Part 23 (1/2)
(_f_) We may distinguish also between the _real_ end (_finis_ ”_qui_” or ”_cujus_”, and the _personal_ end (_finis_ ”_cui_”). The former is the good _which_ the agent desires, the good for the sake of _which_ ”_cujus_”
_gratia_) he acts. The latter is the subject or person _to whom_ he wishes this good, or _for whom_ he wishes to procure it. Thus, a labourer may work to earn _a sustenance_ for _himself_ or also for _his family_. The real and the personal end are never willed separately, but always as one concrete good.
(_g_) The distinction between a _princ.i.p.al_ end and an _accessory_ end (motivum ”_impulsivum_”) is obvious. The former can move to act of itself without the latter, but the latter strengthens the influence of the former. A really charitable person, while efficaciously moved to give alms by sympathy with the poor, may not be uninfluenced by vanity to let others know of his charity.
(_h_) Finally we may note the theological distinction between the _natural_ end, and the _supernatural_ end, of man as a rational and moral agent. The former is the end _due_ to man's nature, the latter is an end which is gratuitous and undue to his nature. G.o.d might not have created the world or man, and in this sense even the natural end of man is a gratuitous gift of G.o.d; but granted that G.o.d did decree to create the world and man, an end corresponding to man's nature and powers was due to him: the knowledge, service and love of G.o.d as known to man by the light of natural reason. But as a matter of fact G.o.d, in His actual providence, has decreed for man an incomparably higher and purely gratuitous end, an end revealed to man by G.o.d Himself, an end entirely undue not only to man but to any and every possible creature: the Beatific Vision of the Divine Essence for ever in heaven.
108. CAUSALITY OF THE FINAL CAUSE; RELATION OF THE LATTER TO EFFICIENT, FORMAL, AND MATERIAL CAUSES.-We can best a.n.a.lyse the influence of the final cause by studying this influence as exerted on conscious and intelligent agents. The final cause has a positive influence of some sort on the production, happening, actualization of effects. What is the nature of this influence? The final cause exerts its influence by being _a __ good_, an apprehended good; it exerts this influence on the appet.i.te of the agent, soliciting the latter to perform certain acts for the realization, attainment, possession, or enjoyment of this good. But it must not be conceived as the _efficient cause_ of this movement of the appet.i.te, nor may its influence be conceived as _action_. An efficient cause must actually exist in order to act; but when the final cause, as an apprehended good, exerts its influence on the appet.i.te _it is not yet actual_: not until the agent, by his action, has realized the end and actually attained it, does the end, as a good, actually exist. We must distinguish between the end _as attained_ and the end _as intended_, between the _finis in executione_ and the _finis in intentione_. It is not the end as attained that is a final cause; as attained it is an effect pure and simple. It is the end as intended that is a final cause; and as intended it does not yet actually exist: hence its influence cannot be by way of _action_. Perhaps it is the _idea_ or _cognition_ of the intended end that exerts the peculiar influence of final cause? No; the _idea_ or _cognition_ of the end actually exists, no doubt, in the conscious agent, but this is only a condition, a _conditio sine qua non_, for the apprehended good, the final cause, to exert its influence: _nil volitum nisi praecognitum_. It is not the cognition of the good, however, that moves the agent to act, it is not the idea of the good that the agent desires or strives for, but the good itself. It is the good itself, the known good, that exerts the influence, and this influence consists in the _pa.s.sive inclination_ or _attraction_ or _tendency_ of the appet.i.te towards the good: a tendency which necessarily results from the very presence of the good (not really or physically of course, but representatively, mentally, ”_intentionally_,” by ”_esse intentionale_”; cf. 4) in the agent's consciousness, and which is formally the actualization of the causal power or influence of the final cause. ”Just as the efficient cause influences by acting,” says St. Thomas,(504) ”so the final cause influences by being yearned for and desired”.
Looked at from the side of the agent that undergoes it, this influence is a _pa.s.sive yielding_: this next becomes an _active_ motion of appet.i.te; and in the case of free will a deliberate act of intending the end, followed by acts of choosing means, and finally by acts commanding the executive faculties to employ these means.
