Why the Human Soul is Immortal (and Animals are Not)

Why does the human soul persist after death whereas the souls of animals do not? In order to answer these questions clearly, we must first define what a soul is and then explore the difference between human and animal souls. To form the basis for our inquiry, we will first prove that all living things have immaterial souls that are distinct from their material bodies and that there are different kinds of souls for the different kinds of living things. Once this basis has been sufficiently laid out, we will focus specifically on whether it is possible for each kind of soul to continue to exist after death. Then of course we will determine whether it is possible for the soul not to exist after death, and by this come to our conclusion that the human soul does indeed persist after bodily death, whereas the souls of animals are destroyed.

We begin with our first question, “what is a soul?” We say that a thing has a soul insofar as it is alive. Life is manifested primarily as nutrition and growth by which something is moved by an intrinsic principle. This power is proper to all living things and is the fullest extent of life in what are called nutritive or vegetative souls (such as plants). In animals, life is also manifested in sensation and directive movement, which is why their souls are called sensitive souls. These two demarcations, vegetative and sensible, are enough to identify three ways in which the soul can be understood in relation to a living thing; viz. as form, as mover (or intrinsic efficient cause), and as end (or final cause).

Aristotle identifies the soul as the form of a living body, which is to say that the soul is what makes a living body what it is. This is not merely a definition of life, that a soul is merely what it means to be alive. Rather, the soul subsists as the actuality of a living body.¹ This means that what is potentially alive is made actually alive by its soul. This also accounts for the integrity of individual living things, as the form is what gives the material elements of a thing the status of parts of a whole.² With regard to motion, Aristotle identifies desire as the primary principle of motion and attributes this to sensible souls.³ There is also motion in the sense of nutrition and growth in vegetative souls and, for our present purpose, it is enough to mention that vegetative souls, while possessing neither a desire prompted by the senses nor the deliberation of reason, they are still inclined to motion with respect to nutrition and growth. Thus all living things are moved internally by a function or part of their souls. With regard to the end, Aristotle identifies the primary end of a living thing as the soul itself.⁴ This is simply to say that the goal of all living things is to live. Because such things are body-soul composites, they are bound to corruption and death. Hence in order to attain the end of life (no pun intended) they are generative, producing things like themselves in species, thereby continuing life specifically, though individually it dies. This necessitates a body in order for subsistence and generation to take place, albeit the body is in this regard a means to the end.⁵

By acknowledging these three roles, it might seem that the soul is some emergent property or function of material arising out of a material cause. We will consider four arguments which support this. Firstly, if the soul is the form of the body, then the soul only exists insofar as it informs the body. Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that the soul is something dependent on the body.⁶ Secondly, if souls are identified according to their activity (as a vegetative soul vegetates and a sensible soul senses) then we ought to consider them precisely to be activities and nothing more. For what we observe in living things are not souls as such, but vegetation and sensation, by which we infer that there is something other than what we observe which performs those activities. But this is an unnecessary abstraction, as we perceive nothing other than activity in a material body.⁷ Thirdly, if the soul is the principle of movement in material things, then it interacts with material. But what is immaterial is impassible and cannot interact with what is material. Therefore the soul must not be immaterial but something material. Finally, the end of a living thing is to preserve its life. But self-preservation is achieved in and through the preservation of the body. Therefore, life-as-end is not distinct from the body but is merely the integrity of the body and its functions.

Against the first argument, we should note that if we regard the form as dependent on matter as a kind of supervening quality, then we would subvert the order of substance and accidents. What is accidental to a thing is secondary to what the thing primarily is, which is its substance. When the soul is called the form of the body, it is precisely meant as the substantial form. Even though matter is a necessary part of a natural living thing, the matter is not enough to identify that thing as what it is, as we see that a plant or animal can grow and diminish over time while maintaining its individuality. But to say that a living thing's soul exists only insofar as it has matter is to put accidents prior to substance or else make matter the substantial form of the body, which is absurd. Hence, if we wish to concede that there are individual living things, then the primacy of the soul is a necessary conclusion from what is perceived.⁸

To the second argument, we can build on our first reply. We ascertain the form of a thing when we identify what it is specifically (i.e. according to a species), for matter is informed according to its species by its form. This is not merely a logical device, for to refer to a substantial form is to say that there is some active principle in that living thing which unifies the parts into a whole. Now when we observe some activity in a certain thing, we can attribute that activity in two ways; to the part in which the activity is manifested, and to the whole to which the part belongs. E.g. when a worm is prodded, we may say that there is a reaction in certain material parts of that worm, and that what we observe is the action of material apparata in response to some material stimulus. This may be true with respect to chemistry, but it is ultimately unintelligible without respect to the thing acting, viz. the worm. If we cannot account for the substantial form of the worm, then we cannot say that the worm moves, but only that the parts of the worm move. But this is an unnecessary reduction, whereas it is reasonable to attribute the movement observed within a thing to the thing itself.

