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Being, Goodness
and Truth
Also available in the series:
TheImmateriality of the Human Mind, theSemantics of Analogy, and the

Conceivability of God
Volume 1:Proceedings of theSociety for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics
Categories, and WhatIs Beyond

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Knowledge, MentalLanguage, and Free Will

Mental Representation
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Medieval Metaphysics; orIslt "Just Semantics"?

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Proceedings of theSociety for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics
The Metaphysics ofPersonalIdentity

Consciousness andSelf-Knowledge in MedievalPhilosophy

Hylomorphism and Mereology

Being, Goodness and Truth

Being, Goodness
and Truth
(Volume 16:
Proceedings of the Society
for Medieval Logic and
Metaphysics)
Edited by
Gyula Klima and Alex Hall
Cambridge
Scholars
Publishing
Being, Goodness and Truth
Series: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics
Edited by Gyula Klima and Alex Hall
This book first published 2019
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright© 2019 by Gyula Klima, Alex Hall and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any fonn or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior pennission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-3765-X

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-3765-1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction .............................................................................................. vii

Alex Hall
Part I: Acquired Virtues in the Christian? Revisiting the Question
Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal

Virtues: Lessons from Thomas Aquinas on Dead Faith ............................. 3
William C. Mattison, III
The Virtual Presence of the Cardinal Virtues ........................................... 17

Lloyd Newton
Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between

Infused and Acqinred Virtue ....................................................................... 35
Angela Knobel
Part II: Being and Goodness: The Metaphysical Grounding of Value
The Good as Telos in Cajetan, Banez and Zume!... .................................. 51

Thomas M . Osborne If.
Hylomorphism and our Knowledge of Value ........................................... 61

Robert C. Koons
Appendix: Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences of Peter

Lombard, Book III, Distinction 33, Translated by Lloyd Newton ............ 77
Contributors ............................................................................................ 113

INTRODUCTION
ALEX HALL
The Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics

(PSMLM) collects original materials presented at sessions sponsored by the
Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics (SMLM). SMLM was
founded in 2000 by Gyula Klima (Director), Joshua Hochschild, Jack Zupko
and Jeffrey Brower, in order to recover the profound metaphysical insights
of medieval thinkers for our own philosophical thought. The Society
currently has over a hundred members on five continents. Alex Hall took up
the position of Assistant Director and Secretary in 2011, with secretarial
duties passing to Timothy Keams in 2014. The Society's maiden
publication appeared online in 2001 and the decade that followed saw the
release of eight more online volumes. In 201 1 , PSMLM transitioned to print
and republished volumes 1-8 as separately titled editions. Sharp-eyed
readers of these volumes will note the replacement of our (lamentably
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body of an intellectual tradition thought to be dead, with the phoenixes that
mark this print rebirth. Volumes 9 and 10 appeared in a dual print/online
format. With Volume 11, PSMLM switched to print only. Friends of the
lions will be happy to note that they remain at their post, protecting the first
ten volumes of the PSMLM at http://faculty.fordham.edulklima/SMLM/,
where interested readers can also keep up with SMLM activities and
projects.
Being, Goodness and Truth (the sixteenth volume of the PSMLM) collects
papers presented at SMLM-sponsored sessions in 2017. The papers take up
various topics in the virtue-ethics tradition as it develops out of the writings
of St. Thomas Aquinas. The essays that make up Part I were read at the
International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan
University, where a SMLM panel discussed whether cultivated virtues exist
in a Christian who has received grace and its attendant, infused virtues. Part
II discusses whether and how values may be grounded in real essences
(conceived as truth makers), presenting papers read at the SMLM satellite
session of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, hosted by
Baylor University and the University of Dallas. Volume 17 of the PSMLM
viii Introduction
(forthcoming) presents a 2018, author-meets-critics workshop on Robert

Pasnau's After Certainty (OUP 2017), sponsored by Sorbonne Universit6
and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. Volume 1 8 (forthcoming) is on
the thought of William of Ockham, including a 2017 author-meets-critics,
panel on Magali Roques' L'essentialisme de Guillaume d'Ockham.
Part I: Acquired Virtues in the Christian?

Revisiting the Question
The virtue ethics tradition that shapes the thought of S1. Thomas Aquinas
dates to the fourth-century Be works of Plato and Aristotle, who believe
that knowledge of the good of a thing is tied to what it is, i.e. its essence.1
A thing's essence detelTIlines its capacities and capacities dictate perfections
relative to kinds. Humans are essentially rational, hence the human good
lies in a well-lived rational life. Aristotle telTIlS this good 'eudaimonia', the
defmitive quality of a life well-lived, a product of education, character,
virtue and chance.2 Aquinas distinguishes between eudaimonia (Latin:
'felicitas') and the perfect happiness ('beatitudo') of the blessed in the
afterlife: 3 "It is impossible for man in this life to be entirely happy (totaliter
esse felicem)."4 Again, Aquinas suspects that Aristotle also thinks of our
happiness as a relatively limited type:
Felicity in its perfect character cannot be present in men, but they may
participate somewhat in it . . in this life . . This seems to have been
Aristotle's view . . . where he asks whether misfortunes take away happiness,
having sho"Wll that felicity consists in the works of virtue . . . He concludes
that those men for whom such perfection in this life is possible are happy as
men (beatos ut homines),5 as if they had not attained felicity absolutely, but
merely in hllillan fashion (SCG 3.48.9).
Beatitude, in tum, requires grace:
lSee Republic Books 1 and 4 and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (NE) Book 1,
chap. 7 (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (ST) 1.5.5; 76.1c).
2NE 1 .8-9; 2 . 1 .
3See Brain Davies, "Happiness," in The Oxford Handbook ofAquinas, Edited by
Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (Oxford University Press, 2012), 227-37.
4Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG) 3.48.7.
5Here and elsewhere, Aquinas uses ' beatitudo' and 'felicitas' to refer to mere hllillan
happiness and beatitude, respectively. However, he generally intends the sense of
the terms the other way around (see Davies, 231-32).
Being, Goodness and Truth ix
It is necessary for man to receive from God some additional principles,

whereby he may be directed to supernatural happiness, even as he is directed
to his connatural end, by means of his natural principles . Such like
principles are called "theological virtues": first, because their object is God,
inasmuch as they direct us aright to God: secondly, because they are infused
in us by God alone: thirdly, because these virtues are not made known to us,
save by Divine revelation, contained in Holy Writ (ST I-II.62.1c).
Aquinas construes Aristotle as having set out the moral and intellectual
virtues that characterize merely human happiness.6 The theological virtues
of faith, hope and charity, on the other hand, direct us to our supernatural
end, exceed our natural capacity and are infused by God along with grace.
Also had by grace and in service to the same supernatural end, are infused
moral and intellectual virtues, counterparts to the cultivated virtues (e.g.
infused temperance).
Aquinas's account raises the question as to whether the infused virtues

somehow coexist alongside the acquired. Coexistence (or compatibilist)
theorists contend that Christians in a state of grace possess both acquired
and infused virtues; transfonnational (or incompatibilist) accounts deny
this. A transfonnationalist, William C. Mattison III nevertheless recognizes
in Chapter 1 that the coexistence thesis finds support in several
considerations that would seem evident to Aquinas. First, the advent of
infused virtues should not result in the loss of a good, here an acquired
virtue. Again, by mortal sin, a Christian who falls from grace loses the
infused virtues. But fallen Christians may yet exercise virtues cultivated
prior to the reception of grace. Were these virtues there all along? Mattison
6Aristotelian psychology is hylomorphic, i.e. Aristotle conceives of hlUllan beings

as matter-form composites (De Anima (DA) 2 . 1 ) . The formal element is the soul.
(An intellectual aspect of soul is separable from body and persists after death.
Nevertheless, Aristotle leaves little or no room for personal immortality (see DA
3.5).) The soul has three broad classes of flUlction: vegetative (autonomic),
appetitive and rational (NE 1.7). The semi-rational, appetitive aspect cannot reason,
but can be habituated by the rational element, lUllike the autonomic (or vegetative)
aspect responsible for things such as digestion and growth. Corresponding to the
appetitive and rational elements of the soul are moral (or ethical) and intellectual
virtues that optimize their respective functions (NE 1 . 1 3 ; 2.6; 6.1). Cutting across
these two categories of virtue are the cardinal virtues: prudence (an intellectual
virtue); andjustice, fortitude and temperance (moral virtues). As prudence concerns
how we ought to act, Aquinas states that "in some way (quodammodo)" it too is a
moral virtue and concludes that the cardinal virtues may therefore be classed as
moral virtues (ST I-II 6 1 . 1c). The moral virtues are reducible to the cardinal virtues
as to their subject and formal principle (ST I-II 61.2, ad 3).
x Introduction
addresses these issues with a study of Aquinas on dead faith. By faith, the
intellect qualified by charity assents to supernatural truths. Dead faith
7
involves the same disposition, but as exercised by one who lacks charity.
8
These habits are cospecific, distinguished as perfect and imperfect, i.e. in
their end or mode of acting. 'Whereas living faith directs us to our
supernatural end, dead faith does not. That is, living and dead faith differ
only in mode, not species. Hence, the case of dead faith does not involve
any habit that coexists with living faith, but the transformation of a living
faith as regards its end or mode. So too, it may be that the gain or loss of
infused virtues merely tranSfOlTIlS a habit. There is neither the loss of a good
habit in the infusion nor a puzzle over why earlier, acquired virtues persist
(albeit in a different mode) absent grace.
In Chapter 2, Lloyd Newton takes issue with a transfOlmationalist account

that Mattison advances in an earlier work, 9 where Mattison notes that an
individual may be ordered to either merely human or supernatural
0
happiness, but not both, since every human person has one last end.1
Because acquired and infused virtues direct us to either human or
supernatural happiness (respectively), a Christian directed to supernatural
happiness wouldn't have acquired virtues, which would, in effect, steer her
u
the wrong way. Newton objects that Aquinas recognizes multiple,
essentially ordered last ends corresponding to various aspects of our nature
as corporeal, living, sentient beings. Hence nothing prevents the coexistence
of various acquired and infused virtues that are directed variously toward
these various ends.
Despite their differences, coexistence and transfOlmational readings

generally agree that a Christian in a state of grace produces one, unified kind
of moral action, i.e. does not sometimes cultivate acquired and at other times
infused virtues. In Chapter 3, Angela Knobel challenges this consensus and
argues that the early Aquinas held a coexistence thesis on which Christians
possess two sets of virtues, e.g. acquired and infused temperance, that
produce two different kinds of act, ordered to our natural and supernatural
ends, respectively.
7Scriptum Super Sententiis III d. 23, q. 3; ST II-II 4.4-5, 5.2-3, 6.2, 7 . 1 ; De Veritate
(DV) 14.5-7. See also James 2 : 1 9-20.
8DV 14.7; ST II-II 4.5, ad. 3 .
9"Can Christians Possess the Acquired Cardinal Virtues," Theological Studies, 72
(20 1 1 ), 558-85.
lOlbid. p. 564 (cf. ST I-II. 1 .4-5).
llMattison, 565.
Being, Goodness and Truth xi
Part II: Being and Goodness:

The Metaphysical Grounding of Value
In ST 1.5.4, Aquinas defends the proposition that the good has the aspect
(ratio) of the final cause. Thomas M. Osborne If. notes in Chapter 5 that
Aquinas's account has given rise to several questions. Does the claim that
the good has the ratio of the [mal cause entail that the two are in no way
distinct? And if they are distinct, how so and what does it mean to say that
the ratio of goodness and the final cause are the same? In an account
criticized for its obscurity by Domingo Banez (1528-1604) and Francisco
Zumel (d. 1607), Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1535) appears to argue that
the good has the ratio of the [mal cause in two senses: (1) (in signata) as the
good is the principle that renders the final cause final (i.e. good, and hence
an end), and this whether or not the final cause is setting in motion some
agent (hence God is good whether or not creatures exist to desire God); and
(2) (in exercito) inasmuch as the good as good exercises final causality.
Banez and Zumel, by contrast, think that the good is the ratio of the final
cause only in actu signata, inasmuch as the ratio of the good can be
understood apart from final causality (which they fear (2) carmot
accommodate), simply as the principle by which an end is able to move the
agent. In later thinkers such as Zume!'s student Diego Alvarez (ca. 1550-
1635) and the seventeenth-century Carmelites of Salamanca we see the
emergence of a Thomistic synthesis that dO\vnplays the differences between
(1) and (2) and is immune to the criticisms of Banez and Zume!.
In Chapter 6 Robert C. Koons takes up the Aristotelian theory of Formal

Identity to which Aquinas subscribes. The Formal Identity Thesis maintains
that understanding is a mental grasp of a thing's fOlTIl or essence. The fOlTIl
that exists for our understanding (described as an intelligible species) is co
12
specific with the fOlTIl that exists outside of the mind in some thing. A
corollary to this is the immateriality of the intellect, as physical composition
would impede the potential to know all forms. Koons defends the Formal
Identity Thesis based on our ability to grasp necessary truths, especially
knowledge of value or the good, which is always of the particular good ofa
type based on its fOlTIl. The question remains as to the nature of the
connection bet\veen these forms and the human mind. Platonist accounts
think of the forms as self-subsistent efficient causes of understanding.
Koons rejects the Platonist thesis, as it either threatens the immanence of
understanding or undelTIlines the per se unity of the person into whose
12De Anima 3.4.

xii Introduction
composition a universal substance (the fmm) enters. But Aristotelians

struggle to explain how the same type of form can be both a qualitative act
of understanding for the intellect and either a substantial or a non-qualitative
accidental fOlTIl in an instance of the species (as when we grasp something
other than a quality of a thing). How can a qualitative form be of the same
species as a non-qualitative or a substantial fOlTIl? Koons suggests that the
intelligible species is intrinsically a fOlTIl of a non-qualitative sort whose
informing of the mind produces an intellectual quality. This form is received
differently in various instances, in the immaterial mind as a qualitative act,
in matter as a substance or accident.
PART ONE:
ACQUIRED VIRTUES IN THE CHRISTIAN?

