Summa I, q. 78, a. 2: Nutritive, Growth and Generative Powers, and the Sacraments

Orientation #

He begins “before we look at the second article” and refers back to “the previous article there” where the sensing power was said to have a more universal object than the living powers (prev. lecture). At the end: “next time we’ll look at the articles on the exterior senses and the interior senses.” The previous class opened q. 78 a. 1 on the five genera of powers; the next takes a. 3 on the five exterior senses.

The class, in order #

1. The four objections (“it seems unsuitably distinguished”) #

He reads a. 2’s objections against dividing the living soul into feeding (nutritive), growing (augmentative) and generating powers, and sorts them.

• Obj. 1: these powers are called natural powers, but the soul’s powers are above natural powers. He notes the problem is partly in the word “natural.” This objection is against all three.
• Obj. 2: no power of the soul should be assigned for what is common to living and non-living; generation is common to everything generable and corruptible. Example: a candle flame lit from another flame — generation in the non-living world; so how is the power to generate a power of the living soul? Against the generative power alone.
• Obj. 3: the soul is more potent than bodily nature, yet nature by one active power gives both the species and a suitable quantity; so the growing power should not differ from the generating power.
• Obj. 4: a thing is conserved in being by that through which it has being (as God creates and conserves us); the generative power gives being, so it should conserve; but the feeding power is ordered to conservation (De Anima II, defining it as the power able to save the one having it). Objs. 3 and 4 would reduce the other two powers to the generative one.

2. Sed contra and “the Philosopher” (“that’s the man with a capital P”) #

Sed contra: Aristotle, De Anima II — the works of this soul are to generate, to use food, and to make growth.

• Aside on antonomasia: Thomas calls Aristotle “the Philosopher” as Aristotle called Homer “the Poet” and he calls Mozart “the Musician”; the Federalist Papers quote “a long farewell to all my greatness” as “the poet” without naming Shakespeare (Henry VIII); a tourist found only the Bible and Shakespeare in an American log cabin.
• Asides: the newspaper is what is most read, not the Bible; a colleague requires students not to watch soap operas; he kept no TV set, nor does his daughter (expecting her fifth) — bad for imagination and reading; the ancients memorized more (Thomas memorizing the Bible and Lombard’s Sentences; Chinese students scoring 100 on the curve).

3. The response: three powers and their order (“three powers of the living part”) #

The living soul has for its object the body living through it, and such a body needs three operations.

1. To acquire existence — the generating power.
2. To acquire a suitable quantity — the growing power.
3. To be saved in its being and its suitable quantity — the feeding (nourishing) power.

Difference among them: feeding and growing have their effect in that in which they are (one’s own body grows and is kept alive, “body and soul together”); generating has its effect in another, because nothing generates itself — “I can’t bring myself into existence.”

Consequences he draws with Thomas:

• Hence the generative power “in a certain way approaches to the dignity of the sensing soul,” which has an operation in exterior things, though more excellently and universally; recall (prev. lecture) that sense has a more universal object than the living powers — not one’s own body only. “That’s very interesting.”
• The principle from Dionysius (Divine Names ch. 7), which Thomas often quotes: the highest of the lower nature attains what is lowest in the higher.
• Therefore among the three the generative is the more final, principal and perfect (De Anima II): it belongs to a thing now perfect to make another like itself. Growing and feeding serve the generative; feeding serves growing.

4. Reproduction as the mortal becoming like the immortal (“the mortal is trying to be like the immortal”) #

Thomas does not mention it here, but Plato (Symposium) and Aristotle following him call reproduction something godlike: individuals cannot be immortal, but by reproducing they give their kind a kind of immortality.

• Shakespeare’s first sonnets urge someone to marry; Sonnet 1 opens “From fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty’s rose might never die” — the beautiful will age and wrinkle, so have a duty to reproduce; a handsome little boy at church who looked like his mother. Plato thus explains why, other things equal, one is more attracted to the good-looking: to perpetuate beauty.
• Theaetetus: philosophy is becoming like God so far as possible for a man — “a very profound definition.” Aristotle in the Ethics: it is lovable to make one man happy, more godlike to make a city happy; Thomas: God works for the good of the whole universe, we cannot, but working for a whole city is more like God (George Washington, “father of his country”). Wisdom is the most divine science, being about God and the knowledge God most of all would have. Greeks used “mortal”/“immortal” for men/gods (Homer), so the mortal seeking immortality is seeking to be like God.
• Shakespeare’s exhortation to use reason: God “gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused” — two reasons (obey God; become like God), which together suggest God’s plan for us, and for the plants, is to become godlike.
• Student: “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” — the danger in becoming more like God. His answer: founders of orders (Benedict, Dominic, Francis) are more godlike than one who helps a single friend out of a mess, because many flourished under their rule; but Gregory the Great, made bishop, began to doubt his salvation, made pope, to despair of it — great responsibility (Paul’s “solicitude of all the churches”; the pope today receiving reports).
• Two ways to immortalize: reproduce, or enshrine in a poem or painting (the other sonnets; Spenser writing the girl’s name in the sand, washed out — but the poet can immortalize her). Spenser’s Epithalamion (epi, “upon”; thalamion, the marriage day; celebrates his marriage to Elizabeth) vs. Prothalamion (before the day, for two daughters marrying, figured as two swans); the Song of Songs is called an epithalamion by commentators, and one psalm (“forty-something”) has the same matter, Thomas says in his Psalms commentary.
• Naming the soul: called “living soul” because life first appears in bodies here, “feeding soul” from its basic activity, but Aristotle ends by calling it the reproducing soul, since we name by the utmost a thing can do (man senses too but has an “understanding soul”). Dandelions, and the farmer neighbour’s “it’s a losing battle”: all things seeking their own immortality.

