essences," inasmuch as Aristotle's metaphysics
was a " dynamism of the form," deepened in its own line by
Aquinas into a" dynamism of esse (to be)." 187 That indeed is
why (there are theological reasons as well, but they are irrelevant for this context) subsistentia is a problem distinctive of
Thomistic metaphysics. But it is extravagant, in my estimation, to say that with this development of a tradition in its
own line " the whole philosophical outlook on reality at once
became different." 188 And in the second place, so far as the
is both being and one. Existence is not what keeps elements apart, it is what
blends them together as constituent elements of the same being. For the same
reason, temporal existence is neither the ceaseless breaking up of eternity nor the
perpetual parceling out of being; it is rather their progressive achievement through
becoming."
187 Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, p. 185. See the discussion in footnote
188 below.
188 Ibid. Extravagant
declarations by historians in philosophy have the decided
tendency of transforming themselves in the minds of their hearers into doctrinal
positions sure of themselves and of their power to renew everything. Such has
been the distinct tendency among certain of the disciples of Gilson, who, seizing
upon the " dynamism of esse," no longer hesitate to conjecture the next step in
" the direction in which the history and science of metaphysics will develop "
(W. E. Carlo, The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence in Existential
Metaphysics [The Hague: Martin us Nijhofl', 1966], p. 3).
So far as the history of metaphysics is concerned, the reduction of essence to
existence may well mark the metaphysical writings of prominent authors, and
if so, the " whole philosophical outlook on reality " does indeed become different;
and we find ourselves, by an unexpected turn of history, re-established within a
Suarezian metaphysics, this time " turned on its head," so that existence is no
longer reduced to essence in the denial of their real distinction, but the reverse
(much what happened to Hegel at the hands of Marx) .
So far as the science of metaphysics is concerned, however, the primacy of
esse over essentia which recognizes itself in Thomas for the first time clearly is
exactly a clearer realization for philosophy of the principle of the primacy of
act over potency, secured now at the level of existential act. It is in this sense
and this sense alone that the Aristotelian " dynamism of form " becomes with
Thomas a "dynamism of esse"; and between the doctrine of the ultimate
subordination of essence to existence and that of the ultimate reducibility of the
former to the latter lies all the difference between philosophical progress by way of
development and philosophical progress by way of substitution. Fr. Gredt has
stated the final reason for the possibility of conceiving philosophical progress in
the former manner in lines which leave nothing to be desired in point of exactitude,

274

JOHN N. DEELY

Aristotelian conception of essences was involved in the problem
of specific natures, it neither was nor could be " radically
transformed " without the whole problem of the metaphysical
grades of being being abandoned. There is no doubt that, as
Mortimer Adler has so carefully exhibited, this St. Thomas
did not do. If he had done so, the " traditional " species
problematic would not be distinguishable from the modern one
in its primary concern. For St. Thomas, as for Aristotle, the
notion of species was convertible with the usual use of essence
and belonged to the ontology of natural kinds by way of
secondary employment.
and which have the further merit of bounding definitively the doctrinal sense of
historians' proclamations concerning the transformations of the philosophical landscape one discovers (and they are there) in reading Aristotle through the
Commentaria and Summae of Aquinas: " Philosophia aristotelico-thomistica cssentialiter consistit in evolutione rigorose logica et consequenti doctrinae aristotelicae
de potentia et actu. Haec doctrina ab Aristotele proposita, a S. Thoma declarata
et ulterius evoluta, in schola thomistica iterum iterumque elaborata est et contra
adversariorum impugnationes defensa. Fundamentum eius est distinctio realis inter
actum et potentiam limitantem actum: inter essentiam limitantem esse et materiam
limitantem formam. Esse irreceptum est simpliciter infinitum, actus purus; et
forma pure spiritualis, in nulla materia receptibilis, est in sua linea infinita. Quo
stabilitur distinctio inter Deum et mundum, inter mundum spiritualem et corporeum .
. . . philosophiam aristotelico-thomisticam doctrinam ex hoc fundamento logica
consequentia evolutam," ostendibile est. (J. Gredt, "Introductio" in Elementa
Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, Vol. I, p. 5, n. 3. See in this same line the
instructive article by C. Fabro, "Tommaso d'Aquino," in Enciclopedia Cattolica,
Vol. XII {Florence, 1954], cols. 259-i'l65.) But then, everyone knows that Fr.
Gredt is one of the "manualistae ": see Jacques Maritain's remarks on "The
Philosophy of St. Thomas" in The Peasant of the Garonne (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, & Winston, 1968), pp. 135-141.
The point remains that one may have " progress " in philosophical history by
substitution, by a discontinuous jumping between the fundamental dialectical
options or " logical possibilities " envisionable in terms of a basic philosophical
problem; but in the history of a doctrine (something else than a school), such
" progress " has more of the character of a series of betrayals or abandonings,
whatever may be the doctrinal position from which one views the movement. And
one may quite well leave aside the language of the "real distinction" (esse/
essentia), still more the "texts" from whosesoever pen, without turning one's gaze
from the matter-at-issue: what is the character of the difference between act and
potency, and what does this imply in the order of lived experience for existence
exercised?
See further fn. 196 below.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

275

What is true is that the distinctive advance of St. Thomas
over Aristotle in having recognized the transcendence of existence respecting essence makes it possible to see the repercussions of evolutionary species on the question of the hierarchy
of being according to essential grades. But, without further
historical digression, let us resume the thread of our analysis.
As we noted initially, a strict employment of the term
essence is possible which confines us to the concrete real, the
historical reality as reality, and refers simply to the capacity to
be as a self-identity. The whole of that which constitutes a
capacity to be, however, must include what is necessary, i.e.,
whatever is intrinsic: and since only individuals do or can exist,
individuating characters are radically enclosed at the level of
essence, not as "accidental" (per accidens) modifications but
as intrinsic and absolute substantial modalities. The total
" capacity to be " in every instance is not merely " forma
substantialis " but " matter-form," or, more exactly (for this
is what forma substantialis is), materia actuata, i.e., all individuating notes or modalities. "It is evident that every
natural generation involves a measure of uncertainty. If that
uncertainty could be entirely eliminated, it would be because
the form would be entirely determined-but in that case
generation itself would become impossible." 189 Since it is at
the heart of being, this " incertitude " bears equally on the
existence of the effect or product and on its very structure.
It is precisely the lack of determination of natural forms and their
incapacity for individuating themselves which makes matter necessary for their existence. This necessity for matter introduces into
the form itself an irreducible obscurity. There can be no idea of
a cosmic form that is distinct and independent from the idea of the
composite; 190 and the matter which enters into this idea is not
determined at all without signifying also a determinability with
respect to an infinity of other forms. A non-subsistent form is not
a quiddity in the strict sense.191 This means that the different
De Koninck, "Reflexions sur le probleme de l'indeterminisme," p.
John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, II, p. 575, n. 15.
191 " Anima sensibilis cum non sit res subsistens, non est quidditas, sicut nee
aliae formae materiales, sed est pars quidditatis, et esse suum est in concretione
ad materiam." (St. Thomas, de Potentia, q. 3, a.
ad
189

1 90

276

JOHN N. DEELY

natural forms (I do not say the diverse ones) cannot be absolutely
opposed as if they were forms of pure spirits, because their definition embraces the notion of matter, that is to say, the possibility
of an infinity of other forms which can be drawn out of this matter.
Consequently the existing varieties of forms or "natural kinds"
are analogues of the segments of a continuum determined a-posteriori. In this sense they are contingent and always quidditati1Jely
new. Between any two given forms in nature, there is an indefinite
possibility of other forms. These forms are in the matter in a purely
potential manner; and consequently the determination which any
material form is, is something to be constituted as determination.
It is necessary to speak in this way if one wishes to avoid the
latitatio formarum (the actual latency of forms) .192

Therefore, at the level of the concrete real, of first intention,
the actuality which is " esse " cannot reflect a univocal kind or
type of being. 193 The most radical and accordingly primary
meaning which attaches to essentia is not " this kind " but
"this existent "-that is, the fundamental notion in the term
essence is one of proportion: essentia dicitur prima et per se
' proportio ad esse ' (" essence bespeaks primarily and of itself
a proportion to existence" 194 ). And since there can be as such
no proportion at the level of being-as-possible, the question of
possible being becomes a question of how an existential proportionality is effected. Thus, we speak of " possible being " rather
than of " the possibility to be " precisely because things come
to be only as individuals, but the phrase may still be misconstrued.
Essences are often conceived as possible beings, the reality of which
coincides with their very possibility. But we should be careful to
distinguish between essential possibility and existential possibility.
For, indeed, they belong in two distinct metaphysical orders, so
much so that there is no way for us to reach the second one
De Koninck, ppo !'l33-4o
Cfo Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, ppo 185-60 Adler, "Solution of the
Problem of Species," ppo 356-70
19 ' Cfo Anthony
Schillaci, Oo Po, De possibilitate entis finiti (Mimeographed:
Fall, 1961), po 3: "Possibilitas en tis non limitatur nisi per intrinsecam contradictionemo 0 0 0 Possibilitas intrinseca alicujus entis identificatur cum eius essentia,
cum intrinseca possibilitas nil aliud sit nisi aptitudo rei ad esse subjectum tou
' esse', quae est ratio constitutiva alicujus rei in ratione essentiaeo"
19 •

193

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

rJ,77

through the first one. An essence is possible, qua essence, when all
its determining predicates are compossible. If they are, the existence of the corresponding being is possible; if they are not, it is not.
And this is true, but it is true only in the order of essential possibility, not at all in the order of existential possibility. Many metaphysicians seem to imagine that an essence cannot exist, so long as
it has not received all its determinations, that, as soon as it has
received them, it is bound either to burst into existence or, at least,
to receive it. Now a twofold error is responsible for such an illusion.
The first one is not to see that to be fully completed in the order of
essentiality does not bring an essence one inch nearer actual
existence. A completely perfected possibility still remains a pure
possibility. The second error is to forget that the essence of a
possible being necessarily includes the possible existence through
which alone it can achieve its essential determination. To repeat,
essential possibility is no sufficient reason for existential possibility,
and since its essence is what a being is going to become, if it exists,
existence itself necessarily enters the calculation of its essential
possibility. 195

It follows ineluctably that only on the basis of causality-a
basis very different from that provided by any phenomenological eidetics-can essentia be understood in the most fundamental manner, i.e., as a proportio ad esse/ 96 The question of
the actuability of essence, of the reality-status of being-aspossible, cannot be dealt with except in terms of the preexistence of effects in their causes: 197 an answer framed with
Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, pp.
my emphasis.
Maritain contends that "the very distinction between existence as received
and existence as exercised, is understandable only in the light of the axiom causae
ad invicem sunt causae." " This involution of causes is at the core of the
problem." (" On the Notion of Subsistence," p. 439). Gilson is in agreement that
the involution of the ca}uses is at the core of the problem, but he seems to conceive
(See Being and Some
their play somewhat differently than does Maritain.
Philo,sophers, p.
in contrast with The Degress of Knowledge, p. 437) . William
Carlo in a recent book seems to be of the opinion that the reciprocity of the
causes is outside the central issue (The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to
In this last perspective, I,
Existence in Existential Nfetaphysics, esp. pp.
for one, lose sight entirely of the traditional species problematic.
197 Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, pp.
makes some striking observations in this connection (observations, moreover, which sound quite like Bergson:
cf. "The Possible and the Real," in Bergson's The Creative Mind, New York:
Philosophical Library, 1946, pp. 91-106): "Having overlooked the transcendence
196
196

JOHN N. DEELY

any other reference and put forward as fundamental posits
implicitly the equivalent of a Platonic Idea. Indeed, it was the
consideration of essence primarily as the focus of formal perfections, to the neglect of interrogating it (except in a secondary fashion) as the existentially established possibility for
concrete presence in the world, that led thinkers into paradox
and contradiction before the evolutionary species problematic.
But the irrepressible essentialism of the human mind blinds us to
that evidence. Instead of accounting for potency by act, we
account for act by potency. We rather forget that what is at
stake is neither existence nor essence, but being, which is both.
We fancy that essences, which owe their complete determination to
existence, are eternally independent of existence. Everything then
proceeds as though the essences of possible beings had been eternally
conceived, by a divine mind, apart from the very act through which
they would some day become actual beings. Thus conceived,
existence does not enter the concrete determination of essences; it
fills them up. 198
of existence, essentialism has entertained the curious illusion that, since, in order
to be, a being must at least be possible, the root of being lies in its possibility.
But possibility is a word of several meanings. It may mean the simple absence of
inner contradiction in an essence, and, in such cases, all non-contradictory combinations of essences are equally possible, but none of them is one step nearer its
actualization than another one. It may also mean that an essence is fully
determined, so that it is actually capable of existing. Such possibles are in the
condition which Scholastics would have called that of proximate potency to
existence. But such a possibility still remains pure abstract possibility. Is it true
to say, with so many philosophers, that, when all the conditions required for the
possibility of a thing are fulfilled, the thing itself is bound to exist? Scarcely.
When all those conditions are fulfilled, what is thereby fulfilled is the possibility
of the thing. If any one of them were lacking, the thing would be impossible, but,
from the fact that all those conditions are given, it does not follow that the thing
is required to exist. The possibility of its essence does not include that of its existence, unless, of course, we count among its required conditions the very existence
of its cause. But, if we do, the being of the cause is the reason why the possible
is a possible being. Omne ens ex ente: all being comes from another being, that
is, not from a possible, but from an existent.
" To overlook this fact is completely to reverse the actual relation of essences
to existences. In human experience, at least, there are no such things as fully
determined essences prior to their existential actualization. Their esse is a necessary
prerequisite to the fullness of their determination."
198 Ibid., p.
Cf. Joseph Owens, "The Intelligibility of Being," Gregorianum,
XXXVI (1955), pp. 169-193.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

In this regard we may appropriate (I do not say " concur
with") some critical reflections put forward by Heidegger. 199
" In connection with all the determinations of being and the
distinctions we have mentioned, we must bear one thing in
mind: because being is initially physis, the power that emerges
and discloses, it discloses itself as eidos and idea. This interpretation never rests exclusively or even primarily on philosophical
exegesis." [" The existence of nature is known directly (per se)
insofar as natural things are manifest to the senses. But what
the nature of each particular thing is, or what the principle of
motion is, is not manifest." 200 ] " Appearance, doxa, is not
something besides being and unconcealment; it belongs to
unconcealment." Thus " it cannot be denied that the interpretation of being as idea [Lat., species vel forma] results from
the basic experience of being as physis. It is, as we say, a
necessary consequence of the essence of being as emerging
Scheinen (seeming, appearing, radiance) .... ["Esse objective
enim consistit in ipsa orientatione per modum transcendentalem
ad esse subjective."] But if the essential consequence is raised
to the level of the essence itself and takes the place of the
essence, what then?. . . . The crux of the matter is not that
physis should have been characterized as idea but that idea
should have become the sole and decisive interpretation of
being." "Physis is the emerging power, the standing-there-initself, stability." ["Because everything acts insofar as it is an
199 From
M. Heidegger, An Introduction To Metaphysics, trans. by Ralph
Manheim (New York: Anchor, 1961), pp. 165, 160,
153, 165, 154-5, and
153-4, respectively: Heidegger's own emphases. However, let there be no misunderstanding here. Anyone who has genuinely grasped the implications of the
phenomenological " Sachen selbst " and the research they in principle ground will
realize how radical our appropriation shall have to be in order to place any
formally philosophical reflections of Heiuegger in an other than phenomenological
context. Lest the reader suspect we are passing over with inadequate assessment the
immense difficulties such an appropriation claims to have overcome, we refer him
to our study which takes up the issue with attention to detail: "The Situation of
Heidegger in the Tradition of Christian Philosophy," The Thomist, XXXI (April,
1967), pp.
esp. sec. VII, "Phenomenology:
The Medium of the Beingquestion," pp.
A full length book on this question is in preparation.
200 St. Thomas Aquinas, In II Phys., lect. I, n. 8.

JOHN N. DEELY

actual being, the consequence is that everything stands in the
same relation to action as it does to being." Thus "the
measure and quality of a thing's power is judged from the
manner and type of its operation, and its power, in turn, manifests its nature; for a thing's natural aptitude for operation
follows upon its actual possession of a certain kind of nature." 201 ] "Idea, appearance as what is seen, is a determination of the stable insofar and only insofar as it encounters
vision." [Thus, not only is it true that " of no thing whatever
can a perfect knowledge be obtained unless its operation is
known," but we must also take account of the critical factor
that " we do not know a great many of the properties of
sensible things, and in most cases we are not able to discover
fully the natures of those properties that we apprehend by
sense." 202 ] Hence "being itself, interpreted as idea, brings with
a relation to the prototypical, the exemplary, the ought."
" From the standpoint of the idea, appearing now takes on a
new meaning. What appears-the phenomenon-is no longer
physis, the emerging power, nor is it the self-manifestation of
the appearance; no, appearing is now the emergence of the copy.
Since the copy never equals its prototype, what appears is
mere appearance, actually an illusion, a deficiency. Now the
on becomes distinct from the phainomenon. And this development brings with it still another vital consequence. Because the
actual repository of being is the idea and this is the prototype,
all disclosure of being must aim at assimilation to the model,
accommodation to the idea. The truth of physis, aletheia as
the unconcealment that is the essence of the emerging power,
now becomes homoiosis and mimesis, assimilation and accommodation, orientation by . . . , it becomes a correctness of
vision, of apprehension as representation." " The idea, as the
201 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 77, a. 8; and Summa contra
gentiles, II, c. I, n. I: respectively.
202 Summa contra gentiles, II, c. I, n. I; and I, c. 8, n. 5:
respectively. In the
CoUationes de Credo in Deum, a. I, is the interesting remark that "our knowledge
is so imperfect that no philosopher has ever been able to discover perfectly the
nature of a single fly."

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

fl81

appearance of the essent, came to constitute its what. Thereby
the whatness, the ' essence,' i. e., the concept of essence, also
became ambiguous." [Thus, in many traditional writings, "In
its proper intelligibility, form bespeaks a capacity for realization (dicit realizabilitatem) in any time, place, or subject
whatever; and consequently, prior to existence, the essence
itself of a thing is a possibility indifferent to existing in any
particular time, place, or set of external circumstances (in
quavis contingentia extrinseca) ."] Such has been the historical interpretive consequence of according primary import to
that which is secondary in the notion of finite being
In terms of the actually existing things in the world, this is
not to say that classification into kinds is fictitious, altogether
false, but that such classification is shot through with analogy
-and this is exactly what genetics has disclosed in a researchable manner. There are natural units, concrete universals, as it
were, corresponding to the term "species." There are, that is
to say, groups of individuals structured basically through sexual
behavior so that the absolute range of adaptive tolerance of the
members of any given group is closely coincident, yet divergent
relative to the adaptive area of other groups; but within these
interaction-structured groupings, within any given species, individuality is not a reducible phenomenon, neither genetically
nor metaphysically, so that typological thinking (however useful it may be for certain purposes) remains of itself at the level
of second intention, one step removed from the concrete real.
In terms of the proportion to" esse,'' there can be no incidental
("per accidens") difjereJwes, "for even though a thing's
existence is other than its essence, existence is not to be understood as something added over and above the essence after the
manner of an accident but as if established as the result of the
principles of the essence. And for that reason the term being,
which is applied to a thing by reason of its very existence,
signifies the same total reality as the term which is applied to
a thing by reason of its essence." 203
••• St. Thomas Aquinas, In IV Met., lect. !t, n. 558.

JOHN N. DEELY

In its complete explication the analysis of essence at the
level of possible being (to which the evolutionary problematic
forces philosophy) gives full metaphysical consistency to the
notion of" being in and through a world." Space-time modifies
and enters into the reality termed essence precisely in that
there is no parent engendering progeny in a one-to-one relationship (there is no causal process in nature reducible to the transmission of an identical form); rather, there is only and always
parent plus this proximally circumscribing environment, together establishing the extrinsic though immediate proportion
constituting this individual existingly.
A " possible being " thus understood is in no degree virtual,
something ideally pre-existent. A simple absence of external
hindrance and non-contradictoriness of intrinsically constitutive notes is alone signified, together with an actual convergence
of causes adequate-be it by reason of nature and chance or
nature and art-to the production of a corruption (which is to
say a generation: corruptio unius est generatio alterius inquantum materia prima numquam existit per se) in the world
of nature. (To borrow an illustration from William Howells:
" Man himself could only appear when a very high organization had been attained [absence of external hindrance]. For
hands and a big brain would not have made a fish human;
they would only have made a fish impossible [contradictoriness
of intrinsically constitutive notes.] [While from the standpoint
of an actual convergence of causes in the history of life,] man's
own trail, among the many trails in evolution, was well defined:
he had to be a mammal and he had to be a primate." 204 ) In
a crude though preliminary way-" there is at least a poetic
anticipation here," Adler contends, " of recent scientific discoveries concerning the causal efficiency of various types of
radiation to produce mutations in the germ plasm" 205 -this
was hinted at by Aristotle: " Man is begotten by man and
by the sun as well." 206 What Heidegger remarks concerning
••• Mankind m the Making (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1959),
p. 341.
205

• 06

Adler, The Problem of Species, p.
Physics, II, c.
194bl3f. Cf. St. Thomas, In IV Met., lect. 3, n. 785.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN

OF SPECIES

283

our awareness of beings holds equally as regards their proper
existence: " It is through world that the essent first becomes
essent." 207
Thus, "to be" means "to stand within limits"; while to
stand within limits means to exist as a dialectically conditioned
possibility or aspect of a world: essence is only the potential
dimension of contingent substance which defines it and fits it
into a given population and environment according to certain
active and passive capacities, while correlatively existence is
essence simultaneously determined as identity with itself and
reference to another, scil., the environmental world.
One would have a perfect necessity in the works of nature therefore
only if one would make abstraction from the matter-principle at
once of individuation and contingency-which enters into every
work of nature and without which nature would not be nature.
And when we speak of the "hypothetical necessity" of natural
laws we mean to say that an effect is certain to the extent that
form prevails over matter [actual determination over possible determination otherwise]. In other words, the laws of nature would be
necessary if matter were neither nature nor principle of contingency,
if in the work of nature, nature were form alone. The expression
"hypothetically necessary" is therefore subject to ready misunderstanding. It does not at all apply to future contingents, except
in their relation to a divine intelligence and will.208
"The organism and the environment," Dobzhansky
simply, "are really parts of an interacting system." 209

notes

An lntJ·oduction to Metaphysics, p. 51.
De Koninck, p. 9!40.
209 Mankind
Evolving, p. 89. Gardner Murphy, Director of Research at the
Menninger Foundation, applies this view directly to the understanding of the
human phenomenon as such: " we often look for human nature in the wrong place;
we merely look inside the living system. [Yet] any products whatever which life
yields, are in a sense the products of a system of events deployed through a vast
system of forces. Indeed, life ean be destroyed and any given avenue can be
blocked, but to find the wellsprings of human nature by looking inside the capsule
is to miss the field character of the event." " A Platonic idea of intrinsic human
nature as something guiding human destiny . . . needs the benefit of field theory
to achieve coherence and credibility in an era in 'which both man and his environment need to be seen not as two realities but as two phases of one reality"human nature. "From such a point of view, part of the essential nature of human207

20 "

JOHN N. DEELY

In summary: possible being does not differ from actual
being simply by the difference of an efficient cause, by a merely
extrinsic principle. Rather, the root meaning of essence must
be derived in terms of possible being as the causal establishment of a proportion to existence, so that at the level of the
concrete real, of actually existing things, essence always involves the concretion of all space-time factors (among which
the generator is primary but never exclusive) entering into the
initial establishment of individuality; "there could be nothing
ness lies in the specific evolutionary trends that underlie the many demands of
mankind upon life .... " (Human Potentialities, pp.
307, and 37, respectively.
109-10, 177,
Johannes Messner,
See also pp.
on a solidly and explicitly Thomistic basis, arrives at a similar formulation: " In
the first edition of this work the matter was dealt with in the following way:
Society is an accident, requiring a substance, namely, man, to support it, but an
ontological accident, since man is by his nature a social being. . . . Today we
would say that ontologically and metaphysically, if the expressions substance and
accident are given the meaning just set down, society can only be described as an
accident. It seems, however, to be another question whether the special supraindividual reality of society can be fully explained in terms of these disjunctive
concepts of substance and of accident, so conceived. Certainly society is not a
substance in the sense of subsisting in and for itself, independently of individuals.
Yet, although society is not a substance in this sense, we cannot conclude that its
being in the ontological and metaphysical sense is merely secondary in relation to
the individual as such." On the contrary, "since the idea of evolution is inseparable
that
from the nature and the natural law of man," Messner is driven to
"society and the individual possess, ontologically and metaphysically, equally
original being. Neither can be derived from the other or reduced to the other as
the primary being .... The association of individuals in society indeed consists in
interrelations, but not in interrelations of integrated individuals . . . ; rather, it
consists in interrelations through which the individuals achieve full humanity and
through which, therefore, a new reality is established." (Social Ethics: Natural
Law in the Western World, J. J. Doherty, trans. St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co ..
1965, pp. 106 f., 76, and 108, respectively, emphasis supplied. See also pp. 36, 55:
63, 76, 84, 97,
139,
See also Erik H. Erikson, "Evolution and Ego," Insight and Responsibility (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
f. Indeed, mused Alexis Carrel, "it would be absurd
1964), pp. 134-157, esp.
if external reality were incapable of encompassing man in his totality. It would
also be absurd if its structure did not correspond in some measure to our own. It
is thus reasonable to attribute the same objectivity to the world of spirit as to
the world of matter."
(Reflections on Life [New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc.,
1965], p. 165). In these terms, it becomes impossible to define the end for man
as man without ipso facto defining the end (and thereby the direction) of the
evolutionary process which man extends.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE OlHGlN OF SPECIES

Q85

outside the essence of being which could constitute a particular
species of being by adding to being; for what is outside of
being is nothing, and this cannot be a differentiating factor." 210
Thus, at the level of first intention, all specific kind-concepts
of universal predication-essentiae specificae-are and can only
be media of analogous intelligibility. 211 To make more of them
than this is to confuse linguistic or logical and ontological
classifications. Indeed, even in the traditional species problematic where it is irreducible grades of being which are at issue
more than the existential diversity of kinds:
The unity of a nature as existing in many individuals is an analogical, not a univocal, unity of being, even though the concept whereby that nature is apprehended is primarily a univocal and not an
analogical concept. This must be so, for there is no way in which
the one can exist in the many except analogically. 212
" No middle can be found," stressed St. Thomas, " between
singulars and their species," for the very good reason that
"actions have to do with singular things and all processes of
generation belong to singular things": "Universals are generated only accidentally when singular things are generated,"
i. e., they are consequent only on the consideration of reason,
so that, although derived from the things, they are as qualitative universals extraneous to the individual natures which
transobjectively ground them in the natural articulations and
interaction-structured groupings of the environmental world. 213
St. Thomas, In V Met., lect. 9, n. 889.
Cf. Adler, " Solution of the Problem of Species," pp. 356-7.
212 Ibid., p. 306, fn. 44 ad finem.
213 St. Thomas, In I Post. Anal., lect. 2, n. 21; In Met., I, lect. I, n. 21; VII, lect.
7, n. 1422; and esp. IV, lect. 4, n. 574, respectively. Also Summa, I, q. 13, a. 12 ad 3;
and q. 85, a. 2 ad 2. Thus the conception of the "concrete universal " (as we
have used the phrase in this analytic) differs from the qualitative universal familiar
to the logician not by way of negation or rejection but by going beyond the static
conceptions of, e. g., " horseness," "whiteness," etc., to include explicit reference to
the immediate phantasmal ground of conceptualization so as to sustain analogical
eidetic visualizations in which singulars are seen as structured by and holding
together through interaction, as weU as in their formal and qualitative isolation:
the idea constantly remains within its totality. Unlike the abstract universal which
prescinds from existence in order to unite its subordinates in the perfect unity of
210
211

JOHN N. DEELY

That which makes this thing to be what it is, is not an instanced
universal or essential form but a unique, incommunicable, unrepeatable (i.e., historical) proportion to being-in-the-universe
-which is something much finer!
That the appearance of a vegetable or animal species is due to
specific causes, nobody will gainsay. But this can only mean that
if, after the fact, we could know these causes in detail, we could
explain by them the form that has been produced; foreseeing the
form is out of the question. It may perhaps be said that the form
could be foreseen if we could know, in all their details, the conditions under which it will be produced. But these conditions are
built into it and are part and parcel of its being; they are peculiar
to that phase of its ht:story in which life finds itself at the m.oment
of producing the form: how could we know beforehand a situation
that is unique of its kind, that has never yet occurred and will
never occur again? Of the future, only that is foreseen which is like
the past or can be made up again with elements like those of the
past. . . . But an original situation, which imparts something of
its own originality to its elements, that is to say, to the partial
views that are taken of it, how can such a situation be pictured as
given before it is actually produced? All that can be said is that,
once produced, it will be explained by the elements that analysis
will then carve out of it. Now, what is true of the production of a
new species is also true of the production of a new individual and,
more generally, of any moment of any living form. 214
an identical "quiddity," the "concrete " universal takes existence as the basis for
an analogous predication concerning individuals of a specific interaction grouping.
In brief, the concrete universal is a general notion, identical with the whole of the
individuals from which we obtain it. Such a conception seems to derive its fundamental possibility from the type of analogical predication referred to traditionally
as "analogy of inequality" or (more precisely) "analogy on the part of the things
judged, but not on the part of the concept predicated." Cf. Adler, "Solution of the
Problem of Species," pp. 356 ff. St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 9.! ad 1.
Cajetan, De nominum analogis, cap. 1; Summa, I-II, q. 66, a. 1 ad l.
In a similar view, Charles De Koninck comments: "C'est que tout concept
formellement scientifique est fonde sur une induction incomplete indefiniinent perfectible--l'inductio per descensum ne peut jamais rejoindre !'experience au point de
fermer le concept et d'en faire un universe! proprement dit: sa genese meme n'est
jamais terminee." (Art. cit., p. 397). Cf. further R. G. Collingwood, Speculum.
M entia (London: Oxford, 199.!4), pp.
214 Bergson, Creative Evolution, pp. 32 f., emphasis supplied.
Cf. Bergson, "The
Possible and the Real," The C1·eative Mind, M. L. Andison, trans. (New York:
Wisrlom Library, 1946), pp. 91 ff., esp. 99-104.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

287

Within this strictly delimited context, then, we may appropriate this striking formulation of Bergson: Evolution " creates,
as it goes on, not only the forms of life, but the ideas that will
enable the intellect to understand it, the terms which will serve
to express it. That is to say that its future overflows its present,
and cannot be sketched out therein in an idea." 215 It does but
express the necessary consequence of the realization that the
natural kinds, such as " the class of Birds and the class of
Fishes," can be distinguished only by means of characters rooted in certain dispositions of matter, of "properties" which
are of the composite and never (even as signs) of the form
alone; and cannot be the subject of a notion strictly speaking
abstract, or of a definition in the logico-metaphysical sensethe necessary consequence, as De Koninck says, of the distinctively modern and even Darwinian discovery that, so far
as the structures of existence in time go, "the problem of contingency in nature is not limited to questions of chance and
fortune, even if these two forms of contingency are the most
evident"; for the very forms themselves which articulate
nature have a fixity which is only feigned. 216
It is the insufficient determination within the various grades of
nature which makes possible events which go beyond even the
limits of a specific natural grade, so that the contingency proper
to chance presupposes a contingency, a mutabilitas in the natural
cause. Whatever might be the perfection of its form, there ever
remains in the composite a margin of indetermination which
exceeds the formal determinations, and which constitutes the possibility of that form either falling short of its full realization, or
producing an effect in nowise predetermined in either universal or
particular nature (since this margin exists for the whole of nature
as well) .217
One sees thus in what sense we can speak of the creation o£
possibles. (Obviously, creation is taken in a very broad sense.)
And this idea applies not only to chance and fortune, but to the
nature itself. We have already explained that the infrahuman
cosmic species are not absolutely determined as regards their struc215

216

m

Creative Evolution, p. 114.
De Koninck, art. cit., p. 285.
Ibid., pp. 241-2.

288

JOHN N. DEELY

ture, nor consequently true a-priori. Each natural kind is new in
its structure. Once established, it constitutes a determined point of
departure for other species in which the determination of their
source and stem will in a certain fashion be prolonged: this determination has opened the world to essential structurations which
would not have been determinately possible without it. 218

Hence the need for never ending research, the danger of
deductive postulations concerning the fulfillments of nature:
" As a thing stands with regard to being, so does it stand with
regard to truth. For the truth of those things which do not
always stand in the same relation to being is not unaffected by
change," since indeed " reality is not referred to knowledge
but the reverse." 219
These considerations make it possible, I think, to see that the
morass of philosophical perplexities in post-Darwinian thought
are due to a certain ambivalence and equivocation in the species
problematic of traditional philosophy, which ambiguity the rise
of evolutionary science served to underscore and make unmistakable. At the same time, by disengaging the philosophical
concepts underlying the species problematic of modern biology,
these considerations also make it clear that evolutionary science
has not altered the structure of the question of essential
natures or kinds as the metaphysician poses it, although evolutionary science has made it clear that none of the natural kinds
-oysters, butterflies, elephants, eels-are so constituted causally as to correspond to the infima seu atoma species, the
" indivisible kinds," of which traditional philosophy so long
spoke. Since there is no evidence that any ecological population
as such is differentiated by a single formal property, and vast
evidence that none is so constituted, it is a violation of the
principle of parsimony to insist that any of the typical populaIbid., pp. fl51-fl.
St. Thomas, In Met., II, lect. 2, n. fl98; and V, lect. 9, n. 896, respectively.
(See also n. 895). Cf. Alexis Carrel, Reflections on Life, p. 60; Man the Unknown
(Harper & Bros., 1939), p. 3fl1; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of
Man, pp. fl73 fl'.; Gardner Murphy, "Man-World Relations," Human Potentialities,
pp. 21 fl'.; G. H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1934), pp. 203 fl'.
218

21 9

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

tions we readily distinguish differ as populations according to
the mode termed "radical" or (traditionally) "specific." If
we choose to use as our primary reference for the term species
" the natural groups afforded by the instincts of mankind," as
Aristotle put it, or " the categories of science illumined by
philosophic knowledge " of which Maritain and Maquart
speak, 220 then it is impossible to retain the notion of specific
natures as being convertible with metaphysical essences without disastrous confusion and an adventure in myth-making.
We must rather acknowledge forthrightly that the hierarchy of
essences does not correspond to nor reveal the disposition of
species.
Whether the disposition of species reveals anything about the
hierarchy of essences-perhaps that it does not, after all, exist
-even though the former cannot correspond to the latter, is
our final question. In other words, the relation of evolutionary
species to the philosophical doctrine of the immutability of
essence, the question of " the influence of Darwinism on philosophy," of the mutual interimplications of the respective primary concerns of the traditional and the modern species problematics, can now be seen to come down to this: once the
notion of species as genetic populations has been laid bare in
its ontological ground, does the notion of species as essential
kinds (i. e., kinds related in such a way that each substance
of a given specific nature has an essential or radically constitutive perfection lacked by its proximate inferior in specific
nature, and lacks an essential perfection possessed by its
proximate superior in specific nature; so that, since the whole
essential difference between essentially distinct kinds lies in
the diversity of their substantial forms as rendered diverse by
virtue of a positive and negative difference rooted in a common
perfection, essentially distinct kinds as essentially distinct mu,st
be ordered in a perfectly ordered series or unilinear hierarchy in
which: a] each member has a unique position, b] there is no
coordination or equality of rank, and c] each member comes
220 See F.-X. Maquart,
Elementa Philosophiae, Tom us II, philosophia naturalis
(Paris: Blot, 1937), esp. pp. U-16.