Looked at from the side of the final cause, the influence consists in an _attraction_ of appet.i.te towards union with itself as a good. The matter cannot be a.n.a.lysed much further; nor will imagination images help us here any more than in the case of efficient causality. It must be noted, however, that the influence of the final cause is the influence not of a reality as actual, or in its _esse actuale_, but of a reality as present to a perceiving mind, or in its _esse intentionale_. At the same time it would be a mistake to infer from this that the influence of the final cause is not _real_. It is sometimes described as ”intentional” causality, ”_causalitas intentionalis_”; but this must not be taken to mean that it is not real: for it is not the ”_esse intentionale_” of the good, _i.e._ the cognition of the good, its presence in the mind or consciousness of the agent, that moves the latter's appet.i.te: it is the apprehended good, apprehended _as real_, as possible of actual attainment, that moves the agent to act. The influence may not be _physical_ in the sense of being productive of, or interchangeable with, or measurable by, corporeal energy, or in terms of mechanical work; nor is it; but it is none the less real.
But if the influence of a final cause really reaches to the effect of the agent's actions only through the medium of the latter's appet.i.te, and therefore through a link of ”intentional” causality, does it not at once follow that the attribution of final causality to the domain of unconscious and inorganic activities, can be at best merely metaphorical?
The attribution to such agencies of an ”_appet.i.tus naturalis_” is intelligible indeed as a striking and perhaps not unpoetic metaphor. But to contend that it is anything more than a metaphor, to claim seriously that inanimate agencies are swayed and influenced by ”ends,”-is not this really to subst.i.tute mysticism and mystery for rational speculation and a.n.a.lysis?
Mechanists are wont to dismiss the doctrine of final causes in the physical universe with offhand charges of this kind. They are but too ready to attribute it to a mystical att.i.tude of mind. Final causes, they say, are not discovered in inanimate nature by the cold, calculating, unemotional a.n.a.lysis to which reason submits its activities, but are read into it by minds which allow themselves to be prompted by the imagination and emotions to personify and anthropomorphize inanimate agencies. The accusation is as plausible as it is unjust. It is plausible because the attribution of final causes to inanimate nature, and of an ”appet.i.tus _naturalis_” to its agencies, _seems_ to imply the recognition of conscious, mental, ”intentional” influence in this domain. But it really implies nothing of the sort; and hence the injustice of the charge. What it does imply is the existence of a genuine _a.n.a.logy_ between the nature and natural activities of physical agencies on the one hand and the appet.i.te and appet.i.tive activities of conscious agencies on the other. The existence of this a.n.a.logy is absolutely undeniable. The orderly, invariable and uniformly suitable character of physical activities, simply forces our reason to recognize in physical agencies _natures_ which tend towards their development, and which by their activities attain to what is _good_ for them, to what _perfects_ them. In other words we have to recognize that each by its natural line of activity attains to results that are good and useful to it _just as if_ it apprehended them as such and consciously tended towards them. The a.n.a.logy is there; and the recognition of it, so far from being a ”mystic” interpretation of facts, is an elementary logical exercise of our reasoning faculty. The scholastics emphasized their recognition of the a.n.a.logy by calling the _nature_ of an unconscious agent,-the principle of its active tendencies towards the realization of its own perfection-an ”_appet.i.tus naturalis_”: an expression into which no one familiar with scholastic terminology would venture to read any element of mysticism.(505)
Every separate agency in nature has a uniform mode of activity; by following out this line of action each co-operates with all the others in maintaining the orderly course of nature. These are facts which call for explanation. They are not explained by the supposition of mechanists that these agencies are mere efficient causes: efficient causality does not account for order, it has got simply nothing to do with order or regularity. Consequently the last word of the mechanical philosophy on the fact of order in the universe is-Agnosticism. In opposition to this att.i.tude we are far from contending that there is no mystery, or that all is clear either in regard to the fact of _change_ or the fact of _regularity_. Just as we cannot explain everything in _efficient_ causality, so neither can we explain everything in _final_ causality. But we do contend that the element of order, development, evolution, even in the physical universe, can be partially explained by recognizing in its several agencies a _nature_, a principle of development, a pa.s.sive inclination implanted in the very being of these agencies by the Intelligent Author of their being.
In conscious agencies this inclination or tendency to actions conformable or _connatural_ to their being is not always in act; it is aroused by conscious cognition, perception, or imagination of a _good_, and operates intermittently. In unconscious agencies it is congenital and constantly in act, _i.e._ as a tendency, not as actually operative: for its actual development due conditions of environment are required: the seed will not grow without a suitable soil, temperature, moisture, etc. In conscious agencies the tendency, considered ent.i.tatively or as a reality in them, is an _accidental form_; in unconscious agencies it is their _forma substantialis_, the formative substantial principle, which determines the specific type to which their nature belongs.(506)
In all agencies the inclination or appet.i.te or tendency to action arises from a form; an elicited appet.i.te from an ”intentional” form, a natural appet.i.te from a ”natural” form: _Omnis inclinatio seu appet.i.tus consequitur formam; appet.i.tus elicitus formam intentionalem, appet.i.tus naturalis formam naturalem_. The scholastic view that final causality pervades all things is expressed in the aphorism, _Omne agens agit propter finem_: Every agency acts for an end.