To the third argument, it would indeed seem that immaterial things cannot interact with material for two reasons; viz. that what is material cannot harm or hinder what is immaterial (e.g. we cannot tie down an angel or transplant a soul) and that there is no known mechanism which would explain how such an interaction could take place. But we should not form too simple a concept of immaterial things. Some tend to think of interaction in terms of bodies responding to touch, like two rocks hitting together. But no interaction at all can be attributed to purely material causes. The rocks that one knocks together are being moved ultimately by something that does the moving. So the answer to the question, how does the immaterial interact with the material, is found in the question, “what is interaction?” Strictly speaking, “pure matter” does not act. To hold this would ultimately be to conflate material cause and efficient cause and to disregard the act-potency distinction altogether. Therefore we must concede that there is something immaterial in a living thing which is the principle of its action.

In response to the fourth argument, it should suffice to say that, having proved the existence of the soul as the substantial form of a living thing, the body is the matter which is informed by the soul, and through such the soul acts. Thus the integrity of the body is due to the soul's act, which works in and through the body as the means to preserve its proper place as form. Because preservation of life is attained through the body, it does not follow that the life of the body is the body itself.

It should now be clear what the soul is; the substantial form of a living being, as well as its active principle, accounting for its growth and sensation, with the end of subsisting itself and in generating life according to its same species. This account of the soul suffices for all animals except man, whose soul is rational in addition to the aforementioned qualities. As mentioned above, the soul (as form) informs matter to participate in a given species. According to Aristotle, a species is nothing other than some member of a genus which is distinguished by means of some difference.⁹ The essence of man is the composite of his form and (indeterminate) matter and is expressed by its definition.¹⁰ This means that the definition of man is precisely a description of his differentiation as a species within his genus. Hence we define man as “rational animal,” in the genus “animal” and differentiated from other animals by his rational intellect. This leaves us with three kinds of souls altogether; vegetative, sensible, and man's, which is called the rational soul.

As we have said, the difference between a man's soul and an animal's soul is in the intellect. So if there is a difference between sensible and rational souls in their ability to survive death, then it must be on account of the intellect. But whether the sensible soul can survive death is still to be determined. In order to understand how the material destruction of a thing can effect its substantial form, it is helpful to understand that there is a kind of hierarchy of forms, owing to their relation to the matter in which they act, as St. Thomas says:

[I]t must be considered that a gradation of forms in the order of operation corresponds to the gradation of forms in the order of existence, for an operation is an act of an agent in act. Therefore the greater perfection a form possesses with respect to conferring the act of existing, so much the greater is its power of operating. Hence more perfect forms have a greater number of operations and more diverse ones than less perfect forms (DA 9 resp.).¹¹

Thus we have varying levels of forms corresponding to different levels of perfection; material forms (such as the form of bronze), the forms of living things, the forms of sensible animals, and the rational form found in human beings.¹² So we should note that an animal has perfections according to their material being, their being alive, and their being an animal, and a man specifically has one more perfection, that of being rational.

That a being has several formal perfections does not necessitate its having several souls. As explained above, the soul is a substantial form. There can only be one substantial form of any given thing, as the substantial form is precisely what accounts for its being a substance. And a substance is something which is adjoined by accidents, the latter existing in a thing by virtue of the former (we can see an analogous relation between a predicate and its subject). But a (primary) substance cannot be predicated of another substance. So if an individual were to have many souls, he would necessarily be a conglomeration of many substances and hence would not be an individual at all, which is absurd.¹³

It should now be clear that there is a “gradation of forms in the order of operation” in living things, not on account of an accumulation of various forms, but on account of a gradation of power according to each form. For example, the sensible soul is superior to material forms, for the sensible soul not only informs matter but grows and perceives as well. And the rational soul is superior to the sensible, because the rational is able to conceive of immaterial things in the intellect, and this in addition to the powers proper to the sensible soul.