JOHN N. DEELY

before or after another in the ascending or descending scale of
being) -does this notion retain any explanatory power at all?
Or does it, like the notion of the infima species, belong to the
historian of ideas and the category of philosophical myth?
Granted that the traditional and modern species problematics are and have been shown to be diverse in orientation,
do their secondary implications illumine or contravene one
another?
Since the traditional species problematic is inextricably bound
up with the question of a natural hierarchy, it will be easy to
engage it in the implications of the modern species problematic
if we can show that the modern problematic as well implies
inescapably a natural hierarchy. Once this has been shown,
we will be in a position to judge whether the implications of
the two problematics are contrary or mutually illuminating.
The question of the influence of Darwinism on philosophy
thus turns out to be simultaneously the question of the influence of philosophy-traditional philosophy at that-on Darwinism. It is the problem of the two hierarchies.
Let us move to a position where it comes into view.

VII.

THE OPERATIONAL
THOUGHT

DISPLACEMENT

IN ITs IMPLICATIONs

OF TYPOLOGICAL

FOR HIERARCHY.

Against the immediate background provided by this preliminary philosophical analytic and before attempting a concluding
summarization of the eidetic character of organic evolution in
terms of hierarchy, we must mention one other significant
component of the development in this century of the science of
genetics (not paleontology, as philosophers often assert) as
the foundation of evolutionary explanations.
We have already seen how all explanation which accounts
for reasons of being must pattern itself on a factorial conception of causality. To the extent that one or more of the four
factors is unaccounted for, the explanation remains incomplete.
It is possible, however, to attempt an explanation in terms of
a reductive rather than factorial conception of causality, and
such reductive explanations may take either of two forms. The

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN

OF SPECIES

291

more important mode of reductive analysis is that which was
first given expression by the Pythagoreans and the astronomers
of the Academy, later taken up again by Galileo, Descartes,
and Newton and subsequently extended in our own time into
a universal science of nature. This is the " explanatory "
method of mathematical-physics, a science which knows the
real only by transposing it and not as the physical real, since
it captures in things only that kind of formal cause which is
the conformity of phenomena to mathematical law, and which
is the basis of prediction and control inasmuch as the intelligible necessities susceptible to mathematical formulation are
transcendent to the sensible object as such and insofar indifferent to its existential status. In itself, this method of
converting a physical into a mathematical description constitutes a marvellous and exceptional instrument of natural science in its efforts to assign reasons for being; and so employed,
it need not be a reductive explanation.
Since, however, knowledge formulated in the physico-mathematical pattern is formally and specifically distinct in its mode
of definition from knowledge formulated in the philosophical
pattern of " causes," there is always the danger that the
instrument will be taken for an explanatory scheme in the full
sense, and at once we are in the line of a reductive conception
of causality. 220 a

•••a J. Schwartz observes that "in its relations with science mathematics depends
on an intellectual effort outside of mathematics for the crucial specification of the
approximation which mathematics is to take literally." "The literal-mindedness of
mathematics thus makes it essential, if mathematics is to be used correctly in
science, that the assumptions upon which mathematics is to elaborate be correctly
chosen from a larger point of view, invisible to mathematics itself. The singlemindedness of mathematics reinforces this conclusion. Mathematics is able to deal
successfully only with the simplest situations, more precisely, with a complex
situation only to the extent that rare good fortune makes this complex situation
hinge upon a few dominant simple factors. Beyond the well-traversed path,
mathematics loses its bearings in a jungle of unnamed special functions and impenetrable combinatorial particularities. Thus, the mathematical technique can only
reach far if it starts from a point close to the simple essentials of a problem which
has simple essentials. That form of wisdom which is the opposite of singlemindedness, the ability to keep many threads in hand, to draw for an argument
from many disparate sources, is quite foreign to mathematics." " Related to this

JOHN N. DEELY

The only other way to fall into reductive explanations is to
simply fail to see that the analysis of structure and function in
nature always involves four correlated aspects, composition and
organization as correlates of structure, agencies and products
as correlates of function. Thus, for example, just as we cannot
describe an organism except by telling what its parts are made
out of and indicating how these parts are put together to form
the whole, so we cannot fully understand the organism unless
we grasp why each step in its development was necessary if
maturity was to be reached; and this in turn requires a grasp
of the forces and processes involved and of the agencies which
give rise to them. Just as, in brief, composition and organization are correlative aspects of the natural unit which cannot be
described separately, so the forces which produce a thing and
the thing itself as end product cannot be described separately.
In short, since all explanation assigns reasons why, i.e.,
states causes, any given explanation must be either factorial, in
which case it states all four relations which respond to the
question why; or reductive, in which case a mathematical
expression is taken for the only or fullest rational understanding possible, or else it is a question of a methodology which is
not transparent to itself, which misunderstands its own dimensions and their interrelations. This latter type of reductionism
is characteristic indifferently of atomistic and mechanistic explanations.
deficiency of mathematics, and perhaps more productive of rueful consequence, is
the simple-mindedness of mathematics-its willingness, like that of a computing
machine, to elaborate upon any idea, however absurd; to dress scientific brilliancies
and scientific absurdities alike in the impressive uniform of formulae and theorems.
Unfortunately, however, an absurdity in uniform is far more persuasive than an
absurdity unclad. The very fact that a theory appears in mathematical form ...
somehow makes us more ready to take it seriously. And the mathematical-intellectual effort of applying the theorem fixes in us the particular point of view of the
neither as a
theory with which we deal, making us blind to whatever
dependent nor as an independent parameter in its mathematical formulation."
("The Pernicious Influence of Mathematics on Science," in Logic, Methodology
and Philosophy of Science, ed. by Ernest Nagel, Patrick Suppes, and Alfred Tarski,
pp. 356-8, passim. See Thomas Aquinas,
Stanford: The University Press,
In libros Aristotelis de caelo et mundo expositio, Bk. I, lect. 3, n.
and Bk. III,
lect. 3, n. 560. Also fn. 70 in Part I of Nogar and Deely, The Problem of
Evolution) .

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

Historically, until very recent times, mathematicism and
mechanism have always been closely associated, no doubt because mechanism provides a way o£ giving to a mathematical
theory a physical, imaginable model; but conceptually the two
approaches to explaining natural change are quite distinct.
Historically, these three distinctive explanatory modes were
first articulated and consciously employed by the early Greeks,
and despite their subsequent sophistication in application to
ever extended areas o£ experience, they still and will always
express the distinctive point o£ view and method associated,
respectively, with Aristotle, Plato, and Democritus.
For our context, these remarks are helpful in that they
provide a background against which it becomes possible to see
that in order to resolve the "family quarrel" between the
Linnaean theory o£ a fixed and immediate creation o£ species
and the Darwinian theory o£ the evolution of species, biology
had to resort to the methods o£ reductive analysis, what we
may call empiriological (changing our terminology here, be it
noted, £rom that o£ previous authors) as against typological
thought, understanding by this latter term all those theories
of specific natures which are characterized by a tendency to
identify natural kinds with essential kind in the metaphysical
sense and so to perpetuate the myth consequent on the error
o£ univocally ontologized kind-essences (or even to supplement
or supplant it with the myth o£ vitalism as well) .
Such a resort to empiriological rather than philosophical
formulations was possible because, even though, as Waddington
has shown, the real objects o£ interest to evolutionary science
are subjects o£ processes which require a factorial rather than
a reductive analysis, nonetheless, involved in organisms as undergoing constant change are certain invariant relationships
as expressed in the Hardy-Weinberg equation that underlies
modem population genetics. Such a resort was probable in
the cultural context o£ modern science which tends to regard
physico-mathematics as the paradigm rather than one mode
o£ rational understanding. Such a resort was perhaps necessary
in the £ace o£ the refusal o£ typologists generally to respect
integrally the requirements o£ parsimony.

JOHN N. DEELY

In any event, it is a fact that the mathematical formulae
of population genetics, as theoretically elaborated in the brilliant works principally of Fisher, Wright, and Haldane, 221 structure operationally the professional scientists' understanding of
evolution. With a certain justice Ernst Mayr holds the opinion
that " history shows that the typologist cannot and does not
have any appreciation of natural selection," because " the typologist interprets natural selection as an all or none phenomenon." "Basically," therefore, " the arguments of the antiselectionists rest on an inability to appreciate the statistical nature
of selection." 222 Since, moreover, typological thinking once
characterized the thought of the West, and its scientific thought
as much as and in some ways more than its philosophical
thought, Dobzhansky considers that it was impossible to express in a convincing way the complexity, power, and subtlety
of evolutionary selection's operation over the two billion years
plus of life's history on this planet until the discussion could
be placed on a quantitative basis. 223
In terms of this " quantitative basis," Dobzhansky summarized the present empiriological state of the question in a
set of passages which we may cite directly for reasons of both
economy and clarity.
Platonic philosophy [which is Dobzhansky's term for what Mayr
calls more accurately typological thinking] considers the elusively
multiform, always changing natural phenomena to be mere shadows
of the immutable ideas, of the eternally fixed essences of things.
This philosophy has appealed to many scientists. Individual organisms and living populations are often supposed to represent imperfect incarnations of ideas, patterns, or types of their respective
races, species, genera, etc. In 1896, the great anthropologist
Virchow defined human races as " acquired deviations from the
original type." Acceptance of the biological evolution theory did
not completely overcome the notion that the annoying variability
221 Their classics are:
R. A. Fisher, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1930); S. Wright, "Statistical Theory of Evolution," Genetics,
16 (1931), pp. 97-159; J. B. S. Haldane, The Causes of Evolution (New York:
Harper,
.
222 Mayr, Animal Species and Evolution, pp. 183, 184, and 185, respectively.
223 Dobzhansky,
Mankind Evolving, p. 140.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN

OF SPECIES

of individuals is somehow a false front which conceals slowly
changing racial or species types. The fiction of types is indeed
helpful for the purpose of classification and of cataloguing organisms.224
([Thus:] A museum systematist is perforce confined to describing
the structural differences in his materials. The assumption implicit
in his work is that a fraction of genetic differences between populations are reflected in morphological traits, and, hence, the morphological descriptions reflect reasonably accurately the magnitude of
the genetic differences between the races, species, genera, etc. This
assumption is on the whole justified, but some groups are known in
which the genetic divergence may be accompanied by little morphological divergence. 225 [Similarly:] It is also a great, though highly
misleading, simplification for a physiologist or a medical man to
believe that different individuals, or different patients, should react
alike to similar treatments. 226 [Yet:] Although any change in the
bodily structures is of necessity a sequel to physiological developmental processes, some physiological differences are not accompanied by detectable changes in the visible morphology. 227 )
The fictitiousness of the types has been shown by the HardyWeinberg's demonstration of the genetic equilibrium. The spatiatemporal entities in sexually reproducing and cross-fertilizing orga··
isms are individuals and Mendelian populations. Every individual
carries a constellation of genes, which is not likely to be found in
other individuals. A population has a gene pool, from which thC;
genes of individuals spring and to which they usually return.
Gene frequencies and variances .. rather than averages, characterize
Mendelian populations. Superficially considered, natural populations of most species seem to consist of normal, or wild-type,
individuals, which owe their origin to mutation. A closer study
shows that the wild-type is also a fiction. "Normal" individuals
are actually a heterogeneous collection of genotypes, the common
property of which is that they possess a tolerable adaptedness to
the prevailing environments. When the heterogeneity happens to
be striking to the eye, or easily detectable by some method, it is
referred to as polymorphism. Polymorphism is a loose descriptive
term; all Mendelian populations are more or less polymorphic. 228
([Thus, for example:] Sibling species are reproductively isolated
Dobzhansky, Genetics and the> Origin of Species, p. 108, my emphasis.
Ibid., p. !'l67.
226 Ibid., p. 108.
227 Ibid., p. !'l67.
226 Ibid., pp. 108-9, my emphasis.

2 "'
225

296

JOHN N. DEELY

Mendelian populations, the members of which show few or no
easily visible differences in the bodily structures. 229 Some authors
have argued that sibling species should not be considered species
because museum taxonomists can not distinguish them in materials
preserved by time honored methods. Species are, however, phenomena of nature which exist regardless of our ability to distinguish
them. 230 )
For over half a century evolutionists held for the concept
of natural selection against the persistent denials and arguments of the typologists; but not until the discovery of
Mendelian heredity could they deal with the concept in an
adequately operational manner, in a manner, that is, which
could effect a demonstratio ad oculos (for those with eyes
to see). The reason is simple. "The essence of Mendelian
heredity is that it is particulate"; and it is precisely "the
particulate nature of inheritance [that] enables calculations to
be made as to the proportion of offspring of different types in
different generations after a cross. Like the atomic theory in
physics, it is the basis of quantitative treatment." 231
Thus, for example: " ' Improbable ' events and constellations of genes play a role in selection difficult for the typologist," viewing the fossil record, " to understand." 232 Yet, as
Mayr (among many others) simply comments:
229
230

Ibid., p.
Ibid., p.

231 Huxley, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, p. 47. In his "New Introduction"
to this classic study for the 1964 Wiley & Sons edition, Huxley notes: " The most
comprehensive and up-to date exposition of the synthetic theory of evolution has
just been given by Ernst Mayr in his magistral book, Animal Species and
Evolution (1963). As he points out, a radical change in recent evolutionary thinking has been ' the replacement of typologie thinking by population thinking.' However, the modern synthetic theory still retains the combination of induction and
deduction that underlay Darwin's original theory (p. iii) ."
232 Mayr, Animal Species and Evolution, p. 187.
It is obvious and has to my
knowledge never been denied that while genetic mutations are " random " with
respect to the adaptive needs of the organisms in which they occur, they are not
at all "random " with respect to the internal structure and chemical constitution
of the gene which mutates and the factors at play thereon-including the influence
of the immediately surrounding genes (of the "genotypic milieu "). "Mutations
are limited," Spuhler points out, " by the structure of the gene which mutates and
this structure is determined by the . . . forces . . . active in the history of the
gene." ("Somatic Paths to Culture," in The Evolution of Man's Capacity For

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

!297

Mathematicians have pointed out that evolution deals with numbers of such astronomical dimensions that even ' improbable '
events may occur. Most species have millions of genetically unique
individuals in every generation, each producing thousands or
millions of gametes. There are thousands or millions of generations
during the geological life span of each species. Under these conditions an event may become a certainty even if the chance of
its occurrence is only one in a billion. Yet the total number of
possible genotypes in a species is infinitely greater than the actual
number of individuals. 232 a
Culture, ed. by J. N. Spuhler, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965, p. 4).
Nonetheless, from within a reductionist perspective, or rather, in trying to get
beyond reductionism without abandoning the accordance of primacy to a reductionist type of explanation, it is natural to have to resort to the most elaborate of
theoretical contrivances in order to maintain some measure of contact with the
sound intuitions of common sense. Thus Chomsky (in Language and Mind, New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968, p. 83 and fn. 26 p. 88) seems to regard
as some sort of fundamental breakthrough or basic insight the fact (''the nontrivial fact," as the phrase goes) that "it has been argued on statistical groundsthrough comparison of the known rate of mutation with the astronomical number
of imaginable modifications of chromosomes and their parts-that such laws "-i.e.,
"laws that determine possible successful mutation and the nature of complex
organisms "-" must exist and must vastly restrict the realizable possibilities. See
the papers by Eden, Schiitzenberger, and Gavadan in Mathem<Ltical Challenges to
the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Wistar Symposium Monograph No.
5, .June, 1967."
It is true that the Neo-Darwinian perspective is usually conceived in a somewhat
reductive manner; but that version of it which regards the rate and direction of
mutational change as entirely extrinsic to the nature of the gene which mutates
carries the tendency to reductionism to a ridiculous extreme, and one may wonder
if one is not confonted here with one of those famous straw men which fill the
writings of philosophers concerned with refuting other positions. "Typically,"
notes Schwartz (art. cit., p. 360), "mathematics knows better what to do than
why. Probability theory is a famous example." One· is hardly justified in asserting
on such a basis that to attribute the development of organisms across prehistory
to evolutionary selection " is perfectly safe . . . so long as we realize that there
is no substance to this assertion, that it amounts to nothing more than a belief
that there is some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena." (Chomsky, p.
83) . That nature always underlies the random is an insight quite independent of
statistical arguments, which is at least as old as Aristotle (see Physica, II, chs. 2-6,
esp. 198a9, inte1· alia); and to assert that the laws determining this underlying
structure and function remain shrouded in "total mystery" (Chomsky, p. 83) is
to dismiss at a stroke not just the research into DNA, but the whole of evolutionary
biology as though it did not exist, or consisted entirely of groundless conjecture.
•••a Mayr, Anim<Ll Species and Evolution, p. 187. See also Dobzhausky, Genetics
and the Origin of Species, pp. 254 and 255: "Nothing can be more certain than
that only au infinitesimal fraction of the possible gene combinations can ever be

298

JOHN N. DEELY

Thus we find in contemporary biology, even as at various
other stages in Western intellectual history, a working explanatory combination of a mechanistic model with a mathematical
theory. We have already noted how the method of converting
a physical description into a mathematical one can either be
mistaken for the constitution of a new level of natural science,
and so become a reductionism, or be rightly recognized as an
instrument used by the natural scientist-a technique, albeit
exceptional, like his other techniques-in his effort to analyse
and discriminate the factors of processes, their always fourfold reasons for being.
We have also seen, in Section IV above, how the establishment in evolutionary science of the factorial as superordinate
to the reductive view of causation, already implicit in Darwin's
work, has only recently and not yet universally come to be
recognized as inevitable for the further maturation of the
evolutionary explanatory scheme.
Now we are in a position to see how this tendency to reductionism in evolutionary theory has generated a false issue in
philosophy by requiring a choice between an evolutionary
process which was tending toward man as to an end, and
therefore had to be a predetermined unfolding leading steadily
to man along a central line of advance visible in the fossil
record, or an evolutionary process in which randomness and
opportunism play a central role, and which therefore could
neither be predetermined to advance along a central line nor
oriented to man as toward an end in some sense. 233
realized in organisms the genotypes of which consist of hundreds of thousands of
genes. The potentially possible gene combinations constitute, however, the 'field'
within which evolutionary changes may occur. The adaptive values of the gene
combination are, of course, not alike." " ... gene patterns which differ in only a
few genes usually have more or less similar adaptive values. The patterns with
superior adaptive values form the 'adapt'ive peaks'; the peaks are separated by the
' adaptive valleys ' which symbolize the gene combinations that are unfit for
(It is noteworthy that, at any given stage in the
survival and perpetuation."
geologic environmental sequence, " some gene combinations which actually appear
from time to time, and probably the vast majority of the potentially possible ones,
are discordant and unfit for survival." [Ibid., p. 254].)
233 It seems to me that this is reflected in T. A. Goudge's well-known study,
The Ascent of Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961).

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN

OF SPECIES

To achieve this perspective, it will be necessary and sufficient
to show that a random, opportunistic process the actual course
of which could not be foreseen in advance is not incompatible
with an evolution necessarily tending toward man. In other
words, the reductionist tendency in biology has generated a false
issue by making it impossible to recognize that there need not
be a pre-determined end-point in order for an over-all system of
processes to change deterministically along a definable and
recognizable course as time passes by reason at once of the
closed, circular causal organization of the system, and of the
irreducible levels or zones through which the system must pass
if the causes of its sub-processes remain operative.
We will proceed in two steps. First, we shall show, with
Waddington's help, why the reductionist or empiriological formulation of the evolutionary mechanism must reject the thesis
" that it is possible to discern in the results of evolution some
general overall direction of change which can truly be regarded
as a special direction," inasmuch as " the direction is one which
in some way arises as a result of the general structure of the
universe; that is, it is not merely a direction in which progress
happens to have occurred, but, in some of its aspects at least,
it has the character of an inevitable consequence of the nature
of the evolutionary process and the organisms involved in
it." 234 In short, we shall see why a reductionist view is incapable of making sense out of the datum of progress as such
in biological evolution.
Second, we shall show that even by adopting the perspective
consequent on a mechanistic view of evolutionary causation,
the arrangement of the living world in an over-all hierarchical
pattern is a necessary result of the operation of evolutionary
selection.
Then, in Section VIII, we will see in what sense it is possible
to discern interior to this imperfect empirical hierarchy a perfect hierarchy of irreducible intelligible grades. In that way it
will be seen how the notion itself of species in traditional
234 C. H. Waddington, "The Possibility of Evolutionary
Theory," in The. Ethical
Animal, p. 65.

300

JOHN N. DEELY

philosophy-once shorn of its ambiguities and uncertaintiescan render the evolutionary data concerning species more intelligible in their own line of explanation which is not mathematical
nor mechanistic (the natural kinds are no more mere proportions of genes than they are numbers) but that of natural
philosophy, wherein are assigned proper reasons for the endless
changes in nature.
Concerning the first point, then, the following passages are
sufficiently clear:
Most biologists at the present day, in expounding evolutionary
theory, seem to be content to leave it that the mechanism by
which evolution has been brought about is composed of these two
major factors: the genetic system with random mutation on the
one hand and natural selection on the other. The evolutionary
pressures exerted by these two factors are exhibited as being quite
external to the nature of the organisms involved. The evolutionary
pressure exerted by the genetic system is that of mutation, and
mutation, it is explained, is a random process. Any explanation
which might be offered for the nature of the mutational changes
would have to be found, it is asserted, in the chemical composition
of the genes and not in the nature of the complete biological
organism in which these genes are carried. Mutation thus appears
as essentially an external force to which the organism passively
submits. Again, natural selective pressures are usually thought of
as arising simply from the external environment. When the climate
changes, a new predator appears, or industrial fumes blacken the
tree trunk on which the animal lives, the populations of organisms
concerned cannot, it is usually implied, do anything but submit to
these pressures and wait until the equally uncontrollable process
of mutation throws up a new hereditary variant which enables
them to meet the enviornment's challenge more successfully. 235
Now, with such a mechanism-random mutation in selective but
unresponsive environments-it would appear difficult to find any
principle which would produce any specific direction of evolutionary change. All evolution would appear to be purely a contingent
phenomenon, which just happened to go in the way that it did, but
for no ascertainable reason. One could admit, of course, that the
mechanism of natural selection is one which will, as has been
235

C. H. Waddington,

Animal, p. 88.

"The Biological Evolutionary

Theory,"

in The Ethical

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

301

frequently pointed out, produce states of extreme improbability
by preserving just those particular chance variations which happen
to fit in with the environment and rejecting all others, but there
seems at first sight to be nothing which could decide as to which
state of improbability will be favoured. 236
Within an explanatory perspective basically similar to this.
it is evident why Dobzhansky, following Simpson and Blum,
can only conceive, " broadly speaking, two kinds of interpretations of evolution. One kind supposes that any and all
evolutionary changes that ever occurred were predestined to
occur. The other kind recognizes that there may be many
different ways of solving the problems of adaptation to the
same environment; which one, if any, of these ways is in fact
adopted in evolution escapes predetermination." 237 In fact,
there is a third kind of interpretation. Plato and Democritus
between them did not exhaust the possibilities of causal explanation-only the reductive conceptions of it.
But secondly, and what is of much greater significance than
the foregoing negative point, evolutionary theory today requires-and this is agreed to by all who understand it-that
because the diversity and discontinuity of the living world on
the one hand, and its adaptation to the environment on the
236 Ibid., p. 89. I have no doubt that G. G. Simpson would reject this sketch
of Waddington's as accurately capturmg his understanding of the evolutionary
mechanism. "It was a crude concept of natural selection," he writes (The
Meaning of Evolution, p. 223), "to think of it as something imposed on the
species from the outside. It is not, as in the metaphor often used with reference
to Darwinian selection, a sieve through which organisms are sifted, some variations
passing (surviving) and some being held back (dying). It is rather a process
intricately woven into the whole life of the group, equally present in the life and
death of individuals, in the associative relationships of the population, and in their
extraspecific adaptations." I have no doubt either that Simpson's grasp of the
process indeed is much more subtle than Waddington's Dtihrer-Iike etching. But
all that is quite beside the point. As long as one insists on stating the four-factor
process in two-factor terms, one cannot completely escape a reductionist tendency
toward what Waddington describes as toward an ideal limit.
237 Dobzhansky,
The Biology of Ultimate Concern (New York: The New
American Library, 1967), p. 61. See also H. F. Blum, "Dimensions and Probability of Life," Nature, 206 (1955), p. 131; and G. G. Simpson, "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids," in This View of Life, pp. 253-271.

JOHN N. DEELY

other, are seen as causally related, the arrangement of the
natural kinds must be structurally hierarchical. This has been
clearly stated by Julian Huxley:
Improvement of general organization is brought about by a succession of successful types. Each type achieves its evolutionary sucess
by virtue of superior organization, and as a result evolves into a
new taxonomic group which radiates (undergoes cladogenesis) at
the expense of the earlier groups in competition with it, including
the group of similar taxonomic rank from which it has originated,
though this may and usually does persist in reduced numbers. This
process appears to apply to the anagenesis [upward evolution] of all
taxa from the genus upward, and indeed inevitably results in a
taxonomic hierarchy. 238

Thus, even within the insufficiently differentiated (so far as
the modes of causation go) explanatory scheme according to
which "natural selection is the only objectively established
antichance evolutionary factor," 239 the main modes under which
238 Huxley, Evolution:
The Modem Synthesis, "New Introduction " (1964), pp.
xxii-xxiii, my emphasis.
239 Simpson, This View of Life, p. 228. "The theory does not demand and the
facts do not indicate that selection is always effective or that at its most
effective, it can eliminate all unfavourable mutations immediately." (Tho Meaning
of Evolution, p. 224) . What the theory does require, however, the facts do
obligingly indicate--specifically, that " by and large, high Darwinian fitness (i. e.,
reproductive success) does go together with the maintenance or advancement of
harmony between the organism and its environment."
(Dobzhansky, Mankind
Evolving, p. 130). Thus Dobzhansky observes that, while "we must beware of
thinking that the nature of an organ is explained [exhaustively or even quite
a.dequately] by finding out the function which this organ performs," among contemporary scientists "the fear of teleology can be carried too far. Some biologists
go to the extreme of saying that the function of an organ has nothing to do with
its being there. Yet nobody can deny that man has eyes to see with, and a
mosquito has its mouth parts to get blood with. It is pedantic to quibble even
about the statement that the purpose of the eyes is seeing. There is really nothing
objectionable about such a statement which simply describes what the organ does,
provided that one always keeps in mind that the presence of an organ and its
function are at the opposite ends of a long ani£ complex chain of cause-and-effect
relationships. Some of the connecting links in this causal chain are the processes
of mutation, sexual recombination, and natural selection over a long series of generations." (Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man, p. 231; emphasis supplied).
It is in the light of the evolutionary process which molds an organ gradually so
that it becomes increasingly apt for the performance of a given adaptive function
that one sees clearly the advantage of replacing the historically overtoned term

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

803

selection operates are sufficient to guarantee a hierarchical
arrangement of forms, albeit imperfect and susceptible of multi" teleology " with the modern term coined to denote precisely the phenomena of
evolutionary adaption, " teleonomy." (The case is analogous to the substitution of
"astronomy" for "astrology"). See Enrst Mayr, "Evolution and Causality."
Thus C. S. Pittendrigh remarks ("Adaptation, Natural, Selection, and Behavior," in Behavior and Evolution, pp. 396 and 393-4): "The refusal to admit
that the turtle came ashore to lay its eggs was intended as a pious assertion that
a causal analysis was the only proper course open to the biologist. But it is clear
now that no organization-living or non-living-is ever fully explained by a causal,"
i. e. (as the author makes clear in context), physiological, " analysis of its
operations." " Another way of putting this is to say that an exclusively causal
explanation of life is possible but only if organisms are not abstracted from their
concrete history." All in all, "today the concept of adaptation is beginning to
enjoy an improved respectability for several reasons: It is seen as less than
perfect; natural selection is better understood; and the engineering physicist in
building end-seeking automata has sanctified the use of teleological jargon. It
seems unfortunate that the term ' teleology ' should be resurrected and, as I think,
abused in this way. The biologist's long-standing confusion would be more fully
removed if all end-directed systems were described by some other term, like
' teleonomic,' in order to emphasize that the recognition and description of enddirectedness does not carry a commitment to Aristotelian [?]teleology as an efficient
causal principle."
And to these remarks we may append the interesting comments of Maritain
(" Ontology and Empiriology in the Study of the Living Organism," in The Degrees
of Knowledge, pp.
passim): "It would certainly be foolish to ignore the
role already played by physico-chemical analysis (and hence calculation) in biology,
a role which is destined to increase daily .... As a matter of fact what is so
studied is the material conditioning, the material means of life. And, since everything within the living organism is effected by physico-chemical means, this analysis
can and should progress indefinitely." "Does this mean that some day it will
exhaust biological reality? By no means. For if within the living thing everything
is effected by physico-chemical means, everything is also effected by the soul (and
its vegetative powers) as first principle .... Thus, for example, while the ontological concept of finality has its place among the explicative concepts of the
Philosophy of Nature, the facts of biological finality represent for physico-chemical
analysis only an irrational that must be reduced as much as possible. And, for the
properly biological experimental analysis of which we have been speaking, those
facts come under an empiriological concept that may be designated by the same
name of finality, but which should be completely recast, and emptied of its philosophical significance. Here, leaving aside any use of finality as a causal explanation,
it will merely express that general pre-explicative condition," i.e., a condition of
simple observation presupposed by the explanation and which itself plays no
explicative role, " that the functions of the living thing, and the use it makes of
its own structure, serve for the continuance of life. As for the concepts of the
soul and of vegetative powers, they play an indispensable role in the Philosophy
of Nature, but remain outside the domain of properly biological experimental
analysis as well as of the physico-chemical analysis of the phenomena of life." On

304

JOHN N. DEELY

linear arrangements. 240 "Indeed it can be argued," observes
Nogar, "that in the evolutionary sequence of naturally related
species, we find the same hierarchical order on the horizontal
(space-time) plane that St. Thomas finds on the vertical plane
of existing organisms." zH It is clear from this that, even if we
adopt a reductive perspective within the explanatory scheme
of modern evolutionary science, the modern and traditional
species problematics do interarticulate; but since "no set of
terms which are constituted by diverse positive differences,
rooted in diverse perfections, can be hierarchically ordered as
essentially higher and lower inter se," 242 it remains to show in
what manner the perfect hierarchy of essential species may
without contradiction exist within the imperfect hierarchy of
genetic and morphological species, and how the former renders
the latter more intelligible in its own line.
the metaphysical bases of the empirological formulation of finality, see the same
author's A Preface to Metaphysics (New York: Mentor Omega,
"The
Principle of Finality:
First Aspect," pp. 103 ff.; "The Principle of Finality:
Second Aspect," pp. 107 ff. It was in this connection that Bergson was able to
remark (though w'ithout anything like an accurate understanding of the factors
providing his basis): " The philosopher, who begins by laying down as a principle
that each detail [of the evolutionary process] is connected with some general plan
of the whole, goes from disappointment to disappointment as soon as he comes to
examine the facts; and, as he had put everything in the same rank, he finds that,
as the result of not allowing for accident, he must regard everything as accidental."
(Op. cit., p. 116: emphasis supplied. Cf. Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution, pp.
and 167). It is precisely in disclosure of a contingent substantial dimension
in the 'world of necessary natures that the evolutionary concept strikes at the heart
of nineteenth-century idealism (see G. W. F. Hegel's statements in Enzyklopiidie
der philosophischen Wi.ssenschaften, ed. by F. Nicolin and 0. Poggler (Hamburg: F.
Meiner, 1959], par. 249, p.
and perhaps, at any Whiteheadian "philosophy of
organism" as well. See Ashley, "Change and Process." See also Merleau-Ponty's
critique of the reductionist conception of causality in biology, as sketched by Remy
Kwant in The Phenomenological Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty (Pittsburgh: Duquesne, 1963), esp. pp.
"The fundamental character of subjectivity."
240 The main modes of selection can be reduced to four:
1) It determines the
direction of evolutionary change (dynamic or directional selection);
It diversifies
living things along the available economic paths open to the forms at any given
time or place (diversifying selection); 3) It maintains the level of existing adaptive
improvements (normalizing, centripetal, or sta]:)ilizing selection, within the group;
balancing selection between groups); 4) It " neglects," i. e., the absence or deficiency
·
of adequate centripetal selective pressure allows degeneration.
241 Nogar, " Evolution:
Scientific and Philosophical Dimensions," p. 30.
242 Adler, " Solution of the Problem of Species," p.

PHILOSOPHICAL

VIII.