REVISITING THE QUESTION
REVISITING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
INFUSED AND ACQUIRED CARDINAL VIRTUES:
LESSONS FROM THOMAS AQUINAS
ON DEAD FAITH
WILLIAM C. MATTISON III
Over the past decade there has arisen a lively discussion concerning the
'
possibility of acquired cardinal virtues in the Cliristian. Though this topic
is referenced in the work of St. Thomas, and in the centuries since has been
treated in varying degrees of detail, it may be the case that it is never been
given as much focused and technical attention as it has in the past decade.
As evidence of this I offer the recent outstanding volume of essays from the
Thomistic Instituut in Utrecht, entitled The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas
on the Theological Nature a/Moral Virtues. Roughly half the contributions,
lPor an article that takes on this question directly and surveys prior scholarship
addressing it, see William Mattison III "Can Christians Possess the Acquired
Virtues?" Theological Studies 72 (201 1), 558-585. For scholarship in the past decade
addressing this question directly, see: Angela Knobel, "Can Aquinas's Infused and
Acquired Virtues Coexist in the Christian Life?" Studies in Christian Ethics 23
(2010): 381-96, "Two Theories of Christian Virtue," American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 84 (2010): 599-618, and "Relating Aquinas' Acquired and Infused
Virtues: Some Problematic Texts" Nova et Vetera 9.2 (20 1 1 ): 41 1-43 1 ; David
Decosimo, "More to Love: Ends, Ordering, and the Compatibility of Acquired and
Infused Virtues," 47-72 in The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological
Nature ofMoral Virtues, Harm Goris and Henk Schoot, editors (Leuven: Peeters,
2017) and Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014), 190-197; Andrew Pinsent ""Who's Afraid of
the Infused Virtues? Dispositional Infusion, HlUllan and Divine," 73-96 in The
Virtuous Life; and, Nicholas Austin, S.l, Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetmvn University Press, 2017). Even more recently, three
articles on this topic appeared in the Journal ofMoral Theology 8.2 (2019). See
William C. Mattison III, "Aquinas, Custom, and the Coexistence of Infused and
Acquired Cardinal Virtues," pp. 1-24; Angela Knobel, "Elevated Virtue?" pp. 25-
29; and, Jean Porter, "Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace: Why the Infused and
Acquired Virtues Cannot Coexist," pp. 40-66.
4 Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal
Virtues
including those from all four keynote speakers, address this topic 2 The
purpose of this essay is to contribute to that debate by examining St.
Thomas' writings on a topic that is rarely referenced - if at all - in recent
scholarship on the possibility of acquired virtue in the Christian.3 The topic
is dead faith.
It would help at the outset to offer a brief sketch of the recent debate on the
possibility of acquired cardinal virtue in the Christian. All participants agree
on the following. It is possible for people to possess virtues, variously called
by St. Thomas "acquired" or "natural" or "political" or "social" virtues,
which enable one to act in a manner oriented toward and indeed constitutive
of natural human flourishing as one's last end.4 There are a host of such
moral and intellectual virtues, but they are typified by the cardinal virtues,
which for St. Thomas "cover" all natural virtue in a sense.5 Thus this debate
2The Virtuous Life, Hann Goris and Henk Schoot, editors (Leuven: Peeters, 2017).
The keynotes are the essays by DeCosimo, Knobel, Mattison and Pinsent.
3Participants in this debate rely so heavily upon Thomas Aquinas' "Writing on virtue
that it is reasonable to ask whether the question at hand is whether acquired cardinal
virtues can exist in the Christian, or whether St. Thomas' work supports one position
or the other. In other words, are we asking what is in reality the case, or what Thomas
said in his corpus? The focus here is the former, but St. Thomas' work is relied upon
heavily given that he offers the most robust account of graced virtue in the Christian
tradition. As I argue in a forthcoming book (Aquinas on Habit, Graced Virtue, and
the Last End), there is significant lack of clarity as well as possible development in
what St. Thomas says on this topic throughout his corpus. However, as Jean Porter
argues in her "Moral Virtue, Charity, and Grace: Why the Infused and Acquired
Virtues Cannot Co-Exist," forthcoming in the Journal a/Moral Theology, one can
identify a position most compatible with Thomas' work on grace and virtue, and
indeed even more so a position that is incompatible with central commitments of his
work on grace and virtue. Porter's title makes her stance clear.
4For more on these four terms as functional equivalents, and Thomas' various
categorizations ofvirtue more broadly, see William Mattison, "1bomas' Categorizations
of Virtue: Historical Background and Contemporary Significance," The Thomist 74
(2010): 1 89-235.
5Thomas often distinguishes, on the basis of object, the theological virtues from the
"moral and intellectual" virtues. Thus scholars commonly speak of the theological
virtue vs. moral virtue distinction in Thomas, which is accurate. But since in
Thomas' work "moral" virtue is at times distinguished from theological virtue, and
at other times distinguished from intellectual virtue (e.g., I-II 58), "cardinal" virtue
is used here in reference to both the moral and intellectual virtues that are
distinguished from the theological virtues. In other words, it includes prudence. This
terminological practice is not only adopted in certain contemporary scholarship [e.g.,
Michael Sherwin, "Infused Virtue and the Effects ofAcquired Vice: A Test Case for
William C. Mattison III 5
is not about the possibility of pagan virtue; all in this debate affirm its
possibility 6 All participants also agree that through God's grace people are
oriented toward supernatural happiness as last end, and God gives graced
7
virtues to enable action oriented toward that end. Such virtues are infused.
They include the theological virtues, which have God as their object. 8 They
also include the infused cardinal virtues, which incline people to act well
with regard to the material activities common to both acquired and infused
cardinal virtues, but in the case of infused virtues in a marmer specified by
reference to the supernatural end and the concomitant divine rule.9 All agree
on this account of virtue thus far.
The question is whether or not a person, oriented toward supernatural

happiness by God's grace, and who therefore possesses the theological and
infused cardinal virtues, also possesses the acquired cardinal virtues. It is a
yes or no question and thus there are two sides, though some recent work
has helpfully identified significant differences within at least one of the
0
sides.1 These sides go by various names. On the one hand there are a set of
the Thomistic Theory on the Infused Cardinal Virtues," The Thomist 73 (2009): 29-
52], but also employed by Thomas himself at times (e.g., I-II 61) due to his claim
that the fOill cardinal virtues "cover," in a sense, all moral virtues (I-II 61,1 & 2).
6For a helpful entry into the topic, which is also part of a thread of scholarly debate
on "pagan virtue," see Brian Shanley, O.P, "Aquinas on Pagan Virtue" The Thomist
63 (1999): 553-77. Shanley responds there to Borlllie Kent's "Moral Provincialism,'"
Religious Studies 30 (1994): 269-85, which is itself a response to the work of
Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue in Thomas and Augustine, esp. his Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
Shanley in turn is responded to by Thomas Osborne, Jr., "The Augustinianism of
Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory," The Thomist 67 (2003): 279-305. Osborne is
responded to by Angela McKay, "Prudence and Acquired Mortal Virtue," The
Thomist 69 (2005): 535�55, to which Osborne replies again in "Perfect and Imperfect
Virtues," The Thomist 71 (2007):39-64. Knobel makes further contributions to the
debate in both "Aquinas and the Pagan Virtues, "International Philosophical
Quarterly 5 1 . 3 (20 1 1 ): 339-354 and "Ends and Virtues," Journal a/Moral Theology
3 . 1 (2014): 105-117. For a recent monograph treatment of the question see David
DeCosimo's Ethic 's as a Work o/Charity.
7Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 63,3. I use the term "Christian" as a
stand in to refer to such a person in possession of virtues given through God's grace.
8Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 62, 1 .
9Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 63,3 & 4 . A complete accOlUlt of the
habits infused by God's grace would also include the gifts of the Holy Spirit. See
Summa Theologiae I-II 68.
lOpor excellent treatments of the different ways that each position may be held, see
Knobel, "Can the Infused and Acquired Virtues Coexist," "Two Theories of
Virtues
positions which claim that a Christian can indeed possess both acquired and
infused cardinal virtues. This group of positions is coined "coexistence" (by
Knobel), or "compatibilist" (by DeCosimo). I'll use Knobel's "coexistence"
here. On the other side there are a set of positions which claim that a person
with the infused virtues carmot possess the acquired cardinal virtues. This
group of positions is called the "transfOlmational" by Knobel, or
"incompatibilist" by Decosimo. I'll again use Knobel's tenn, transfonnational.
That name comes from the claim by this camp that should a person's natural
capacities be qualified by acquired cardinal virtues but then receive the
grace of God and its concomitant qualities called infused virtues, say, at
conversion, then the specification of the natural powers by those qualities
called virtues would be "transformed" or re-qualified toward the
supernatural end.11
One commonly raised issue in this debate is how to explain the impact of
the bestowal or arrival of infused virtue. All in this debate agree tbat people
who live lives ordered toward supernatural happiness with God can cease to
live toward that end. In the Catholic tradition this is called mortal sin. When
this occurs, one no longer possesses the virtue of charity, which is friendship
with God tbat orients all virtuous activity toward tbat supernatural end of
friendship with God. One also ceases to possess infused moral virtues which
are informed by charity. But presumably tbe person who had, say, infused
temperance by which she lived while in friendship witb God, will not
immediately become a glutton, or unchaste. To this point all agree. The
question then is how might we describe how such person exercises her
natural abilities? Is she rightly said to possess the virtue temperance? If so
it would of course be acquired temperance. Does that mean the acquired
temperance was there all along, "underneath," if you will, the infused
temperance? This would be a claim in support of the coexistence position.
Or would the loss of charity somehow engender the acquired temperance?
It certainly would seem odd if a mortal sin were to cause the acquisition of
a previously unpossessed virtue. A similar problem is raised when one
receives charity and the infused cardinal virtues. If one had acquired, say,
temperance before that reception of grace, does acquired temperance cease
to exist? Does it remain, but idle? Does it remain active either in conjunction
Christian Virtue," and especially "Relating Aquinas' Acquired and Infused Virtues:
Some Problematic Texts" all cited above. The differences in these arguments on
either side are quite significant. However, in the end the question at hand is indeed
a yes or no question.
l lPor an example of this see Mattison, "Can Christians Possess the Acquired
Virtues?" 560 & 584.
with infused virtue or on occasion deployed instead of infused virtue

(perhaps even by infused virtue)?
A helpful resource on this question in Thomas' thought is the topic of dead

faith. It has important similarities to the scenario just described. Dead faith
is a sort of faith that is importantly lacking because one does not possess
charity. It can be ascribed to people who had living faith but through mortal
sin no longer possess charity. Such people may continue to affinn accurate
things about who God is, and thus are said to have some sort of faith though
without charity. The parallel to the above scenario where infused moral
virtues are lost with charity should be obvious. But there is an important
difference here. There is no such thing as acquired faith. So positing a
persistent acquired virtue "underneath" the (now lost) infused faith is not an
option. Nor is positing the acquisition of acquired faith after the loss of
infused faith. The purpose of this essay is to explore what Thomas says
about dead or lifeless faith and its relationship to living faith, in order to
illuminate the dynamic of what happens when a person with an infused
virtue loses it, and yet continues to perform acts of that virtue. I begin with
a brief section explaining the role of charity in the virtue of faith, and then
what it is that constitutes dead faith. Section two offers a glimpse at St.
Thomas' narration of a debate among other thirteenth century figures as
regards dead faith, a debate that is markedly similar to the contemporary
debate over the relationship between acquired and infused cardinal virtues
in the same person. Section Three presents Thomas' resolution of that
debate. In the final section I explain why his resolution pertains directly to
the contemporary debate and what his thought on lifeless faith contributes
to contemporary scholarship on the possibility of acquired cardinal virtues
in the Christian.
Living Faith and Dead Faith
The virtue of faith is a habit of acts of belief, belief in true claims about God.
The sort of intellectual assent called "belief' is prompted not by the
compelling nature of the claims themselves, since unlike with scientiae the
truth of the matter at hand does not compel assent, in this case in part
because it surpasses the natural capacity of the human intellect. Instead, an
act of belief is an act of the intellect assenting to something as true, where
the intellect is prompted by the will to such assent.12 All this is true of acts
of beliefs more generally. The virtue of faith concerns intellectual assent (to
12Thornas Aquinas, Summa Theo!ogiae, II-II 2,1 .

Virtues
truths that surpass the capacity of unaided human intellect) about God, in a
manner prompted by the will, in this case as the will is qualified by the
theological virtue of charity. Faith is thus properly an act ofthe intellect, but
with the intellect's act given its "fOlTIl," to use Thomas' term, by the will as
qualified by charity.1 3
What, then, is dead faith? The Scriptural basis for this is James 2: 19-20,
which speaks of dead faith without works, and of the faith of demons, both
forms of faith that similarly lack charity even as they differ in other ways.
Dead faith, sometimes translated lifeless and most exactly translated
"unfonned," is the disposition ofthe intellect to true affinnations about God
that are nonetheless not prompted by charity since the one at hand does not
possess charity.1 4 Since charity provides the "fonn" of faith, the habit is
"unformed," or dead, or lifeless. Nonetheless it is still accurately called faith
because it is a stable disposition to acts that are materially the same as acts
of faith, such as affinnations that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or
that Jesus Christ is God and man. Indeed Thomas claims lifeless faith is still
rightly called a gift from God, since its affirmations are not possible for
unaided human reason aloneY Nonetheless it is not a virtue.16 This is an
important point, especially for the final section's comparison of the
transformation of acts of dead faith into living faith through the infusion of
charity (or vice versa through its loss), on the one hand, with the
transformation of acquired cardinal virtue into infused cardinal virtue
through the infusion of charity, on the other hand. Dead faith is not a virtue
despite the accuracy of its affinnations, because not only the end but also
the object of faith is God. The intellect of a person with dead faith is not
13Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theo!ogiae, II-II 4,2 & 3.