So, having given a precise account of sensible and rational souls as well as their differences, we can now explain why sensible souls cannot survive death. St. Thomas explains this in the following:

[T]hings composed of matter and form are corrupted by losing the form that gives them their act of existing. Moreover a form itself cannot be corrupted in itself (per se), but is corrupted accidentally as a result of the disintegration of the composite, inasmuch as the composite, which exists in virtue of its form, ceases to exist as a composite. This indeed, is the case if the form is one that does not have an act of existing in itself, but is merely that by which a composite exists.¹⁴

Thomas here distinguishes between a form which is the act of existing in a composite (form and matter) and a form which is its own act of existing. We can see how this plays into the question of death by resuscitating our first and fourth objections from above and adding some qualifications. If a certain soul exists only as that which informs some matter, then the soul only exists insofar as it informs the body. Therefore it is necessary that the soul is something dependent on the body, not as an emergent property but in regards to its subsistence. Such a soul subsists in composition with its matter by preserving the integrity of the composite in the matter through which it operates. Thus the disintegration of the composite in death entails the dissolution of that soul which formed the composite. Simply put, the soul of a dog informs some matter as a dog's matter. Everything the dog's soul does is done through in its matter. If you disintegrate the dog then its soul ceases to exist because there is nothing left for there to be a dog.

As noted above, the human soul differs from other animals in his intellect. Man exists as an animal by means of his body, but rationally by means of his intellect. Thomas explains:

Now if there is a form having an act of existing in itself, then that form must be incorruptible. For a thing having an act of existing (esse) does not cease to exist unless its form is separated from it. Hence if the thing having an act of existing is itself a form, it is impossible for its act of existing to be separated from it. Now it is evident that the principle by which a man understands is a form having its act of existing in itself and is not merely that by which something exists. For, as the Philosopher proves in the De anima [III, 4, 429b 3], intellection is not an act executed by any bodily organ.¹⁵

While man's soul shares with other animals the operations proper to their bodies, the operation of his soul in the intellect is distinct from his body. Though man acquires knowledge beginning with the perception of material things by means of his body, all three causes present in his soul (formal, efficient, and final) act in the intellect without the incorporation of matter. His intellect does not exist as any material thing. His act of intellection moves by an intrinsic principle, without material cooperation. And the end of his intellect is not merely the preservation of life, but the attainment of truth, which is ultimately not attained in nor attributable to his matter. Thus we can see that the rational soul does not exist by virtue of its composition with matter, but exists in its own right. Therefore when man's body dies, his soul must survive.¹⁶

1 Aristotle, De Anima in Introductory Readings in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, eds. Reeve and Miller (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 278.

2 ibid.

3 Aristotle, De Anima, 285.

4 Op. cit. 281.

5 Op. cit. 282.

6 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputate De Anima, trans. John Patrick Rowan (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1949), A 14, Obj. 1

7 Op. cit. A 12, Obj. 2

8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, ed. Joseph Kenny (NY: Hanover House, 1957), II.xxvi.3

9 Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Joe Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 1999), 998b (pg. 43).

10 Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968), IV.iii (pg. 36).

11 Aquinas, De Anima, 9 resp.

12 ibid.

13 Aquinas, De Anima, 11 resp..

14 Op. cit. 14 resp.

15 ibid.

16 ibid.

Why the Mind Cannot Err With Respect to Essence

In the Summa Theologica (I, Q 85, A 6), St. Thomas argues that the intellect cannot err with respect to a thing's essence. This seems counter-intuitive, as Thomas himself wrote an entire work on properly understanding essence. So why one cannot err in apprehending essence is not entirely clear. In order to understand what is meant by his claim, we will determine what the intellect is, how it operates, what an essence is, and what is meant by error on the part of the intellect. To the question treated in the Summa, we being with the sed contra:

Augustine says (Questions. 83, qu. 32), that "everyone who is deceived, does not rightly understand that wherein he is deceived." And the Philosopher says (De Anima iii, 10), that "the intellect is always true."¹

This gives us a two-pronged approach to the problem. On one hand, there is the proposition that deception implies an imperfect operation of the intellect. On the other hand, there is the proposition that the intellect itself is true by nature. This prompts an account of exactly what the intellect is, for if there is error or deception at all, it would seem to be on account of the intellect (as is stated in objections 1 and 2 of the same question).²

