CHAPTER XI

CONCERNING PLATO'S OPINION ON THE IDEAS

AND ITS REFUTATION

             60.--Influenced by these reasons, the Platonists held that in the case of all immaterial substances and, in general, all existing things, God is immediately the cause of being according to the aforementioned mode of production which is without change or motion. But they posited a certain order of causality in the aforementioned substances according to other participations in the divine goodness. For, as we said above, the Platonists posited abstract principles according to the order of our intelligible conceptions. This would mean that just as unity and being are most common and are the first to fall in the intellect, after which comes life, then intellect and so forth, so likewise, the first and highest among these separate principles is that which is being itself, and this is the First Principle, God, of Whom we have said that He is His own being. Under this principle, they posited another separate principle, life, and again, another, intellect. If, therefore, there be some immaterial substance which is intelligent, living, and being, it will be a being through participation in the First Principle which is being itself; it will be living through participation in the second separate principle which is life; and it will be intelligent through a participation in another separate principle which is the intellect itself. This would be the same as if it were posited that man is an animal through participation in the separate principle which is animal; and a biped through participation in a second principle which is biped

             61.--Now this position can be true in a certain way but, absolutely speaking, it cannot be true. For among those qualities which come accidentally to some being, nothing prevents that which is prior from coming from a more universal cause and that, which is subsequent, from coming from some subsequent principle. For example, animals and plants participate in heat and cold from the elements but they obtain the determinate mode of complexion which pertains to their own species from the seminal power through which they are generated. Nor is it awkward that a thing have quantity or be white or hot from different principles. But this is absolutely impossible in the case of substantial attributes. For all attributes which are predicated of some thing substantially, are essentially and absolutely one. Now a single effect is not reduced to several first principles according to the same notion of principle because an effect cannot be simpler than its cause. Whence, Aristotle himself uses this argument against the Platonists, namely, that if animal were one thing and biped another thing in separate principles, then there would not be "one two-footed animal" without qualification. If, therefore, among immaterial substances, that which is the "to be" were different from the "to live" and from the "to be intelligent" in such a way that "living" would come to an existing being or "being intelligent" would come to a living being as an accident to a subject or form to matter, then what is said would be correct. For we see that something is the cause of the accident which is not the cause of the subject, and something is the cause of the substantial form that is not the cause of matter. But in immaterial substances, their "to be" itself is their "to live", and their "to live" is not other than their "to be intelligent". Therefore they are living and understanding from the same principle that they are beings. Therefore if all immaterial substances have their being immediately from God, then they have immediately from Him their life and intelligence. And if anything comes to them over and above their essence, for example, intelligible species or the like, in this respect, the position of the Platonists can hold, namely, that such qualities among lower immaterial substances may have been derived according to a certain order from higher ones.