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN

OF SPECIES

305

THE Two HIERARCHIES

We have seen in all the foregoing that contemporary evolutionary science maintains the reality of substantial species both
secundum se and quoad nos, and that this suffices to remove
the direct contradiction between the scientific conception of
nature and the hylomorphic conception. We have shown moreover that the scientific notion of species implies their hierarchical ordering, in an imperfect or multilinear sense. On the other
hand, we have made reference to the fact that the traditional
concept of species as essential kinds implies a hierarchical
ordering in a perfect or unilinear sense. 243
In order, finally, to show how these two views, far from
being incompatible, are mutually illuminating, we shall have
to establish four further points. First, it: will have to be shown
how the genetic conception of the individual organism implies
a doctrine of substantial form. Second, we shall have to show
how the doctrine of substantial form set in the context of the
possible modes of difference leads to a doctrine of essentially
distinct " species," or, more exactly, of irreducible grades of
being through which any process of anagenesis on any planet
would have to pass if it were to continue. Third, we shall have
to show how, in the existential establishment of these grades,
there is room for the unforseeable and the undeterminedfor chance and the opportunistic-without
the phenomenon
of progress being reduced to a mere contingent path. In other
words, we shall see why the fact that " the fossil record shows
very clearly that there is no central line leading steadily, in a
goal-directed way, from a protozoan to man," that there has
been instead " continual and extremely intricate branching,"
so that " whatever course we follow through the branches there
are repeated changes both in the rate and in the direction of
evolution," 244 is entirely compatible with and even implied by
248 I consider the available literature
on this point to be demonstrative. See fn.
124 above. If I am mistaken, I shall be glad to be so proven.
244 Simpson, "The Nonprevalence
of Humanoids," in This Vi.ew of Life, p. 265.
Simpson develops this point thoroughly in The Meaning of Evolution; see esp. ch. X'
"The Problem of Problems," pp. 123-9.

306

JOHN N. DEELY

the fact that only the essential thresholds of ontological difference exhibit an apriori necessity and (in that sense) predetermination-a" hypothetical necessity": if there is a development of life, then there are only three possible levels which it
can traverse. 245 Finally, we shall have to consider the causal
possibility of the passage from " lower " to " higher " grades.
Then the influence of Darwin on philosophy and vice versa
-the mutual implications of the modem and traditional
"species" problematics-will be clear.
To begin with the first point, we are right back with the
question of the difference between science and philosophy in
terms of their relation to experience. In the particular case
that concerns us now-the transition from genetic to substantial individuality-the medium is the organizational correlate
of structure identified by Aristotle as " formal cause." We
know that the " material cause " of the individual organism,
the compositional correlate of structure, are DNA-RNA molecular groups, genes, chromosomes, etc. We know that what
differentiates them is not only their different components but
the way these components are arranged with respect to one
another-their organization. This is summed up by Mayr
and others by reference to " the unity of the genotype," the
fact that, although the genes are transmitted as more or less
discrete, unblending units, they function as interacting and
cooperative sets in the organism's development, controlling the
metabolic pattern as such which governs the development of
the organism as a whole and establishing a "reaction range"
outside of which the organism cannot be pushed without
ceasing to be itself. Thus in the concept of the genotype as
circumscribing both the capacity and the limitations for development of the organism there is a twofold element, an
empirical, sensible element subject to observation and direct
manipulation (the arrangement of the genotypic components
with respect to one another) and an intelligible, non-empirical
element, the unity itself of the genotype, expressible through
••• See De Koninck, art. cit., p.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

307

and demonstrable in the phenotype, which is inferred and without which the "organism as a describable object" would not
be possible, but which is directly neither observed nor observable. Now that principle of unity, which is not that which exists
but that by which the individual exists as a describable object
identical with itself and distinct from all others, that intelligible ground of the prior possibility of a determinate being,
is exactly what traditional philosophy intended by its notion
of substantial form-" the first act of any material entity which
determines its matter and gives it a constant tendency toward
further completion." 2 <W (A parallel analysis of the intelligible
apriori involved in the empirical composition of the genotype
leads in exactly the same way to the traditional notion of
primary matter as the capacity common to specifically or
recognizably distinct unities to be converted one into the
other.)
In my opinion, it may be going too far to say that here the
concept of formal causality (parallelly, material causality)
divides before the mind, so to speak, according to two specifically different modes of defining, one by resolution into the
sensible, the other by resolution into the intelligible-the
famous " perinoetic " and " dianoetic " intellections differentiating the " empiriological " realm of science from the " ontological " realm of natural philosophy-for the reason that the
observable, manipulable organization and composition themselves require the inference of " form " (materia actuata) and
"matter" (materia actuabilis) as intelligible principles of the
intrinsic constitution of existing and genetically constituted
individuals. Nothing more is involved in these two levels
from the philosopher's point of view, it seems to me, than the
distinction between first and second act.
However this may be, our point is clear: the genetic conception of individuality is not only not opposed to the hylomorphic
conception, but from the standpoint of intelligibility it directly
implicates it.
246

Cf. John Wild, Introduction to Realistic Philosophy (New York:

1948), p. 506.

Harper,

308

JOHN N. DEELY

Our next step is to demonstrate that the hylomorphic composition of natural units, the individuals or " substances " of
nature, necessarily implies that if there are individuals which
differ by reason of properties in the strictest ontological sense,
properties rooted in the intelligible a priori constitution of possibly different beings as consequent on the form alone, these
individuals are related by reference to these properties in a
unilinear way. 247 This will require but an application of the
logic of definition to the possible modes of difference.
Let us begin by restating the possible modes of difference. 248
Some things differ only in degree: the difference between the
two things may be rooted in one and the same perfection
possessed by both in different quantities, in which case it
will be signified by a positive term with varying quantification
that signifies more or less of the same. On the other hand,
some things differ in kind: either the difference between the two
things may be rooted in two " perfections " or determinations
related by contrariety, in which case it will be signified by two
positive terms, each signifying the possession of one of the two
contrary determinations,-e. g., the difFerence between placentals as a class and marsupials as a class; or the difference
between the two things may be rooted in one of two determinations related cumulatively (i.e., so related that whatever
possesses X must also possess Y, but note converso, where X
is the " cumulative " and Y the " accumulated " perfection,
and this deficiency with respect to X may be a condition
either of privation-simple indetermination-or of negationdeterminate exclusion), that one or 'root' perfection being
the cumulative determination or perfection, in which case it
will be signified by a positive and a negative term, the former
signifying the possession, the latter the rejection, of that on!'!
perfection-e. g., a) whatever has wings (cumulative perfection) must have externally specialized organs (accumulated
247 See Adler, The Pwblem of Species, pp. 110-111 and fn. 141, p. 111.
••• Here I am basing myself on and to a certain extent presupposing Adler's
analysis in "The Hierarchy of Essences." Anyone who wishes proof that all the
really possible modes of difference are being considered should consult this article.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

309

perfection), but not everything with externally specialized
organs need have wings, though it will necessarily have some
positive alternative, paws, for example (coordinate perfections
cumulative of the same determination) ; b) whatever has hoofs
(cumulative perfection) must have externally specialized organs (accumulated perfection), but the ungulates or hoofed
animals may differ among themselves as odd-toed-perissodactyls, or even-toed-artiodactyls
(two contrary perfections
cumulative of the same determination) ; c) whatever is capable
of self-replication (cumulative perfection) must be a material
substance (accumulated perfection), but not every material
substance is capable of replication (supraordinate relation of
cumulation) .
If we translate this analysis into the terms apparent, superficial, and radical difference in kind which we have used
throughout our preceding phases of analysis, we get the following correspondence.
An apparent difference in kind is plainly a subordinate mode
of difference in degree: when, between two things being compared, the difference in degree in a certain respect is large, and
when, in addition, in that same respect, the intermediate
degrees which are always possible are in fact absent or missing
(i.e., not realized by actual specimens), then the large gap in
the series of degrees may confer upon the two things being
compared the appearance of a difference in kind; really they
differ in degree.
Translating the superficial and radical' difference in kind is
a bit more tricky. On the one hand, an observable or manifest
difference in kind may be based on and explained by an
underlying difference in degree, in which one degree is above
and the other below a critical threshold in a continuum of
degrees; such differences in kind are real, and are termed
" superficial " only to indicate that what underlies and explains
them is a difference in degree involving a critical threshold, so
that a given degree is either above or below the threshold (e. g.,
icejwaterjsteam) correlated with either the presence or absence
of the property in question with respect to which no intermedi-

310

JOHN N. DEELY

ates are possible. On the other hand, an observable or manifest
difference in kind may be based on and explained by the fact
that of the two things being compared one has a factor or
element in its constitution that is totally absent from the
constitution of the other, in consequence of which the two
things, with respect to their fundamental constitution or makeup, can also be said to differ in kind; such differences in kind,
no more 1·eal than the preceding one8, are termed "radical "
only to indicate that the observable or manifest difference in
kind is itself rooted in an underlying difference in kind.
Now it is clear that, by the above definitions, two things
may differ superficially in kind when their difference is rooted
in contrariety and when their difference derives from cumulatively related perfections; all the examples given above to
illustrate the contrary and cumulative modes of difference in
kind could from a genetic standpoint be construed as superficial differences in kind. Nonetheless, among the examples
of cumulative modes of difference, there is an important difference from the standpoint of logic which shall have to be
looked at more closely, which is that, in all the examples
given except in that involving replication as a root power,
the differentiation of the two kinds involved three distinguishable perfecHons of which each species or kind possessed
two. In the example involving reproductive capacity, the
differentiation of the two kinds involved two, not three, distinct
perfections of which one kind possessed both and the other only
one.
Now, let us call all differences in kind which involve three
determinations, or two contrary determinations, "differences
according to mode Alpha"; and those which involve only two
determinations or perfections cumulatively related," differences
according to mode Beta." In terms of the logic of definition, 249
249 Adler, "The Hierarchy of Essences," p. 16: "A kind is a definable species of
thing. The definition of a species or kind, whether it be accidental or essential,
involves stating a genus and a difference. In order not to beg the question about
the essential as opposed to the accidental, let us use these three terms-' genus,'
'difference,' and 'species '-in the following manner. Let 'genus' signify whatever
is common to two kinds differentiated: i. e., let it signify one or more perfections

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

311

it is easy to see that all those kinds defined according to mode
Beta will always and necessarily be related to one another
unilinearly as subordinate and supraordinate, never as coordinate, contrary, or multilinear. "That differentiation according
to mode Beta makes one species supraordinate to the other
follows from the fact that one possesses the perfection or perfections possessed by the other and in addition possesses a
perfection lacked by that other. This fact not only causes one
species to be higher than the other, but also is the key to the
hierarchical ordering of all species thus differentiated." 250
We have here an antinomy.
Since Alpha and Beta exhaust the modes according to which
things can differ in kind, since moreover from a genetic point
of view (equivalenty: from an exclusive standpoint of material
cause) things which differ according to either mode fit the
definition of superficial difference in kind, whereas from a
logical point of view only mode Alpha fits the definition of
a superficial difference while mode Beta fits the definition of
a radical difference, we are forced to ask ourselves whether
the only differences in kind ontologically possible are not
either apparent or superficial (" differences according to mode
which the things being differentiated possess in common. Let ' difference ' signify
a perfection (or a set of inseparable perfections) possessed by one kind and
rejected by the other. Let 'species' signify a kind as constituted by one or more
perfections which it has in common with another kind, combined with the perfection, possessed or rejected, by which it is differentiated from that other. Hence
whether the kind under consideration is essential or accidental, defining the species
requires us to state its genus and its difference.
" So far we have used all these terms-' genus,' ' difference,' ' species,' and
'definition '-with systematic ambiguity, so that they are equally applicable to
ail kinds, whether they are differentiated according to mode Alpha or mooe Beta.
Now let us remove that ambiguity by seeing the altered signification of these terms
as we pass from one mode to the other." (See the further discussion in fn.
below.)
250 Adler, " The Hierarchy
of Essences," p. 18. The reader should beware of
making any simple parallels between Adler's analysis in " The Hierarchy of
Essences " of differential modes Alpha and Beta and my own analysis here; for, as
the reader familiar with all three texts will have noticed, in order to correlate the
analysis of the modes of difference in The Difference of Man with that in "The
Hierarchy " for the present context, it has been necessary to define differential
modes Alpha and Beta slightly differently than Adler did.

312

JOHN N. DEELY

Alpha ") , while the radical difference in kind represents a
mere logical construct without application to the realities of
the natural world. 250 a
250 • Actually, to speak with absolute exactitude and strictness, since the " superficial difference in kind is one that can be explained by an underlying difference in
degree," even though this fact "does not reduce that difference in kind to a
it would be possible for
difference in degree" (The Difference of Man, p.
a geneticist or molecular biologist misconceiving the type of formal autonomy that
is proper and possible within his diBcipline (see M. J. Adler, The Conditions of
Philosophy, New York: Atheneum, 1964, pp. 38-9 and 81-9; cf. also David Bidney,
Theoretical Anthropology, New York: Columbia, 1953, pp. 39-53, 106-113, and
115-6, inter alia) and in view of the fact that a " critical threshold " as such is
neither a genetic constituent, a gene, nor a combination of these, but something
consequent on such factors, to argue that even superficial differences represent mere
mental constructs and that in consequence there are only apparent differences in
the natural world, but no real ones of any genre. Such a view would run counter
not only to common experience and the known facts of speciation (see Part I, Sec. V
above, esp. pp. 144-6), but it would entail the denial of the possibility of logical
discourse grounded ·in the realities of nature, inasmuch as the law of the excluded
middle would be reduced (insofar as it denotes something beyond the simple
ontological identity of a thing with itself covered by the principle of identity and
valid in a world devoid of non-apparent differences in kind) to the status of an
ens rationis cum fundamento in re; and it would become in the end impossible to
distinguish between differences introduced into our thought by being and differences
introduced into being by our thought-exactly Quinton's dilemma. "The impossibility of intermediates [without reference to serial order] constitutes the discontinuity or discreteness of kinds; only things that differ in kind differ discretely or
discontinuously. Another way of saying this is to say that the law of the excluded
middle holds for things that differ in kind and only for things that differ in kind.
Thus, for example, a whole number is either odd or even. There is no third possi"When ... using the
bility or tertium quid." (The Difference of Man, p.
word ' continuum ' . . . to signify continuous variation- " whether actual or
possible, i. e.: " the mode of difference to which the law of the excluded middle
does not apply-as contrasted with discrete differences, to which it does apply,"
one is in the order of physical rather than mathematical discourse. (Ibid., p.
" Just as the word ' only ' is indicative of difference in kind . . . so the words
'more ' and ' less ' are indicative of difference in degree." (Ibid.), (See Aristotle,
Metaphysica, X, 7,
"When two things differ in kind, no intermediate is
possible; the law of the excluded middle applies; and the two things can be said
to differ discretely or discontinuously. Thus, for example, an animal either is able
to fly or not; there is no intermediate between flying and not flying. When two
things differ in degree, intermediates are always possible; the law of the excluded
middle does not apply; and the two things can be said to differ continuously.
Thus, for example, between any two species of reptile differing in length a third
species, having an intermediate length, is always possible. The fact that no fossil
or extant species may have this intermediate length does not remove the possi-

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

313

The answer to this question must be found in the tendency
of the notion of formal cause to be reduced to an empirical
arrangement, whereas beyond this it implies an intelligible
principle of substantial unity. If this is well understood, it
will be seen that any definition of the individual organism in
terms of its genetic structure is not and cannot be an essential
definition of what kind of organism it is simply, for the genetic
structure is a " compound " inasmuch as it is in the Aristotelian
sense at the level of materia secunda, i.e., materia jam actuata
-otherwise, it would not be an empirical and directly manipulable arrangement-" and no compound as such can enter into
the definition of a form." 251 Thus an organism is not a
genotype, although every organism must have a genotype.
The difference between accidental form and substantial form is
that whereas the former does not make a thing simply be, but only
makes it be such or so much-as large or white or anything else
of this kind-the substantial form gives it being simply. Hence
the accidental form presupposes an already existing subject; but
the substantial form presupposes only potentiality to existence, i. e.,
primary matter.
From this it is clear why it is impossible for one thing to have
several substantial forms; because the first makes the thing an
actual unity, and if others are added, inasmuch as they presuppose
the subject already existing in act, they confer only secondary
modifications. 252

Three things follow from this. First of all, we may note
that not only does an account of the individual organism in
terms of genetic organization imply a substantial principle of
bility of there being one." (Ibid., p. 22. Further exemplification with respect to
the law of the excluded middle is given on p. 22-vertebrate/invertebrate,
viviparous/oviparous, etc.).
Thus the very fact that irreducible differences occur at any level of biological
reality-in phenotypical adaptations, for
that they can be and are
kno'wn to be such independently of our researches into them, is already sufficient
evidence that it is untenable to contend that the world of nature consists of
things which differ only in degree and in no other way beyond numerical
existential diversity. See pp. 145-6 in Part I of this article.
251 St. Thomas, In II de anima, lect. 1, n. 222.
252 Ibid., n. 224.

314

JOHN N. DEELY

unity but to the extent it ignores that implication it inevitably
slips into a mechanistic reductionism; for from an ontological
perspective both the composition of a body and its empirical
organization qua empirical (as counterdistinguished from what
is proper to it as organization over against composition, namely,
to bespeak unity of determination over against manifold determinability) are in the order of accidental material disposition,
since " the matter of a living body," i.e., a living compound,
"stands to the body's life as potency to its act, while this act
according to which the body has life is precisely the soul." 253
In the second place, we can now see why real differences in
kind could appear from a genetic standpont as superficial, even
if they were in fact radical. 254 For this it would be sufficient
Ibid., n.
From this may be inferred also the reason behind the differing terminology
employed in analyzing the modes of difference in "The Hierarchy of Essences.,
and in The Difference of Man. Since all the infra-human forms are material
actualities simpliciter dicta, it is altogether impossible to demonstrate the radical
difference in kind between plant and simple corporeal substance, plant and animal,
except in terms of the hylomorphic conception of nature. Because this doctrine
unfolds at the level of the intelligible intuition of the unity of the sensibly organized, there is probably no way to formulate an indirect argument for its truth
susceptible of strictly empirical resolution (see The Difference of Man, pp.
esp. p.
On the other hand, because the human form is a material actuality only
secundum quid, it should be possible to structure an indirect argument leading to
an emprical situation inexplicable on the suppositions of a metaphysical (as distinguished from a methodological) behaviorism (see The Difference of Man, pp.
i.e., a situation which even from the genetic point view could no longer
be defended as a superficially differential situation, and independent of the
hylomorphic philosophical theory of nature. (E. g., this was exactly the thrust
and exactly the standpoint of my article on " The Emergence of Man: An inquiry
into the Operation of Natural Selection in the Making of Man," The New
Scholasticism, XL [April, 1966], pp. 141-176; and why I could say that with man,
" for perhaps the only time in the history of biological development, a specific
discontinuity arose and could only have arisen between two individuals " [p. 170];
whereas from a strictly hylomorphic standpoint such a statement would have been
inadmissable.)
The terminology of The Difference of Man was fashioned with this unique
structure of human esse in view; whereas, to begin with the terminology of
" The Hierarchy of Essences " and then precise it with respect to man's secundum
quid materiality would have made the analytical apparatus of The Difference of
Man impossibly cumbersome
253

254

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

315

to ignore or simply never see the intelligible implications of
composition and organization in terms of determinability and
determination.
For matter certainly is that which as such is not a particular existent, but simply in potency to becoming such. Form, on the other
hand, is that by reason of which .a particular thing actually exists.
While the composite is the particular existent itself; for that is
said to be .a particular existent (i.e., something you can point to)
which is complete in being· and kind. And among material things
only the composite substance is such. 255

From such a standpoint, empiriological in the reductive sense
to the end, all that would or could appear would be varying
genetic distributions yielding varying phenotypes, sometimes
with novel traits, it is true, but traits always reducible to the
underlying genetic organization of potentially infinite variation.
This is inescapable from within an explanatory scheme which
consistently subordinates intelligible implications to the sensible or empiric order, i. e., which never allows the intelligible
implications of experience to work themselves out. " When one
asks the empiricist what makes the thinking being different
from the animal without reason, he can find nothing in the
sensible order other than a different degree of organization.
From the same point of view St. Thomas would have to reach
the same conclusion. Since the empirical conditions are different in the two cases, the resultant phenomena differ: that is
all the empiricist finds." 256 For "no composite as such can
enter into the definition of a form." 257
In the third place, we can see that things which differ according to mode Alpha are always kinds definable in terms of
characteristics or traits which are rooted in the composite,
whereas the things which differ according to mode Beta are
always kinds definable in terms of a property which follows
necessarily from the substantial form as consequent on it alone
and due neither to the signate matter nor to the objective
St. Thomas, In II de anima, lect. 1, n. 215.
A.-D. Sertillanges, L'Idee de creation et ses retentissements en philosophie
(Paris: Au bier, 1945), p. 147. See however the qualifications in fn. 254 supra.
257 St. Thomas, In II de anima, n. 222.
255

256

316

JOHN N. DEELY

circumstances of the thing's existence or operation. 258 In traditional terms, all definitions worked out on the pattern of mode
Alpha may very well be real descriptive definitions which capture a distinctive life-style and syndrome of characters proper
to a stable and unique population within the natural world, but
from the side of the metaphysical composition of essence as an
a priori established within a determinate grade of being by
reason of a formal property convertible with its formal or
" specific " difference, such definitions are not and could never
become essential. 259 The former definitions are definitions of
" accidental " unities in the sense that historical causality alone
could determine the actual structure and function, for instance,
of Pterodactyls; the latter definitions are of "essential" unities
inasmuch as whatever the determinate structure of Pterodactyl
populations, each of their constituents had to exercise an
existence intrinsically determined to an irreducible substantial
level or grade of being.
Thus everything which differs according to mode Beta will
fit the definition of a radical difference in kind. And there will
be as many such differences as there are substantial
specifically different in the metaphysical sense.
We now see both why a radical difference in kind is indistinguishable from a superficial one from the standpoint of sensible
verification, and how these two modes differ in reference to the
hylomorphic composition of natural bodies; whereas the latter
may or may not be implicated in the eduction of a new
substance, the former always is. And as many true properties
as there are in the ontological sense, radicated in the form
alone (which never exists as such, of course), so many irreducible ontological species will there be in the traditional sense of
the term. No one has ever been able to show that there are
more than four such grades, and there is every reason to believe
that only four definitions are possible which meet the requirements of mode Beta. 260
See The Problem of Species, p. 190 (cited in fn. 157 supra).
See fn. 157 above, and The Problem of Species, pp. 179 ff.
260 See Acller, " Solution of the Problem
of Species" and "The Hierarchy of
Essences."
258
259

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

317

From this point of view, the radical kinds alone are species,
while all the other articulations of nature, " the class of the
birds and the class of the fishes," are sub-species.
While in terms of an analysis of species as natural kinds
distinguished among themselves according to the operation of
proper causal networks, from the point of view of historical
causality, the radical kinds are not species at all, but a priori
levels or grades rooted in the intelligible necessities of being,
which levels, moreover, can never exist as such but only as
realized in genetic populations of substantial individuale.
For purposes of illustrating this idea, let us suppose a finite
intelligence contemplating the universe at the period when there
was no actually living thing. This intelligence would have been
able to foresee with infallibility the emergence of man in this
world, and also all those factors which condition absolutely the
determination of matter in the line of the human composite: it
would have foreseen the plant and the brute, but would have found
it impossible to envision all the concrete modes according to which
these natural species would be realized. These species, which are
quasi-genera in relation to the sub-species, are fixed a-priori, because there is no intermediate point between " to be," " to live,"
" to know," and " to understand." . . . The inorganic, the plant
and the animal are boundary-species and certain. But it is impossible for the determination proper to the sub-species which
realize these natural species in a historical fashion to participate
in this positive certainty. Otherwise, the modes according to which
the animal or the plant would be realisable would be actually
determined in matter ahead of time ... that is to say that there
would not only be an idea of matter, but settled ideas.
The intelligence which we have imagined would know with certitude that matter would receive a human forih, but it would not
be able to say much about the intermediate forms. The throng of
sub-species possible is undefinable-between the highest forms of
vegetative life and the lowest forms of animal life there is yet again
an indefinable number of possibles-and consequently it belongs
to the order of the unenvisionable. If one wishes to advance, one
must straddle the intermediate forms, each step establishing a clear
discontinuity without actual intermediates. Doubtless the structure of the ladder will be determined in a certain measure by the
substances given at the outset. . . . But the number and the
interval of the stages could not be given in advance. . . . The

318

JOHN N. DEELY

surprises which matter reserves for us are undefined. One would
have no way of discerning in the initial composite (or composites)
a rigid plan of the hierarchy to be established, as if the universe
were a multiplication table or matter a subject which received
forms coming from without, as the Platonists imagined.
There is therefore a dimension of the unforeseeable in the order
of natural determinations:
All the sub-species belong at any
moment in the existence of the world to the order of future contingents. The hierarchy of these species belongs to history. One
understands then why the sub-species " cow " inasmuch as it is
cow is philosophically indefinable. It has a determinate truth only
a-posteriori, like the actual divisions of a continuum. 261

All the essential concerns and decisive interimplications of
the traditional and modern species problematics are faultlessly
limned in these lines by De Koninck. Such is the true picture
of the authentic influence of Darwin on philosophy. For "if
the existential establishment of the hierarchy of essences is an
opus naturae," the irregularity of the evolutionary progression
of the natural kinds such as science exhibits it is perfectly
explajned. 262
This brings us face to face with one further consideration,
however, which it is impossible not to come to terms with: the
passage from the lower to the higher grades of being, the root
problem of evolutionary progress.
Actually, this question is not so difficult as is often supposed.
In the first place, in terms of the hylomorphic composition of
bodies, it is impossible to deny that it is " the degree of complexity in the scale of organization of organic structures and
functions " 263 which is the true measure of ontological perfection and consequently the criterion of progress. It is a
question of principle, and quite independent of the impossibility of deciding in the particular case whether a butterfly is
" more complex " than a moth, an elephant than a mammoth,
or an oyster than a clam:
The number and diversity of activities complete in themselves
varies in direct proportion to the perfection of the soul in living
261

De Koninck, art. cit., pp. 234-5.

••• Ibid., p. 240.
••• Cf. The Problem of Species, p. 261.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

819

things. The higher the soul the wider is the range of its activities;
and the wider its active range the more, and the more distinctly
diversified, organs or bodily instruments are required by it. So
the relatively greater nobility of the rational soul calls for a greater
diversity of its bodily organs, whilst the far lower soul of a
segmented animal or a plant has only a narrow field of activity and
therefore needs a body that is more uniform and less articulated,
and in any part of which, taken separately, it can maintain its
being.264

" In short, not every difference in degree of perfection makes a
difference in species, but only such as involve grades of being." 2a5
In the second place, from within the explanatory framework
of evolutionary science, and as Darwin himself clearly recognized, adaptation to the contingent circumstances of a changing
environment results inevitably in the preservation and development of natural kinds which tend in the long run to mutate
in the direction of superior " accidental " (i. e., historical) embodiments of the irreducible grades of being, as a simple
concomitant of the fact that adaptive versatility absolutely
depends on a versatile (i.e., complex) physical organization:
As species have generally diverged in character during their long
course of descent and modification, we can understand why it is
that the more ancient forms, or early progenitors of each group, so
often occupy a position in some degree intermediate between existing groups. Recent forms are generally looked upon as being,
on the whole, higher in the scale of organization than ancient forms;
and they must be higher, insofar as the later and more improved
forms have conquered the older and less improved forms in the
264 St. Thomas,
In I de aninw,, lect. 14, n.
The point is made equally
clearly from an " empiriological " point of view (for the sense of this, see the
discussion of reductionism in Section VII above) by Julian Huxley in Essays of a
" Higher and Lower," pp. 39-56.
Humanist (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964), ch.
See also A.-D. Sertillanges, "La hierarchie des etres," in Le Christianisme et les
philosophies
ed.; Paris: Aubier, 1941), pp.
See also Gredt, n. 519,
p. 441 Nota. Moreover, I may add that the cited text from St. Thomas sufficiently
indicates the manner in which Pere Teilhard's celebrated "law of complexity/
consciousness" is ontologically founded.
265 Adler,
The Problem of Species, p.
fn. 208. Cf. A. G. Van Melsen,
Evolution and Philosophy (Pittsburgh: Duquesne, 1965), esp. pp. 97-157.

320

JOHN N. DEELY

struggle for life; they have also generally had their organs more
specialized for different functions. This fact is perfectly compatible
with numerous beings still retaining simple and but little improved
structures, fitted for simple conditions of life; it is likewise compatible with some forms having retrograded in organization, by
having become at each stage of descent better fitted for new and
degraded habits of life. 266

In the third place, it is not necessary to deny that " dogs
give birth to puppies and not human infants," 267 nor to
question the necessity of a proportion between an effect and
its adequate cause, nor to adopt a view " according to which
all animals (and plants) are but the transitory manifestations of one world-wide life-substance," 268 nor even to invoke
" the intervention of causes other than the material energies
at work in the starting point and in the environment," 269 in
order to account rationally for the transition from the inorganic
to the living to the animal. It is necessary and sufficient, in
my opinion, to attend simply to one fact and one principle
which in truth hold the key to most of the problems generated
in philosophy by the evolution of life, whether they center on
266 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (edition cited in fn. 13 supra), p. 364.
See also J. Huxley, "Higher and Lower," in Essays of a Humanist.
267 " The implications of evolution contradict
our daily experience. When a fish
comes out on dry land it dies. Evolution as commonly taught also involves a
contradiction of the principle of causality. In our experience every cause is greater
than its effect. Dogs give birth to puppies and not human infants. In evolution
as so commonly taught every effect is greater than its cause, referring to the
development of the major species. By a gradual process of perfection it culminates
in the most perfect being of all, man. The world as we know it does n>Ot support
this view." Carlo, Philosophy, Science, and Knowledge, p. 121. Compare with the
view of de Finance, Existence et liberte, pp. 262-3 (cited in fn. 270 infra).
268 A view which Joseph Donceel attributes
approvingly to Teilhard de Chardin
and Karl Rahner: "Causality and Evolution: A survey of some Nco-scholastic
Theories," by Joseph Donceel, The New Scholasticism, XXXIX (July, 1965),
p. 296.
269 Donceel's
own view, ibid., p. 298. On p. 304 Donceel cites de Finance's
position but seems not to have grasped its authentic implications. This is clear
from his attempt to introduce via Pere Teilhard "a third intermediate notion, that
of creative transformation " (p. 306) between the divine creative act and the
actions of creatures-a very curious doctrine from one who claims to understand
from within, as Fr. Teilhard did not, the theology and philosophy of St. Thomas.
Cf. Sertillanges, L'id6!;J d!;J creation !;Jt ses retentissements en philosophie.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

$21

the relation of essence to existence or on the origin of " species."
The fact is that the process by which evolution has taken place
must be found in the individual generations of organisms. The
principle is the involution and mutual activation of the causes:
causae ad invicem. sunt causae.
Here it is a question of making explicit certain indications
already touched on in Section VI above. There can never be
any question of an effect as such exceeding the determination
or " perfection " of its adequate reasons for being-a contradiction indeed; but the resason for being is never an efficient
cause alone. " There is more in the cause and the effect than
in the cause alone," notes de Finance. 270 To challenge the
270 Joseph de Finance,
Existence et liberte, p. 268. This passage (pp. 262-8)
bears citation: " L'idee de causalite instrumentale est restee trop souvent liee a
des schemes grossierement artificialistes (le marteau, la scie, le pinceau, etc.), qui
empechent de voir en elle ce qu'elle est en effet: un essai pour repondre a cette
question que pose !'experience quotidienne comment un etre peut-il donner ce qu'il
n'a pas? Comment peut-il etre plus que soi? (Voir la-dessus d'excellentes pages
du P. Labourdette, "Le peche originel et les origines de l'homme," Revue Thomiste
1950, III, pp. 496-505, ainsi que J. Maritain, Raison et raisons, Paris, Egloff, 1947,
pp. 77-82.)
"Si l'on s'engage dans cette direction, on concevra les individus comme des
instruments au service de la Cause universelle, qui ne cesse par eux d'amener a
!'existence des etres en qui son idee s'exprime de plus en plus parfaitement. On
peut aller plus loin et, rejoignant Lamarck par une voie imprevue, attribuer ce
role instrumental au milieu lui-meme. Mais il ne faudrait pas que l'idee, forcement
analogique et inadequate, de causalite instrumentale, nous donne !'impression d'une
activite qui s'exercerait sur l'univers en lui restant exterieure. Non, dans la
perspective ou nous nous sommes place, l'univers apparait travaille par une force
interne qui le projette au dela de lui-meme. Cet au-dela n'est pas en lui a la fagon
d'une perfection naturellement possedee, et cependant il est deja en lui d'une
certaine maniere et cree en lui comme une inquietude, une distension metaphysique.
ll est en lui d'abord comme la fin est dans le mouvement et c'est lui qui donne leur
sens et leur elan a toutes les activites cosmiques. Mais le rapport du mobile a la
fin n'epuise pas la signification de la presence intentionnelle. C'est l'efficience meme
des agents naturels qui se trouve par elle surelevee et ordonnee a des effets qui
depassent le niveau d'etre de ceux-ci.
"La chose paraitra moins etrange, si l'on observe que toute action de la
creature est, par elle-meme, position d'un plus-etre ou, en d'autres termes, que la
causalite de l'agent fini est essentiellement synthitique et progressive. ll ne pent,
dit-on, y avoir dans l'effet plus que dans la cause. Soit, mais, a moins d'admettre
que la cause s'appauvrit de ce qu'elle transmet ou que !'existence individuelle n'a
aucune densite ontologique, il faut ajouter aussitot qu'il y a plus dans la cause et
l'effet que dans la cause seule. Le cas est particulierement clair dans Ie domaine

JOHN N. DEELY

evolutionary idea in terms of the relation of efficient cause to
its possible effect considered, moreover, from the standpoint
itself of efficiency, is to misunderstand the issue entirely, for it
de Ia vie. Le plus determine des fixistes n'a aucune peine a concevoir Ia propagation
d'une espece a partir de quelques individus et nul dans !'Ecole n'a jamais vu la
moindre difficulte dans !'extension graduelle de la vie sur la planete. Or, cette
extension constitue bel et bien pour l'univers un progres dont il faut rendre compte.
II y a, en toute causalite veritable, une antinomie qui differe moins qu'on le pense
de celle qu'enveloppe !'idee d'evolution. Seulement l'experience quotidienne nons
impose !'idee de Ia causalite, tandis que !'evolution ne repond a aucune donnee
immediate. Mais l'une et !'autre sont progressives et ne s'expliquent en definitive
que par Ia presence operante, en tout agent cree, de l'lpsum Esse subsistens.
L'evolution ne serait un scandale que pour une conception strictement aristotelicienne du processus causal, ramene a Ia transmission d'une forme identique-l'existence individuelle de l'effet n'entrant pas en ligne de compte--; mais alors,
contre !'intention d'Aristote, c'est Ia verite meme de l'efficience que l'on compromet."
This last line particularly is worth noting: "L'evolution ne serait un scandale
que pour une conception strictement aristotelicienne du processus causal, ramene it
Ia transmission d'une forme identique--l'existence
individuelle de l'effet n'entrant
pas en ligne de compte "; for this seems to have been the basis for Hegel's express
denial of the possibility of an historical evolution such as Darwin argued for: " Die
Natur ist als ein System von Stufen zu betrachten, deren eine aus der andern
notwendig hervorgeht und die niichste Wahrheit derjenigen ist, aus welcher sie
resultiert, aber nicht so, dass die eine aus der andern natiixlich erzeugt wiirde,
sondern in der innern, den Grund der Natur ausmachenden Idee. Die llietamorphose
kommt nur dem Begriffe als solchem zu, da dessen Veriinderung allein Entwicklung ist. Der Begriff aber ist in der Natur teils nur Inneres, teils existierend nur
als lebendiges Individuum; auf dieses allein ist daher existierende Metamorphose
beschriinkt.
"Es ist eine ungeschickte Vorstellung iilterer, auch neuerer Naturphilosophie
gewesen, die Fortbildung und den Ubergang einer Naturfonn und Sphiire in eine
hohere fiir eine iiusserlich-wirkliche Produktion anzusehen, die man jedoch, urn sie
deutlicher zu machen, in das Dunkel der Vergangenheit zuriickgelegt hat. Der
Natur ist gerade die Ausserlichkeit eigentiimlich, die Unterschiede auseinanderfallen und sie als gleichgiiltige Existenzen a uftreten zu lassen; der dialektischc
Begriff, der die Stufen fortle'itet, ist das Innere derselben. Solcher nebuloser, im
Grunde sinnlicher Vorstellungen, wie insbesondere das sogenannte Hervorgehen z. B.
der Pflanzen und Tiere aus dem Wasser und dann das Hervorgehen der entwickeltern Tierorganisationen aus den niedrigern usw. ist, muss sich die denkende
Betrachtung entschlagen."
(G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopiidie der
Wissenschaften, neu herausgegeben von Friedheim Nioolin und Otto Pdggeler
[Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1959], p. :202, par. 249. See Stace's comments on this
passage in The Philosophy of Hegel [New York: Dover, 1955], par. 434, pp. 313315).
"Mais alors," nous disons encore, "contre !'intention d'Aristote, c'est la verite
meme de l'efficience que l'on compromet."