The intellect is understood as being passive in that it is predisposed to what is intelligible, as Thomas explains, “[T]he human intellect, which is the lowest in the order of intelligence and most remote from the perfection of the Divine intellect, is in potentiality with regard to things intelligible, and is at first 'like a clean tablet on which nothing is written,' as the Philosopher says.”³ Aristotle likewise compares the intellect to the senses because of its passivity to external objects. But neither intellect nor sense is purely passive. Though the senses receive impressions from external objects, they are passive only in that they are potentially receptive to their proper objects.⁴ In a similar way, the passive intellect receives external objects, and is potential to them in the sense that it must lack the natures which it apprehends, as Thomas explains, “if the intellect were restricted to any particular nature, this connatural restriction would prevent it from knowing other natures.”⁵ We can see this analogously in the eye: It is incorrect to say that the eye contains light and color by its nature, rather that it is by nature receptive to light and color. Moreover, the intelligible forms which we perceive in matter exist in matter, though matter is not intelligible per se. What makes them intelligible is the power of the active intellect which discerns form from matter by abstraction.⁶ So the intellect, in order to know, must have a nature that is distinct from all the other things that it knows. Therefore, if it can know all sensible things, it must be distinct from any sensible nature. This precludes any notion of the intellect as a bodily organ, which leads us to conclude that the intellect must be something immaterial.⁷

That the intellect is immaterial helps us to understand how it is passive in one respect but active in another. While both intellect and the bodily senses are receptive to their proper objects (not in the same way but analogously), they are each active in different ways. As Thomas explains, “the difference is that sensitivity acts in the body, but the intellect acts on its own.”⁸ We can see this in the effects their proper objects have on their operation: The eye sees by receiving light, so that the material organ is effected by a material object. Too much of its object can overwhelm the organ, as when the eye is blinded by an excess of light. But the intellect is never overwhelmed by “too much truth.” Rather than being blinded or brought low by its object, the intellect is strengthened in its operation such that what was difficult to receive at first makes it see all other objects more easily.⁹ Because the intellect acquires knowledge primarily through the senses, its activity presupposes the activity of the senses. But because the intellect does not of necessity work through some bodily organ, it works by its own intrinsic principle.

As said above, the intellect is receptive to truth as a kind of potency. It acquires knowledge with reference to sensible things, but it works in itself from the self-evident first principles that it possesses by nature. And there are also principles external to a man which can aid in the acquisition of knowledge. So there are two principles involved in the activity of acquiring knowledge, extrinsic and intrinsic; extrinsic in what man learns by instruction and intrinsic in what he discovers by his own act. Because the intellect acts by an intrinsic principle, it acts on an active potency.¹⁰ Hence instruction, being an extrinsic principle, is something secondary to the activity of the intellect, and is not necessary for its perfect operation. In order to ascertain whether it is possible for the intellect to err with respect to its own operation, we should focus primarily on the intrinsic principle of knowledge.

Having given an account of the intellect, what it is and by what principle it operates, we have now to explore how the intellect understands its object. We have already mentioned that matter is not in itself intelligible but that the intellect nevertheless understands in connection with the sensitive faculties. While matter itself is not something which the intellect directly apprehends it is perceived through the senses. And it is from its perception through the senses that the intellect creates an image (a phantasm) of what is perceived from which it can abstract the intelligible form.¹¹ According to St. Thomas, one can abstract in two ways. One way is to consider something to be separate from that in which it is understood as if they were separate in reality; e.g. if one were to abstract “red” from “surface,” taking the color to be something distinct and separate from colored surfaces. This type of abstraction admits error, because the intellect in this way does not consider things as they are. The second way in which the intellect can abstract is to consider something absolutely, such that we disregard those things which are not necessary to the thing in question; e.g. if we consider “red” apart from “apple,” we are not erroneously understanding what “red” is but regarding “apple” as something unnecessary to redness. Simply put, we may correctly understand “red” by itself as an (accidental) essence, but we cannot understand it as something which exists by itself.¹²

Aristotle's insight into the process of understanding is crucial to forming a complete account of the intellect's operation. In the beginning of the Physics he explains,

[T]he natural road is from what is more familiar and clearer to us to what is clearer and better known by nature; for it is not the same things that are well known to us and well known simply. For this reason it is necessary to lead ourselves forward in this way; from what is less clear by nature but clearer to us to what is clearer and better known by nature. But the things that are first evident and clear to us are more so the ones that are jumbled together, but later the elements and beginnings become known to those who separate them out from these. Thus it is necessary to proceed from what is general to what is particular, for it is the whole that is better known by perceiving, and what is general is a kind of whole since it embraces many things as though they were parts.¹³

So, taking as the object of intellection what is perceived by the senses, the intellect begins its process of coming to know with a general and confused image of things, and from there proceeds by means of abstraction to a more precise knowledge of things in themselves. Thomas expounds on this when he says, “the perfect act of the intellect is complete knowledge, when the object is distinctly and determinately known; whereas the incomplete act is imperfect knowledge, when the object is known indistinctly, and as it were confusedly.”¹⁴ So we refer to the act of the intellect from its active potency as being perfected in the complete and determinate knowledge of its object. But this process is not possible without having a starting point which is found in the first principles.¹⁵ Yet how these first principles are acquired must be explained in order to complete our account of the process of coming to know.