14Thomas' most extensive "Writings on dead faith can be found at: Scriptum Super
Sententiis 1. III d. 23, q. 3 (http://www.corpusthomisticmn.org/snp3023.htrnl#10563;
portions of this are translated into English in On Love and Charily: Readings from
the "Commentary on the Sentences o/Peter Lombard," trans. Peter Kwasniewski,
Thomas Bolin O.S.B. & Joseph Bolin (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
American Press, 2008); De veritate XIV5-7
(https:lldhspriory.org/thornas/QDdeVer14.hlrn); Summa Thealagiae, II-II 4,4; 4,5;
5,2; 5,3; 6,2 & 7,1; Commentary on the Letter o/SaintPau! to the Romans c. 1 1. 6
[#105-108 in Vol. 37 ofLatin / English Edition o/the Works o/Aquinas, trans. F.R.
Larcher, O.P (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine,
2012)].
15Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theo!ogiae, II-II 6,1 (and also II-II 5,2 ad 2) and
Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III d. 23, q. 3, a. 2.
16Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theo!ogiae, II-II 4,5 and Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III
d. 23, g. 3, a. 1, ga. 2.
being actualized to its fullest reach, to use Thomas' term for how a virtue
qualifies a power. It is not moved to assent by tbe will qualified by charity.
The intellect is otherwise moved, in the case of the person with dead faith
likely by an enduring disposition akin to what Thomas calls consuetudo
which we commonly call "habit" (in the non-rich sense of the term) and
which is commonly translated "custom.,,17 Thus faitb witbout charity (dead
faitb) is not a virtue because it is not moved by (or connected by) either of
the principles of human action that enable the powers to attain tbeir highest
reach: human reason via prudence in the case of acquired (natural) virtues
or grace via charity in the case of infused (supernatural) virtues.
In sum, Thomas's account of faith explains how its acts (of belief) are
prompted by charity. His account of dead faith depicts how faith can exist
without charity, and move a person to acts that are in some sense good and
a gift from God despite the fact tbat they are not acts of virtue since tbey do
not attain tbe highest reach of tbe power at hand. Having explained what
both tbese types of faith look like and how they differ, we turn now to
Thomas' explanation of what happens when a person moves from living
faith to dead faith, or vice versa.
Thomas' Account of a Scholastic Debate
In Summa Theologioe II-II 4,4 Thomas asks whether or not lifeless faith can
become living faith.18 He immediately explains the meaning ofthe question
by contextualizing it in a debate among his predecessors. The fIrst position
he describes is held by William of Auxerre, and tbe second by Alexander of
Hales. Though tbey oppose each other, Thomas shows that they hold a
crucial common assumption, and Thomas' own view will COnfOlTIl to neither
of these thinkers since he denies that underlying assumption. His narration
of that debate is succinct and exact enough for our purposes to warrant
quoting in full:
17Por more on the ways that custom can generate stable activity, and yet importantly
differs from habit, see William C. Mattison III, "Aquinas, Custom, and the
Coexistence of Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues." As for the demons, the
intellect is moved to assent, not by a will grasping the good, but by persuasive signs
that nonetheless do not constitute the essence ofwhat is seen. See Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae II-II 5,2. Once again, the lifeless faith of demons differs from
that ofhmnan persons.
18Por parallel treatments see De veritate 14,7 and Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III d.
23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 3 as well as a. 1 qa. 3.
Virtues
Some19 have said that living and lifeless faith are distinct habits, but that
when living faith comes, lifeless faith is done away, and that, in like manner,
when a man sins mortally after having living faith, a new habit of lifeless
faith is infused into him by God.20 But it seems unfitting that grace should
deprive man ofa gift of God by corning to him, and that a gift of God should
be infused into man, on account of mortal sin.
Consequently, others21 have said that living and lifeless faith are indeed
distinct habits, but that, all the same, when living faith comes the habit of
lifeless faith is not taken away, and that it remains together with the habit of
living faith in the same subject. Yet again it seems unreasonable that the
habit oflifeless faith should remain inactive in a person having living faith.
We must therefore hold differently that living and lifeless faith are the same
habit.
Both camps in this debate hold that living and lifeless faith are distinct
habits, a claim that Thomas denies. Explaining Thomas' denial bears
directly on the debate in current scholarship.
Now of course in some important sense living and lifeless faith are indeed
distinct habits. So in what way does Thomas mean they are not distinct? In
this Summa text he claims that habits are differentiated by what they
"directly pertain to.,,22 And faith directly pertains to the intellect, and
accurate beliefs about God. In other words, in both living and lifeless faith,
the person assents by one's intellect to true claims about God. That activity,
which in the Sentences he calls the "natural species" of faith, is the same for
both.23 Where they differ is in what he calls in the Sentences "moral
19The Summa Theologiae editor identifies this position with William of Auxerre as
found at Summa Aurea III, iii, 15.
2�ecall that even lifeless faith is a gift from God since its acts exceed natural human
capacities. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II 6,1 (and also II-II 5,2 ad
2) and Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III d. 23, q. 3, a. 2
2lThe Summa Theologiae editor identifies this position with Alexander of Hales as
found at Summa Theologiae iii, 64.
22Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II 4,4 habitus diversificatur secundum
illud quodper se ad habitum pertinent.
23Thomas uses natural species as distinct from moral species early in his career, but
these terms are less precise and later abandoned. It should be noted that in
mentioning natural species, Thomas is not saying there is a "natural virtue" (or
acquired virtue) of faith. As noted below, Thomas eventually uses the term "object"
for what he here calls natural species. That object is distinguished from the "mode
of acting" in De veritate XIV.? In Summa Theologiae, I-II 63,4 Thomas
species." Finally, in De veritate Thomas claims there are two sorts of

differentiation in habits, by object and in mode of acting. Habits are
differentiated "in essence" by their objects, as seeing is a distinct material
activity from hearing. As to their mode of acting, habits are not
differentiated by essence but in their level of completeness or perfection, as
when one sees more or less clearly.24 Thomas concludes:
Living faith and lifeless faith do not have different objects, but only different
ways of acting .... So, living faith and lifeless faith are not distinguished as
two different habits, but as a perfect habit and an imperfect habit.25
Thus they are indeed distinguished, but they are different in their end, or
their mode of acting, or their level of perfection, as to the one activity to
which they both directly pertain.
Thomas' Solution to the Change from Living to Lifeless

Faith, or Vice Versa
Having rejected the common assumption by William and Alexander that

living and lifeless faith are distinct habits, Thomas can offer his own
solution to the question of what occurs when living faith becomes lifeless,
or vice versa. The answer is that word "becomes." His Sentences treatment
ofthe topic asks "whether lifeless [unformed] faith becomes living [formed]
faitli at the coming of charity" and he replies tliat it does. This is the same
title of his Summa Theologaie treatment.26 Though there is obviously
change between living and lifeless faith, it is not one of addition or
subtraction in the subject. It is a matter of one and the same "habit,"27 in
distinguishes the "material element" of the virtue from its formal object, whereby a
mean is specified according to some rille (e.g., hmnan reason or Divine rule). In his
Summa Theolgiae treatment of dead faith he speaks of the acts of faith as good
"generically" (ex genere; II-II 6,2, ad 2) and says living and lifeless faith do not
differ by species (non different specie) but as perfect and imperfect (II-II 4,5 ad 3).
24De veritate XIV.?
25De veritate XIV.?
26Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 4,4.
27Thomas consistently calls lifeless faith a "habit." Properly speaking a habit is a
disposition to a certain sort of activity whose stability is given by its formal element,
be it the measme ofhmnan reason in the acquired virtues (as provided by prudence)
or the measme of the Divine rule in the infused virtues (as provided by charity).
Since lifeless faith is without charity, it lacks the connectivity provided by charity,
and in the most proper sense is not rightly called a habit. Thomas does use the terms
"habit" and "virtue" at times more broadly to refer to what more precisely are called
Virtues
terms of the activity the habit directly pertains to, changing as to its (as
Thomas describes variously) fOlTIl, or mode, or level of perfection. This is
why William was wrong to assume that lifeless faith is "cast away" at the
arrival of charity, or arrives when living faith is lost. 'When charity arrives
to one who believes with lifeless faith, it "confirms and perfects" that habit
of lifeless faith and makes it living, rather than creating a habit anew as
when charity arrives in a nonbeliever.28 As Thomas says in De veritate,
"folTIlless faith stays when charity comes, and is itself fOlTIled. In this way
only the fOlTIllessness is removed. "29 Thomas' consistent language is that
lifeless faith is perfected and given a new form by charity (hence the term
"transform" for this dynamic). Lifeless faith is not lost; only its lifelessness
is.30 It is perfected, or transfolTIled such that the intellectual activity of
affilTIling true things about God is now ordered toward the supernatural
happiness of friendship with God. Conversely, when charity is lost and
living faith becomes lifeless, there is also continuity but a change in fOlTIl.
We might even say faith in this case is "de-folTIled." Though it may seem
something is "gained" since lifeless faith entails true affilTIlations about
God, in reality those affilTIlations were there in the habit (with the same
essence) of living faith, yet now they are unformed or defolTIled since bereft
of charity. The appearance of a gain in this change is illusory.
Thomas' solution also explains why Alexander was wrong in affirming the
coexistence of lifeless and living faith. There are not two habits of the same
essence but different fOlTIl residing in one person, perhaps with one idle or
(though not mentioned by Alexander) with them working together in one
action. In the case of faith Thomas says "formed and unformed faith do not
differ in species. "31 He clarifies this with a claim that extends beyond faith
when he says "it is not possible for two fOlTIls of one species to exist at the
dispositions. For this distinction see Summa Theologiae I-II 49,2 ad. 3. For an
example of Thomas calling a "virtue" that which is not properly a virtue, see On the
Cardinal Virtues pp. 241-277 in E.M. Atkins and Thomas Williams (eds.) Disputed
Questions on the Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 2005), a. 2. For
a recent in-depth inquiry to the definitions of habits and dispositions, and the
relationship between them, see Andrew Whitmore, Dispositions and Habits in the
Work of Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Catholic University of America Dissertation,
2018.
28Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 4,4 ad 3.
29De veritate XIV.7.
3 0De veritate XIV.7 ad. 4: "When life comes, it is not necessary for that which is
dead to leave, but for death to leave. Hence, not formless faith but only the
formlessness is removed through charity."
31Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. 3 d. 23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 3.
same time [in the same subject], because forms are diversified in number by
reason of diversity of matter or subject."32 This is corroborated in De
veritate where Thomas claims "Nor, again, can it be said [of living and
lifeless faith] that both acts and habits are there together. . . . "33 Therefore
there are not and cannot be in one person two separate habits for activity of
the same essence or object.34
Relevance for the Possibility of Acquired Cardinal Virtues

in the Christian
Now that Thomas' position on living faith, lifeless faith, and the relationship
between them is clear, we tum to apply his thinking to the contemporary
debate. First, let me note the reasons why this comparison is warranted. In
both cases we have habits that are not charity yet are informed by charity
(living faith on the one hand, infused cardinal virtues on the other hand).
The habits retain continuity in their immediate activities (and hence in both
cases are called faith, or cardinal virtues), yet these habits can be fOlmed by
charity. Thus in both cases the "essence," or object, of the habit remains the
sarne whether informed by charity or not. Nonetheless they do indeed differ
as to the object of the will as end, which is provided by charity.35 Thus their
difference is not of essence, but in what Thomas variously calls their fOlTIl,
or mode of acting, as imperfect to perfect. Thomas uses the imperfect /
perfect distinction consistently to refer to both lifeless faith I living faith on
the one hand, and acquired cardinal virtue / infused cardinal virtue on the
other hand.36 For all these reasons Thomas' thought on whether or not
(imperfect) lifeless faith can coexist with living faith, and on what happens
with lifeless faith when charity arrives or departs, is illuminative for the
relationship between acquired and infused virtue.
The most important difference in the comparison is that whereas lifeless

faith is not a virtue, all in the contemporary debate agree that the acquired
cardinal virtues are indeed virtues. The reason for this difference is the
difference in object between the cardinal virtues on the one hand, and the
theological virtues on the other hand. The cardinal virtues concern activities

33De veritate XIV.?
34This claim provides the backgrOlUld for a crucial article in the debate over acquired
and infused cardinal virtues, Summa Theologiae I-II 63,4.
35Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 4,3.
36 For a particularly clear example of this with regard to the cardinal virtues, see
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 65,1.
Virtues
accessible to unaided reason. Thus they can be oriented toward natural

human flourishing, with the measure of human reason, which would "fmm"
such virtues. When this occurs they are true virtues. Of course, when charity
is infused they are then measured by, i.e., given their fOlTIl by, the Divine
rule.37 However, the theological virtues have God as their object. To be
directed to God (in the sense that God is object of the theological virtues,
not in the sense of natural knowledge of God through His effects) is beyond
the capacity of unaided human reason and therefore a gift, even in the case
of dead faith. What provides the form to theological virtues is charity. Since
there is no natural faith (given its object), there is no other measure to
provide fOlTIl to faith. Hence it is unfolTIled, and not a virtue. This explains
why acquired cardinal virtues can be virtues and dead faith carmot, even
while the acts of belief in dead faith are accurate and thus it is rightly called
in some sense "gift." Nevertheless, this not insignificant difference does not
impinge upon the common dynamic of how in both cases a habit inclining
toward acts of one material object is informed by charity. Indeed Thomas'
central point in describing this dynamic is that in such situations the new
habit is the "same habit," in the sense of object.
So what can we learn from this inquiry into lifeless and living faith about
the acquired and infused cardinal virtues? First, certain proponents of the
coexistence view have a legitimate concern that is very similar to that of
William of Auxerre, who rightly claims it would be unfitting if the arrival
of charity and living faith were to cast away lifeless faith, or even more if
the departure of charity and living faith entailed the "gain" oflifeless faith.
Coexistence proponents similarly think it unfitting if the arrival of charity
and infused cardinal virtues were to cast off acquired cardinal virtues, since
grace should not result in the loss of a good, and since there is such obvious
continuity of action before and after conversion in the person who
previously possessed acquired cardinal virtues. Coexistence proponents find
it even more unfitting if the loss of charity and infused cardinal virtues
entailed the "gain" of acquired cardinal virtues. Thomas' solution to this
regarding lifeless I living faith applies to acquired I infused cardinal virtues.
When charity arrives the acquired cardinal virtues become infused cardinal
virtues. There is continuity but change. They are perfected, given a new
form ("transformed") by charity.38 These habits are the same in the activity
37Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 63,4.