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

is to make no allowance for the pre-existence of the " patient "
and the repercussions of its own pre-existing organizational
dispositions which may either reinforce or cancel out or modify
in some startling way the dispositions which would have been
established by the efficiency of the agent if its interaction
partner had been a purely plastic material. Since the corruption
of one form is the generation of another, and since all forms are
corrupted only per accidens, it is to the final dispositions of the
being corrupted that we must look if we wish to know the
ontological species of the subsequent form.
This is clear from Aristotle's definition of the soul (the substantial form of a living being) through its proper subject: "If,
then, we have to give a general formula applicable to all kinds
of soul, we must describe it as the first grade of actuality of a
natural organized body," 271 where the "natural organization"
in question is simply the microstructural dispositions which
will necessitate the eduction from matter of a form with the
faculty of replicating itself-matter organized in such a way as
to enclose the capacity for life. For " unity has many senses
(as many as 'is' has), but the most proper and fundamental
sense of both is the relation of an actuality to that of which
it is the actuality," 272 as the pupil plus the power of sight
constitutes the eye.
The whole question turns on the problem of organization.
The total range of diversity in the universe of physical beings
is rooted in the peculiar disposition and composition of parts
in each unity, that is, in the individuating disposition; but
because there are four irreducible levels of material existence,
this individuating disposition must also always include a specifying disposition.
Living bodies, as all natural bodies, are fashioned out of
pre-existing matter, i. e., out of the potentiality in each thing
to be converted, remotely or proximately, into something
radically different. Thus, considered in itself, life pertains to
271

2 '"

Aristotle, De anima, Bk. II, ch. 1,
Ibid.,
b 8-9.

b 4-6.

JOHN N. DEELY

the potency of matter. Per se, the organization specific of life
(realizable according to countless concrete modes) belongs to
inorganic matter only after the manner of an inadequate or
remote potentiality; per accidens, however, it may under given
conditions pertain to it adequately, i.e., causally.
This is the basis for the prior possibility in principle of
so-called "equivocal generation": the origin of living matter
out of non-living matter by reason of a fortuitous dispositioning
of the latter in a chance (or laboratory controlled) series of
causes. That this is possible follows from the very nature of
the soul as the first act of a body disposed through organization
to sustain in being the operations of life. It does not matter
by what agencies this organization is effected: the sole condition essential and primary for educing a soul (= for constituting a living being) is the production of an organization
suited to life; the actual processes through which this organization is constituted are accidental and purely secondary considerations. A univocal cause is always proportioned to its
effect, either in the sense of belonging to the same irreducible
ontological level, or in the sense of belonging to a higher order,
such that it contains the ontological species of its effect within
itself eminently. An equivocal cause, on the other hand, need
not be proportioned to its effect except per accidens, in the
general way that any material substance is able to act on
another by very reason of belonging to a common ontological
genus. In this way, as the investigations of biochemistry
sufficiently indicate, the structures of the living world are
potentially latent throughout the whole of secondary matter; 273
for which reason again a concatenation of special circumstances
could efficaciously though in a per accidens way disposition the
specific (ontologically specific) organization of a living being
which otherwise pertained to any one of the circumstanced
273 E. g., consult N. H. Horowitz,
"The Origin of Life," in Frontiers of Basic
Science, E. Hutchings, ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1958); S. Huang, "Occurence
of Life In the Universe," American Scientist, 47 (September, 1959), pp. 397-402,
Albert Ducrocq, The Origins of Life (London: Elek) . Two works in this area
are fundamental classics: A. I. Oparin, The Origin of Life on Earth (3rd ed.; New
York: Macmillan, 1957); and L. J. Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment
(Boston: Beacon, 1958). See also Gredt, fn. I p. 349, n. 408, pp. 342-3.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

entities only potentially and indeed inefficaciously. In such a
case, there would be no violation of the principle of causality
and no need for a "special" divine concursus (still less intervention) , any more than there are instances of either of these
in our everyday experience. 274 The soul is but the first actuality
of a disposed physico-chemical structure.
From an experimental point of view, it is only a superficial
difference in kind. " Since in the two cases the empirical conditions are different, the phenomena themselves differ: that is
all that the scientist finds." 275
From an explanatory and ontological point of view, it is a
radical difference in kind, an irreducible ontological level or
zone which will fill itself up with novelties until the opening
of a still further zone is required by the very exuberance of
the vegetative forms.
The fact that the relationship of the mechanistic to the autonomous
process components is dependent upon, and therefore largely patterned after, the physical relationship of macrovariables and microstates has been the origin of many of the difficulties and misconceptions which have arisen in biological theorizing. The tendency
of so many investigators who are concerned with specific macroscopic mechanisms to make short shrift of any organismic concepts,
and to generalize mechanistic views too readily beyond their
original limits, can no doubt be traced to this source. 276

" We are equally far removed from a pat mechanism as
from an intrinsically dualistic vitalism"; 277 and yet, like De
Koninck's imaginary intelligence contemplating the earliest
De Finance, lac. cit. (see fn. !'l70 supm).
Sertillanges, L'idee de creation, p. 147.
276 Walter M. Elsasser, Atom and Organism, A New Approach to Theoretical
Biology (Princeton: The Un'iversity Press, 1966), p. 106. On the preceding page,
Elsasser exactly observed that " to consider the organism apart from its mechanistic
components and functions is patently absurd. This is such a fundamental fact
that one must be quite sure not to mistake it for an implicit guarantee that
mechanistic biology will be successful by itself." C£. Jacques Maritain, "Ontology
and Empiriology in the Study of the Living Organism," in The Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 19!'l-199. According to Maritain, the "ontological and philosophical
knowledge of the living thing " has as " part of its task to root out the double
illusion of mechanism and vitalism." (p. 198)
277 Ibid., p. 60.
274

275

326

JOHN N. DEELY

stages of the process, we recognize the inevitability of life once
constituted to rise-barring catastrophe--by the steps of historical novelty and by multifarious and weaving paths leading
through a maze of natural forms through a taxonomic hierarchy
to the rational animal; and we recognize within the 1,600,000
plus types of animals (including here the 800,000 plus types of
insects which in an ontological no less than in a strictly
biological optic are modes of animality: sentire in sentibus est
esse) and 200,000 plus types of plants called by the taxonomist
" species " another order of species and another hierarchy, the
perfect hierarchy of essential forms.
We see, therefore, how the problem of the " higher " from the
" lower " poses itself within the order of ontological grades. It
is a mistake and a complete misunderstanding to state the issue
in terms of dogs generating humans or butterflies generating
mice. The authentic philosophical question is whether there
is some form of physico-chemical organization which could
under some circumstances be so disposed by the cosmic agents
environing it as to require the eduction of a living form; and
beyond that a question of whether there is any form of
vegetative life which could under some circumstances give rise
to some form capable in however imperfect and rudimentary
a way of sensitive life. And from the standpoint of the definition of the soul through its proper subject and the involution
of the causes, it is impossible to say that an affirmative answer
to this question involves a contradiction. By reason of the fact
that the ontological species can only be realized in individuals
historically and contingently constituted, it is impossible to
assign to these species absolute limits. This is the essential
error in the distinction between natural and systematic species
as it is commonly drawn by philosophers. "What De Koninck
calls the absolute species are ordered hierarchically, but within
each sphere of the hierarchy-which, because of the intrinsic
indetermination and contingency of these forms is a zone of
probability-there is a continuum of sub-species, varieties, or
races which are only ' statistical entities.' " 278
278

Adler, The Problem of Species, p. 82.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

327

Finally, we see just what are the philosophical dimensions
of the origin of species. The principle of hierarchy, which
governed traditional thought in this matter without all its
main implications being recognized at once, stated that, since
nature is of a hylomorphic constitution, there are a number of
essentially distinct kinds in the world of physical things, and
these specific natures are ordered in a perfect hierarchy by
reason of the nature of essential constitution. This principle
of hierarchy excludes a single all-embracing continuum, but it
allows for a plurality of continua that permit a lower kind to
approach the next higher by a scale of degrees. Nonetheless,
the recognition that we not only know quiddities other than
man but know them quidditatively, all that there are-this
became possible historically only thanks to the massive labors
of evolutionary research which forced the ambiguities and uncertainties of traditional discussions to the fore. Speaking
from a traditional point of view and in strictly traditional
terms, it became possible to say: " Every real [in the sense of
essential] definition we possess has a natural species for its
object; and for every natural species that there is we possess
a real [essential] definition. Only singulars or accidental units
escape our dianoetic intellection. These are truly infraintelligible for the human mind, but no specific essence
is." 279 Once the symbiosis of epistemology and ontology
in the statement of the traditional problematic was recognized, it became possible to free the ontological analysis
in its own line; and this, coupled with fidelity to the principle
of parsimony, made it necessary to acknowledge that the
question as to what are the several real essential definitions we
possess is answered by naming the universal concepts which we
can define adequately, immediately below which in the order
of concepts occur those which we cannot so define; and that
since our knowledge of such things as gold and mercury, lion
and dog, oyster and elephant, by all accounts, goes no further
than nominal and descriptive definitions within the order of
••• Ibid., p. 41.

328

JOHN N. DEELY

perinoetic intellection, since in addition it is impossible to
arrange our real descriptive definitions of these things according to the principle of perfect hierarchy, it is impossible to
respect the principle of parsimony and still contend that these
things either are real species or that our knowledge of them
justifies regarding them as approximations to and substitutes
for the putative multiplicity of infra-human groupings of infima
specific constitutions. In fact, there is no evidence for such
multiplicity.
Contingency and dynamism are certainly central in the Aristotelian philosophy of nature. It is fundamentally a philosophy of
change. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that Aristotle is primarily concerned with the dynamics of change in the individual
subject, and not with the dynamism of nature itself, as having a
career in which variegation occurs in time. To this extent, the postDarwinian criticism is justified. Partly the failure is due to cultural
circumstances, which made it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish sharply enough between the two meanings of " species "; even
if Aristotle and St. Thomas had explicitly drawn the line between
Species and Race [i. e., sub-species in the ontological sense or
species in the biological sense], they could not have fully appreciated its implications for the dynamism of nature, because they were
ignorant of facts which have been discovered by later research. A
real addition to Aristotelian truth is, therefore, possible, an addition
which develops hylomorphism in the direction of its own central
principles. The result is a richer and sounder philosophy of change,
which embraces not only the careers of mutable individuals, but the
temporal course of nature itself in all its infra-Specific variability.
As there is growth and change in the individual between generation
and corruption, so between creation and the end of time, there is
the maturation of the world itself. Created nature has grown and
developed, has flourished and decayed, in the course of generations;
and the basic principles of this history, with its partially unpredictable future, are two: the potentiality of matter and the contingency of form. 280
In the light of these clarifications and rectifications, and
speaking within the matrix of essential principles and their
implications rather than within the perspective of textual and
••• Ibid., p. 278.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

3Q9

historical analysis alone, we must say that "for Aristotle, the
fundamental reality is the hierarchy and discontinuity of
species, though he also acknowledges the appearance of continuity in the ascending scale of degrees of vitality by which
we pass from lower to higher forms of life; and, in addition, as
an empirical biologist, he candidly confesses the difficulty of
determining whether a particular specimen is to be classified
as a plant or as an animal." 281
To summarize. If by species you mean what is fixed in such
a way as to be open to no differentiation beyond individual
traits, then there are no species. If by species you intend existentially differentiated natural populations, then there are as
many species as the conditions of genetic transmission, environmental stability, and historical interaction give rise to-well over
a million at current count. Finally, if by species you understand
a type or grade of being irreducible in a hierachy by reason of a
formal difference, a type so related within the hierarchy as to
be unilinearly situated as higher or lower than the ones immediately below or above by the addition or substraction of a
unit difference peculiar to that one step of gradation in the
natural hierarchy-an irreducible level of intelligibility which
admits of no intermediate stage-then there are but four
species: corporeal substance, living corporeal substance, sensi-·
tive corporeal substance, and rational sensitive corporeal substance; for only these four notions taken as types of being can
be so defined inductively that their respective differences differentiate every inorganic composite, the highest (most active) as
well as the lowest, from every plant, the lowest as well as the
highest; and so on for plants and animals, animals and men.
But according to which of the two legitimate senses of species
you have in mind, you must conceive of the hierarchy of nature
differently, for it is differently on the two accountings: in the
hierarchy of historically constituted populations differing really
and substantially among themselves according to typical and
(relatively) constant genotypic frequencies and phenotypic
281

Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference It MaklU!, p. 302.

330

JOHN N. DEELY

syndromes, the least animal is not differentiated from the
highest plant by the addition and substraction o£ a unit difference peculiar to that one step o£ speciation in the hierarchyindeed the step as such is not there, and it is: difficult or
impossible to assign a sense to the terms here. " The terms
' higher ' and ' lower ' do not mean the same thing £or the
scientist and the philosopher. . . . They cannot be applied to
the details o£ specific classification .... Consequently, he [the
scientist] does not address himself to the question: how in
evolutionary science, could the higher forms come £rom the
lower forms? " 282
On the other hand, even £rom the philosopher's point o£
view, this question, if properly posed, "though it offers some
difficulties, . . . does not occasion a real stumbling block." 283
In the hierarchy o£ irreducible grades or spheres o£ being, each
o£ the levels is not only different in the way it surpasses the
activities o£ corporeal nature but also according to the unique
and contingent way in which the historical populations subrealized as statistical entities within these probability zones or
levels (dimensions, even) exceed their proximate inferiors
under one aspect and are exceeded by them under another; yet
the hierarchical ordering o£ the ontological zones a.s such
interrupts the ordering o£ the interaction-structured population
species, for no population species as such is ever differentiated,
so far as is known, by the addition and subtraction o£ a unit
difference.
In short, it was at its time premature and is in our time
hopelessly obsolete to subscribe to John Dewey's contention
that, with respect to the traditional concerns o£ philosophy
turned toward nature, "the greatest dissolvent in contemporary thought o£ old questions, the greatest precipitant o£ new
methods, new intentions, new problems, is the one effected by
the scientific revolution that found its climax in the ' Origin o£
Nogar, The Wisdom of Evolution, pp. 8!20-!'ll.
George P. Klubertanz, "Causality and Evolution," The Modern Schoolman,
XIX (November 1941), p. l!'l. See further Nogar, "Higher from Lower" in The
Wisdom of Evolution, pp. 8!'l0-8!'l4.
282
283

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

831

Species.' " 284 The truth o£ the matter has been stated much
less extravagantly and much more accurately by Raymond
Nagar. Distinguishing sha;rply between natural species as
essences and natural species such as are intuitively recognized
in the sensible world, Nagar observes that "the divisions
between substances and accidents, composed and simple bodies,
the living and the non-living, the sensible and the non-sensible,
the rational and the irrational, do not carry the analysis very
far into the matter o£ natural species. They do not tell you the
difference between the paramecium, the mollusk, the toad, the
flamingo, the camel and the cat." 285 " Contemporary science
does not use these criteria o£ higher or lower £or the simple
reason that they cannot be applied to the details o£ specific
classification. Which is a ' higher ' form, the beetle, the grasshopper, or the honeybee? It is not that the metaphysical
grades o£ perfection are not valid philosophical categories of
the general divisions o£ being; the scientist just has not found
them useful in his methodology." 286

IX.

CoNCLUSION

What are we to conclude £rom the foregoing discussion? We
began this investigation by posing £or ourselves the question
o£ whether the recent discoveries in science, especially the
refinements on Darwin's theory o£ evolution, did not demand,
as John Dewey and many other contemporary thinkers contended, 287 a radical change in the conception o£ the nature of
philosophical thinking?
For many post-Darwinian thinkers, only a philosophy imperfectly aware o£ its nature and £unction would claim to be
more than an intellectual expression o£ the aspirations and
ideals o£ a particular culture. Philosophy was born and reared
in the emotional and social life o£ mankind evolving, and that
John Dewey, art. cit., p. 19.
The Wisdom of Evolution, pp.
280 Ibid., pp.
287 See Philip
P. Wiener's Evolution and the Founders of Pragmation (New
York: Harper, 1949).
284

285

332

JOHN N. DEELY

is precisely where it must remain. Thus " metaphysics " is
the name of philosophy so close to the Greeks in (cultural)
aspiration and (cultural) ideal that it has not gotten around to
really meeting Darwin-or to realizing that any attempt to
discern the fundamental structural features which the intelligibility afforded by the world postulates as its necessary condition ("its condition a priori," as some would have it) is
futile and unrewarding, to say nothing of culturally obsolete.
Now it is certainly true that ancient and medieval philosophy in its most formal reflections concerned itself with discerning evidence for precisely this last sort of inquiry. And it is
equally true that the question as to whether or not there is a
metaphysical dimension to man's awareness of the world is the
same as the question as to whether or not this task is proper
and possible. But, in the perspectives of these classic assessments, what was the focus, the specifying concern, as it were,
of the general metaphysical problematic? In the AristotelianThomistic tradition the answer to this is forthright:
The question which was raised of old and is raised now and always,
and is ever the subject of doubt, viz. what being is, is just the
question, what is substance? For it is this that some assert to be
one, others more than one, and that some assert to be limited in
number, others unlimited. And so we also must consider chiefly
and primarily and almost exclusively what that is which is in this
sense. 288

Dewey is not the first nor will he be the last to proclaim the
futility of such a consideration, and to do so in the name of
"evolutionary science"; and yet, in the light of the question
as posed by Aristotle, it is incumbent on those who would
relativize philosophy in terms of the cultural state of scientific
progress and who would accordingly see in philosophy no more
than an effort to draw out the ultimate implications of scientific
theories in terms of "world-view," to demonstrate and not
merely proclaim that the data of evolutionary science render
288 Aristotle, Metaphysica, VII, ch. 1,
St. Thomas, In VII Met., lect.
and
This, of course, is not to say that the formal
1, esp. nn.
subject of Metaphysics is ens per se or substantia rather than ens commune: see
below, and the discussion in fn. 188 supra.
reference in fn.

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

838

all question of being in terms of substance and all substantialist interpretation of nature radically inept. Only then would
their position be a reasonable and not authoritarian or dogmatic one; for it can hardly be claimed that evolution renders
metaphysics in the traditional sense " impossible " and outdated by time if an empirically sound assessment of the
materials on which evolutionary thought is primarily based can
be shown to be in accord with the basic insights of an act/
potency analysis of substance. There is an alternative to the
assessments current among many thinkers, no less fundamental,
but less extravagant.
We have only begun to see the implications of hylomorphism ...
in the light of modern scientific research. We must estimate our
intellectual responsibilities in terms of our concrete historic position
in a developing culture. Certainly, the work of philosophy is not
yet finished; on the contrary, there is evidence that we may be
entering on a fresh historic moment when, after the frustrations
and confusions of the first few centuries of modern times, we may
be able to reap the fruits which belong properly to a culture in
which science finds its place alongside philosophy and theology in
the fulfillment of human enlightenment. A fruitful rapprochement
between natural philosophy and the natural sciences is just be··
coming possible, after years of misunderstanding and destructive
feud, and such promise bears directly on the remaining difficulties
in the problem of species .... These very difficulties lie directly
in the path of an advance in philosophical thought,-an advance
which promises to be the characteristic achievement of our epoch
in the centuries to come.
We need not wait, however, for the burgeonings of time. There
is immediate work to be done. . . . In all of these matters it may
be too early to accomplish more than a partial clarification and a
qualified resolution of the problems, but the more definitely we
understand these problems the better we have performed the work
that seems allotted to our day. We are living at a time when
the main philosophical task is to clear away the accumulated
underbrush which obscures the field of vision. . . . The problems
are genuine, there is work to be done in philosophy; and at least,
one can hope that the brilliant past of the traditional doctrine
contains the secret which, if wisely read, will lead to an equally
brilliant future. 289
289

Adler, The Problem of Species, pp.

passim.

334

JOHN N. DEELY

Is an understanding of the world at all possible which is
not in every way bound to the cultural state of scientific
progress, or, more generally, a pure function (more or less
perfectly aware of itself as such) of the level of historic
consciousness attained by a given cultural epoch? That is the
larger question. This essay has not attempted to deal with it
directly/ 90 except to make it clear that the problem of specific
structures framed by modern biology is not a problem too dark
to be illumined fundamentally by the essential principles of
the metaphysics and natural philosophy of the scholastic tradition; so that, consequently, whether or not one considers it
in the end impossible to transcend " even in thought " 291 spacetime in general and the temporality and historicity of our
socio-cultural existence in particular, at least there is nothing
in the materials of evolutionary science which at the present
time gives the lie to this critical contention of Jacques
Maritain: " The whole structure of the experimental science
of the ancients has doubtless crumbled and its collapse may
well appear to anxious minds to spell the ruin of everything
the ancients had thought. But in reality, their metaphysics and
their philosophy of nature, in their essential principles at least
(as they can be gathered from the Thomistic synthesis), have
no more been affected thereby " 292 than the intelligibility of a
290 I have however dealt with this "larger
question" directly, or 'in its own
terms,' in another essay, "Finitude, Negativity, and Transcendence: The Problematic of Metaphysical Knowledge," Philosophy Today, XI (Fall 1967), pp. 184-206;
and it may be noted that this present essay is but the amplification and (to that
extent) demonstration of two points mentioned in passing in this other essay, on
pp. 191-2 ad fn. 30 and in fn. 32 p. 203, respectively.
291 The view, of course, of Teilhard de Chardin, repeated throughout
his works
but here cited specifically from The Future of Man, trans. Norman Denny (New
York: Harper, 1964), p. 214; a genre of view developed with marvelous incoherence
and indifference to any requirements of strict logic-to cite but one prominent
example-in Leslie Dewart's The Future of Belief (New York: Herder, 1966).
(Other like examples from the " Death of God " movement are cited by Mortimer
Adler in his recent study of The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes,
fn. 2, p. 363; cf. also pp. 284 and 292.)
292 The Degrees of Knowledge, p. 60; cf. also fn. 1, p. 224. At the same time,
we ought to note that, at one place at least in his writings, Maritain gives explicit
indication as to how he thinks this cited contention ought to be verified in

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF

835

manuscript is affected by being written first in pencil and then
in ink.
Far from destroying the very possibility of metaphysics, it
is possible-as the foregoing analyses have indicated-to illustrate and justify this contention in the very terms of the
present state of research in the particular sphere of evolutionary science. It is even possible-if Sertillanges is to be trusted
-to go as far as Pere Teilhard de Chardin, and consider that
" Aristotelian hylomorphism represents the projection, upon a
world without duration, of modern evolutionism. Rethought
within a universe in which duration adds a further dimension,
the theory of matter and form becomes almost indistinguishable from our contemporary speculations on the development
of matter." 293
JoHN

N. DEELY

University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Canada

of evolutionary biology: see the section on " Substantial Forms and Evolution,"
pp. 35-8 of the essay " Philosophical Co-operation and Intellectual Justice," in
The Range of Reason (New York Scribner's, 1951!), pp. 80-50. We ought to note
this, because, so far as I am able to judge, although this present essay has come
to share Maritain's conclusion, it has done so along lines of analysis largely at
variance with and often opposed to those lines Monsieur Maritain himself would
have pursued in seeking to illustrate the conclusion in question in the particular
area of biological evolution.
293 Teilhard
de Chardin, Oeuvres, Vol. III, p. 181. Cited by A.-D. Sertillanges
in L'Vnivers et l'ilme (Paris: Ouvrieres, 1965), p. 38.

ANALYTICAL OUTLINE
PART I (January, 1969)
PREFATORY REMARKS (Concerning the Problem of Evolution
as an Illustration of the Historical Conflict Between Modern Science
and Traditional Philosophy)- p. 75
I. THE STATE OF THE QUESTION
A. Incommensurability
of the Species Problematic of Modern
Science with that of Traditional Philosophy- p. 76
B. Textual Illustrations of this Incommensurability- p. 76
I. Texts respecting the problem of species as posed by traditional
philosophy- p. 77
2. Texts respecting the problem of species as posed by modern
science- p. 77
C. Statement of the Properties of the Notion of Species
tained by Traditional Philosophy - p. 79
I. Relation of the philosophical notion of species to the problem
of inductive verification- p. 82
2. Relation of the philosophical notion of species to a notion of
hierarchy in nature- p. 83
D. Statement of the Properties of the Notion of Species Entertained
by Modern Science- p. 84
I. Relation of the scientific notion of species to the problem of
inductive verification - p. 86
2. Relation of the scientific notion of species to a notion of
hierarchy in nature- p. 87
E. Contrast of the Consequences of the Two Notions of Speciesp. 89
I. With respect to hierarchy in nature - p. 89
2. With respect to the formal determinateness of specific distinction-p. 89
F. Statement of the Problem of Assessing the Implications which the
Scientific Notion of Species has for the Philosophical Notion,
and Vice Versa- p. 90
II. APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM
A. The Methodological or " Logical " Dimension of the Problem p. 90

336

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

337

B. The Analytical or " Categoreal " Dimension of the Problemp. 91
1. In terms of modern genetics and ecology- p. 91
2. In terms of essence and existence- p. 92
3. In terms of the necessary proportion between cause and
effect - p. 92
C. The Physico-Mathematical or " Empiriological " Dimension of
the Problem - p. 93
III. THE LOGICAL OF RATIONAL UNDERSTANDING
A. The Alternative Approaches to the Problem of Understanding
Nature- p. 93
B. The Notion of Methodological Behaviorism and Its Bearing on
the Problem at Hand- p. 94
C. The Necessary Steps of "Methodological Behaviorism "- p. 95
1. The sequence of investigative questions - p. 95
2. The nature of explanation- p. 96
a. The notion of factorial analysis - p. 97
b. The correlation of structure and function- p. 99
c. The role of the principle of parsimony- p. 99
D. Statement of the Import of the Concept of Methodological Behaviorism on the Definitions of Science and Philosophy- p. 100
E. "Methodological Behaviorism " as the Form of Rational Understanding- p. 101
IV. THE FRAMEWORK OF EVOLUTIONARY

SCIENCE

A. Statement of Expectations Generated by the Notion of Methodological Behaviorism- p. 102
B. Verification of Expectations- p. 103
1. Respecting the history of evolutionary science viewed in terms
of the four scientific questions- p. 103
2. Respecting the contemporary organization of evolutionary research in terms of the four causes- p. 104
C. Resolution of Difficulties- p. 107
I. Difficulties arising from the meanings of terms- p. 107
2. Difficulties arising from the focus of evolutionary studies on
populations rather than on individuals as such- p. 108
a. The two anti-chance factors in evolution- p. 110
b. The lability of populations presupposes the stability of
individuals- p. 111
D. Consideration of the Sense in which Evolutionary Studies Meet
the Ancient Requirement that Science is of the Necessaryp. 112

338

JOHN N. DEELY

1. The " quasi-syllogistic" leading to the idea of evolutionary
or " natural " selection- p. llQ
Q. Digression on the historic:al conflict between modern science
and traditional philosophy over the permanence of speciesp. 118
8. Diagram of evolutionary studies as constituting knowledge of
a reasoned fact, or science in the classical sense - p. 1Q7
4. Evolution as a transcendental property of the interaction situation- p. IQ8
V. SPECIFIC STRUCTURES

IN AN EVOLVING WORLD

A. The Noetic Aspect of the Darwinian Revolution- p. 180
B. The Ontological Aspect of the Darwinian Revolution- p. 18Q
1. The " family quarrel " between Linnaeus and Darwin over
the fixity of forms - p. 188
Q. The problem of the criterion of metalogical species statusp. 184
8. Realistic vs. subjectivistic approaches- p. 186
C. The Causal Status of the Natural Groups or Kinds Indicated in
the Everyday Experience of Mankind- p. 188
1. The two senses (multiplication vs. transformation)
of the
question of specific change- p. 188
Q. The problem of species in terms of the interaction structuring
of natural groups- p. 189
8. The subjectivism of contemporary philosophy in conflict with
the spontaneous realism of evolutionary science- p. 145
4. The three main stages or levels in the establishment of
species- p. 147
a. The essential feature of the process of speciation- p. 147
b. The essential feature of the species as such- p. 147
c. The inapplicability of an " essential definition " in the traditional philosophical sense to the species discerned by genetic
analysis - p. 148

PART II (April, 1969)
VI. THE ERROR OF UNIVOCALLY
ESSENCES

ONTOLOGIZED

KIND-

A. The Contention to be Developed - p. Q51

B. Socio-Cultural,

Philosophical, Theological, and Psychological
Sources of the Ambiguities in the Traditional Notion of
Species - p. Q5Q
1. Socio-cultural source: the doctrine of the celestial spheresp. Q5Q

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

o:E' THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

339

First philosophical source: equivocation in the notion of
essence as applied to the diversities in nature - p.
3. Second philosophical source: confusion of the logical and
ontological usage of the term " property"- p.
4. Third philosophical source: subordination of ontological to
epistemological constructs in the systematic classification of
natural realities - p.
a. Darwin's bifurcate formulation of a three-sided issuep.
b. Infidelity on the part of philosophers to the governing
principle of rational explanations, the principle of parsimony-p.
5. Fourth philosophical source: confusion of the reductive with
the factorial notion of the proportion obtaining between cause
and effect- p.
6. Theological source: interpretation of Scripture as indicating
a direct and special divine intervention prerequisite to the
origin of any natural species or kind- p.
7. Psychological source: the human tendency to substitute authority for evidence- p.
C. Explanation of the Expression, " The Error of Univocally Ontologized Kind-Essences"- p.
D. The Failure of Traditional Philosophy and Contemporary Biology to Communicate in the Area of Species- p.
E. The Possibility and Necessity of Such Communication- p.
1. The context of causally structured history - p.
The alteration in the meaning or sense of essentia in the contemporary as opposed to the classical species problematicp.
3. Statement of the proper task of the philosopher with respect
to evolution - p.
F. The Problem of Essence at the Level of Existentia ut Exercitap.
1. The transcendental transference required in order to place the
question of essence in the order of " possible being "- p.
Articulation of the present problem with the traditional question of subsistentia- p.
3. Subsistence as the basic philosophical concept underlying the
empirical circumscription of species as interaction-structured
adaptive groupings - p.
4. Digression on some historical exaggerations concerning the
explanatory role played by esse in Thomistic metaphysics and
natural philosophy- p.

