summa-contra-gentiles

CHAPTER XLIV
errors of the early heretics, who strove to prove that the
different nature of good and evil in things is owing to
contrary agents. But on account of the great difference
which he obser\'ed both in natural and in human things,
which difference apparently is not preceded by any merits,—
for instance that some bodies are lightsome, some dark,
that some are born of pagans, some of Christians,— he was
compelled to assert that all differences to be found in things
have proceeded from a difference of merits, in accordance
with the justice of God. For he says that God, of His mere
goodness, first made all creatures equal, all of them being
spiritual and rational : and these by their free-will were
moved in divers ways, some adhering to God more, and
some less, some withdrawing from God more, and some
less ; and in this way there resulted through divine justice,
various grades in spiritual substances, so that some were
angels in their various orders, some human souls in their
various states, some demons in their various states : and
on account of the diversity among rational creatures, he
said that God had established diversity among corporeal
creatures, so that the more noble spiritual substances were
united to the more noble bodies, and thus the corporeal
creature would minister in all other various ways to the
diversity of spiritual substances.
But this opinion is clearly convicted of falsehood. For
among effects, the better a thing is, the more does it obtain
precedence in the intention of the agent. Now the greatest
good in things created is the perfection of the universe,
consisting in the order of distinct :
things because in all
things the perfection of the whole takes precedence of the
Wherefore the diversity of things
agent, and
not from a diversity of merits.
perfection of each part.
results from the principal intention of the first
Again. If all rational creatures were created equal from
the beginning, we must say that one of them does not
depend on another in its action. Now that which results
from the concurrence of various causes, one of which does
not depend on another, is casual. Therefore according to
loi