According to Aristotle, the first principles required for knowledge are neither innate, for infants would be as capable of knowledge as a grown man, nor are they acquired at some later point, for learning and discovery would be impossible until then. Because knowledge is acquired through sense-perception, he concludes that the first principles are gathered from sense-perception and the accumulation of memory which, over time, make up experience. Irrational animals have the capacity of both sense-perception and memory, but they are not capable of gathering the principles of knowledge which is a capacity of the intellectual soul.¹⁶ Thomas elaborates on this by reference to the agent intellect, reminding us that the intellect is not merely passive but must actively derive the universal from the experience of particulars.¹⁷

We are now equipped to give a complete account of the intellectual operation in man. A man begins by perceiving sensible objects through his senses (rust, a hard surface, heaviness, etc.). The objects of his senses are unintelligible, but his passive intellect receives an image of the thing perceived and holds this in memory. After many instances of this, the agent intellect is able to abstract from his experience a universal principle (the concept of iron). With the universal now in mind, he is able to proceed to knowledge of particulars (knowing what iron is in general, he can identify particular bodies of iron). It is clear from this that the intellect understands its object by combination and division.¹⁸ This is easily seen with respect to the twofold composition of material things. In one sense a thing is composed of form and matter, in another sense it is composed of substance and accidents. The intellect divides with respect to both these compositions, as our very consideration of them attests, and in combination we acknowledge those composites to be whole in reality.¹⁹

With the intellect and its operations accounted for, we now consider what essence is. Aristotle explains, “a thing's essence is what a thing is.”²⁰ An essence is like a definition, and is indeed expressed by a definition, but is strictly speaking a definition of a thing in its own right, rather than a property or something which can only exist parasitically on something else: E.g. 'man' or 'tree' is an essence but 'white' is not, because 'white' only exists as a property which adheres to man or tree. There are however essential properties of man which are not accidental. “Bipedal”, for instance, is an essential part of 'man'. There is a correspondence here to species, as 'man' is a species of the genus 'animal', and one of the differentiae which distinguishes 'man' from 'cow' is “bipedal,” though “bipedal” itself is not an essence. Aristotle thus concludes, “essence will not be found in any of those things which are not a species of a genus.”²¹

To understand an essence is the same as to identify it. That is, the question, “why is that a man” can be answered by explaining what a man is, and vice versa.²² So, in a general sense, an essence is what a thing is. Depending on what is meant by a “thing” however, there can be a distinction between an essence and a thing. For example, a man is a composite of form and matter. Thus the question “what is a man?” cannot be answered without reference to a body and its constituents. To the question “why is that body a man's body?” the answer will refer to the form which makes the body a man's body. The distinction between the composite and the components points to the substantial form which composes the elements into a whole: E.g. Even though a man by definition has body parts, a collection of body parts is not a man.²³

Essence, in the formulation of its definition, is generally understood with regard to species (though the two terms are not strictly synonymous). A species is a member of some genus which is distinguished from other species of that genus by some difference.; for instance, 'man' is defined as a 'rational animal'. He is generically an animal and specifically rational, 'rational' being the key difference from other animals. It is important to note that man is distinct from animals in species, but not in genus. Man is an animal, albeit a rational one.²⁴ Though there are many men in the species 'man', the species itself is one, as Thomas says,

“[I]t is evident that a multiplicity of parts in a definition does not signify a multiplicity of essential parts of which the essence is constituted as if they were distinct things; but all signify one thing which is made determinate by an ultimate difference. It is also evident from this that there is one substantial form for every species.”²⁵

An essence is expressed by a definition, so that there are many men does not prove that there are many essences or species of man, because where and how many they are does not belong to the definition of man. Neither does the multiplicity of “parts” implicit in the definition (for example man's two legs) mean that there are many essences within an essence, because essence belongs primarily to substance, but each of those so-called parts do not exist as a substance.²⁶ So one could say that there is a definition of “leg” and thus that a leg has in a certain sense an essence, but a leg is not a substance. Furthermore, a leg is defined as part of a body, so it cannot be a leg unless it is subsumed under the essence of the thing to which it belongs.