340

JOHN N. DEELY

5. Essence as the concrete possibility for self-identity in the context of natural generations and corruptions- p. Q75
6. The fundamental analogy "built-into" essence as actualizable
subject - p. Q76
a. Ambiguity in the use of the word " possibility "- p. Q76
b. Causality as the fundamental ground of real possibilityp. Q77
7. The historical interpretive consequence of according primary
import to that which is secondary in the notion of finite
being- p. Q78
8. Implications of the foregoing for the question of the ontological status of taxonomic classifications - p. Q81
9. The metaphysical notion of " being-in-and-through-a-world "
-p. Q8Q

10. Summary- p. 284
G. The Problem of Contingency in Nature- p. Q87
H. Statement of the Problem of the Relation of Evolutionary Species
to the Philosophical Doctrine of the Immutability of Essences p. Q88
VII. THE OPERATIONAL DISPLACEMENT OF TYPOLOGICAL
THOUGHT IN ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR HIERARCHY
A. The Possibility of Causal Analysis Reductive in Form - p. Q90
1. Physico-mathematics- p. 291
2. Mechanism- p. 292
3 Contrasts and historical roots - p. 292
B. The Role of Reductive or "Empiriological " Analyses in the
Resolution of Biology's "Family Quarrel" over Fixity of Forms
-p. 293
1. Utility of a mathematical approach to the problem of evolutionary selection- p. 293
2. Basis of the success of the use of mathematics in biology p. 296
C. The False Issue over Progress Generated in Philosophy by the
Tendency to Conceive Evolutionary Adaptation on a Reductivist
Causal Schema - p. 298
1. Why a reductionist conception of evolutionary selection must
regard the idea of progress as contingent omni ex parte-p. 300
2. That even on a reductionist conception of evolutionary selection the arrangement of forms in a hierarchy or series of
hierarchies of grades and intergrades is an inevitable phenomenon- p. 301

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIMENSIONS

OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

341

VIII. THE TWO HIERARCHIES
A. Clarification So Far of the Problem of the Mutual Interimplications of the Traditional Philosophical and Modern Scientific
Notions of Species - p. 805
B. Issues still to be Considered in order to Resolve this Problemp. 805
C. Consideration of the Outstanding Issues- p. 806
I. The issue over hylomorphism- p. 306
The issue over irreducible ontological levels or grades- p. 808
a. Analytical statement of the possible modes of differencep. 808
b. Collation of this analysis with the terminology of differences as " apparent," " superficial," and " radical "- p. 809
i. The difficulty concerning radical difference in kind as
viewed from the standpoint of material caus- p. 811
ii. Resolution of this antinomy- p. 818
c. Consequences of the analysis concerning the modes o.E
difference- p. 818
i. For the avoidance of reductionism - p. 818
ii. For the relation of superficial to radical difference in
kind-p. 814
iii. For the logic of definition and inductive verificationp. 815
d. Relation of superficial and radical differences in kind to the
hylomorphic structure of natural entities- p. 816
8. The issue over the role of chance in the constitution of the
world- p. 817
4. The issue over causality- p. 818
a. The ontological criterion of evolutionary advance or progress- p. 818
b. The inevitability of ontological development or advancep. 819
c. The relation and proportion of cause to effect - p.
i. Meaning of the principle, causae sunt ad invicem
causae- p.
ii. Particular considerations on the interdependency of
material and formal causality- p.
iii. The notion of " equivocal generation "- p.
D. Resolution of the Outstanding Issues- p.
E. Solution of the Problem of the Implications which the Scientific
Notion of Species has for the Philosophical Notion of Essential
Kinds - p.
F. Summary - p.

JOHN N. DEELY

I. The two legitimate senses of the term " species "- p. 3fl9
fl. The two notions of natural hierarchy parallelling the two
senses of the term species- p. 3fl9
3. The true pattern of " higher " and " lower " forms- p. 330

IX. CONCLUSION
A. The Problem of Evolution in the Context of the Historical
Conflict between Modern Science and Traditional Philosophy p. 331
I. The allegations of contemporary thinkers- p. 331
fl. Justified vs. dogmatic allegations - p. 33fl

3. An alternative assessment- p. 333
B. The "Evolution of Species " as a Non-Illustration of a Conflict
de jure between Modern Science and Traditional Philosophyp. 334

GEOMETRY AND CONVENTION:
DISCUSSION

A CRITICAL

A

COLLECTION of essays/ together with the essays of
George Schlesinger and the essay of Hilary Putman,
replies to which are contained in this collection, provide
contemporary philosophers of nature with a twentieth-century
counterpart of the famous Leibniz-Clarke correspondence.
Griinbaum levels an all-out attack on that form of spatial and
temporal absolutism which holds that distances and durations
are intrinsic features of space and time. He upholds a form of
relativism according to which space and time have distances
and durations only relative to physical devices such as rods
and clocks and according to which a significant conventional
element is involved in specifying how such devices determine
distances and durations. Schlesinger claims that hypothetical
empirical facts-the lengthening of the day as measured by a
pendulum, the increase of the velocity of light as measured by
rods and pendulum clocks-could force us to accept the view
that everything has doubled in size overnight. But how can
one be forced to accept nocturnal doubling if one is free to
account for the hypothetical facts by supposing that the laws
of nature have changed their dependence on lengths and hence
that things have not doubled in size at all? By rejecting this
alternative Schlesinger is made by Griinbaum to appear as a
spatial absolutist who holds that space has an intrinsic metric
and that this metric can change. Putnam's long criticism of
the first essay in Griinbaum's collection is an attempt to show
that Griinbaum has exaggerated the role of convention in
regard to spatial and temporal measures. One should consider
geometrical and chronological matters in the context of an
1 Adolf
Griinbaum, Geometry and Ch1·onometry in Philosophical Perspective,
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1968. Pp. 386. $3.45.

343

344

MILTON FISK

entire physical theory, and then, according to Putnam, it will
be apparent there is little room left for convention. From this
point of view, one can say that intervals in space and time
have, in an objective way, magnitudes. In his 175 page reply
to Putnam, Griinbaum denies he has been unaware of important theoretical and empirical constraints in the choice of
a metric. But, granting the constraints, there is still an important element of convention since, he points out, space and
time as mere sets of points and instants lack metrical properties.
Such, then, in barest outline are the issues in this lengthy
debate over the status of spatial and temporal magnitudes.
It is with considerable misgivings that I add to this already
voluminous discussion. Griinbaum's
essay in the third
volume of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Sciencethe substance of which appears again as Chapters 1-4 of his
Philosophical Problems of Space and Time and is Chapter 1
of the present collection-sparked the discussion. This essay
developed Reichenbach's emphasis, particularly in The Philosophy of Space and Time, on definitional or conventional
elements in geometry and chronometry. Griinbaum finds the
justification for the conventionalism Reichenbach advocates
in the idea of Riemann that continuous manifolds have no
Griinbaum joins together replies
intrinsic metric. In
to two of Schlesinger's papers, the first of Schlesinger's papers
appearing in Philosophical Studies (15, 1964) and the second
in The Australasian Journal of Philosophy
1967). Griinbaum's replies originally appeared along with these papers.
The third and final chapter, published in the fifth volume of
Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science, is the reply to
Putnam's critique in the second volume of The Delaware
Seminar. The thoroughness of Griinbaum's exposition and of
his replies is accompanied by an undesirable amount of repetitiveness. And the polemical bombast, especially of the reply
to Putnam, has interferred with the possibility of a clear
statement of the fundamental issue between the two. The
elaborate attempts to show how " Putnam flies in the face of
my writings, is unmindful of an important caveat of mme,

GEOMETRY AND CONVENTION

345

and saddles me with" so-and-so's error could, without loss,
have been saved for private correspondence with Putnam.
Despite such attempts, the reply contains many valuable
elaborations of points Griinbaurn made in the 1962 essay. The
points made throughout the collection are driven horne with
great intellectual power. As one would expect in a work of
Griinbaurn's, the arguments turn on considerations deep within
the foundations of science rather than on surface level appeals
to the absurdity of opposed positions as judged by linguistic
or conceptual familiarity. This seriousness of approach together with the power of its implementation make this collection an important addition to the relativist tradition.
I shall focus on the relationship between a metric's being
extrinsic and its being conventional. These two factors are
closely related in Griinbaurn's thinking. He argues that one
can infer the conventionality of the metric from its being
extrinsic. His argument is, I think, a failure. The way in
which I shall attempt to show this shall be in the spirit of
Putnam's basic objection to Griinbaurn.
Suppose a space were made up of points with immediate
neighbors. Such a space would be different from the customary
continuous space assumed by physics in which there are always
points between points. The space with immediate neighbors
is, by contrast, called a discrete space. In a discrete space we
can define distance in terms of intrinsic features of that space.
So the distance between A and B might be the least number of
intervals between points between A and B. Whether or not
there are alternatives to this metric, it is based on an intrinsic
feature of the manifold-the cardinality of intervals-rather
than on something extrinsic to the manifold such as a rigid
rod. 2
On the other hand, in a continuous space any two distinct
2 It is to be observed
that, even when the metric can be defined by intrinsic
features, those features do not determine a unique metric (up to multiplication
by a constant). One is not forced by the fact that A and B are neighboring points
and C and D are neighboring points to say that the distance from A to B is the
same as that from C to D. Suppose we decide that any point in a manifold has
eight neighbors. We might adopt the following metric. There is a point A such

346

MILTON

FISK

points have the same number of points between them. The
cardinality of the points is the power of the continuum. Thus
it is not open to us to define the distance between two points
in a continuous space in terms of the number of intervening
intervals between points. Nor is any other intrinsic feature
of the space, considered merely as a continuous manifold with
the property of smoothness, such as to provide a basis for
defining a metric. So Griinbaum says that, as continuous
manifolds, space and also time are intrinsically metrically
amorphous. (p. 13)
How then does conventionality come in? No facts about the
continuous manifold can alone be used to define whether Ol'
not the distance between A and B is the same as or different
from the distance between C and D. Suppose then we reply
on a rod taken as a unit and assumed to vary in some fixed
way as it is transported from place to place. Apart from
physical perturbations, it might be assumed the variation
under transport vanishes and thus that the rod is self-congruent on transport. The choice of unit is a trivial kind of
conventionality and it is not this that Griinbaum set out to
emphasize. What he insists on is rather that the self-congruence
of the unit rod is a matter of convention rather than a matter
of fact. I£ instead of being self-congruent the rod varies its
length in a specified way under transport, it would be this
variation that is conventional.
that its neighbors are one unit away from it, their neighbors still further out from
A are two units away from them and hence three units from A. As we proceed
still further out we alternate between one unit and two unit intervals. Now,
suppose space lacks such a " radial " topology and has instead a " boxlike " one.
A given point might have only four neighbors. We might represent this space in
such a way that any point, A, appears to be nested within eight points. The eight
points would define a " square," with the four points which are neighbors to the
internal point A, being on the sides and the remaining four points being at the
corners of the square. The distance from A to a corner point, B, might be defined
as the least sum of the number of intervals between neighbors and would thus be
two (cf. Griinbaum, Philosophical Problems, p. 886). Alternatively, corner points
of the immediately surrounding rectangle might be deemed to have the Pythagorean
units from A. So it does not follow that if the metric is
property of being
defined by intrinsic features it has no alternatives. Alternativeness does not have
as a necessary condition the extrinsic nature of a metric. I owe the point that
there are alternative intrinsic metrics to Clark Glymour.

v2

GEOMETRY AND CONVENTION

347

"Vhat argument does Griinbaum use to show that conventionality must be involved in the matter of self-congruence?
His argument is summarized in the following passage:
The failure of the intervals of physical space to possess an
intrinsic metric-a failure which compels recourse to an extrinsic
transported metric standard to begin with-has the consequence
that the continuous structure of physical space cannot certify the
self-congruence (rigidity) of any extrinsic standard under transport ... an extrinsic metric standard is self-congruent under
transport as a matter of convention and not as a matter of spatial
fact. (p. 149; repeated on p. 217)

Before deciding whether this argument is successful, I wish to
introduce three general considerations.
(1) Suppose a1, ... , an is an n-tuple satisfying then-place
predicate F, not because of features of a1, ... , an alone but
only because of those features together with some state of
affairs P. Let us put this by saying that a1, ... , an have F
in respect to P. F will not then be said to be an intrinsic
property of the given n-tuple, but will be said to be a property
of it in respect to P. Probability is not an intrinsic property
of hypotheses but a property of them in respect to evidence.
Time-like separation is not an intrinsic property of two spacetime points but a property of them in respect to the causal
connectibility of events located at those points. (c£. p. 301)
The respect P in which a1, ... , an has F may be a
matter of fact or it may be a matter of convention. It does
not then follow from F not being intrinsic to a1, ... , an that
this n-tuple having F is a matter of convention. Only when P
is a matter of convention is the n-tuple having F a matter of
convention. An hypothesis does not have a probability just as
a matter of convention even though it has its probability
relative to some body of evidence. Grant that the interval
between points A and B has a length in respect to a rod's being
self-congruent on transport. It follows that the length is conventional only if the rod's self-congruence is conventional.
(3) There are three cases to be considered in regard to the
testability of the respect P in which a1, ... , an has F. (i) P

348

MILTON

FISK

may be testable in a context which does not include facts
concerning a1, ... , a,. Call this "total outside" testability.
An evidence statement not i:mplying the hypothesis it is used
to support is testable without assuming the hypothesis it is
used to support is true or that it is false. In this case the
hypothesis has a probability in respect to something with total
outside testability. (ii) P may have only "partial outside"
testability. Here P cannot be tested without reference to facts
about a1, ... , a,, but outside facts are also involved in the
testing context. (iii) P may have " total inside " testability in
that no facts beyond those about the n-tuple need be involved
in the context of testing for the truth of P. But if this were the
case then the property F of then-tuple could be determined just
by facts of then-tuple and no need to introduce a respect would
arise. Now if the self-congruence of rods is untestable in all
these ways, one might be prepared to say it is a matter of
convention. In each of the three cases mentioned a distinction
between direct and indirect testability is to be allowed for.
Thus, from the fact that self-congruence is not testable by
direct observation in any of these ways, it does not follow that
it is not testable in any of these ways. It may be testable in
one of these ways in the indirect manner of a high level
hypothesis.
I want now to show that Griinbaum rests his case for conventionality on the premiss that self-congruence under transport lacks total inside testability. Only if lack of total inside
testability implied failure of outside testability would his case
for conventionality be a strong one.
Suppose the case for partial outside testability were put as
follows. We assume a continuous manifold, we specify a unit
rod and its self-congruence under transport, we adopt a certain
metrical geometry, and we propose a number of physical hypotheses. We then proceed to check the empirical consequences
of this theory. If, upon checking, changes seem called for, they
could conceivably be made in any one of several places. In
particular, we might change the assumption about self-congruence and thus say it was tested. It is then no more conventional than other parts of the theory. And should we ever be

GEOMETRY AND CONVENTION

349

warranted in saying any part of the theory is true as a matter
of physical fact, we would under certain circumstances also be
warranted in saying the same about the self-congruence assumption.
Against this case what does Griinbaum offer? There seem to
be two strands of argument. The one deals with theoretical
alternativeness, the other with empirically motivated changes
of self-congruence assumptions. According to the first, we do
not test a self-congruence assumption, for, as allowed for by
metrical amorphousness, there is always an empirically equivalent theory embodying an incompatible self-congruence assumption. For example, a clock fixed on a rotating disk and
one not on it furnish incompatible standards of self-congruence,
in view of the non-linearity of the transformation relating the
two. (p.
There are reasons for adopting one standard
rather than the other, but these reasons have to do with convenience of description. The rejected standard is not rejected
because it is falsified by observations.
To argue in this way from alternativeness proves too much.
Alternativeness of self-congruence is not the only kind. It is
in principle possible to have empirically equivalent theories
that differ as regards matters other than self-congruence. Are
we then to argue that theories are conventional in every respect
in which empirically equivalent theories can differ from them?
Even in the case of two theories with incompatible congruences
it will be impossible to say they are testable in respect to the
ways they differ to compensate for their different congruences.
Furthermore, phenomenal color properties would be conventional, since Goodman's grue and bleen would be alternative to
the plain man's green and blue. Even intrinsic metrics would
be conventional since empirically equivalent physical theories
could be constructed on the Pythagorean and the non-Pythagorean discrete spaces of footnote
How does Griinbaum keep the argument from proving too
much? Distances and durations are not intrinsic to manifolds
of points and instants. So self-congruence does not admit of
inside testability. But pressures (p.
and phenomenal
are intrinsic to their respective domains. Thus
colors (p.

350

MILTON

FISK

for them and other important properties there is inside testability. For them there is a decision among alternative possibilities by this inside testability. Conventionalism is thereby
avoided for them.
Grant that other features are intrinsic to the objects they
qualify. It simply does not follow that in testing for such
features the only things to be considered are the objects they
qualify. Outside testability is not excluded for instrinsic
features. Even if pressure were intrinsic to gases, we still
consider objects in or around a gas in determining its pressure.
There is no assurance of access by inside testability to intrinsic
features. But only with such access could alternative possibilities be conclusively eliminated. Without it, the needed
distinction between self-congruence and other features disappears.
To avoid a sweeping conventionalism, we must recognize
that having incompatible congruences in empirically equivalent
theories is not a bar to the testability of a self-congruence
assumption. The testability of one of the congruences becomes
possible after the selection of a theory embodying it from
alternative theories with incompatible congruences by general
principles Griinbaum lumps under the heading of principles of
descriptive simplicity. Without such selectivity it is hard to
imagine there could be any confirmatory testing, even where
alternative congruences are not involved.
The second strand of argument concerns cases where a
standard of self-congruence is actually abandoned. Let the
standard be a rod. Suddenly it gives different results from rods
previously concordant with it. Have we tested the rod's selfcongruence with negative outcome, or if we abandon it as
standard, have we given up, as inconvenient, a conventional
self-congruence? In view of the intrinsic metrical amorphousness of space, one is free to retain the old standard or to reject
it despite the discordant results. (p.
It would then seem
there is no test of the standard, since one is not logically
compelled to abandon it.
This is inconclusive for the following reasons. First, intrinsic
metrical amorphousness implies freedom to retain or to reject

GEOMETRY AND CONVENTION

351

the standard as far as the manifold of points is concerned.
Thus there is indeed no inside testability. But from this
freedom it does not follow that there is a similar freedom as
far as physical reality is concerned. And hence it does not
follow that there is no outside testability. The case for conventionalism is again made to rest on lack of inside testability.
This time, however, there is no indication how this might imply
lack of outside testability. Second, we are here asked to accept
the notion that, for a claim to be about a potential matter of
fact, there must be potential observations logically compelling
its rejection. This notion flies in the face of the fact that
many, if not most, prima facie nonconventional claims are
tested not alone but together with others, any one of which
might be given up before a discordant experience.
To sum up. I have agreed with Griinbaum that spatia] and
temporal continuous manifolds are metrically amorphous.
They lack an intrinsic metric. I have tried to show, however,
that this argument from metrical amorphousness to conventionality is a failure. I have held that the thesis of metrical
conventionality is false if self-congruence of a rod under transport or of a periodic process under repetition is an empirically
testable matter. Due to metrical amorphousness, self-congruence is not testable in respect to facts about the bare
manifold of points or instants. Thus it lacks what I called
inside testability. But the manifold is only the skeleton of the
physical world. Is self-congruence testable in respect to the
metrical physical world? Does it have outside testability? I
examined two arguments for showing that it lacks outside
testability. Both were attempts to derive failure of outside
testability from failure of inside testability. Both were seen to
be wanting. In fact, it would seem that a good case can be
made for the non-conventionality of self-congruence, if a good
case can be made for the non-conventionality of other features
signified by physical theories. 3
MILTON FISK

Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
8 I am grateful
to Professor Griinbaum for comments leading to significant
revisions in this study.

THE LOGIC OF CREATION:

R

A NOTE

CENT DISCUSSIONS of the Christian conception of
creation have made it clear that the relation between
the claims of science and the claims of religion has
been widely confused. It would be extravagant, indeed, to
presume that in the course of this brief analysis the myriad
difficulties surrounding the Christian view of creation will adequately be resolved. However, it is the purpose of the following
examination to take one step toward clarifying what has
seemed irremediably confused.
Presumably, the creation of the world has been explained
in such radically different ways by science and the JudeaChristian tradition that many have concluded that the explanations are contradictory and thus one explanation must
be admitted while the other rejected. Without describing the
intricacies of either the Christian or the scientific view of
creation, I think it can be demonstrated that the two divergent
conceptions are not necessarily contradictory. Therefore, the
appropriation of one conceptual scheme does not necessarily
affirm the exclusion of the other. Moreover, I suspect that
it is feasible for one to hold both the Christian conception and
the scientific description of creation without logical contradiction.
Suppose that one could very roughly unpack the creation
claims of science and Christianity into the following over
simplified linguistic forms: A) The world was "created" because of an explosion (the Big Bang Theory). B) The world
was "created" because of God (that is to say, God created
the world). Surely, the grammatical structure of the two
linguistic forms inclines one to accommodate the rather attractive, most simple form of contradiction as an evaluation here.
It seems as though the same subject is being " explained " by
two divergent theses, and thus one thesis must be incorrect.
But one is obliged to be hesitant about being misled by
852

THE LOGIC OF cl:rEATlON

superficial similarities between certain forms of expression, and
moreover, to avoid philosophical confusions, one must distinguish the " surface grammar " of linguistic forms £rom their
" depth grammar " or logical structure. The following analysis
may be helpful to elucidate the problem.
If two observers watch a bucket fall from a workman's
ladder, in the particular context envisaged, at least the subsequent sets of statements might be proposed to capture the
sense of what has been seen.
Set A) 1. A bucket is hanging on a workman's ladder.
9l. The bucket is subject to the law o£ gravity.
3. The bucket falls because it is subject to the law of
gravity.
Set B) 1. A bucket is hanging on a workman's ladder.
Q. The bucket is knocked off the ladder by the workman.
3. The bucket falls because the workman knocked it
off the ladder.
For the purpose of our analysis, careful attention will be given
to statements Q and 3 in both of the represented sets above.
It is contended that statement 2 of set A, " the bucket is
subject to the law of gravity," is not being used to report an
occurrence. The law of gravity, in this context, cannot be
claimed to happen at a definite time, and surely it would be
logically odd to ask how long gravity took. The bucket is
subject to the law of gravity whether it is hanging from the
workman's ladder or is held in the workman's hand. The
statement implies that, if the bucket is not supported by some
means, then it will fall according to the law of gravity. Such
statements as "the bucket is subject to the law o£ gravity"
may be given the appellation, as Ryle suggests, " hypothetical
statements" 1 to distinguish them from other statements which
display important differences in terms of logical status. An
1

Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind, Hutchinson,

London, 1949.

354

RONALD S. LAURA

example of a statement which conveniently differs in logical
environment from the " hypothetical statement " is statement
Q of set B.
Statement 2 of set B, " the bucket is knocked off the ladder
by the workman," is a report of something being done or
something that has happened. Such statements which are used
to report an occurrence or occurrences are generally called
"categorical statements," 2 and they logically entail the possibility of asking certain relevant questions. For example, in
our case one might ask how the workman knocked the bucket
off the ladder. Did he hit it with his hammer or kick it with
his foot? It is important to notice that not all the answers
to the revelant queries will necessarily be known, but this
does not affect the tenability of the position, since the notion
of the "categorical statement" that is entertained here assumes only that the answers to such questions could be known
and that the questions themselves constitute meaningful moves
in the language.
Since it is clear that the two statements, " the bucket is
subject to the law of gravity" and "the bucket is knocked
off the ladder by the workman," do not perform the same
logical function, it follows that the two derivative statements,
"the bucket falls because it is subject to the law of gravity"
and "the bucket falls because the workman knocked it off
the ladder," also perform different logical functions and thus
belong to different logical categories. Although the grammatical form of the latter two statements may seem to imply a
contradiction between the statements, an analysis of their
logical status makes it obvious that no logical contradiction
obtains.
To say " the bucket falls because it is subject to the law
of gravity" is not to deny that "the bucket falls because the
workman knocked it off the ladder." If one explains the fall
of the bucket in terms of gravity, then the sense of the
statement is best understood by reference to a law, specifically,
2

lbid.

THE LOGIC OF CREATION

355

the law of gravity. On the other hand, if the fall of the bucket
in statement 3 of set B is to be explained, then the occurrence
must be explicated in terms of " cause " which is categorically
distinct from the notion of "law." Thus, it is not a contradiction to maintain statement 3 of set A and B simultaneously,
since the predications of the statements function in a logically
different manner from one another. It has even been suggested
that one statement can only be explained in relation to the
other, which is a more complex question that can only be
mentioned here.
The point of the discussion is that the examination illustrates
an accurate account of what is meant by logically different
categories. Therefore, the two observers of the bucket falling
could explain and interpret the situation differently. I£ one of
the observers were a physicist, he might explain the falling
bucket in terms of gravity; the other observer might give the
explanation of natural cause. Whatever the case, the assertion
of one explanation does not exclude the other explanation, and
both explanations could be maintained simultaneously by
either observer, without contradiction.
Although only a cursory account of category distinctions
has been viewed, the application of the notion of different
logical categories seems clearly relevant to the problem of
creation. The assertion that "the world was created by an
explosion " and the Christian claim that " the world was
created by God " are of logically different categories. That
is to say, the two claims have quite distinct logical functions;
they are not being used in the same way. Moreover, the
scientific claim should not be construed as occurring in the
logical environment of " explanatory statements." The scientific assertion describes a presumed state of affairs, but it
does not necessarily explain them. That is, the claims of science
about the creation of the world do not explain the occurrence
of the state of affairs science is describing. The scientific claim
may describe how a state of affairs obtains, but it does not
necessarily explain why a state of affairs takes place. That is to
say, science presupposes a state of affairs and then proceeds
to describe it.

856

RONALD S. LAURA

The Christian claim, on the other hand, attempts to explain
the state of affairs that science describes. The Christian claim
does not presuppose the creation " event," but rather it
endeavors to explain the occurrence of the event by affirming a Creator in whom all states of affairs are grounded.
Thus, the Christian assertion that " there is a God who created
the world " does not imply that the assertion itself merely
describes a particular or another state of affairs. Rather, the
claim entails that God is the source of states of affairs but
not one of them.
In the final analysis it is evident that the assertions of the
following form are not contradictory, and furthermore one
could hold both claims without being involved in a selfcontradiction: A) The world was " created " because of an
explosion. B) The world was "created" because of God (God
created the world). In statement A) it is asserted that the
world was created because of an explosion and in statement
B) that the world was created because of God. These two
uses of " because of" belong to two different logical categories.
In A) the creation is described in terms or an empirical cause;
in B) the creation is explained in terms of the source of states
of affairs. To treat statement A) as if it belonged to the same
logical category as statement B) is to make a category mistake
which would commit one to answering senseless questions like
how long the creation took and what was God doing before
he created the world. Thus, to treat statement A) as though
it belonged to the same logical category as statement B) leads
to absurdities and entangles one m the linguistic confusion
that I have wished to avoid.
RoNALD

Harvard University Divinity School
Cambridge, Mass.

S. LAuRA

BOOK REVIEWS
The Doctrine of Merits in Old Rabbinical Literature and The Old Rabbinic
Doctrine of God. By A. MARMORSTEIN. New York: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1968. Pp.
and pp. 163. $14.95.
Many Christians, even in our own time, tend to regard Judaism as a
religion whose development was terminated with the establishment of
Christianity. Even many priests and scholars who know better on an
intellectual level often disregard this knowledge on a popular level.
Many Christians still see Judaism as a forerunner of Christianity. There
is too little appreciation of Judaism as a developing religion. The way
Judaism is true for the Jew, the way it validates itself, its role in the world,
its response to challenges, and its ability to adjust and to survive have
been of little or no concern to the Christian community.
A. Marmorstein's Doctrine of Merits in Old Rabbinical Literature illustrates the manner in which Judaism survived, adjusted to new conditions
and responded to contemporary events, challenges, slander and calumnies.
This response is indicated by the therne of the book, i. e., the Doctrine of
Merits, which teaches that it is possible for man to acquire merits before
God, a concept which concerned rabbinic authorities. The author also
depicts the action-interaction technique which was utilized by the Tanaaim
and Amoraim during the rabbinic period. This technique encouraged
creativity and speculation which made this period so productive and
helpful in reorienting, redefining and purifying Judaism. It created a new
framework which enabled Judaism to survive after the destruction of the
Second Temple. Another aspect of the response and development of
Judaism is related by indicating the ability of Judaism to react to charges
levelled against it and the manner in which it did so.
Marmorstein's theme is drawn from the Agadic material in rabbinic
literature. He utilizes the Mishnah and the Talmud as well as the Mekilta
(the halakic midrash to Exodus), the Sifra (the halakic midrash to
Leviticus), the Sifre (the midrash to Numbers and Deuteronomy) and
the Tanhuma-Midrash (the name given to three different collections of
Pentateuch Agadot). He cites many other sources including various
midrashim. The nature of the study does not involve the use of halacha
or halakic concepts, i.e., the religious legal concepts of Judaism.
The book is very useful in illustrating the completeness of Judaism. By
depicting the use of parables and religious philosophical concepts Marmorstein adds an awareness of a new dimension. Too often Judaism has been
viewed by the non-Jew, particularly the Christian, as a system of dry

357

358

BOOK REVIEWS

legalism. It has been forgotten that proverbs, anecdotes, parables and
allegories were important rabbinic teaching devices. Since the material
for Marmostein's work is drawn from the Agada, the relationship between
law and lore in Judaism should be obvious. As Chaim Nachman Bialik,
a modern Jewish poet, observed, Halacha and Agada are two sides of the
same coin. Although the requirements for legal observances and responsibilities have played an important role in the unfolding of the religion of
the Jewish people, the tradition also drew from the wealth of human
experience, rarely negating any source of truth and human instruction.
The development of the Agadic method is depicted with regard to the
development of the Doctrine of Merits. Contemporary events in the third
century saw the metamorphosis of the teaching that the world was created
for the sake of the Patriarchs and the righteous to the teaching that the
world was created for the sake of Israel. This development, the author
informs us, was connected with the polemics of the day.
The church and the porch, the cathedral and the temple, revived the half forgotten and totally ill-founded abuses against the Jews. The Jews are a useless
nation which had done nothing for the good of humanity. The Jews, so the
Agadists reply to the Church, are something more than witnesses of the veracity
of the Church; they are the source of every blessing and happiness. (p. 27)

Basically, the concept of the Doctrine of Merits teaches that certain
benefits accrue to the individual, the Jewish people, the world, mankind,
the generations, or a particular generation as a result of individual worthy
deeds, merits of past generations, merits of particular individuals (especially
Abraham and Jacob, a particular deed or deeds, or for other individual
observances, goals or deeds.
Judaism has often had a tension within it regarding various aspects of
its teachings. It has evolved a normative structure, but it has not been
monolithic. The manner in which the Doctrine of Merits evolved is illustrative of the many dimensions of Judaism. Thus, for example, Shemayah
and Abtalyon presented opposing concepts with regard to the Doctrine of
Merits. The former taught that God divided the sea for the Israelites
because of the merits of Abraham, while the latter taught that God
divided the sea for the merits of the generation that stood by the sea
itself. Hillel attempted to resolve this conflict (as did some of the Amoraim
in the third century) by combining both ideas, i.e., the merit of personal
faith and deed with the merit of the fathers. Other Tannaaim and Amoraim
in the early centuries of Christianity emphasized one or another of these
choices.
There are many variations on the theme of merits. There are, however,
several basic ideas regarding merits, which are accepted with more or
less agreement. Merits exist; they are based on the principles of faith,
works and love. Merits justify here and now; the world itself was created
for merits; it is sustained for merits and they will help man to achieve a
share in the world to come. God gave the Law for man to obtain merits;

BOOK REVIEWS

359

by not using merits they will be available for future generations; both
Jews and Gentiles acquire merits for good works. The righteous can justify
the existence of a group and even of a generation. He who brings others
to good deeds attains merits. He who causes others to do unrighteous deeds
is as guilty (if not more guilty) that he who performs them.
Group responsibility and the responsibility of the individual to the group
is also emphasized in the Doctrine of Merits. A man or a woman cannot
sin or do good without influencing someone else for good or for bad. This is
true of the family, the tribe, the Israelites and the Gentiles. The innocent
suffer for the wicked through the totality of human experience. The latter
also receive blessings because of the former.
1'he Doctrine of Merits in Old Rabbinical Literat1tre exhibits Mamorstein's impressive depth of scholarship. The author explores the labyrinth
of Talmudic and rabbinic sources in order to present his themes and his
documentation. He cites both the Babylonian and Palestinian sources,
various halakic and midrashic commentaries and various works in Hebrew,
German, and English. Although the volume is significant and worthwhile,
there are several drawbacks. It is regrettable that the structure of the
book was so poorly conceived. Concepts are not presented in an orderly
manner that progresses from section to section but are often introduced
wherever there seems to be an opportunity. This process sometimes
results in the same ideas being presented two, three, four or even more
times. Sometimes what should have been the initial premise or statement
is made well into the discussion of a particular merit. Dr. R. J. Zwi
Werblowsky in a valuable prologue to the work makes the well-founded
observation that it would have been preferable to have been able to produce
a new work on the theme of merits because of improved rabbinic texts now
available to the scholar rather than to reissue the present book which was
first published in 19BO. However, the paucity of scholars capable of doing
work in this area, balanced against the scholarly labor of Marmorstein and
the abundance of the material he collected, justify the reprint of the
earlier studies.
The value of this work is enhanced by including with it two other works
by Marmorstein. Both of these were originally published under the title
1'he Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God. The first book in this section is
subtitled 1'he Names and Attributes of God and was originally published
in 19B7, and the second subtitled Essays in Anthropomorphism was first
issued in 1937. These works should prove of interest to the Christian
theologian as well as to the Jewish scholar.
Marmorstein's purpose in 1'he Names and Attributes of God was to
portray the historical development of the concept of God as reflected in
the names used for God. Many of the names are descriptive terms or
else depict attributes of God. This is sometimes accomplished by treating
adjectives as nouns. Many of the names of God are attributes which man
is to emulate. The very name by which God is addressed directs the

360

BOOK REVIEWS

thoughts of man to the nature of God and to his responsibilities with
respect to the Diety.
The Jewish people have been extremely interested in God, the names
of God and God's attributes. A phrase often used to comment on this
preoccupation is the designation of Israel as a " God intoxicated people."
Since there is no systematic theology in Judaism, Marmorstein had a
tremendously difficult task in researching these theological concepts, being
obliged to delve into many hundreds of folios of old rabbinic literature.
The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God is an impressive, erudite work based
on the multiple sources of rabbinic literature and Hellenistic literature.
The value of the book is furthered through the list of abbreviations used
in rabbinic literature. This list should be valuable, helpful, and usable.
The scholar, familiar with rabbinic literature, will have no difficulty with
the abbreviations, but there may be some problems for the uninitiated.
B is used, e. g., to indicate both the Babylonian Talmud and also Buber
(editor of the Midrash Psalms). Since Bah. is also used to indicate the
Babylonian ralmud, the editor could have adopted this abbreviation
consistently.
There is a more serious lack in the editing of the book, if it is intended
for interested priests and laymen who are not scholars in rabbinic literature.
There are a number of statements which are quoted in the Hebrew. Some
of these passages (many of which are quite lengthy) are translated by
the author. Most of them are not. Since the book is interesting, readable
and informative, in general, the editor would have done well to provide
translations of the Hebrew material.
The third work in the current book deals with anthropomorphic concepts
in rabbinic literature. There were two conflicting tendencies in Judaism
regarding the human characteristics of God as depicted in the Bible. There
were rabbinic teachers who insisted on the literal translation. God hears,
listens, responds, says, etc., and these ideas are to be taken literally. Other
rabbinic teachers went to great lengths to understand and explain the
Bible in an allegorical manner. The Bible uses human terms, describes
God in human form, etc., because this is the way man thinks and can
comprehend God's works. But God is not to be thought of as a human
person.
The problem that man faced in the Talmudic age was how does man
adjust contemporary knowledge with Biblical teachings. Is the Bible to be
accepted literally or figuratively? The literalists were balanced by the
allegorists, who reinterpreted through the use of new methods or incorporation of new ideas to teach ancient truths. As in so much of Jewish life,
both concepts continue to function, and both continue to be accepted as
valid aspects of a living tradition.
RABBI LEONARD

Temple Sinai
Amityville, N. Y.

w. STERN

BOOK REVIEWS

361

Paul and Qumran. Studies in New Testament Exegesis. Ed. by JEROME
MuRPHY-O'CoNNOR,0. P. Chicago: The Priory Press, 1968. Pp.
$5.95.

