Selections from the Writings

of Charles De Koninck
Compiled by Bart A. Mazzetti
(c) 2013 Bart A. Mazzetti

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 TEXTS OF CDK

1. Natural Science as Philosophy (repr.; Québec: Laval University, 1959)

2. “The Unity and Diversity of Natural Science,” Mélanges à là Memoire de Charles De

Koninck

3. The Hollow Universe, Ch. III, “The Lifeless World of Biology”. p. 84

4. “Three Sources of Philosophy” (Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American

Catholic Philosophical Association, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC,
1964, pp. 13-17) (excerpts)

5. “The Unity and Diversity of Natural Science,” Mélanges à là Memoire de Charles De

Koninck, pp. 5-25 (excerpt)

6. “Introduction to the Study of the Soul”. Preface to Stanislas Cantin, Précis de

psychologie thomiste (Quebec: Laval University, 1948) (Eng. tr. Bruno M. Mondor, O.P.)

7. Prefatory Remarks to A General Introduction to the Study of Nature by Charles De

Koninck. Manual, Prentice Hall. Corrected by T. De Koninck and C. De Koninck

8. Resume of lecture notes of Methodologie Generale given by M. Charles De Koninck.

1938-39 (Page 1)

9. Letter to Mortimer Adler, Quebec June 15, 1938 (excerpt)

10. “Le Cosmos,” Laval (1936) (typescript, pp. 40-44) (insertions [in square braces] by
B.A.M., as are the footnotes)

11. “The Wisdom That is Mary”, The Thomist, vol. vi., no. 1, April, 1943, pp. 2-3
(excerpts)

12. “Education Before the Age Of Reason”. Taken from “The Importance of Education
Before the Age of Reason”. Commencement Address to the Graduates of Saint Mary’s
College. Notre Dame, Indiana (June 2 & June 3 1960) (Rpt. Fidelity Magazine, Vol. 12,
December, 1992, pp . 17-21) (excerpt)

Supplement:

1. Emmanuel Trépanier, In Memoriam Charles De Koninck

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1. Ancient and modern: The distinction between philosophy
and science.
n. 1. Charles De Koninck, Natural Science as Philosophy (repr.;
Québec: Laval University, 1959), p. 1:
We are often told of a distinction between philosophical
psychology and experimental psychology. This is a distinction
that I do not understand. Take the beginning of the De Anima,
where Aristotle shows that even here we must provide natural
definitions as distinguished from the logical or dialectical. His
example is that of ‘anger’. It is true that anger is ‘a desire for
vengeance’. But this definition is purely formal, somewhat like
the definitions of mathematics, i.e. ‘per species’. Now, in
mathematics, formal definitions are sufficient to the subject,
since the subject is abstract; anger, however, is also something
physical, as may be seen in the behavior of any person in a
rage. If we are to form a natural definition of what anger is, we
will have to add something to that ‘desire for vengeance’, such
as ‘attended by an effervescence of the blood about the heart’.
A psychology which would confine itself to formal definitions
would be no more than dialectical. (Notice, however, that this
natural definition of anger is itself only dialectical, but
dialectical in a different sense. For propositions—and a
definition is virtually a proposition—may be called dialectical
for two different reasons: either because the composition or
division of the known terms which it comprises is no more than
probable; or because one or both of the terms themselves are
insufficient, which is the case of purely formal definitions of
natural things. We have to do with something less than
dialectical when the terms are themselves no more than likely
constructs, even though they have some basis in experience.
Such was the case of Aristotle’s ‘incorruptible’ heavenly
bodies, and of Dalton’s ‘atoms’.) In the definition of anger as
‘a desire for vengeance attended by an effervescence of the

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 blood about the heart’, the former part is certain, though
dialectical; the latter part, taken by itself, is natural, yet
dialectical qua insufficient even as a natural definition. Natural,
because it refers to something sensible; dialectical because no
more than provisional.
n. 2. Charles De Koninck, “The Unity and Diversity of Natural
Science,” Mélanges à là Memoire de Charles De Koninck, pp. 5-
25 (excerpt):
On the question of where the study of nature should begin,
Aristotle’s teaching is clear and familiar. His first treatise on
natural science, the Physics, tells us, at the very beginning, that
the investigation of nature must

start from the things which are more knowable and certain to
us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more
certain in themselves; for the same things are not “knowable
relatively to us” and “knowable” absolutely. So in the present
inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what
is more obscure by nature, but more certain to us towards
what is more certain and more knowable by nature.— Now
what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused
wholes, the elements and principles of which become known
to us later by analysis. Thus we must advance from vague
generalities to particulars. For it is a [vague] whole that is
more known to sense perception, and a generality is likewise
a kind of whole, comprising many things within it, like parts.
Much the same happens in relation of the name to the
definition. A name such as “circle,” means vaguely a sort of
whole; the definition analyses this whole into its parts [i.e.
defining parts]. Similarly a child begins by calling all men
“father,” and all women “mother,” but later on distinguishes
each of them.1

Should the thought occur to us that modern science may have

rendered the mode of procedure obsolete, just as it has
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invalidated much of Aristotle’s cosmology, we shall find no
support for our suspicion in one of the more advanced
expositors of the scientific outlook, namely Lord Russell. Just
last year, he wrote of a “prejudice” which he describes as
“perhaps the most important in all my thinking.”

. . . This is concerned with method. My method invariably is

to start from something vague but puzzling, something which
seems indubitable but which I cannot express without any
precision. I go through a process which is like that of first
seeing something with the naked eye and then examining it
through a microscope. I find that by fixity of attention
divisions and distinctions appear where none at first was
visible, just as through a microscope you can see the bacilli
in impure water which without the microscope are not
discernible. There are many who decry analysis, but it has
seemed to me evident, as in the ease of the impure water, that
analysis gives new knowledge without destroying any of the
previous distinct knowledge. This applies not only to the
structure of physical things, but quite fits such concepts.
‘Knowledge, for example, as commonly used is a very
imprecise term covering a number of different things and a
number of different states from certainty to slight probability.

It seems to me that philosophical investigation, as far as I

have experience of it, starts from that curious and
unsatisfactory state of mind in which complete certainty
without being able to say what one is certain of. The process
that results from prolonged attention is just like that of
watching an object approaching through a thick fog: at first it
is only a vague darkness, but as it approaches articulations
appear and one discovers that it is a man or a woman, or a
horse or a cow or what not. It seems to me that those who
object to analysis would wish us to be content with the initial
dark blur. Belief in the above process is my strongest and

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 most unshakable prejudice as regards the methods of
philosophical investigation.2

Now, what can such a mode of procedure have to do with our

question, which is where we ought to begin a study of nature?
The method described means that we should begin with
generalities which, though vague, are quite certain. Of course
no intellect with a speculative vitality can rest in these
generalities however reassuring in their certainty. The mind
wants to know as much as it can about as much as there is to
know. Knowledge, as we progress, must become more and
more specific and detailed. The real question is, ought we to
make some formal, radical, distinction between our first
approach to nature, with its vague certainties, and the more
particular knowledge acquired as we move forward?
It would be disastrous to fall back into the ancient confusion
that sciences are distinguished according to degrees of
generality. Not that we refuse all value to distinctions based
upon degrees of generality. St. Thomas’ own Proemium to the
Physics distinguishes the various branches of natural science
according to what is less and less universal, and natural science
can hardly proceed without divisions based upon decreasing
generality, if by generality is meant community of predication,
as “animal” is more common than “man.” Hence it is that
Aristotle, in the first treatise of natural science, the Physics,
studies mobile or changeable being in general. What he there
establishes is meant to apply to every kind of change. First to
absolute change, as when a man comes to be or dies; then to the
special kind of change called motion, such as walking, turning
pale, or growing. Notice, however, that in the modern study of
nature there is nothing that corresponds to the problems and
discussions of the Physics. For instance, we accept some initial,
nominal, definition of movement, infinity, place, time, etc., but
we no longer ask just what are the realities which these words
are intended to mean. In fact, many a modern author, in his
attempt to arrive at a real definition of movement, will conclude

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that there is no such thing and reduce it to an illusion arising
from a succession of immobile states. It would be easy enough
to show how he reaches his curious conclusion, and how it is
quite beside the point. But this is not my subject. All I mean to
stress is that in fact modern researchers often fail to begin by
analyzing vague generality first conveyed by the word
“movement.” Right from the start they want something exact,
such as the way a movement is measured, in terms of place and
time, with both of these latter items left equally undefined
except as to name; and movement, time, and place are soon
replaced by symbolic constructions which some will interpret
as substitutes more exact than the names—Which in a sense
they are. But symbols, however precise the rules for their use,
may easily leave the basic issues as obscure as ever. What has
been lost sight of is that the only way of achieving true success
in such investigations is by deeper and deeper understanding of
what was at first only vaguely known.
My high school textbook of physics—nearly forty years
ago—began with La dynamique celeste, which could in some
measure be held to correspond with the treatise De Caelo,
namely cosmology. The subject of the De Caelo was mobility
according to place, by means of which the universe itself is
defined. The aim of the study was to discover laws governing
the universe, an aim which is still that of physics today. Though
local motion is the most common sort of change, it is of a
special kind nonetheless. So by starting the study of nature with
this kind of motion, science must overlook what all kinds of
change have in common. The mind is applying itself
immediately to their differences and will soon be led to deny
these. For example, the denial of these differences is implicit in
those thinkers who believe that the ultimate explanation of
whatever there is to be explained in nature will be a
mathematico-physical one. Of course there is also an
impressive number of eminent physicists who reject this over-
simplification.

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 Aristotle’s third treatise on nature is about change according
to quality: On Generation and Corruption—the two terms of
alteration. Although it is only in relatively familiar living
creatures that these absolute terms of qualitative change are
verified beyond a doubt, it may well be true that all natural
things are subject to such alteration. At any rate, no exceptions
are known for certain. Still, motion according to place
obviously remains more universal than change of quality and
the kind of coming to be or passing away attendant upon it.
Allow me to call your attention to the fact that, in On
Generation and Corruption, Aristotle pays chief attention to
sensible qualities, such as hot and cold, wet and dry. For this
reason, there are many who point out that his view of nature
was essentially a qualitative one, whereas the modern one tends
to be entirely quantitative.
Finally, in the fourth of these treatises, Aristotle applies
himself to the kind of mobile being that changes according to
quantity, in growth and decrement. This is the living being,
which is surely a less common object in nature, no matter how
much life there may be on as many other planets as you choose.
Now, it is exceedingly important to notice that the Philosopher,
in his treatise on living beings, should start, not by considering,
first of all, living being in general, as he has taken mobile being
in the Physics, but that he should begin with a study of the soul:
De Anima. The reason is, as St. Thomas explains, that the
investigation of living things is from the outset based upon a
new kind of experience: the experience of being alive which we
ourselves enjoy as we have sensations. If we abstracted from
this experience, we could never arrive at any definitive reason
for distinguishing the living from the non-living. Indeed some
moderns already find themselves at this point. For them,
swelling and growth have become the same thing; reproduction
is perhaps mere copying; atoms are said to repair themselves,
and the operation of mechanical computers are identified with
thought. In other words, if we abstract from our inner
experience of being alive, as distinguished from sheer external

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sense experience, we will find ourselves surveying living things
from a point of view which can never acknowledge even the
most obviously living things to be alive. The unpredictable
behavior of some animals might always be attributed to our
ignorance of the relevant data.

From the De Anima, which defines the principle of life and its
differences in kind, we move on towards more concrete
knowledge of the organic power of sensation and its object: De
Sensu et Sensato. Experience of sensing, and reflection upon
this experience (which we call “internal”), remain in the
foreground, but we are now bent upon relating sensation to the
physical tools which it implies and upon which it depends.
Then follow the Parva Naturalia: De Memoria et
Reminiscentia, De Somno et Vigilia, De Juventute et Senectute,
De Morte et Vita. Notice that the later two studies refer to states
that are common to all familiar animals and even to all forms of
life. In other words, within biology itself, we are following an
order which in a sense is the reverse of that observed in
proceeding from the generality of the Physics to reach biology.
In the study of life we begin with confused knowledge, it is
true; yet it is knowledge not of an integral whole, but of an
integral part, namely, that by reason of which a living, thing,
primarily the animal, differs from a mere body. From this we
progress gradually, with growing dependence upon external
experience, toward more distinct knowledge of the part, of
course, but also, and simultaneously, of the whole. For the
study of that which makes a living thing to be alive must
eventually entail the study of each of its organs, and of their
ultimate coordination.
The first living beings to be considered in their totality are the
animals. Such study will lead man into the jungle, sea, air, and
back to the laboratory. The knowledge he amasses is first
descriptive of the type recorded by Aristotle in the De Historia
Animalium. Then he will want to know why the various kinds
of animals, including man, should be built as they are and

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behave as they do. This is the subject of the De Partibus
Animalium. In still further treatises the scientist must become
even more concrete and apply himself to the particular way in
which various animals come to be, reproduce and get around. I
refer to the treatises De Generatione, De Motu Animalium and
De Progressione. Aristotle, the Philosopher, desired to know
why dogs run a little slantwise! The man whom in our day we
call a philosopher is quite indifferent, if not averse, to this kind
of knowledge. We should be reminded of what his great
forerunner declared in the De Partibus Animalium:

We now proceed to treat of animals, without omitting, to the

best of our ability, any member of the kingdom, however
lowly. For if some have no graces to charm the senses, yet
even these, by disclosing to the mind the architectonic spirit
that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can
trace links of causation, and especially to those who are
naturally inclined to philosophy. Indeed, it would be strange
if mimic representations of them were attractive, because
they disclose the mimetic skill of the painter or sculptor, and
the original realities themselves were not more interesting, to
all at any rate who have eyes to discern the reasons that
determined their formation. We therefore must not recoil
with childish aversion from the examination of the humbler
animals. Every realm of nature is marvelous: and as
Heraclitus, when the strangers who came to visit him found
him warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen and
hesitated to go in, is reported to have bidden them not to be
afraid to enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present,
so we should venture on the study of every kind of animal
without distaste for each and all will reveal to us something
natural and something beautiful. Absence of haphazard and
conduciveness of everything to an end are to be found in
Nature’s works in the highest degree, and the resultant end of
her generations and combinations is a form of the beautiful.3

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But let us return to our problem. When we move from the realm
of the Physics into that study which today takes the place of the
De Caelo or from the De Anima to the De Animalibus, are we
going from philosophy to science? Or, if the order were
reversed, would we be going from science to philosophy? But
can we in fact practice the one without the other? Relativity and
quantum theory are often said to be scientific and not
philosophical. Stated as a principle, this distinction puzzles me.
I can see that Einstein’s theory does not depend upon a
definition of time of the type which Aristotle provides in his
Physics, and that the ancient definition does not depend upon
time as Einstein describes it. Yet both Einstein’s theory and
Aristotle’s definition have to do with nature in some way or
other. The point is: do these diverse ways relate to diverse pur-
poses? To put it more exactly: do they divide the subject-term
of the study of nature? It might be remarked that of course their
purposes differ: in one case the aim is to know just what time
is; in the other, to know what time it is, how to measure a
length of it, or how to define simultaneity at a distance. The
difference is plain, but does it oblige me to conclude that the
time of mathematical physics has nothing to do with the time
known and named before mathematical physics began? Let me
refer again to the text we quoted from the De Partibus
Animalium: it is a “thirst for philosophy” that sets one on to
investigate sensible things in a fashion now called scientific as
distinguished from the philosophic.
Yet Aristotle and St. Thomas themselves use language which
seems to support a real distinction between philosophy and
science; because they speak of “natural sciences” in the plural;
so that, if one of these is natural philosophy it would appear to
be something other than the rest. Notice, however, how this
plurality is explained:

One science can be subject to another in two ways. First,

when the subject of one science is a species of the subject of
the higher science; in this way the animal is a species of

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 natural body, so that the science of animals is subordinate to
natural science. There is subordination in another sense,
when the subject of an inferior science is not a species of the
higher one but when the subject of the inferior science
compares to that of the superior one as what is material to
what is formal.4

The latter kind of subordination is called subalternation. An

instance of this is the way the science of optics is subordinated
to geometry.
But, if these two kinds of subordination be properly
understood, it will become clear that, though they do give rise
to distinguishable fields of study, they do not truly divide the
subject of natural science. That the first kind does not have this
effect is plain from the example: the study of animal is clearly
an extension of the study of body. Let us see how the second
also fails to generate an entirely new science.
Geometry, to take up our own example, is used in optics for
the sake of manifesting sensible phenomena, not for the sake of
furthering geometry, a science which constructs its own subject
and has no more than a remote foundation in reality.
Mathematics is not about nature, yet we use it to manifest
nature; for mathematics, in this respect akin to logic, is about
subjects and their properties that follow from our mode of
understanding—consequuntur ex modo intelligendi, sicut est
abstractio mathematicorum et huiusmodi.5
True, optics and harmonics are formally mathematical, since
in them we apply to subjects of sense experience mathematical
knowledge which, even when applied, remains mathematical.6
Though only materially natural, the subject which we aim to
reveal is nonetheless natural. For this very reason we call such
sciences “more natural” than mathematical: “because
everything is named and specified by its terminus: hence
because the business of these sciences terminates in natural
matter, even though they proceed through mathematical
principles, they are more natural than they are mathematical.”7

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 Why should all the divisions of natural science be no more
than material divisions, including even the distinction between
the purely natural sciences and those which, though mainly
natural, are formally mathematical? The reason is that sciences
are formally distinct according to their modes of defining, and
of these there are, generically,8 only three, the natural, the
mathematical, and the metaphysical. Whether it be man or
rainbow that we describe or define, our description or definition
must include sensible matter, and this is to define in the natural
mode. The subjects of mathematics, however, are defined
without sensible matter, though they would need it to exist
outside the mind where they would cease to be mathematical.
Finally, there are the definitions of metaphysics, namely, of
subjects which are entirely separated or separable from sensible
matter, although their real existence is not easy to establish.
Any other mode of defining would have to be of non-sensible
things with sensible matter, which is impossible except in a
verbal way. Now, the whole point is that “sensible matter” is a
generic and univocal term, like the “intelligible matter” of
mathematics9—such as the continuity of a line or the units of a
number. But “matter” is said analogically of “sensible” and
“intelligible.” Yet, unlike “sensible matter,” “intelligible
matter” gives rise to specifically distinct sciences not because
of the specific differences, but by reason of different modes of
defining, as can be seen in the radically distinct modes of
construction. Metaphysical subjects are defined by excluding
all matter, whether sensible or intelligible, and their definitions
are in this sense, negative, although the definita are most
positive.
We must consider still another difficulty, one which is more
obvious in our time, and that seems to justify the distinction
between philosophy of nature and natural science. The ancients
did not respect the prodigiously fruitful role of fictions—
“logical fictions,” as Bertrand Russell calls them. Nor did
Galileo or Newton, for the matter of that; a fact ironically
brought out by Newton’s famous hypotheses non fingo.

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(Newton actually contrived most fruitful fictions, though he
failed to realize that they were fictions.) The contemporary
mathematical physicist knows that he can probe into the world
of nature only by means of mental constructions suggested in
part by experience, in part by mathematics. They are fictions in
the strict sense of this term, whose power we must not
underrate. The atom, for instance, is largely a logical fiction. If
you have any doubts, look at what has happened to atoms since
Dalton’s days. (I say “largely,” for in physics the mental
constructs must have some foundation in experience and
experiment, else they could hardly lead to further knowledge of
nature.)
Let us look a bit more closely into this subject. Is the mode of
defining in mathematical physics today still the same as in
earlier times— namely, with sensible matter? Yes and no. First
of all, the definitions of mathematical physics are no longer
definitions in the strict sense of this term. They are not even
nominal. The astronomer cannot make much headway with
nominal definitions of “sun” or “moon,” which may be verified
by pointing to the sun or the moon. He has his own mode of
defining and it is not even nominal, it is symbolic, although he
uses words in describing measurement and experiment. The
raw materials of his type of knowledge are already the result of
measurement and experiment, gathered into and expressed by
measure-numbers that are symbols.
Now there is a curious fact about these symbols: they must in
the end refer to a very particular concrete object found near the
capital of France, the product of a convention, namely, the
meter, or some similar device. For “meter” does not mean
simply “measure,” or “standard of length,” though the word
comes from the Greek metron, which means universally “that
by means of which the quantity of a thing is first made known.”
The mathematical physicist can get nowhere with such a defini-
tion. His definition of the meter is “the distance between two
lines on a certain platinum-iridium bar kept at the International

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Bureau of Weights in Paris, when this bar is at 0° C. or 32° F.
Copies of this bar are kept elsewhere.”
“Meter,” in physics, is the name we have given to a certain
physical object of our own making. It should be understood as a
proper name, like “Oscar.” We have fair copies of the meter, in
a laboratory or dry goods shop but the authentic one, the real
Oscar, is in Paris. Now this is an individual thing from which,
so long as the convention holds, we must not deviate. It turns
up in all other measurements—even in the most unexpected of
these, namely, in the definition of temperature which enters into
the “definition” of the meter. For the platinum iridium bar is
called a meter long when its temperature is 0° C., and the
mercury column of our thermometer has a scale which is a
graduated length. If the definition of meter were intended as an
authentic one, like we gave of “measure,” it would be circular.
It is a “definition” only in the original sense of “delimiting” and
thus “setting apart.”
One might object that there ought to be something universal
about the meter, since there are many copies of the one kept in
Paris, and that “meter” can be said of each. But the objection
ignores the real issue. For no metal bar anywhere is a meter
except to the degree that it is a fair copy of the original one in
Paris, and the Parisian one cannot be predicated of any but
itself. It is true that if the Paris meter were destroyed, we would
construct another, but our convention would still hang upon an
individual object.
The mathematical physicist is no doubt after universal
knowledge, but the essential thing is that he no longer pretends
to achieve it. He can scarcely dare, when his entire science
must rely upon an individual object. Much the same is true of
all the natural sciences as they advance towards greater
concretion. Our definition of man as a “rational animal” is safe
enough, but this tells us nothing about the anatomy and
physiology that characterize man. To acquire knowledge of this
kind we must perform experiments upon individuals, and
further knowledge will depend upon these. Now a knowledge

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which continues to depend upon individual things may hardly
be called “science” in Aristotle’s sense, for the simple reason
that individual things are never sufficiently grasped. By
episteme Aristotle meant knowledge about a universal subject,
acquired by demonstration from first, self-evident, and proper
principles. Even to him there was not much of it outside logic
and mathematics. But if it be knowledge of the physical world
that we seek, we will soon be launched on a sea of provisional
generalizations, universals ut nunc, i.e., for the time being, and
of hypotheses to be improved upon by further hypotheses.
Though we move on in great strides, nothing final can ever
come into sight.
We are sometimes told that this precarious, provisional
character of even the most exact branch of natural science,
mathematical physics, must not be over-stressed. And the
reason offered is that we achieve undeniable results. The results
may be indeed most practical; but does this require that
theoretical knowledge, which led to their success be specu-
latively true? We can launch artificial satellites on the basis of
Newtonian physics, but does this prove that such physical
theory is true? Practical success is always a sign that we are on
the right track towards speculative truth, but to move towards a
term and to have reached it are not quite the same thing.
Dalton’s atoms, conceived as billiard balls, only much smaller,
served their purpose and were nearer the truth than those of
Democritus; but they were not the last word on the subject, nor
are the atoms of today. Just because we can set down the word
“atom” does not mean that there are atoms in the way that there
are apples. Atoms are not atoms in the way apples are apples.
As Heisenberg puts it: “we cannot speak about the atoms in
ordinary language.”
Now, all this faces us no doubt with a deep enough cleavage
between diverse modes of knowing the things in nature. But
does this cleavage restrict natural philosophy to our initial
gropings under investigation? What we are agreeing to call
philosophy of nature is experimental too, though not quite after

