The Causes of Habits: Natural Habits, Habits from Acts, and Whether One Act Is Enough (Summa I-II q.51 a.1-3)

Orientation #

He says last time concluded the subject of habits “with the thing about the angels”, thrown in “for good measure” (prev. lecture: q. 50, a. 6). He says the question on the distinction of habits comes later and “we’ve got to restrain our desire to hear about that”, and that he had “time for one more article” (a. 3), leaving the fourth article (infused habits) for later. The next class continues with infused habits and the growth of habits.

The class, in order #

1. Where q. 51 sits in the plan (“consider about the cause of habits”) #

He rereads the preamble of q. 49: after acts and passions, the beginnings of human acts; first intrinsic (power and habit, first and second species of quality), powers having been treated in the Prima Pars; habits in general, then virtues and vices. Four things: substance (q. 49), subject (q. 50), cause of generation, growth and corruption (qq. 51-53), distinction (q. 54). He states the sub-order: generation (51), growth (52), diminution and corruption (53).

• Aside on distinction: “Distinction is the most fundamental thing in the life of the mind”, and in life: you distinguish the soup from the spoon you swallow it with; the distinction between man and woman is “kind of neglected nowadays”.

2. The four articles announced (“whether some habit is by nature”) #

Point: he previews the four questions and attaches an example to each.

• a. 1, habit by nature: Hamlet’s “vicious mole of nature”, “nature cannot choose its origin”.
• a. 2, habit from acts: Ethics on moral virtue by repeated acts; Hamlet to his mother, refuse tonight and next time it is easier to say no.
• a. 3, habit from one act: one demonstration and “you got geometry just like that” (to Joshua); but one refusal of the candy does not confirm you in virtue.
• a. 4, habits “poured into” men by God, i.e. infused.

3. Article 1, the objections and sed contra (“their use is not subject to the will”) #

1. Obj. 1: what is by nature is not used at will; habit is what one uses when he wants (the Commentator, De anima III).
2. Obj. 2: nature does not do by two what it can do by one; powers are by nature, so a natural habit would coincide with the power.
3. Obj. 3: nature does not fail in necessary things; habits are necessary to act well; but plainly nature does not cause all necessary habits (“pick up the daily newspaper”).

• Sed contra: Ethics VI lists among the habits of reason the understanding of beginnings (axioms), which is by nature. He calls it in English “the natural understanding” (Latin intellectus, Greek nous), against “reasoned-out understanding” for epistēmē: one naturally comes to understand that a whole is more than a part.
• Aside on Averroes: Thomas criticises him often (unity of the intellect) but quotes him with approval, e.g. that “God is living” and “God is life itself” are not synonyms, since they signify differently though God’s substance is one and simple; likewise wisdom and justice of God; and on Aristotle’s fourth sense of “perfect” in the fifth book (lacking nothing, universally perfect) Averroes says this is God, and Thomas agrees: God has the perfection of every genus simply. Same admiration for Avicenna; Thomas quotes Origen in the Catena despite “serious difficulties” in him.

4. Article 1 body: natural by species vs. by individual (“natural to man to be capable of laughter”) #

Point: “natural” is said in two ways.

• By the nature of the species: man risible (the logic-book property), because reason sees the incongruity, while being an animal he can make the sound; cats and dogs do not really laugh; fire naturally borne upward.
• By the nature of the individual: Socrates sickly or healthy by his makeup (complexion); Hamlet’s “vicious mole of nature”; some born irascible, others capricious; mothers with several children can tell a child’s disposition from its movement in the womb.
• His question: which sense of nature is the measure when we say live according to nature, or when Hamlet tells the actors to hold the mirror up to nature? Answer: the common nature, by which being reasonable belongs to us; not what is private to Duane Berquist or to Francis de Sales, who was given to anger by nature and overcame it by discipline; individuals become unreasonable through drink, anger, cowardice.

5. Wholly by nature vs. partly from an exterior principle (“the whole health is by nature”) #

Point: under either nature, a thing is natural wholly, or partly by nature and partly from outside.

• Health from within, no medicine, wholly by nature; health with medicine, partly from without. A “famous example” that Aristotle and Thomas apply to learning: some discover a truth by themselves, others need the master’s words. Contrast making a chair, wholly from the artist, nature never makes a chair but sometimes heals you unaided.
• Habit as disposition to a form or nature: can be natural in either way; a disposition owed to the species, outside which no man is found, has latitude, so grades belong to individuals, wholly or partly from nature.
• Habit as disposition to operation (subject: a power of the soul): natural by species on the side of the soul (substantial form, specific principle), by individual on the side of the body (material principle). In neither way is a human habit wholly from nature; in angels it is, since they have naturally the intelligible forms.
• Aside: his son Marcus asked why we couldn’t be born knowing everything; “you want to be an angel, not a man” — a temptation sometimes.