38This is how Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. 3 d. 23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 1 s.c. 1 is rightly
interpreted: "The corning of grace does not take away acquired habits; therefore
much less does it take away the infused habit offaith." The whole point of this article
(4) is describing the change from lUlformed to formed faith. Since both habits are
to which they directly pertain, their object.39 The impact of Thomas' claim
that both a lifeless and living faith, tliough importantly different, are in the
sense of object the "same habit" is clear here. The same may be said of the
infused and acquired cardinal virtues, which, though importantly different,
are in the sense of object the "same habit." This is why, say, infused
temperance and acquired temperance are both rightly called "temperance."
Can botli be said to exist together?40
Thomas' argument against Alexander of Hales against the coexistence of

lifeless and living faith in one person applies also to the coexistence of
acquired and infused cardinal virtues. Just as Thomas claims "fOlmed and
unformed faith do not differ in species" [as in natural species, or object],41
nor do acquired and infused cardinal virtues. Thomas draws from this that
it cannot be said of lifeless and living faith "tliat both acts and habits are
there together." The same is true of acquired and infused cardinal virtues,
for the same reason Thomas offers: "it is not possible for two forms of one
species to exist at the same time [in the same subject], because forms are
diversified in number by reason of diversity of matter or subject."42
faith, one is not "taken a-..vay." But it is indeed in-formed, or transformed, such that
lifelessness is no longer there even though faith remains. Similarly, with the acquired
virtues, their lack of being informed by charity "is removed by charity," to apply
Thomas' words on faith to cardinal virtue.
390ne might even go so far as to say that the infused virtues can perform the acts the
acquired virtues perform, though now toward a different end. This is not an
incidental difference, as seen in I-II 63,4. After all Thomas claims "formed faith can
perform every act which formless faith performs" (De veritate XIV7).
400ne recent attempt to explain the relationship between acquired and infused virtues
in the Christian is to posit the ongoing presence of "virtual" acquired virtues with
infused virtues. For an example of this, see W. Scott Cleveland and Brandon Dahrn,
"The Virtual Presence of Acquired Virtues in the Christian," American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 93. 1 (2019): 75-100. This scholarship is an excellent
example of trying to accOlUlt for both the formal differences of acquired and infused
virtues, and also the seeming residual influence of prior habituation. In the end
Cleveland and Dahm's virtually present acquired virtue is "no longer a full habit but
now remains virtually in a less-than-habit disposition of a power" (96). This claim
means that acquired virtues, qua habits, do not in fact coexist with infused virtues.
Despite attempting to chart a middle course this essay appears to fall on what the
authors call the "transformation" side of the debate. After all, supporters of the
transformation view readily recognize that even contrary dispositions (not habits)
are compatible with infused virtues, so smely residual dispositions from prior
acquired virtue habituation may persist.
Virtues
In conclusion, Thomas is far more explicit and clear about the ways that
lifeless faith becomes living (and vice versa) than he is about tbe ways that
the acquired cardinal virtues become infused cardinal virtues (and vice
versa). Though there are not insignificant dis-analogies between lifeless
faith and acquired cardinal virtues, those differences are not significant for
how each sort of habit is informed by charity. Thus we can leam much about
the relationship between acquired and infused cardinal virtues in one person
from Thomas' thought on the relationship between lifeless faith and living
faith. \¥hat we learn is that acquired and infused cardinal virtues cannot
coexist in the same person. We also learn how acquired cardinal virtues
"become" infused cardinal virtues (or vice versa), a claim that follows from
these importantly different habits nonetbeless being tbe "sarne habit" in the
sense of their object.
THE VIRTUAL PRESENCE
OF THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
LLOYD NEWTON
The question before us is whether, according to St. Thomas Aquinas,

Christians can possess the acquired cardinal virtues.1 Traditionally, most
Thomists affinn that they can possess the acquired cardinal virtues, even
though they also possess the infused cardinal virtues .' Yet not all Thomistic
scholars agree. Contrary to the traditional reading, William Mattison has
recently argued that since Christians have been infused with the cardinal
virtues at baptism, they carmot also possess the acquired cardinal virtues.3
Mattison's claim is surprising, given that Thomists have traditionally taught
otherwise and given that one passage in Aquinas' Sentence Commentary
very clearly indicates that they can: "Infused virtue is together with acquired
virtue, which is clear in the adult who, having acquired virtue, approaches
baptism, since he does not receive less infused virtue than a child."4
lNot only was the current session, hosted at the annual medieval conference at
Kalamazoo, focused on this question, but Mattison's thesis was the subject of an
entire conference hosted by the Thomas Institut in Utrecht in 2017.
2Williarn C. Mattison III, "Can Christians Possess the Acquired Cardinal Virtues,"
Theological Studies, 72 (20 1 1 ), 558-85, p. 559. Although Mattison's article was
published 7 years ago, he continues to maintain the view that a person with the
infused virtues cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues.
3Ibid.
4In III Sent d. 33 q. 1 a. 2 qc. 4 s.c. 2: 'Praeterea, duaeformae ejusdem speciei non
possunt esse in uno subjecto. Sed virtus infusa est simul cum virtute acquisita, ut
patel in adulto qui habens virtutem acquisitam ad Baptismum accedit, qui non minus
recipit de infusis quam puer. Ergo virtus acquisita et infusa differunt specie.'
Admittedly, this passage is in a 'sed contra' argmnent immediately preceding
Aquinas' resolution of the broader question. However, the fact that Aquinas does
not raise issue with the argmnent is a strong indication that this is indeed his view. I
will look at this text and the larger sUlTOlUlding text from his Sentence Commentary
in more detail in the second section of this paper.
18 The Virtual Presence of the Cardinal Virtues
So why does Mattison insist on the opposite position, viz., that Christians
cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues? Very simply, I think that he
misreads a central passage in the Summa Theologica. Thus, in what follows,
I propose to accomplish the following three goals. In the first section, I want
to focus on the original article in which Mattison argues for the contrary
position, showing that this particular article has a false premise in its
reasoning. Mattison's argument in this article relies almost exclusively on
the shorter, more summative texts on this topic found in Aquinas' Summa
Theologica and not on the more extensive treatments of this issue in his
Commentary on the Sentences or in his Disputed Questions on the Virtues.
Thus, in the second section, I want to examine the relevant passages where
Aquinas addresses this issue, both those found in the Summa Theologica as
well as the pertinent passages found in his Commentary on the Sentences
and the Disputed Questions on Virftte .5 But even without a more detailed
knowledge of the longer passages found in the latter two work� I think
Mattison fundamentally misreads Aquinas because he fails to consider the
broader, psychological and teleological framework within which Aquinas
addresses these issues. Thus, in the third section of this article, I wish to
sketch Thomas's understanding of human nature within its larger
psychological and teleological framework. In doing so, I do not attempt to
argue that Christians can possess both the acquired and infused cardinal
virtues, since Aquinas clearly indicates that they can. Rather, my goal is to
show how Aquinas' treatment of the virtues is part of a larger, more
comprehensive view ofthe world, and thus how his treatment ofthe cardinal
virtues must be interpreted by the larger framework of his other writings.
Let us begin by considering Mattison's claim.
Section I
Mattison's recent article addressing this question consists of two main

sections, in the first of which he develops two main arguments as to why
Christians cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues. Although he gives
two distinct arguments, by his 0\Vll admission, those arguments are
interrelated. More importantly for this paper, the faulty premise in the first
argument is the same for the second argument, and is reiterated several times
5These passages are not, to my knowledge translated into English anywhere. Thus,
in an effort to move the debate to the next level and to aid the average reader, I am
providing an English translation of four of the questions from his Commentary on
the Sentences that address this issue as an appendix to this article.
Lloyd Ne-wton 19
throughout the paper. Thus, refuting the first argument will suffice to
disprove his overall claim.
The first argument is summarized by the author in the following 7

statements:
1 . The human person wills all for an end (STh I-II, q. 1 , a. l).
2. Every human person has one last end (STh I-II, q. 1, a. 4 and 5).
3. The human person wills all that he wills for the last end (happiness) (STh
I-II, q. 1, a. 6 and 7).
4. Happiness is twofold, natural and supernatural (STh I-II, q. 62, a. 1).
5. The virtues by which one wills natural happiness as one's last end are
always acquired and never infused (DQCV, q. 4, ad. 3).
6. The virtues by which one wills supernatural happiness as one's last end
are always infused and never acquired (STh I-II, q. 63, a. 2).
7. Therefore, the human person directed toward the last end of supernatural
happiness cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues.
Since I disagree with his conclusion, it is imperative for me to find fault

with one of more of his premises. In this instance, I argue that the author
misunderstands the second premise, viz., that "Every human person has one
last end." In support of this premise, the author appeals to STh I-II, q. 1,
articles 4 and 5.6 Let us look more closely at these two questions.
The first question is article 4 of the I-II, q. L The English edition, published
by the English Dominicans, phrases the question this way: "Whether there
is one last end of human life?" Unfortunately, this is not an accurate
translation of the Latin, which reads: utrum sit aliquis ultimusfinis humanae
vitae. A more literal translation would be: whether there is some ultimate
end of human life? Tellingly, it does not ask whether there is one last end,
just whether there is an ultimate end. For what is at issue in this question is
not whether there is one ultimate end, but whether the ultimate end is finite
or infinite. This becomes clear when one looks at the objections. The first
objection argues that: "it would seem that there is no last end of human life,
but that we proceed to infinity. For Good is essentially diffusive, as
Dionysius states."7 Similarly, the second and third objections each argue
that the end is infinite. In reply to this question, S1. Thomas argues that the
ultimate end is in fact finite. As he states it: "Absolutely speaking, it is not
possible to proceed indefinitely in the matter of ends, from any point of
view."
'Ibid. p. 564.
7STh I-II, q. 1, art. 4.
20 The Virtual Presence ofthe Cardinal Virtues
However, one might object that the tenn 'ultimate' implies the notion of
singularity or that there can be only one end. Perhaps this was why the
English Dominicans glossed their translation ofthis question as to "\¥hether
there is one last end of human life?". However, this is apparently not the
way St. Thomas understands the question, because the very next article
concerns the number of ends that can be had. Again, the English translation
reads: "'Whether one man can have several last ends?" In this instance, the
English translation is much closer to the Latin, which reads: utrum unius
hominis possint esse plures ultimi fines. However, a more literal translation
would be: whether there are many last ends with respect to one man.
Now, a superficial reading of this question could give the impression that
Aquinas thinks there is only one ultimate end for humans. After all, the first
objection argues that "It would seem possible for one man's will to be
directed at the same time to several things, as last ends." Moreover, the very
nature of the Summa is such that Aquinas almost always disagrees with the
objections. Thus, one might infer that since the initial objection is wrong,
and that the opposite of 'several things' is 'one thing', Aquinas would
maintain that there is only 'one' last end. However, we all know that
Aquinas does not simply argue that the objections are wrong. Rather, he
almost always concedes that the objections are true in some way, and that
what is needed is a clarification, or disambiguation of how a particular word
in the question is used in more than one way. With this caveat in mind, here
is Aquinas' reply in full:
I answer that, it is impossible for one man's will to be directed at the same
time to diverse things, as last ends. Three reasons may be assigned for this.
First, since everything desires its 0\Vll perfection, a man desires for his
ultimate end, that which he desires as his perfect and cro\Vlling good. Hence
Augustine says (De civ. Dei xix, 1): "In speaking of the end of good we
mean now, not that it passes away so as to be no more, but that it is perfected
so as to be complete." It is therefore necessary for the last end so to fill man's
appetite, that nothing is left besides it for man to desire. "Which is not
possible, if something else be required for his perfection. Consequently it is
not possible for the appetite so to tend to two things, as though each were its
perfect good.
The second reason is because, just as in the process of reasoning, the

principle is that which is naturally knO\V ll, so in the process of the rational
appetite, i.e. the will, the principle needs to be that which is naturally desired.
Now this must needs be one: since nature tends to one thing only. But the
principle in the process of the rational appetite is the last end. Therefore that
to which the will tends, as to its last end, is one.
Lloyd Ne-wton 21
The third reason is because, since voluntary actions receive their species
from the end, as stated above (Article 3), they must needs receive their genus
from the last end, which is cornmon to them all: just as natural things are
placed in a genus according to a common fonn. Since, then, all things that
can be desired by the will, belong, as such, to one genus, the last end must
needs be one. And all the more because in every genus there is one first
principle; and the last end has the nature of a first principle, as stated above.
Now as the last end of man, simply as man, is to the whole hlUllan race, so
is the last end of any individual man to that individual. Therefore, just as of
all men there is naturally one last end, so the will of an individual man must
be fixed on one last end.
Let us look at this reply more closely. The opening sentence simply says
that: "It is impossible for one man's will to be directed at the same time to
diverse things, as last ends.,,8 In keeping with common scholastic practice,
Aquinas is not affitming a position, rather he is denying a false one: man's
will carmot be directed to diverse last ends. However, to say that one cannot
have diverse ends is not the same as to say that he carmot have more than
one end. Consider the argument to the contrary in this question:
On the contrary, That in which a man rests as in his last end, is master of
his affections, since he takes therefrom his entire rille of life. Hence of
gluttons it is "Written (Philippians 3 : 1 9): 'Whose god is their belly": viz.
because they place their last end in the pleasures ofthe belly. Now according
to Matthew 6:24, "No man can serve two masters," such, namely, as are not
ordained to one another. Therefore it is impossible for one man to have
several last ends not ordained to one another. (Italics added).
As this argument makes clear, it is perfectly possible, and I argue is the case,
that there are multiple, essentially ordered last ends. Thus, contrary to the
author's initial claim, Aquinas does not say that man has only one last end;
what he says is that man carmot have diverse ends.
FurthemlOre, the example of eating as an end is particularly instructive. A

moment of reflection will reveal that all ends, other than a last end, can
simultaneously be a means to a further end. For example, driving to a
restaurant is a means to eating at that restaurant, where the end of the
immediate action is the activity of eating. But apart from the aforementioned
gluttons, eating is, strictly speaking, not a last end. And while it may be the
end of driving to the restaurant, it is not a last end, for it is a means to living.
Thus, eating is both a means and an end. But living, qua living, is a last end,
8STh I-II, q. 1 , art. 5.

and is not a means to any other end.9 For neither the unbeliever, nor even
the Christian, chooses to live as a means toward some further end. As such,
living can be said to be a [mal end, since it is not chosen as a means to some
further end. But a Christian, trusting in the faith that there is an afterlife as
well as a judgment, may live in such a way that he orders the final end of
living towards the further final end of ever-lasting life. But just because he
orders living toward ever-lasting life, that does not make living a means of
obtaining ever-lasting life. For according to the Christian faith, all people
have ever-lasting life, whether they live another day or another forty years.
Thus, it is possible that a person can have a series of essentially ordered last
ends. But what does Aquinas mean by a series of essentially ordered ends?
I wish to explore this topic more in the third section, but before turning to
how it is possible, let us first look at the key texts that address this specific
Issue.
Section II
Besides his extended, general discussion of the virtues in his Disputed