From our a.n.a.lysis of final causality it will be seen that the ”end”
becomes a cause by exercising its influence on the agent or efficient cause, and thus initiating the action of the latter. We have seen already that material and formal causes exercise their causality dependently on the efficient cause of the change or effect produced by the latter. We now see that the final cause, the end as _intended_, determines the action of the efficient cause; hence its causality holds the primacy as compared with that of the other causes: it is in this sense the cause of causes, _causa causarum_.(507) But while the end _as intended_ is the starting point of the whole process, the end _as attained_ is the ultimate term of the latter. Hence the scholastic aphorism: _Finis est primus in intentione et ultimus in executione_. And this is true where the process involves a series of acts attaining to means subordinate to an end: this latter is the first thing intended and the last attained.
The final cause, the end as intended, is extrinsic to the effect. It is intrinsic to the efficient cause. It is a ”_forma_” or determinative principle of the latter: a _forma intentionalis_ in conscious agents, a _forma naturalis_ in unconscious agents.
109. NATURE AND THE LAWS OF NATURE. CHARACTER AND GROUNDS OF THEIR NECESSITY AND UNIVERSALITY. SCIENTIFIC DETERMINISM AND PHILOSOPHIC FATALISM.-By the term _nature_ we have seen that Aristotle and the scholastics meant the essence or substance of an agent regarded as inner principle of the latter's normal activities, as determining the bent or inclination of these, and therefore as in a real sense their final cause.
Hence Aristotle's definition of _nature_ as _a certain principle or cause of the motion and rest of the thing in which that principle is rooted fundamentally and essentially and not merely accidentally_.(508) The scholastics, recognizing that this _intentio naturae_, this subjection to finality, in _unconscious_ agencies must be the work and the index of intelligence, in other words that this _a.n.a.logical_ finality in inanimate things must connote a _proper_ finality, a properly purposive mode of action, in the author of these things, conceived this _nature_ or _intentio naturae_ as the impression of a divine art or plan upon the very being of all creatures by the Creator Himself. Hence St. Thomas's profound and well-known description of _nature_ as ”_the principle of a divine art impressed upon things, in virtue of which they move towards determinate ends_”. Defining _art_ as _the just conception __ of external works to be accomplished_,(509) he observes that nature is a sort of art: ”as if a s.h.i.+p-builder were to endow his materials with the power of moving and adapting themselves so as to form or construct a s.h.i.+p”.(510) And elsewhere he remarks that nature differs from art only in this that the former is an intrinsic, the latter an extrinsic, principle of the work which is accomplished through its influence: so that if the art whereby a s.h.i.+p is constructed were intrinsic to the materials, the s.h.i.+p would be constructed by nature as it actually is by art.(511)
Such, then, is the teleological conception of the nature of each individual agency in the universe. When we speak of ”universal _nature_,”
”external _nature_,” ”physical _nature_,” ”the course of _nature_,” ”the laws of _nature_,” etc. we are using the term in a collective sense to signify the sum-total of all the agencies which const.i.tute the whole physical universe; and furthermore in all such contexts we usually understand by _nature_ the world of _corporeal_ things as distinct from the domain of _mind_ or _spirit_.
