Theses Contained in the Doctrine of St. Thomas

"After our Most Holy Lord Pope Pius X, by the Motu Proprio Doctoris Angelici, issued on the day 29 June 1914, salutarily prescribed that in all schools of philosophy the principles and greater pronouncements of Thomas Aquinas be held holily, some teachers of diverse Institutes proposed to this sacred Congregation of Studies certain theses to be examined, which they themselves were accustomed to hand down and defend as exact according to the principal principles of the holy Teacher, especially in metaphysics. This sacred Congregation, after the aforesaid theses had been duly examined and submitted to the Most Holy Lord, by mandate of His Holiness, responds that they plainly contain the principles and greater pronouncements of the holy Doctor. And they are these:

I. Potency and act so divide being that whatever is either is pure act, or necessarily coalesces from potency and act as from first and intrinsic principles.

II. Act, as perfection, is not limited except by potency, which is the capacity of perfection. Therefore in the order in which act is pure, in that same order it exists only as unlimited and unique; but where it is finite and multiple, it falls into true composition with potency.

III. Wherefore in the absolute notion itself of being, one God subsists, one and most simple; all the other things which participate being itself have a nature by which being is restricted, and consist of essence and being as principles really distinct.

IV. Being, which is denominated from being, is not said univocally of God and creatures, nor nevertheless wholly equivocally, but analogically, by an analogy both of attribution and of proportionality.

V. There is besides, in every creature, a real composition of the subsisting subject with forms secondarily added, or accidents; but this could not be understood unless being were received in an essence really distinct from it.

VI. Besides absolute accidents there is also the relative, or toward something. For although toward something does not signify, according to its proper notion, something inhering in something, nevertheless often it has a cause in things, and therefore a real entity distinct from the subject.

VII. A spiritual creature is altogether simple in its essence. But in it there remains a twofold composition: of essence with being, and of substance with accidents.

VIII. But a corporeal creature, as regards its very essence, is composed of potency and act; and this potency and act of the order of essence are designated by the names matter and form.

IX. Neither of these parts has being per se, nor is produced or corrupted per se, nor is placed in a predicament except reductively as a substantial principle.

X. Although extension into integral parts follows upon corporeal nature, nevertheless it is not the same for a body to be substance and to be quantified. For substance, by reason of itself, is indivisible, not indeed after the manner of a point, but after the manner of that which is outside the order of dimension. But quantity, which gives extension to substance, really differs from substance, and is an accident in the true name.

XI. Matter designated by quantity is the principle of individuation, that is, of numerical distinction, which cannot exist in pure spirits, of one individual from another in the same specific nature.

XII. By the same quantity it is effected that a body be circumscriptively in place, and that in one place only it can be in this way by any power whatever.

XIII. Bodies are divided in two ways: for some are living, others lacking life. In living things, so that in the same subject the part moving and the part moved may be had per se, the substantial form, designated by the name soul, requires organic disposition, or heterogeneous parts.

XIV. Souls of the vegetal and sensitive order in no way subsist per se, nor are produced per se, but are only as the principle by which the living thing is and lives; and since they depend wholly on matter, when the composite is corrupted, by that very fact they are corrupted per accidens.

XV. On the contrary, the human soul subsists per se, which, when it can be infused into a sufficiently disposed subject, is created by God, and by its nature is incorruptible and immortal.

XVI. The same rational soul is united to the body in such a way that it is the unique substantial form of the same, and through it man has that he is man and animal and living and body and substance and being. Therefore the soul gives to man every essential grade of perfection; moreover it communicates to the body the act of being by which it itself is.

XVII. Faculties of a twofold order, organic and inorganic, emanate from the human soul by natural resultance; the former, to which sense pertains, are subjected in the composite; the latter in the soul alone. Therefore the intellect is a faculty intrinsically independent of an organ.

XVIII. Intellectuality necessarily follows immateriality, and indeed in such a way that according to the grades of distance from matter, there are also grades of intellectuality. The adequate object of intellection is commonly being itself; but the proper object of the human intellect in the present state of union is contained in quiddities abstracted from material conditions.

XIX. Therefore we receive knowledge from sensible things. But since the sensible is not intelligible in act, besides the intellect formally understanding, there must be admitted in the soul an active power which abstracts intelligible species from phantasms.

XX. Through these species we directly know universals; singulars we attain by sense, and then also by intellect through conversion to phantasms; but to the knowledge of spiritual things we ascend by analogy.

XXI. The will follows, it does not precede, the intellect; the will necessarily seeks that which is presented to it as a good satisfying the appetite from every side, but among several goods which are proposed as to be sought by a changeable judgment, it freely chooses. Therefore choice follows the last practical judgment; but that it is last, the will effects.

XXII. That God is, we neither perceive by immediate intuition, nor demonstrate a priori, but certainly a posteriori, that is, through those things which have been made, with the argument led from effects to cause: namely, from things which are moved and cannot be the adequate principle of their own motion, to the first unmoved mover; from the process of worldly things from causes subordinated among themselves, to the first uncaused cause; from corruptible things which have themselves equally to being and non-being, to an absolutely necessary being; from those things which, according to diminished perfections of being, living, understanding, more and less are, live, and understand, to Him who is maximally understanding, maximally living, maximally being; finally, from the order of the universe to the separated intellect which ordered, disposed, and directs things to the end.

XXIII. The divine Essence, through this, that it is identified with the exercised actuality of being itself, or through this, that it is subsisting Being itself, is proposed to us as well constituted in its, as it were, metaphysical notion, and through this same thing exhibits to us the notion of its infinity in perfection.

XXIV. Therefore by the very purity of His being, God is separated from all finite things. From this it is inferred, first, that the world could have proceeded from God only through creation; then, that the creative power, by which being inasmuch as being is reached per se and first, cannot be communicable, even miraculously, to any finite nature; finally, that no created agent influences the being of any effect whatever, unless by motion received from the first Cause. Given at Rome, on the day 27 July 1913."