Questions on the Virtues, Aquinas discusses the acquired and infused
cardinal virtues in three other places: Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 51, Summa
Theologica I-II, Q. 63, and in his Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. 3,
Distinction 33. Allow me to briefly summarize each of these questions.lO
In Q. 51, Aquinas asks 4 questions about habits in general: 1) whether any

habit is from nature?; 2) whether any habit is caused by acts?; 3) whether a
habit can be caused by one act?; and 4) whether any habits are infused? To
each question, Aquinas responds affimmtively. Thus, some habits are
innate, some are acquired by one or more acts, and some are infused, i.e.,
are divine gifts.
9Granted, living is not the last end ofman qua man, but is simply the last ofman qua
living being, that is, it is the last end of his vegetative soul. As we will discuss in the
next section, happiness is the last end of man qua man. Readers familiar with
Aquinas will recognize the parallel between the will, which is innately oriented
toward the highest good, namely happiness, and the free-will, which chooses the
means toward that ultimate end, on the one hand, and living and eating, on the other.
For while we choose what and when to eat, no one, I argue, simply chooses to live,
in the same -way that no one chooses to seek happiness as an end.
lOI presmne that most readers interested in this topic are quite familiar with these
texts, so I will not restate the texts here. Besides, my argmnent concerns a broader
interpretive approach, not dissecting any one particular sentence uttered by Aquinas.
Lloyd Ne-wton 23
Having affitmed something true about habit as a genus, twelve questions

later Aquinas asks four similar questions, this time about the species of
habits, i.e., virtues in particular: 1) whether any moral virtues are innate?;
2) whether any moral virtues are acquired? 3) whether any moral virtues are
infused?; and 4) whether acquired and infused virtues are the same in
species? Again, Aquinas answers the first three questions affirmatively,
such that some virtues are, in a way innate; some are acquired; and some are
infused.
Not surprisingly, the same four questions about virtue in the Summa
Theologica were previously asked in his Commentary on the Sentences.
Thus, in Bk. 3, distinction 33, art. 3, Aquinas asks: 1) whether the virtues
are in us by nature?; 2) whether the virtues are acquired?; 3) whether the
virtues are infused; 4) whether the acquired and infused virtues are the same
in species?l1 Once again, Aquinas argues that some virtues are, in a way,
innate, some are acquired, and some are infused.
Since in each set of questions Aquinas clearly affirms that some habits and
virtues are acquired, we are left with a broad interpretive question: how are
we to understand Aquinas when he affirms that some virtues are indeed
acquired? On Mattison's view, since Christians possess the infused cardinal
virtues, and since we can only have one last end, when Aquinas says humans
have acquired cardinal virtues, he must be referring to pagans or
unbelievers. Indeed, Mattison is adamant that Christians, at least insofar as
they are in a state of grace, carmot possess acquired cardinal virtues. But
such a view, I argue, encounters three, broad interpretive difficulties.
First, following Aquinas, I qualify the answer to the question regarding

innate virtues by saying that some virtues are, in a way, innate. 'Why the
qualification? As is well known, one common philosophical position is
platonism, which argues that knowledge, for instance, is innate, and that all
learning is simply remembering. On such a platonic background, all virtues
are seen to be innate. Furthermore, although Aquinas, following Aristotle
ultimately modifies this view, he does not come out and simply dismiss it
or claim that it is \¥fong. Rather, as he almost always does, Aquinas grants
that there is some truth in the platonic view. Virtues are innate insofar as
there is an innate capacity, or potentiality for virtue.12 These innate virtues
l lSumma Theologica I-II, Q. 63

12See his lengthy discussion of this in Disputed Questions on Virtue, Q. 8, where he
distinguishes between potencies, or capacities, that are pmely passive and those that
are partly passive and partly active. In the same question, Aquinas distinguishes
are fulfilled, however, by either activities or infusion. As he says in in

Commentary on the Sentences,
Some beginning (of virtue) is from nature, as a fonn exists in the potency of
matter, and the knowledge (science) of a conclusion exists in lUliversal
principles: since what is learned in the particular, is known prior in the
lUliversal, and the virtues preexist in the natural order toward the good of the
virtue, which is in the reason knowing a good of this kind, and also in the
will naturally desiring it; and in some way, it is in the inferior bodily (parts),
insofar as those (parts) are naturally subject to reason . . . (however) the
fulfillment of the forms, i.e., insofar as they are in act, is from an extrinsic
agent: indeed the fulfillment (or actuality) of science is from doctrine or
discovery; however, (the fulfillment or actuality) of virtue is from
habituation or from infusion. 13
However, nowhere does Aquinas distinguish between the virtues that are
innate for Christians versus those virtues that are innate for unbelievers.
Rather, virtues in general are, in a sense, innate to humans. Presumably,
then, both Christians and unbelievers have innate virtues. But on Mattison's
view, we are faced with the following odd position: Christians can have
innate virtues, but they can't have acquired virtues, even though innate
virtues are, on Aquinas' view, simply the seeds, or passive potencies, of
acquired virtues.
This last claim brings me to my second general criticism: when Aquinas

talks about acquired and infused virtues, he nowhere limits or specifies that
acquired virtues only pertain to unbelievers. True, he does say that infused
virtues are given to believers, who by God's grace, have been granted more
virtues, both theological virtues and infused cardinal virtues. But nowhere
in his treatment does he say that Christians can't have acquired virtues, nor
does he suggest that when he talks about acquired virtues, he is only talking
about virtues that pertain to pagans. Indeed, arguably, it makes little sense
for Aquinas to go into such depth about acquired virtues if Christians can't
acquire any virtues. Yet, on Mattison's view, one is left to wonder why
Aquinas talks at all about acquired cardinal virtues, if those virtues have
between the innate disposition toward virtue that all men share, and the innate
dispositions toward virtue that some men in particular share, which is due either to
"natural makeup or celestial influence." Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on
Virtue, trans. Ralph McInerny (South Bend, Ind. : St. Augustine's, 1999), pg. 50.
13Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences. Thus, in Bk. 3, distinction 33,
art. 3, q. 1 a. 2 qc. 1 co. Translation mine.
Lloyd Ne-wton 25
little or no bearing on the Christian life. 14 By contrast, Aquinas is very clear

that Christians are not to follow the ceremonial aspects ofthe Old Testament
law. If Christians cannot possess or acquire virtues by their 0\Vll acts, would
not one reasonably expect Aquinas to say something along these lines?
But the fact that Aquinas talks at length about acquired cardinal virtues
brings me to my last, general difficulty: what about the other virtues?
Assuming that the telTIl 'cardinal virtues' refer to the four major or general
virtues of prudence, courage, moderation, and justice, one is left wondering
about all of the specific virtues that Aquinas routinely discusses in other
parts of his works. For example, Aquinas recognized the five intellectual
virtues of wisdom, science, intuition, art, and prudence. These intellectual
virtues are certainly not innate. Thus, they must be either acquired or
infused. However, to my knowledge, not even Mattison wants to say that
there is a distinctly Christian science or art.15 But on Mattison's view, either
they are infused, since Christians carmot have acquired virtues, or they
simply cannot be acquired by Christians. Neither alternative looks
promlsmg.
Similarly, when one turns to the latter parts of his discussion of the virtues
in his Commentary on the Sentences, one will notice that Aquinas defends
different kinds of courage that Aristotle discusses in his Politics, as well as
different species of courage articulated by Macrobius, to say nothing of
different kinds of temperance and prudence articulated by Cicero.!6 But if
Aquinas defends Cicero's and Aristotle's insights into these virtues and
their parts, then we are left wondering either how these pagans gained so
much knowledge of infused virtue, or why does Aquinas take so much time
articulating and defending types of virtues that have no meaning for
Christians. Again, neither alternative looks promising.
14 It has been suggested that perhaps Aquinas discusses the acquired cardinal virtues
insofar as they pertain to a Christian who is not in a state of grace. If this is the
reason, however, it is not obvious from the text. Moreover, such a scenario would, I
think, raise more questions about how a Christian transitions back and forth between
possessing acquired cardinal virtues one moment and infused the next. To my
knowledge, though, no such discussion exists.
15 The science oftheology being a crucial exception, of course. But this science relies
upon accepting the premises on faith, not reason.
16See my translation of the basic outline ofBk. 3, Distinction 33, in the appendix to
this article.
Thus, one is left with the following, broad interpretive question: when
Aquinas affitms the reality of acquired cardinal virtues, as well as other
virtues, such as insight, art, science, etc., is he limiting these virtues to
pagans, while Christians possess only the infused virtues? Or is it possible
for Christians to possess both acquired and infused cardinal virtues? As
Mattison admits, scholars traditionally interpret Aquinas in the latter way.
To see why this is the more reasonable interpretation and why most
Thomists endorse this view, let us tum once again to his Commentary on
the Sentences. In the fourth article, Aquinas makes abundantly clear that he
is talking about virtues with respect to one and the same person, namely a
Christian. In asking whether acquired temperance is the same as infused
temperance, the following argument is put forth: "infused virtue is
simultaneously together with acquired virtue, as is evident in an adult who,
having acquired virtue, approaches baptism, since he does not receive less
of the infused virtue than a child. ,,17 In this argument, it is clear that a non
Christian adult, who possess the moral virtue of temperance, is given the
additional, infused virtue of temperance, which differs in species, but
subsequently exists simultaneously in the newly baptized believer.
In sum, Aquinas does not say what Mattison interprets him as saying -
namely that Christians have only one ultimate end. Rather, as I shall argue,
Christians may have, and indeed often do have, a series of essentially
ordered ends differentiated with respect to various aspects of the soul. But
what does Aquinas mean by a series of essentially ordered ends? To see
what this means, let us tum to the third section of this paper.
Section III
To return briefly to Mattison's article, in the second section he rightly

notices that Aquinas' ethics presuppose a "requisite psychological
structure" which "persists in the life of graced virtue.,,18 However, nowhere
does he connect the psychological basis or the political setting with the basic
nature of virtues. Likewise, he nowhere in the article mentions the role of
natural law, nor specifically the fourfold good that Aquinas articulates in q.
94, art. 2 of the I-II. There, S1. Thomas mentions the following four distinct
goods: the first is the good of existence, which we share with all substances;
17In III Sent d. 33 q. 1 a. 2 qc. 4 s.c. 2: "Praeterea, duaeformae ejusdem speciei non
possunt esse in uno subjecto. Sed virtus infusa est simu/ cum virtute acquisita, ut
patet in adulto qui habens virtutem acquisitam ad Baptismum accedit, qui non minus
recipit de infusis quam puer. Ergo virtus acquisita et infusa differunt specie."
l8Ibid., p. 570.
Lloyd Ne-wton 27
the second is the good we share with other animals (and arguably with all
animated beings), namely the preservation of the family or species; the third
good is the good of living in society; and the fourth is the good of reason,
or knowing the truth. These four basic goods, I argue, are what Aquinas
primarily has in mind when he speaks of 'essentially ordered' ends. To see
how this is so, let us look more closely at Aquinas' basic view of human
nature as it fits in with nature as a whole.
i. Corporeal Beings
Although Aquinas does not say so explicitly, this fourfold good is obviously
connected to the basic division of kinds as they are traditionally presented
in Porphyry's tree, and these goods are arguably connected to the four
cardinal virtues as well. Allow me to explain. In Porphyry's tree the highest
genus substance is immediately divided into corporeal and incorporeal
beings. Unlike the incorporeal beings, which presumably are identified with
angels and such, corporeal beings are material beings. That is, they are three
dimensional and so take up space. More importantly, as substances, they
have a goal, or good, that they seek - namely to stay in existence. As
Aquinas says elsewhere, all substances have an end, or good, which they
seek, namely the preservation of their 0\Vll being.19 St. Thomas understands
this goal as an imitation of the divine, whose essence is to exist, insofar as
all corporeal beings strive to stay in existence. As physical beings, though,
they are naturally changing - they come into existence and out of existence.
That is, since they are not divine, they carmot stay in existence forever, but
are governed by becoming. Nevertheless, they are teleologically structured
to strive towards being, or remaining in existence, which is their good or
end. Moreover, I argue that to stay in existence is a final or ultimate end.
That is, existence is not a means to some further end. For no one chooses to
exist - it rather is simply a given.
ii. Plants - Living Beings
Of course, as we all know, no corporeal beings are simply corporeal - some

are inanimate while others are animate or living. These latter beings have a
new grade of existence that the others lack. Moreover, this new grade of
being bestows new, additional goods to those that they already have as
simply corporeal substances. That is, as living things, these corporeal beings
are able to reproduce and thus to perpetuate their family or species. Thus,
19STh I-II, q. 94, art. 2.

while individuals come and go, the family or species is in some sense
eternal, and thus more divine.20
Central to Aquinas' understanding is that living things are hylomorphic

