Whether the rational soul is from a translate
Article III. Whether the rational soul is from a translate.
1. The real question is this: is the rational soul educed from the potency of the seed's matter by seminal and prolific power, as plant and brute souls are — or does God produce it without any concurrence of pre-existing matter, creating it and infusing it into the body? Nearly all modern philosophers and theologians favor the second view, and rightly. I do not recall any contrary argument weighty enough to pull even a moderately practiced mind into the camp of those who say our souls are sown by parents in carnal generation and not created and infused by God. For immediate creation by God, Scripture's witness and philosophical arguments from known principles of nature both count. Leaving Scripture to the theologians — especially Junius on Genesis 1 — I offer reasons drawn from physics and metaphysics.
2. First: if the soul is generable, it is corruptible; but the consequent is absurd, so the antecedent is too. A form produced in generation by matter's concurrence depends on matter so that, once separated from what gave and kept its being, it must perish. Opponents reply that human souls are of themselves corruptible — the argument shows they depend on matter in becoming and being — yet will last forever because God has decreed to conserve them. Asked why the soul considered in itself is corruptible, they say that if God stopped conserving souls they would at once sink into nothing. That answer fails. When substances are divided into eternal and perishable, eternity does not mean independence from God's conserving influx; it means no creature can destroy them by a physical action. On that score angels, the heavens, and rational souls alike may be called incorruptible. Further, those who answer so cannot deny that the human soul cannot be destroyed by any physical or material action; from which I infer it also cannot be produced by any such action. Why can no physical action destroy it? Because it is a spiritual substance. For the same reason no material power can produce it: what is repugnant to a spirit in destruction is repugnant to it in production. Generation is a physical, material action — done in matter, by seminal virtue.
3. Second: God willed human souls to exist outside bodies after death, and brute souls to perish with their bodies. Therefore he gave the rational soul a nature independent of matter, so that by that nature it can exist outside corporeal matter. As to its nature, then, the soul is independent of corporeal matter.
4. Third: only that form is educed from matter's causative potency which comes to be with matter's passive concurrence giving it being. The seed's matter cannot by passive concurrence give being to the soul. Therefore the soul is not educed from matter's potency; God creates it and pours it into matter. The major is clear from what went before. The minor: no active power acts beyond its genus — it cannot produce what is of a higher nature and order. The soul exceeds the whole order of corporeal nature as a spiritual substance; no corporeal power can produce it. They reply that the material force in the seed cannot of itself make a spiritual substance, yet can, as instrument of the generating soul, be elevated beyond its species to produce a spirit — as a phantasm, a sensible material species, by the soul's power impresses intelligible (spiritual) images on the patient intellect. That evasion is empty. A created agent cannot, by a purely material instrument, produce something immaterial; and the prolific faculty in the seed is purely material. The case of intelligible species is different: the soul uses the agent intellect as a principal instrument to excite and elevate the phantasm. Universally, a material power cannot be the principal or sole instrument in producing a spiritual substance, though it may be a secondary instrument in producing a spiritual quality.
5. Fourth: opponents are driven to hard, absurd conclusions. To dodge these arguments they must deny that the soul is a spiritual substance, and allow that a physical action can destroy it unless God specially preserves it — claims that strip our soul of dignity and leave us no purchase against atheists from immortality. If the soul by nature depends on the body so that it cannot of itself exist outside it, how shall we persuade them it is immortal? The same conclusions slight divine wisdom: to say God willed souls to exist outside bodies and yet denied them a nature fit for that is to say he did not produce the soul wisely enough.
6. Fifth: though we hold that God creates the soul and infuses it, so that the parent does not give the child a soul, we can still maintain that a human generates a human as truly as a lion a lion or an ox an ox; and we can maintain that the natural hereditary corruption called original sin is passed from parents to children, and explain how. Nothing forces us into an opinion that contradicts the soul's nature and so deeply detracts from its dignity.
Latin
ART. III. An anima rationalis sit ex traduce. 1. Verus hujus controversiae status est, utrum anima rationalis educatur ex potentia materiae seminis, vi seminalis & prolificae virtutis, sicut animae plantarum, & belluarum: an vero a DEO absque materiae praeexistentis concursu producatur, h.e. creatur, & corpori infundatur. Posterior sententia omnibus fere modernis Philosophis, & Theologis arridet, & merito; non enim memini me legisse ullum argumentum in contrarium, tanti ponderis, ut genium aliquem, vel mediocriter in hac controversia versatum, in eorum sententiam adduceret, qui contendunt animas nostras a parentibus, per carnalem generationem proseminari; non vero a DEO creari, & infundi. Contra vero, pro ea sententia, quae asserit animas humanas a DEO immediate creari, non solum faciunt varia S. Scripturae testimonia, sed etiam argumenta Philosophica principiis naturae notis nitentia: ego autem, omissis argumentis ex S. Scriptura petitis, quia ea luculenter proponuntur a Theologis, praecipue vero a clarissimo D. Junio, in explicatione 1. cap. Genes. rationes quasdam afferám, partim ex Physica, partim ex Metaphysica depromptas. 