The volume under review is a collection of essays compiled (and translated, where necessary) from various scientific journals, under the editorship of the Irish Dominican exegete, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor. These
essays (nine in all) concentrate on the institutions, words and ideas found
both in the writings of Paul and of the Essences.
In the opening essay the Director of the Ecole Biblique, Pierre Benoit,
0. P., lays down solid principles on which should be based any fair attempt
to draw parallels or to conclude to real contact between the New Testament
and the Qumran Scrolls. While Essenism had some direct influence on
Christianity, this was not at the very beginning, but later. "The contacts
with Qumran come less through John the Baptist and Jesus, than
through Paul, John and the faithful of the second generation." Benoit also
points out that, while the New Testament can share with Qumran
certain themes and expressions, yet everything has been transformed from
within and endowed with a new significance. Joseph Fitzmyer, S. J. shows
that the Scrolls cast light on the obscure and seemingly incomprehensible
mention of the angels in 1 Cor. 11 : 10-Paul's admonition to the Christian
women of Corinth that they should wear a veil during public worship
"because of the angels." We learn from two Qumran texts that bodily
defects offend the sight of the angels who are present at public worship.
Paul argues that the unveiled head of a woman is like a bodily defect which
should be excluded from the sacred assembly.
The passage
6:14-7:1 has long been regarded as an interpolation;
now it is seen to have a remarkable affinity with the Qumran literature.
Joachim Gnilka concludes, however, that it cannot be an Essence document
but a document penned by the hand of a Christian author. He holds the
view that
Cor. represents a collection of Pauline letters or letter-fragments; the editor of the collection believed the passage in question to be
a fragment of a Pauline letter. The passage 1 Cor. 6 : 1-4 leads one to
presume that the church of Corinth had instituted courts for the benefit
of the faithful. It has seemed to Mathias Delcor that a more adequate idea
of the probable organization of the courts of the primitive Church can be
obtained by studying those of the community at Qumran rather than those
presented in the rabbinical writings. His conclusion is that, despite important differences, what is apparently the same judicial system existed in
the courts of Corinth and at Qumran. The long article of Walter Grundmann studies the doctrine of justification by faith as proposed by the
Teacher of Righteousness and by St. Paul. Both have a personal experience
as their starting point, and both found the notion of salvific justice in the
Old Testament. But the former made a connection between justice and

BOOK REVIEWS

grace and scrupulous fulfillment of the Law which was not open to Paul;
for him the place of the Law is taken by Christ. The faith in Christ, which
saves a Christian, is faith in the crucified and risen Christ. This study
offers a striking case of the similarities and the very great differences
between Christianity and Qumran.
Both Karl Georg Kuhn and Franz Mussner consider the light thrown
on Ephesians by Qumran. Kuhn first examines the language and style of
Ephesians and concludes that the relationship of the language and style of
the epistle to that of the Qumran texts can hardly be explained except
on the basis of a continuity of tradition. Then he turns to the origin of the
paraenetic tradition of Eph. 4 :1-62:20 and shows that a part of these admonitions comes specifically from the tradition of the Essence paraenesis as
we find it in the Qumran writings and the late-Jewish texts that are closely
connected with them. Mussner investigates various recurring themes,
concepts and patterns of thought in the Epistle. He treats of " mystery ";
the bond between the community and heaven (Eph. 2 : 6, 18) ; the community as temple and city (2 : 20-22); re-creation (Eph. 2) . It transpires
that the Scrolls throw much light on Ephesians, especially on the central
section formed by Eph. 2, where we find a common thematic association
of ideas. This strengthens the belief that the thematic material of
Ephesians has its roots in a tradition that is also represented at Qumran.
For the rest, the outlook of Ephesians is very different from that of
Qumran, for it sees everything in the perspective of the Christ-event.
Joseph Coppens studies the term "mystery" in the theology of St.
Paul and notes the usage of the term in Qumran. In its strict and
religious sense the Pauline "mystery" (generally in the singular) appears
principally in the Captivity Epistles. Whereas in his earlier epistles Paul
does not restrict the term to a single reality, in the Captivity Epistles the
mystery is Christ in all his dimensions, insofar as in him the divine
mystery is realized. This Christological emphasis marks the most obvious
contrast to the Qumran "mysteries" (almost always in the plural)-all
the wonderful works of the divine plan from the beginning. Yet some at
least of the Pauline texts do become clearer in the light of the Qumran
evidence. And, of course, it is no longer needful, nor even admissible to
seek the origin of the Pauline doctrine of mystery in Hellenism.
In the final essay of the collection the editor himself examines the
concept of truth in the Pauline and the Essene writings. The Essene
concept of truth is homogeneous with that of the Old Testament; and this
factor, of course, would explain marked similarities both of thoughtcontent and terminology between Paul's concept of " truth" and that of
the Essenes. Contacts are significant, therefore, only in the measure that
they are on points peculiar to Paul and Qumran. A matter of particular
interest is the fact that three passages from the Hymns very strongly
support the view that in 1 Tim. 8 : 15 it is Timothy (not the Church)

BOOK REVIEWS

363

who is a "pillar and bulwark of the truth." In general, it emerges that
the most characteristic aspects of the Pauline concept of truth are almost
exclusively associated with definite blocks of Epistles and not scattered
throughout the corpus. The theme of truth, as it occurs in Ephesians and
the Pastorals, in marked affinity with its occurrence in the Qumran writings, suggests that those who penned these epistles, secretaries or disciples
of Paul, were converted Essenes.
It is inevitable that further research will modify some of the views
put forward in these essays. Some suggested contacts may seem less likely,
whereas others may be discerned. At any rate, a strong case is made for
the influence of Qumran on Pauline language and concepts. Two points
emerge clearly, nonetheless: the originality of the Christian message and
the fact that the influence of Essenism on Christianity took place in its
later development rather than during its early years. An important feature
of many of the essays is that, in working out parallels between Paul and
Qumran, they develop Pauline doctrine and explain texts in a manner that
is illuminating, whether or not one accepts the proposed Qumran affinity.
One can instance Grundmann's treatment of justification and Coppens'
synthesis of "mystery."
Paul and Qumran must be given a special place among the scholarly
writings about the Scrolls-and the scholarly output in this area is
immense. Father Murphy-O'Connor was conscious of a communication gap
between the scholars and others who are interested in the progress of their
research and decided to do something about it: "My sole object in
compiling this book was to bridge this gap by rendering more accessible
some of the more significant articles devoted to study of the contacts
between the Pauline writings and the Essene documents." His own splendid
essay assures us of his competence for the task. All serious students of the
New Testament owe him a real debt of gratitude.
WILFRID J. HARRINGTON, 0. P.
St. Mary's, Tallaght,
Co. Dublin, Ireland

Summa Theologiae, Volume 33 (Hope). By Saint Thomas Aquinas. Translated and Edited by WILLIAM J. HILL, 0. P., (New York: McGrawHill, 1966). Pp. 226. $6.75.
The meaning and implications of Christian hope are being contemplated
and appropriated these days as seldom before in the history of the Church.
Quite as remarkable as the present concentration on the " great forgotten "
doctrine of hope is the diversity of persons (and ideologies represented)
in dialogue. Not only are pioneering Christian theologians, such as

364

BOOK REVIEWS

Jiirgen Moltmann and Johannes Metz, focused on hope but traditionalist
and progressive Catholics, fundamentalist and liberal Protestants, political
conservatives and radicals, Marxists, members of the " new left," and many
people yet unlabelled by these " catch-all " categories, are all finding
common ground in its consideration. At its core, the " theology of hope "
movement is both extremely radical-in its reinterpretation of temporality,
eschatology, and history, for example-and deeply committed to such
traditional sources of authority as Holy Scripture and the Church.
Saint Thomas found in the doctrine of Christian hope an essential
ingredient for his theology, and he telescoped many of the" contemporary"
discoveries and issues as he meditated. Thus with real pleasure we welcome
Volume 33 of the new Summa Theologiae, which offers forcefully Saint
Thomas's major articles on hope together with those subsequent, related
questions about fear, despair, presumption, and "precepts." The translator
and editor of this volume, William J. Hill, 0. P., has framed his English
version (facing a Latin text) with an introduction, some notes of reference
and explanation, and index, a glossary, and nine appendices.
The six questions of the Summa which Hill has included form a conditio
sine qua non of most Catholic appropriations of the Biblical doctrine; and
Saint Thomas's spiritual sensitivity regarding hope offers illumination for
all other men as well. Saint Thomas carefully delineated the theological
virtue of hope from the more mundane, yet not totally disanalogous, hopes
of men. He found reasons for hope in the creation itself, in the teleological
cosmology which he found all-pervasive, in the redemptive purpose of God,
and in the person of Jesus Christ. He unfolded Biblical references to hope
with an exuberance seldom approached in Christian history, at least until
the present day. He linked hope inseparably with fear, as does the Bible.
He weeded negative from positive hopes and the spurious from the true.
Saint Thomas also warned against the twin violations of hope-in despair
and presumption-a necessary corrective in his own day (and perhaps even
in ours) to any preoccupation with despair alone. In brief, Saint Thomas
balanced a joyful theology of hope with correlative warnings to the viator
on its deceptive potential.
Father Hill is to be roundly congratulated for performing, in excellent
fashion, the difficult tasks to which he set himself. Evident from the
notes and appendices is the fact that Scripture's first and final words
occupy the same focal place for the editor that they did for Saint Thomas.
Moreover, as his numerous citations to Biblical passages indicate, Father
Hill has attempted to retain the " utmost importance " of Scriptural data.
His first appendix, " The Revelation of Hope in Sacred Scripture," serves
to reiterate Biblical priorities and to guard against imbalanced readings of
the Summa.
Father Hill's honesty is refreshing also. He is unwilling to distort by
simplistic, neat designations the profound and very subtle insights provided
by Saint Thomas. On the incredibly complicated concursus of causalities,

365

BOOK REVIEWS

for example, he has warned (p. xix) of its possible injustice to
contingency. Again, he has provided assistance in viewing Aristotelian
"four-fold" causality (p. 14) but has not tried to explain the entire
relationship of final to efficient cause, a seemingly essential ambiguity on
which the saint meditates (II-II, q. 17, a. 4). He has not "rationalizedaway " the enigmatic quotation by Saint Thomas of Ben Sirach 25 : 16.
(p. 66) On the matter of relating time to hope, he has chosen to illustrate
from art rather than from logic.
Most enjoyable, however, are the consistent invitations for contemplation
on Christian hope which Father Hill offers. His presentation, as well as
this portion of the Summa, proves " open to organic growth." (p. xx)
Realizing that everything about hope cannot be provided in a single
volume and that additional, secondary information might clutter the
volume's present forcefulness and clarity, nevertheless I would certainly
have appreciated further remarks in several areas. The relationship of this
section on hope to that on hope among the angels has not been discussed
by Father Hill. Since Saint Thomas seems to have found true for angels
much of what applied to men, this word may be peripheral. On the other
hand, perhaps I, q. 59, a. 4 (see Volume 9, "Angels," p. 183) and other
references can shed light on the present discussion. Again, the notes and
Appendix 2, "Historical Context: Crisis and Clarification," make no
mention of Joachim of Flora, whose contributions to a medieval theology
of hope were certainly profound and perhaps even provided a part of the
immediate context for the views of Saint Thomas.
Secondly, I find the notes and appendices innocent, in large measure, of
the contemporary dialogues. Marxist categories, the mention of Ernst
Bloch's Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Frankfort, 1959), detailed words about the
prophetic Gabriel Marcel (pp. 127, 143), and some indications of the work
of Moltmann, Metz, and others would have been most welcome.
Thirdly, and most serious, I miss any but stereotyped (albeit gentle) hints
at non-Catholic " dislocations " of hope. Luther's position is caricatured;
Calvin is ignored; Easterners have been omitted altogether, excepting
early ones. Only Paul Tillich, whose contribution concerning hope can
scarcely be termed signal, has been cited seriously in discussion. (pp. 156,
178)
Even considering these criticism of omission, Father Hill's efforts and his
successes in proffering a serious commentary on Saint Thomas's theology
of hope must be considered extraordinary. The new English Summa,
which evidences a uniformity of excellence rare indeed among multivolumed endeavors, is undeniably enriched by Father Hill's editing and
translating of Saint Thomas's central section on hope.
LOUIS WEEKS,

3316 Swansea
Durham, North Carolina

III

366

BOOK REVIEWS

Faith in the Face of Doubt. Ed. by JoHN P. KEATING. New York: Paulist
Press, 1968. Pp. 173. $1.45.
This book is a collection of eight talks given at the Catholic student
center at the University of California at Berkeley. The five contributors
are Jesuits. They make a gallant effort to show an understanding and
sympathy with students whose studies and environment may breed a
challenge to their faith. Generally, the case for faith is ably stated. But,
to create sympathy with a critical audience, some uncritical and challengeable assertions are made. I quote a few. Fr. L. Patrick Carroll writes:
" Biblical criticism has demythologized the historical facts related to the
gospels and reduced much of our knowledge of the man Jesus Christ to the
fact that a particular group of people in a particular time experienced
something that dynamically orientated their lives, and this ' something ' was
Jesus Christ." (p. 78) We are not told whose biblical criticism or which
historical facts. Is such a sentence capable of leading a young man from
doubt to certainty?
Fr. John A. Coleman, writing on grace and St. Augustine's reply to
Pelagius, says: "St. Augustine reaffirmed man's entire dependence on the
gracious God. Unfortunately, Augustine muddied the waters by making
grace seem like a thing. At times he portrays God as very choosy about
his friends, demanding of man an abject, infantile stance of dependence."
(p. 96) Yet, strangely enough, it is from these " muddied " waters that the
Council of Orange draws its teaching on grace.
The same author, speaking of the change God brings about in us, says:
" Some theologians choose to call this change in us by the name of grace."
It is not merely some theologians but the Church itself that uses this word
to describe the healing and complete readjustment of our nature which God
brings about. The Church does not use this word to describe only "
loving initiative, respectful of our freedom." Grace is not just God's
graciousness. (Cf. Denz. 821, can. 11 on justification.)
Is it fair for Fr. Roger J. Guettinger to suggest that in I Cor. 6 : 16
" St. Paul is saying among other things, that the sexual act-even when it
is performed with a prostitute-can express either love or something less
than love and can be a source of either growth or dehumanization "?
If St. Paul values fornication so positively, why does he say: "Fugite
fornicationem "?
Several statements are unfairly critical of the Church and of its members.
Fr. L. Patrick Carroll, writing of the challenges of non-belief, says: " The
men who challenge or ignore religion are not naive, or sophistic, or even
uninformed. They are honest men who know much about religion in general
and Catholicism in particular. We have fostered whatever misconceptions
they entertain."
(p. 117) Has the Church preached a misconception of
God's true self? There is still room for the sin of rejecting the light, and

BOOK REVIEWS

367

especially among intellectuals whose temptation is pride. Indeed, it is
strange that in this book nobody mentioned the need of humility, except
in the act of ridiculing St. Augustine for demanding " an abject, infantile
stance of dependence." In a book on faith, even to college students, one
would have liked to hear quoted: " unless you become as little children."
In the same essay it is stated that: "we must admit the obvious morality
of many non-believers and must assent to the fact that their approach has
often flowered in more concrete loving activity in the world than has been
furnished by a trans-temporal Christian faith." (p. 121) But, why should
we foul our own nest in this way? After all, it is God's Church. Has Fr.
Carroll reflected on the complete failure of the unbelieving world even to
tackle the problem of poverty and disease? Is it just to make such a
statement without mentioning the martyrs of charity in the Catholic
Church?
I put these questions not to damn a book of many merits but to
express my disagreement with these loose and inaccurate ways of speaking.
Perhaps they gain the passing sympathy of a particular audience, but they
do not witness to the truth. In the end, that is what matters.
JEROME ToNER, 0. P.
St. Charles' Seminary
Nagpur, India

The Beginning of Eternal Life: The Dynamic Faith of Thomas Aquinas,
Origins and Interpretation. By JAMES A. MoHLER, S. J. New York,
Philosophical Library, 1968. Pp. 144. $4.95.
Students always need exposure to solid learning from the Christian
tradition by their contemporaries. Father Mohler steps forward with his
offering to satisfy this need. The scope of his work is highly restricted.
He is presenting here only the teaching of St. Thomas on faith, bagically
the content of the first seven questions of the Secunda Secundae.
Each of the four expository chapters begins with a sketch of the sources
used by St. Thomas (generally by indicating the thought of a few significant Fathers, and digesting the thought of the earlier scholastics); he then
concentrates on summarizing the thought of St. Thomas on the subject
matter. The main points exposed are the definition of faith in Hebrews
11: 1; Augustine's description of faith as cogitare cum assensu; the object,
act, and habit of faith; and faith as a virtue. Each chapter concludes by
inquiring into the peculiarity of St. Thomas's contributions to the theology
of faith. These are seen to be: an appreciation of the dynamically eschatological dimension of faith, i. e., faith already introduces us into the

368

BOOK REVIEWS

dimension of the eternal by uniting us to the First Truth; a refreshing and
original balancing of the cognitive and affective elements of faith; and a
precising of the relation of charity to faith. The final chapter provides a
brief summary.
Much of the work amounts to a re-organized and interwoven translation
of the Summa and the De V eritate, with the addition of a fair sprinkling
of the Commentary on the Sentences. On the whole, the book is not
remarkable for its originality. It is basically a paraphrase of St. Thomas
(and, on occasion, an overly literal one). It is valuable for making
accessible in a usable English form the teaching of Aquinas, and for providing the original version of the texts cited. Users of the book are presumed
to have some background for handling the baldly presented scholasticism.
Terms such as agent intellect, possible intellect, end in common, and
formal reason of the object (a distressingly inadequate translation of ratio
formalis object·i) are used, for the most part, without a word of explanation.
A notable contribution of the work, however, is the thorough documentation
and the Latin texts (especially for the early scholastics) in the fortyseven pages of footnotes, plus a good bibliography.
This work would be a valuable source for a course on faith. Students
could cover much of the basic course information by reading, and lectures
could then focus on interpretation. All in all, a useful product.
JoHN A. FARREN, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin. By STEPHANUs TROOSTER, S. J.
Glen Rock, N.J.: Newman Press/Paulist Press, 1968. Pp. 138. $4.95.
The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin. By. F. R.
TENNANT. New York, N. Y.: Shocken Books, Inc., 1968. Pp. 390.
$7.50 cloth,
paper.
These two books may sell because they cover the lively and currently
controversial subject of original sin. But there are several far better books
treating the same matter already on the market.
Trooster's book is almost completely derivative, according to himself.
This fact will discourage the teacher of theology who only has time to read
the best of modern theology and prefers to read the primary sources. The
author also remarks: "It is certainly not difficult to analyse and write
critical commentaries on the attempts of others to arrive at new solutions,
especially if such attempts have not as yet completely matured." (p. 41)

BOOK REVIEWS

369

This is not true of his work. It is extremely difficult to make an assessment
of it, favorable or unfavorable. It is a torturous work, with an abundance
of qualifications at all the crucial points in his arguments. Like his
acknowledged theological mentor and compatriot, Peter Schoonenberg S. J.,
he lacks the charisms of simplicity and clarity. In fairness, however, his
labyrinthine thought and ponderous expression stem to a great extent from
the very nature of the difficult task he has set himself.
Trooster tries to reformulate the dogma of original sin in terms of the
modern and scientific evaluation of man and the cosmos. In practice he
tries to square evolution and closely related disciplines or theses with
divine revelation concerning original sin. He writes: " To place an
extremely gifted and highly privileged spiritual man at the beginning of
human life on earth appears in complete contradiction to modern scientific
thought on this matter." (p. 18) Nevertheless, the author does make a
brave effort to salvage something of the teaching of the Church on original
justice after it has been torpedoed by the dogmatic assertions of modern
science. The spirit of the book is captured in another similar passage.
" Acceptance of the modern viewpoint, however, eliminates the possibility
of accounting for the genesis of evil in the world on the basis of sin committed by the first man. After all, how could so primitive a human being
have been in a position to refuse God's offer of salvation; how could such
a primitive being have been capable of a breach of covenant with God? "
(p. 18) These are, of course, legitimate questions. But it seems to me that
the modern theology of original sin as presented by Trooster is bristling
with as many imponderables as the traditional theology.
Perhaps the modern difficulties are more real and acceptable to the
modern man. Still, I feel that Trooster should have followed the guidelines for research set down by Pope Paul in attempting to achieve a formulation that is compatible with modern science. Theology is essentially
ecclesial and cannot make any lasting progress without the positive effort.
to keep in vital continuity with the Magisterium. The student of theology
would benefit more from a book like " Christ and Original Sin " by Peter
De Rosa, if he wished to keep abreast of the latest and most balanced
developments in the theology of original sin.
F. R. Tennant's book was first published in 1903. He was one of the
giants of the English Protestant theology of his day. One admires his intellectual integrity and enjoys his literary style, even though one cannot
often agree with his conclusions.
In the introduction by Mary Frances Thelen we read: "Tennant presented three arguments to show that there is no such thing a.s original sin:
(1) there was no literal historical fall.
There is no bias toward sin.
(3) The racial solidarity or racial inheritance, whose recognition was the
fruitful part of the doctrine of the Fall, is to be located in the material of
sin, not in sin itself." (p. iii) However, when he explains himself, he is as

370

BOOK REVIEWS

close to the Catholic teaching on original sin as Trooster is. His difficulty
is the perennial one that original sin cannot be sin at all because there is
no personal responsible action. Any Catholic student could have told him
the answer to his difficulty by making the necessary distinctions.
However, this book will be of interest to the historian of the nonCatholic theology of original sin. Old Testament scripture students will
be interested in his interpretations of Genesis. It is disappointing in its
scanty reference to possible parallels of the Fall story in Indian religions
and philosophy. (This, of course, is a personal regret because a fuller
treatment would have been helpful for one teaching the theology of original
sin in India!) One wonders how great the contribution to theology by a
man of Tennant's obvious intellectual stature and culture would have been
had he the positive and certain guidance of the Magisterium to encourage
him. I feel he would have made a splendid attempt to reconcile evolution
and the traditional teaching of the Church. His attempt, such as it is,
anticipates many of the best insights of present-day Catholic theologians.
Of course, he was a scientist and a theologian and not just one or the other,
or worse, neither,-which seems to be the case with some contemporary
writers on original sin.
BEDE McGREGGOR, 0. P.
St. Charles' Seminary

Nagpur, India

The Church and the Body Politic. By FRANKLIN H. LITTELL. New York:
The Seabury Press, 1969. Pp. 175. $5.95.
Every adult Sunday school class and study group will find much to discuss and to challenge them in The Church And the Body Politic by Dr.
Franklin H. Littell, eminent educator, historian and President of Iowa
Wesleyan College, Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Churches must stop expecting
government, schools, public welfare agencies or the medical profession to
be official organs of Christianity, he warns. Two-thirds of the world are
under communism; Europe is no longer a secure base for Christianity, and
the Supreme Court of the United States has at last faced up to the First
Amendment of the Constitution which established America as a society of
many faiths-none of them connected with the government. Yet, Dr.
Littell sees no cause for despair if Christians and churches, armed with new
programs and direction, realize that the present situation provides unparalleled opportunities to get about the Lord's business. " After all," he
says, " Christ died for the world, not for the church! "
He questions those who would train church members to be lay clerics,
urging the dignity of the laity as such. He urges churches to make

BOOK REVIEWS

371

membership more difficult and cites examples of the accomplishments made
by those who demand effort and commitment above attendance and
donation. To those who say the church should stay out of politics, Dr.
Littell shows that, historically, in cases where the church stood mutely by.
totalitarianism took over-as in Russia and Nazi Germany. He says the
time has come to abandon the over-emphasis on mass evangelism-which
has brought American church membership from 6.9% in 1800 to a constituency of 96% of the population today-and get down to work. In
conjunction with higher membership standards he feels work-study groups
should be organized around members' vocations so that religious ethics
can be strongly and boldly advocated where they are needed most-in every
part of and at all levels of a community's daily life.
A former professor of church history at The Chicago Theological
Seminary, Southern Methodist University and Emory University, Dr.
Littell avoids preaching in his book and relies on examples, statistics and a
broad base of historical fact to call American churches to action. The
church should take a strong position on public issues and in politics, he
says, and not let government and technicians direct American life. " The
most awful figure of the modern world is," he states, " the technically
competent barbarian-the master of persuasion who sells his services to
the highest bidder or the careful bookkeeper who counted dead bodies at
Dachau and Auschwitz."
BILL BAXTER
lCYWa Wesleyan College
Mount Pleasant, Iowa

John Knox. By JASPER RIDLEY. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Pp. 596. $9.50.
Against the turbulent background of the sixteenth century, Jasper Ridley
has written a comprehensive exciting biography on " the light of Scotland,"
John Knox. A man of mysterious character and high achievement, this
Scot is pictured in all the controversy which surrounded him but without
the false slanders. The author is essentially concerned with Knox's
revolutionary ideas, activities and his mentality, which viewed the world in
essentially political terms. Mr. Ridley pictures this political-religious
thinker as " one of the most ruthless and successful revolutionary leaders
in history," and as one rather to be encountered in history books than in
the flesh. Dictators and mobs might murder an opponent whom they
considered dangerous or for the purpose of revenge, but Knox is the onlv
revolutionary " who proclaimed that it was sinful not to kill their
The author traces the development of Knox's thought from the Berwick

872

BOOK REVIEWS

congregation, where he taught that the monarch must be obeyed, until the
accession of Queen Mary when his views changed radically. Rule of
women, in Knox's opinion, was contrary to nature, a view in which he
became more hardened.
A pragmatist of the highest caliber, a successful strategist, he could
another. His passions did not seem to be limited to the cause of Scotland
against the rule of women, yet appeal for help from Queen Elizabeth I.
A powerful individual by temperament, yet one whose strength lay in the
organization that he built, he could uphold one murder and yet condemn
another. His passions did not seem to be limited to the cause of Scotland
and religion, for in the last seven years of his life, when he was fifty years
old, he married for the second time a girl of the age of seventeen.
As a theologian, he certainly was not a John Calvin, Martin Bucer,
Peter Martyr, or, for that matter, a Thomas Cranmer. It was not in his
nature to enter into subtle analysis of deep theological questions. He
never formulated "his opinions on the nature of the [Real] Presence with
any clarity " until he went to Geneva where he accepted Calvin's and
Bullinger's. In fact, he seemed more like a renaissance political pamphleteer
than a theologian, being bitter and invective in " vilifying and ridiculing
the mass [sic] and the adoration of the Host." He could label and attack
any of his religious opponents with the ability of a nineteenth-century
politican.
In an age when success is the measure of greatness John Knox cannot
help but be appealing. A regime which has lasted over four hundred years
cannot be considered anything less than successful. The Church of Scotland
worships today essentially as it did in Knox's time. The order of worship
is still that of Geneva, and communion is still received sitting. This is
Knox's achievement. "He was, after all, a religious leader, and although
all his life he was absorbed in political struggle and would never have
accepted the idea of a non-political Church, the daily and weekly religious
service was the central thing in his life. This still remains."
STuART McPHAIL, 0. P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

A Marriage Manual. By DR. WILLIAM LYNCH. New York: Pocket Books,
1968. Pp. 807. 95¢.

Sex in Marriage: Love-Giving, Life-Giving. By the Archdiocese of Washington, 1968. Pp. 40.
Dr. Lynch's book is a physician's practical guide to marriage. The
author tells us that it has been his privilege as an obstetrician-gynecologist
" to see people who are involved in happy marriages find the power of

BOOK REVIEWS

373

their love in their own lives and the meaning of the expression ' count
your blessings'." He speaks for the normal marriage, not the abnormal.
As surveys of the normal are difficult to come by, this manual is particularly valuable, because one whose knowledge of human nature is gathered
largely from dealing with normal people inevitably gets a more balanced
view of marriage than another whose chief concern is the pathology of
marriage, no matter how orthodox his moral principles.
The author treats of the Catholic concept of marriage, the Catholic
family, and every aspect of marital relations from dating and engagement
to menopause and death, in a very readable and nontechnical manner.
Indeed, this manual is remarkable for its clarity and completeness. If
there is one criticism of this otherwise excellent pocket edition, it is that
nothing has been added to the text since the appearance of the original,
high-priced edition in 1964. Consequently, no mention is made of the
relevant statements pertaining to marriage as found in the documents of
Vatican II. It would be incorrect, however, to conclude that the rich
insights of the Council have not been anticipated by the author. They
certainly have, as is evident from his chapters on the meaning of marriage,
the Catholic family, and the limitation of the family.
It has been said on good authority that there is no group of men in
contemporary society more responsible for discrediting the Catholic concept of marriage than the medical profession. Of course, there is no doubt
that for them, more so than for any other professional group, moral
principles can pose very acute and painful problems, particularly in the
field of marriage. Still, it must be insisted that the moral conscience of
the medical profession is a most vital factor in any community. The great
merit of the book under review is that it has been written by one who,
in the words of Pope Paul VI, values above every human interest the
superior demands of his Christian vocation. A Marriage Manual for
Catholics should prove of considerable assistance to married couples and a
valuable aid and encouragement to the Catholic medical profession to take
up enthusiastically the call to help those in need of direction " so as to be
able to give to those married persons who consult them wise counsel and
healthy direction, such as they have a right to expect" (Humanae Vitae,
pp. 27) . This should be the object of the Catholic medical profession's
most enlightened concern today.
The booklet, Sex in Marriage, treats of many questions asked since the
appearance of Humanae Vitae in a very clear and unambiguous manner.
It succeeds admirably in counteracting much of the intemperate comment
that has tended of late to bewilder the popular mind. Although the
Encyclical raised a number of fundamental questions which theology is
only still in the process of clarifying, the replies in this booklet nonetheless
provide the broad lines for an ultimate satisfactory solution.
Particularly valuable and timely are the distinguished author's replies to

374

BOOK REVIEWS

such questions as: the relation between authority and conscience; the
relation between the Magisterium and the natural moral law; the fundamental difference between contraception and rhythm; the apparent parallel
between the condemnation of Galileo, usury and contraception; the unbreakable link between the life-giving and the love-giving aspects of sexual
intercourse; the reception of the Sacraments on the part of those who
With regard to this last problem, a pastoral
practice contraception.
directive of great understanding and compassion is given. Married couples,
we are told, who " honestly try to stop using contraception and who fall
into sin should not despair, even if it happens over and over. Such couples
should go to confession and then return to Communion. They should stay
close to Christ in the Eucharist by receiving Him often, even-or especiallywhen they are struggling with temptation .... In going to confession,
people should not demand more of themselves than God is demanding of
them. But this does not mean being sure one will never fall again. . . .
We believe that God rewards those who keep seeking Him, no matter
how unsuccessful they seem to be in their own eyes."
This booklet was primarily written for the benefit of the faithful of the
Archdiocese of Washington. However, it has already been widely appreciated in many places far removed from its immediate intended destination.
It should continue to enable all who read and study it to realize that
Pope Paul VI has certainly benefitted mankind by issuing his Encyclical.
KILIAN

R. DwYER, 0. P.

St. Charles' Seminary
Nagpur, India

The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought. By EMIL L. FACKENHEIM.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press. $8.50.
To the average university student today Hegel's thought seems unintelligible. It has little connection with the world of science and technology.
Its theories, if they are not simply fantasies, seem arbitrary constructions
of existential facts. Its core dialectic, although somewhat corresponding to
an emergent evolutionary model of the world, nevertheless seems strange,
a priori, and enigmatic.
And yet this peculiar speculative construction was created from beginning to end precisely to explain and justify the modern mind. It is a
closely reasoned off-shoot of Kantian and post-Kantian thought whose
point of departure is the defense of the modern scientific world-view.
This has perhaps never been presented with greater penetration and detail
than by Johann Erdmann, the Hegelian of the right of the last century,
in the second volume of his Outline of the History of Philosophy. With
vast erudition and deep insight he shows how Hegel arose step by step

BOOK REVIEWS

375

from the original Kantian endeavor to bolster the claims of Newtonian
science. But the point to which Hegel was eventually led in this process
seems remote from its beginning and even in conflict with it. This is in
good part what makes him unintelligible.
And yet, contemporary thinkers cannot escape from him. He has laid
down their terminology and for many, if not for most, this is indispensable.
Existentialism's debt to it is well-known. Hegel's terminology is to contemporary philosophy what scholastic terminology was to modern philosophy after the Reformation.
But his influence is more than this. The content of his thought also
emerges every once in a while to command renewed attention. I suspect
that this is because the steps that led to it, taking their point of departure
in the modern scientific mentality, have not yet been overcome. Every
thinker who moves from the same beginning tends to follow the same path
and, sooner or later, to become once more fascinated with the great
German.
In the past few years theologians have shown this interest in him and
probably for the same reason. An interesting article by Peter Henrici, S. J.
documents this, "Hegel und die Theologie," Gregorianurn, No. 4 (1967),
706-746. Professor Fackenheim's book is part and parcel of this new
interest. He agrees with the common opinion that Hegel's thought was
fundamentally Christian. Hegel, he thinks, took his beginnings from the
Christian religious consciousness and from that passed to philosophy. This
seems to be supported by Hegel's own statement: "Religion can exist
without philosophy. But philosophy cannot exist without religion. For it
encompasses religion" (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Science, second
preface). This means for him that religion, under the impulse of the
dialectic, gives rise to philosophical consciousness.
Entering into considerable detail, Professor Fackenheim tries to show
exactly how this occurs. The exposition is highly competent. The author
knows his Hegel. His chief problem, however, is one common to all
Hegel's commentators. He is burdened with the enigma of the dialectic.
This is not elucidated in any way by describing its stages. The reader
wants always to know what is its proper meaning and justification. If it
is viewed simply as a phenomenological presentation of an evolutionary
process, it seems intelligible enough. But when it is presented in Hegel's
terms as a peculiar relational structure of position and negation, it seems
to disappear into thin air.
The reason for this unintelligibility, it seems to me, is the lack of
knowledge of ancient and medieval thought among our contemporaries.
They cannot therefore grasp its presence in the Hegelian dialectical triad.
Professor Fackenheim is quite right when he points out that Hegel is as
much a " response to Aristotle " as he is to Kant, Fichte and Schelling.
(p. xii) He "shatters the context of German idealism" by this. (ibid.)
It is the presence of Platonic and Neoplatonic relations in the dialectic,

