Summa I q.77 a.6: How the Powers Flow from the Soul's Essence, Properties in Geometry, and Grace and the Theological Virtues

Orientation #

He says of the reply “I think I’ve gone over this with some of you before,” and looks ahead to “the natural light of reason that we’ll be talking about when we talk about the act of understanding.” The verified sources match this episode to q. 77 a. 6 (19 min) and briefly a. 7 (4 min), but the transcript as given ends before any reading of a. 7. The previous class worked through a. 5 (Platonic vs. Aristotelian views of which powers belong to soul alone) and broke before Article Six; the next class takes up a. 7 and the senses of “before”.

The class, in order #

1. Article 6: the three objections and the sed contra (“Whether the powers of the soul flow”) #

He reads the objections and the “on the contrary” of a. 6.

1. Obj. 1: nature is determined to one; from one simple thing diverse things do not naturally proceed; the soul’s essence is one and simple, its powers many and diverse.
2. Obj. 2 (Damascene): that from which something proceeds is its cause; the soul’s essence cannot be called a cause of the powers “as is clear to one going through each of the kinds of causes.” He notes the objection only asserts, does not show, that no kind of cause applies.
3. Obj. 3: emanation names a motion; nothing is moved by itself (Physics VII), except by reason of a part, as an animal is; nor is the soul moved (De Anima I); so the soul does not cause its powers in itself.
4. Sed contra: the powers are like natural properties of the soul; the subject causes its own accidents, since it is put in the accident’s definition (Metaphysics VII). Example: being half of four, a third of six, a fourth of eight are properties that follow upon being two; so the powers follow upon what the soul is.

2. The two most probable errors about the soul: Phaedo (“the two most probable opinions about the soul”) #

The article is “a very nice text” for distinguishing substantial from accidental form; he sets up the distinction from the Phaedo.

• Socrates: the soul is a complete substance (he reasons, in the little dialogue “Am I a soul, or a body, or composed of both?”, that he is just a soul). Simmias brings a Pythagorean opinion: the soul is an accidental form.
• Neither is true; each has an element of truth, because the soul is a substantial form: substantial (Socrates saw part of the truth), a form (Simmias saw part).
• Why these are the two most probable opinions: once you discover the human soul has an operation not in the body, hence an existence not in the body, you easily jump to “a substance temporarily imprisoned in the body”; seeing instead the formal aspect and the unity of soul and body, you jump to “accidental form.” The truth is “a bit of both.”

3. Substantial and accidental form: agreement and two differences (“partly agree and partly differ”) #

The respondeo’s central distinction, read with his examples.

• Agree: both are an act as opposed to a potency; by each something is in some way in act.
• Differ, first: substantial form makes something be simply; its subject is a being in potency only (first matter). Accidental form makes something be such, so much, or in some way; its subject is an actual being. Examples: when I was conceived I came to be, simply; when I studied Euclid I did not come to be, I came to be a geometer; taking medicine, I come to be healthy; generating a son, “did I come to be? Not you. I came to be a father.”
• Argument from the first difference:
  1. Actuality is found per prius in substantial form before its subject (its subject is only matter, being in potency).
  2. The first in each genus is a cause; so substantial form causes being-in-act to its subject.
  3. With accidental form it is the reverse: actuality is in the subject before the accident; so the accident’s actuality can be caused by the subject’s actuality.
  4. Hence the subject, as in potency, receives the accidental form; as in act, produces it.
  5. This holds of the proper, per se accident, “what in logic we call the property.” For an extrinsic accident the subject is receptive only, and the producer is an extrinsic agent: if you stab me with your sword and give me a shape I didn’t have, I only receive that.
• Differ, second: the less principal is on account of the more principal. Matter is for the sake of substantial form; accidental form is for the sake of the completion of the subject. Aside: this is how we differ from God, who has every perfection by nature; we must acquire geometry, courage, justice and the rest to complete ourselves—“I’m more complete when I have geometry.”

4. Application to the powers (“the subject of the powers of the soul”) #

The subject of the powers is either the soul alone (which can be a subject of accident insofar as it has some potentiality) or the composite; and the composite is an act of the soul. So all the powers, whichever their subject, flow from the soul’s nature as from a principle: an accident is caused by the subject as in act, received in it as in potency. He adds: the soul is defined as an act but is not pure act like God; there is some potency there.

