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 CAUSE

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CAUSE

cause (God) creates and infuses them into matter. (Cf. In III Phys., Lect. 5.)

There are many divisions and subdivisions of the efficient cause commonly made in Scholastic treatises, to which the reader is referred for a more complete development of the subject. Under this head, how- ever, will be added the principal dignities, or axioms of causality, as laid down by the Schoolmen: (1) What- ever exists in nature is either a cause or. an effect (Contra Gent., Ill, cvii). (2) No entity can be its own cause (op. cit., II, xxi). (3) There is no effect without a cause. (4) Given the cause, the effect fol- lows; the cause removed, the effect ceases. This axiom is to be understood of causes efficient in act, and of effects related to them not only in becoming but also in being (op. cit., II, xxxv). (5) An effect requires a proportionate cause. This axiom is to be understood in the sense that actual effects respond to actual causes, particular effects I" particular causes, etc. (op. cit., II, xxi). (6) The cause is by nature prior to its effect. Priority is not necessarily under- stood here as relating to time. (Op. cit., II, xxi; "Summa theol.", Ill, Q. lxii. a. 6; " De potentia", C}. iii. a. xiii; " De veritate",Q. xwiii, a. vii.) (7) The perfection of the effect pre-exists in its cause (formally, virtually, or eminently), (t'f. Summa theol., I, Q. vi, a. 2.) (8) Whatever is the cause of a cause (precisely as cause) is the cause also of its effect. This axiom enunciates a truth with regard to series of connected causes formally acting by their nature. (Cf. Summa Theol.. I. Q. xlv, a. 5.) (9) The first cause (in any order of causes dependent one on the other) contrib- utes more to the production of the effect than the secondary cause. (Cf. De causis, in cap.) Argu- ments, besides that given above, for the establishing of the fact of efficient causality in the physical world are to be found in the "Contra Gentiles", III, lxix. Il may be pointed out, in anticipation of the concep- tion of purely mechanical, or dynamical, causation to be referred to later on, that in this system causation is not merely taken to mean an impulse, or change, in motion. The theory advanced is one to account for change of any kind, and, by a profound analysis, to reach the causes upon which things depend for their becoming and their actual being.

The final cause, or end. is that tor the sake of which the effect, or result of an action, is produced. It is distinguished in the following manner: I (1) The end considered objectively, or the effect itself as desired by the agent; (2) the end formally considered, or the possession or use of the effect. 1 1 ( 1 > The end of the efficient operation, or that effect or result to which the operation is directed by the efficient cause; (2 i the end of the agent, or that which he principally and ultimately intends by his operation. Ill (1) The end prior to the activity caused by it, both as cause and in the line of being; (2) the end prior to the activity as cause, but posterior to this in the line of being. There are other divisions of the final cause, for the details of which the reader is referred to the literature upon the subject. The causality of the final cause is to be referred to its appetibility. " As the influx of the efficient cause is in its act, so the influx of the final cause is in its being sought after and desired." (St. Thomas. De veritate, Q. xxii, a. ii.) That it is a true cause Aquinas shows in the following words: "Matter does not ; ic<|iiire form, except accord- ing as it is moved by an acting cause (agent i; for nothing reduces itself frorn potency to act. Hut the acting cause doe- not move, except by reason of the intention of an end. For if the acting cause were not determined to some effect, it would not act to produce one rather than another. In order, therefore, that it should produce a determined effect, it is necessary that it should be determined to something certain as end." (Summa theol., I— II, Q. i, a. 2; cf. also In V Metaphysic., Lect. 2.)

The final cause, like the efficient, is extrinsic to the effect, the latter being the cause of the existence of the former, and the former causing the lat ter, not in its ex- istence, but as to its activity here and now exercised. Efficient causes acting towards ends are distinguished as: (1) acting by intelligence; or (2) acting by nature. Ultimately, the tendency of the operation of the latter class is resolved into operation by intelligence, since the determined operation following on their nature is, and must be, assigned to an intelligent first cause, either of a particular series, or of all series: i. e. God. Thus deliberative operation is seen not to be of the essence of operation towards the attainment of ends. It is shown that, in no one of the four classes into which causes are differentiated is an infinite pro- gression possible; and, upon the doctrine advanced as to causality in general, and the four classes of causes in particular, are based arguments demon- strating rationally the existence of God. It may be of interest to refer in this section to the exemplary cause, or exemplary ideas, as conceived by St. Thomas. He writes (Summa theol., I, Q. xv, a. 1): " In all those things that are not generated by chance, it is necessary that form should be the end of the generation of each. But the efficient cause [agents] does not act on account of the form, except in so far as the likeness of the form is in it. And this happens in two ways. (1) For in certain efficient causes the form of the thing to be made pre-exists, agreeably to natural essence, as in those things that act by nature; as man begets man, and fire produces fire. (2) But in others it pre-exists agreeably to intelligible essence; as in those things which act by intellect; as the like- ness of the house pre-exists in the mind of the builder." He concludes that, since the world is not the result of chance, there is an idea (in the succeeding article of the same question, many ideas) in the Divine mind, as the archetype forms of things. But these ideas are the essence of God understood by Him as imitable in diverse modes on the part of His creatures. In this sense, perhaps, did Aristotle iden- tify form, end. and moving cause. In the mutability on the part of creation. St. Thomas finds the secret of the world of phenomena. Viewed with his theory of causality as exposed above, it is perhaps the most complete and consistent explanation that has ever been given of the problem. When we find Spinoza putting forward substance, with its two attributes of thought and extension, determined to modes (unreal as these ultimately turn out to be); when Berkeley teaches that what we take to be causal changes in the phenomenal world are illusory, that there are no secondary causes, and that <!od and the human mind alone are real; when Hegel posits the unfolding of thought as the cause of phenomenal change, or Schopenhauer will manifesting itself in phenomenal succession — we seem to have found some clue to the labyrinth of causality, some common ground of unifi- cation. But it is at the cost of doing violence to our sense perception and immediate necessary judgments that the unification is brought about. In the Scholastic solution of the problem a ground of unifi- cation is provided in the transcendence, rather than the immanence, of the first and original source of all efficient causality. Moreover, with the isolation of the four causes and the declaration of their relation- ships and interaction, a coherent account is given of the working of secondary causality, as a matter of fact, in the phenomenal world.

There is one aspect of the present topic that usually has a treatment apart from tin' more general question of causality. How. it is asked, can causal action be conceived as taking place between soul and body—between mind and matter, or between matter and' mind? For a fuller statement of the answer to the latter part of this question the reader must be referred to the article Epistemoi.ogy. It may be