5. Reply 1: why “natural” powers (“because they have an effect like nature”) #

Nature vs. soul: nature is determined to one of two opposites; the soul, even the plant soul, begins to rise above this (it grows in contrary directions), and reason has the same knowledge of opposites (medical art can cure or kill). These powers are called natural (a) because their effect is like nature’s — giving existence and quantity and conserving — though in a higher way; they are the closest to nature, least rising above it; (b) because they act instrumentally through the active and passive qualities, the principles of natural actions — in Aristotle’s primitive chemistry the soul digests using the properties of fire; today, chemicals one could isolate in the lab. So the natural powers are instruments, tools, of the soul.

6. Reply 2: generation from a seed (“wholly from the outside”) #

Generation in inanimate things is wholly from outside; in living things it is in a higher way, through something of the living thing itself, the seed, containing a formative principle of the body; hence a power preparing such seed — the generating power. Ascending scale: lower animals lay an egg not yet alive, which must be sat on; higher animals give birth from within; the generation of the Son in the Trinity is far more intrinsic still — the higher the life, the more inward the generation.

7. Reply 3: why a separate growing power (“with a small quantity”) #

Because living things are generated from a seed, the animal is at first of small quantity and needs a power to reach its suitable size; the inanimate body is generated from matter determined by an extrinsic agent and receives species and quantity at once. Hence Plato, Aristotle and Thomas compare a principle in philosophy to a seed: small in size, great in power; Christ’s mustard seed; the Greek proverb “the beginning is half of all” (he gives it in Greek; transcript garbled), picked up by Thomas and Albert the Great.

8. Reply 4: heat, moisture and the feeding power (“it belongs to consume moisture”) #

The living principle’s operation is completed by heat, which consumes moisture; a nutritive power is needed to restore lost moisture by converting food into the body’s substance — needed also for the acts of growing and generating (“the old science”: dry up and turn to dust). A further point: the generated body is eventually separated in space from the generator, so the generative power cannot keep it alive; yet for nine months the baby is attached and fed by the mother, so what she eats affects it.

• Asides: whether pregnant women overdo avoiding tea and alcohol; a daughter guessing her baby’s sex from its behaviour; a head nurse telling boy from girl by the heartbeat; carrying in back or front.

9. Theological footnote: three sacraments under three powers (“under the likeness of bodily life”) #

A sacrament is a sensible sign giving grace, because God knows we are animals with reason; so under the likeness of these three powers we receive three sacraments. Students first guess baptism, confirmation, ordination (indelible seals); he corrects: baptism, confirmation, Eucharist.

• Generation — baptism, another birth; Nicodemus takes “born again of water and the Holy Spirit” too materially (re-entering the womb); we are born of our mother the Church.
• Growing — confirmation: as the kitten becomes a cat and the boy a man, a spiritual coming of age; hence the tap on the cheek, to stand and fight for the Church.
• Feeding — Eucharist, under bread and wine, which Thomas says are most commonly used for food (“being an Italian”). Thomas compares these three explicitly (Summa contra Gentiles, probably the Summa too); they are given together especially in the Eastern Church, and the Catechism groups them; confession and last anointing answer to something gone wrong.
• “Food” extended: Christ’s sitting at his table eating the same food — seeing God, “food for thought,” Socrates’ “feast of reason”; Shakespeare’s Beatrice with “food for her laughter”; feeding someone’s anger; Dionysius, higher angels are food (cibus) for lower; Monsignor Dion feeding students like a mother bird; Scripture’s “no one to break the bread” — Thomas dividing the text into bite-size pieces.
• Differences between spiritual and material food, only visible once one sees the likeness: (1) material food is not living (no eating the live chicken), and we give it life by digesting it; spiritual food is alive and gives life to the eater — “just the reverse.” (2) In material food the lower is food of the higher (plants for animals, lower animals for higher, all for man’s varied diet); in spiritual food the higher is food of the lower, and the lower partakes of the higher’s life — I share Thomas’s mind reading him, God’s mind reading Scripture, whereas the carrot takes on my life. Student: taking in Christ we become Him — “that’s the exact difference.” Panis vivus, vitam praestans hominibus: ordinary bread is not alive (British navy biscuits with weevils). Modern philosophy gives him no sense of being fed; Thomas does.