2. Prima ratio est haec: Si anima est generabilis, est corruptibilis: at absurdum est posterius: Ergo & prius: ratio majoris est haec; illa forma, quae ita dependet a materia, ut per concursum causae materialis in generatione producatur, ita etiam dependet a materia, ut si ab ea separetur, quae conferebat & conservabat ejus esse, necessario pereat. Ad hoc argumentum respondere solent Theologi, & Philosophi, qui sunt in contraria sententia, animas humanas esse ex se corruptibiles, ut probat illud argumentum; quia dependent a materia in fieri & esse, duraturas tamen esse in aeternum, quia DEUS statuit eas conservare. Quod si quis eos roget, cur anima, in se spectata, sit corruptibilis: Respondent hanc esse rationem, quia si DEUS cessaret ab actu quo conservat animas, illae statim in nihilum redirent. Sed haec responsio non placet, primo quia Theologi, & Philosophi, cum dividunt substantias in aeternas & caducas, non volunt aliquas substantias ideo esse aeternas, quod a conservativo DEI influxu non dependeant; sed quod a nulla creatura, per actionem Physicam destrui possint: hoc autem modo non solum Angeli, & Coelum, sed etiam animae rationales incorruptibiles dici possunt. Deinde illi qui ita respondent, non possunt negare animam humanam ita se habere, ut nulla actione Physica, seu materiali destrui possit: unde ego infero, eam nulla actione Physica, vel materiali, posse produci. Quaenam enim est ratio, quod nulla actione Physica destrui possit? Nonne, quia est substantia spiritualis? At ob eandem etiam rationem, nulla virtute materiali potest produci, idque quia, sicut repugnat spiritui actione Physica & materiali destrui, ita etiam repugnat spiritui actione Physica & materiali produci; generatio autem est actio Physica & materialis, tum quia fit in materia, tum quia fit per virtutem materialem, scilicet per virtutem seminalem. 3. Secunda ratio: Deus voluit animas humanas existere, extra corpora, post hominum mortem; voluit autem animas belluarum perire cum corporibus: Ergo dedit animae rationali, naturam independentem a materia, ut ratione illius naturae possit existere extra materiam corpoream; unde infero animam quoad naturam suam esse independentem a materia corporea. 4. Tertio, Ea sola forma educitur ex potentia causativa materiae, quae fit materia passive concurrente, ad tribuendum ei esse: sed materia seminis non potest concursu passivo, tribuere esse animae: Ergo non educitur ex potentia materiae, sed a Deo per creationem in materiam infunditur. Propositio manifesta est ex praecedentibus: assumptio probatur; nulla virtus activa agit ultra suum genus, ut loquuntur; i.e. non potest agendo producere eam rem, quae est excellentioris naturae, & superioris ordinis: sed anima excedit totum genus naturae corporeae, cum sit substantia spiritualis: nulla igitur virtus corporea potest animam producere. Ad hoc argumentum respondere solent, vim materialem in semine existentem per se non posse producere spiritualem substantiam animae, posse tamen virtute spiritualis illius substantiae, cujus est instrumentum, i.e. virtute animae hominis generantis, elevari ultra suam speciem, ad producendum spiritum: quemadmodum phantasma, quod est sensibilis & materialis species, virtute animae, cujus est instrumentum, species intelligibiles, h.e. spirituales rerum imagines intellectui patienti imprimit. Hoc effugium plane futile est, & nullius momenti; fieri enim non potest, ut a gente creatum opera instrumenti pure materialis, aliquid immateriale producatur; facultas autem prolifica in semine existens, pure materialis est; secus tamen accidit, in productione specierum intelligibilium; anima enim utitur vi intellectus agentis, ut principalis instrumenti, excitantis & elevantis phantasma, ad producendas illas species; quare universaliter verum est, virtutem materialem non posse esse aut principale, aut solitarium instrumentum, in productione spiritualis substantiae, licet esse possit instrumentum secundarium, in productione spiritualis qualitatis. 5. Quarto, Illi qui sunt in opposita sententia, coguntur admittere conclusiones admodum duras, & absurdas; nam ut vitent vim talium argumentorum, coguntur admittere animam non esse substantiam spiritualem; item animam posse actione Physica destrui, nisi DEUS eam speciali suo auxilio conservet ab interitu: quae conclusiones admodum derogant dignitati, & excellentiae animae nostrae, & nobis auferunt occasionem confutandi Atheos, argumentis petitis ab immortalitate animae. Si enim anima est forma natura sua dependens a corpore, ita ut extra corpus per se existere non valeat, quomodo persuadebimus iis, animam esse immortalem? derogant etiam hae conclusiones sapientiae divinae; quippe asserere DEUM voluisse animas existere, extra corpora, & negasse iis naturam ad hoc idoneam, est dicere DEUM non satis prudenter produxisse animam. 6. Quinto, Quamvis dicamus animam a DEO creari, & in corpus infundi, & proinde parentem non tribuere filio suo animam, satis tamen commode tueri possumus, hominem tam vere generare hominem, quam leo leonem, & bos bovem; possumus item tueri naturalem & hereditariam corruptionem, quam Peccatum Originale vocant, a parentibus ad liberos propagari, & hujus propagationis modum explicare: nulla ergo necessitas nos cogit amplecti eam sententiam, quae animae naturae repugnat, & ejus dignitati tantum detrahit.
About this text
Robert Baron, Philosophia Theologiae Ancillans (Philosophy in Service to Theology): the first exercise, on being and essence, and the second, on the origin of the soul and the spread of sin — newly rendered from Latin. Later exercises are not in this volume.
English follows locked 1658 Oxford Latin. Prima Art. I-XII from IA PDF leaves ~15-53. Secunda Art. I-XV from PDF leaves 56-107 / printed pp.54-105 (tess+pdftotext+DjVu). No modern English copied. Exercitatio Tertia+ remain.
Catalogue & scope
Wing B887. IA bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_philosophia-theologi-an_baron-robert_1658. Exercitatio Prima Art. I-XII; Exercitatio Secunda Art. I-XV (De origine animae & propagatione peccati). Not whole Philosophia (213 pp). Exercitatio Tertia+ remain.
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