376

BOOK REVIEWS

totally neglected by the contemporary mind, which creates the unintelligibility of Hegel. As Professor Fackenheim so trenchantly puts it, this lack
of a Platonic dimension would make A. N. Whitehead seem to Hegel an
anachronistic and inferior Plato. (p.
Hegel was unique among the leaders of modem philosophy because of
his penetrating appreciation of at least some profound themes from antiquity. It is no accident that he closes his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences with a quotation from Aristotle's Metaphysics. He cites this
without commentary, as much as to say that all the preceding is simply
to give it meaning and that it gives meaning to the preceding. The reference is to the doctrine of the Nous. In view of this it is difficult to see
how anyone could attempt to interpret the Hegelian dialectical triad without first clearly stating the Aristotelian and Platonic doctrine of the Nous.
Hegel is truly a response to antiquity as much as to Kant. Radically, it is
this which creates his greatest obscurity to the modern mind untutored in
the ancient metaphysics.
The student of Neoplatonic metaphysics who compares its fundamental
axioms with Hegel's statements concerning the elements of the dialectical
triad cannot help but be struck by the similarity, even identity.
But this dialectic poses two problems. The first has to do with its own
inner structure and relations; the second has to do with the more or less
factual expose of the stages through which it gone in history. These two
were never strictly interconnected in Hegel's thought. This makes the
particular triadic structure through which religion gives rise to philosophy
at least problematical. And it also makes it impossible logically to attack
the validity of the dialectic in itself simply because it does not follow tho
particular concrete historical steps which Hegel ascribed to it. Here, it
seems to me, Professor Fackenheim is on shaky ground. And his statement
that Hegel, if he were to return today and see what has happened to the
flow of history since his time, would no longer be an Hegelian, (p.
identifies too closely the dialectic in itself and the actual historical
process.
The root attitude which gave rise to Hegel's thought has not yet been
transcended. We are in a post-Hegelian age chronologically but not conceptually. And our age will return in puzzlement to the German master
as long as it still adheres to the mentality which grounded his enigmatic
thought.
Professor Fackenheim's book is a valuable contribution to the present
renewed interest in the religious dimension of Hegelianism. The reviewer
will look forward with anticipation to the follow-up volume on Kant,
Fichte, Schleiermacher and Schelling.
KEVIN WALL,

Berkeley Priory
Berkeley, California

0. P.

BOOK REVIEWS

377

The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge.
By MARCIA L. CoLISH. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1968. Pp. 427. $10.00.
Marcia Colish has selected a fascinating theme for this work, the way in
which the classical liberal arts tradition of language theory combined with
the Christian theologies of the Divine Logos to influence the epistemological
theories which lay at the basis of scholasticism. Too often this liberal arts
tradition is considered only as an item in the history of education, and its
deeper philosophical implications are passed over.
After an introduction in which she expounds the general issues, she selects
four key authors to illustrate these, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Thomas
Aquinas, and Dante. Very neatly, and in my opinion quite justly, these
four authors exemplify respectively the differing influences of rhetorical
theory, grammatical theory, logical theory, and poetic theory of language
on philosophy and theology. Each of these authors stands for a whole
tendency to use one or the other of these dialectical instruments, to construct a philosophical or theological system. Thus St. Augustine is
constantly influenced in the way he states or solves a theological question
by his own bent of mind which had been so disciplined in the rhetorician's
concern for the effect of language on the hearts of his audience and the
various " figures of speech" and modes of discourse by which this is
achieved. At the same time his Christian conviction that God has revealed
himself to man both through the Scriptures and through the Creation,
and finally through his Son, the Word entering into the created world, gave
to this rhetorical point of view a profound metaphysical and theological
depth. Similarly St. Anselm, living in a period when the Aristotelian logic
was not yet very well known, tended to use the more familiar techniques
and categories of grammar to state and solve questions that would be given
a logical formulation by Aquinas.
In my opinion the most original and helpful of the sections is that on
St. Augustine. It is very revealing to trace, as the author does, the theme
of the truthful word and the lie through Augustine's account of his own
mental and spiritual development in the Confessions. This approach helps
to explain the relevance of many otherwise rather puzzling passages in the
Confessions. We see why Augustine so carefully analyzes the phases of
his infancy and boyhood in terms of his learning to talk and his learning to
lie. It also casts light on the important role which memory plays in
Augustine's thought. Finally, the author helps us to understand how for
Augustine human speech must be redeemed by the Word of God in order
to speak the truth, and even then it must end, after the theological attempt
"to express the Inexpressible" in the words of prayer.
The least successful section is that on Thomas Aquinas. I have the
impression that the author is uncomforable with Aquinas and does not
quite know how to fit him into her scheme. To tell the truth, St. Thomas
is too Aristotelian in his method to be reduced to a single mode of discourse,

378

BOOK REVIEWS

since it is precisely the Aristotelian method to insist on the multiplicity of
modes of discourse and their special functions. Of course, it is correct to
say that St. Thomas largely occupies himself with the logical approach,
but within this he carefully distinguishes dialectical argumentation from
demonstration. It would have been very interesting if the author had
examined the interplay of these different modes in St. Thomas's thought.
She centers, instead, on the topic of analogy, which is, of course, of great
importance in the Summa Theologiae. However, she adopts the view,
with which I do not agree, that analogy is a purely logical problem. It
would have been more revealing if she had showed how St. Thomas uses
the logical theory of analogy as an instrument to develop an ontological
theory of the order of knowledge. I found her discussion of the topic
neither very clear nor illuminating.
In her view "the principal reason for the inclusion of the proofs [of the
existence of God] is didactic; it is to train his students to cope with
Thomas's criticism." (p. 196 f.) Is St. Thomas's purpose apologetic? Or
is it rather that the qttinque 'Viae establish by an a posteriori method
proper to Aristotelian empiricism the ground for the metaphysics which
St. Thomas intends to use as the instrument of his theology? Since throughout the Summa St. Thomas uses the basic principle of the identity of
essence and existence in God and their distinction in creatures as the very
basis for the analogy between creatures and God, he has to establish this
principle philosophically. St. Thomas is emphatic (Summa I, q. 1, a. 5, ad
£) that sacred doctrine as founded in revelation does not depend ex
necessitate on philosophy, but it can profitably use it. But if it uses philosophy, its philosophical premises must be established philosophically.
The statement that " epistemologically . . . he holds that all knowledge,
with the exception of intuited first principles, enters the mind through the
senses," (p. 181) is, I believe, mistaken. It is true that certain modern
Thomists believe that St. Thomas holds for some a priori element in knowledge. This would, if true, prove that he, like most medieval Aristotelians,
was really a Platonist at heart. It seems to me, however, that it is clear
enough that for St. Thomas first principles are known by intellectual
intuition into sense experience. Aristotle deals quite explicitly with this
point in the Posterior Analytics and St. Thomas, both in his commentary
on this work and in his very frequent use of its doctrine on the principles
of demonstration, shows himself Aristotle's convinced disciple.
As a whole, however, this book will open up interesting vistas of research
for philosopher, theologian, and literary theorists of language alike. The
philosophy of language which occupies such an important position in
current philosophy can greatly profit from works of this sort which reveal
the historical dimensions of the issues with which it must deal.
BENEDICT

Aquinas Institute of Philosophy
River Forest, Illinois

M. AsHLEY, 0. P.

BOOK REVIEWS

379

Dominican Self-Appraisal in the Light of the Council. By VALENTINE
WALGRAVE, 0. P. Chicago: The Priory Press, 1968. Pp. 369 with
appendixes. $10.00.
Primarily this is a familial book. The Dominican Order, like all religious
families in the Church, is engaged in the work of adaptive renewal. The
Order must acknowledge a debt of gratitude to one of its friars, Valentine
W algrave, for having brought to the task of self-evaluation a clarity of
vision and the basic erudition requisite to situate the problems which must
be resolved if the Order is to continue as a vital force in the life of the
Church.
Since it is a familial book, there are many details and applications which,
apart from the members of the Order, would be of interest only to those
who are irreformably curious. However, the core concept developed by the
author is of value not only for all religious who are called to " combine
contemplation with apostolic love" (Vat. Cone. II, Perf. Car., n. 5) but
inferentially to all who seriously seek to orient themselves in relation to the
whole of reality.
To acquire an appreciative understanding of reality, the seeker must
assume a posture of openness or receptivity much as the craftsman must
be sensitive and responsive to the lineaments of his material if he would
produce a masterwork. It is the author's thesis that the climate of contemporary Western civilization is inimical to the easy assimilation of the
contemplative attitude which he understands as " a psychological predisposition which inclines us to be receptive to the grace of contemplation .
. . ." (p. 105)
Two factors operate as obstacles to the acquisition of this spirit. The
first is a closed humanism, not yet incorporated into an authentic
Christian form, characterized by a " socialization " devoted to involvement
for the sake of personal fulfillment which further generates an " horizontalism " that excludes the transcendant. This work of humanization, being
committed to temporal values, repudiates the ascetical attitude as an
obstacle to spontaneity and accepts only that asceticism connected with
service-oriented activity. Further, despite a clear linguistic commitment to
eschatology, the movement of humanism for the most part empties the
concept of all transterrestrial values.
The second obstacle to the acquisition of the contemplative attitude,
one which is prior to and related to the first, is the predominance of the
active consciousness, that is, a primary concern with actualization. Modern
man is above all else an "achiever," a "realizer" who is attracted not by
the transcendental but is challenged to re-create himself and the world in
which he lives. Such activism necessarily excludes or makes very difficult
the attitude of listening which is the beginning of the dialogue with the
transcendant. In a word, the requisite openness to divine reality is viewed

380

BOOK REVIEWS

as a passive sterility which makes no efficient contribution to the accomplishment of actualization.
Father Walgrave concludes: "To recover a receptive form of consciousness which is willing to live in silence and awareness of God, we must
develop a concept of man that is in complete opposition to a closed form
He believes that a providential trend is at work
of humanism." (p.
in the world which may serve to liberate man and bring him to accept
himself as one of" the poor of Yaweh." A recovery of the dialogie sense of
contemplation has been manifested in the lives of such influential figures
as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dag HammerskjOld and Pope John XXIII.
It is the author's unassailable premise that the Dominican concept-the
ideal incarnated in Saint Dominic-contains a contemplative dimension
that has a value in itself and an ultimate relationship to the apostolic and
doctrinal mission. Authenticity demands a practical reaffirmation of this
by the Order. The ultimate criterion which must be applied to evaluate
experiments engaged in concerning the housekeeping details of the Dominican life-form is neither the norm of efficiency nor that of self-realization but
whether or not the process is contributory to the development of the
contemplative attitude. If this is assured, all else will follow.
WILLIAM

B. RYAN, 0. P.

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. 0.

Miscellanea Andre Combes. Rome: Libreria Editrice della Pont. Universita Lateranense, 1967-1968. I (Pp. 896, L. 4000), II (Pp. 500,
L. 5000), III (Pp. 500, L. 5000) .
Friends and colleagues of Monsignor Andre Combes joined together to
offer a massive tribute to him in the form most characteristic of his own
career, scholarly writing. The three large volumes of Miscellanea honor the
man who, after a distinguished scholarly career in his native France, came
to the Lateran in Rome at the threshold of its academic renewal, which
coincided with the opening of the pontificate of John XXIII. In 1968 he
became the founder of the Chair of St. Thomas at the Lateran, with the
purpose of recapturing the long history of Thomistic teaching going back
to the former Apollinare and of bringing Thomistic thought to bear on the
area of contemporary Catholic culture. From this sprang the series
"Cathedra Sancti Thomae" (which also includes this Miscellanea) and
the later "Studi e ricerche sulla rinascita del tomismo." Combes was also
the founder of the Institute of Higher Studies of Spirituality, which
publishes " Spiritualitas."

BOOK REVIEWS

381

A disciple and collaborator of Etienne Gilson, student of the spirituality
of Gerson, dedicated follower of St. Therese of Lisieux, lifelong admirer of
St. Thomas Aquinas-these various interests among others indicated in the
prefatory "Life and Works of Msgr. Andre Combes" are reflected in the
sweep of articles relating to every epoch in the life of the Church.
The three volumes are divided into eleven sections beginning with
Biblical Themes and ending with Thomism and Modern Science. We can
merely list the major contributions which would offer direct interest to
Thomists. " Comment Le Premier Moteur Meut L 'Univers," by Paul
Siwek, S. J. (I,
; " Berenger de Tours dans les ecrits de Saint
Thomas d'Aquin," by Godfroid Geenen, 0. P. (II, 43-61); "Un aspect de
la notion de verite selon Saint Albert le Grand auteur du ' De Bono,'" by
Abbe Francis Ruello (II, 149-160); "Elementi per una dottrina tomistica
della partecipazione," by Cornelio Fabro, C. P. S. (II, 163-190); "Animadversiones thomisticae in argumentum ideologicum pro existentia Dei," by
Humbertus Degl'Innocenti, 0. P. (II,
"S. Tommaso, 'De spiritualibus Creaturis,' art. 10, ad 8," by Msgr. Giorgio Giannim (II,
" Significate e valore della IV Via nella Somma Teologica di San Tommaso,"
by Toshiyuki Miyakawa (II,
"La finalita dei miracoli secondo
S. Tommaso d'Aquino (Contra Gentes, III, 99) ," by Prof. Vladimiro
Boublik (II,
"II pensiero politico di Tommaso d'Aquino," by
Prof. Umberto A. Padovani (II,
" Due grandi ascesi della carita:
S. Tommaso e S. Francesco di Sales," by Prof. Luigi Bogliolo, S.D. B.
(II, 479-497); "Marginalia alia storia del Neotomismo," by Clemente
"Sur un argument de Saint Thomas," by
Vansteenkiste, 0. P. (III,
Joseph de Finance, S. J. (III,
This work not only honors an illustrious master of the Lateran University
but also offers helpful material to serious students of the sacred sciences.
NICHOLAS HALLIGAN, 0. P.
Dominican HoUIIe of Studies
Washington, D. C.

The Bond of Marriage. Ed. by WILLIAM W. BASSETT. Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Pp.
$6.95.
To appreciate The Bond of Marriage, one must first look at this topic
in retrospect. To go back to the Fourth Session of Vatican Council II,
September
1965, where we find this topic described as a "bombshell"
when it was brought up by the Eastern-rite prelate, Archbishop Elie
Zoghbi, who urged that the Church should cast a merciful eye on the plight
of husbands and wives who have been abandoned and left to live lives of
perpetual continence. " Could not the Church dispense the innocent party

382

BOOK REVIEWS

from the bonds of matrimony according to the practice of some Eastern
churches? " he declared, emphasizing the fact " that heroic virtue cannot
be imposed upon all." The Archbishop's talk stunned most of the prelates
present. The Council Daybook describes the scene by saying that the
"council Fathers listened in earnest attention, but remained stolidly in
their seats, and the coffee bars, which usually do a bustling business, were
virtually deserted."
After Vatican Council II, in 1967, another "bombshell" hit (the
American Catholic Church in the form of Divorce and Remarriage (Towards a new Catholic Teaching), by Very Rev. Msgr. Victor J. Pospishil,
who maintains, and attempts to substantiate logically, "that the Church
possesses the authority to permit the remarriage of all divorced persons.
While accepting as self-evident that the institution of marriage was
ordained by God to be a permanent, enduring association between man
and woman, and ideally should last till death of one spouse dissolves it, it
is necessary to distinguish two related concepts: permanency and indissolubility."
Monsignor Pospishil maintains that the doctrine of the absolute indissolubility of a consummated sacramental marriage is a part of the ordinary
magisterium of the Catholic Church, but, nowhere is there an infallible
definition of it, even thought it is a doctrine proxima fidei or at least certa.
He goes on to say that " for all practical purposes, a Catholic is obliged in
his conscience to give his assent to this teaching, but this does not
preclude the possibility that such a teaching might be changed; moreover,
serious theological research is permitted and its findings are allowed to be
published contrary to this teaching."
This second "bombshell" in America had an effect upon many of the
members of the Church through the New York Times, Time and Newsweek
magazines, and other periodicals. It stirred up the American hierarchy.
Surprisingly, in due time the Conference of American Bishops requested
the Canon Law Society of America to do some scholarly research in this
field. The Symposium held at Notre Dame on the Bond of Marriage was
the result. Father William Bassett of Catholic University arranged and
directed this symposium and later edited the papers of this symposium in
this book, The Bond of Marriage. Like its forerunner, Divorce and Remarriage, this book is an ecumenical and an interdisciplinary study. It is
most timely and apropos to a sick and ailing society. Having interviewed
almost 8,000 marriage cases personally, I find this study another honest
attempt to find a way to heal and mend a cancerous society in a very sick
world.
Regarding absolute indissolubility, proof from Scripture is the weakest
link, and Father Dominic Crossan, 0. S.M., does not explain the passages
of Scripture on divorce but has placed them in perspective by relating
them to each other and to the overall teaching of Christ. The conclusion

BOOK REVIEWS

383

of his talk explains rather well his views on the matter when he says:
"that the categorical imperative of Jesus can never be used as a casuistic
absolute but only as a categorical ideal. The New Testament itself recorded
two exceptions (Matt. 19, 9; I Cor. 7 : 12-16) as its experience of life
progressed. There will be, unfortunately, many more exceptions, many
more cases where divorce and remarriage must be sorrowfully accepted as
part of our human weakness and our failure to form community before
Christ is all in all." The prohibition of Matt. 5 : 81-32 against divorce is
given a new perspective here, when examined in the light of the Sermon on
the Mount.
John Noonan treated a chapter, entitled" Novel 22," of a larger work he
has 'in preparation in which he speaks of the liberal legislation of the
Christian Emperors from Constantine to Justin II. Their main endeavor
was to provide adequate legislation to protect the rights and property of
individuals. During this time " there was in Roman divorce law no assertion that Marriage was indissoluble or irrevocable by the law of God,
nature, or man; no assertion that marriage was a mystery or sacrament;
no assertion that a valid first marriage was any barrier to a valid second
marriage. Divorce was regulated not only as a matter of property rights,
but the crucial question of remarriage was treated by the law, and where
divorce was admitted, remarriage at once or after a period followed as !1
consequence which the law explicitly allowed." For this reason, the milieu
in which we find this epoch of history regarding marriage and divorce
is very perplexing to historians. As one author Gaudemet puts it: " the
legislation of this period was intended to assure the triumph of the
Catholic faith." All of Justinian's work took place within a framework in
which he accepted the human malleability of the law on remarriage. This
appears in his Novel 22 in which he says: "Of those things which occur
among men, whatever is bound is soluble."
Alexander Schmemann offers his views in the line of the categorical
imperative of Jesus (similar t.o the views of Crossan) implying that it
could never be used as a casuistic absolute but only as a categorical ideal.
He feels that the conflict of divorce and remarriage, traditionally held by
the Eastern church, is a realistic solution to the problem; the East handles
this unique paradox of ideal and reality in a more humane manner. He
claims that " within the orthodox tradition there is no such thing as
divorce. The Church can no more remove the sacramentality of marriage
than she can remove the consecration from the Eucharistic Host. The
Church simply grants the right to remarry in certain cases."
" What about the previous marriage? " He goes on to say: " Thl'
ontological status of that first marriage is simply never made a matter of
question. To ask the question supposes a static view of reality. Within
the dynamic action attributed to the Holy Spirit by Orthodox theology,
marriage can exist only while people actually live a marriage. If a marriage

384

BOOK REVIEWS

is not lived, it is dead. It is nothing. The real problem is not the abstract,
(Aristotelian essence that might remain) but what is to be done in pastoral
terms with the existing situation. This is where the mechanics of canonical
procedure in allowing remarriage are rooted."
Louis and Constance Dupre present their findings of marriage as an
institution closely related to the common good. They, however, evaluate
uniquely the conflict and tension existing between the institutional and
personal aspects of life regarding marriage. Since personal responsibility
is greatly emphasized today, they indicate that the common good cannot
exist without the inalienable rights and freedom of the individual; they
further suggest that justice and rights are the necessary ingredients to make
the necessary changes. "Yet when it comes to the actual recognition of
these individual rights," they say, "Canon Law remains exactly where it
was hundreds of years ago. In cases where an annulment is sought, the
presumption is still entirely on the side of the institution, that is, of the
existing contract .... In the Pauline privilege, for centuries (even today)
the Church has recognized the right of the individual over the institution
with respect to the full exercise of his supernatural gifts." Could not the
Church extend the application of this same principle to other deserving
cases? The Dupres cannot understand why the rights of the individual
must be placed secondary to the maintenance of the institution. "What
does the inalienable right to marital fulfillment mean when the marital
relation is invariably subordinated to the institution contract, however
weak the grounds are which support the contract?" They answer this
question by eliciting help from Father Schillebeeckx who, in his book on
marriage, justifies the Pauline Privilege by declaring the communion in
faith an essential element of Christian marriage. In other words, for
Schillebeeckx, the Pauline Privilege is merely the acceptance of the selfdissolution of marriage in the interest of the baptized partner's life of faith.
Yet, no matter how important the elements of faith may be to a Christian
marriage, other elements (e. g., prolonged adultery which strikes at the
heart of the marital relationship) are even more essential to marriage itself.
Therefore, may we not apply to fidelity what Schillebeekx says about faith,
namely, that it forms such an indispensable element in the marital relationship that without it this relationship practically ceases to exist?
Marvin Sussman and John Higgins discuss the sociological and psychological problems of matrimony respectively. Marriage is viewed psychologically with the contemporary situation as a continuous process with
vicissitudes, aiming toward a state of mutual integration. Because of the
difficulties and problems surrounding the married life, they present some
ways and means of solving them.
William Bassett's topic, " The Marriage of Christians " Valid Contract,
Valid Sacrament?, comprises two important questions. He develops his
thesis by the traditional canonical position regarding the juridic nature of

BOOK REVIEWS

S85

marriage and its relationship with the Church. Later he asks the question
why and how did the Church ever become involved in adjudicating the
validity or invalidity of marriage. It is possible, he answers, that " in
probing at the deepest level the rationale for the practice that may have
arisen from the exigencies of historical circumstances" it continues in our
days at variance with other kinds of religious experience. Instead of
" Go (ing) teach all nations," the Church is trapped in a net of its own
making through the paradox that underlies the procedural impasse of the
present day due to that extremely tight and intricate system of procedure.
And how did the legal procedure come about? It has been elaborated from
deductive principles derived from legal meaning of consent to a contractual
exchange of rights and duties.
Bassett asks some more very interesting questions. For example, "If the
sacrament of matrimony implies also a kind of contract, does it follow
necessarily that the validly given consent to marry by two baptized
persons must always be sacramental? Must the marriage of two baptized
people be both sacrament and contract? Furthermore, must the relationship
of the Church to the sacrament of matrimony find its disciplinary expression
only within the logic of contractual law?" In answer to such questions he
indicates that we must probe more deeply into two specific areas of this
position: the exclusive competency of the Church over the marriages of the
baptized and the meaning of the contractual theory of marriage. He then
develops this historically.
Bassett further elucidates on Canon ll18 which states: The marriage of
two validly baptized persons is termed a sacramental marriage (matrimonium ratum) and if the conjugal act has been completed, marriage cannot be
dissolved by the Church nor by any cause save death. This is the law of the
Church today. But does the Church have power from Christ, a vicarious
power, to dissolve such a marriage? Bassett refers to W. R. O'Connor
who says: " There is nowhere in the Gospels an absolute prohibition of all
dissolubility, extrinsic as well as intrinsic, for all cases of marriage."
O'Connor also found that there is nothing in the New Testament which
would justify the distinction between nonsacramental and nonconsummated sacramental marriages, for which the Church grants divorce, and
the sacramental consummated marriages. Since we must assume that the
Church coulil not have erred in dissolving the former ones by assuming
a power not explicitly mentioned in Scripture, it is inferred that she
possesses the same power in respect to all marriages. Other studies have
also concluded that the New Testament exclusion of the dissolution of
marriage could at the most establish a moral ideal, but there was no
intention of formulating a legal norm.
Furthermore, " from principles of the present law there is no intrinsic
reason to prohibit dispensation from divine law as such. But, by vicarious
power, bishops now dispense vows (Canon 1313). Dispensation from a vow

386

BOOK REVIEWS

is certainly not a dispensation from merely ecclesiastical law. This involves a relationship to God, which is a divine law. Pope Gregory XIII
in the constitution Populis gave Ordinaries, pastors, and Jesuit confessors
the faculty to dispense marriages contracted in infidelity, so that one
partner could remarry after baptism in the Church without the necessity
of interpolating the former spouse. This delegation of authority certainly
extends beyond the limits of the Pauline privilege. Thus," says Bassett,
" there seems to be no intrinsic reason to deny the ability to dispense nor
the delegability of such power to bishops."
Traditional canonical theory has attached sacramentality to the ratification of marriage and indissolubility to a very narrow biological understanding of consummation. l\lloreover, to accept the simple equation of
contract-sacrament
is to accept only one way-a very narrow way-of
understanding sacramentality and marriage. An examination of the canonical tradition and practice of the past few centuries on the practical and
positive level gives ample reason to question the assumptions upon which
they are based. From what is said here, the Church seems to be a
stumbling block to many morally crippled Christians in the world today.
Marriage is to be a lasting convenant of love proven in enduring fidelity;
it is the sign of that relationship that exists between Christ and the Church
as expressed in The Constitution on the Church and the Modem World.
In conclusion, we can ask the question: On what grounds should decisions
of nullity be based to be most responsive to the truth of this greatly
complex human and sacred relationship? Surely it can be said that
marriage is more than consent, more than a moment of commitment, a
happening that marks only the beginning, the "matrimonium in fieri." A
marriage is more than a valid contract of marriage. Thus decisions must
look beyond the moment and conditions of consent toward an appraisal
of married life and love in continuity. Even St. Augustine avoided an
equation of marriage with either consent or contract, as this was understood
in Roman law of his day. In Scripture marriage reflects a covenant of
life with life. Marital affection in pre-Tridentine canonists is what characterized both the consent and the union of husband and wife. Consent
to marriage is much more than consent to those acts which are united to
reproduction. Marriage involves the deepest kind of commitment. Unfortunately, the exigencies of proof confine the use of marital affection in
judicial procedure.
What is meant by saying that marriage is a " sacrament "? History of
theology suggests that the awareness of the sacramentality of marriage
emerged only gradually. As a result marriage still remains one of the
most difficult of sacramental realities to grasp.
In this section dealing with the sacramentality of marriage Father
Bassett entertains some fine questions such as: Where is the sacramental
reality in marriage located? When one speaks of the " sacrament " of

BOOK REVIEWS

387

marriage, to what exactly is he referring? If it is reality, in what does
this reality consist? Is sacramentality located in the religious character
of the marital " vows "? If one suggests that the sacramentality of marriage
consists in its having been instituted by Christ, then further questions must
be asked to avoid begging the issue. If Christ " instituted " marriage as
a sacrament, what precisely did He effect in doing so? In what does
sacramental reality consist? It cannot be an absolute degree of indissolubility, because unconsummated "sacramental" marriages are dissolved.
So what is it? The judicial process, as a human means for arriving at
truth, always falls short in its approximation of reality. This essential
imperfection of human law and human judgment should be plainly acknowledged in canonical procedure to temper the meaning of moral ceritude, and
in many cases even to alter the object of decision itself. Marriage as a
human reality cannot be completed in a single moment of time. Indeed
marriage is a state of life and a permanent sacrament. The difficulty is in
the current canonical practice in the persistent determination to fix the
fullness of sign and sacramentality upon a moment of consent. Fixation
upon particular moments to discover when the sacrament comes into being
is a judicial compulsion. The static and departmentalized, however, is
but a single mode of comprehension of the dynamic processes of life.
Bassett holds that " a sacramentalized way of life rings a truer note than
a sacramentalized contract for the meaning of marriage."
The Bond of Marriage is a compilation of talks representing the serious
deliberations of research scholars involved in the pursuit of the best principles of pastoral care for the common good regarding the marriage of
Christians " in the light of the Gospel and of human experience " (Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the Modern World). The value or ideal of
the permanence of marriage is not challenged here; it merely considers the
significance of the bond from various aspects in order to evaluate better
the canonical discipline surrounding it in the Church today. It points out
how marriage is closely interwoven into the strands of human life, and it
assumes with the changes of history and culture different modes of form
and fulfillment, while at the same time there endures a constancy of ideal.
In its evaluation it looks into the moral theology of the past, which deals
with states of life, of officers, canon law of debts and obligations . . .
analyzing static categories . . . the contract, confining the framework of
evaluation to lines of contract. Marriage is much more than this. Marriage
is dynamic, evolving, a lived relationship of persons. There is no answer
to the question of what marriage really means. For society and its legal
opposition, it means one thing; for the Church, it means another; for the
husband and wife, yet a third. Marriage enables sexuality to become a
catalyst of human personality. It is the normal and natural ambit of
self-realization. Marriage is an image, an icon of the kingdom of God.
Thus it is holy and a sacrament.

388

BOOK REVIEWS

But to speak with conviction about the permanence of the bond of
marriage, however, does not exhaust its meaning nor preclude the possibility of relaxation of ecclesiastical law surrounding it. Church law and
discipline are largely a human response to a human need. w·e know that
attitudes are derived from cultural and historical circumstances which find
their way into the making of law. Thus canon law is derivative and
dependent. Therefore it is a practical instrument for the good of individuals
and the common good, a prudential measure that takes its sanctity from
the purpose it serves and fidelity to truth it reflects. But canon law cannot
mirror reality perfectly. As society evolves and develops, the principles
reflected in canon law must be examined again and again to see if they
come up to par. This age definitely is the time for such re-examination and
revaluation because our present canon law rests very heavily upon the
foundation of post-Tridentine theology, in terms of Aristotelian science and
method, marked by the certainty, necessity and universality of the worldview that is so little shared by men today. The handwriting is on the
wall. The Decrees of Vatican II contain the necessary ingredients for updating, because they speak of an imperative to renew the pastoral ministry
by building a new law on a much better vision of law, a new vision.
Why a new vision? Here in our own country, thousands upon thousands
of souls cease to share the communion of their Church because they cannot
due to matrimonial difficulties hinging upon the permanency of marriage.
In many countries of Europe, as many as 70% of mixed marriages are
performed outside the Church, and many who do this, leave the Church.
Marriage failures are many and frequent, so much so that the Church with
its system cannot cope with the situation adequately.
Can the Church change its basic laws of marriage so that the evangelical
mjunction concerning the permanence of marriage can be observed as an
ideal rather than as a legal absolute? Should this be done? The very importance of marriage for men and the tragedy of its failure demand an
unflagging pursuit of the best principles of pastoral care for the greatest
good, supported by faith and reason.
With all due respect to the teaching of the Church, we all know that our
present structure of dogma, moral and canon law does not contain the last
word to this honest question. The talks of the Symposium contained in
The Bond of Marriage began at the bottom; they began with the New
Testament discussing the first meaning of the permanence of marriage in
that primal source. Historically speaking, the first few centuries give us
very little to work with, but the legislation of the early Christian emperors,
when taken together with the ancient and canonical traditions of the East.
gives us much food for thought.
Today the notion of the common good is identified with the good of
persons, not above or beyond them. Pope Paul VI noted in his first
encyclical letter Ecclesiam Suam that for Church and Society this is the

BOOK REVIEWS

389

thinking of man in a new way, and in a new way also of man's life in
common. What does this understanding of the common good now indicate
for canonical reform? There is a theory that a change in ecclesiastical law
would set off a chaotic chain reaction of divorces; however, the canonical
reform necessary to protect the innocent few need not be prejudicial to
the attitude of the majority. This is exactly what Popes Gregory IX and
Paul VI are against, if we read them correctly. The common good is their
goal. Ours should be the same.
BERNARD A. SIEGLE, T. 0. R.
St. Francis Seminary

Loretto, Pa.