What we have considered thus far is essence in terms of its definition. But we should consider essence in terms of being as well. As regards to what a thing is in itself, essence is the composite of form and matter.²⁷ It is by its essence that an individual thing participates in being. This is not to say that everything which has an essence also has being, but that all things which exist do so insofar as they have an essence. As noted above, it belongs to the species of material beings to have matter, but not this or that matter. The prerequisite matter for a given species is called indeterminate matter, while the matter by which an individual participates in the species is called determinate. Therefore material things in particular participate in a species through determinate matter and, by the same token, are distinct from other individuals who share the same essence.²⁸ Though essence is the composition of form and matter, neither the form nor the matter are separate in reality, this means that essence cannot be broken into parts: It is understood by combining terms (form and matter, genus and difference, etc.) into a definition, but an essence is a distinct unity in reality.

Now that it is clear what the intellect is and how it operates, as well as what essence is and how it is known, we may at last consider Thomas' argument in full. He recalls the comparison between sense and intellect, viz. that both are always directed to their proper object, adding that, “as long as the faculty exists, its judgment concerning its own proper object does not fail.”²⁹ The senses may be deceived with respect objects that are “common,” such as size or color; e.g. the eye perceives the sun to be yellow and an inch across. The senses may also be deceived with respect to objects in an accidental way; e.g. salt may be mistaken for sugar. With common objects, the eye is deceived because what is perceives is other than what it is, as the sun is not yellow nor an inch across. With the latter case (salt and sugar), the eye is not deceived with respect to what it apprehends, for it takes the salt to be white and translucent, but is deceived in conflating its object with what appears to be an identical object but is in fact different. In both of these cases, one's sight functions perfectly; it apprehends precisely what it receives. This is why Thomas says, “as long as the faculty exists, its judgment concerning its own proper object does not fail.”³⁰

The proper object of the intellect is essence (in this instance referred to as quiddity which simply emphasizes the “what” of the thing). As we have said, a thing's essence is what a thing is, and it is something unified which we come to understand as a composition. So, in an absolute sense, we have an essence that is indivisible in reality which is apprehended by the intellect which is immaterial. But in order for the intellect to understand an essence, it must move to its act of knowing by means of combination and division. Thus we have two types of error to consider, the apprehension of an object by the intellect taken absolutely, and the understanding of it in terms of its definition (its intellectual composition). If the intellect is said to err with regard to apprehending something absolutely, as for instance one might be said to err in his understanding of what “space” is, then he does not know what it is. There is nothing complex about this type of “error.” Either one knows it or he does not. In fact, if one does not know “space” then he is not mistaken about it, because there is nothing in his mind to mistake. In this regard, i.e. with things that are apprehended simply, the mind cannot err. It is only in the process of discerning composition, as it pertains to a thing's definition, that the mind can be mistaken; for instance, if one were to regard a circle as a “three-sided figure.” Another way in which the intellect could err is to combine incompatible terms into a definition, as for instance in “rational plant.” The error in both of these examples is attributed either to the mis-attribution of a definition or to the combination of incompatible terms into an attempted definition.³¹ But both of these errors are accidental to intellectual operation. The result of both of these errors is to fail to understand an essence completely.

An analogous way of understanding the truth of intellection is by considering the various levels of “error” with regard to apprehension. For example, a young reader may come across a word never before seen and pronounce it “hoar-is-on.” The mistake is in combining the syllables in a way that misses the meaning of the word. The is no “half-understanding” in this regard; the word is a complete mystery. With help from his teacher, the child learns that the word is “horizon” and suddenly understands completely. In another example, a hunter might mistake an elk for a deer. He does not misapprehend the essence of elk, rather he completely understands the essence of deer and misappropriates it to the wrong sense object. Finally, in a more complex case, one might attempt to define an animal without reference to form or the soul, regarding it as merely mechanical or “purely material.” In this case, it should be said that either he does not understand what an animal is because, while he may understand the parts of its definition, i.e. the terms “matter,” “body,” “life,” “motion,” etc. are correctly apprehended, but they are out placed out of order in that definition. So he does not “half-understand” what an animal is; he does not understand what an animal is at all, though he understands all of the parts necessary to combine a correct definition and come to knowledge of its essence.

It may seem trivial to argue for the truth of the intellect if what is meant is simply that error is only in the process of learning and that substantial ignorance is absolute. But all science (especially philosophy) is at stake if this distinction is not understood properly. The intellect has the power to know the truth, it has the means to attain it, and it knows truth with certainty. That the means of attaining knowledge is prone to fault does not mean that the intellect does not know truth, for to say that the intellect is not true is to say that there is no intellect.

1 ST I, Q 85, A 6 sed contra.(Benziger Bros., 1947)

2 Op. cit. obj 1 & 2

3 ST I, Q 79, A 2 resp.

4 Aquinas, Commentary on De Anima, trans. Foster and Humphries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951) 676.