16
the manner of mathematical physics nor even of advanced
biology. I pointed out long ago that in the study of nature we
must distinguish between strictly scientific knowledge (in
Aristotle’s sense) and that which is called dialectical, as
providing no more than an opinion. Now, opinions are still
enunciated in words, and are in fact true or false if it be
speculative knowledge that we mean to express. Notice,
however, that an opinion is not a fiction in the strict sense of
this term. It is, at bottom an inquisitive proposition. The
opinion that “the world is eternal” still leaves open the question
whether the world really is or has to be eternal. We can unfold
what we mean by “world” and by “eternal”, but can we in truth
say the latter of the former? The notions of “world” and
“eternal”, though vague, have a relatively stable meaning. What
we are questioning is not the meaning, of course, but their
connection in a proposition. Is such a proposition necessary? Is
the eternity of the world a fact?
But in mathematical physics, when words are used to
describe, not how things are in fact, but merely how a certain
symbolic construction has been laid down, e.g., that of the
atom, we must be aware that, unlike the terms used in a
statement about nature, the symbols, the construction, and the
names we choose to employ for the purpose of communication
do not have a stable meaning. The only stable meaning the
word “atom” ever had was that of “indivisible”. In other words,
we are now entitled to question not merely the connection of
the terms, but the very terms themselves. At any rate, these are
utterly provisional, whereas what “world” or “eternal” stand for
are not.
It should now be plain that our study of nature can proceed on
three different levels: that of science, that of opinion, and that
of terms that are themselves provisional—whose meanings are
accordingly unstable. There is no doubt that in point of
certitude there are radical distinctions between these various
modes of investigating nature: between vague knowledge that
is certain and definitive, such as knowledge of what the word

17
“man” stands for; knowledge that is tentative, of the kind we
have in dialectical propositions; and knowledge that is both
tentative and known to be provisional, provisional even as to
the very terms we use to express it. The latter kind is nothing
short of paradoxical, since greater exactness is paid for by
increasing instability. These distinctions are quite relevant, but
our great question is, do they divide the purpose of the study of
nature? Will the three different methods require that science be
formally divided in accordance with them? Do these provide us
with different subject-terms?
It may be useful to consider two extreme positions on this
question. Some hold that if there is to be a natural philosophy it
must remain confined to common generalities, such as the
conditions of absolute becoming, the definitions of motion,
infinity, place, time, etc. and that where we carry out
investigations further, we then practice experimental science, as
in seeking to know what the speed of light is. Others, again,
believe that natural philosophy presupposes the experimental
sciences, and is no more than a reflection on their method and
on their present achievements and implications as compared to
those of earlier science. Natural philosophy and philosophy of
science would be much the same.
Both of these conceptions are partly true, for these is no doubt
that we must examine first of all the things we first name, and
these are vague generalities. They are, in a sense, the most
important and to neglect them will eventually spell disaster.
The doctrine of prime matter, for instance, is essential to save
the unity of the human individual. For if we held that man is no
more than an accidental superstructure made up of electrical
charges, a human person would be no more of an individual
than an individual pile of bricks.
But is it the sole function of the natural philosopher to be
stubborn about the validity of such problems, about their
possible and even definitive solutions? Does he cease to be a
philosopher when he asks more concretely what a man is?
When he asks what is the anatomy and physiology of the

18
human brain? Or what are its chemical components? Why
should the mind interrogating nature rest in vague generalities,
no matter how important and how certain these may be? Is
there anything unworthy about investigating man’s organic
constitution, or the activities of slugworms? It is of course true
that no single individual can in our time ever hope to know the
whole of even a single ramification of natural science, such as
astronomy and botany, nor even list the unlimited number of
questions men may eventually learn to ask about a relatively
narrow domain of nature. Yet no matter how general or how
particular, how certain or provisory, knowledge about nature
will always be derived from, and must return to experience,
external or internal. In each and every case, if the knowledge is
to be of nature, the descriptions and definitions, no matter of
what kind, must in the end include sensible matter. It does not
seem possible, therefore, to set a rigid frontier between
philosophy of nature and science of nature.
The second opinion we described is likewise partly true. For
if philosophy is to deserve its name, it will never confine itself
to one narrow domain of nature or become indifferent to
findings achieved by a particular research. A man may be a
skillful investigator, but he will never be master of his science
until he knows just what it is that he knows, the status of his
own mind with regard to his particular subject; and until he
comes to realize, if only vaguely, how much there is that he
does not know. But the great shortcoming of this opinion, that
philosophy of nature must be simply philosophy of science, is
its inevitable failure to pay explicit attention to the vague
generalities with which all thinking about reality must begin,
and to which all later knowledge must be related. To rest in
vague generalities is unsatisfactory to the inquisitive mind, but
to rest in “man is a swarm of atoms” is no less reprehensible,
for the simple reason that intelligence must demand a
connection between this statement and the knowledge we
already have of man, as expressed in ordinary language; when
we ask what man is, for example, or what he is made of, and

19
how. Heisenberg puts it this way: “Even for the physicist the
description in plain language [as distinguished from that of
theoretical physics] will be a criterion of the degree of
understanding that has been reached.”10
A wholly legitimate question may now be raised: does not our
very criticism of these two opinions imply a distinction
between natural philosophy and natural science? Does not our
criticism allow that a man may be a skillful scientist without
any desire to reflect upon what he has believed, and to see how
this relates to his earlier knowledge? I grant that there do exist
skillful scientists who see no point in “philosophical’
questions,” but it is equally true that most eminent “scientists”
are, without exception, very much concerned with
philosophical questions. And so I suggest that the existence of
these two types of scientists can scarcely oblige us to divide the
study of nature into two ideally distinct endeavors. To my
mind, the distinction is a purely contingent one. The skillful
scientist who has no further preoccupation is really only a tool;
he is to the true man of science what a laboratory technician is
to the physicist or biologist whom he serves. If he be called a
scientist, it is only in virtue of a change in the imposition of the
term “science,” and if one explained this to him, he would most
probably object to being called a scientist in this new and
exclusive sense.
I have heard a skillful biochemist maintain that philosophical
questions are impossibly difficult, if not wholly inane; whereas
the scientist’s problems can become real and meaningful when
he can reduce them to the simplest kind of questions. These
questions he assumed to be entirely direct and clear—e.g., what
is the chemical structure of a protein molecule? —so much so
that a philosopher would consider them unworthy of his
attention. Such a philosopher would be not worthy of the name.
If a single man cannot engage upon specialized research in so
many diverse fields, if the philosopher cannot hope to be much
of a scientist, nor the scientist to be much of a philosopher,
surely this is a state of things which both ought deeply to regret.

20
 As already suggested, there is no doubt that in the study of
nature we are faced with two very different kinds of questions.
Let me use time as an example. The name “time” is in common
use, and used in a significant way. So we do have some vague
knowledge of time, else it would not occur to us to ask what
time is, as in Book IV of the Physics. The answer is that time is
a measure of movement; more precisely, “the number of a
movement according to the before and after of movement.”
Now this requires that time itself be a movement, since a
measure must be homogeneous with the measured.
But it is not merely as a movement that time is the measure of
movement. It will have the nature of measure by reason of its
regularity and speed. And so we are led to the further question:
where in nature is this movement to be found? Aristotle found
it in the outer sphere of the universe. Has that earlier definition
of time broken down along with the structure of the universe as
he conceived it to be? The article on Time, its measurement, in
the Encyclopedia Britannica, tells us that time is still defined in
terms of speed and regularity, man is still in search of this true
constant speed. Where to search for it is a question specifically
pertaining to mathematical physics. I fail to see, however, how
uncertainty as to where time is to be found can affect its
original definition.
The late Hermann Weyl, an outstanding mathematician,
declared that “the first step in explaining relativity theory must
always consist in shattering the dogmatic belief in the temporal
terms past, present, future. You cannot apply Mathematics as
long as words becloud reality.11 There is a sense in which this is
so. But will his statement be true if interpreted to mean that the
time of mathematical physics has nothing at all to do with time
as first named? Weyl was too good a philosopher to adhere
consistently to such an interpretation of his words.
There is a great deal of equivocation about the relation of the
familiar world to the scientific one. Some writers seem to
argue, either that the one has nothing to do with the other, or
that only the “scientific world” is true. According to Max Born,

21
and I think he is right, Eddington was prone to over-stress,
especially in his analogies, the role of mental construction in
physics and did not sufficiently emphasize as Einstein had, the
fact that such construction is utterly empty unless related to
experience as the first and ultimate norm. The essential point is
that the familiar elephant and the scientific one are not in
different worlds: the scientific one does not banish the one who
slides down the grassy hillside. If, for the solution of a given
problem, the elephant can be replaced by two tons of a
something else, this only goes to show that the problem was not
about the elephant, but about two tons of whatever you choose.
The elephant may have disappeared from our consideration; he
has not disappeared from reality
Eddington made a good point, of course. Still, our
indebtedness to him should not allow us to forget that whatever
slides down his grassy slope will be a thing of some kind or
another, but decidedly not a pointer-reading. There is no reason
why physics should deprive zoology of elephants, even though
some biologists seem to believe zoology must eventually
surrender to them despite protests from ranking physicists who
would not know what to do with elephants as such.

Professor Max Born has stated our case well:

Physicists form their notions through the interpretation of

experiments. This method may rightly be called Natural
Philosophy, a word still used for physics at the Scottish
universities. In this sense I shall attempt to investigate the
concepts of cause and chance in these lectures. My material
will be taken mainly from physics, but I shall try to regard it
with the attitude of the philosopher, and I hope that the
results obtained will be of use wherever the concepts of cause
and chance are applied. I know that such an attempt will not
find favor with some philosophers, who maintain that science
teaches only a narrow aspect of the world, and one which is
of no great importance to man’s mind. It is true that many

22
 scientists are not philosophically minded and have hitherto
shown much skill and ingenuity but little wisdom. I need
hardly to enlarge on this subject. The practical applications of
science have given us the means of a fuller and richer life,
but also the means of destruction and devastation on a vast
scale. Wise men would have considered the consequences of
their activities before starting on them; scientists have failed
to do so, and only recently have they become conscious of
their responsibilities to society. They have gained prestige as
men of action, but they have lost credit as philosophers.13

Born seems to be understanding wisdom in a practical, moral

sense. But I think he has more in mind than this. Practical
wisdom is one that follows upon awareness that man, being
what he is, cannot be looked upon indifferently by the
physicist, for the simple reason that the true physicist must be a
philosopher who realizes the limitations of his particular branch
of science. Belief that his part is the whole, or that it is a self-
contained whole, would be preposterously unscientific. What
Born means, as I understand it, is that, no matter how skillful or
ingenious, no one can be a true scientist without being a
philosopher. Nor does a man bear witness to a temperamentum
philosophicum if he does not realize that scientific investi-
gations, taken in the narrower sense we have described, help
the mind to escape from ignorance and, as Aristotle said,
“provide immense pleasure to all who can trace links of
causation, and are inclined to philosophy”. Indifference to the
phenomena of sun and moon, to bugs and elephants proves the
absence of philosophic temperament.
Why, then, has the wholly artificial distinction between
philosophy and science been so readily accepted? It has in
some measure been forced upon us by inevitable specialization,
or, to put it another way, by the limitations of the single brain.
But these limitations are not to be projected upon natural
science and its subject. The fact that no mathematician now
knows more than part of mathematics ought hardly be taken to

23
mean that the only subject of the science is confined to the part
that he knows. The knowability of a subject should not be
restricted to and identified with what a given man may actually
know of it with some exactness. This is another way of saying
that what is knowable as to us must not be confused with what
is knowable in itself.
The unscientific limitation just mentioned finds ample
illustration in the history of science. Let me quote an example
of what I here intend. It is again from Born. He has in mind
Laplace’s idea of causality, namely, that the future is wholly
predetermined in the past. “An unrestricted belief in this type of
causality leads necessarily to the idea that the world is an
automaton of which we ourselves are only little cogwheels.
This means materialistic determinism.” Such a generalization,
reared upon a still primitive astronomy, was unscientific, if
only because it ignored human responsibility. It was no doubt
an “idee claire et distincte,” yet, like most such ideas, utterly
lacking in wisdom, if only because it clashed with a hard
though intangible, fact of experience, just as obvious as the
succession of night and day. Hypotheses of this type are those
of a scientist gone mad or, if you wish, of a bad philosopher.
Are we to conclude from this that it is precisely the business of
the philosopher, as distinguished from the scientist, to defend
things such as human freedom, and to show that determinism is
an unsound hypothesis? I should say that the wise scientist too,
should know as much, since he does and must philosophize.
There is, nonetheless, a historical case for the distinction we
reject in principle. The man who putters in a laboratory may not
have time to concentrate upon the outcome of his convenient
generalizations. Yet there ought to be someone able to warn us
of logical consequences that clash with the whole of
experience. No one may possess a head big enough to contain
all the knowledge of nature now available; but general though
vague, knowledge we do have, knowledge which can be
explored up to a point without moving on to a further
concretion. To call attention to the extreme relevance of our

24
first and vague knowledge of reality, the sort that we express in
ordinary language, may be the self-imposed task of some
people, whom we call philosophers. Still, my contention is that
if, in this redirection of their work, they see anything more than
a limitation forced upon them by the shortcomings of the
human brain, they are projecting this limitation upon nature as
if real things stood in different worlds according as they are
seen by philosopher or scientist. Small wonder if minds
convinced of such a doctrine want to reduce all philosophy to a
hopeless metaphysics in the empty air of unqualified verbal
“being.” So far as I am concerned, I refuse to renounce myself
for a mere swarm of electrical charges, no matter how much I
may stand in need of them and know that I cannot exist without
them.
The need to bring out connections between our “common
concepts,” expressed by so-called “natural language,” and the
mathematical scheme of theoretical physics has been
felicitously stressed by Werner Heisenberg in his Gifford
Lectures. Remember the passage already quoted: “Even for the
physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of
the degree of understanding that has been reached.”14 If the
physicist’s knowledge were believed to be quite divorced from
common concepts and ordinary language, then we would of
course have the kind of scientist who is not a philosopher. Such
a scientist, I repeat, would not even be a true scientist, but a
mere tool.

Here is that relevant passage from Heisenberg’s Gifford

Lectures:

. . . One of the most important features of the development

and the analysis of modern physics is the experience that the
concepts of natural language, vaguely defined as they are,
seem to be more stable in the expression of knowledge than
the precise terms of scientific language, derived as an
idealization from only limited groups of phenomena. This is

25
in fact not surprising since the concepts of natural language
are formed by the immediate connection with reality; they
represent reality. It is true that they are not very well defined
and may therefore also undergo changes in the course of the
centuries, just as reality itself did, but they never lose the
immediate connection with reality. On the other hand, the
scientific concepts are idealizations; they are derived from
experience obtained by refined experimental tools, and are
precisely defined through axioms and definitions. Only
through these precise definitions is it possible to connect the
concepts with a mathematical scheme and to derive math-
ematically the infinite variety of possible phenomena in this
field. But through this process of idealization and precise
definition the immediate connection with reality is lost. The
concepts still correspond very closely to reality in that part of
nature which had been the object of the research. But the
correspondence may be lost in other parts containing other
groups of phenomena.
Keeping in mind the intrinsic stability of the concepts of
natural language in the process of scientific development, one
sees that—after the experience of modern physics—our
attitude toward concepts like mind or the human soul or life
or God will be different from that of the nineteenth century,
because these concepts belong to the natural language and
have therefore immediate connection with reality. It is true
that we will also realize that these concepts are not well
defined in the scientific sense and that their application may
lead to various contradictions, for the time being we may
have to take the concepts, unanalyzed as they are; but still we
know that they touch reality. It may be useful in this connec-
tion to remember that even in the most precise part of
science, in mathematics, we cannot avoid using concepts that
involve contradictions. For instance, it is well known that the
concept of infinity leads to contradictions that have been
analyzed, but it would be practically impossible to construct
the main parts of mathematics without this concept.

26
 The general trend of human thinking in the nineteenth
century had been toward an increasing confidence in the
scientific method and in precise rational terms, and had led to
a general skepticism with regard to those concepts of natural
language which do not fit into the closed frame of scientific
thought — for instance, those of religion. Modern physics
has in many ways increased this skepticism; but it has at the
same time turned it against the overestimation of precise
scientific concepts, against a too optimistic view on progress
in general, and finally against skepticism itself. The
skepticism against precise scientific concepts does not mean
that there should be a definite limitation for the application of
rational thinking. On the contrary, one may say that the
human ability to understand may be in a certain sense
unlimited. But the existing scientific concepts cover always
only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has
not yet been understood is infinite. Whenever we proceed
from the known into the unknown we may hope to
understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new
meaning of the word “understanding.” We know that any
understanding must be based finally upon the natural
language because it is only there that we can be certain to
touch reality, and hence we must be skeptical about any
skepticism with regard to this natural language and its
essential concepts. Therefore, we may use these concepts as
they have been used at all times. In this way modern physics
has perhaps opened the door to a wider outlook on the
relation between the human mind and reality.15

Heisenberg has made our point. He has described for us the

full meaning of natural philosophy. Having started with the
concepts of natural language as we move on into the realm of
symbolic construction controlled by the test of experience, we
must be constantly ready to sweep into reverse, as it were, lest
contact with reality be lost. In doing so we will use ordinary
language, whose concepts appear more stable than the precise

27
terms of “scientific” knowledge. If we keep the total aim of
natural science in view, symbolic terms are inadequate: to
isolate them from the concepts of natural language is to divorce
them from nature and therefore from real science.
Bertrand Russell, in Human Knowledge, conveyed the same
idea, though he seems to forget it when he declares ‘Mr. Smith’
to be no more than a collective name for a mere bundle of
occurrences. Here is the passage in question:

All nominal definitions, if pushed back far enough, must lead

ultimately to terms having only ostensive definitions, and in
the case of an empirical science the empirical terms must
depend upon terms of which the ostensive definition is given
in perception. The Astronomer’s sun, for instance, is very
different from what we see, but it must have a definition
derived from the ostensive definition of the word ‘sun’ which
we learnt in childhood. Thus an empirical interpretation of a
set of axioms, when complete, must always involve the use
of terms which have an ostensive definition derived from
sensible experience. It will not, of course, contain only such
terms, for there will always be logical terms; but it is the
presence of terms derived from experience that makes an
interpretation empirical.
The question of interpretation has been unduly neglected.
So long as we remain in the region of mathematical formulae,
everything appears precise, but when we seek to interpret
them it turns out that the precision is partly illusory. Until
this matter has been cleared up, we cannot tell with any
exactitude what any given science is asserting.16

There is no doubt that our view is not popular among

contemporary scholastics. It appears so much more simple to
have a neat set of theses called philosophy of nature, and to
relegate more concrete investigations to the “scientists.” But
such a distinction is a purely pragmatic one, and merely reflects

28
the impossibility for an individual to work in all the fields of
this one subject, natural science.
The bewildering progress of natural science reveals not only
the bottomless depths of nature and the ineffable variety of
nature’s works shows, at the same time, the unexpected
limitations of any human mind, and the devious modes of
knowing it must resort to, even in the study of things
immediately around us. Still, to enquire what any object of
nature is, and to pursue the enquiry down to the last detail, is
surely a pursuit which deserves to be called philosophy. To
answer such a question, all the branches of natural science
should be brought into play, and each of these remains open to
infinity. At least this much we know.
1. Physics, Bk. I, ch. 1, 184al7-184bl4.
2. My Philosophical Development (New York, 1959) p. 133.
3. On the Parts of Animals, Bk. 1, ch. 5, 645a-25. Cf. On the Heavens, II, 12, 291b25.
4. In I Anal. Post., 1.5.
5. In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a.3.
6. “Nam geometria considerat quidem de linea quae habet essc in materia sensibili, quae est
linea naturalis: non tamen considerat de ea in quantum est in materia sensibili, secundum
quod est naturalis, sed abstracte, ut dictum est. Sed perspectiva e converso accipit lineam
abstractam secundum quod est in consideratione mathematici, et applicat eam ad materiam
sensibilem; et sic determinat de ea non inquantum est mathematica, sed inquantum est
physica.” In II Phy., 1. 5.
7. Ibid.— It is true that physic-mathematical sciences are sometimes called species scientiae
mathematicae. But this does not mean that they are a species of a genus in the way animal is
a species of body. As St. Thomas explains: “Interdum tamen dicitur aliquid esse species
alicujus generis propter hoc quod habet aliquid extraneum, ad quod applicatur generis
ratio.... Et simili modo loquendi dicuntur astrologia et perspectiva species mathematicae,
inquantum principia mathematica applicantur materiam naturalem.” Summa Theol. I-II, 35,
8.
8. The word “generically’’ is used because of mathematics which, when considered as
science in the strict sense of this term, is twofold, namely arithmetic and geometry, each of
which has its own mode of defining without sensible matter.
9. Cf. my “Abstraction from Matter,” in Laval theologique et philosophique, XIII
(1957) 133-196; XVI (1960) 53-69.
10. Physics and Philosophy, (New York,1958), p. 168.
11. “The Mathematical Way of Thinking.” Science, XCII (1940), 439.
12. Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance, (Oxford, 1949) pp. 1-20.
13. Born, op. cit., p.3.
14. By “natural language” Prof. Heisenberg does not mean a language that is natural to us as
our organs of speech are natural, as if nature provided us with a language the way that she
produces feet and brain. Unless we call the grunts and groans of man or beast “language,”
this term refers to artifacts that signify by convention. Using ordinary language we should
always be able to refer its words back to common knowledge of things first known, a
knowledge which may lead us to further knowledge of things, requiring either new

29
 impositions upon words already in use, nor even, simply, a new word. An example of a new
imposition would be the word “soul,” which first meant breeze or breath; an instance of a
new word is “God”—no matter what its etymological origin—for God can be known only at
the term of a discourse, and once known we impose the name as entirely proper to Him. I do
not mean that in doing so we spell out a new word. The point is that in virtue of the
imposition the name now has a single meaning incommunicable to anything else, except by
metaphor.
15. Op. cit., pp. 200-201.
16. Human Knowledge (London, 1948), p. 2516.

n. 3. Charles De Koninck, The Hollow Universe, Ch. III, “The

Lifeless World of Biology”. p. 84:
Of all our normal language it is true that, whether its words be
used as metaphors, given new meanings, or meanings long
worn out and now revived, they still imply reference to
something already known, something that may be quite certain,
no matter how fuzzy at the edges.1
1
All analogical terms are examples of what is meant. Take, for
instance, the Greek ‘logos’, several of whose meanings are
retained in our word ‘reason’. Prescinding here from the
historical order of its various impositions, logos first stands for
the conventionally meaningful sounds or written signs
produced by man for the purpose of communication: words,
phrases, and speech, as distinguished from the thought they are
intended to convey. Then it can mean the thought itself which
the sounds are aimed to express. It was further imposed to
mean what the thought names, and, again, the definition or
‘what it is that the name signifies’. It may also mean
proposition, argument, discussion, discourse, or treatise. Finally
it has other abstract meanings such as ‘notion’, e.g. the notion
of circle; or the reason or ground for something, as in
‘Xanthippe threw a pail of water on Socrates for the reason that
he came home too late’, or ‘the flat triangle has its three angles
equal to two right angles for the reason that its exterior angle is
equal to the opposite interior angles’. The same word was again
extended to mean the power of reason, the faculty; then, too,
the exercise of this power, as in judgement, opinion,
justification, explanation. It can also mean proportion, rule, and
30
 hypothesis. But the first imposition remains throughout
important, inasmuch as the plain, unqualified, unanalysed
meaning of ‘word’ is more known to us, while all the other
meanings of ‘logos’ are somehow related to this first one.

N.B. One should also consult Dr. De Koninck’s paper “Abstraction

from Matter”.

2. The common conceptions of the understanding: Three

Sources of Philosophy.
n. 4. Charles De Koninck, “Three Sources of Philosophy”
(Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association, The Catholic University of America,
Washington, DC, 1964, pp. 13-17):

Discussing the fact that we first say all of three—of only two
we say both—St. Thomas observes that we follow this way of
speaking because conceptions that are commonly held by all
proceed from an inclination of nature that is prior to any
deliberate and constructive endeavour to learn. This
constructive endeavour gives rise to proper conceptions—
propriae conceptiones uniuscujusque—and a way of speaking
appropriate to these.1 Other examples of common conceptions
would be those gathered under the word one, for instance; or
being, or same. What we call movement, or place, or time are
conceptions narrower in scope but still common. Ordinary
language holds a vast number of such conceptions, and reveals
distinctions not always easily accounted for. As Heisenberg
observes, we do not speak of a piece of water, at least not in the
same sense in which we speak of a piece of bread. Paul Valery
wrote: “Every man knows a prodigious amount of things, of
which he does not know that he knows them….” This search

31
alone exhausts philosophy….” Valery’s remark may be an
exaggeration, yet it is an instructive one….