The proof of this view,-that the agencies of the physical universe are not merely efficient causes, but that they act under the influence of ends; that they have definite lines of action which are natural to them, and whereby they realize their own individual development and the maintenance of the universe as a _cosmos_; that by doing so they reveal the influence of _intelligent purpose_,-the proof of this view lies, as we have seen, in the fact that their activities are regular, uniform, and mutually useful, or, in other words, that they are productive of _order_ (110). Bearing this in mind let us inquire into the various meanings discernible in the very familiar expressions, ”laws of nature,” ”physical laws,” ”natural laws”.(512)
We may understand firstly by a law of nature this innate tendency we have been describing as impressed upon the very being of all created things by the Creator. It is in this sense we speak of a thing acting ”naturally,”
or ”according to the _law_ of its nature,” or ”according to its nature,”
when we see it acting according to what we conceive to be the end intended for it, acting in a manner conducive to the development of its own individuality, the preservation of its specific type or kind, and the fulfilment of its role in the general scheme of things. What this ”natural” mode of action is for this particular kind of thing, we gather from our experience of the regular or normal activity of things of its kind. Thus, we say it is a _law_ of oxygen and hydrogen to combine in definite proportions, under suitable conditions, to form water; a _law_ of all particles of matter in the universe to tend to move towards one another with a definite acceleration; a _law_ of living organisms to reproduce their kind. This usage comes nearest to the original meaning of the term _law_: a precept or command imposed on intelligent agents by a superior. For we conceive this natural tendency impressed on physical agencies by the Creator after the a.n.a.logy of a precept or command. And we have good reason to do so: because _uniformity of conduct_ in intelligent agents is the normal result of their obedience to a law imposed upon them; and we see in the activities of the physical universe an _all-pervading feature of regularity_.
Secondly, we transfer the term _law_ to _this result itself_ of the natural tendency of the being, of the convergence of its activities towards its end. That is to say, we call _the uniform mode of action_ of an agent a _law of nature_, a _natural_ or _physical law_. This usage, which is common in the positive sciences, implies a less profound, a more superficial, but a perfectly legitimate mode of apprehending and studying the changes and phenomena of the physical universe.
Thirdly, since the several agencies of the universe co-exist in time and s.p.a.ce, since they constantly interact on one another, since for the exercise of the natural activities of each _certain extrinsic conditions of relations.h.i.+p with its environment_ must be fulfilled, an accurate knowledge and exact formulation of these relations are obviously requisite for a scientific and practical insight into the mode of activity of any natural agency. In fact the physical scientist may and does take for granted the natural tendency and the uniformity of action resulting therefrom, and confines himself to _discovering and formulating the relations between any given kind of action and the extrinsic conditions requisite for its exercise_. Such, for instance, would be any chemical ”law” setting forth the measure, and the conditions of temperature, pressure, etc., in which certain chemical elements combine to form a certain chemical compound. To all such formulae scientists give the t.i.tle of _physical laws_, or _laws of physical nature_. These formulae, descriptive of the manner in which a phenomenon takes place, setting forth with the greatest possible quant.i.tative exactness the phenomenal factors(513) that enter into and precede and accompany it, are laws in a still more superficial and still less philosophical sense, but a sense which is most commonly-and justly-accepted in the positive or physical sciences.
Before examining the feature and characteristic of _necessity and universality_ which enters into all these various conceptions of a ”physical law” we have here to observe that it would make for clearness, and for a better understanding between physics and metaphysics, between science and philosophy, between the investigator who seeks by observation and experiment for the proximate phenomenal conditions and ”physical” causes of phenomena, and the investigator who seeks for the ultimate real ground and explanation of these latter by speculative a.n.a.lysis of them, and by reasoning from the scientist's discoveries about them,-if it were understood and agreed that investigation into the scope and significance and ultimate ground of this feature of stability in the laws of physical nature belongs to the philosopher rather than to the scientist. We have already called attention to the fact that the propriety of such an obviously reasonable and intelligible division of labour is almost universally admitted in theory both by scientists and by philosophers; though, unfortunately, it is not always remembered in practice (100).
In theory the scientist a.s.sumes, and very properly a.s.sumes, that the agencies with which he deals are not capricious, unreliable, irregular, but stable, reliable, regular in their mode of action, that in similar sets of conditions and circ.u.mstances they will act uniformly. Without inquiring into the ultimate grounds of this a.s.sumption he premises that all his conclusions, all his inductive generalizations about the activity of these agencies, will hold good of these latter just in so far as they do act according to his general postulate as to their regularity. He then proceeds, by the inductive processes of hypothesis and experimental verification, to determine what agencies produce such or such an event, under what conditions they bring this about, what are all the phenomenal conditions, positive and negative, antecedent and concomitant, in the absence of any one of which this event will not happen, and in the presence of all of which it will happen.
These are, in accordance with his a.s.sumption, _determining_ causes of the event; the knowledge of them is from the speculative point of view extremely important, and from the practical standpoint of invention and applied science extremely useful. As a scientist he has no other knowledge in view: he aims at discovering the ”how,”
the _quomodo_, of natural phenomena,-how, for instance, under what conditions and in what measure, water is produced from oxygen and hydrogen. When he has discovered all these positive and negative conditions his _scientific_ knowledge of the formation of water is complete.