5 Op. cit. 680.

6 ST I, Q 79, A 3 resp.

7 Aquinas, Commentary on De Anima, 681.

8 Op. cit. 688.

9 Ibid.

10 St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Teacher in Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings, trans. Ralph McInerny (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998), 199.

11 ST I, Q 86, A 1 sed contra

12 ST I, Q 86, A 1 resp.

13 Aristotle, Physics in Aristotle’s Physics: A Guided Study, trans. Joe Sachs (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 33 (1.i).

14 ST I, Q 85, A 3 resp.

15 Physics 99b20

16 Physics 100a4

17 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, trans. Fabian R. Larcher, (http://dhspriory.org/thomas/PostAnalytica.htm), II, xx.

18 ST I, Q 85, A 5 resp.

19 ST I, Q 85, A 5, ad 3

20 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics, trans. John P. Rowan, (Chicago, 1961) (http://dhspriory.org/thomas/Metaphysics7.htm), VII, iii, 581.

21 Ibid.

22 Aristotle, Metaphysics in Commentary on the Metaphysics by Thomas Aquinas, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago, 1961) (http://dhspriory.org/thomas/Metaphysics7.htm), 1651.

23 Commentary on Metaphysics, 1674.

24 Aquinas, Commentary on Metaphysics, 1328.

25 Aquinas, Commentary on Metaphysics, 1339.

26 Op. cit., 1339.

27 Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968), 36 (IV.iii).

28 De Ente, IV.v

29 ST I, Q 85, A 6 resp.

30 ibid.

31 ST I, Q 85, A 6

Labor, Sloth, and Depression

The most misunderstood vice of our time is probably sloth. But to correctly understand sloth, one must first understand what a vice is. Quite simply, a vice is a bad habit, trained by repeated sin and inclining one to sin more. But a key element of every vice is a disordered passion. Our passions are good when properly ordered, but they multiply evils when disordered. Thus most vices can be defined according to specific passions. For example, fear is a useful passion that helps us avoid evil, but fear that causes more evil than it avoids means cowardice. Anger is a healthy response to confront evil, but anger that causes more evil than it battles is called wrath. Joy is felt when some good is possessed, but joy in response to evil is a sign of hatred.

It is vitally important to understand this distinction; that vice is a condition which manifests itself in the passions, but sin is a specific action. They are closely connected: Sin comes from vice, and vice is fostered by sin. For example, a man who eats too much does so because he is infected with gluttony; and every time the man eats too much, he becomes more gluttonous. But to say that a man is a glutton is only to say that he is inclined to eat too much. Knowing of his gluttony does not necessarily imply knowledge about his particular sins, past or present.

So then, which disordered passion amounts to sloth? Sorrow. St. Thomas defines sloth for us as follows:

“Sloth, according to Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii, 14) is an oppressive sorrow, which, to wit, so weighs upon man's mind, that he wants to do nothing... Hence sloth implies a certain weariness of work... Accordingly, [sloth] denotes sorrow for spiritual good...” (ST II.II, q. 35, a. 1)

Note that sloth implies a weariness of work, but that is only an effect. The essence of sloth is sorrow, specifically sorrow in response to good. A healthy sorrow is the response to an evil that cannot be avoided, which is the same as the loss of some good. When evil is first encountered, we may react with anger (in an attempt to remove the evil) or fear (in an attempt to escape it). If either fails, we are confronted with an insurmountable or inescapable evil, and we become sorrowful. Because anger or fear usually precedes sadness, both wrath and cowardice can lead to sloth (cf. Evagrios, “Praktikos,” 10).

Sloth is also called “acedia.” Acedia literally means “having no enemy” and the sense behind this meaning should be clear from what we now know. If sloth is an oppressive sorrow for good, then there is nothing left to be done in the face of evil: Neither good nor evil makes a difference. Cowardice reinforces sloth, because it keeps one at a distance from anything that might stir his soul to action. Likewise, wrath, far from being the antipathy to cowardice, is a companion to both cowardice and sloth. Wrath is an overreaction to evil and even mistakes the good for something to be despised and resisted. Often the man who spends much of his effort avoiding difficulty, forgoing many good things as a result, will become overwhelmed with passion if he finds himself cornered by it. Hence the coward may resort to wrath, and the wrathful coward is likely to be slothful, because he is so strongly moved away from anything in which he might find joy.