Proper conceptions can become hopelessly out of touch with

the common ones which should engender them, and the gulf
between the former and the latter can even become infinite,
inasmuch as [13-14]
1
In I de Coelo, lect. 2.

the possibilities of defining something badly or inadequately

are as countless as the ways of missing a target…. And I take as
examples the distance between motion, infinity, place and time
as we first know and name them on the one hand, and on the
other, the definitions we compose to bring home to us more
distinctly what these things are. Whereas the definiendum is a
common conception, the definition, expressing more distinctly
what the thing is, is a proper conception whose value must
depend upon what is already vaguely known….

Conceptions are called common not only because they are

commonly held by all but also because of an intrinsic
commonness that explains why they are proportionately vague
or confused. The things we are most certain of, whether
expressed by word or proposition, are less exactly known in
direct proportion to our greater and greater certitude….
As was suggested above, there is a direct proportion between
the [14-15] inescapable certitude of the things most commonly
yet most vaguely known and the difficulty of defining or
describing them. Yet, if we did not have such preexistent
knowledge, we would ask no question about anything, nor
would we communicate with one another except by sniffs and
grunts.
The reason for the difficulty of reflection upon our common
conceptions is that, while most known to us, they are least
knowable in themselves, just as what is most knowable in itself

32
 is least knowable to us—except in mathematics. For instance,
as St. Thomas explains, “this name act, which is posited to
signify actuality and completeness, namely form, and the like,
such as the act of any sort of operation whatever, is derived, as
to the origin of the term, chiefly from motion. Since words are
signs of intelligible conceptions, we first impose names upon
the things we first know, even though these be posterior in the
order of nature. Now among all other acts, the one that is most
known and apparent to us is motion, as known to us sensibly.
Hence it is upon this act the name act was first imposed, and
from motion it was extended to other things.”
As we move away from first and common conceptions and
from such earlier meanings of words, we become more
engaged, as we should, in proper conceptions and expressions
appropriate to them. But the crucial point is that our proper
conceptions, no matter how good and true, should never be
divorced from, and then substituted for, the common ones….

[15-16]
1
In II Meta., lect. 3.*

Yet it is precisely our common conceptions that are

sometimes called trivial, on the foolish assumption that what all
in fact agree upon can be of no importance and must be
irrelevant to the high pursuits of philosophy. It is true that if we
shut ourselves rigidly within notions or propositions “quae
communiter cadunt in conceptione cujuslibet intellectus” we
shall never begin to philosophize. But philosophy nevertheless
depends upon knowledge that is prior to and independent of
philosophy. Should we attempt to cut ourselves loose from the
common conceptions, drifting away from our moorings, we
shall soon find ourselves trapped in verbiage and, in the
inescapable terms of common conceptions, forever arguing

*
N.B. The correct reference is to Book IX, lect. 3; see further below. I give the text with my own translation
elsewhere.

33
against their relevance—much as the person holding that all
statements are false, or that all is contingent, cannot escape the
implication that this statement likewise must be false, or that
not all things are contingent, since at least the statement that all
things are contingent is held to be necessary by the one who
makes it….

The distinction between common and proper conceptions

allows us to define what a philosophical ‘system’ is and,
accordingly, how to construct one. As Spinoza and Hegel
understood it, a philosophical system is one that starts from
proper conceptions as if they could be substituted for common
ones. This approach has the apparent advantage of a freedom to
which we may never lay claim so long as we must insist on the
priority of common conceptions. But, after committing
ourselves to the wrong sort of beginning, we can indulge in
endless acrobatics within our heads, regardless of awkward
fact. Definitions now become arbitrary. We choose our
definitions and follow through by assuming the reality of the
definita we have posited by defining. Now, once something
second is taken as first, we can fabricate as many philosophical
systems as we please. If, for instance, we substituted Aristotle’s
definition of motion for what the definition defines and then
forgot all about the definiendum, we would at once have
materials for a system….

[16-17]

In other words, when a name that stands for a common

conception is thereafter used for its elaborated definition as if
the definition henceforth became its first and sole meaning, we
are on the way to a system, and the first and final term of
resolution would be to that name, divorced from what we really
know before inquiry. We would in fact have as many
irreducible systems as there are languages, and within each

34
language there would be as many systems as there are diverse
meanings of the words referred to in that way….
Meanwhile, we maintain the common conceptions as the first
inescapable source of philosophy for the reason that “in
hujusmodi principiis stat omnium demonstrationum resolutio.”1
1
In Boethii de Hebdomadibus, lect. 1.

35
Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In I de Coelo, lect. 2, n. 13 (tr. Larcher &
Conway):

13. Thirdly, he proves at [8] the same by appealing to the

general way we speak. And he says that we even assign names
to things according to the aforementioned method, in which
perfection agrees with the number 3. For when there are two
things, we say “both,” – thus we speak of two men as “both” –
but we do not say “all,” which we use for the first time in the
case of three. And we all in general use this way of speaking,
because nature so inclines us. For whatever is peculiar to
individuals in their way of speaking seems to arise from the
particular conceptions of each, but what is generally observed
among all would seem to arise from natural inclination.1

Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In IX Meta., lect. 3, n. 11 (tr. Charles De

Koninck):

(And he says that) this name act, which is posited to signify

actuality and completeness, namely form, and the like, such as
the act of any sort of operation whatever, is derived, as to the
origin of the term, chiefly from motion. Since words are signs
of intelligible conceptions, we first impose names upon the
things we first know, even though these be posterior in the
order of nature. Now among all other acts, the one that is most
known and apparent to us is motion, as known to us sensibly.
Hence it is upon this act the name act was first imposed, and
from motion it was extended to other things.2

1
tertio ibi: assignamus autem etc., probat idem per communem usum loquendi. et dicit quod etiam
assignamus vocabula rebus secundum modum praedictum, quo scilicet perfectio competit ternario. si enim
aliqua sunt duo, dicimus quod sint ambo, et duos homines dicimus ambos: non autem de his dicimus omnes,
sed primo hoc vocabulo utimur circa tres. et istum modum loquendi sequimur communiter omnes, propter
hoc quod natura ad hoc nos inclinat. ea enim quae sunt propria singulis in modo loquendi, videntur
provenire ex propriis conceptionibus uniuscuiusque: sed id quod observatur communiter apud omnes,
videtur ex naturali inclinatione provenire.
2
secundo ibi, venit autem ostendit quid sit esse in actu; et dicit, quod hoc nomen actus, quod ponitur ad
significandum endelechiam et perfectionem, scilicet formam, et alia huiusmodi, sicut sunt quaecumque
operationes, veniunt maxime ex motibus quantum ad originem vocabuli. cum enim nomina sint signa
intelligibilium conceptionum, illis primo imponimus nomina, quae primo intelligimus, licet sint posteriora

36
 §

3. The method of knowing.

n. 5. Charles De Koninck, “The Unity and Diversity of Natural
Science,” Mélanges à là Memoire de Charles De Koninck, pp. 5-
25 (excerpt):
The need to bring out connections between our “common
concepts,” expressed by so-called “natural language,” and the
mathematical scheme of theoretical physics has been
felicitously stressed by Werner Heisenberg in his Gifford
Lectures. Remember the passage already quoted: “Even for the
physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of
the degree of understanding that has been reached.”14 If the
physicist’s knowledge were believed to be quite divorced from
common concepts and ordinary language, then we would of
course have the kind of scientist who is not a philosopher. Such
a scientist, I repeat, would not even be a true scientist, but a
mere tool.

Here is that relevant passage from Heisenberg’s Gifford

Lectures:

. . . One of the most important features of the development

and the analysis of modern physics is the experience that the
concepts of natural language, vaguely defined as they are,
seem to be more stable in the expression of knowledge than
the precise terms of scientific language, derived as an
idealization from only limited groups of phenomena. This is
in fact not surprising since the concepts of natural language
are formed by the immediate connection with reality; they
represent reality. It is true that they are not very well defined
and may therefore also undergo changes in the course of the
secundum ordinem naturae. inter alios autem actus, maxime est nobis notus et apparens motus, qui
sensibiliter a nobis videtur. et ideo ei primo impositum fuit nomen actus, et a motu ad alia derivatum est.

37
centuries, just as reality itself did, but t hey never lose the
immediate connection with reality. On the other hand, the
scientific concepts are idealizations; they are derived from
experience obtained by refined experimental tools, and are
precisely defined through axioms and definitions. Only
through these precise definitions is it possible to connect the
concepts with a mathematical scheme and to derive math-
ematically the infinite variety of possible phenomena in this
field. But through this process of idealization and precise
definition the immediate connection with reality is lost. The
concepts still correspond very closely to reality in that part of
nature which had been the object of the research. But the
correspondence may be lost in other parts containing other
groups of phenomena.
Keeping in mind the intrinsic stability of the concepts of
natural language in the process of scientific development, one
sees that—after the experience of modern physics—our
attitude toward concepts like mind or the human soul or life
or God will be different from that of the nineteenth century,
because these concepts belong to the natural language and
have therefore immediate connection with reality. It is true
that we will also realize that these concepts are not well
defined in the scientific sense and that their application may
lead to various contradictions, for the time being we may
have to take the concepts, unanalyzed as they are; but still we
know that they touch reality. It may be useful in this connec-
tion to remember that even in the most precise part of
science, in mathematics, we cannot avoid using concepts that
involve contradictions. For instance, it is well known that the
concept of infinity leads to contradictions that have been
analyzed, but it would be practically impossible to construct
the main parts of mathematics without this concept.
The general trend of human thinking in the nineteenth
century had been toward an increasing confidence in the
scientific method and in precise rational terms, and had led to
a general skepticism with regard to those concepts of natural

38
 language which do not fit into the closed frame of scientific
thought — for instance, those of religion. Modern physics
has in many ways increased this skepticism; but it has at the
same time turned it against the overestimation of precise
scientific concepts, against a too optimistic view of progress
in general, and finally against skepticism itself. The
skepticism against precise scientific concepts does not mean
that there should be a definite limitation for the application of
rational thinking. On the contrary, one may say that the
human ability to understand may be in a certain sense
unlimited. But the existing scientific concepts cover always
only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has
not yet been understood is infinite. Whenever we proceed
from the known into the unknown we may hope to
understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new
meaning of the word “understanding.” We know that any
understanding must be based finally upon the natural
language because it is only there that we can be certain to
touch reality, and hence we must be skeptical about any
skepticism with regard to this natural language and its
essential concepts. Therefore, we may use these concepts as
they have been used at all times. In this way modern physics
has perhaps opened the door to a wider outlook on the
relation between the human mind and reality.15

Heisenberg has made our point. He has described for us the

full meaning of natural philosophy. Having started with the
concepts of natural language as we move on into the realm of
symbolic construction controlled by the test of experience, we
must be constantly ready to sweep into reverse, as it were, lest
contact with reality be lost. In doing so we will use ordinary
language, whose concepts appear more stable than the precise
terms of “scientific” knowledge. If we keep the total aim of
natural science in view, symbolic terms are inadequate: to
isolate them from the concepts of natural language is to divorce
them from nature and therefore from real science.

39
 Bertrand Russell, in Human Knowledge, conveyed the same
idea, though he seems to forget it when he declares ‘Mr. Smith’
to be no more than a collective name for a mere bundle of
occurrences. Here is the passage in question:

All nominal definitions, if pushed back far enough, must lead

ultimately to terms having only ostensive definitions, and in
the case of an empirical science the empirical terms must
depend upon terms of which the ostensive definition is given
in perception. The Astronomer’s sun, for instance, is very
different from what we see, but it must have a definition
derived from the ostensive definition of the word ‘sun’ which
we learnt in childhood. Thus an empirical interpretation of a
set of axioms, when complete, must always involve the use
of terms which have an ostensive definition derived from
sensible experience. It will not, of course, contain only such
terms, for there will always be logical terms; but it is the
presence of terms derived from experience that makes an
interpretation empirical.
The question of interpretation has been unduly neglected.
So long as we remain in the region of mathematical formulae,
everything appears precise, but when we seek to interpret
them it turns out that the precision is partly illusory. Until
this matter has been cleared up, we cannot tell with any
exactitude what any given science is asserting.16

There is no doubt that our view is not popular among

contemporary scholastics. It appears so much more simple to
have a neat set of theses called philosophy of nature, and to
relegate more concrete investigations to the “scientists.” But
such a distinction is a purely pragmatic one, and merely reflects
the impossibility for an individual to work in all the fields of
this one subject, natural science.
The bewildering progress of natural science reveals not only
the bottomless depths of nature and the ineffable variety of
nature’s works shows, at the same time, the unexpected

40
limitations of any human mind, and the devious modes of
knowing it must resort to, even in the study of things
immediately around us. Still, to enquire what any object of
nature is, and to pursue the enquiry down to the last detail, is
surely a pursuit which deserves to be called philosophy. To
answer such a question, all the branches of natural science
should be brought into play, and each of these remains open to
infinity. At least this much we know.

<…>

14. By “natural language” Prof. Heisenberg does not mean a

language that is natural to us as our organs of speech are
natural, as if nature provided us with a language the way that
she produces feet and brain. Unless we call the grunts and
groans of man or beast “language,” this term refers to artifacts
that signify by convention. Using ordinary language we should
always be able to refer its words back to common knowledge of
things first known, a knowledge which may lead us to further
knowledge of things, requiring either new impositions upon
words already in use, nor even, simply, a new word. An
example of a new imposition would be the word “soul,” which
first meant breeze or breath; an instance of a new word is
“God”—no matter what its etymological origin—for God can
be known only at the term of a discourse, and once known we
impose the name as entirely proper to Him. I do not mean that
in doing so we spell out a new word. The point is that in virtue
of the imposition the name now has a single meaning
incommunicable to anything else, except by metaphor.
15. Op. cit., pp. 200-201.
16. Human Knowledge (London, 1948), p. 2516.
§

41
n. 6. Charles De Koninck, “Introduction to the Study of the
Soul”. Preface to Stanislas Cantin, Précis de psychologie
thomiste (Quebec: Laval University, 1948) (Eng. tr. Bruno M.
Mon-dor, O.P.):
I. THE STUDY OF THE SOUL AND THE STUDY OF
LIVING THINGS

If one deviates slightly from the truth in the beginning, the

deviation will increase thousands of times as a natural
consequence. That is why one must never pass cursorily over
the preliminaries of a doctrine, or presume that they are
sufficiently known; they merit, on the contrary, all our
attention….
We suppose as known the principal problems touching
mobile being in general and its major divisions: mobility
according to place, which is the most common; and mobility
according to quantity, which is restricted to animated beings.
Aristotle has discussed the principles and properties of mobile
being and its major divisions, in general, in the book the
Physics. The De Caelo et Mundo and the De Generatione et
Corruptione study in particular the two first species of
mobility. These last two works which treat of subjects, the
study of which demands very circumstantial experience, and of
which many of the theories remain more or less provisional, are
in a great measure outdated and replaced by physics and
chemistry; whereas the books of the Physics, insofar as they do
not resort to phenomena and to theories which depend upon
subsequent treatises are impervious to time.
You are beginning at present the study of the third species of
mobility, that of the animated mobile being, of the living body,
and behold! the first difficulty is raised on the subject of the
very title of this treatise. The word psychology signifies that it
is indeed the soul, and not the living or animated mobile being,
which is the object of this discourse, of this treatise. The books
of the Physics had for their subject mobile being as such, the
De Caelo treated of mobile body; the De Generatione et
42
Corruptione, of things which come into being and perish at the
term of a movement according to quality, called alteration.
Nevertheless, the treatise on the soul studies at first onset not
the animated mobile being, the living body, but resolutely that
which is in short only a principle of the natural living beings:
their proper and intrinsic principle which we agree to call the
soul. Wouldn’t it be convenient to consider and define in the
first place the natural living being in general, and then to show
what is the characteristic of its form? The general properties of
living bodies as such once established, those of the soul in
particular would secondly be sought.
It is, however, in the inverse order that one ought to proceed,
as St. Thomas expressly affirms. The study of living things
ought to begin from the study of the soul in itself, and it is only
in the last place that the general consideration of living things
can be entered upon: “But in the last place is ordered the book
which pertains to the common consideration of living things”.
Such is the order to be followed, and for a very good reason.
From the outset of his commentary on the De Anima, St.
Thomas says that it is necessary to consider first the things
which are common to all animated beings; now what is first
common to all animated beings is the soul: “for in this they all
agree”. And yet, at first sight, this reason leaves a doubt. In
fact, couldn’t be said just as well, if not better, that which all
these species of living things have in common, is that they are
living beings? Let us not forget, however, that we are here in
the philosophy of nature: we are studying natural things. Now,
among the latter, “there are some which are simply bodies and
magnitudes, just as stones and other inanimate things; others
have a body and magnitude, just as plants and animals, and
their principal part is the soul—likewise it is more according to
the soul than according to the body that these things are what
they are”. Therefore, that by which living bodies are what they
are, is not the common attribute of living, but that very thing in
virtue of which we call them, more precisely, animated things.

43
 But that increases the difficulty. In order not to be obliged to
repeat with respect to each species all that each species has in
common with the others, science must very reasonably treat in
the first place about that which is common—as much as
possible. We say “as much as possible” for, on the one hand
science must begin with what is most known by us, and on the
other hand, what is most common is not always the most
known. For example, there are without doubt, some elements
common to all natural beings; but in the course of history, all
that the sciences have taken for elements (for the ancients water
and earth, air and fire) could have always been resolved into
more primitive entities, since in all strictness elements must be
understood as “the things into which bodies are ultimately
divided, while they are no longer divided into other things
differing in kind”. On the other hand, it is very necessary that
this most common thing, with which a science begins, be also
the most known by us. But, how could it be affirmed that, of all
living beings, it is the soul which is known first, when its
existence has been denied by so many persons among whom
are numbered philosophers and savants of renown? And
wouldn’t honest folk be astonished if they were told that the
carrot has a soul and this is not a metaphor?

<…>

V. THE ORDER TO BE FOLLOWED IN THE STUDY OF

LIVING THINGS

.…Since the forms and the operations of the living things that
surround us are of a great diversity, the souls that are their
principles ought also to be diversified. And in that case, which
one ought we to study first? We fear that the answer will come
to us too promptly. Indeed, we have learned for a long time that
science ought to proceed from the general to the particular, but
we doubt whether the sense of this principle of method is
always understood and whether its import is always seen. There

44
is, it is true, the reason of economy: in order not to have to
repeat for each of the multiple species all that they have in
common among themselves, it is better to study the communia
at the beginning, once and for all. But we have already pointed
out that this question is not so simple. Since it is here a question
of apprenticeship, it is necessary that the common things be at
the same time most knowable for us. Furthermore, that the first
data may be easier to know, it does not follow that their study
and the research of the common properties to be defined and to
be demonstrated will be equally easy. It is precisely in the
doctrine touching upon these common things that the errors are
very numerous and consequently very widespread. We get a
clear idea, in studying the Physics, that if the fact of movement
is easy to ascertain, and very certain, “it is difficult to see in
what it consists,” just as modern philosophy never ceases to
prove. The disagreement on the most elementary notions is so
radical that most of the learned men turn away from them
(when they do not declare them vain) in order to apply
themselves then and there to the particular: the “fundamental
problem of movement” becomes, then, a problem of mechanics
which begins with the law of inertia; the science of life begins,
not with the study of the soul, but with cytology, the previous
question being useless, insoluble, reserved to the philosophy
which searches in a dark room for a black cat that is not there—
as has been said of Metaphysics. It must be admitted,
nevertheless, that this process has borne some fruit.
What order is to be observed in the study of the living,
conforming to the method which St. Thomas calls processus in
determinando, in opposition to processus in demonstrando? For
the reason given above, we do not consider first of all the living
as such, but rather that in virtue of which it is living, namely,
the soul. It is, therefore, the soul, envisaged in all its generality,
according to its “communissima ratio”, that we will seek to
define first. Then, “we ought not to content ourselves with the
common definition, but seek the proper definition of each part
of the soul.… Consequently, for each species of animated

45
being, it is necessary to seek what is its soul; in order to know
what is the soul of the plant, what is the soul of man, and what
is the soul of the beast”.
It is with a purpose that we asked ourselves what order is to
be observed in the study of the “living”, and not only the soul.
The treatise on the soul, in fact, is only the first part of the
study of the living. In his commentary on the De Sensu et
Sensato which is placed immediately after the treatise on the
soul, St. Thomas outlines the study of the living: the
Philosopher “begins the teaching of natural science by starting
with that which is most common to all things of nature, namely,
movement and the principle of movement: then in the end, he
proceeds by the mode of concretion, that is to say, of
application of the principles common to determined mobile
things, some of which are living bodies. With these he begins
again the same procedure, dividing his study into three parts: in
the first, he considers the soul in itself, as if he were studying it
in an abstract manner; in the second, he studies the things of the
soul in a concrete manner, that is, through the mode of
application to the body, but by adhering to the generalities; in
the third, he applies all these considerations to each species of
animals and of plants, by determining what is proper to each
species. The first of these studies is contained in the book De
Anima; the third, in the books De Animalibus et Plantis. With
regard to the intermediate study, it is found included in the
books which he wrote on the subject of things which belong
commonly to either all living animals, or to several genera of
animals, or even to all the living: this is the object of the
present treatise”.…

VI. THE PROCESS OF CONCRETION IN THE STUDY OF

LIVING THINGS

The process in determinando is the order which we follow in

the consideration of the different subjects and principles of a
science insofar as they are more known by us. Now, that which

46
is most known by us and more certain is the confused. Thus it
is that we notice first of all that this object is a figure, that it is a
closed curve, and finally that it is an ellipse. Likewise, man is
known first as an animal. We find this order, as much in
intellectual knowledge as in sensible knowledge. As long as we
know the ellipse solely as a figure or as a closed curve, we do
not distinguish it from the other species of figures, or of closed
curves; as long as man is not known in that which distinguishes
him from the beast, our knowledge is confused.
But this confused knowledge is also more common, more
universal: for the polygon is equally a figure, the circle is a
closed curve, and the horse is an animal. Likewise in science,
we consider things according to that which, in them, is first of
all more known, to go thus by degrees toward that which is
more knowable in itself: for, manifestly, man is more knowable
in himself than animal, being animal and reasonable, he is more
distinct, more in act and consequently more knowable in
himself. We are advancing from subject to subject following
this order of community. In the science of nature, we try to
know in the first place what is proper to a thing insofar as it is
mobile, then what is true of it with regard to its mobility
according to place, etc. A last term of all this process would be,
for example, the study of the characteristic gait of the elephant.
Certainly, it would be impossible for one man to embrace the
vast domain which separates the consideration of the mobile
being and that of the flight of the dragonfly: that is, all the
natural sciences. Moreover, each of the multiple natural
sciences which already have to borrow from the field of the
others, can extend indefinitely in its own bosom. Such would
be, nevertheless, the order which he would have to observe in
order to have a well-ordered overall view.
The process in demonstrando also, is determined by the
principle that we ought to go from the more known to us to the
less known. But it differs from the first by the order which we
follow in the research and the demonstration of the properties
of a given subject. In the process in determinando we go from

47
the less determined subject to the more determined subject: we
seek to know first of all the nature and the properties of the soul
in general, and then the nature and the properties of its different
species: whereas the process of demonstration is the order
which is followed in the acquisition of the scientific knowledge
of a given subject. While the first process is common to all the
sciences, the second can vary from one science to the other and
even according to the different parts of one science. Thus
mathematics and the physico-mathematic sciences demonstrate
through the formal cause alone; natural science applies itself,
besides, to knowing things by that of which they are made, by
that which makes them, and by the good which moves the agent
to produce them. The entire book II of the Physics is
consecrated to this part of the general method of the study of
nature which we call the process of demonstration, but each
treatise will have besides its particular procedure. Thus it is that
in mathematics, where the most known by us can, from the
point of view of demonstration, be identified, in principle, with
the most known in itself, the demonstrations will be a priori:
the reasons given by us are at the same time the first reasons in
themselves. But in natural science most of the proofs remain a
posteriori. The first demonstration which you will learn in the
present treatise is precisely of this sort: the soul is the first act
by of a natural body endowed with organs, because it is “that
by which” and “primarily”, we live, feel, move and think. The
process in demonstrando consists, therefore, in no wise in
bridging the gap between the different subjects of the process in
determinando as if, from the nature and the properties of the
soul envisaged in all its generalities, the nature and the
properties of the species were able to be inferred. There is,
therefore, no cause to attribute to ourselves an Hegelian
method, which confuses the two processes.
The process in determinando is at the same time a process of
concretion. The universal, in fact, taken in the sense in which
we understand it in the present process, is compared to the
particulars of which it can be affirmed, like the abstract to the

48
concrete, like “movement” to “local movement”. At the
beginning—that is, as long as we are still in the general and
confused—we are far from the determination, from the
perfection, from the knowability proper to things. Through an
abstraction of this kind, our knowledge is very poor, and it is by
going gradually toward the specification of objects, toward
their ultimate distinction, their concretion, that science is
enriched. “In natural things”, says St. Thomas, “nothing is
perfect as long as it is in potency; a thing is absolutely perfect
when it is in ultimate act; in the intermediate state between pure
potency and pure act it is not absolutely, but relatively perfect.
Likewise for science. Now, the science which is had of a thing
only in general is not a complete science according to the
ultimate act; it is something intermediate between pure potency
and ultimate act. For he who knows a thing in general actually
knows something about that which is the proper reason of this
thing, but the rest, he knows only in potency. Likewise, he who
only knows man insofar as he is an animal only knows in act
one part of his definition, namely, the genus: the constitutive
differences of the species, he does not as yet know in act, but
only in potency. Whence it manifestly follows that the
complete science demands that we do not stop at generalities,
but that we proceed to the species…”
The proper being of things is, then, their ultimate difference,
which attracts us and liberates the intellect from this
indetermination of the universal. Science being the perfection
of the intellect that seeks this perfection, one naturally wishes
to know what makes a beaver a beaver; what makes a man,
man, with regard to all that distinguishes them from all other
things, body and soul. It is the author of the Metaphysics and of
the De Anima who wanted to know why dogs run obliquely. He
did not rest content with mobile being, nor with animated body,
nor with the beast, nor with the quadruped. And in this the
process of concretion consists. It is, therefore, in this direction,
so scorned by a certain type of philosophy, that the perfection
of science is to be found, as St. Thomas says when beginning

49
the study “of shooting stars, comets, rain and snow, lightening,
earthquakes, et alia hujusmodi”.