6. Natural beginning of habits in the knowing powers (“the understanding of the beginnings, is said to be a natural habit”) #

Point: in the grasping powers a habit can be natural as to its beginning, in both ways.

• By species, on the side of the soul: understanding of principles; once one knows what a whole and a part are, he knows every whole is greater than its part; but what whole and part are he knows only through intelligible forms taken from the images (phantasms), so Posterior Analytics (end) shows even knowledge of principles comes from sense.
• His reflection: Hamlet’s definition of reason (“large discourse, looking before and after”) he takes as reason as reason, i.e. discourse from the unknown to the known; it could be stretched to reason as nature only insofar as experience of wholes and parts precedes the natural recognition.
• By individual, on the side of the body: one man’s organs make him more apt to understand, since understanding needs the sense powers. His high-school classmate who memorised pages at a glance and was handed exams instead of courses, later a PhD in mathematics.
• Student contributions: savants (“idiot” dropped as unkind); Sacks’s twins in an institution exchanging prime numbers, delighted when the doctor joined in, then off his chart, later separated; the Eagle Hill school in Hardwick (from Sandra Larsen) cultivating the one thing troubled children can do. He: “unusual examples” of habitus cognitivus secundum inchoationem naturalem.

7. The desiring powers, and the three replies (“the seeds in a way of virtues”) #

Point: in the appetitive powers no natural habit on the side of the soul as to the habit’s substance, only as to certain principles, the principles of common justice, seminalia virtutum; the inclination to the object belongs to the power itself (the will naturally seeks happiness). On the side of the body, some are disposed by complexion to chastity, mildness, or irascibility. His grandchildren each with a different bent; Shakespeare on humour: some laugh too much, some not even if Nestor swore it was funny, one in the middle has the virtue.

• Ad 1: the objection takes nature as divided against reason and will, but reason and will belong to man’s nature; something is known naturally and willed naturally (we do not choose to be happy rather than miserable; we choose what happiness consists in). Against Sartre’s wholly free will and Mill’s open mind that never really knows anything; Whittaker Chambers on Columbia students treating ideas as ping-pong balls; Benedict’s “tyranny of relativism”.
• Ad 2: something natural can be added to a power that cannot belong to the power itself: an angel’s intellect cannot of itself know all things, for it would be the act of all things, being itself, “I am who am”; so intelligible forms are added by partaking of divine wisdom.
• Ad 3: nature is not equally related to all habits; some can be caused by nature, some not.

8. Article 2: are habits caused by acts? (“the same thing with the mover and the moved”) #

Objections: (1) a quality is received, but an agent emits, does not receive; (2) what is moved to a quality is moved by a mover, so a self-caused habit makes the same thing mover and moved, impossible (Physics VII), “destructive of all philosophy”; (3) the effect is not nobler than its cause, but the habit is nobler than the preceding act, since it yields nobler acts. Sed contra: Ethics II, virtues and vices caused from acts.

• Aside prompted by the objection’s shock: you need hope to be a philosopher; in the Phaedo Simmias and Cebes’ objections collapse Socrates’ arguments and the company despairs, and the narrator admired Socrates most for leading them out (his cousin Donald was amazed). Teacher’s duty to encourage: Monsignor Dionne “it’s the business of the teacher to encourage the student”; his own teachers in order, Kasurik (most encouraging), De Koninck (more caution), Dionne (whose “principle of passion is fear”, first reaction to reject).
• Body: 1. Some agents have only an active principle (fire heating), so no habit from their act; natural things cannot be accustomed (you can’t accustom your ears to see). 2. Some have both active and passive principles of their act, as in human acts: the appetitive power moved by the apprehending power presenting its object; the intellect reasoning to conclusions from per se known premises (his own comparison: the syllogism, conclusion in potency, premises the active principle). 3. So habits are caused, not in the first active principle, but in the moved power, disposed by the agent’s act; from multiplied acts a quality is generated in the passive power, the habit: moral virtue in appetite moved by reason (Plato’s man taming a horse), science in the intellect moved by the axioms, then by prior theorems.
• Ad 1: the agent as agent receives nothing, but as moved by another it receives. Ad 2: the same cannot be mover and moved in the same respect, but can according to diverse things; cf. the definition of syllogism, “another follows necessarily”. Ad 3: the preceding act proceeds from a nobler principle than the habit: reason is nobler than moral virtue, and the understanding of principles nobler than the science of conclusions. “Thomas puts intellectus above scientia.”

9. Article 3: can one act generate a habit? (“one swallow does not make spring”) #

Objections (affirmative side): one demonstration causes science, a habit of one conclusion (as in Dionne’s class); an act grows by intensity as well as multiplication, so one intense act could cause a habit (a student: the repentant thief); health and sickness are habits caused by one act (chiropractic, “all of a sudden he’s fixed”). Sed contra: Ethics I, one swallow or one day does not make a man happy by perfect virtue; virtue the road to happiness, vice to misery.