10. Is Thomas the preserve of an elite? (“the preserve of an intellectual elite”) #

Student’s question after he announces next time (exterior and interior senses). His answer: to some extent, but there are levels — the Naples sermons for the common man; the Compendium Theologiae (incomplete); the Summa, with about three objections, as an abbreviation of the Quaestiones Disputatae with their ten or fifteen; the Dominican four-volume Sunday sermons (gospel, Catena Aurea, half a dozen sermons; reprinted, he thinks, by Ignatius Press) proportioned to people — his uneducated mother puzzled by gospel details a priest never explained. Much school time is wasted: Paris required Euclid I by heart for theology; Leibniz trained on Euclid; Einstein’s remark; his teacher Kasurik sent him to Euclid after college; Roy Monroe’s friend; the Trivium school and Thomas Aquinas College. Parish talks on parables at his wife’s suggestion: the wedding garment, which the Fathers say signifies charity, which the tables missed; Cajetan says Thomas so venerated the Fathers he inherited the mind of all of them, as Aristotle did the first philosophers; Thomas would trade Paris for Chrysostom on John, whom with Augustine he follows in his John commentary. Modern geometry stresses logistica, the art of calculating (as “calculus” suggests); he lost interest in math because of the character of the knowledge, until Euclid. Recording cuts off.

His words #

• feeding / nourishing power — the nutritiva; conserves the body in being and quantity [ed.: nutritive power]
• growing power — augmentativa [ed.: augmentative power]
• generating power — generativa; has its effect in another
• living soul / feeding soul / reproducing soul — three names for the vegetative soul, the last from its utmost act [ed.: vegetative soul]
• the Philosopher — Aristotle, named as Homer is “the Poet”
• virtutes naturales — natural powers, so called for likeness of effect and instrumental use of active and passive qualities
• nature vs. soul — nature determined to one of two opposites; soul rises above it
• seed — small in size, great in power; the model for a principle in philosophy
• Epithalamion / Prothalamion — upon / before the marriage day
• cibus — food, applied by Dionysius to higher angels
• Panis vivus, vitam praestans hominibus — living bread, bestowing life on men
• logistica — the art of calculating, the emphasis of modern math teaching

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 78, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, response, four replies)
• Shakespeare, Sonnet 1, opening lines
• Shakespeare’s lines on “godlike reason” left “to fust in us unused” (play not named)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima II (definition of the nutritive power; works of this soul; generative most perfect)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 7; and his saying that higher angels are food for lower
• Plato, Symposium; Theaetetus
• Aristotle, Ethics (city more godlike); on wisdom as most divine science
• Federalist Papers; Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Henry V
• Spenser, Epithalamion, Prothalamion; Song of Songs; a psalm “forty-something” with the same matter (Thomas’s Psalms commentary)
• Gospel of John (Nicodemus); Christ on the mustard seed; the wedding garment parable; Scripture on “no one to break the bread”
• Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles on the three sacraments; Catechism of the Catholic Church; Naples sermons; Compendium Theologiae; Quaestiones Disputatae; Catena Aurea; commentary on John; Cajetan’s commentary on the Summa; Chrysostom on John
• Euclid, Elements

His questions #

• How can the power to generate be a power of the living soul when a flame generates a flame? Generation in the non-living is wholly from outside; in the living it is through the seed, from something of the living thing itself.
• Why does the generative power approach the dignity of the sensing soul? Because it extends to another body, not one’s own only — like sense, whose object is more universal.
• Why is the generative power the most principal of the three? It belongs to a thing now perfect to make another like itself; the other two serve it.
• Why are these powers called natural? Their effect is like nature’s, and they act through the active and passive qualities as instruments.
• Why must the living thing have a growing power when nature gives species and quantity at once? Because it begins from a seed, with a small quantity.
• Why doesn’t the generative power also conserve the thing? Heat consumes moisture; a feeding power must restore it; the generated body is eventually separated from its generator.
• What three sacraments are compared to these three powers? Baptism (generation), confirmation (growth), Eucharist (food).
• What is the difference between spiritual food and material food? Spiritual food is alive and gives life to the eater; the higher feeds the lower — the reverse of material food on both counts.
• Has Thomas become the preserve of an intellectual elite? To some extent; but his works come at different levels, and better early training (Euclid, the Fathers, parables) would proportion people to him.