VII. THE TWO GENERA OF UNIVERSAL CAUSES IN

THE STUDY
OF LIVING THINGS.

In this process of concretion, to the relation of the universal to

the particular of which we have just spoken, is added another
which is in some way the inverse of the first. The more the
process approaches the distinct knowledge of the particular, the
more do we approach that very way to a universality which, in
distinction to universality in praedicando, is such [i.e.
universal] by its actuality, by its extreme determination which
embraces the multiple in its variety and its distinction. The
perfection of our knowledge of the universal in causando will
depend on the degree of distinction according to which we will
know the particular.
Let us remark first of all that if, from the point of view of
predication, the species is the subjective part of the potential
whole which is the genus, from another point of view, that of
distinct knowledge, the relation of the universal to the
particular is in some way inverted. The species, in fact, is in
itself an integral whole which contains the genus as a part. Thus
it is that man, who can be called animal, is more than an
animal; he is moreover reasonable. As long as we do not grasp
distinctly these actual parts, knowledge of the integral whole
remains confused, like that which we have of the subjective
parts of a potential whole. But from that moment when we
know them in a distinct manner, we grasp precisely this relation
upon which the species is more common than the genus. What,
in the first perspective, was envisaged as a whole is now a part;
the particular includes the more universal et amplius:
“according as the less common contains in its notion not only
the more common, but also other things, as man [contains] not
only animal, but also rational”.

50
 A number of modern philosophers would conclude from this
that here, then, is a part greater than its whole; so that the
principle of contradiction itself would be set aside. Yet, as we
have indicated, it is a question of totally different relations. In
effect, the unity of the genus which we predicate of man, of
horse, of the bee, etc., is purely logical; the predicable genus
animal has its form and its unity from reason which can abstract
from the differences, without which, nevertheless, it is
impossible to be, in reality, animal. There is not, therefore, in
nature, in addition to the form by which man is man, and that
by which the horse is horse, a common form by which the
different species of animals would be animals. The form by
which man is man, is at the same time the form by which he is
animal, and it is by its form of horse that the horse is animal.
Hence, to know the animal distinctly is to know it insofar as it
is man, or horse, or bee, etc. The universal whole which is the
same genus animal does not contain its parts in act, but only in
potency, and this is the reason why they are called subjective.
But if we said that it contains them only in potency and that the
potency is a potency for an act, we would point out that potency
in cause is defined precisely in the line of predication in which
the predicable is like a form in comparison to all that of which
it can be predicated. (Thus, in the attribution: man is an animal,
or: the horse is an animal, man and horse are subjects and
animal is the form.) In effect, from the point of view of the
things signified, this genus is founded upon the natures and it is
posterior to these; it is in the natures distinct according to their
ultimate form that actuality is found, but never in the genus
which owes its unity and its universality to the abstraction from
this actuality. As soon as we consider animal in the species, it is
no more than a part of a more comprehensive whole. Thus, the
species is not in any way an elaboration of the genus.
But shall we say, the genus which is found thus surpassed,
being no longer a form, but a subject—since man, for example,
is an animal by his form of man—is no longer, in this regard,
the predicable of other species; we have from that moment, not

51
withstanding, abandoned more comprehensive universality
which expresses the unity of innumerable species. It will be
added, perhaps that science ought precisely to surpass the
particular, in order to go towards an ever-greater universality,
free to return to the particular to view it from above as a
restricted concretion of the universal—participation.

We have not arbitrarily chosen this objection. It is fitting to

pause here in an introduction to the study of the soul. In the
first chapter of his treatise, Aristotle points out that “we must
be careful not to ignore the question whether the soul can be
defined in a single unambiguous formula, as is the case with
animal, or whether we must not give a separate formula for
each sort of it, as we do for horse, dog, man, god (in the latter
case the ‘universal’ animal—and so too every other ‘common
predicate’—being treated either as nothing at all or as a later
product)”. Now in this regard, St. Thomas recalls that in fact

the Platonists affirmed the existence of separated universals,

that is to say, of forms and ideas which were, for particular
things, causes of their existence and of knowledge (which we
have of them); for them, there existed a separated soul, a soul
in itself, which served as cause and idea to the particular
souls; from this came all that we find in these particular
souls. According to the philosophers of nature, on the
contrary, universals were only particular substances, and the
universals were nothing in reality. Thence the question: is it
necessary to seek only the common notion of the soul, as the
Platonists said, or the notion of this soul or of that soul, as the
philosophers of nature said, namely, the soul of the horse or
of the man, or of the God. (Aristotle) says “of God”, because
of the belief of those philosophers in the divinity of celestial
bodies which they said were animated.

Consequently, according to the conception of the Platonists,

the definition of the soul in general should signify at the same

52
time the very perfect and universal cause of all the species of
souls. So that, to the question: who makes shoes? the response:
the artisan, would be more pertinent than the response: the
cobbler. “Artisan” should signify more, it seems, since it can
equally be affirmed of the tailor, the mason, etc. There is,
therefore, a cause higher, anterior and universal, whereas the
cobbler is only a particular cause, proximate and proper. But
doesn’t it follow that the knowledge of the reason of things
becomes deeper in proportion as we rise to a more confused
generality? Indeed, the doctrine in question was not so simple,
and the Platonists would reply easily that the indetermination in
which this generality leaves us comes from the darkness of an
intellect imprisoned in a body.
We ought without doubt to inquire about the causes higher,
anterior and universal, as much as possible. But if more often
we should not know how to grasp them, yet it is necessary to be
aware of them. Be this as it may, we should take upon
ourselves the inverse direction of that which we have just
described. In fact, the expressions “cause higher”, “the
universal”, “proximate”, etc. are fundamentally equivocal. Thus
it is that “artisan”, in comparison to “carpenter”, is an anterior
cause, higher, universal, in the logical order, according to
predication, but not according to causality. In the example
given, universality only expresses the indetermination of our
knowledge of the cause. In reality, it is the proximate cause, the
art of the carpenter, which is the primary and supreme cause in
the order given.
When we affirm that science ought to seek to know things
through their primary, supreme, ultimate causes, it is manifestly
not a question of causes which are such in the order of
predication, which causes leave us in confusion with regard to
the proper nature of things. Nevertheless, in rejecting the
apparently easy conception of the Platonists, we must not
abandon at the same time the search for causes which are
universals in the very line of causality. For we have not
deceived ourselves that such causes exist and that in them we

53
will have a more perfect knowledge of particular things. Thus,
the art of the tailor is a particular cause and first in a given
order. But why this art? Why these garments? Why doesn’t
nature clothe us? We will find finally the primary reason in the
intellective soul which “ as comprehending universals, has a
power extending to the infinite; therefore it cannot be limited
by nature to certain fixed natural notions, or even to certain
fixed means, whether of defense or of clothing, as is the case
with other animals, the souls of which are endowed with
knowledge and power in regard to fixed particular things.
Instead of all these, man has by nature his reason and his hands,
which are the organs of organs (De Anima iii), since by their
means man can make for himself instruments of an infinite
variety, and for any number of purposes”. This cause may be
called universal according to causality, not only because it is
the determined cause of all the intermediary causes up to the
garment, up to the art which conceives it and produces it, but
because it is still that which is the cause with regard to the art
of the cobbler, mason, carpenter, etc. Insofar as man is in some
way the end and principle of all the arts, he is, in this respect, a
universal cause. Likewise, when we demonstrate that in nature
“all other things preexist, as certain instruments, preparatory to
the understanding, which is the last perfection intended in the
operation of nature”, we recognize in the human intellect a
universal final cause.
Still, the perfection with which we will know such a cause
will depend always on the degree of distinct knowledge which
we have of things with regard to which it is a universal cause.
This means that in the knowledge of this cause there will be for
us degrees of endless perfectibility. St. Thomas was able to
write the words we have just cited, without, however, teaching
a doctrine of evolution. Doubtless we will never know the
fundamental and universal laws which command the process or
organization of the matter in view of the intellective soul.
Nevertheless, we can know in a general way that these laws
exist; that man is the good of the whole cosmos, of all the

54
vegetal and animal proliferation, however difficult it may be to
see it in a concrete manner. What is Andromeda doing here; the
hippopotamus; the fly; and innumerable species which we
would never have known; to say nothing of the clod of earth—
poor relative of astronomy—awkward sine qua non for the
astronomer. General knowledge of a very precise reason in
itself is immediately the occasion for precise questions, some of
which are fruitful, but others embarrassing like the remarks of
an enfant terrible. Those latter were the most successful
sophisms of history. In this regard, it is fitting to recall the
proverb: fools shouldn’t see things half-done.

VIII. THE INTERMEDIATE CHARACTER OF OUR

SCIENCE

Have we distinguished the two genera of universality to

exclude from science the universal in praedicando? Not in the
least. Not only is it essential to the order of apprenticeship and
to the state of imperfect science, but it is necessary to all human
science however perfect it may be. In fact, when it is a question
of a science properly so-called—of a certain knowledge
through causes—the progress of this science according to the
process of determination will not consist in substituting the new
for what had been previously been established. Besides the fact
that the general definition of the soul, for example, will not
change in the course of the treatise, the universality of the
predication remains essential to the unity of our science. In fact,
although the universal in praedicando does not exist in things,
it is nevertheless founded on them and what we say of the soul
in general is true of every soul in particular: it is true that the
rational soul is the first act of a body furnished with
instruments, and that it is true also of the soul of the cat.
Consequently, if it is necessary to attribute to our intellect the
confusion in which the general definition of the soul leaves us
with regard to the different species, it remains nonetheless true
that this definition expresses in a relatively distinct manner

55
what the different species have in common, and what separates
them from all other things. Let us suppose that we were treating
in an isolate manner of the different species, not only would we
have to repeat often the same things, but also we would have to
know that we repeat them. Now, although the natures of which
we say the same thing are not the same in virtue of a common
natural form, distinct from that by which man is man and cat,
cat, we can however grasp what they have in common only by
means of such a universal. On the one hand we cannot grasp
simultaneously in one and the same concept many distinct
objects except at the expense of distinct knowledge; on the
other hand, we cannot consider the unity of many objects
except by grasping them simultaneously. For it is one things to
have a distinct knowledge of many objects, which is developed
in a successive consideration, and quite another thing to have
the simultaneous consideration of the same objects by means of
one single concept. From this is seen the intermediate character
of our science which always wavers between the confused
universal of which it cannot rid itself, and the universal in
causando which it never seems to grasp completely. It will not
truly be free excepting if the latter were at the same time at the
beginning of our knowledge; if that which is most actual in
things were also most known by us.

It is now evident,” says Aristotle, “that a single definition can

be given of the soul only in the same sense as one can be
given of figure. For, as in that case there is no figure
distinguishable and apart from triangle, etc., so here there is
no soul apart from the forms of soul just enumerated. It is
true that a highly general definition can be given of figure
which will fit all figures without expressing the peculiar
nature of any figure. So here in the case of soul and its
specific forms. Hence it is absurd in this and similar cases to
demand an absolutely general definition, which will fail to
express the peculiar nature of anything that is or again
omitting this, to look for separate definitions corresponding

56
 to each infima species. The cases of figures and soul are
exactly parallel; for the particulars subsumed under the
common name in both cases—figures and living things—
constitute a series, each successive term of which potentially
contains its predecessor, e.g. the square the triangle, the
sensory power the self-nutritive. Hence we must ask in the
case of each order of living things, what is its soul, i.e. what
is the soul of plant, animal, man? Why the terms are related
in this serial way must form the subject of later examination.

But it is only at the end of the Metaphysics, well beyond the

treatises of natural living things, that he will determine the
cause absolutely and universal in causando.

<…>

XVI THE PROCESS OF INTENTION AND COMPOSITION

We have seen that the ancients thought that they knew these
first principles, but we have called attention to the fact that such
a knowledge is for us as a limit which we cannot reach. On this
point, the testimonies of the most eminent savants are not
wanting….
Why is this so? The answer is unanimous: the measurements
upon which the whole scientific construction is established are
never more than approached. In this regard, it is necessary to
consider first the impossibility of an infinitely precise
measurement in the domain of the continuum. It would be
necessary, in effect, that the standard of measure be a
magnitude equal to zero. In reality, this standard, however
small it may be, is simple by hypothesis only—“accipitur ut
simplex per suppositionem”. But whenever it is a question of
seeking the universal and fundamental principles of this order,
every lack of precision is of consequence. Secondly, it is
necessary to define the physical properties by description of
their process of measurement, which, in order to be adequate,

57
should comprehend and express all the circumstances of the
mensuration. Now, that is impossible; for it would be necessary
previously to know in a precise manner the principles which
govern the totality of the physical world: it would be necessary
to be a separated intellect who would not have any need of
experience in order to know the world—“a god contemplating
the external world”, as Eddington says.
But why can’t we proceed, in this order of things, as we have
done in the Physics and as we will do in the abstract study of
the soul? The definition of movement, for example, is not
provisory, and that of the soul will be entirely definitive. On the
other hand, a similar definition of the nature of light would be
an intolerable barrier. Why isn’t the advance toward these
principles that of the process of concretion? We shall find the
answer to this question by dwelling on the Prooemium to the
De Caelo of St. Thomas.
In practical reason’s consideration of a house, we can
distinguish four processes. Firstly, there is the process
according to the order of apprehension. The builder of houses,
for example, grasps in the first place the form of the house in an
absolute manner, in order to apply it then to the matter.
Secondly, there is the process according to the order of
intention: the artisan intends to construct the house in its
entirety, and it is in view of this totality that he does everything
that he does with regard to the parts. Thirdly, there follows the
process according to the order of composition, in which the
stones are cut, for example, in order to assemble them into a
wall. And fourthly, there is the order of maintenance of the
work, according to which the artisan lays first the foundation
upon which rests the other parts of the house.
In the consideration by speculative reason, we can find
processes corresponding to those of practical reason. Thus it is
that we consider first the most general, in order to consider
afterwards the least general. This is what we have called the
process of determination, which corresponds to the order of
apprehension in the arts. Thus in the study of nature, we

58
commence with the “communissima” of the book of the
Physics, which has as subject mobile being insofar as it is
mobile: and we shall do likewise in the study of living things,
which begins with the consideration of the “communia omnibus
animatis, postquam vero illa quae sunt propria cuilibet rei
animatae”.
Then follows the order which corresponds to that of the
intention, in which we proceed from the ensemble, the whole,
toward its parts. But, it is to be remarked that this whole which
we are thus considering in the first place is opposed, not to any
part whatsoever, but very precisely to the parts according to
matter, as opposed to the parts according to species—“prout
scilicet totum est prius in consideratione quem partes, non
qualecumque, sed partes quae sunt secundum materiam et quae
sunt individui”. The material parts are the parts without which
we can, however, consider the whole. Thus we can consider the
circle without considering the semicircle, or animal without
considering foot, or man, without Socrates; on the other hand,
we would not be able to define semicircle without circle, nor
foot without animal, nor would we be able to consider Socrates
without man. Besides, the formal parts (“partes speciei et
formae”) are essential to the consideration of the whole. The
three lines of a triangle, the rational soul, and the body
composed of flesh and bones, are essential to the definition of a
triangle and a man. Let us note, moreover, that in order to have
the perfect definition of man it would be necessary to know him
with regard to the elements without which he could not be man.
Therefore, the consideration of the whole according to the order
which corresponds to the intention of practical reason, will
depend on the knowledge of the formal parts, without which we
cannot truly know it: “hujusmodi enim partes sunt priores in
consideratione quam totum, et ponitur in definitione totius,
sicut carnes et ossa in diffinitione hominis”. Applied to the
science of nature, this means that we cannot attain knowledge
of the material universe in its totality except in proportion as we
know its formal parts, that is to say, the parts which are

59
essential to everything insofar as it is a part of the universe. For
the ancients, these “partes speciei” of the universe were nothing
other than the elements, namely, the simple bodies, envisaged
from the point of view of gravitation. This is the reason why we
made the treatise De Caelo correspond to experimental physics.
These parts of the universe and the laws which govern them are
common. The weight of a man placed on a weighing machine is
registered just as that of a stone. The principles which are
primary in this universal order—that is to say, the principles of
the physical world considered in itself—are applied just as well
to living bodies as to non-living bodies. From the point of view
which occupies us at present, the living things, principal parts
of the universe in other respects, are “partes materiae”, and not
“partes speciei et formae”—they are not part of the definition
of the whole in question.
In the third place, there is a process which corresponds to that
of composition in the arts. It is especially this order of
composition which will detain us, and we will soon see the
reason for it. Following this order, we go from simple things to
composed things in order to know the latter as much as we can
know them through their simple components, in brief, in order
to see the role of the components in the constitution of the
totality. Knowing the formal parts of the universe, we would
understand the totality which they compose. However, such a
comprehension of the totality would be limited to what it is in
virtue of these common parts taken as such. For there are, in the
universe, wholes which do not owe all that they are to the
formal parts alone which constitute them as parts of the
universe. This is manifestly the case with living bodies.
Although being verified of those bodies, the universal
principles do not suffice to explain the living body insofar as it
is living. In digesting food or in lifting an arm, we do not act
contrarily to the laws of the physical world. And yet, those
operations cannot be brought back to the sole knowledge of the
formal parts of the universe and of their laws, however perfect
this knowledge may be.

60
 We are here in the presence of a composition which is other
than that of the universe, but which involves nevertheless, the
same parts of the universe. These wholes, in effect, have in turn
proper formal parts by which they differ specifically from every
other totality. The “partes diffinitivae” of man are not those of
other natural living things. Let us note, however, that these
proper parts presuppose the first. But the parts which
distinguish one thing from another must not be conceived as
inserted, after the manner of a wedge, between the parts of the
universe; some parts are not mixed with other parts. It is a
matter, in effect, of parts by which the whole is defined, and not
of fragments. With regard to man, the formal parts of the
universe, whatever they may be, are parts of man by the form
of man. Surely, whenever we concern ourselves with the sole
point of view of these parts of the universe envisaged as such,
the totalities in question are no longer reckoned in their
specification: the difference of a man and a paving stone placed
on a weighing machine is not registered. But it is nonetheless
true that the man is not a soul associated with parts of the
universe: the latter are indeed parts which compose the body of
man, and this body is a formal part of man insofar as he is man.

It is in pursuing this route that we would soon see the parts of

the universe assume at once an altogether other aspect.

Cf. also Charles De Koninck, “Introduction to the Study of the

Soul”. Preface to Stanislas Cantin, Précis de psychologie thomiste
(Quebec: Laval University, 1948) (Eng. tr. Bruno M. Mondor,
O.P.), sec. XIV. “The Equivocation of ‘Sensible Matter’”:

His theory concludes at the coincidence between what is most

elementary in itself in material things and what is the most
elementary for us in our knowledge. And as, in fact, touch is
the sense of certitude par excellence, the identification of what
is first in things from the point of view of matter with what is
moreover the best know by us, as hypothetical as this might be,

61
 will not be less tenacious. It will become too reassuring to be
put into doubt. And so it was held for a number of centuries. It
is understandable why the principle of the primacy of
experience in natural science, principle on which Aristotle
insists in the treatise where he sets forth the theory of elements,
remained so long inoperative in this domain.

<…>

It would not be sufficient to see in this theory a very primitive

outline of experimental science. It is important before all else to
grasp its fundamental hypothesis: the primary and “elementary”
material causes of things are defined by the proper sensibles,
and what is more, by the most “elementary” sensible qualities.

Cf. also excerpt from PART XIV p. 3:

…[I]t will be necessary to say henceforth that “reason is

employed in another way, not as furnishing a sufficient proof of
a principle, but as confirming an already established principle,
by showing the congruity of its results, as in astronomy the
theory of eccentrics is considered as established, because
thereby the sensible appearances of heavenly movements can
be explained; not, however, as if this proof were sufficient,
forasmuch as some other theory might explain them.”

62
n. 7. Prefatory Remarks to A General Introduction to the Study
of Nature by Charles De Koninck. Manual, Prentice Hall.
Corrected by T. De Koninck and C. De Koninck.

(A final version of this is Random Reflections on Science and Calculation, in LTP.)

PREFATORY REMARKS

The purpose of this Introduction is to show what are the subject

and principles of what Aristotle calls the science of nature or
natural philosophy. We shall attempt this by way of an
exposition of the first two books of his Physics. The reader
should know from this very beginning that we are not wholly
unaware of the extent to which the meaning of the words just
employed has changed—viz. ‘science’, ‘subject of a science’,
‘principles of a science’, and ‘science of nature’. It would be
difficult to find a single instance in which the same words still
mean the same thing. Plainly, we cannot afford to neglect this
fact.
Many a teacher called upon to give an elementary course in
the Philosophy of Nature—which sometimes goes under the
title of what is actually only one of its parts, viz. Cosmology—
will feel impatient when we show some measure of solicitude
for the scientific climate that is proper to our day. Why should
we bother about it, he might say. We have the mandate to teach
the subject, so let us get down to business. Precisely, can we
reasonably get down to it? In fact, is there such a subject? For
some reason or other we may be already convinced that there
is. But that is not the point, when in teaching one must begin
from what is known to the listener. Now his preliminary
information—if only that which was gathered from the
headlines—in an elementary course in some special subject of
philosophy is very different from that of the beginner of some
half century ago. One would compound the confusion by
ignoring the difference. No philosopher we hold in esteem
thought he could neglect the opinions of his times. It would be
most unfair to let the student believe that what is meant by
63
‘science’ in the philosophy of nature must be roughly the same
as what is meant by ‘science’ today—only to learn eventually
that they really have no more in common than a dog and the
constellation that goes by the same name. Yet the fruits of
modern science grow with cosmic violence. What then?
The first thing to be noted is that all that will be said in this
Introduction will be expressed by means of words.