• Body: 1. The active principle must totally conquer the passive to cause a quality; fire does not inflame at once but removes contrary dispositions little by little (paulatim) [garbled Latin, unclear in recording]. 2. Reason cannot wholly overcome the appetitive power in one act, since appetite is related in many ways to many things, while reason judges one desirable thing under determinate circumstances; virtue determines appetite to one, so that it acts per modum naturae, nature not being able to be more than one thing. So a habit of virtue needs many acts. Breaking a horse (Washington Irving on wild horses), training a dog: not all at once.
• Distinction in the apprehending powers: two passivities, the possible understanding vs. the passive understanding (particular reason, vis cogitativa, with memory and imagination, a bodily organ). As to the possible understanding, one per se known proposition convinces firmly, so science can come from one act (the first theorem of Euclid, “something marvelous”); a probable proposition does not, so opinion (habitus opinativus) needs many acts, as in dialectic. As to the lower powers, acts must be repeated to impress memory; De memoria: meditation confirms memory. Hence his reply to Kasurik’s “always saying the same thing” and “repetitio…” [ed.: presumably repetitio est mater studiorum].
• Bodily habits from one act if the agent is strong: a strong medicine induces sweat at once.
• To a student: not “no instance”, the exception is the possible intellect, not the sense powers serving reason. Parenting: repeat things.
• Student (from St. Alphonsus): some sins, especially venereal, contract a habit after one act by the strength of the pleasure, presumably where vice was already cultivated in imagination; a visiting speaker on child abuse said “there’s never a first time”. Left as the student’s interpretation; the class ends here.

His words #

• beginnings; his rendering of principia.
• the natural understanding; understanding of beginnings/axioms, Latin intellectus, Greek nous [ed.: habit of first principles]; vs. “reasoned-out understanding” for epistēmē.
• the Commentator; Averroes.
• the fifth book of Wisdom; Aristotle on “perfect” [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• complexion; the bodily makeup one is born with.
• poured in; infused.
• grasping / knowing powers vs. desiring powers; apprehensive and appetitive powers.
• phantasms; “the Greek word for image”.
• reason as reason vs. reason as nature; discourse vs. what reason knows naturally.
• habitus cognitivus secundum inchoationem naturalem; a knowing habit according to a natural beginning.
• seminalia virtutum; seeds of the virtues, the principles of common justice.
• actus omnium; God as the act of all things.
• per modum naturae; virtue determining appetite to one.
• paulatim; little by little (fire and combustible).
• possible understanding vs. passive understanding (particular reason, vis cogitativa).
• habitus opinativus; the opining habit.
• ad bonum doctrina [garbled]; his tag for the angel article thrown in “for good measure”.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 49 prologue (order of the treatise).
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 51 prologue; a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies); a. 2 (same); a. 3 (same, replies said to be clear).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Ethics VI (understanding of principles), II (virtues from acts; natural things not accustomed), I (one swallow); Posterior Analytics, end; Physics VII; Metaphysics V (“perfect”); De anima III (the Commentator on habit); On Memory and Recollection (meditation confirms memory).
• Averroes on divine names and on “perfect” (as quoted by Thomas on the names of God); Avicenna; Origen in the Catena Aurea.
• Plato, Phaedo (Simmias and Cebes; Socrates’ hope); Plato on taming a horse.
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (vicious mole of nature; to his mother; mirror up to nature; large discourse); Shakespeare on humour (Nestor).
• Sartre; J.S. Mill, On Liberty; Whittaker Chambers; Benedict on relativism; Oliver Sacks’s book on savants (name uncertain in recording); Washington Irving; St. Alphonsus.

His questions #

• Which sense of nature is the measure when Hamlet holds “the mirror up to nature” and we say live according to nature? The common nature of the species, by which we are reasonable, not the individual’s makeup.
• Does a cat or a dog really laugh? No; laughter needs reason to see the incongruity.
• Why couldn’t we be born knowing everything (Marcus)? That is to be an angel, not a man; angels have their intelligible forms naturally.
• If reason by thinking causes a habit in reason, isn’t the same thing mover and moved? Not in the same respect: the intellect is moved by the premises, the appetite by reason.
• Can you accustom your eyes to hear? No; a purely active natural principle admits no habit.
• Can you train a horse or a dog all at once? No; reason cannot wholly conquer the appetite in one act, so virtue needs many acts.
• Can one demonstration cause a habit? Yes, science in the possible intellect; opinion and memory need repetition.
• Can one act cause a bodily habit? Yes, if the agent is strong, as a strong medicine causes sweat at once.
• Can one act of a venereal sin contract a vice (student, from St. Alphonsus)? Left open; the student offers it as a psychological fact, presupposing vice already cultivated in imagination.