5. Reply to obj. 1: many from one, by order and by receptors (“from one simple thing, many things are able to proceed”) #

Thomas says “something very important”: from one simple thing many things can proceed naturally (a) in a certain order and (b) on account of the diversity of receptors. So the diverse powers proceed from the one soul both by the order of the powers and by the diversity of bodily organs.

• Trinity illustration of (a): from the Father proceeds the Son, and from Father and Son as one principle the Holy Spirit; Augustine calls this the order of nature or of origin. Even in the Trinity you don’t get many from one without order—the Son and Spirit do not proceed from the Father as equals. (He slips, saying “Son” for the Spirit, and corrects himself.)
• Reflected in us: the will perhaps proceeds from the fact that we have understanding, as the Spirit proceeds by way of love, the Son by way of understanding.

6. Reply to obj. 2: the subject as cause in many ways (“the subject is a cause of its own proper accident”) #

The subject causes its proper accident as end, in some way as active cause (“a little bit like a mover or maker, but not really in the strict sense”), and as material cause insofar as receptive. So the soul’s nature is cause of all its powers as end (they are for the perfection of the soul) and as active principle, and of some—understanding and will—also as subject; for the others the body is subject.

7. Reply to obj. 3: natural resulting, not transmutation; the geometry example (“when straight lines intersect”) #

The flowing of proper accidents from a subject is not a change but a natural resulting, as colour results from light. He exemplifies with the theorem that intersecting straight lines make opposite angles equal.

• Digression on defining a right angle: students say “ninety degrees”; why not a fourth of a circle? but to divide a circle into four you must draw a line at right angles, so you must know right angle first—“the modern mind is out of order.” Euclid’s definition: when a straight line meets a straight line making equal angles, those are right angles; he shows it is possible to draw such a line.
• Proof as he gives it: a straight line meeting a straight line makes two right angles or angles equal to two right angles (subdivide one right angle, the parts match); so a + x = two right angles, b + x = two right angles; things equal to the same are equal; subtract equals; a = b.
• The point: here you go from cause to effect. The intersection causes there being angles; the straightness causes their equality. Angles, let alone their equality, are not in the definition of “intersecting straight lines,” yet equal opposite angles are their natural result, a property. Likewise the triangle’s interior angles equal to two right angles.
• Property vs. extrinsic accident: green or yellow does not follow on being a triangle; equal angles do. The powers are to the soul not as green to triangle (else we’d have irregularity in what powers we have) but as the angle-equality to the triangle, or half-of-four to two. You don’t have to transform the lines to make the angles equal; so the soul does not change itself to have its powers. He accepts a student’s gloss: “follows upon” is another way of saying it. Note: we know the soul through its powers, and know they always go with it.
• Aside: a student’s phrase sounds like “modular property”; he takes it as “property as opposed to accident” [ed.: likely ASR for a student’s word; the sense he gives is proper accident].

8. Emanatio: the word borrowed from flowing water (“the flowing from”) #

“Emanatio” literally means to flow from, as water from a stream. Aside: the hot springs at Bath, constant temperature, known before the Romans, flowing into the Avon—joke that this explains Shakespeare; Achilles dipped in magic water held by the heel; “my mother held me by the nose,” his lifelong nose trouble, “not in remission right now.”

9. Theological footnote: grace and the theological virtues (“a little theological footnote”) #

By likeness of proportion, sanctifying grace is to faith, hope and charity as the soul is to reason and will.

1. Faith is in the intellect, hope and charity in the will—the powers whose subject is the soul alone.
2. Sanctifying grace is in the soul as subject; it is, as St. Peter teaches, a sharing in the divine nature (words taken over into one of the canons of the Mass; Augustine: God became man so that man might become God).
3. As reason and will naturally flow from the soul, so when the soul is elevated by grace there flows into reason and will faith, hope and charity, elevating them (Newman after his conversion: mysteries hard to accept became easy; the will’s acts gain a vigour). It would not make sense to elevate reason and will and not the soul that understands and wills through them. Grace “never goes against nature, it elevates nature.”
4. Not identity: faith, hope, charity are habits (first species of quality), reason and will innate powers (second species); grace is like a disposition of the soul. But they are not the same as grace, and the tie to charity is especially strong: lose charity, lose grace, and vice versa; unformed faith could remain without grace.