1. Science of nature and the use of words.

It has latterly become rather obvious that the giant strides of the
mathematical study of nature are concomitant with a general
emancipation from the use of words. The mathematical
physicist does not know what he is talking about until he can
have recourse to symbols that are not names. At the same time
this very statement uses nothing but words, and it is difficult to
see how one could make such statement in any other way. One
might suggest that this statement could be symbolized by the
sign ‘S’. But the interpretation of the symbol would have to
refer to the statement made in words.
When Sir Arthur Eddington shows so convincingly that the
exact science of nature can get nowhere until it has reduced its
definitions to measure-numbers, and that these are expressed in
terms of mathematical symbols, not words, he uses words to
show it. Even the terms ‘exact’, ‘science’, ‘symbol’, and
‘nature’ he employs as words intended to mean something in
the way that words do. Indeed he does so while showing just
how the physicist obtains his measure-numbers and is
concerned only with them. By length, for instance, which is
otherwise defined as ‘what is extended in one dimension’, he,
as a mathematical physicist, means ‘when we take a reasonably
fair copy of a certain platinum-iridium bar kept in Paris...and
apply it successively or by division to know the distance
between A and B, the result of the operation may be expressed
by Lx.’ Thus defined, the standard of length can of course have
no length, when there is no other standard, so that length only is

64
once the measurement is had. In turn, weight is ‘when using a
weighing-machine...’, and so on for all the basic definitions.
The importance of ‘when’ in these definitions can hardly be
exaggerated. If the physicist said ‘length is...’ instead of ‘length
is when...’ he would refer to a mode of definition which aims to
state ‘what’ a thing is absolutely, and not merely what the name
or symbol is intended to mean. Having thus defined length he
may tell us “this is length”, but this only another way of saying
that that is all he can be concerned with. In mathematical
physics definitions should be no more than interpretations of
the symbols chosen, by describing how the measure-numbers
were obtained. It is interesting to note that if only this type of
definition were valid in any field, then the definition of ‘man’
would have to be like ‘when I tread on something and it
produces a series of sounds such as “Where do you think you’re
going?” And that is man.’
It is also plain that when interpreting the time-symbol t the
mathematical physicist does not intend even a nominal
definition of the word ‘time’ as this term was and is still used
without specific reference to the way in which the measure-
number is obtained. The same holds for the very expression
‘mathematical physics’, meaning a certain type of knowledge
about ‘nature’. He would not try to define in terms of measure-
numbers what the word ‘nature’ stands for, although we might
point out that even his kind of definition has something to do
with what we call nature. Take, for instance, the following
statement made by Einstein:

It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction

enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting
them which give us the key to the understanding of the
phenomena of Nature. Experience can of course guide us in
our choice of serviceable mathematical concepts; it cannot
possibly be the source from which they are derived;
experience of course remains the sole criterion of the

65
 serviceability of mathematical construction for physics, but
the truly creative principle resides in mathematics.

He makes clear what he means by physics when he adds that by

itself

such construction can give us no knowledge whatsoever of

the world of experience; all knowledge about reality begins
with experience and terminates in it. Conclusions obtained by
purely rational processes are, so far as Reality is concerned,
entirely empty.1

We do not know how he would have interpreted the names

‘Nature’ and ‘Reality’ though he might have suggested that to
the physicist they are what the measure-numbers somehow
refer to, and the test of the relevance of rational construction to
his purpose. We are confident that he would not have confined
himself to ‘Nature is when using such or such a standard of
measure...etc.’,—although in doing so there would be reference
to nature, and to what he already know ‘reality’ to mean.

2. The symbolic world of mathematical physics, and the

‘symbolically constructed fictions’ of mathematical logic.

Once Eddington has made it clear that from the mathematical

physicist’s standpoint the world is a symbolic one—in the sense
that what he knows of it can be conveyed only by symbols and
involves a generous share of fiction, starting from and referring
to metrical structure—but that whatever the symbols convey is
not all that the world is, he goes on using words to bring home
his thoughts on the subject. Hence, to employ either words or
symbols is not a matter of choice: now one, then the other, is
imposed upon us according to what we wish to express. We are
sometimes led to believe that the use of symbols is a way of
economizing words. That is not the whole truth. Their use
certainly economizes thought. But it is far more important to

66
realize that the mathematical physicist, as well as the
mathematician, does not use symbols instead of names for the
sake of abbreviating his equations, but because he could not
resolve them by operating on names.
As we shall see further on, the art of calculation simply
cannot be concerned with objects in the sense of what names
refer us to, like ‘man’, ‘horse’, or ‘nature’. Even what the
ancients had named ‘number’ or ‘figure’ is of no formal interest
to it. H. Poincare said

Mathematicians do not study objects, but the relations

between the objects; it is therefore indifferent to them when
the objects are replaced by other objects, so long as the
relations do not change. Not the matter, but the form is their
concern.

And the objects that are of no concern to him are not merely
those like horse or apple, but numbers and figures as well.
Now what about the objects that neither mathematician nor
mathematical physicist is concerned with? What has happened
to the number, e.g., ‘three’, which we had named before putting
it into an equation, or to the ‘time’ we named before we
manufactured the measure-number by the clock? The
operations upon the symbols may have been so proficient that
we forgot, or believed we should now forget, what those names
meant while we were using them. Could we really replace what
the word ‘man’ meant by referring henceforth to no more than
the mathematical physicist’s view of him as a swarm of electric
charges? This no doubt man is, but is it ‘what it is to be a man’?
It must be true that if the physicist could produce that particular
kind of swarm he would have indeed produced a man. But why
would we call it a man unless it were like what we already
identified as a man?

3. Where words remain in use.

67
If neither the mathematician nor the mathematical physicist can
be no more than hampered by the use of names, apparently they
must use them when they want to convey what their knowledge
is about and especially what it is not concerned with. In saying
that they cannot be concerned with things as they are named,
they are using names to say it, though they are admittedly not
speaking qua mathematician or mathematical physicist.
The question we are trying to raise here is this: can there be
true knowledge of what the names we use about nature are
intended to mean? Can the things they refer to be defined and
used to demonstrate something in a way which deserves to be
called scientific? Must the term ‘science’ be restricted to the art
of calculation and its application? What did we mean by
‘change’, ‘movement’, ‘infinity’, and ‘time’ before we defined
them by measure-numbers? Has their meaning now become
mere fancy? It has been suggested that the only reason why we
shall continue to use words is that they are necessary to
communication in the order of behaviour—that language is
essentially practical. No court of law would excuse
manslaughter as being no more than a disturbance produced in
a particular swarm of electric charges by another swarm
reasonably like the former. So we continue to believe that Mr.
Smith is there in some fashion or other perhaps not too clear,
and that he after all still has rights and obligations, even as we
do. But it seems that so soon as we forget about the practical
order—about how we should behave and treat our neighbour,
and all such things expressed by names—and apply ourselves
to scientific investigation, things like man and his doing are
irretrievably left behind. If the thing (while even ‘thing’ may be
distressingly unscientific) we call ‘man’ does persist, it is only
as what turns up for breakfast or is summoned to pay taxes, or
allowed to sleep, and in some event even to study physics.
It is no doubt significant that words are used to tell us these
things, and that these things would not be told unless in using
words our thought were turned to something recognized as their
meaning. Nor is it less significant that the practical life should

68
force their use upon us. And there is no denying that many of
the words which for centuries remained basic in philosophy,
like ‘matter’, ‘form’, ‘action’, originally referred to the order of
making and doing, and not to the things of nature; and ‘time’
may well have meant something we do not have enough of.
Surely these facts are worth looking into, however little
scientific a curiosity about such things may seem.

4. If all definitions were to be of names or of symbols only.

If it must be assumed that there can be no true knowledge of

things as we name them, but only of what can be expressed by
the symbols of logic and in calculation, then what we say about
this or any other kind of knowledge in using words could
hardly be true. Let us put it still another way. If, as Stuart Mill
said, “All definitions are of names, and of names only”, such
that the things named cannot be defined in themselves, however
tentatively, meaning that we cannot know what they are but
only what is that name we use to signify them, and since there
cannot be a science of the names themselves in as much as they
signify no more than by convention, it is clear that there can be
no science of anything to the extent that it is named.
On the other hand, what Mill says applies literally to the
symbols of the art of calculation, whether applied in
mathematics or in physics: to define is simply to interpret the
symbol by explaining how it is to be taken, not by stating what
the thing named is. For instance, when asked to define the
‘number two’, the art of calculation will never try to tell us
what two is, because what two is never enters into the operation
of calculation. In that activity, two is only a term with a
function similar to what which it fills in an equation like ‘2 plus
x = 5’. Whether two here is actually ‘one two’ or ‘two ones’
can make no difference. The only unity two possesses in such
an equation is the unity of a symbol; and what ever sort of unity
2 may enjoy apart from that assigned to it as an operational

69
symbol is quite irrelevant to a definition derived from its
operational use alone. Lord Russell puts it this way:

We naturally think that the class of couples (for example) is

something different from the number 2. But there is no doubt
about the class of couples: it is indubitable and not difficult to
define, whereas the number 2, in any other sense, is a
metaphysical entity about which we can never feel sure that it
exists or that we have tracked it down. It is therefore more
prudent to content ourselves with the class of couples, which
we are sure of, than to hunt for a problematical number 2
which must always remain elusive. Accordingly we set up
the following definition:

The number of a class is the class of all those classes that are
similar to it.

Thus the number of a couple will be the class of all couples.

In fact, the class of all couples will be the number 2,
according to our definition.

It is admittedly difficult to see how any other way of being

two could be relevant to the equation ‘2 plus x = 5’. In this
context, therefore, Aristotle’s definition of number as ‘a
plurality measured by one’ must appear awkward, and is
certainly useless. But Aristotle was trying to convey what
number is, not what an operational symbol may stand for.
Definitions of the same type appear in connection with
geometry. Hermann Weyl had this to say in illustration of what
he meant by ‘creative definitions’:

Thus, in geometry, the concept of circle is introduced with the

help of the ternary point relation of congruence, OA = OB,
which appears in the axioms, as follows, “A point O and a
different point A determine a circle, the ‘circle about O through
A’; that a point lies on this circle means that OA = OP.” For

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the mathematician it is irrelevant what circles are. It is of
importance only to know in what manner a circle may be given
(namely, by O and by A) and what is meant by saying that a
point P lies on the circle thus given. Only in statements of this
latter form or in statement explicitly defined on their basis does
the concept of a circle appear.
Especially deserving of attention is the neat statement that
“For the mathematician it is irrelevant what circles are.”
Further on, Hermann Weyl lays out his understanding—most
mathematicians do share his view—of what is now meant by
the ‘concept’ of number:

If one wants to speak, all the same, of numbers as concepts or

ideal objects, one must at any rate refrain from giving them
independent existence; their being exhausts itself in the
functional role which they play and their relations of more or
less. (They certainly are not concepts in the sense of
Aristotle’s theory of abstraction.)

Turning now to the mode of definition in mathematical physics,

we have Eddington’s incontrovertible statement about what a
definable with is:

Never mind what two tons refers to; what is it? How has it
actually entered in so definite a way into our experience?
Two tons is the reading of the pointer when the elephant was
placed on a weighing-machine.

It was never intended to reveal what weight is apart from this

particular mode of defining, viz. by describing how the
physicist obtains this kind of measure-number.

5. Just what is implied when we are told that science is no

longer concerned with ‘objects’.

71
We have been told that the mathematician is not concerned
with objects, he cannot get very far with the number, like two,
of which Lord Russell says that it “is a metaphysical entity
about which we can never feel sure that it exists or that we have
tracked it down.” And to the geometer in particular, it is also
irrelevant ‘what circles are’. We must be aware of the
implication of this fact with regard to what was previously
called mathematical science, and which had to do with quantity,
this being either number, the subject of arithmetic, or
continuous quantity, the subject of geometry. According to
Aristotle, these subjects are to be defined in metaphysics, while
the mathematician assumes them, but replaces them by
symbolic construction or creative definition, as we were told.
Now it is important to note that these constructions are not
intended to replace those subjects absolutely. The latter are
simply left out, because, it is said, we can never feel sure that
they exist or that we have tracked them down. Hence, they who
would continue to apply their mind to those subjects would be
seen as moving about on slippery ground.
We may perhaps make clear what has happened by
comparing what Poincare said to be the concern of the
mathematician—viz. the form, and not the object that he also
calls the matter—with what the Greeks (Plato and Aristotle in
particular) called the matter and the form of a number. Aristotle
distinguishes a matter and a form that constitute a number
intrinsically, they being related as potency to act. The matter of
a number is the units that compose it in the order of material
cause, like the pieces of wood that make up a table, or, better
still, like the limbs that make up the body of a man. By the
form of a number, he meant the particular kind of unity and
order which is exhibited by adding a unit to a unit, a unit to the
number obtained, and so on for all the integers. The addition
does not fabricate the number but merely brings to mind new
kinds of number which, though they are not conceived as
existing in reality the way Socrates does, nevertheless are
considered as having certain properties which are true even

72
when we do not actually consider them. Number, thus
understood, is defined as ‘a plurality measured by one’—one
being the principle of number. Now, any proper measure must
be one in kind with the measured, meaning, here, that to be in
number the units must be of the same nature. The particular
kind of unity that is proper to any given number depends upon
the homogeneity of its components. Otherwise we have no
more than “a sort of heap” (Metaph. 1044a). The number two,
then, isnot the same as two mere units of any kind.
Still, even when objects are not of the same kind, we can count
them nevertheless, like the objects in this room—persons,
desks, chairs, coughs, absences, the relations of reason that we
have in mind, and even those which we ought to have but do
not. Thus we have a number that applies to the heterogeneous
elements of a heap or mere aggregate, a number which we use
to express how many objects are there in the room. This type of
number arises in the act of sheer counting. It is the number of
the art of calculation which was called logismos or logistike
number may have, it is provided in the operations of additions,
multiplication, subtraction, and division. Its unity is
independent of what the things are that we refer to as being
such or such in number; this is the number which has been
defined as the class of all those classes which are similar to it.
Thus the number 2 is the class of all couples, no matter what
their kind or the the kind of their elements. Nor do the couples
or their units have to be couples or units in any positive sense,
for if number is defined by the operation, whatever the
operation may be applied to will by that very fact be such a
number, like zero, or a fraction, or an irrational number. And
number, thus understood, is admittedly not an object in the
sense in which the number two that is one two is an object. It is
a convenient fiction which our mind has produced. Though a
fiction, it is nonetheless proficient, as can be see from the fact
that we can count things regardless of what they are. Thus,
what the things are is of no account to the calculator. The
indifference of this number with regard to the nature of the

73
numbered is equaled only by the indifference of the heap as a
heap.
The science of arithmetic, as Aristotle and Euclid understood
it, is about the numbers that are per se one; unlike logismos, it
does not abstract from what the things are that it applies to: to
be the subject of a science as they understood this term, these
must be one per se. What Whitehead says about arithmetic is
true only of the art of calculation which the science employs:

Now, the first noticeable fact about arithmetic is that it applies

to everything, to tastes and to sounds, to apples and to angels,
to the ideas of the mind and to the bones of the body. The
nature of the things is perfectly indifferent, of all things it is
true that two and two make four. Thus we write down as the
leading characteristic of mathematics that it deals with
properties and ideas which are applicable to things just because
they are things, and apart from any particular feelings, or
emotions, or sensations, in any way connected with them. This
is what is meant by calling mathematics an abstract science.
Perhaps we ought to make explicit that the nature of things is
indifferent to the point where all that Whitehead mentions can
be gathered under a single number.

6. The expression ‘mathematical science’ now has a new

meaning.

Arithmetic, as it is understood in this context, has nothing to do

whatsoever with the subject of what the ancients called by that
same name. In fact, most moderns would say that what the
ancients had in mind was not a science at all. This is what Lord
Russell implies when he says its subject would be something
“about which we can never feel sure that it exist or that we have
tracked it down.” On the other hand, there is no doubt about
the class of couples: anything, thing or no, will belong to it, if it
is a couple no matter what of. Thus mathematics as it is
understood today has put aside everything that might be called

74
into question in any way. To possess what is left we do not
even have to discuss whether anything corresponds to the
fictions, nor whether these are only in the mind. To save their
value, even ‘logical’ in ‘logical fictions’ does not have to be
tied down to what is in or of the mind. It is enough that
‘logical’ should refer to logismos; whereas it should certainly
not refer to logic in the Aristotelian sense of this term.
A further point is worth noting here. The art of calculation
does not take into account whether a number is a group of
actually divided elements, or whether it is a one that is divisible
yet not divided. Whatever is to the right of the symbol of
equality is essentially the same as what is to the left of it. Thus
‘1 + 1 = 2’ is exactly the same as ‘1 + 1 = 1 + 1’. Hence,
whether ‘2’ stands for one two, or for two ones of any kind, is
completely indifferent. Whether the number it applies to is
actually one or actually many is of no account here. Such is the
case of all the basic laws of the art. We may neglect, then,
whether a number is an aggregate of units, as is said by some
[e.g. Thales, who is said to have defined number as a bundle of
units]; for two is either not one, or the unit is not present in it in
complete actuality.
Likewise with regard to magnitude, whether the line is
actually divided or only potentially so, is irrelevant to the art of
calculation when applied to it. Moreover, whether a line
contains an infinity of points in potency or in act, is indifferent.
Of the infinite no more is required than that we should be able
to define it operationally. The distinction between act and
potency is simply beside the question. Infinite classes can
indeed be easily definied in this way. But whether there is an
infinite class in the way there is a number that is per se one is a
matter irrelevant to what the art defines and applies to. To it,
such questions can be no more than obtrusive.

7. The ‘mathematics’ that abstracts from the distinction

between ‘per se’ and ‘per accidens’.

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All this implies that logismos side-steps the distinction between
what is per se and what is per accidens, either as to being or as
to unity. That the mind can transcend this division is plain from
the fact that we can string together the following incidentally
connected ‘bald-headed pale barn-building flute-playing thrice-
married ill-tempered barber’. We cannot name what it is to be
such a particular accidental ensemble—although it may be
‘Oscar’—but we can make a symbol stand for it. In terms of the
calculus of classes, anything which is all those things together
belongs to the class that is the logical product of the classes
‘bald-headed’, ‘pale’, ‘barn-building’, etc., and the product may
be represented by the single arbitrary sign ‘h’.

76
n. 8. Resume of lecture notes of Methodologie Generale given by
M. Charles De Koninck. 1938-39:

I. Knowledge in general, which consists in becoming another as

other. That is a definition of objectivity which at the same time
manifests what subjectivity is. A being which is purely and simply
subject is incapable of going out from itself, is closed to all that
which is exterior to it as it is closed for itself. It does not know
itself, for if it did it would know itself as other (in the cognitive
sense). Other means simply object.

II. Intellectual knowledge. This is necessary to understand if we are

to know what science is. This knowledge extends to all things
absolutely. No need for demonstration; merely a little dialectics to
cause the fact to be observed. The soul is in a certain manner all
things. The sensitive soul of the animals is in a sense all sensibles,
but in the case of the intellectual soul, it is a question of all things in
a completely rigorous sense. “Nam unaquaequae intellectualis
substantia est quodammodo omnia, in quantum totius entis
comprehensiva est suo intellectui” III CG 112.

How do we know all things? It is impossible to pose the question

without at the same time knowing all things. How could the
question arise unless you knew all things? The reply is implied in
the question. One cannot know that he does not know all without
knowing all. To the question: what is the extent of our intelligence,
the reply, in all frankness, is that we know all, and this without
exception. What exception can be imagined? The exception is
again among the things which are. All things, that is, all which is
not nothing, all which is not impossible. Hence we arrive at the
paradox that it is impossible to know nothing sans knowing
everything, or rather that it is impossible to know that one knows
nothing without knowing everything. This is a paradoxical idea: one
can know all and know nothing in a certain manner. This manifests
the nature of our intelligence, for although it extends to all things,
yet considered in itself it is in potency. All this is implied in the

77
principle of contradiction, which is, that a thing cannot be and not
be at the same time and in the same respect, and since this principle
is first, without which nothing else can be known, it is impossible
that we know something without knowing everything, since
everything is implied in this principle. The principle applies to
everything which is possible.

Therefore, there is an absolute co-extensivity between being and

non-being, being and the impossible, that is, that non-being is
absolutely outside being. Being is not opposed to non-being in a
certain respect, but it is entirely opposed to it, the impossible is
excluded absolutely from being. As this opposition between being
and non-being is absolute, and absolutely universal, we have an
opposition of contradiction. [end of p. 1]

78
n. 9. Charles De Koninck, Letter to Mortimer Adler, Quebec June
15, 1938 (excerpt):
12. I would readily agree with you that the history of
philosophy grows in spiral form. But I do not think that this
holds for philosophy itself as science, unless as in Hegel,
philosophy were the history of philosophy. On the contrary
experimental science evolves essentially in spiral form, by way
of successive substitutions, as in all dialectics. The history of
philosophy describes a spiral in so far as it is dialectical.

I will add to this a few points on the philosophy of history. I

distinguish it as I do with philosophy of nature: science and
wisdom. As science, philosophy of history is philosophy of
nature. History is essential to nature because of time: it is
essential to nature sub statu motus existens, that is in so far as
our universe is subject to evolution and profound novelty. If
there must be evolution along relatively unpredictable lines,
this growth must assume a spiral form. Here we join Maritain
with his distinction between univocism and analogy in the
conception of history. We might add equivocism (i.e. complete
heterogeneity of the various stages) if Maritain has not done so;
this being, I understand, Bergson’s position. Now all this we
may show a priori. We can show, starting from any given
mobile being, that the universe must evolve toward mind: i.e. a
term essentially immobile, otherwise movement itself would be
a contradiction. Spiritual immobility alone is an immobility
which has ratio termini. Now if the universe was intrinsically
predetermined as to the various lines along which this evolution
must take place, that would mean that matter is intrinsically
disposed to the human form: then history would not exist.
There would be no reason why the term of evolution should not
exist from the start.

79
n. 10. Charles De Koninck, “Le Cosmos,” Laval (1936)
(typescript, pp. 40-44) (insertions [in square braces] by B.A.M.,
as are the footnotes).

(1) The sum total of bodily beings that make up nature is

partitioned in four species: men, animals, plants, inorganic
substances. These only are philosophically definable. These
four obviously constitute a hierarchy: one higher than the other
in perfection. They are essentially different (ontological
species): one has or has not life, one has or has not sense life,
one has or has not intellectual life; there is no middle.
In spite of essential difference[s] the four have something in
common: men are animals along with dogs; they in turn are
vegetative along with plants, and along with inorganic
substances they are bodily beings. Yet man is not the mere sum
of [the] four (an aggregate); he is one being (not several
substances conjoined).

(2) Man is the raison d’etre of the Universe (the final

explanation and end of all other earthly beings) For: a) Nature
cannot be ordained to God except through man; since the
Universe has its end in God, it must be that it is capable of a
return to its Source, and only an intellectual creature [is
capable] of that return. b) No movement properly so-called1 can
be simply an end in itself; movement consists in going toward
something; there cannot be just movement for movement[‘s
sake]; hence the final term of every mobile being must be
something immobile: a being which insofar as it is the
terminus, has not to pursue its existence; it will have a
successive existence as a composite being, but will be above
time by reason of its spiritual form – this is man.

(3) Man is the raison d’etre of Matter – the Matter in every

bodily being is an appetite (a desire) for the human form. For:
a) every bodily being, although one in substance, has two
1
The text reads, “No movement properly so-called called”, etc.

80
substantial principles,, viz. Prime Matter, and Form; Matter is
pure potency, pure determinability; it is the same in all bodily
beings – Prime Matter as pure indetermination reunites all
material beings in one same matrix, which is common to them
all; it is potency to all forms, from the highest to the lowest. b)
Prime matter is an appetite, a desire for the highest form (See S.
Thomas in C. Gent. III, c. 22).

(4) In the order of nature Man is posterior to other bodily

beings. Man is as much the raison d’etre of all possible natural
forms, as he is of Prime Matter. Every natural form is turned in
the direction of man. The essential desire of Prime Matter,
which extends indefinitely beyond any form that it has
received, is to be actuated by the immobile form of man. And
in this perspective the infra-human forms are much less final
states than tendencies. Thus there is a scale of natural forms, as
steps from one to the other. We are speaking here of the order
of nature, and not for the moment of the order of time. But if it
can be said in advance and with certainty that matter will
receive the human form – without that the existence of any
mobile being whatsoever would be contradictory in advance –
philosophy has no means of predicting what intervening forms
will actually be realized. Intelligence must ultimately come to
matter, but only Science can discern the devious pattern that
nature takes to arrive at it. The fixity of infra-human forms is
then a counterfeit fixity. We are naturally metaphysicians, and
from that [comes?] the inclination to assimilate the cosmic
hierarchy to a series of whole numbers, and to the immobile
hierarchy of pure spirits; whereas there is only an analogy
between them.