The effect of sloth is not always weariness for labor. Today, it is often the case that one labors too much rather than laboring too little. Laboring too much is a sign of vice because labor's purpose is to make leisure possible. If we labor to the exclusion of leisure then we are fostering sloth, because we are shrinking away from the good and are not working as we ought.

Because sloth is a disordered sorrow, it is often mistaken for “depression,” a physiological disorder. This confusion is partly due to the fact that vice generally evokes disapproval, whereas sorrow arouses pity; so a vice manifested in disordinate sorrow is unlikely to be considered a vice at all, especially by those without a sound moral formation. One who is misled into thinking that he is “depressed” would do well to make a concerted effort at cultivating the virtues opposed to sloth, and note whether his depression begins to subside.

The opposite of sloth is zeal, which is an intense love and devotion to the good. And zeal is accompanied by courage (the opposite of cowardice) which endures suffering for the sake of the good. He who has true zeal does not labor as much as he can; he labors as much as he needs to serve God and his neighbor. Likewise, courage does not suffer the pains of labor for their own sake, but for the sake of laboring well and attaining the good.

The virtues are not aimed at merely any good that one happens to notice. They are ordered in a heirarchy of goods, and ultimately at God,Who is Goodness itself. Thus all activities must be guarded by virtue according to their proper order: Pleasure and entertainment for the sake of labor, labor for the sake of leisure, and leisure for the glory of God.

Let us pray to God in the words of St. John Cassian, that He may stir up in us a feiry zeal, and that our souls, “which had been occupied by a sorrow that works death, will be taken by a godly sorrow and one full of joy. That which had been wasted by acedia, will at once be tilled by courage.” (Conferences V.23)

Capitalism Does Not Work

Capitalism is one of those theories that looks good on paper, but in reality just does not work. This is because the main problem with Capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

Competition:
Because a capitalist economy is competitive, what will always happen is that whoever has an edge over the competition will end up making more money. But making more money does not mean spending more money. A man who makes $35,000 per year will probably have a car and a house, the two most expensive things he owns. A man who makes ten times as much -- $350,000 -- will not own ten houses and ten cars. So what happens in this economy is that more and more money ends up in fewer and fewer pockets.

So, true capitalism will always fail in the end, because you can only get richer if there are other people who can pay you, but the richer you get, the poorer other people become, because there is only so much money to go around. Sooner or later, the money must stop changing hands. (Anyone who has played Monopoly knows what I mean.)

Where Money Comes From:

This is why our economy today uses an infinite supply of money. When the economy starts to slow down, the Federal Reserve (the Head Bank in the US) buys bonds from big banks (a bond is a note that promises to be paid back with interest). Those big banks can then give out loans to smaller banks and companies based on how much money they received for these bonds. This is where most money comes from: It's loaned to us.

But loans need to be paid back. If too many loans go into default, the whole economy can crash. So, banks depend on people and businesses to pay back their loans. People usually get their money by working at a business. And businesses get their money by selling things to people. But when you put businesses and people together, where does all their money come from?

The Poor:

There are plenty of people who can't sell things to other people and also can't find a job. In fact, the economy needs to have these people, because money comes from banks, and even if a poor person could get a loan, how would he pay it back? These people cannot get a job either, because if everyone had a job, the businesses that pay them will not be able to make a profit. For example, imagine there are only two businesses in the world; Business A pays its workers $100 for every box of clothes they make and Business B pays its workers $100 for every box of food. If a box of clothes and a box of food cost $100 each, then each business makes 0% profit and goes bankrupt. If each box costs $110, then each business is making 10% profit, but not for long, because the workers won't be able to afford to buy any boxes at this rate. So instead of raising the price, the businessmen just lay off some of its workers. How does this fix anything? I'll tell you.

Welfare:
Our economy needs people to buy things so that businesses can pay back the banks, so that the banks can make good on their bonds. But businesses cannot hire everyone. That's where the state comes in. The state gives "free" money to the poor, who use this money to buy things, so that businesses can keep making money and pay back their loans. Where does the government get this money? Well, the national debt is incredibly high. But that's ok.

Real Capitalism Has Not Been Tried?
But hold on! If the whole economy is dependent on state welfare, is this real capitalism? The simple answer is "no." At least, this is not what many people think capitalism should be. But we have seen that if a competitive economy is too simple and too honest, then it will fail pretty quickly. We need an infinite supply of money from the top and we need poor welfare recipients to fill in the cracks at the bottom. Notice what the key role of the government is: It declares that the money which the Federal Reserve creates is good money, it forces people to pay back their loans, and it hands out money to the losers at the bottom. Without the government's constant support, the whole system would collapse. This is the way we make capitalism "work" -- by force.