• Student (garbled): asks whether this distinguishes grace in the soul from faith and charity in the powers; he replies “it’s reversed”: faith, hope, charity flow from the soul elevated by grace.
• Student: what effect does grace have on the vegetative and nutritive powers? He answers with a different kind of overflow, “from the top down”: seeing a truth makes one feel better physically (less if the body is tired, not disposed); a strong will shows in emotional warmth (John Paul II); reason commands the imagination to form the triangle or intersecting lines. “A little different type of overflowing,” with some similarity. Aside: in grade school pretending to eat peanuts while reading a geography book—“exercise of your imagination.”

10. The four species of quality and the commentaries (“four kinds of qualities”) #

Answering “the first are habits and the second are what?”:

• Aristotle’s four kinds of quality: habit or disposition; natural powers; sensible qualities (hot, cold, black, white); figure or shape. Thomas explains this order in the Prima Secundae when about to treat the virtues: habit comes first because it disposes one well or ill toward one’s nature, which comes first, and the powers can be ill disposed by habits (Saddam Hussein’s cruelty vs. courage, justice, temperance). “We can’t go into all that right now.”
• No adequate commentary on the Categories: Thomas distinguishes the ten categories generally in Physics III and Metaphysics V, and treats particular ones here and there (quality at length in I-II). Porphyry’s Isagoge was written to explain genus, species (genos, eidos), diaphora; Averroes commented on it by demand; at Laval they read Albert the Great’s paraphrase of the Isagoge and Categories, “not as good as Thomas would have done.” Thomas’s logical commentaries: complete Posterior Analytics, incomplete Peri Hermeneias; none on Prior Analytics, Categories, Topics (“the book about places”) or Sophistical Refutations.

His words #

• “flow from its what”: his reading of “fluant ab essentia” [ed.: emanate/flow from the essence]
• “natural hearing”: Physics
• “ability”: potency
• “being simply” vs. “being such or so much or in some way having itself”: substantial vs. accidental being
• “per prius”: found before, first
• “property” (per se, proper accident) vs. “extrinsic accident”: the former caused by the subject’s nature, the latter received only
• “emanatio”: flowing from; “follows upon” as equivalent
• “order of nature / order of origin”: Augustine’s term for order of procession in the Trinity
• “sanctifying grace” vs. “actual grace”: only the former is a disposition of the soul in this analogy
• “likeness of proportion”: the analogy soul : powers :: grace : theological virtues
• “genos, eidos, diaphora”: genus, species, difference (Porphyry)
• “the book about places”: Topics; “refutations”: Sophistical Refutations

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 77, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, respondeo, three replies)

Mentioned

• Plato, Phaedo (Socrates, Simmias’s Pythagorean opinion)
• Aristotle, Physics VII (nothing moved by itself); De Anima I (soul not moved); Metaphysics VII (subject in definition of accident); Physics III and Metaphysics V (general distinction of the categories)
• Aristotle, Categories (four species of quality)
• Thomas, Prima Secundae (on quality, before the virtues)
• John Damascene (cited in obj. 2); Augustine (order of nature; “God became man”)
• St. Peter, epistles (sharing in the divine nature)
• Euclid (definition of right angle; vertical-angle and triangle theorems)
• Porphyry, Isagoge; Averroes and Albert the Great on the Isagoge/Categories; Thomas on Posterior Analytics and Peri Hermeneias
• Cardinal Newman (post-conversion ease with mysteries)

His questions #

• Am I a soul, or a body, or composed of soul and body? Socrates reasons he is just a soul; the truth is the soul is a substantial form, neither complete substance nor accidental form.
• When I studied Euclid, did I come to be? Only in a certain sense—a geometer; being simply came with conception.
• When I generated a son, did I come to be? Not I: I came to be a father.
• How can many and diverse things follow from one simple nature? In a certain order, and by diversity of receptors (bodily organs); cf. the order of origin in the Trinity.
• What is the theorem about straight lines intersecting, and how is it proven? Opposite angles equal; from the definition of right angle and the axioms, going from cause (straightness, intersection) to effect.
• Does green follow upon being a triangle? No—an extrinsic accident; equal angles do, a property, and the powers are like that to the soul.
• Where are faith, hope and charity? Where is sanctifying grace? In intellect and will; grace in the soul itself, from which the virtues flow.
• What effect does grace have on the vegetative powers? A different, “top down” overflow, like understanding making one feel physically better; some similarity only.
• The first kind of quality is habit; the second is what? Natural powers; then sensible qualities; then figure.