(5) A temporal order in the realization of this hierarchy is

postulated by philosophical principles. The mobile as mobile
tends toward the spiritual form of man. The movement to this
end is proportioned to the degree of perfection. The degree of
perfection is determined by the form. Under this aspect every

81
form is invariable and immobile, for by definition a form
constitutes a being to be what it is. If the form as form were
variable, a being would never be what it is; if the form as such
were unmovable, movement would be contradictory. Form is
then the principle of the diversity of movement without being
itself in movement. [40-41]
The desire of matter, although fulfilled in the measure of the
perfection of the form actuating it – and in that measure the
composite enjoys a certain finish and rest – remains unsatisfied
until it gains the spiritual form of man. Under no matter what
form [matter] may be, it reaches out toward more perfect forms.
Thus matter is in its turn principle of movement. But to be
principle of movement belongs to neither matter alone, since it
is necessarily associated with form; nor to form alone, since it
is in itself invariable. In order that there be a determined
principle of movement there must be at the same time matter
and form. But no nature remains closed in on itself. This must
be clearly understood. “Id enim per se videtur esse de
intentione naturae quod est semper et perpetuum” (St. Thomas,
I, q. 98, a. 1) “That seems to be essentially in the intention of
nature which is always and perpetual”. Mobile beings do not
advance on a perpendicular plane to fall flat at the end of their
course. That would be the same [as] to say that their form is the
principal end, and that their essential orientation toward the
spiritual form is entirely accidental, whereas the latter is their
raison d’etre. But is not nature a principle of movement, and is
not the activity or passivity of the mobile of the accidental
order? Consequently, is not the perfecting demanded by nature
simply of the accidental order? And does not any natural being
whatsoever reach its end when it is finished? Let us say that the
particular end of natural beings consists in their individual
completion of the accidental order. But this particular end is not
their principal end. It is true that the more a being is perfect, the
more the particular end coincides with the principal end. Matter
and form are not accidental principles, but essential. Now these
essential principles are the one[s] that are reaching up toward

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spirituality, and the accidents are only instruments of the
substance. If one were to say that the composite finds its raison
d’etre in the actuation of its accidental powers and
potentialities, the implication would be that substance is for the
accidents, and that an infra-human being is willed principally
for itself. A nature is essentially a principle of ascending
movement; it is from the very depths of its being a striving
upwards.
A being the essence of which is composed of matter and form
can have its complex existence realized only successively. The
unfinished character essential to every hylemorphic substance
is the cause of time. The hylemorphic substance is perfectible
from the point of view of essence. If a nature were absolutely
finished from the point of view of essence it would no longer
be hylemorphic; it would no longer be nature in the strict sense
of the term. Therefore, successive and continuous duration is
above all a sign of a qualitative enrichment that “takes time”.
Every nature tends to surpass itself, since its very essence is
ordained to forms always higher, until it reaches a term that is
immobile.

(6) The notion of generation in nature – Generation and

corruption are explained through matter and form. The cosmic
beings that appear and disappear, one after another, and one
from another, are drawn from the potency of matter by beings
already in existence, and they are reduced to potency in their
corruption. Prime matter is not a kind of reservoir that contains
in a latent state determined forms that only await the occasion
to come into the open. Forms can be contained therein only
after the manner of possible cleavages in a line indefinitely
divisible. On the other hand generation of new substances is in
no way a creation, but the act in which a given composite draws
out another from the potency of Prime Matter. Be it understood
that Prime Matter is created, or rather co-created (since it
cannot subsist outside of a composite), and that any composite
being whatsoever is, as a finite being, a created being. Under

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this aspect the universe opens directly on God. But that does
not prevent a composite being from being truly engendered, nor
a created being from being its generator.
This brings us to a very important [point], viz. that from the
moment of the existence of the first composite being (granted
that the world had a beginning in time) all the natural forms
possible were given in the potency of Prime Matter. From then
on no special creative act is necessary to draw them from
potency into [41-42] actuality, provided there exists a sufficient
created cause, whatever it be. And, if this sufficient, and
created cause exists, the generative causality must be attributed
to it in virtue of the principle of divine government through
second causes. The principle of sufficient causality demands
that the cause in question be on the same level at least as the
effect produced. No being can draw from the potency of matter
a composite that is superior to itself, at least not as principal
cause. It is, then, absolutely impossible for any plant to
engender an animal as principal cause.

(7) Philosophical principles call for the functioning of natural

beings as instrumental causes of the origin of higher natural
beings. – Some are reluctant to see in nature a generalized
ascending movement towards forms more and more perfect
from the imperfect forms. St. Thomas did not hesitate. (See in
De Potentia, q. 4, a. 11) The reluctance of modern Schoolmen
is easily explained. Since the time of Suarez they have boxed in
the universe. They want to explain everything in nature by
intra-cosmic causes. Suarez by denying the demonstrative value
of the arguments of St. Thomas to prove in a strictly rational
way the existence of pure spirits, cut asunder every essential
link between the cosmos and the created spiritual world. If we
sterilize the world from its very beginning nothing new can
come out of it. Creationism which under all aspects opens the
world directly on God bypassing the universal hierarchy,
implicitly rejects what is essential to the universe, UNITY OF
ORDER.

84
 True, in this Creationist view there is an ascending movement
that actually takes place in the most elementary of vital
functions – nutrition. Grass assimilates air and water; the cow
assimilates grass; man assimilates the cow. But this cycle or
movement remains closed in on itself, if there had been always,
inorganic beings, plants, animals. The world in this view is
open only to individual multiplication. An ascending movement
of this kind is not realized by the internal push of lower natures
ordained to higher, but by an influence from above them that
they passively undergo. In other words, in this hypothesis of a
cycle closed in on itself in time, the perfect ought to precede the
imperfect not only in the order of nature (incontestably true),
but also in the order of time. Or, at least, they must co-exist.
The idea of progress is thus reduced to a purely quantitative
increase. At bottom that is a kind of evolution which is only a
dispersion, or a regression.
The Ontological view of nature demands something else.
We have seen through analysis that the movement deeply
rooted in the very nature of mobile being is toward essences
more and more complete and perfect. The superior composite
being is not something absolutely new with regard to the
composite from which it was drawn. It was given in the
potency of matter. This excludes at one and the same time
univocity and equivocity: two extremes that destroy the very
notion of pure potency. If it were univocity, matter would be
potency of only one species of composite being; if it were
equivocity, the composite beings of different species would
have nothing naturally common between them. Matter ties
together all composite beings in one same natural genus.
Further, the new composite being always contains virtually the
perfections of its predecessors which it surpasses. The new,
moreover, is realized within well defined extremes: the original
cosmos and man. All intermediary forms will bear far reaching
traces of these extremes.
Without a doubt, the individual form of a composite being is
invariable. An evolution of the substance is impossible. But the

85
form is not the nature. Indeed form considered apart from its
relation to matter is no longer nature in the strict sense of the
term. Yet, an ascending movement in the substantial order is
called for. We know in advance that this ascending movement
can be realized only in a discontinuous succession of
substances more and more rich in perfection of being. But how
establish between them the deep rooted bond that allows us to
say that the superior substances were drawn out of the inferior?
It is formally realized in dispositive alterations. While the
evolution of [42-43] substance into substance is impossible, the
entire composite is capable of an enrichment that disposes it to
a superior whole composite.
We know that an individual composite cannot of itself
produce alterations that would terminate in a composite of a
superior order. Accidental capacities are measured only by their
determined and invariable substance. Yet nature demands an
ascending movement by way of alterations. How can that be
realized without there being already a superior natural
substance?
Again we run up against a conception of a spatio-temporal
universe closed in on itself, and as cosmos having no extra-
cosmic cause. Already the inorganic world obliges us to appeal
to a spiritual influence or pressure that puts it in motion, the
inorganic withal not having an active principle of motion within
itself. This spiritual pressure or push comes not from a univocal
cause on the level of the effect, but equivocal – a superior
substance that contains virtually the perfections of that which is
inferior to it, that is more powerful and more efficacious than
all the subordinate causes. (See St. Thomas C. Gent. III, c. 23)
This pressure naturally exercised on the cosmos – since
natures themselves demand it – suffices to draw out of the
potency of the composite given in the beginning all the forms
that are necessary to reach the end. And since this pressure is
natural, it must act on natures according to the laws inscribed in
them. In this ascending movement by which more perfect
beings are drawn from less perfect, the given intra-cosmic

86
composite is only an instrument, the spiritual agent being the
principal cause. The spiritual pressure will not draw any nature
out of any composite whatsoever. The instrument, although it
produces an effect superior to itself under the influence of a
superior cause, implies nevertheless essential limitations. The
more perfect the substances engendered, the more will they be
in their turn perfect instruments.
St. Thomas with the ancients thought he recognized in
celestial bodies the instruments which spiritual substances use
in acting on the cosmos. (See in De Pot. a. VI, a. 6, ad 10) St.
Thomas made exception for superior animals, the first of
which, for him, had to be directly formed by a special
intervention of God (although this intervention would be
natural, as in the case of the creation of human substantial
forms). Yet in this matter he departs from the tradition of the
Fathers for purely experimental reasons (not philosophical):
“...videmus enim sensibiliter quod aliquis debilis effectus
producitur ab agente remoto, sed fortis effectus requirit agens
propinquum...” (De Malo, XVI, a. 9, c.) If we today are
incapable of identifying the instrument, we are none the less
necessitated to affirm its existence.
While we thus re-integrate in the universe the spiritual
activity that works in it, we do not agree with those of old who
saw spontaneous generations spring up on all sides. It belongs
to experimental science to find where under and under what
conditions life arises. Let us add, however, that the passage
from the inorganic to the organic probably will never be
definable from the scientific point of view – the two are as
irreducible as physics and biology. Is there any need to point
out that the concept here proposed does not in the least touch
the adage: “omne vivens e vivo”, a necessary principle in
philosophy. What we here reject is the view that the living
source of life must be a univocal cause. The principal cause of
cosmic life and of its ascending upsurge is neither of the same
species nor of the same natural genus; it is none the less a living
being.

87
 (8) Origin of the Human Soul and the Human Body – the
human soul, although Form of the body, is not drawn out of the
potentiality of matter. (It must be immediately created by God).
Nevertheless every body is ordained to it either mediately or
immediately. The matter that is informed by the human soul
must have a proximate disposition to it, and this proximate
disposition necessitates that information. The disposition that is
the product of the working of nature is not constitutive of the
human body, since the body is not human save through the
spiritual form that actuates it. Yet that product is the immediate
disposition for the human body. Under the influence of pressure
exerted in it by a spiritual [43-44] agent entire nature (sic)
works toward the bringing forth of this disposition. This
disposition is realized in an incipient way in the measure of
progress up the scale of plants and animals.

It would seem that the evolution of the human body would

follow lines sketched by St. Thomas in his teaching on the
evolution of the human embryo: a succession of forms, the
inferior preparing matter for the superior until finally matter is
proximately disposed to the soul (See II C. Gent. c. 89: “Nec
est inconveniens si aliquid intermediorum etc...”) We have
abandoned the doctrine in this particular application, but it is
unquestionably valid for cosmic evolution in general.

(9) The First Man – Let us say that in the case of man there
exists a prior man who as generative cause is sufficient to bring
about the disposition for the human soul. This is univocal
causality. Cannot an equivocal cause realize the same effect?
And is it not natural to invoke it for the disposition of the body
of the First Man[?] Yes, I say First Man. True, one could raise
the point that if this spiritual pressure were sufficient to lift up
nature even to the disposition for the human body, and if this
equivocal causality is even more perfect than that of [a]
univocal cause, the latter would have no reason for its

88
 existence. Why would not human beings arise everywhere
without human parents?
That is nonsense. We have recourse to equivocal causality
only when a univocal cause is insufficient to explain an effect.
Therefore, from the moment that there is given a sufficient
univocal cause, the equivocal cause becomes on this head, and
in virtue of ontological economy, superfluous. In other words,
if all humanity can have its origin in one unique first individual,
the contrary hypothesis is absolutely without reason. The
constitution of this univocal cause is precisely the end of the
spiritual pressure. Just as God manifests His power by creating
effects which are cause in their turn, so this equivocal causality
reaches its peak, when it succeeds in producing an effect that
will be henceforth independent. Creationism is a disguised
renewal of the old doctrine of “those who deprive beings of
nature of their proper activity”, a doctrine energetically
combated by St. Thomas (C. Gent. III, c. 69).
If by human body we mean a subject disposed in its ultimate
disposition for the human soul, we must hold with S. Augustine
that the human body was in the potency of matter from the
beginning “according to seminal reasons”. By “seminal
reasons” we understand the initial composite (matter and form)
of the cosmos, the ultimate end (man), the efficient cause (the
spiritual agent and the composite). If by “making a human
body” we understand the preparatory and dispositive work
preceding in time the formal constitution of the human body,
we must say that the human body originates by way of an
evolutionary process, and that the evolutionary process had
man as its objective from the start.

Cf. Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “The Importance of Substance”

(Jacques Maritain Center: Thomistic Institute) (excerpt):1

ESSENCE AND EVOLUTION

1
(http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/ti/dewan.htm [12/18/08])

89
To complete this meditation on the importance of essence and
substance, I wish to look at some of the things Charles De
Koninck said about species in his presentation of cosmic
evolution.(77)(78) This is important because many people would
say that the very notion of a “species” is questionable,(79) and
that Aristotelian substantial form is an idea which can be
blamed for thousands of years of intellectual (and seeming
natural) stasis.(80)
What I am most interested in in De Koninck’s study is the
conception of the forms and essences of material things.(81) He
presents a view of these “absolutes” as being very weak
absolutes. The texts I think of in St. Thomas that help see
where De Koninck is going are such as ST 1.11.4.ad 3, on
diverse substances or essences as having diverse powers of
effecting unity; SCG 2.68 (cited by De Koninck) on the greater
unity of higher form;(82) the doctrine of “partial form” in the In
De caelo;(83) and the general doctrine of hierarchy of form in
Thomas.(84) I would say that De Koninck is explaining the oft-
repeated doctrine that natural forms are “educed from the
potency of matter”, being present in matter not actually but
potentially.
What then is De Koninck’s conception? He tells us that
Thomas distinguishes between necessary forms and contingent
forms. De Koninck says:

... Those forms are necessary which are entirely determined,

and which constitute, [p. 123] just by themselves essences -
the pure spirits; and the forms which determine their matter
sufficiently so as to be inseparable from it - [the forms] of the
celestial bodies in an outmoded astronomy and those of men
in the definitive future state of our universe. The forms of
corruptible beings are contingent.(85) Among these beings,
we distinguish those which are entirely corruptible secundum
totum et secundum partem; and those which are only in part
[corruptible], - such as men in the present state of the world.
Thus, we obtain forms that are absolutely contingent, and

90
 forms which are contingent secundum quid. Natural beings
are contingent because there is in them a real potency for not-
being: prime matter. [pp. 122-123]

I take it that in the above he is calling the human soul a

secundum quid contingent form, i.e. contingent “in a certain
respect”. He goes on to explain his conception of contingent
form:

Precisely what do we mean by the contingency of the form?

Indeed, the form is not contingent because its co-principle is
for it a potency towards not-being; the composite is
corruptible because its form is contingent. It is the
contingency of the form which is the intrinsic reason for the
precariousness and the uncertainty of its [the composite’s]
existence. That is why we can conceive of a form which
would not be contingent, in spite of its union with matter -
the human form after the resurrection, where the composite is
incorruptible.(86)

And he continues, underlining indetermination:

The upshot is then that the form is contingent because it is

not sufficiently determined in itself. Indeed, it is the lack of
determination and the incapacity to individuate itself which
call for matter,(87) and which are the ultimate cause of the
essential complexity of mobile being. The existence of
cosmic essence will be complex in its way, i.e. successive
and continuous.(88) Indeed, the nature of existence is
measured by the nature of essence. Quantum unicuique est de
forma, tantum inest ei de virtute essendi.(89) If the form is
not necessary, its existence cannot be totally assured.

Having thus focused on the ontologically hierarchical character

of form, he goes on:

91
 This need for matter which is the form [qu’est la forme]
introduces into it [the form] an irreducible obscurity. Of the
cosmic form(90) there cannot be a distinct idea, [an idea]
independent of the idea of the composite; even the separated
human form implies a relation to matter. And the matter
which enters into this idea is not determined save as also
signifying determinability relative to an infinity of other
forms. A non-subsistent form is not a quiddity in the strict
sense. This is to say that the different sub-species, such as the
canine species and that [p. 125] of the elephant, cannot be
absolutely opposed, as are the individual-species which are
the pure spirits; this is also to say that their definition will
include the notion of matter, i.e. the possibility of an infinity
of other sub-specific forms which can be drawn forth from
matter. If they were determined in the matter, there would be
of each one of them an idea independent of matter; and it
[matter] would not be pure potency; there would be latitatio
formarum, or else all the forms would come along ab
extrinseco.(91)

I must say that, reading the above, I was not sure why De
Koninck was speaking of “sub-species”. This comes out much
more clearly in his slightly later Revue Thomiste article,
wherein he is much more explicit regarding “natural species” as
distinct from “sub-species”. There he says:

... the different natural forms are not contingent from every
angle. The contingency only affects the sub-species; but since
the sub-human natural species are only realized in sub-
species, the importance of this contingency is appreciable.

Let us suppose, to illustrate this idea, a finite intelligence

contemplating the world at the moment when there was in it
no thing actually alive. This intelligence could foresee
infallibly the coming of man into this world and also all that
conditions absolutely the determination of matter in view of

92
 the human composite: it foresees the plant and the brute, but
it is impossible for it to foresee all the concrete ways in
which the natural species will be realized. These species,
which are quasi-genera relative to the sub-species, are
certain, a priori, because they constitute irreducible degrees
of being: there is no intermediary between “being”, “living”,
“knowing”, and “understanding”. Besides, the absolute
character of this gradation finds its foundation in the idea of
man whose soul is formally sensitive, vegetative, and form of
corporeity. Because the soul of man is all that, not merely
eminently but formally, these degrees of being are
susceptible to being distinctly realized outside of him. The
inorganic, the plant, and the animal are species-limits and
[are] certain. But it is impossible that the proper
determination of the sub-species which realize in a particular
way these natural species participate in this certitude.
Otherwise, the ways in which the animal and the plant can be
realized would be determined in advance in matter; or, again,
the matter included in the idea of man would signify
explicitly all and the only possible forms: this is to say that
there would not only be an idea of matter, but determinate
ideas.(92)

He goes on to say that all sub-species were at a given moment

future contingents. Thus, “cow” as “cow” is “philosophically
indefinable”. Its determinate truth is a posteriori. And:

The fixity of sub-human forms is thus only a counterfeit

fixity. We are naturally metaphysicians: hence, the need to
see the necessary and to assimilate, in the present case, the
cosmic hierarchy to the series of whole numbers or to the
immobile series of pure spirits, though there exists between
them only an analogy.(93)

93
Perhaps you see why I wished to qualify the meditation on
substance in itself with these observations, so interesting from
the viewpoint of evolution.
Coming back to the Québec paper, we see that De Koninck is
able to convey the unforseeability of just what particular forms
will emerge as nature moves towards its goal:

Thus, the existent varieties are analogous to the cuts made in

a continuum which are determinately true only a posteriori.
Consequently, the determination which is a material form is
something yet to be made [est à faire], precisely as
determination. If it were entirely made in advance, then
generation, for example, would be a pure launching into
existence of a form already determined in the matter. [pp.
124-125]

We go on, now, to consider the field of species. We are told:

Two neighboring angelic forms are infinitely close in that

they admit no intermediary species; they are also infinitely
distant in that a transition from one species to the other is
impossible, because they do not have in common a physical
genus; they are absolutely heterogeneous. Natural sub-
species, on the contrary, are infinitely close by their common
natural genus; infinitely distant by the real possibility of an
infinity of other intermediate sub-species. Thus, the vegetal
realm has no absolute extreme limits. Between the most
perfect of plants that exist and the lowest of animals, there is
the possibility of an infinity of more perfect plants and of less
perfect animals, even if this infinity is incompossible, from
the viewpoint of existence. [p. 126]

And at last we come to some remarkable conceptions of the

“natural species” and the “sub-species”:

94
 ... Natural species should be conceived of as zones of
probability. No natural and individual form is an absolute
type of a sub-species, nor [is] any sub-species [an absolute
type] of its natural species. “The dog”, “the carrot” are
statistical entities like “the Frenchman” or “the Englishman”.
None of the elements exhausts the essence of its class. (That
is why racism, which erects nations as absolute entities, and
its contrary, atomism, are forms of determinism. The satirical
poet is right to say:

All men are fools, and, despite all their care,

Differ among themselves only as to more or less.

Because the reasonable man also is only a statistical entity.)

[pp. 126-127]

It is hard to say what to attribute to form, and what to attribute

to matter here. And what is meant by a “statistical entity”? This
makes it seem as though it is the truly statistical mode of
knowing which gets at the specific real. Have we lost the
property of form here? Perhaps not. Rather, it might be said that
form only comes into its own in intellectual consider-ation.(94)
The sensible real is only potentially intelligible. As Thomas
says:

... the intelligible in act is not something existing in natural

reality, as far as the nature of sensible things is concerned,
which do not subsist outside of matter.(95)

De Koninck is challenging us to take seriously the form as

perfection of matter, and even as only a partial perfection of
matter, matter which is open to an infinity of such partial
perfections.
Here, we get an important point as to what De Koninck
means to say about nature and its evolutionary process. He tells
us:
95
 The higher one climbs in the hierarchy of species, the more
the forms become necessary and consequently intelligible.
Quanto magis distant a materia, tanto magis necessariae.(96)
But only the human form will have an existence which is
totally assured, by the fact that it is spiritual and that its
duration [sa durée], leaving aside the time which it involves
by its union with matter, is eviternal.

The idea is constantly to give us more and more a sense of the

nature of corporeal forms, as having something of
determination and something of indetermination.
Obviously, De Koninck is giving us an interpretation of
Thomas’s doctrine. The merit of it, as I see it, quite aside from
modern interests in evolution, is the extent to which it adds to
the intelligibility of “educing form from the potency of matter”.
Is his argument compelling? His contention is that if the “sub-
specific” forms were determinate, we would find ourselves in a
doctrine of “hiddenness of forms” or else in a doctrine which
gives a definite idea or ideas of matter. Yet he allows his
hypothetical observer to foresee, not only the human form, but
even the “natural forms” or “quasi-genera”. The question then
is: if one can foresee any form at all, without ruining the
doctrine of “educing from the potency of matter”, why cannot
one posit that one can see all forms within the “zone” of the
natural forms? I suppose the answer must lie in the need to
preserve the indetermination, the infinity of possibilities, which
such matter has.(97)
What is clear is that De Koninck helps us see the many levels
of form which Thomas really has in mind. And that is all to the
good.
I have never heard any public discussion of this doctrine of
De Koninck’s (perhaps I have just not been in the right place at
the right time), but I think it merits exploration.