composites, where the genus is related to, or taken from, matter and the
specific difference is related to, or taken from, fOlTIl. As Aquinas states it,
"there is the composition of fOlTIl with matter; and to this corresponds that
composition of the intellect, whereby the universal whole is predicated of
its part: for the genus is derived from common matter, while the difference
that completes the species is derived from the fonn."21 That is, living things
have a vegetative soul, which gives them a potency to various acts, such as
taking in nutrition, growth, and reproduction. Stated another way, the soul,
or form of the body, is both a fOlTIl or act of a prior matter or potency, and
also, as such, a potency to new forms. For unlike simple corporeal
substances, plants have the ability to reproduce.
Before moving on, let me add three corollaries. First, while living things
have a perfection that inanimate beings lack, this perfection does not come
without a cost. Specifically, in order for the species to reproduce, it is not
nOlTIlal for them to produce a mature being at once. Thus, not only do plants
have an ability to reproduce, and thus to produce another being like
themselves in fOlTIl, but they must also have the ability to grow and
transfolTIl the other into themselves. Stated another way, the addition of a
new grade of being comes at a price. That is, the introduction of new powers
is not an unmixed blessing. The species may reproduce, but this involves a
heavy cost.
A second corollary is that this cost is offset by the ability to impose new
forms. That is, in the process of growth and nutrition, the vegetative soul
transforms lower corporeal things into higher things. When plants absorb
nutrients from the soil, those nutrients are transfolTIled into living beings.
As we will see, this ability to acquire forms will be a recurring theme at each
level of being.
20ne species, or family, has a greater participation in divinity both in being more
eternal and being alive. See STh I-II, q. 2, art. 5, ad 3, where Aquinas says: "Since
the end corresponds to the beginning; this argmnent proves that the last end is the
first beginning of being, in Whom every perfection of being is: Whose likeness,
according to their proportion, some desire as to being only, some as to living being."
2lSTh I, q. 86, art. 5, ad. 3.
Lloyd Ne-wton 29
The third corollary is that these new beings have additional goals, but that
the new goals do not simply replace the previous goals. That is, the goal of
reproduction and thus the preservation of the family or species does not
replace the goal of self-preservation. Animated beings are still corporeal
beings, and thus still have the goal of self-preservation. True, at times the
individual must sacrifice the lower goal to achieve the higher goal, but that
is not the norm. In fact, without self-preservation, the new goals could never
be achieved.
iii Animals - Sentient Beings
Let us return, though, to the basic view. As we know, not all living things
are only such - some are also sentient. Thus, as we see in Porphyry's tree,
living beings are divided into sentient and non-sentient beings, that is, into
animals and plants. According to Aquinas, animals have an additional
specification over and above plants: they have a sentient soul. Stated another
way, the division of a genus into its two species is not an equal division,
where both species have their 0\Vll proper specifying difference. Rather,
what I am arguing for here is that one species that divides a genus has a
specifying fonn or difference, which the other species simply lacks. In a
moment, we will see how Aquinas describes this in relation to humans.
In the meantime, let me restate the three corollaries as they pertain to this
new level. First, as we saw before, this new soul or form both elevates the
lower beings, but comes at a price. For sentient beings, like all animated
beings, can grow and reproduce. But unlike plants, they are not passive in
relation to their food or reproduction. That is, plants are entirely dependent
and passive in relation to the weather. If the sun shines and it rains, then
plants will grow, and ifnot, then they won't. Animals, on the contrary, have
the ability to go after their food. They can seek it out, and are not dependent
on waiting for their food to come to them, as are plants. Likewise, the ability
to go after food entails that there are more choices and kinds of food to
pursue. Unlike plants, animals not only depend on water and sunlight, but
they also can consume other plants, or lower beings, while some, indeed,
can even consume other animals.
This last fact points us to the costs that are involved. Not only can animals
actively consume other animals, but the reverse is equally and necessarily
true: animals can be passively eaten by other animals. Taken together, these
new abilities are identified by Aquinas as the capacity to sense the world
aroundthem, to desire some objects and be averse to others, and the capacity
to move locally.22
The second corollary concerns the way in which animals acquire new forms:
animals not only tranSfOlTIl other substances into themselves, as all living
things can, but they can also sense the other fOlTIlS too. Unlike plants,
animals have a new relation to fOlliS: they are aware of them. 'While plants
are able to transfOlTIl or change the fOlTIl of other substances, animals,
insofar as they perceive their food, are also cognizant of those fOlTIlS. Here
is how Aquinas describes the first two kinds of living beings:
Now the powers of the soul are distinguished generically by their objects.
For the higher a power is, the more universal is the objectto which it extends,
as we have said above (77, 3, ad 4). But the object of the soul's operation
may be considered in a triple order. For in the soul there is a power the object
of which is only the body that is lUlited to that soul; the powers of this genus
are called "vegetative" for the vegetative power acts only on the body to
which the soul is lUlited. There is another genus in the powers of the soul,
which genus regards a more lUliversal object namely, every sensible body,
not only the body to which the soul is lUlited.23
That is, the senses have a more universal object insofar as they are able to
perceive their surroundings.
The third corollary involves a new set of goals or capacities. Allow me to

explain. Another cost to animals is that qua animals, their food supply is
limited and now requires cooperation amongst one another. Animals now
compete with others for their food. However, this cost also has its remedies
or benefits: animals, unlike plants, have the ability to function together
socially to meet their needs. Thus there is now a third end over and above
the other two: the preservation of the herd or society. Not only can animals
reproduce and thus perpetuate their family or species, as all living things
can, but they also can now perpetuate their 0\Vll unique group. This is a new
end, over and above the other two. It is also another way in which these
beings imitate the divine. That is, inanimate things imitate God insofar as
He exists, living things imitate God insofar as He is alive and eternal, while
animals imitate God insofar as the three divine persons have a communal
relationship with one another. Moreover, it is important to realize that this
new end does not simply replace the other two ends. A group cannot exist
22STh I, Q, 78, art. 1 .

23STh I, Q 78, art. ! .
Lloyd Ne-wton 31
if the individual or species do not continue to exist. Thus we now have an

essentially ordered series of ends: self-preservation; preservation of life,
preservation of the species, and the preservation of the society. According
to my view, each of these ends should be understood as a final end of a
major power or capacity of the soul. They are ultimate or last ends because
they are the first principle, if you will, of the basic potency or capacity of
the various grades of substance.
iv. Humans - Rational Beings
Having looked at the first three grades of being, let us return to Porphyry's
tree for the final grade: the genus animal is divided into men and brute
beasts. What differentiates man from the brute beasts is that he has a rational
soul. Once again, we must remember that according to St. Thomas, the
genus animal is taken from the matter, while the difference rational is taken
from the form. Here is how Aquinas describes this aspect in STh I, q. 3, art.
5:
A species is constituted of genus and difference. Now that from which the
difference constituting the species is derived, is always related to that from
which the genus is derived, as actuality is related to potentiality. For animal
is derived from sensitive nature, by concretion as it were, for that is animal,
which has a sensitive nature. Rational being, on the other hand, is derived
from intellectual nature, because that is rational, which has an intellectual
nature, and intelligence is compared to sense, as actuality to potentiality.24
So, as we saw before, the difference is taken from the fOlTIl, whereas the
genus is taken from the matter. However, there is something else noteworthy
about this quotation. An animal is one type of living thing, having a sensitive
nature. But Aquinas simply says that animal is a 'concrete' instance of the
genus animal. 'What I take him to be saying here is that animals do not have
their 0\Vll specific difference over and above what they have as sensitive
beings. In contrast, a human being is related to sensitive nature as act to
potency. Stated another way, when a genus is divided into two species, one
species has a positive fOlTIl or differentia, which is related to the genus as
form to matter. The other species, however, is differentiated by a lack of
that fOlTIl. As we will see in the next section, this understanding of
24STh I. q. 3. art. 5.
specification will be extremely important as we answer the question of

whether or not Christians possess the acquired cardinal virtues.25
Let me briefly say sometbing about the three corollaries as they pertain to
this higher grade of existence. Like the otbers, this new grade of being both
elevates and has its costs. An obvious benefit for humans is that the range
of edible objects is also increased. By this, I don't mean simply tbathumans
are onmivores, but that we have the capacity to cook our food and make
foods that other animals, qua animals, carmot make, such as bread and wine,
to say nothing of our ability to use knives and forks when we eat.26
But just as in the previous examples, these advantages do not come without
a cost: while humans have a greater capacity than other animals, that
capacity is not instinctively fonned. Rather, it is a raw plasticity that
requires a great deal of education. Even when other animals have some
learning to do, they do so instinctively. For example, if a carnivorous animal
must learn from its parents how to hunt, it does so relatively soon after birth
and does so instinctively. Not so with humans. Unlike other animals, at least
one fourth of our life is spent learning, and indeed some of us will spend our
entire lives learning. This learning is part of what is meant by the term
'virtue'. To repeat, humans have raw capacities that far outstrip the
capacities of the other animals, and correspondingly, we have activities that
far excel the activities of other animals. But those capacities and their
corresponding activities, while part of our nature, are not naturally or
instinctively developed. As we saw previously, they are innate in a sense.
But only in a sense. This is where virtues enter. A virtue, as is well knO\vn,
is what disposes someone to act well. That is, a virtue both perfects the raw
capacity or faculty as such and it perfects tbe corresponding activity.
Intimately connected to the notion of virtue is the second corollary. Humans