Absolutely Null and Utterly Void: The Papal Condemnation of Anglican
01·ders, 1896. By JoHN JAY HuGHES. Washington: Corpus Books,
1968. Pp. 348. $7.95.
The Church of England-to alter Sir Winston Churchill's famous comment on the Kremlin-is a theological enigma within a paradox. When
it finally emerged from the Elizabethan Settlement, it retained much of its
medieval constitution and found itself in possession of a version of the
Book of Common Prayer which enshrined in splendid English, and unresolved juxtaposition, various and diverse theological elements drawn from
patristic, medieval, Lutheran and Zwinglian sources. Six different versions,
if one counts those of 1604 and 1637, of this remarkable document have, as
the Anglican scholar Gregory Dix remarked, proven to be " incompetent
to provide for the Church of England a tolerable method of doing that
which is the very center of its life for every Christian Church."
Father John Jay Hughes, the author of what is the most recent in the
very long list of works dealing with the enigmatic and paradoxical problems
associated with Anglican orders, is evidently highly qualified for the exploration of just such problems. He comes from a distinguished clerical
family; both his father and his grandfather were prominent among the
clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
He himself was ordained a priest in that body in 1954. Six years later,
however, he became a Roman Catholic and a teacher of theology in
Germany where, in 1965, he was invited by the Bishop of MUnster to begin
work for the doctorate in theology at the University of MUnster. Three
years later he achieved what may very well be the first thing of its kind
since the Reformation: he was conditionally ordained to the Roman
Catholic priesthood in the diocese of MUnster.
This event, it should be observed, has no direct and immediate bearing

890

BOOK REVIEWS

upon the question of the validity of Anglican orders. It was technically
possible because an Old Catholic bishop was involved in the episcopal
succession of the Protestant Episcopal bishop from whom Father Hughes
had received his Anglican ordination in 1954. But it does put the author
of Absolutely Null and Utterly Void in an unusual, if not enigmatic,
position in current ecclesiastical life, just as it affords him a somewhat
unique perspective with which to view the questions upon which he has
chosen to write.
Cardinal Newman, who knew more than a little about the matter, is
quoted by Father Hughes as follows:
The enquiry into Anglican Orders has ever been to me of the class which I
must call dreary; for it is dreary surely to have to grope into the minute intricate
passages and obscure corners of past occurrences in order to ascertain whether this
man was ever consecrated, or that man used a valid form, or a certain sacramental
intention came up to the mark, or the report, or register of an ecclesiastical act
can be cleared of suspicion. On giving myself to consider the question, I have
never been able to arrive at anything higher than a probable conclusion, which
is most unsatisfactory except to antiquarians, who delight in researches into the
past for their own sake. (p. 276)

Father Hughes has done more groping " into the minute intricate
passages and obscure corners of past occurences " than many who have
ventured into the incredibly complex undertaking of dealing with the
enigmas and paradoxes of Anglican ordinations. His present volume is
primarily concerned with the history of Leo XIII's judicial sentence in the
bull Apostolicae Curae, which declared on September 13, 1896, " ...
ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been and are
absolutely null and utterly void." Father Hughes, quite properly, does not
attempt to settle the question of validity, although his own views are not.
altogether omitted. And it is clear that he intends to develop them in a
theological work which we may await with some interest.
The present volume opens with a clear enough exposition of the origin
of the Anglican hierarchy in the sixteenth century and disposes of the
corpse of the "Nag's Head Fable," together with the remains of other
legends, in a thoroughly decent fashion. Some might argue, however, that
he fails to dispose of what Sir Maurice Powicke says in The Reformation in
England: " The one definite thing which can be said about the Reformation in England is that it was an act of State. The King became the head
of the Church, the King in Parliament gave a sanction to the revised
organization, formularies, liturgy, and even in some degree to the doctrine
of the Church."
But this is, perhaps, not the kind of thing with which Father Hughes
is especially concerned. His own original historical research, which is
not without importance, centers around the very unhappy, if not dreary,
tale of the attempt by Charles Lindley, the second Viscount Halifax and
the Abbe Etienne Fernand Portal to promote reunion between Rome and

BOOK REVIEWS

391

Canterbury through joint theological discussions which were to begin with
the question of Anglican orders.
The narrative is well documented; yet this is a book which is also
interestingly dramatic in its presentation. In this respect it differs from
the learned style of what remains as the most complete scholarly study of
the subject of Anglican orders in modern times-Father Francis Clark's
Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention (1956).
Father Hughes presents colorful, witty, and occasionally penetrating
portraits of his protagonists and antagonists. He has an evident feeling for
the drama of ecclesiastical intrigue and an equally evident capacity for
bringing back the atmosphere of the late Victorian world with a sense of
immediacy. The reader is led from the first meeting of Halifax and Portal
on the island of Madeira in the winter of 1889-90 through the development
of their campaign for reunion between Rome and Canterbury and on to
the unfortunate proposal that a series of theological discussions should
begin with the question of the validity of Anglican orders. This idea,
urged by Portal and strengthened by the published opinion of the distinguished ecclesiastical historian Duchesne that Anglican orders might be
valid, was pressed by Halifax in Rome. Opposition to the Anglican claims
arose, as might have been expected, most strongly among English Roman
Catholics. Consequently, the antagonists opposing Halifax and Portal in
Father Hughes's version of the drama were: Cardinal Vaughan, the Archbishop of Westminster; Dom Francis Aidan Gasquet, who had gained some
fame as a writer of Roman Catholic historical apologetics; and his scholarly
friend, Edmund Bishop.
The activities of Halifax, Portal. and their friends and opponents stirred
up a great deal of agitated discussion over a subject which had not been
the center of so much attention since the end of the seventeenth century.
Portal published a provocative article in La Science Catholique in 1893; the
Anglican scholars, E. Denny and T. A. Lacey, produced a Latin defense
of English ordinations, De Hierarchia Anglicana, in 1895; and a whole
flood of other publications, marked by various degrees of learning and
acerbity, swirled through the theological world of Britain and the Continent.
Meanwhile, Halifax and Portal managed to visit the Archbishops of York
and Canterbury; they were also individually received in private audience
by Leo XIII, who obtained contradictory pictures of the Church of
England from almost everyone whom he consulted. His Cardinal Secretary
of State, Rampolla, was clearly impressed by the High Church version;
while his protege, Mgr. Raphael Merry del Val, Dom Gasquet, and
Cardinal Vaughan were zealously at work persuading the aged pontiff of
quite different interpretations of the truth about Anglicanism.
Certainly, the atmosphere in England itself was really anything but
ecumenical. The Roman Catholic hierarchy had been reconstituted in
1850, which many regarded as a threat and an affront; the most articulate

392

BOOK REVIEWS

English Roman Catholics were converts, who, like Cardinal Manning, felt
little sympathy for the Church of England, some of whose clergy had been
subjected to legal penalties for their efforts to restore Eucharistic vestments and devotion. Indeed, Manning had even been somewhat suspicious
of his fellow-convert, Newman, and had written to Rome: "I see much
danger of an English Catholicism of which Newman is the highest type. It
is the old Anglican, patristic, literary Oxford tone transplanted into the
Church. . . . In one word, it is worldly Catholicism, and it will have the
worldly on its side." (See J. J. O'Connor, The Catholic Revival in England,
N.Y., 194fl).
Bitter religious controversy had, in fact, marked the life of much of the
Church of England during the whole Victorian time. As Margaret Maison
remarks in The Victorian Vision (1961):
If England escaped the horrors of a revolution in the Victorian age her National
Church did not. The history of the Church of England during this time is a
stirring record of warfare, struggle, persecution, agonized secession and fiercest
conflict, differences of religious belief causing hostilities not merely confined to
verbal clashes, lawsuits and imprisonments but extended to the level of actual
physical fighting.

As the Reverend Thomas Mozley, who was Newman's brother-in-law,
remarked in his reminiscences, " The Church of England was one vast arena
of controversy. Ten thousand popes ... laid down the law and demanded
instant obedience."
Father Hughes establishes the fact that Halifax, who was the lay
spokesman for the "highest" and the High Church minority, had an
ecumenical intention of the noblest kind in his efforts to obtain a favorable
judgment from Rome on Anglican orders. But it was inevitable, under the
circumstances, that this effort would be misinterpreted both in Westiminster
and Canterbury, to say nothing of Rome itself, where England has never
been the Vatican's best developed area of informed judgments. Consequently, one feels that whatever may have been Gasquet's deficiences as
an historian, he was right when he told Halifax in Rome that it was utterly
futile to expect the Holy See to affirm the validity of Anglican ordinations.
In fact, as one reads Father Hughes's account, one cannot quite escape the
impression of Halifax, with all his real piety and romantic attachment to
his personal vision of Anglicanism, as another man from La Mancha-a
melancholy and devoted self-appointed knight errant who was born out of
due time.
As a result of Portal's work with Halifax, the ground was laid for the
appearance of an ecumenical journal, Revue Anglo-Romaine, the first
number of which appeared in Paris in December, 1895. This publication
reflected Halifax's desire for joint theological discussions conducted in an
irenic spirit. But Halifax had emphasized the idea that such discussions

BOOK REVIEWS

393

ought to beg\.• with the question of orders, and beiore the controversial
Revue began its publication a movement was well underway to clear up
what Merry del Val described as the " confusion " being created by all
the talk and writing on the question of Anglican orders. The outcome of
this was that Cardinal Vaughan called for the fullest investigation of the
question and was able to announce in September, 1895 that a special
commission would be appointed at Rome to investigate the validity of
Anglican orders.
Father Hughes devotes much of his book to an attempt to reconstruct
the narrative of the work of this commission, which met for the first time
on March 9!4, 1896. Its proceedings were secret, and the record of them
regrettably remains so to this day. The historian is, consequently, deprived
of his primary source and compelled to depend upon diaries, letters,
memoirs and recollections of those who were involved. On the evidence
which he has been able to present, Father Hughes finds that the twelve
meetings of the commission-at none of which any Anglicans were permitted to present a case-gave the subject something less than the careful
analysis it deserved. Yet, in spite of a massive votum presented by
Cardinal Vaughan's representatives and the absence of any fully qualified
spokesmen for the Anglican side, the vote, as reported by Merry del Val
in a letter written in 1910, was not exactly overwhelming. According to
his best recollection, there were only four members of the commission who
voted for invalidity, and they were known to represent this negative
opinion before the sessions considered the case. Two, or possibly three, of
the eight members voted for validity.
The cardinals of the Holy Office met under the personal presidency of
Leo XIII on July 16, 1896 and concluded that the question of the validity
of Anglican orders had previously been submitted to the Holy See in
individual cases in 1684 and 1708 and had been fully determined in the
negative. It was further concluded that the enquiry of the recent commission had shown the previous judgment to be correct. The drafting and
promulgation of Apostolicae Curae followed.
Father Hughes rightly insists that, " The consideration of the Bull's
theological arguments lies beyond the scope of this book." Nonetheless he
concludes that there may well be reason not only to re-examine these
arguments, which have to do with defect of intention and form, but also
to re-evaluate the historical precedents of the cases of 1684 and 1708.
But there is a crucial point which would appear to be a serious difficulty,
at least for many Roman Catholic theologians; and it does not have to
do with the liturgical history of ordinals nor with the intentions of
individual bishops. As Father Hughes himself points out, ". . . apostolic
succession means more than the mere maintenance of an intact series of
episcopal consecrations. There may be an essential change at some point
. . . which means that after this point the consecrations do not have the

394

BOOK REVIEWS

same theological significance they had before." (p.
And this may
very well be what has happened in the case of Anglican orders. To quote
Father Hughes again: " There can be little doubt, after Clark's work, that
the English reformers rejected contemporary notions of 'sacrificing priesthood'." (p. 292) In short, the Church of England rejected the contemporary doctrine of the Church of Rome and profoundly altered the significance
of what had been the meaning of priesthood for English Roman Catholics
for generations.
It is, of course, not impossible that future theological developments may
so alter Roman Catholic teaching about the priesthood that the Anglican
departure from what was currently the Catholic position in the sixteenth
century may be re-examined and seen in a more favorable light. But it
does not seem that such a development is very likely to take place in the
immediate future. Meanwhile, it may be noted that the Anglican world
has its own problems about how to treat the orders of ministers of nonepiscopal churches. In the case of the Church of South India, for example,
there is some reason to believe that the concept of apostolic succession
among Anglicans was, to say the least, compromised. In any event, it is
quite possible that, as Anglicans continue to seek a basis of organic unity
with non-episcopal denominations, they may move even further away from
the Roman Catholic view of orders than did their sixteenth-century
ancestors. There is always the extreme position of men who, like Bishop
Pike, believe that all orders are " partially invalid " in a divided Christendom, which does seem a bit like talking about eggs that are "partially
fresh." This view may yet prevail if Anglican ecumenism continues to take
the direction of the South Indian" merger," in which Anglicans joined with
and initially recognized the orders of non-episcopal denominations, even
though provisions were made for an episcopate to be part of the future life
of the new church in that part of the world.
One closes Father Hughes's book with the feeling that, however noble
their motives, Lord Halifax and the Abbe Portal unwittingly performed a
disservice to the cause of Roman-Anglican relations by pressing the wrong
subject at the wrong time. The 1896 condemnation really could not have
been otherwise under the circumstances of the period.
The question of Anglican orders is not really about the problem of
whether there was a time when certain " medieval " ideas were not a part
of the theology of the rite. The problem is that of authority. When the
Roman Church states that a valid ordinal must contain certain forms and
be governed by certain intentions, it claims to be stating what has always
been the case; for teaching that was at one time not explicit, nor universally
understood, is regarded as nevertheless something which was always
implicit when such teaching is formulated and stated by the magisterium
of the Church. Consequently, those who admit the authority of Rome and
who look to its approved teaching to provide sure guidance in matters of

BOOK REVIEWS

395

sacramental theology may take the view that the issues suggested by
Father Hughes's book are not really about the question of Anglican ordinations but fundamentally about the authority of the papacy itself.
PAUL VAN K. THOMSON
Providence College
Providence, R. I.

Psychotherapy and Religion. By JosEF RuDIN. Translated by Elisabeth
Reinecke and Paul C. Bailey, C. S.C. Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1968. Pp. 9.40. $5.95.
Rudin states in the Foreword that his book is not intended primarily for
a few professionals but is aimed toward a larger group who wonder about
the relation between psychology and theology. This book is a collection of
essays on selected topics more or less in psychotherapy and religion. Although Rudin promises " a conversation seeking clarity " between these
two areas, the book tends to be a series of psychological and theological
monologues rather than a dialogue.
Part one is an explication of certain fundamental views of man. An
analysis of" The Normal Man" is so simple that it tends to be simplistic.
The author does not explicate his basic assumptions, succinctly define
terms, or present original thinking. The following four chapters deal with
soul-anxiety, development, freedom, and personal life. Although Rudin
tries to point to the value of " soul anxiety," he ultimately considers
anxiety in terms of problem-centeredness rather than growth-centeredness.
Furthermore, Rudin does not give the structure and dynamics of this basic
anxiety. The essay on development is simple and clear. Although the
analysis of unauthentic modes of identification are interesting, it lacks in
originality and synthesis. Furthermore, religion, as in most of the book,
is used too much as a deus ex machina instead of as an integral part of the
thesis.
The analysis of freedom is one of the most extensive and creative
efforts of the author. The main point-freedom is the goal of therapyis well taken particularly in the total context of the book. Rudin tries to
explicate the emergent and transcendent dimensions of freedom which are
considered to be necessary for authentic spirituality. Finally, the author
presents views on personal life and on being a person. This presentation
tends to be incoherent and unclear; for instance, the term person is used
with various meanings.
The purpose of part two is to investigate authentic and unauthentic

896

BOOK REVIEWS

religious experience in light of the preceding and new psychological and
theological insights. In chapter six, Rudin gives a clear account of the
conscious and unconscious factors in religion. He rejects the Freudian
theory of religion and begins to consider religion in terms of Jungian
thinking. The following chapter is a reflection of Jung's book, Answer to
Job. Rudin is at his most passionate and scholarly best when he interacts
with Jung. Under the influence of Jung, Rudin almost transcends the
projection theory of religion and begins to consider religious experience
as a function of a fundamental structure of man. Unfortunately, Rudin
does not sufficiently develop this theme. In fact, in the last chapter on
prayer Rudin admits the critical importance of distinguishing between
God as a wish-fulfilling projection and as a transcendent experience. However, he says that this topic seems to be inaccessible to psychological
investigation. This admission is perhaps the most serious deficit of the
book, for psychotherapy is little benefit to religion without it being able
to differentiate religion as an unhealthy illusion or as a legitimate transcendent experience. Fortunately, there are a number of psychological
approaches to this apparent dilemma. For instance, the consequent changes
in behavior differ in the authentic and unauthentic religious experience. Or,
religion as an illusion lacks certain psychodynamics which the authentic
religious experience has. These and other insights into the religious experience are available to the psychologist as psychologist.
In the final chapters, Rudin gives a good and readable account of the
" neuroticized God-image." His analysis of unhealthy conceptions of God
are primarily in terms of a Jungian framework and are rather original.
Rudin also gives some concrete advice to the person who is involved
in the areas of psychotherapy and spiritual guidance. Although the presentation lacks originality and depth, he delineates their common and
different grounds in a simple and clear way. Both these approachespsychotherapy and spiritual guidance-are somewhat different ways to
" help man to form his life integrally and meaningfully and to lead it
beyond relativities toward an absolute" (Rudin, 1968, p. 201). It is
pointed out that Rudin considers psychiatry and psychotherapy quite
differently than most professionals in the United States. He sees the
domain of the psychiatrist to be psychoses, while psychotherapy is the
treatment of the neuroses. Consequently, Rudin does not mention the
fruitful and fascinating realm of psychosis and the religious experience.
Psychotherapy and Religion lacks in unity, coherency, and conciseness,
and it tends to regress into the psychologism or theologism it tries to
transcend. On the other hand, there are simple and refreshing analyses of
psychopathology and some attempts at original thinking. Its greatest
import is the use of Jungian thinking in the analysis of religion. Although
only in its seminal stages, the proposal that God is dynamically and
structurally related to man has much heuristic value.

BOOK REVIEWS

397

At worst, Psychotherapy and Religion is a psychotheological potpourri,
and at best it points out new horizons in psychotheological investigation.
WILLIAM F. KRAFT
Director of Psychological Services
Dixmont State Hospital
Glenfield, Pa.

Le Retour a saint Thomas, a-t-il encore un sens aujourd'hui? By FERNAND
VAN S'l'EENBERGHEN. Conference Albert-le-Grand 1967. Montreal:
Institut d':Etudes :Medievales, 1967. 61 pp.
Philosophy in the 20th Century: Catholic and Christian. Ed. by GEORGE
F. McLEAN, 0. M. I. Q vols. New York: Frederick Unga.r Publishing
Co., 1968. Vol. I. An Annotated Bibliog.raphy of Philosophy in
Catholic Thought 1900-1964, xiv + 371 pp. $9.00. Vol-. II. A
Bibliography of Christian Philosophy and Contemporary Issues. viii +
31Q pp. $7.50. Set $15.00.
The seventeenth in its series of public lectu.res, this brief though
magisterial work of Fe.rnand van Steenberghen raises a question that
touches the very life of the Institut d'Etudes Medievales, viz., whether
continued studies of medieval thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas make any
sense today? The answer provided by the celebrated canon of Louvain to
his crucial question, happily, is affirmative. It cannot help but encourage
medievalists to continue their patient researches on Aquinas and his
intellectual milieu, assured that their work is bearing fruit both in the
Church and in the intellectual world of the late 1960's.
To make his point, van Steenberghen uses the simple device of retreating
back into history to sketch the crisis that was facing the Church at the
beginning of the nineteenth centu.ry. Immediately following the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, with strong and influential currents
in philosophy-stirred up by the Encyclopedists in France, by Kantians in
Germany, and by Humeans in England-sweeping away the foundations
of metaphysics and theology, the intellectual futu.re of Catholicism looked
bleak indeed. Those who, at the time, might have wished to write a
blueprint for Catholic intellectual life in the nineteenth century could offer
a simple plan. What they really needed was a true philosophy, not a
disguised theology; they needed a flexible instrument for dialogue with their
contemporaries, a living synthesis in harmony with mode.rn science; and
they needed a teacher who would be commonly accepted in the Church,

398

BOOK REVIEWS

one around whom all segments of a scattering flock could rally. Actually,
such a plan never materialized. After several abortive starts, Catholic
intellectuals finally centered on this man with his system of thought that
lacked all of the desired characteristics. Paradoxically, very little of his
philosophy was originally his own, and what could be identified as such
derived largely from his Catholic faith; far from being up-to-date and alive,
his thought was medieval and scholastic, couched in the dead, sterotyped
language of the Schools; and rather than being a common champion, he
had always been at the height of controversy, rejected by many both
during his lifetime and after his death.
Unlikely though Thomism must have appeared as the Catholic answer
in the nineteenth century, van Steenberghen argues, the fact is that it
provided the intellectual basis for meeting successfully the challenges of
rationalism, idealism and empiricism and for opening up dialogue with the
new philosophies of the twentieth century. If studied and developed
intelligently, he concludes, Thomism is far from dead, and it may well
prove to be the Church's most valuable asset in the years ahead. There
have been mistakes in the past, of course-and here van Steenberghen
elaborates on some of the celebrated controversies between Louvain and
Rome, generally holding (in vindication of Louvain) that a liberally
progressive Thomism should have been encouraged long ago, in place of
the stultifying conservatism that was officially imposed by the Roman
Curia. Despite these mistakes, however, he acknowledges latent strengths
in Aquinas's teaching that are still to be exploited. Among these he lists
its historical value, as solidly anchored in the Church's tradition; its philosophical value, as being able to transcend the details of history and philology
and arrive at a type of knowledge that is stable and enduring; and its
theological value, as being well adapted for synthesizing new discoveries
in theological sources, particularly in the biblical sciences, in a coherent
and meaningful way.
In describing the phenomenal growth of Thomistic studies since Leo
XIII's Aeterni Patris (August 4, 1879), van Steenberghen notes that a
Thomistic bibliography of 1920 lists some 2200 titles written between 1800
and 1920. Within the next twenty years, in one-sixth the time, he points
out that this number was more than doubled, to some 4800 titles by 1940,
and that at present it has almost octupled, to some 15000 titles by 1967.
His figures are based on European bibliographies, but a corraboration of his
findings will readily be seen in the two volumes of American bibliography
recently edited by George F. McLean, which can conveniently be reviewed
in the context of van Steenberghen's study.
The first of these volumes is an annotated bibliography of the most
significant books on Catholic philosophy that have appeared in English
between 1900 and 1964. The listing includes about 1800 titles, and comprises, apart from the bibliographical data, a succinct description and

BOOK REVIEWS

399

evaluation, a grading on the level of difficulty, and an indication of the
significant reviews of the work. The evaluations have been checked by a
large number of professors in Catholic colleges and universities, and they
are remarkably objective. Since this volume includes textbooks and
scholarly studies, it is an invaluable teaching aid as well as a reliable
reference work.
The second volume is wider in scope than the first, since it includes
articles as well as books and is not restricted to English titles. It includes
about 4000 entries, divided according to schools and themes such as man,
person, love, freedom, culture, value, ethics, language, law, and God.
Many of the titles listed have appeared within the last thirty years,
although more recent studies are in the majority. There are no annotations,
because of the sheer volume of the materials listed; this reviewer can attest,
however, that all of the works are significant in their fields. At the end of
the volume is a complete listing of all doctoral dissertations in philosophy
presented in Catholic universities and pontifical faculties in the U. S. and
Canada.
Father McLean can only be thanked, and congratulated, for the patient
years of research that went into the preparation of these valuable reference
tools. They attest to the remarkable productivity of Catholic scholars in
current philosophical movements. And even a casual perusal of both
volumes will reveal the extent of both Catholic and Christian interest in,
and indebtedness to, the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.
WILLIAM A. WALLACE, 0. P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

Christian Spirituality East and West. By JoRDAN AUMANN, 0. P., THoMAS
HoPKO, DoNALD G. BLOESCH. Chicago: The Priory Press, 1968. Pp.
$5.95.

This slim volume is the third in a series of special lectures delivered at
the Institute of Spirituality conducted by the Aquinas Institute of Philosophy and Theology, River Forest, Illinois. The lectures published here
were delivered during the 1967 session; a fourth volume, The Church and
the World, was in preparation when this book went to press.
In the opening essay, "Trends in Catholic Spirituality," Jordan Aumann
traces the history of Christian Spirituality in eighty-nine pages, the last
ten of which are devoted to " Contemporary Catholic Spirituality." It
a good, pedestrian introductory approach to a course in the history of
spiritual theology and depends on the usual well-known sources, such as

400

BOOK REVIEWS

Pourrat and Leclercq. One notion which is constant throughout is the use
of the label " monastic " to denominate post-Constantinian spirituality, a
popular convenience which surely overlooks the predominance of apostolic
activity in the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries. The best and most
original section is that devoted to contemporary trends. However, like so
many other glances at the future, it has a slightly triumphal sound, as if
the oversights of the past are certain to be corrected in the new age on
which the pilgrim Church is about to enter. On page 90, for example, the
impression is given that the monastic spirituality which " always prevailed ''
is finally and forever done away with. Following this, the anticipated
sanctification of priests through the works of their ministry (apparently
alone) sounds most promising indeed. Enthusiasm for what the author
calls " the contemporary spirituality of involvement " inspires him to
reflections which call for much further explanation. " Sanctity," he says,
" is of the supernatural order of grace and the infused virtues, but the
achieving of it by the modern Christian demands that he first achieve
maturity as a human person and cultivate the natural virtues." (p. 87)
One wonders how far this is to go and whether Donald Bloesch in the third
section is not closer to the reality when he cites what he calls the
" evangelical view " that " grace does not build upon nature: rather it
brings to men a new nature." (p. 170) Does sanctity lie beyond the
compulsive neurotic? The insistence that the Christian "first attain
maturity as a human person " seems to place a dangerous importance on
the human contribution to sanctity. Is the so-called "narcissistic spirituality " to be replaced by a spirituality of superman and the examination of
conscience to be revised by way of manuals of mental hygiene?
The second essay, "Orthodox Spirituality," by Thomas Hopko, is disappointing. While it discusses a number of never-questioned fundamentals
of the spiritual life, the promise of the title seems unfulfilled. No history
of Eastern spirituality is offered, and no features characteristic of Orthodox
practice emerge from the study. There are three sub-titles: Theology and
Spiritual Life; Liturgy and Spiritual Life; Prayer and Spiritual Life. In
the third section the author lays some stress on the lack of any appeal
to the imagination in the Eastern Church despite its colorful liturgy, but,
aside from this consideration and the relatively copious bibliography of
Orthodox works, the study might be entitled "Catholic Spirituality." The
author's few pages (150-54) on the "Jesus prayer" are enlightening and
inspiring but hardly especially Eastern. He speaks of a " veritable technology of the inner spiritual activity of the individual soul " (p. 154),
but he nowhere presents an Orthodox view of it. A reviewer should not
criticise a work that is not there, but he may be excused for expecting
what the title promises.
The best part of the book, and a significant production, is the final essay,
"Evangelical Spirituality," by Donald Bloesch. Honestly and perhaps

BOOK REVIEWS

401

courageously he reflects on a condition which-all unconsciously on the
author's part-may contain a warning to Catholic theologians! " The spirituality of Protestantism is not obvious, partly because of the secularization
of our churches." (p. 166) He then proceeds to unfold his view of that
real if hidden spirituality in its foundations, the means to achieve it, and
its ultimate object, sainthood.
To one whose entire background is Catholic it is impressive at how many
points Catholic and Evangelical spirituality (at least Evangelical spirituality according to Bloesch) coincide. While emphasizing that the Reformers
recognized the distinction between the sacred and the profane, the author
insists that Luther held that even the most menial tasks can be made to
redound to the glory of God, even as did Tauler before him. (p. 167)
To say the least, this suggests that the occasional reader of Luther can
not know all that he says or all that he believes, if he confines himself
to what Luther said about superstitious practices in monasteries. Surely,
if the most menial tasks can be made to redound to the glory of God,
they can also serve to strengthen man in God's grace. "In Evangelical
theology," the author says, "grace is essentially the personal favor of
God towards men." It is not " the power by which we make ourselves
acceptable to God, but the act by which He makes people acceptable to
Him. Grace is the holy God in action." (p. 170) St. Thomas would have
no conflict with the meaning beneath those words. For him grace certainly
implied something in the soul but " something bestowed on man by God "
(I-II, q. 110, a. 1). Luther, I think, did not grasp, or at least he does
not show that he grasped, the utter gratuity of grace as it was understood
by St. Thomas and his tradition. For Aquinas the soul, changed by that
" something " which grace put into it, still requires a further divine help,
a grace, in order to act supernaturally. If Tauler perceived how the most
menial task could redound to God's glory, it is because, like St. Catherine
of Siena, he saw God's helping grace as always and everywhere influencing
the soul, even as the enveloping water of the sea influences the fish.
Bloesch strikes another Catholic chord when he reflects on the dualism
between light and darkness as fundamental to Evangelical spirituality,
if it is a chord not often sounded by contemporary writers in Catholic
spirituality. "The very meaning of the atonement," he says, "is tied to a
dualistic understanding of reality." (p. 173) And, as he had noted earlier,
" this is not a metaphysical dualism of nature and spirit but a moral
dualism of light against darkness." (p.
This doctrine of the two
kingdoms extends much farther than Evangelical spirituality. The conflict
between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the Evil One is at
the heart of the spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola. He understood it, I
submit, far more realistically than Luther or Calvin. It dominates the
Spiritual Exercises as it dominated the insights of St. Paul and the
insistent teaching of the Didache. This conflict, this war to the end, is also

BOOK REVIEWS

at the heart of evangelical spirituality (with a small e) and is not to be
reasoned away by identifying the sacred and the secular. There can never
be any question in Christian thought about the possibility of baptizing the
temporal, and the very least part of it, but neither can there be any
question that it needs baptism if it is to redound to God's glory through
man's use of it. Bloesch is not teaching "Evangelical Spirituality " but is
echoing the spirituality of all the Christian ages when he reflects that
"the material can be a channel of God's revelation but it can also be a
barrier to the grace of God." (p. 169) Realization of that fact explains
the spirituality of the Desert Fathers, every manifestation of authentic
monastic spirituality, as well as every other phase of man's struggle against
the powers of darkness which, as Vatican II remarks "pervades the whole
history of man" (The Church To-day, par. 37). Bloesch reflects that "it
is man's perpetual misuse of material things that makes Protestants wary
of pan-sacramentalism." (p. 169) And so it should make all men of good
will wary. It is by the dedicated use of good things in God's service,
through and with God's grace, that the good things He has made are
restrained in their ability to lead away from the way of grace.
PHILIP

St. Mary's Priory,
Conn.
New

F. MuLHERN, 0. P.

BOOKS RECEIVED
American Catholic Philosophical Association: Philosophy and the Future
of Man. (Pp.
Argus Communications Co.: Catholic Education: Survival or Demise?
by Virgil C. Blum, S. J. (Pp.
$1.00 paper)
Beauchesne et Ses Fils: La Philosophie de Whitehead et le Probleme de
Dieu, by Alix Parmentier. (Pp. 648, 48,50 F); Le Structuralisme.
Dialogue entre Jules Gritti et Paul Toinet. Verse et Controverse 7.
(Pp. 96, 8,80 F); Civilisation Technique et Humanisme. Colloque
de l'Academie Internationale de Philosophic des Sciences. (Pp.
F); Philosophic et Science. Elements de bibliographie, by JeanDominique Robert. (Pp. 884, 48,50 F)
Belknap Press: St. Augustine's Early Theory of Man, A. D. 886-891, by
Robert J. O'Connell, S. J. (Pp. 801, $10.00)
Bobbs-Merill, Co., Inc.: Philosophical Theology, by James F. Ross. (Pp.
$8.50)

Catholic Book Agency: Paul Tillich's Appraisal of St. Thomas' Teaching
on the Act of Faith, by Theodore Hall, 0. P. (Pp. 104)
Catholic University of America Press: Philosophy and Contemporary Man,
ed. by George F. McLean, 0. M. I. (Pp. 198, $7.95 paper); Current
Issues in Modern Philosophy, ed. by G. F. McLean. (Pp. 198,
$7.95 paper); Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy,
Vol. 4, ed. by John K. Ryan. (Pp.
$7.50 paper)
Columbia University Press: Religious Trends in English Poetry. Vol. VI:
Valley of Dry Bones, by Hoxie Neale Fairchild. (Pp. 585,
$1MO)

Corpus Books: The Reasonableness of Faith, by Diogenes Allen. (Pp. 188,
$4.95)

Edizioni di Ethica: Una Discussione sul'Etica della Felicita, by Giovanni
Blandino, S. J. (Pp. 99)
Edizione Domenicane: Thomae Aquinatis Vitae Fontes Praecipuae, by
Angelico Ferrua, 0. P. (Pp. 411, L. MOO)
Forham University Press: The Presence and Absence of God, ed. by
Christopher F. Mooney, S. J. (Pp. 189, $6.00)
Free Press: Medieval Philosophy. From St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa,
ed. by John F. Wippel & Allan B. Wolter, 0. F. M. (P. 487, $8.95
paper)
Harper and Row: Science and Christ, by Teilhard de Chardin. Trans. by
Rene Hauge. (Pp.
$5.00)
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.: Is It I, Lord? Pastoral Psychology and

408

404

BOOKS RECEIVED

the Recognition of Guilt, by Arnold Uleyn. (Pp. 255, $5.95); Priest
for Tomorrow. A radical Examination of Christian Ministry, by
Ruud J. Bunnik. (Pp. 238, $5.95)
KTAV Publishing House, Inc: The Teachings of Maimonides, by Abraham
Cohen. (Pp. 383, $8.95)
Loyola University Press: Dimensions of Faith. Yesterday and Today, by
James A. Mohler, S. J. (Pp. 229, $2.80)
Northwestern University Press: Two Logics. The Conflict Between Classical and Neo-Analytic Philosophy, by Henry B. Veatch. (Pp. 288,
$8.00)

Oxford University Press: Moral Knowledge and its Methodology in
Aristotle, by Donald Monan, S. J. (Pp. 163, $5.50)
Philosophical Library: Theories on the Nature of Life, by Giovanni
Blandino, S. J. (Pp. 387, $6.00)
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies: St. Thomas Aquinas. Quaestiones
de Anima, ed. by James H. Robb. (Pp. 282)
Priory Press: Yves Congar. Theology in the Service of God's People, by
Jean-Pierre Jossua, 0. P. (Pp. 241, $5.95)
C. Scribner's Sons: American Philosophy and the Future, ed. by Michael
Novak. (Pp. 367, $7.95 hardback, $3.95 paperback); The Judgment
of the Dead, by S. G. F. Brandon. (Pp. 300, $6.95); Integral
Humanism, by Jacques Maritan. (Pp. 308, $7.95); The Religious
Experience of Mankind, by Ninian Smart. (Pp. 588, $10.00)
Sheed & Ward: Is Original Sin in Scripture? by Herbert Haag. (Pp. 127,
$3.95); The One Bread, by Max Thurian. (Pp. 159, $4.50)
Trinity University Press: Autobiogmphies of Ten Religious Leaders:
Alternatives in Christian Experience, by Radsolav A. Tsanoff. (Pp.
320, $7.00)

University of Notre Dame Press: Eucharist. Theology and Spirituality of
the Eucharistic Prayer, by Louis Bouyer. (Pp. 496, $14.00);
Christian Existence in the New Testament. Vol. I, by Rudolf
Schnackenburg. (Pp. 241, $6.95); Lutherans and Roman Catholicism. The Changing Conflict 1917-1963, by Myron A. Marty. (Pp.
254, $6.95)

Westminster Press:
$6.50)

Jesus and Ethics, by Richard H. Hiers.

(Pp. 20S