ENDNOTES
96
<…>

77. De Koninck, Charles, “Le problème de l’indéterminisme”,

in L’Académie Canadienne Saint-Thomas d’Aquin (Sixième
session, 9 et 10 octobre 1935), Québec, 1937: Typ.”L’Action
Catholique”, pp. 65-159.
De Koninck published a shorter study on the general idea of
indeterminism, “Thomism and Scientific Indeterminism”, in
Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association (for 1936), Washington, 1937: Catholic University
of America Press, pp. 58-76. In this (p. 68, n. 20), he refers us
to the Québec item for more detail.
Subsequently he published “Réflexions sur le problème de
l’Indéterminisme”, Revue Thomiste t. 43 (1937), pp. 227-252
and 393-409. - I would like to have used some material from
the recently published “Le cosmos (1936) - Extrait”, Laval
théologique et philosophique 50 (1994), pp. 111-143. However,
I call attention to this important paper, which presents evolution
as requiring the causality of an extra-cosmic pure spirit. - The
footnotes in what follows are mine, not De Koninck’s, unless
indicated.
78. De Koninck (“Le cosmos”) says:

And if we do not seem able to follow the Angelic Doctor, is

it not because we have excluded from the universe the
efficient and sufficient cause moving the cosmos and pushing
it upwards? Our timorous attitude is only too easily
explained. Since Suarez we have resolutely put a plug on the
world’s top side: we wish to explain everything in nature by
means of intracosmic causes. Suarez, in denying the
apodictic value of the arguments presented by saint Thomas
for demonstrating on strictly rational lines the existence of
pure spirits, cut every essential link between the cosmos and
the created spiritual universe. Let us add to that his hybrid
notion of prime matter, and we arrive logically at the

97
 barbarous creationism of our philosophy manuals. It is
obvious that if we sterilize the world from its outset, nothing
more can come forth. Creationism, which from all angles
opens the world directly on God, passing to one side of the
universal hierarchy, implicitly rejects what is essential to the
universe: unity of order. [129]

De Koninck says that since Suarez the Scholastics abandon

more and more the ontological study of nature. They think that
scientific explanations replace the philosophy of nature. The
philosophers concentrate only on notions of interest to the
theologians. Cosmic repulsion may explain the expansion of the
universe, and the theory of genes explain mutations, but none
of that is an explanation of why anything is in motion. He says:

... none of that can explain the simple deplacement of a

material point from the ontological point of view. And to do
that, one cannot have direct recourse to the general notions of
metaphysics - we must find appropriate causes. If I have a
headache because God wills it, that does not prevent my
attributing it to a too long evening, and [does not prevent] its
being removable by an aspirin. [129]

And he continues:

Now, I say that no intracosmic cause can provide for me an

ontological explanation of the movement of the moon, not
that the movement of the moon interests me particularly in
philosophy of nature, but it is the movement of an inorganic
phenomenon, and it is as such that I consider it. [130]

79. Michel Delsol, “Où mène la biologie moderne? Questions

aux théologiens et aux philosophes”, Laval théologique et
philosophique 52 (1996), pp, 339-353: the second section is
entitled “The Disappearance of the Notion of Species”. The

98
idea is that the picture of the species as something well defined
is to be abandoned: pp. 340-341.
80. Cf. e.g. David L. Hull, “The Effect of Essentialism on
Taxonomy - Two Thousand Years of Stasis”, British Journal
for the Philosophy of Science, XVI (1965), no. 60, pp. 314-327
and no. 61, pp. 1-18.
81. I set aside for another time discussion of the general
conception De Koninck has concerning the philosophy of
evolution, particularly as presented in “Le cosmos”.
82. SCG 2.68 (para. 6, i.e. “Hoc autem modo mirabilis...”),
where Thomas concludes:

... But something is not less one [if composed] out of

intellectual substance and corporeal matter than out of the
form of fire and its matter, but perhaps more [one]: because
the more a form conquers matter, the more a unit [magis
unum] is brought about out of it and matter.

83. In De caelo 1.6 (63 [6]).

84. See especially SCG 3.97 in its entirety.
85. I would underline that this is true of them, not as form, but
as such form. See my paper, “St. Thomas Aquinas against
Metaphysical Materialism”, in Atti del’VIII Congresso
Tomistico Internazionale, Vatican City, 1982: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, t. V, 412-434.
86. Notice here that he has this idea of the human soul in the
present state as in a measure “contingent”. This is a recognition
of the essential incompleteness of the human form. His eye is
on the composite.
87. Cf. CM 5.10 (905):

... matter is included in the first mode [of substance, i.e.

particular substance], because particular substance does not
have it that it be substance and that it be individual in
material things, save by virtue of matter [ex materia]. (my
italics)

99
88. Here, I would note that the esse of temporal things is only
per accidens measured by time; but it is measured by time. Cf.
Quodl. 4.3.2 [5], summarized in Endnote b.
89. De Koninck gives no reference for this, but it is doctrinally
the same as what is said in In De caelo 1.6 (Spiazzi #62 [5]):
each thing is, i.e. has being, through its form; hence, just so
much and for so long each thing has of being, viz. just as great
as is the power of its form.
90. This means the sort of form which we find in the world of
generation and corruption.
91. On these two positions concerning form, see ST 1.45.8;
“latitatio formarum”, i.e. the forms are “hidden” in the matter,
considers the forms as already actual but “lying low”;
obviously, the coming of forms from outside also views them
as having complete being. Thomas’s doctrine is that higher, i.e.
spiritual, beings employ movement and change to exercise
causality upon composite, i.e. material, agents, which bring
form out of the potency of matter into act: cf. ST 1.65.4.ad 2.
92. De Koninck, Revue Thomiste, p. 234. In the Québec article,
in a footnote (and again, one much more intelligible when one
has read the RT article) he says:

... By existent varieties I mean the sub-species included

within the limits of absolute natural species. Note
nevertheless that a sub-species which constitutes in fact a
limit of a natural species is never the absolute limit of this
natural species. It tends towards a limit which is to be found
at infinity. In the last analysis, the absolute character of
natural species is founded on matter as essentially ordered
towards its ultimate act, towards its last end - the human
form, which is formally and in eminent fashion, at once
sensitive, vegetative, and the form of corporeity. [p. 125, n.
1]

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 What he seems to mean is that the absolute lower forms are
likenesses of what we see in the highest form of matter, and
that it is matter, as calling for that highest form, which calls for
forms which possess that sort of likeness.
93. Revue Thomiste, p. 235.
94. ST 1.75.5 (444a6-11):

... the intellective soul knows some thing in its nature

absolutely, for example, the stone inasmuch as it is a stone,
absolutely. Therefore, the form of the stone, absolutely,
according to its proper formal character, is in the intellective
soul...

95. ST 1.79.3.ad 3.
96. He is speaking of the cosmic forms, and so cf. such texts as
ST 1.76.1 (449b37-450a5), or ST 1-2.85.6 (1181b4-27) on
forms as aiming at incorruptibility.
97. On the infinity of forms to which matter is in potency, cf.
CM 1.12 (198) and ST 1.7.2.ad 3.

Jacques Maritain Center: Thomistic Institute. The Importance

of Substance. Lawrence Dewan, O.P.

Cf. also Dave Quackenbush, “De Koninck’s Cosmos”. Lecture

given at Thomas Aquinas College on March 11, 2011:1

Charles De Koninck was born in Belgium in July of 1906, and

died in Rome in February of 1965 - he was 58. De Koninck
taught Mr. Berquist, Mr. McArthur, and Mr. Neumayr. Mr.
McArthur and Mr. Berquist both said that they entered
philosophy because of hearing Dr. De Koninck lecture. So I
think it is fair to say that we would not be here, tonight, without
De Koninck. I met De Koninck in some old mimeographs the
tutors were reading during my senior year, and later I found

1
(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SN2RyS1xnsVCwkO0mwWYqDAq50KeAR8Gl=en&pli=1#
113e9xNK_yw/edit?h [3/29/11])

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more old class notes in an file cabinet at Notre Dame. When I
asked Dr. McInerny where the photocopied class notes came
from, he told me about the Charles De Koninck archive at the
University of Laval. Next thing I knew, we had decided that I
should fly up there and photocopy the whole thing. So I did,
enjoying the hospitality of Thomas De Koninck, son of Charles,
a philosopher himself who has continued his father’s work, and
a very kind gentleman. I spent, I think, six 10-hour days,
photocopying non-stop, manually, about 10,000 pages of
mostly unpublished notes and article drafts. The archive has
now been scanned, and is readily available to anyone interested.

Dr. Ralph McInerny was another Thomist who studied with De

Koninck. And he devoted himself in the last years of his life to
a strenuous effort at producing an English edition of De
Koninck’s collected works. Dr. McInerny told us this project
was motivated by piety, by the strong realization, as he neared
the end of his own days, of what an extraordinary blessing it
had been to be a student of De Koninck.

In a memoir written several years ago, McInerny recalled his

time with De Koninck more than 50 years before. I want to start
by reading a bit from that:

De Koninck once wrote that his ambition was simply to be a

faithful student of his master Thomas Aquinas. Discipleship
seems to have either of two results. The disciple never
emerges from what the master had accomplished and is
content to retail it. Or, and this was the case with De Koninck
and other giants of the Thomistic Revival, Thomas was
followed because his starting points were the inevitable ones,
and by acknowledging and seeing where they led, one could
go far beyond the text of the master while at the same time
claiming that what one said was simply an organic extension.
It is only in this second way that a tradition can live.

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 And Charles De Koninck was the liveliest Thomist I have
ever known.

I mention these things, before turning to a sketch of De

Koninck’s account of the world, because I feel a similar duty of
piety to De Koninck and to this community. So, for what it is
worth, I offer to you my own view that De Koninck is in every
way at the heart of what enables this College to stand in the
tradition of living Thomism, and of the intellectual tradition of
the Catholic Church. As a College, we should turn to him in
gratitude - to his thought, and to the faith and spirit that inform
it.

What I will principally sketch for you tonight is De Koninck’s

account of an adequate philosophy of the cosmos, as he thought
such an account was available to the philosopher of the 20th
century. But first, some more general remarks about the
significance of that account.

While still quite a young man, in his first years at Laval, he

wrote a book called “Cosmos.” Let’s notice first what a
remarkable thing it was for a man to compose a book with such
a title before he was 30 years old. Some might see presumption
here. I see a confirmation that philosophy must arise from a
great and daring love of wisdom, the kind of love characteristic
of the energy of youth.

During these same years, in the mid-30’s, De Koninck taught a

class on Nietzsche, in which he heaped contempt on those
distressed by the force of Nietzsche’s affirmation of will. De
Koninck saw in Nietzsche a kind of providential sign of the
revolt of nature against the diminished desires of modern man.

Nietzsche wanted it all, but didn’t know what that meant. De

Koninck thought that the Catholic philosopher ought also to
want it all, to want to know the meaning of the whole world,

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and its goodness. The difference, he believed, was that the
Catholic philosopher knew, as a fruit of faith, that the Good
itself wants to give itself to us, and that the world we seek to
know has something to do with this. The Catholic philosopher
has reason to expect the whole cosmos to be a sign for him, a
means of knowing and loving God. This is the first, and
governing, point to make about natural philosophy as De
Koninck understood it - to philosophize is to ask about the
whole of things, about reality, about the entire world and what
it means.

De Koninck loved and mastered the formalities of philosophy,

and the distinctions between disciplines, but he never forgot
that the divisions of philosophy are subordinate to the pursuit of
Wisdom. The philosopher studies the natural world, from its
astonishing details to its mysterious totality, in order that from
such knowledge might arise a wisdom of the source. Natural
philosophy, precisely in remaining true to itself, seeks to be
surpassed by meta-physics, by a knowledge of the immaterial.
Inevitably then, the philosopher asks about the cosmos,
including the human. He attends to it in all its dimensions of
time and space, the very small and the very large, the simple
and the complex. Above all, he asks what to make of the whole
thing, as one thing. Aristotle did so, and Charles De Koninck
thought that there was no good reason for a Catholic
philosopher in the 20th century to shy away from doing so as
well. But while Aristotle could, perhaps, trust hopefully that
gazing at the night sky would reveal fundamental signs of the
causal unity of the cosmos, and trust as well that the ordinary
experiences of common substances would reveal the
unchanging nature of the first material principles, things were a
bit more complicated for a philosopher in the 20th century.
Reality had become a rather ungainly, and moving, target for
specu-lation.

In recent centuries, we have become aware that the material

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cosmos is billions of years old, and of a size that threatens, in
my case quite successfully, to overwhelm our capacity to
imagine, even to understand. We have discovered that the
periodic elements themselves did not exist for hundreds of
millions of years, that they were born at particular times in the
cores of stars, and that those very particles are more like dances
of mathematical energy than Newton’s inert bits of stuff.

We have learned as well that life began relatively recently, after

billions of years of a lifeless cosmos, that the various species of
living beings have shown up in a bizarre and glorious pageant,
roughly in order from the imperfect to the perfect, over the past
3 billion years. In what Aristotle thought he saw as a
permanent, ordered and complete set of living kinds, we now
know that we see only the latest living edge of life on earth.
Perhaps most startling, we now know that the vast,
overwhelming majority of kinds of living things that ever
existed, are extinct. We wonder what Aristotle could not –
whether they lived in vain?
The very structures of living things have, in the past century,
been revealed to be compli-cated and wonderful in ways that
compete quite well with more cosmic stunners like 100 billion
galaxies. There are new infinites in every direction, within and
without. And man himself, we now see, is embedded
organically, mysteriously, in this amazing world.

If you are not astonished almost beyond words by the turn that
human knowledge of the universe has taken in the past century,
you are not paying attention. 10 years before De Koninck wrote
“Cosmos”, an astronomer in Pasadena, Edwin Hubble,
announced to the world that the Milky Way Galaxy was not the
whole of creation, but a minute island in an ocean of galaxies –
the current estimate, in the visible sky, is 100 billion Milky
Ways. It is hard to imagine a moment more apparently hostile
to the hope of discerning a conclusive meaning to the whole of
material creation. 10 years later, as he wrote “Cosmos,” De

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Koninck was aware of the brand new, and still extremely
controversial, theory of Belgian priest Monsignor George
Lemaitre – also at Louvain – that the universe was expanding
from an original condition of unity, at a determinate moment in
the past.

So, much has been revealed by science to the philosopher. And

as with all revelations, those of science have not always been
very welcome. It was a dizzying, potentially upsetting,
disorienting, time to be a Catholic natural philosopher. And at
this, perhaps culminating, time of transformation of the
scientific account of the world, the young Charles De Koninck
composed his daring account of the whole shebang.

De Koninck thought that modern Thomists simply didn’t know

what to make of the situation. Aristotle and St. Thomas – and
Dante – understood the causal order of the world to be
embodied, literally, in a naturally eternal, spherical universe.
Today, in my own experience, it is hard for us even to imagine
what it would be like to believe [in] such a thing. And yet we
read texts of Aristotle and St. Thomas in which the most fun-
damental philosophical questions are considered in light of the
truth of this remote image of the world.

De Koninck thought we are tempted by this situation to do one

of two things, either of them bad. Put simply, either we
abandon crucial parts of the philosophy which, for our masters,
appeared to be incarnate in their now surpassed image of the
cosmos, or we abandon the conviction that such philosophy
depended in any way for them on that image. Either we
conclude sadly that our hope of understanding the world passed
away along with the celestial spheres and the four elements, or
we claim that our philosophy survived, miraculously, unscathed
from the shipwreck of the ancient image of the world.

De Koninck thought we could do better. In this he spoke out of

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the heart of the true perennial tradition. God does not cease
speaking to us through creation as we understand it better.
Perhaps “revelation” is a loaded term for this situation? Let’s
think about that. Surely, we must say that God intended for the
cosmos to be revealed to man – and by man – gradually,
through history.

And when we contemplate the astonishing turn this knowledge

has taken in the recent past, can we doubt that it is part of
God’s providence that man should come to be increasingly
provoked by the nature of creation? Is this increased knowledge
of nature itself a principal aspect of cosmic history? Are the
histories of the cosmos, and of man, one history – and if so, can
reason begin to anticipate the culmination of this history? De
Koninck tackles all these questions in the remarkable book of
his youth.
Now I’ll try to give you a first glimpse at how he does so. What
follows is not so much an argument, as a tour, of some of the
principal judgements at which De Koninck thought natural
philosophy could arrive regarding the cosmos.

So what, according to De Koninck, is the cosmos? The short

answer is that the cosmos is mobile being - that the whole of
physical reality is fundamentally one creature, moving toward
its maturation, its perfection, in order to return to God. De
Koninck thought that the much disputed evolution of biological
species was, for the philosopher, one aspect of the motion of
the entire world toward God. Writing at a time when most
Catholic phil-osophers saw in the idea of evolution a threat to
Catholic and philosophical truth, De Koninck insisted that we
should want evolution, and not just biological, but cosmic,
evolution, to be true. The idea of evolution was particularly
convincing to him precisely because Divine power is most
present where created causes are most causes. An evol-ving
cosmos is a cosmos with a nature, an intrinsic principle of
motion toward its own perfection. In such a world, the Divine

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wisdom gives to every creature the privilege of joining in the
work of ascent, of return to God the first principle. When we
diminish the causal role played by creatures, we diminish the
principal good God intended in creation - the universe as one
thing, having a unity of essential, and consequently of causal,
order. But Is Evolution True?

De Koninck thought that evolution – the ascent, forming a

cosmic history, of the kinds of physical substances that exist –
follows necessarily from the philosophical principles of
Aristotle and St. Thomas:

The philosophy of nature, being certain knowledge through

causes, is able to reach only what is essential to nature, and
necessary, such as the matter/form composition of natural
substances, the contingency which this composition entails,
the necessity of evolution, [and] the necessity of humanity as
the final end of this entire ascension of the world.

This point is worth repeating – De Koninck identified

evolution, and the culmination of evolution in man, as two of
the few strictly demonstrable truths of natural philosophy.

But what about philosophical objections to evolution, against

the higher arising from the lower, or one kind of thing causing
something specifically different? Are not the species of
corporeal beings eternal? De Koninck thought we need to
remember what corporeal beings are, and what makes them
different from angels. Modern philosophical objections to
evolution, he said:

attribute to natural beings . . . properties (that) are specific

(to) purely spiritual creatures. Our Philosophy of Nature
reeks with sins of angelism, it is often no more than bad
angelology.

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What does this mean? Without noticing it, we too often think
about material substances, cosmic beings, as though they were
pure spirits, immaterial beings. We don’t, of course, forget that
bodily things are, or have, bodies, but we don’t think carefully
enough about the difference matter makes.

What does Aristotle teach us is the common feature of every

cosmic substance? Composition from matter and form. De
Koninck contrasts such cosmic essence[s] – the essences of
possible corporeal substances – with angelic essences this way:

What pure spirits have that is quite specific by opposition to

cosmic beings is simplicity and perfect determination of
essence.

Because the angelic essence is simple, it is received once and

for all, in its entirety. Angels have no past or future. They are
perfectly what they are, all at once, with no potency to be
anything else. This is good. Cosmic beings – rocks, plants,
planets, dogs – on the other hand, have essences that are
complex. And one of the principles of their complex essence is
purely indeterminate, namely, matter. Since the way things
exist follows from what they are, beings with a complex
essence have a complex existence. This is, relatively speaking,
bad. From such unfortunately complex existence – the story of
our cosmic lives – arises the necessity of time. A being with a
complex essence must have a complex existence. That means
an existence received successively. But this successively
received existence must be always that of the same being, so it
must be successively and continuously received. But successive
and continuous duration is precisely the definition of time. So
the career of a cosmic, a physical, a natural being, is inevitably
spread out across the dimension we call time. My now is not
my then – being what I am now is mysteriously, continually,
divided from what I was and from what I will be. I am complex
in a way that I experience as a defect of unity, an imperfection

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in the way I am. This is true of rocks, electrons, planets.
“Natural beings are busy in pur-suit of existence, and spend
time in doing so.”

We are not used to thinking this way, perhaps. But from this
perspective, the longer some-thing exists, the more its existence
is dispersed, spread out. From this perspective, De Kon-inck
says, “Natural subhuman species should be considered as more
and more audacious attempts to detach the world itself from the
dispersion of time, in order to dominate it from outside, instead
of being borne away by it.” Matter, and the correlative
imperfection of cor-poreal forms, make the course of cosmic
existence contingent as well. Only natural beings have a future,
and that future cannot be perfectly determined to be one way or
another, be-cause natural beings are insufficiently determined,
insufficiently real, to make that part of their existence which we
know as their future be necessarily one way or another.

From these consequences of the matter/form composition of

natural substances, De Koninck thought we can see the
necessity of evolution culminating in humanity. But he also
under-stood that drawing this conclusion, even from the most
basic principles of natural philo-sophy, was made much easier
by the modern scientific discovery that the cosmos has, since its
origin, been developing toward structure, complexity,
interiority, and life. The vast, co-operative, complex, ordered
endeavor of modern natural science to assemble what is, in
effect, a cosmic “natural history,” was not available to St.
Thomas. It was available to De Koninck. He thought this
natural history could provide the philosopher crucial extrinsic
sup-port for strictly philosophical conclusions. His argument
shows how natural science, al-though not itself achieving
philosophic certitude, can serve the philosopher. Man must be
the reason the cosmos exists, the reason matter exists, and the
reason that all other natural forms exist.

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1. Man is the reason the cosmos exists – its final explanation
and its end, or goal. This can be seen in several ways.

First: no motion can be an end in itself. Movement is a going

toward a good which is not possessed. It is contradictory to
think of a motion as good in itself – its very account denies this
possibility. So the final term of any mobile being must be
something simply immobile, something achieved – which
means something above time. This term is man, who as a
spiritual being does not pursue his existence in time, although
he remains in time in so far as he is corporeal.
Further, the universe, and all its parts, have their final end in
God. This means that creatures must be capable of a return to
God. But the corporeal universe, the cosmos, can only achieve
that return to God through man, for only an intellectual creature
can return to God. For these reasons, a physical creation
without man is literally unthinkable - a contradiction.

A world cannot exist in order to be indefinitely separated from

its own existence, and in-definitely separated from itself by
space. By the very fact that it is made for intelligence, it is
necessary that it be able to be present to itself; it is necessary
that an intelligence be able to restore this entire ensemble to its
principle, and that the world become a kind of hymn. In order
to arrive at that, it is necessary that time be arrested and that it
be immo-bilized, and that space be entirely penetrated and
present. Now, that cannot be done but in an intelligence, which
is as such outside of space and outside of time. And our
universe will be immobilized at the moment when intelligence
will have made its conquest.

So man and his return to the Creator are the reason for which
the entire cosmos exists. Man, thought De Koninck, is the way
the material creation enables itself to return to God.

111
2. In addition to being the reason for which the cosmos exists,
man is also the reason for which matter exists.

The matter in every bodily being is properly understood as an

appetite, a desire, for the human form. Matter is intelligible by
reference to act – but no act which remains mingled with
potency can be the principal goal of matter. As pure potency
and determinability, mat-ter is the same in every being. It is an
appetite or desire for all forms, the lowest to the high-est, but
most properly it is a desire for the highest form, which is the
form of man. So the human form is desired principally by all
matter.

3. Man is also the reason for being of all possible natural forms,
as much as he is of matter.

Natural forms are like attempts to satisfy the desire of matter

for the perfect immobility of the spiritual human form.
Accordingly, each natural form is turned in the direction of
man. Infra-human forms are attempts at immobile act, as
though each were an attempt at the human form. From this
perspective the infra-human forms are much less final states
than tendencies. They are, recall, “more and more audacious
attempts to detach the world itself from the dispersion of time.”

And so we arrive at a cosmic hierarchy. The possible infra-

human natural forms form a continuum. De Koninck thought
that only four natural species are philosophically definable,
necessary, within this continuum - inorganic, plant, animal, and
man. Man must be a body, he must be a living body, a sensitive
body, and he must have a rational soul. Accordingly, these
degrees of being must exist. All other, more specific, degrees of
being may or may not exist – like particular places one may or
may not set one’s foot in a walk with a determinate starting
point and a determinate goal. Animal was necessary, turtle was

112
contingent. So the actual infra-human forms constitute a scale,
as of steps from one form to the next, whose order has the
human form as its principle.

This is not to speak yet of an order in time, but an order of

natures:

The fixity of infra-human forms is then a counterfeit fixity.

We are naturally metaphys-icians, and so we incline to
assimilate the cosmic hierarchy to a series of whole numbers,
and to the immobile hierarchy of pure spirits; whereas there
is only an analogy between them.

This, notice, is what De Koninck means by “bad angelology.”

But must we postulate a temporal order in the realization of this

hierarchy of actual forms? What prevents the ultimate and
intrinsic end of the cosmos from being realized from the
beginning?

From the beginning, matter is essentially ordered to man, to this

intelligence that has need of passive experience, therefore of
sensation and animality, which entail vegetative life and
corporeity. If matter does not have this act right away, this is
because orig-inally it is not sufficiently disposed and first much
must be done, a work which consists in eliciting ever more
simple quidditative determinations. The cause of this resistance
of the world is nothing other than the indetermination of matter.

But we are still, necessarily, speaking of a world of

fundamentally contingent events. Al-though intelligence must
come to matter, the manner of its coming is contingent. The
parti-cular infra-human forms have arisen from matter like cuts
in a line - there are infinitely many cuts that might be made,
and no way to know in advance which ones will be made. So
all infra-human forms more particular than inorganic substance,

113
plant and animal, are contingent. This contingency is a
universal property of material beings, arising from the
indetermination of the matter which is an essential principle of
them all. The corresponding incompleteness or imperfect
determination of natural forms is a correlative source of the
contingency of the natural. Only natural science, or methodical
natural history, can discern the actual path that nature takes to
arrive at man, and only after the fact.