have the ability to know their ends in a way that ainmals do not. That is,
while animals can and must perceive their food in order to grow, humans
can both perceive their food and know it as food, i.e., as an end. Thus,
humans both sense food and grasp its intelligible nature. St. Thomas
describes this new ability by saying that: "tbere is yet another genus in the
powers of the soul, which genus regards a still more universal object -
25This is not to say, of COlise, that there is a plurality of forms. Animals only have
one soul a sentient soul, but that soul virtually contains all the powers beneath it.
See STh I, q. 76, art. 3.
26Por an excellent, modem accOlUlt of this essentially Aristotelian notion, see Leon
Kass, The Hungry Soul.
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superiority in face and figure. The features of many might almost
have been called delicate and refined; and it was so, strange to say,
even when very perceptible traces of the African nose and lips
remained, and these still surmounted with the African wool. I
understood that this was also to a great extent the case where a
Spaniard was the father. The reason of this difference I believe to be
a very obvious one, that Frenchmen and Spaniards, having much
smaller bones than the Northern nations, are better able on that
account to correct, in their mixed descendants, the grossness of the
physiognomy and figure of the African. The German half-breeds are
still more unattractive than the Anglo-Saxon; the Scandinavian are
worse; but the worst of all are those whose long-headed and high
cheek-boned fathers come from the north of the Tweed.
No one without having seen the thing himself—
and the jolting will impress it on his memory—can The Best Road
form any proper conception of the holes, the mud, in the World.
and the pools of water which not unfrequently
constitute what is called in America a road. At Augusta I had seen
axles disappear in the main streets. But the most advanced
specimen of this kind of means of communication I ever passed
over, was in going to the station of the Mississippi and Tennessee
railway at New Orleans. I could not see or hear that any attempt had
ever been made to form a road. The traffic was great, and was of
course confined by the houses to a narrow street. It was a natural
swamp, and there had been lately a great deal of rain. My reflections
on coming at last to the station were, that American horses were
wonderful animals, and that in nothing did the Americans themselves
show their inventive powers so triumphantly as in constructing
carriages which could carry heavy loads day after day through such
difficulties;—I do not say through such roads, because there was
nothing but a collection of the hindrances to travelling which a road is
made to remedy.
This is a subject on which the Americans themselves are very
tolerant and easily satisfied. ‘Sir,’ said a gentleman to me, on the top
of Wells and Fargo’s coach, as we were passing over the Plains to
Denver, ‘Sir, this is the finest piece of road in the world.’ As nothing
had been said previously about roads, and as what we were passing
along was merely a freight-track on the dry prairie, four inches deep
in dust and sand and earth in fine weather, and as many or more
inches deep in mud in wet weather, I intimated that I believed I had
not heard rightly his remark. He then repeated his assertion even
more emphatically than at first, ‘that it was the best piece of road in
the world.’ I was beginning to explain to him, as courteously as I
could, why I should hardly have ventured to call it a road at all, when
he stopped me short with, ‘Sir, we have no faith in European
practices. I am a judge of roads. I have seen all kinds of roads; and I
have seen roads in all kinds of places; and this is just what I said it
was, the finest piece of road in the world.’ Over this model road,
sometimes with six good horses, never with less than four, we were
able to manage about six miles an hour.
The railroad from New Orleans, for the first mile or two, lies
through a most dreary dismal swamp. The water stands everywhere.
The palmetto and the swamp cedar grow out of the water. The trees
are completely shrouded with the grey Spanish moss. The trees and
the moss look as if they had long been dead. One who enters the
city by this approach (had ever any other great city such an
approach?) must carry with him some not very encouraging
thoughts. Whenever in the summer or autumn the wind blows from
this direction, I suppose it will remind him of the yellow fever, the
horrible scourge of the place.
The swamp I just mentioned is succeeded by
sugar plantations, the costly machinery of which A Prayer for a
had been destroyed during the war. They now Brother Minister.
appeared to be used as grazing farms for cattle
brought up from Texas. On one of these ruined plantations I saw
some hedges of the Cherokee rose. This is an evergreen, and
makes too wide a hedge, though its height may be an advantage in
that climate. It is a common opinion in New Orleans that all these
sugar plantations will eventually be re-established; but that this will
never be done by the present proprietors, who are all ruined, and
who will have to sell the land at a merely nominal price, which is all
that the land without the machinery is worth. Those who will buy the
land will be companies, or Northern men who will have capital
enough to purchase new machinery, and to pay the heavy costs of
carrying on the cultivation of the cane and manufacture of the sugar.
Americans are very careful not to give offence in what they say to
others. An American bishop remarked to me that the only exception
to this rule was to be found among ministers of religion, and among
them only in their prayers. He mentioned, as an instance, something
that had occurred at a public meeting at which he had himself been
present. A minister had opened the proceedings with prayer. He was
followed by a rival preacher. The latter, after dwelling for some time
on general topics, at last came up to his opponent in the following
way: he prayed that the gifts of the Spirit might be poured out on all
his brethren in the ministry abundantly, and then added, ‘and on
behalf of our brother whose words we have just heard, we offer this
special supplication, that his heart may become as soft as his head.’
CHAPTER X.
MY ONLY DELAY ON AN AMERICAN RAILWAY—NO CONCEALING
ONE’S NATIONALITY—RAILWAY COW-PLOUGH—PISTOLS—
MEMPHIS—EMIGRATION FROM THE SOUTH DEPRECATED—
TRUE METHOD OF RESUSCITATION—THE MINISTER’S STUDY—
CONVERSATION WITH TWO MINISTERS—INVITATION TO ‘GO TO
CHURCH’ 150 MILES OFF—LUXURY DOES NOT SAP THE
MILITARY SPIRIT—MRS. READ—ENTRY INTO EDEN—SHARE A
BED-ROOM WITH A CALIFORNIAN—HOW CALIFORNIA WAS
CIVILISED—HOW A SITE UPON THE SWAMP WAS CREATED FOR
CAIRO—DECLINE THE FOURTH PART OF A BED-ROOM AT ODIN
—‘BE GOOD TO YOURSELF.’
One hears a great deal of accidents on American railways, and they
certainly appear to be very frequent, and often to be most fearful. It
is not an uncommon consequence of a railway accident in winter that
a great part of the passengers are burnt to death. This arises from
the fact that an American railway car is a long box containing
between fifty and sixty people, generally with a red-hot stove in
winter at each end, and without any possible means of egress
except by the doors at each end. The natural issue of this is that
when an accident takes place, the carriages are forced close
together, the doors are thus shut, and the stoves being overturned,
or the crushed-in ends of the carriages brought in contact with them,
the train is in a few minutes in flames. But as the Americans have
more than thirty-eight thousand miles of railway at work, which is
more than three times as much as we have in the United Kingdom,
they are entitled to a good many accidents. My own experience, but
it is limited to eight thousand miles, is in favour of the safety of
American railway travelling. No train I was in ever met with an
accident. The only delay I ever had to submit to was caused by a
luggage train ahead having crushed a rail. And this delay of four
hours was not altogether wasted time, for besides giving one an
opportunity for taking a little walk in an American forest, it was the
cause of one’s hearing the following piece of wisdom: ‘There are two
things a man ought to bear well: what he can help, and what he
cannot help;’ and the following specimen of infantile Transatlantic
English: ‘Mother! Fix me good. Fix me good.’ The first came from a
gentleman ‘on board’ the train, whom his friends called General, and
was addressed to some impatient passengers. The latter came from
a little sobbing child of two or three years of age, who wanted to be
placed in an easier position.
In my tour throughout the greater part of the
Union I was never mistaken for a native. On some No Concealing
occasions, before I had spoken a word I was One’s
addressed as an Englishman. I could not imagine Nationality.
what it was that revealed my nationality. Was it my
dress? or the look of my luggage? or was it my manner? It once
happened—it was between Gordonsville and Richmond—that a
gentleman in the train even went still further, by divining at a glance
not only my nationality, but also that I was a clergyman; for he
began, ‘I suppose, sir, I am addressing an English clergyman.’ I was
puzzled, and could only be certain that it was not my dress that had
enabled him to make the discovery. The single point at which their
sagacity was ever at fault, appeared to be the motive which had
induced me to undertake so long a journey (of course I am only
speaking of the persons one casually meets in a railway car). In the
South, and up the Mississippi, I frequently heard the supposition that
I had come across the water to establish some kind of business. I
was supposed on the prairies to be speculating in land; in the Rocky
Mountains to have an eye to gold mining. But to go back to the
original point. I was once told what it was that had betrayed me on
that particular occasion, and to that particular gentleman. He had
taken his seat at the same breakfast table as myself, at the Gayoso
Hotel, at Memphis. We had not been talking together long, when he
announced to me that I was an Englishman, and how he had made
the discovery. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘it is impossible for a foreigner to escape
detection in this country. His speech always betrays him. There is a
harshness and a coarseness in foreign tones which an American
instantly observes, because Americans themselves all speak with
soft and musical intonations; it is natural to them.’
The railway cow-catcher, of which we used to
see frequent mention in books of American travel, Memphis.
appears now to have been superseded by another
contrivance with a different form; for in the United States nothing
remains long in one form. The new form resembles that of the snow-
plough, and it must act by partially lifting what it comes in contact
with, and then throwing it off to the right or left, as it may happen.
This cow-plough, though evidently superior to any contrivance for
picking up or catching the cow, does not always do its work. Not far
from the town of Jackson, we came up with one of these poor
animals that happened to be lying on the rails. On this occasion the
plough went over it, and so did the first two or three carriages; till at
last the unhappy brute got fast fixed among the springs and wheels
of the car I was in. The train was stopped, and the cow taken out,
which, though horribly mangled, proved to be still alive. The
conductor called out for the loan of a pistol to enable him to put it out
of its misery. In an instant almost from every window on that side the
train a hand was extended offering the desired instrument. On my
making some observation on the number of pistols that were
forthcoming ready loaded, at a moment’s notice, the gentleman
seated next to me replied, ‘that it was quite possible that I was the
only man unarmed in the train. That formerly in that part of the
country many people carried revolvers, but that now, from
apprehension of the blacks, in consequence of the frequent
robberies committed by them, no one ever thought of moving without
his six-shooter.’
Memphis is on a bluff of the Mississippi. How strange does this
juxtaposition of the names of hoar antiquity and of yesterday sound
in the ears of a European! And it will also seem strange to many that
this city, whose name they had never heard mentioned, except as
being that of a great city of the Pharaohs, has already a population
of 84,000 inhabitants, and is so well situated that it is destined to
become, under the reign of freedom, one of the largest of the
second-class cities of the Union. A bluff is a river-cliff. It may be
either an old and abandoned one (many miles of such bluffs are to
be seen in the valley of the Platte, at considerable distances from the
existing channel of the river), or it may be one at the foot of which
the stream still runs. To the latter class belongs the bluff on which
Memphis is built. It is of a soft sand, and large spaces of it have
been escarped and graded between the city and the water’s edge, in
such a manner as to enable the traffic to be carried on easily. A great
many cotton bales were standing ready for shipment on the great
river steamers. As these bales were spread out over the quays,
occupying in this way much space, they suggested the idea of a
great deal of traffic. One might perhaps have counted a thousand of
them. But then I remembered that the whole of them would be but a
very sorry cargo for one of the enormous steamers, the General
Robert Lee, or the General Putman, on board of which I had lately
been, and which were the largest vessels, excepting the Great
Eastern, I had ever seen. They had stowage, I understood, for three
thousand bales, and yet as you looked through their gilded and
splendidly furnished saloons, 180 yards in length, and saw how great
was the number of sleeping berths they contained, you would have
supposed they were constructed for passengers only.
In this most modern city with most ancient name,
there were many fine shops and good buildings, Emigration
but little that was continuously good; unoccupied Deprecated.
spaces, or spaces occupied only with poor wooden
tenements, were everywhere interposed. The streets were generally
totally uncared for. This unsightliness and neglect are to be set down
to the past, and not to the present state of things. They are some of
the legacies of slavery.
I found that from Memphis, as from many other places in the
South, a considerable emigration was going on. While I was there
names of intending emigrants were being collected for a settlement
in British Honduras: this however, I believe, was abandoned on
account of the unsuitableness of the climate for white labour. As in
their own State of Tennessee there is so much good land, and so
delightful a climate, it could have been political reasons only that
prompted this thought of leaving their country. For such persons
Brazil appears just now one of the most favourable fields for
commencing life anew; as the government is there offering, at a
merely nominal price, in the hills in the neighbourhood of the capital,
land well suited for coffee plantations, and where the climate is such
as to admit of European labour. This has been done with the
especial view of attracting some part of the emigration from the
Southern States. No friend, however, of the unhappy people of the
South would advise them to accept any offers of the kind. How much
more manly would it be, and how much better would it be financially
for themselves, and morally for their children and descendants, if
they are prepared to labour with their own hands, to do so in their
own country, and remain a part of the great Anglo-Saxon race, with
all its rich inheritance of laws, literature, and traditions, than to cast in
their lot with mongrel Portuguese and Africans!
Among the letters of introduction I carried with me to Memphis was
one to the President of the Memphis and Ohio railway. He had just
returned from a short stay at the Hot Springs Mountain in Arkansas.
He is one of those gentlemen who are doing everything in their
power to resuscitate the South by persuading the people to turn their
attention to the varied and inexhaustible resources they possess
within their own territories. As instances of this he showed me two
specimens; one of a creamy white stone he had lately brought from
the Hot Springs Mountain in Arkansas, and which could cut steel as
readily as a file does soft iron. Of this stone he was having hones
and grindstones made, which would probably be the best things of
their kind anywhere to be had. The other specimen he showed me
was that of iron ore from the Iron Mountain in Alabama. It looked
almost like the metal itself. He said it contained sixty per cent. of
iron, and that the Confederates had made use of it in the late war.
This mountain is sixty miles north of Montgomery, and there is in its
neighbourhood plenty of limestone, and of coal. For this district he
expected (as who would not?) a great future; for not only is the
consumption of iron in agriculture every year increasing, in the form
of new machinery as well as tools, of which the South now stands
greatly in need, but the place itself, from its contiguity to several
large navigable streams, is admirably situated for a great
manufacturing centre.
It is the custom in the American Church for the clergyman of the
parish to spend a great part of every morning in a room annexed to
his church. I always found this room fitted up as his
library and study, with a fire in winter blazing on the A Conversation
hearth, and the minister himself seated at the table with Two
at work. This arrangement has great advantages Ministers.
both for the clergyman and for his parishioners. He
can study, and prepare for his pulpit, without any interruptions from
his children, or from the ever-recurring little incidents of domestic
affairs, to which, had he been in his own house, he would have been
expected to give some attention; and his parishioners are more likely
to call upon him in this room, knowing that he is there for the very
purpose of seeing them, and that they shall not be disturbing anyone
by their visit.
Having been requested to call on a clergyman of the place, I found
him in such a room as I have just been describing, in company with
another clergyman of the neighbourhood. Of course the conversation
turned on church affairs. They told me that there were five Episcopal
churches in the city; that the Episcopal church was not so active in
the States of Mississippi and Louisiana as elsewhere in the Union.
That the church of Rome was, in that part of the country, looking very
far ahead, and buying large tracts of land, and founding educational
establishments; that the Germans and Irish did not leave its
communion. That church partisanship was a strong feeling in
America; to take for instance our own church, there were everywhere
men who were not members, that is communicants, but yet
considered themselves as belonging to the Episcopal church, who
would fight for every stitch in the surplice, and every letter in the
Prayer-book. And that it was so in all the other churches. Much
interest, they said, was taken in the ritualistic question, because it
was becoming generally felt that our service is deficient in appeals to
the senses; and that it wants variety and animation. That in the
American church, though there is no canon forbidding ex tempore
preaching, there is one which imposes on the clergyman the
necessity of writing every sermon he preaches. The object of this
canon is to enable the bishop to judge of the orthodoxy of any
statements in the sermon with which the congregation may have
been dissatisfied. This was thought necessary in consequence of the
sensitiveness of some congregations, and the tendency in all
American churches to lapse into some ‘ism’ or ‘ology.’ They told me
that in some of the nascent States, as for instance in Idaho, the
church was stronger than any other religious body. In this territory (I
believe it is still in that embryonic condition), there is not a town or
village without an Episcopal church. This has been brought about by
sending out missionary bishops to plant the church in these new
territories. The missionary bishop of Idaho, Dr. Clarkson, is one of
the most active and successful of this new order. As this plan has
succeeded so well, it is much to be regretted that it was not
attempted long ago.
Americans are great travellers. It almost appears
as if there was something in the air of America Going to Church
which makes one think lightly of distances, 150 Miles off.
however great. I heard a lady at Washington
talking of starting in a few days for California—a journey of more
than five thousand miles—as if it involved no more than a journey
from London to Edinburgh. I met another lady at a dinner table at
New Orleans who had only that day arrived from New York, a
distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles; and I entered Denver with
two ladies who had been travelling continuously for about two
thousand miles each—one from some New England town, and the
other from New York. But I was never made so sensible of an
American’s disregard of distance, and of the slightness of the
provocation needed for inducing him to undertake a journey, as I was
by an invitation I received from a gentleman to accompany him one
hundred and fifty miles out, and of course as many back, merely to
hear a preacher he thought well of, and who he understood would be
only at that distance from Memphis on Sunday. Now this gentleman
was a lawyer who had come all the distance from Detroit to
Memphis, on the previous day, on some matter of business, and
would have to start on his return on Monday evening; and this was
the way in which he spent the Sunday that intervened between two
such long journeys, adding three hundred miles to what anyone but
an American would have thought was already a great deal too much
travelling.
It is a commonly received opinion, though perhaps more largely
entertained by authors than by their readers, that the ever-increasing
luxury of the present day has done much to weaken the warlike
virtues. This opinion, I believe, is exactly the opposite of the truth,
and is merely the echo of the opinion of those writers of ancient
Rome who made and bequeathed to us a thoroughly mistaken
diagnosis of the diseases and symptoms of the body politic of their
own decaying empire. Our own late wars, but above everything of
the kind in modern or ancient times, the late great American war,
show how entirely false is this opinion. Never was a war before
carried on upon so great a scale, in proportion to the population of
