CAUSE
461
CAUSE
He holds that the world is eternal; but, in virtue of his
fundamental principle that no potentiality can pre-
cede actuality, he makes it a participative eternity.
Hence the material and the formal causes that
together go to make up the world are created, or more
properly, eternally concreated. From this funda-
mental principle of the priority of actuality over
potentiality. Aristotle proves also t ho fact "of the
existence of God as the first moving cause. As each
effect of a process is now to be reckoned an actuality
that was before no more than potential, and postu-
lates a moving cause in order that it should have come
into being as the term of a motion, so all things in the
world, taken together, necessitate an absolutely first
cause of the same nature. This first moving cause
must, on Aristotle's principle, be an absolute actual-
ity, since, were it not entirely in act, it could not be
t he moving cause of all t lungs nor keep them eternally
in motion. Similarly, it must be pure form, or poOs,
with no admixture of matter, since this would import
a limitation of its actuality. Thus did Aristotle raise
and answer the question of causality, dividing causes
into four classes, and indicating the nature of the
causal influx with which each contributes towards the
production of their common effect. For, according
to this theory, all tiie four causes, taken together, are
really the cause of any given physical effect.
The teaching of Aristotle is that which substan- tially passed current in the medieval schools. With certain important modifications concerning the eternity of the material cause, the substantiality of certain formal causes of material entities, and* the determination of the final cause, the fourfold division was handed on to the Christian teachers of patristic and scholastic times. As Aristotle had developed and improved the doctrine of Plato with regard to inherent substantial forms, so the leaders of Christian thought, guided in their work by the light of revelation and the teaching of the Church, perfected the philosophical teaching of Aristotle. It is not. indeed, advanced that the Christian philosophy of this period was merely theological; but it is contended that certain purely philosophical truths, verifiable in and by philosophy, were obtained as a result of the impetus given to meta- physical research by the dogmas of revelation. This is not the place for enlarging upon such a topic except in so far as it is directly pertinent to the question of causes; anil it is principally in other matters that the contention obtains. Still, at least in the three cases to which allusion has just been made, it is true that speculation was helped forward on the right lines by the teaching of the Church. The truth of the con- tention is patent. In the patristic period, particu- larly in the works of St. Augustine, who was a Plato- nist rather than an Aristotelean, and in the scholastic Period, the foremost representative of which is St. Thomas Aquinas, the doctrine of the four causes of being is set forth in connexion with t he modifications noted. The theory of causality, as held and taught in the Middle Ages, and as taught in the schools to-day, will in this section be exhibited in some detail.
"The ancient philosophers came to the knowledge of truth by degrees and slowly ", writes St. Thomas. " For at first, being as it were less cultivated, they did not recognize any beings other than sensible bodies. And those of them who acknowledged movement in them only admitted movement as to accidents, as in rarity and density, aggregation and disgregation. And, supposing that the substance of bodies was uncreated, they assigned certain causes for accidental changesof this kind, as, forexample, friendship, strife, intellect .or something of this nature. Proceeding, they distinguished intellectually between the substantial form and the matter, which they considered as un- created; and they perceived that substantial transmu- tation takes place in bodies with respect to their sub- stantial forms." (SummaTheologica, Q. xliv, a. 1,2.)
The last sentence of this passage gives the basis
of the Scholastic doctrine with regard to causes.
"Consider", a Scholastic would say, "a substantial
change — that is to say, a change in which one sub-
stance, made known to the understanding by its
qualities, ceases to be what it was in the instant A,
and becomes, in the instant B, another substance. In
order that such a change should be possible, four
things are necessary: namely, (1) the thing that is
changed; (2) the term, or manner of being, or essence,
that is induced in that which is changed; (3) the
active agent that produces the change, or accom-
plishes the existence of the new term, manner of
being, or essence; and (4) the motive, or reason why
this latter acts. There is also, though it cannot be
reckoned as a cause, the terminus a quo, or the original
determinative of the thing changed, which passes out
of being with the advent of the newly induced term.
These four necessary things, since they produce the
final result by a mutual action and interaction, in
which they give being to it considered as result, arc its
causes. They are to be discovered, moreover, wher-
ever and whenever any change takes place, not only
in substantial, but also in accidental, changes, or mere
changes of qualities." Consider the two cases, the
one of accidental, the other of substantial, change.
A cube of wax is moulded by the hand into a sphere.
The wax, as permanent substratum of the change of
figure, is considered to be the matter, or material
cause. The spherical figure supervening upon that of
the cubical, is the induced formal cause. The
moulder, or fashioner of the sphere, is the efficient
cause. The final cause is to be sought for in the inten-
tion of the moulder. The substance of the wax
remains throughout the entire process of the mould-
ing. It is affected only accidentally by the operation.
Consequently the example is one of accidental
change, and gives us no more than an accidental
formal cause. But in cases of substantial change,
such as, for example, the electrolysis of water, the
induced formal cause is a substantial one; and, more-
over, since the substance of the water does not
remain after the change has taken place, the material
cause cannot be other than a subject, or permanent
substratum, that is neither water nor oxygen and
hydrogen taken together. In such a case, it is called
primordial, or first matter, and is conceived as being a
subject potential to information by any and all
formal causes. It is a potentiality, but. as a perma-
nent substratum, or determinable entity, is capable
of receiving new substantial determinations in the
place of that which actually denominates it. It
cannot exist alone, but exists only as informed, or
actuated by a formal cause. It is no! eternal, but
created, or, more properly, concreated with substan-
tial form.
The material cause, as presented in the Scholastic system of philosophy, fulfils the conditions of a cause as given above. It gives being to the effect, since without it this could neither exist nor come into be- ing. Though it is conceived a> an essentially incom- plete subject, as a merely passive potentiality, it is distinguished from the complete effect, to the be- coming and being of which it contributes. The diversity of primordial matter from the forms which actuate it is exhibited by the consideration that there is an essential distinction between the subject of change and the states, modifications, or determined natures from which and towards which the change is conceived as acting. Hence primordial matter is reasonably held to be a reality, belonging reduc- tively to the category of substance, and determinable to even- kind of corporeal substance by reason of its essential ordination to the reception of a form. Quantity is said to be a coneequenl of material sub- stances by reason of the matter entering into their physical composition; and by matter, as quantified,