The cosmos will, then, necessarily pursue a contingent ascent

toward the ultimate disposition of matter to receive the form of
man. Evolution, De Koninck says, consists precisely in the
formation of an adequate corporeal instrument to serve the
human spirit – the least of the created intelligences. But matter
is not, all by itself, the principle of motion. For there to be a
determined principle of motion, there must be matter, which
desires, and form, which deter-mines the kind of motion by
which the desired end can be pursued. Both matter and form are
essential parts of any nature. How a composite can be changed
will follow from what kind of being it is now – from its form.
So different natural substances will be in motion toward man
differently, according to their different, contingent, degrees of
perfection.

How can new natures come to be? Generation of new

substances occurs as the term of alterations in existing
substances. Every natural composite is generated by another
natural composite through alteration. In such generation,
substantial form is elicited from matter by an agent of
generation, by means of instruments. To generate is just to
draw a possible natural form, already given in the potency of
prime matter, into actuality. So if a new form, higher than any
existing corporeal or cosmic form, is to be elicited from matter,
it will be elicited by the causality of existing corporeal forms.
The natural way for any substance, new kind or not, higher or
not, to come to be is as the term of alterations of existing

114
substance. After initial co-creation of prime matter in the
original composite beings, no special creative act is necessary
for such generation. All possible corporeal forms are given in
the potency of matter, and need only be drawn into act.

There remains the question of the principal agent. How can new
beings, more perfect than any previous cosmic beings, be
generated without the direct intervention of God? De Koninck’s
answer is that modern scholastics have departed from St.
Thomas in rejecting the purely philosophical demonstration of
the existence and causality of pure spirits, of angels, who as
nobler parts of the universe are related to the cosmos precisely
as universal causes.

Having forgotten the philosophy by which we understand the

difference between angels and corporeal beings, we have made
two errors. We have unknowingly attributed angelic attributes
to corporeal beings – perfect determination and simplicity of
essence. And we have forgotten that the universe includes
intelligent causes at work in the cosmos. So pure spirits are the
intelligent agent causes which, responding to the natural desire
of the cosmos, suffice to draw out of the original composites
with which the cosmos began all the forms which are necessary
for it to reach its end. Since this angelic causal power is
natural, it must act on natures according to the laws inscribed
in them:

In the ascending movement by which more perfect beings are

drawn from less per-fect, the given intra-cosmic composite is
only an instrument, the spiritual agent being the principal
cause. The spiritual pressure will not draw [just] any nature
out of any composite whatsoever. The instrument, although it
produces an effect super-ior to itself under the influence of a
superior cause, implies nevertheless essential limitations. The
more perfect the substances engendered, the more will they
be in their turn more perfect instruments.

115
De Koninck insists that the development of the biosphere is an
increasing elevation above time. Not metaphorically, but really,
a being is lifted above the conditions of space and time in the
measure that it is perfected. And this elevation, in turn,
corresponds to the degree of life it has. To live is to triumph
over the separations of space and time. In its local motion, with
accumulated memory of its experience at prior locations, an
animal labors at the great project of unification. This, he says,
“is the profound sense of the locomobility of knowers, a power
that frees them from the shackles of their spatiality, and which
in the final instance is at the service of the exploring
intelligence.”

The necessity of humanity as the specific term of the cosmic

motion does not mean that the cosmos reached its natural
perfection when man came to be. What did the evolutionary
perspective imply for De Koninck about the naturally perfected
cosmos that lies ahead?

Man as knower, and as maker, tends to complete the

subordination of cosmic matter to himself. This not Baconian
hubris – it is the purpose of the world. He tends toward ubiquity
by extending his presence, his sense knowledge, and his
intellectual knowledge, to the whole of the cosmos. In thus
making the world more and more simply one in his knowledge,
he overcomes in himself its separation from itself. In man, the
cosmos increasingly tends as well to transcend its separation
from itself in time. Past and present are increasingly collec-ted
in the knowledge of man, and the whole of cosmic existence
thus increasingly achieves a unity which, without man, is
utterly lacking.

From this perspective, the entire cosmos may be viewed as an

impulse toward the perfected life of thought.

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We can consider the maturation of the cosmos as a tendency
toward the thought in which all its parts are united and lived;
the cosmos thus tends to compenetrate itself, to touch itself in
the intelligence of man, in which it can realize (the) explicit
return to its First Principle.

What would be the ideal state that we would pursue in time and
in thought?” De Koninck asks. “I would wish to exist all at
once. I would wish that all things be present in me all together.
I would wish to contemplate them in an instant immobile and
indivisible. I would wish to have a present which has no past,
and which is never separate from the future.

But it is clear that the “man” who anticipates this culminating

condition is not an “I,” but a “we.” It is humanity, not isolated
men, in whom the self-possession of the cosmos will reach
perfection. The perfected cosmos will be, on this view, a
common good, possessed as such by the perfected human
community. In fact, the entire cosmic ascent can be viewed as
well as an ascent of love, of desire for the good. Moved
originally from without, before the coming of life, the cosmos
increasingly desires its perfection with a love from within,
culminating in the rational desire called will. In man, the
cosmos loves itself explicitly.

Each individual being, of course, has its particular end. But for
a lion, for example, to be all that a lion can be – for it to reach
its own individual completion in the accidental order – is not
the principal end of a lion. Even the essential principles of the
lion, its matter and form, are seeking spirituality, the immobile
act. The accidents which perfect the lion as lion may be all that
this lion can achieve for itself as an individual toward this goal.
But this is not the same as saying that the perfect day of hunting
is all that either the matter or the form of the lion are for, all
that they, and the lion, are ordered to, all that they desire. Nor is

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the species to which every individual is proximately ordered an
end in itself. To have an essence com-posed of matter and form
is to have a perfectible essence. Nature may bring about many
lions so that the leonine nature can continue to exist, and to
exist well, as what it is. But this specific existence itself, spread
out over indefinitely many individuals, must in turn be or-dered
to something higher. It is good that lions continue to be, for a
time, but nature seeks perfect lions so that there can, eventually,
be more perfect natural beings. The whole of nature is
essentially a principle of ascending movement, an intensifying
desire for the culminating good:

Lower natures serve universal nature even in generation.

When a higher nature is elicited from the potency of a lower
nature by equivocal generation, this eliciting is . . . always
natural in the degree that it responds to the desire of the
lower nature as ordered to the good of universal nature and to
the ultimate intrinsic end of the world.

Every part of the universe, even the humblest and farthest

removed from the One Who is goodness by His essence,
tends naturally and more intensely toward the good, intrinsic
and extrinsic, of the universe than towards the good of its
genus, of its kind, and last towards its own.

Nature, De Koninck says, is generosity, and evolution is, for

the ascending natures, a gift of self in the precise degree that it
is a work of nature. “All infrahuman things,” he says, “are love
of and desire for man by their very tendency toward the explicit
love of God.” Accord-ingly, in cosmic evolution, he saw not
only an attempt by the world at self-possession in knowledge –
the cosmos also “tends to be united to itself and possess itself
effectively in love.” The world tends toward this self-
knowledge and self-love, he says, “not, doubtless, as ultimate
end, but as the pre-condition of the explicit return to the First
Principle by love.” Cosmic development seeks perfect self-

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possession in preparation for self-donation to God. And it is on
man that this highest hope of the world rests.

I want to conclude by remembering once again the importance,

the dignity, that De Koninck attributed to the natural sciences.
It is unreasonable, he repeatedly said of evolution, to judge a
theory by the abuses that are made of it. He certainly thought
the same of the tendency of philosophers to be ungrateful to the
sciences. I expect that Charles de Koninck thanked God
fervently for the blessing of being alive when he was, at a time
of glory and triumph for the natural sciences. But I believe he
thanked God more fervently for the blessing of having a
glimpse of the higher truths which he believed that science
helped the philosopher, and the theologian, to reach.

At the conclusion of the first part of “Cosmos,” entitled “The

Scientific Point of View,” De Koninck articulated both the
importance, and the dignity, of the scientific effort:

Science, while being only a flat projection of what has relief

and depth, enables us to foresee the immense effort and the
prodigious cost nature invests in the preparation for the
coming of man. And whether he knows it or not, everything
that happens in the world is done for him. The scale of
natural species is only a scale of assault. If man is the ulti-
mum in executione, he is nonetheless the primum in
intentione. The all too poor account that we have given
enables us to suspect the richness of the human being who
contains virtually all the degrees of perfection of that which
is below him. And it is not only in the formidable display of
power that we should look for this richness: the reaches of
space, the unimaginable masses, the vertiginous speeds of
astronomy are not worth a lily. But we have also seen that we
have need of the stars to understand the lily. We will only be
able to understand ourselves when we understand the
universe. Our present is filled with the past.

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 The more profoundly we understand the world, the better we
comprehend that we touch it only with the feet, and that with
our head we touch the bottom rungs of another hierarchy of
which nature is only a fleeting shadow.

Cosmos, the book, was never published. It has been suggested

that this was because De Koninck reconsidered some of its
principal ideas. I believe that this is not true. To mention just
one, but in my view, decisive, indication of this: when, in 1962,
a French journal devoted an entire issue to honoring him, De
Koninck chose the central chapter of “Cosmos,” entitled “The
Cosmos as Impulse toward the Life of Thought,” to be
published for the first time. But 1962 was a long time after
1936.

In my view, the likely reason the book was never published was
that De Koninck decided that those who would read it were not
ready for it. In 1936, Catholic intellectuals who publicly
embraced evolution were viewed with suspicion, at best. One of
the greatest philo-sophical souls of the 20th century, whose
understanding of the world was remarkably akin to De
Koninck’s, spent his entire productive life in various forms of
banishment from the world of ideas because of those views.

Teilhard de Chardin, a great scientist, great philosopher, and

holy priest, had been banished to China by the Jesuits because
of the inconvenient popularity of his views on cosmology,
evolution, and the place of man in the world. Those views were
substantially the same as De Koninck’s. Aristotle fled rather
than let Athens sin twice against philosophy; Descartes
changed his publishing plans after seeing what happened to
Galileo. I believe De Koninck probably took the prudent path
as well.

Nietzsche speaks of the mask that great men must wear, and of

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 the pain they bear. In 1952 Teilhard wrote to a friend from his
final place of banishment, New York City, that “the University
of Laval at Quebec is about to hold a congress on Evolution.
Naturally no one has thought (or dared) to ask for a
contribution from me. . . .”

In the publication of the proceedings of the conference, hosted

by De Koninck, mention is made by one of the presenters of De
Koninck’s well known views on evolution, and a promise is
made of their publication in a later edition of the Laval Journal.
This never happened. Teilhard died two and a half years later,
still probably thinking that Charles De Koninck was a rear-
guard apologist for the Vatican on evolution.

It saddens me that these two champions of the view that Jesus

Christ is the Lord of the Cosmos and of History never met, and
it may still be worthwhile to ask why they didn’t. It took
courage to trust, in those confusing years, that natural science
was working in service of the glory of the Lord. For having that
courage, both men are my heroes.

Ron McArthur wrote his dissertation under De Koninck on the

subject of universal causality. I propose that we would do well
to recognize in Charles De Koninck – educator of our Founders
and liveliest of Thomists – a universal cause of Thomas
Aquinas College.
dquackenbush@thomasaquinas.edu

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n. 11. Charles De Koninck, “The Wisdom That is Mary”, The
Thomist, vol. vi., no. 1, April, 1943, pp. 2-3:
What is proper to wisdom? The adage says: “Sapientis est
ordinare—To order pertains to him who is wise.” How are we
to understand the term, “to order”? To start with, what is
“order”? Two things are included in the notion of order,
distinction and principle. Principle is that from which
something proceeds in any way whatsoever. Principle implies
proceeding. Proceeding or procession is movement from a
principle, movement which can be understood in the broad
sense of any action, the action of thinking as well as of physical
motion. Accordingly as the principle is a principle of place, a
principle of time, or a principle of nature, order will be divided
into local order, temporal order and the order of nature. Of
these three orders the last is the most profound, since it implies
the notion of origination, inasmuch as nature is “that from
which is born [2-3] first the thing which is born: ex qua pullalat
pullulans primo.” Under another aspect order is divided into
universal and particular order accordingly as the principle is
absolutely first, or first in a given genus only.
What order is in question in the adage: “It is the part of the
wise man to set things in order?” It belongs to the wise man to
set things in order, says St. Thomas, “Because wisdom is the
highest perfection of reason, to which it properly belongs to
know order.”4 Since order implies principle, and principle
implies relation, the intellect alone can grasp order as order.
“Since the intellect (in opposition to the will) draws things to
itself, and proceeds by passing from one to the other, it can
compare and formally grasp the relation of one thing to another,
the intellect therefore possesses within itself the primary root
and reason necessary for ordering things—comparing them
among themselves and establishing a relation of one to the
other.”5 However, the mere knowledge of an order is not, as
such, sapiential. Simple apprehension can attain order, and
every science involves a certain order. Wisdom will only be the
highest perfection of reason insofar as it implies an order
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 proceeding from a principle which is wholly first. The verb, “to
order,” expresses this originative primacy. “It is not to be
ordered,” says Aristotle, “but to order, which belongs to the
wise man.”6 That is why wisdom is radical. It not only shows
the interlocking of one thing with another, but it grasps things
in their primary root, wherein all things that proceed therefrom
are, in a certain way, precontained; and it grasps this root under
its proper formality of origin. If this root were not at the same
time origin, the absolutely first principle would be in
dependence upon that of which it is the first principle; the
multiple would then be, as such, the nature of a first principle.
Wisdom may be predicated substantially of a thing which in
its being and operation is of the nature of the first principle
whence proceed in a certain way all things by way of
origination. It would not suffice for it to attain the primary root
solely according to knowledge, because then it would be wise
only; but it must substantially possess the nature of a first
principle, and know itself as such.
4
In I Ethic., lect. 1, (edit. Pirotta), n. 1.
5
John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, (edit. Vives), T. VII, disp. 21, a. 1, 744b.
6
Aristotle, I Metaph., cap. I, 982 a 15.

Cf. ibid, , pp. 4-5; 8-9:

Generation means vital origin and assimilation. It is the procession of a living thing from
within a living thing conjoined as a principle of life and which assimilates the product of
generation to its proper nature by virtue of this very procession. Generation consists
therefore in expressing a likeness propagative of the nature of the generator. The generator
draws that which is generated from its very substance while forming it. If the Blessed Virgin
is truly a generator, this definition must truly apply to her. Let us here note that although in
the act of conception the mother is solely a passive principle which, while properly a nature,
does not of itself imply an active and expressive assimilation, nevertheless, considered in [4-
5] her relation to the one engendered, the mother is properly an active principle which vitally
assimilates the one engendered. An assimilative action takes place formally in the production
of the passive principle of conception, a production which results from the active generative
power of the woman, in view of the one engendered. For this reason, the mother participates
actively in the vital assimilation of the one engendered. She is properly a genetrix.
Birth regards primarily and principally the being of the hypostasis and the person.

<...>

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31
St. Thomas, III Pars, q. 35, a. 4, c. [8-9]

called the mother of Christ according to the hypostasis, which hypostasis is God and man,
and this is why she is the mother of God and of the man—although she is not consubstantial
with God except with respect to His human nature, since consubstantiality taken in itself
means nothing other than convenientia in substance. Birth, then, belongs primarily and of
itself to the person, and to the nature by consequence and secondarily.”32
32
St. Albert, In III Sententiarum, dist. 4, a. 5, ad 2, T. 28, p. 85b.

124
n. 12. Charles De Koninck, “Education Before the Age Of
Reason”. Taken from “The Impor-tance of Education Before
the Age of Reason”. Commencement Address to the Graduates
of Saint Mary’s College. Notre Dame, Indiana (June 2 & June 3
1960) (Rpt. Fidelity Magazine, Vol. 12, December, 1992, pp . 17-
21):
.…Now, it is the mother who is more especially the first
educator and teacher, as standing nearest to the child by nature.
She is there from the start, and, as Plato taught: “do you realize
that the beginning of anything is most important, especially for
something both young and tender? For it is then especially that
it is shaped, and takes on any mould that one wants to impress
on it.” For a man, he adds, though gentle and capable of
becoming the most divine of all animals if rightly trained, if
brought up badly, can be the most ferocious of all creatures
upon the earth.
So important is this early formation that Aristotle and St.
Thomas went so far as to say that unless a child has been
encouraged to like what is beautiful and to dislike the wrong
and ugly before the so-called age of reason, it will be almost
impossible for him to act by virtue in later life. Notice, now,
that it is education, by example, discipline and word, before the
child is sent to school, with which we are concerned….

When we hear the word “education” we think immediately of

school, whereas the most important and lasting education must
normally be provided by parents at home….

By education here I mean both moral training and other

teaching. The aim of moral training is to instill into the child
the right habits before he can act on his own account, thus
providing him with the opportunity to become a good person.
We must be aware that a child lives in a condition which is
most precarious, for the habits he acquires will in the main
depend upon the habits and thinking of his parents and of other

125
persons with whom he grows up. All parents naturally want
their child to achieve happiness.
But what is happiness for the parents? If it is true human
happiness they are after, happiness in a life of action. I think
that all here present would agree that the man who is temperate,
brave, just and prudent, and who enjoys sufficient welfare, is a
good and happy man. For it is on account of pleasure that we
do evil deeds, and on account of pain we abstain from noble
ones. Happy is the man who delights in abstaining from
excessive pleasure of the kind shared with the lower animals,
while he who is annoyed at restraint is self-indulgent and must
rely on random thrills. In this he is not unlike the beast who can
only be restrained by the menace of pain. To be happy one must
also be able to stand one’s ground against things that are
terrible, and delight in this or at least not be grieved by it
beyond reason.
This is courage. While the man who is overcome by terror to
the point where he prefers moral death to natural life is a
coward. Now, unless one has been brought up in a particular
way from childhood, temperance and fortitude in later life will
be practically impossible.
Accordingly, if we allow our children to form the habit of
over-indulgence in quality or quantity of food, if we allow them
to believe that there is always a way of avoiding danger and
that a man is honest so long as he is not caught, and good so
long as he is good at something such as plumbing, playing the
piano, firing things into orbit, or making money, the life for
which we are preparing them is one of misery. Now, all these
predetermining qualities, or lack of them, come to the child
between cradle and school….

Plato, Aristotle and Menicius consider the right music as

essential to child-training. And vulgar music, attuned to the
disorderly cravings of our nature, is fatal. Music imitates the
passions in its own special way, for passions themselves are

126
 movements; and as George Santayana so shrewdly observed, it
is less the music that moves than we who move with it.
De Koninck, Charles
Education Before the Age of Reason
December, 1992 pp . 17-21
Fidelity Magazine, Vol. 12

127
n. 1. Emmanuel Trépanier, In Memoriam Charles De Koninck:
In Memoriam

Charles De Koninck
by Emmanuel Trépanier

It is with the most profound sadness that the Université Laval

learned on the thirteenth of February of the sudden death of the
eminent dean of its faculty of Philosophy. Mister Charles De
Koninck passed away in Rome the same morning at the age of
fifty-eight. Theological adviser to His Eminence Cardinal Roy
at the third session of Vatican II, he had just come to participate
in the work of a subcommittee of the Council. In spite of an
attack of grave illness, he accomplished this last service with
the greatest generosity.

Born in Thourout Belgium on the twenty-ninth of July, 1906,

Charles De Koninck spent his childhood in Detroit, Michigan
where his family had emigrated. He returned to his country of
origin in 1917 in order to do secondary studies there at the
college of Ostende, theological studies in the Dominican Order,
then philosophic studies at the University of Louvain. He
received his Doctorate in Philosophy in 1934, immediately
afterward he came to Québec where the Université Laval had
the exceptional fortune of attaching him to its Faculty of
Philosophy in the process of being formed.

Mr. De Koninck dedicated his career as professor to the

teaching of the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of the
sciences, of which he held the chair beginning in 1935. The
esteem and authority which he had from the very first acquired
resulted in his being named dean in 1939. That is what was, for
seventeen years, contributing in every manner to the
development and to the prestige of a young faculty. He had
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been back at this post since last June. All his former students
would testify to the decisive influence which he exercised on
their orientation and to the complete devotedness with which he
showered them. He held that teaching should prepare
“professors of the elements of philosophy” and his primary
concern in his courses was to insure the comprehension of the
first and fundamental notions. He was himself proof of their
ability to influence. All his students venerated in him an
authentic master; but they awarded him a special favor who,
very numerous, had the advantage of preparing their doctorate
under his direction. A direction demanding but attentive, in
which the student benefitted from the most enriching
intellectual and human contact.

Mr. De Koninck published works in Flemish, in French, in

English; certain of them have been translated into other
languages. He collaborated in many reviews in Canada and
elsewhere. The readers of the Laval Théologique et
Philosophique can measure the irreplaceable loss which our
review has suffered in his person. He was its spirit at the same
time the most precious of its collaborators. His most important
contributions were his defense of Saint Thomas, “Sur la
primauté du bien commun” (1945); “Introduction à l'étude de
l'âme” (1947); “Un paradoxe du devenir par contradiction”
(1956); “Abstraction from Matter” (1957 and 1960). His
numerous articles on the Most Blessed Virgin were collected in
long volumes: “La piété du Fils” (1954) and “Le Scandle de la
médiation” (1962). Let us add that Mr. De Koninck published
also: “Le Cosmos” (1936), “La sobriété” (1951), “The Hollow
Universe” (1960), “Tout homme est mon prochain” (1964).

The reputation of Mr. De Koninck, like his eminent services,

won for him as many distinctions as honorific invitations. He
was a member of the Royal Society of Canada, member of the
Roman Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commander of the
Order of Saint Gregory the Great. The Canadian Society of The

129
History and Philosophy of The Sciences counted him among
their founding members; the Canadian Association of
Philosophy had elected him as their president in 1963-1964.
Greatly esteemed in the United States where he had been a
sought-after lecturer for twenty-five years, the American
Catholic Philosophic Association awarded him the Aquinas-
Spellman Medal at their 1964 meeting. The University of Notre
Dame, Indiana, received him as visiting professor from 1957 to
1964; McMaster University of Hamilton, Ontario, invited him
to give the “Whidden Lectures” in 1959, and Lafayette
University, Indiana, the “Matchette Lectures” in 1960. He
would have been next August the principal lecturer at the
International Congress of Catholic Universities in Tokyo.

Mr. De Koninck was always and with all his soul a Christian
of profound faith and a dedicated servant of the Church. His
intellectual activity itself receives the most vivid illumination
from that virtue of piety which he celebrated with so much
love. As a philosopher, he was always faithful to Saint Thomas,
and, consequently, to the one whom Saint Thomas names with
respect “The Philosopher.” If it is true that he hardly loved
being called a “Thomist”, it is because he abhorred whatever
suggests the idea of the “Philosophic System” with its artificial
construction and the narrowness of its perspectives. He had that
breadth of spirit that gives to the teaching of Saint Thomas the
quality of living and open thought; he knew how to draw from
it, as from the most current thought, the positions which he held
on indeterminism, evolution, the status of the experimental
sciences, or the critiques which he made of personalism,
totalitarianism, and of Marxism. Fidelity to his masters met in
him with an ardent preoccupation with the present.

He manifested the same qualities of mind as a theologian. He

was of the tradition of scholastic theologians in which
philosophy is so greatly taken up in the service of the faith. And
he maintained this tradition in the forefront of the life of the

130
Church. His studies on the “person” and on the “death” of the
Blessed Virgin were written about the time of the promulgation
of the Dogma of the Assumption. When the time of the Council
had come, the grave problems caused by the updating of
Christian thought attracted his reflection very early. He applied
himself to defining the just conception of the secularism of the
State and of freedom of conscience. He employed himself
likewise in seeking doctrinal reasons what could be the
foundation of a solution to the problem of birth control. He
considered it a great fortune to be called to carry on his work in
the framework of the Council. His sudden end there allows us
to see the crowning of a life of study and of influence.

Mr. De Koninck had acquired an international reputation. But

for us his colleagues, who led the everyday life of work with
him, how could one render homage to his memory without
evoking the cordial intimacy which his personality, at once so
rich and so human, sustained. At the thought that he will no
longer be there, always welcoming and available, in the secret
of our hearts we mourn his death.

To Mrs. De Koninck, to his son Thomas, our colleague, to all

the members of his large family, we offer our liveliest
condolences. May they be assured that we share in their sorrow.

Translated from Laval Théologique et Philosophique, volume

XXI, number 1, 1965.

Selections from the Writings of Charles De Koninck

Compiled by Bart A. Mazzetti

(c) 2013 Bart A. Mazzetti. All rights reserved.

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