the communities engaged in it; never was a war more deadly; and
never before was a war so thoroughly voluntary in the cases of so
large a majority of the common rank and file of the combatants. The
history of the 7th New York Volunteers, a regiment of gentlemen who
went out, at the beginning of the war, of their own free will, and went
through the whole of it with all its hardships, sufferings, and
deadliness, would alone disprove this opinion. The hundreds of
thousands of men who in the North left their countinghouses, their
farms, and their drawing-rooms, to risk health, and limb, and life for
an idea, are just so many hundreds of thousands of arguments
against it. And in some respects the argument from the South is still
stronger, for there a still larger proportion of the people went to
greater hardships, more cruel wants and sufferings, and to a deadlier
warfare, inasmuch as the same regiments had more frequently to
meet the enemy. In every family I visited in the South I heard tales of
suffering and of heroism. I will only repeat one, because it shows
what a lady even can do and bear in these luxurious times. A Mrs.
Read, while assisting her husband at the siege of Vicksburg, had her
right arm so shattered by a shell that immediate amputation was
necessary. It was during the night, but she would not have anyone
called off from other work to do for her what she was still capable of
doing for herself; she therefore held with her left hand the lamp
which lighted the surgeon to amputate her shattered right arm.
I arrived at Cairo by steamer at three o’clock in
the morning. It was a dark and gusty winter night. Eden.
The rain was falling heavily. At the landing place
there was not a light, not a conveyance, not a porter, not a negro
even to direct us the way to the hotel. Self-help was the only kind of
help any of the passengers got that night. As I scrambled up the
slippery Levee, and then waded through the mud to the hotel distant
about a quarter of a mile, I congratulated myself on my having sent
on all my heavy luggage in advance, so that I had nothing with me
but a hat-box and a hand-bag. But these impediments were more
than enough for the occasion. As I struggled on I thought that if the
author of ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ who was then giving readings in
America, should revisit his Eden under such circumstances, he
would not feel dissatisfied with the kind of immortality he had
conferred upon it.
The stream of passengers at last reached the hotel. There was no
want of light here. This had been our beacon, and we felt that we
had made the harbour. It was a large red-brick building, with a large
hall, and a large stove, red-hot, in the midst of it. I went straight to
the clerk’s counter, and entered my name in the folio guests’-book. I
was among the first to do this, that I might secure a good room. No
sooner, however, had I gone through this preliminary than the
manager turned to me, and announced that the house could not
allow me a room to myself that night, but that I must take one jointly
with the gentleman who had registered his name before me. I hardly
took in the speaker’s meaning, for this was the first occasion of my
life when the idea of occupying a bed-room with another man had
been suggested to me. I suppose I was so taken by surprise that I
remained silent when I ought to have spoken, for I was next
addressed by the gentleman himself with whom it was proposed I
should share the bed-room. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘what do you intend to
do? It is now past three; and if you don’t accept this gentleman’s
offer, you will have to go out again into the street.’ Having said this
he took the key from the clerk, and turning to an attendant, told him
to show the way to the room. I rather followed than accompanied
him, thinking over, as I went along, what I had read of Cairo when,
fifteen or twenty years ago, it was a nest of rowdies, robbers,
gamblers, and cut-throats, floating upon a fever-and-ague-haunted
swamp. I began to be somewhat reassured by the appearance and
bearing of my companion. He was a clean-limbed and remarkably
handsome man, apparently turned of forty. His moustache and beard
were trimmed in the French style, and his bearing was frank and
soldierly. On the other side, however, I observed that he had no
luggage whatever. At last the door was reached and opened. The
attendant entered to light the gas. While he was doing this my
companion crossed the room. In crossing it he took off his coat, and
kicked off his boots, and walked ‘slick’ into bed. This was done
quietly and deliberately, but in less time than it took to light the gas. I
felt that I was becoming uncertain as to the reality of things. Was I at
Drury Lane, looking on at the transformations of a pantomime? or
was I dreaming that I was at Cairo?
As the balance of probability did not appear to
be in favour of either of these suppositions, I took A Bed-room
off my boots, and placed them on the outside of Companion.
the door. As I closed the door a voice came to me
from the bed at the further side of the room. Its tone was manly and
friendly: ‘Sir,’ it said, ‘if that is the only pair of boots you have with
you’ (it was so; for I had sent my luggage on to St. Louis), ‘I would
advise you to keep them inside the room, and have them cleaned on
your feet in the morning. The last time I was here I put mine outside
the door, and never saw them again; and so I had to go barefooted
till I could get another pair.’ I thanked the speaker for his advice, and
acted upon it. My next care was to provide for the safety of my watch
and pocket-book, which contained three hundred dollars in
greenbacks. This I did by putting them into the pocket where I had
my handkerchief, which I then took out of my pocket, as if there was
nothing in it (but the watch and pocket-book were in it), and placed it
under my pillow. I have no doubt but that my companion saw through
what I was doing, for he now addressed me a second time. ‘Before
you go to sleep, I suppose you would like to know who is in the room
with you; and yet I hardly know how to describe myself. For the last
four or five years I have been on this side the mountains. For the
fifteen years before that I had been in California; and I began life in
the old States as a lawyer. In the early days of California, I went out
as one of a company for digging and mining. There were seven of
us, and five of the seven were lawyers. I came over the mountains to
help the North in putting down the rebellion. I made a great heap of
money in California, and I have lost a great heap in bad speculations
since I have been over here. But I have got a scheme on its legs by
which I hope to make again as much as I have lost. That, sir, is what
I am—and I wish you good night. My name is——’ I could not catch
the word, but I afterwards ascertained it, and found that my first bed-
room companion added modesty to his other merits, and had not told
me how great a man he was in his own State.
It happened the next day that no train started for the North till half-
past four in the afternoon; and as the rain of the previous night had
turned to heavy driving sleet, I congratulated myself on the accident,
although it appeared so disagreeable at the time, to which I was
indebted for the acquaintance of the Californian. He had known
California, he said, from the first influx of gold hunters. The rogues
and desperadoes of all that part of the world were collected there;
but there was some good stuff that came in at the same time.
Society would have been completely turned upside down, and no
decent man could have remained in the place, if it had not been for
Lynch law and the use of the pistol. These two things set everything
quite right in five years, in a way in which no other kind of law,
supported by all the churches and all the teachers in the world, could
have done it in fifty years. And now the State is as orderly a
community as there is on the face of the earth. After the roughness
of many years of Californian life, in the early days of the State, he
found the hardships of the late war mere bagatelles. The war
seemed to him only like an exciting pastime.
The capacity of Eden, for offering a field for such
talents as those of Mr. Mark Tapley, was very much How the Site of
diminished during the late war; for being at the Eden was
junction of the Ohio with the Mississippi (the Ohio Created.
itself, not far above this point, is joined by three
large streams), it became a very important military station. But it was
necessary to create a site for a town, for the locality itself supplied
nothing of the kind. This was done by raising a levee, forty feet high,
and then, behind this, making streets in the form of embankments at
right angles to the levee, these streets again being intersected by
other embankments parallel to the levee. The whole space that was
reclaimed was thus divided by these embankments into hollow
squares, each of which is intended for a block of buildings. At
present very few of these blocks have been raised, but the streets—
that is, the embankments, with in some instances planked trottoirs at
their sides—are finished. If the water should ever rise up through the
ground, or the storm-water flow into the cellars and underground
parts of the houses, it will be necessary to pump it out, for there can
be no drainage in such a place. So in America, where no difficulties
are recognised, are towns built in swamps.
One cannot help speculating on what will be the amount of
inducement required for getting people to try to live and carry on
business at this city in the swamp, for the fact that the traffic of the
valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi join and diverge here will ensure
its becoming rich and populous. And what will be the manners and
customs of the place? Will it be merely that people living here will
call for more whisky toddy and sherry cobblers, smoke more cigars,
and play more games of billiards than they would elsewhere? How
far will the beneficent railway go towards redressing the
wretchedness of the place by carrying off, for the night, for Sundays,
and for holidays, all who might wish to have their homes on terra
firma? Democracies are stingy and do not build beautiful cities in
these days; so, however rich it may become, it is not likely ever to
become a Venice.
The train in which I had left Cairo reached a place called Odin at
eleven o’clock at night. We had to wait here for a St. Louis train till
the next morning. This is an instance of what is called, in American
railway phraseology, ‘making bad connexions.’ The gentleman who
registered after me at the chief hotel at Odin happened to be my
Californian acquaintance. Having entered his name, he said to the
manager, pointing to me, ‘This gentleman and I will have the same
bed-room.’ This was meant as a compliment; and I did not now feel
as disinclined to the proposal, particularly as it came from him, as I
had been a few nights before. The clerk, however, told him that the
house was full, and that I was the last person he could
accommodate. I was, upon this, shown to my bed-room, which
turned out to be only the fourth part of a very small apartment
containing four beds, three of which were already tenanted. My
English inexperience and prejudices were still too strong for this, so I
sallied out in search of another hotel. While thus occupied I had time
to reflect, that there is not much more harm in spending the night in a
room with three others, than in spending the day in a railway car with
thirty or forty others. At last, chance conducted me to the same
house the Californian had already reached; and we sat by the stove
in the drawing-room, talking together till the small hours of the
morning. There is an unconventional kind of frankness and
manliness that is very pleasing in these Western men, who have
gone through a great deal of rough life and hardship, and have
never, for years together, been out of danger from Indians, or
desperate white men, as sanguinary as Indians, and as little troubled
with scruples.
For the words’ sake I ‘made a note’ of a parting
expression I heard used by a rough-looking and ill- Be Good to
clad ostler, who it appeared was not very Yourself.
comfortably assured of his friend’s motives for
leaving him to go to one of the most rowdy places in the Union. His
friend had taken his place on the roof of the coach, which was in the
act of starting, when he waved his hand to him, saying at the same
time with an enviable neatness, that conveyed both his kindly
feelings and his misgivings, ‘Tom, be good to yourself.’
CHAPTER XI
MISSISSIPPI FROZEN OVER AT ST. LOUIS—WHY THE BRIDGE AT
ST. LOUIS IS BUILT BY CHICAGO MEN—GENERAL SHERMAN—
IDEAS ABOUT EDUCATION AT ST. LOUIS—LIBERAL BEQUESTS
FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES—HOW NEW ENGLANDISM
LEAVENS THE WHOLE LUMP—THE GERMAN INVASION WILL
NOT GERMANISE AMERICA—ST. LOUIS—ITS RAPID GROWTH—
ITS CHURCH ARCHITECTURE—AN IDEA ON MENTAL CULTURE
FROM THE WEST BANK OF THE MISSISSIPPI—A THOUGHT
SUGGESTED BY HEARING THE SKATERS ON THE MISSISSIPPI
TALKING ENGLISH.
On leaving Odin I saw the prairie for the first time. It was a sea of
rich level land, and was here everywhere under cultivation. Since I
had left Washington, I had not till now seen cultivation and houses
everywhere around me, as far as the eye could reach. After some
hours we came to undulating land where coal-mining was being
carried on. There were several pits alongside of the rail. The seam of
coal, I was told, is seven feet thick. At ten o’clock we reached East
St. Louis. Only a few days ago I had been among the oranges,
bananas, and sugar-canes; and now I looked upon the mighty
Mississippi, solidly frozen from shore to shore, and saw multitudes of
persons crossing and recrossing on the ice. So great is the range of
climate in this vast country, and yet, by the aid of steam, so near to
each other are the two extremes!
At St. Louis, the Mississippi is crossed by very
powerful steam ferries, and a passage across the An Advantage
river has for this purpose to be kept open and free of Youth.
from ice. The Bluff has been escarped to enable
vehicles to get down to the water-side. The crush and crowd were
very great, and to increase the difficulty of getting down, the face of
the descent was at that time coated thickly with ice. I saw two loaded
waggons capsize, and the coach I was in at one time began to slip,
and we were only saved by the skill of the driver. The ferry boat took
over more than a dozen coaches and waggons each trip, many of
them having four horses. The city of St. Louis is on the further or
western bank, and all the traffic of the city and of the vast region
beyond it crosses at this ferry. It will not, however, be needed much
longer, for the foundations are now being laid for a bridge, which, like
that at Niagara, will carry foot-passengers and all kinds of horse-
drawn vehicles, as well as the railway trains. It is a strange thing that
this bridge is being built, not by the people of St. Louis itself, but by
capital advanced by Chicago men. The reason is not far to seek. St.
Louis, regarded as a considerable place, is ten or fifteen years older
than Chicago. The moneyed men therefore at St. Louis are getting
into years, and so have become cautious, and indisposed to try new
investments. The Chicago men are still young: the enterprise of
youth in them is not yet exhausted; and so they are ready to
entertain, and even to accept, new ideas; and a proposal, however
grand, or novel, or costly it may be, is not on these accounts
appalling to them. In America, where everything is ever moving and
changing, an elderly man is unfit for business.
At St. Louis I became acquainted with General Sherman. I
mention this because it may be interesting to hear what were one’s
impressions of the man who conceived and executed one of the
boldest and most arduous military achievements of modern times—
that of marching his army down through the heart of the Southern
States to Charleston and Savannah. He is tall and thin, without an
ounce of flesh to spare. He gives you the idea of a man who is ready
at any moment to tax his mental and bodily powers to any amount
possible for human nature, and that they would respond to the
demands made upon them without flagging, only that his frame
would become more and more fleshless and wiry. If you had not
known that he was General Sherman, still you would have thought
him one of the kindliest and friendliest men you had ever met. His
first questions were, whether there was anything he could do for me?
any letters he could write for me to persons in St. Louis or Missouri?
any information on any subject that it was in his power to give me?
The letters of introduction he supplied me with he wrote with his own
hand. He interested himself about my intended excursion to the
Plains and Rocky Mountains, going over the route with me, and
advising me what to see and what to do, and bid me not to hesitate
about applying to him for anything I wanted that he could do for me.
His physiognomy agrees with his military life in indicating that he is a
man of unflinching determination. His first thought on undertaking
anything appears to be, as it was with our Iron Duke, to master
thoroughly all the details of the subject, to ascertain what will be
wanted down to the minutest particular, and to provide for
everything.
As the superintendent of schools at St. Louis, to
whom I had a letter from Washington, was Educational
confined to his house by illness, I took a letter from Ideas at St.
General Sherman to the president of an institution Louis.
at St. Louis that goes by the name of the
‘Washington University.’ It is not a university in our sense of the
word, but an institution for working connectedly the different
educational resources of the place, beginning with the elementary
schools, and passing up through grammar and high schools to a kind
of polytechnic institution, in which arts rather than sciences are
taught, the arts in truth being little more than the principles and
practice of different trades and occupations. This seems to us a low
view to take of education and of a university. But it is what is first
wanted in a new country, where every man has to work for his bread,
and everything has to be done. Higher culture is not for the existing,
but for future generations. So think the people who manage this
institution. And so think the people for whose benefit the institution
has been established, except that they have little or no idea at all, as
yet, of the ‘higher culture.’ They are beginning to be intolerant even
of the time and money spent in teaching law and medicine, and of
the position assigned to lawyers and physicians. It was in this spirit
that a gentleman said to me, on the prairie between Chicago and
Omaha, ‘What we want, sir, in this great country, is fewer graduates
of law and medicine, and more graduates of the machine shop and
agricultural college.’
This Washington University has had 800,000 dollars presented
and bequeathed to it by citizens of St. Louis in the last eleven years;
and as the war, and the collapse that followed the war, cover more
than half of this period, the sum appears very considerable. This is in
the spirit, and it is a very common spirit in America, of the times
when our own colleges and schools were founded.
The president told me that he came from New England to settle at
St. Louis thirty years ago. He rode all the way. At that time the
country was so little settled that he would ride by compass a whole
day without seeing a log hut or a human being. He brought with him
to St. Louis the ideas and the traditions of New England. His son
had, following the example of his father, moved on westward. He had
crossed the mountains and settled in Oregon, on the Pacific coast.
His son had been brought up at St. Louis in the ideas and traditions
of New England, and had taken them with him. In this way it is that
the New England element, which is a distinct character, is kept up
and propagated throughout the whole West. Other emigrants bring
with them nothing of so tough and perdurable a nature; New
Englandism therefore must spread till it has leavened the whole
lump.
In the West one is frequently confronted by the
question, What will be the effect on the Americans America will not
of the future of the vast hordes of Germans which be Germanised.
yearly invade and settle in the country? Whole
districts are occupied by them, beginning in Pennsylvania, to the
exclusion of the English language. In the Western towns you will see
street after street in which half, or more than half, the names are
German. They have their own hotels, their own newspapers, their
own theatres. It seems a greater invasion than that of the Roman
Empire by their fathers. That overthrew the empire, and for a time
disorganised society; it, however, did not extend the language of the
Fatherland into Italy, Spain, or France. But here is a continuous
stream of between 200,000 and 300,000, every year coming, not
with sword and torch to slay and to burn, or to perish themselves, but
with the axe and the plough to clear away the forest, and to cultivate
the soil. Every one that comes is taken up into that entity which will
be the America of the future. What then will be the effect? Many
Americans fear that it will not be good. ‘Because,’ say they, ‘the
Germans are deficient in spirituality.’ That is the word they use. ‘They

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Being, Goodness and Truth

Gyula Klima and Alex Hall

Series: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics

Edited by Gyula Klima and Alex Hall

This book first published 2019

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright© 2019 by Gyula Klima, Alex Hall and contributors

ISBN (10): 1-5275-3765-X

Introduction .............................................................................................. vii

Part I: Acquired Virtues in the Christian? Revisiting the Question

Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal

The Virtual Presence of the Cardinal Virtues ........................................... 17

Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between

Part II: Being and Goodness: The Metaphysical Grounding of Value

The Good as Telos in Cajetan, Banez and Zume!... .................................. 51

Hylomorphism and our Knowledge of Value ........................................... 61

Appendix: Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences of Peter

Contributors ............................................................................................ 113

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Part I: Acquired Virtues in the Christian?

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