summa-contra-gentiles

I02
THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES
the aforesaid opinion, this distinction and order of things
is casual : and this is impossible, as proved above. ^
Moreover. That which is natural to a person,
is not
acquired by him by his will :
for the movement of the will,
or free-will, presupposes the existence of the wilier, and for
this his nature is required.
Accordingly, if the various grades
of rational creatures were derived from a movement of the
free-will, all rational creatures would have their respective
grade not naturally but accidentally. But this is impossible.
For since the specific difference is natural to each thing,
it
would follow that all created rational substances are of one
species, namely angels, demons, human souls, and the souls
of the heavenly bodies (which Origen supposed to be animated).
That this is false is
proved by the diversity of
natural actions : because the mode by which the human
intellect naturally understands is not the same as that which
sense and imagination, or the angelic intellect and the soul
of the sun demand unless :
perhaps we picture the angels
and heavenly bodies with flesh and bones and like parts, so
that they may have organs of sense, which is absurd. It
follows, therefore, that the diversity of intellectual substances
is not the result of a diversity of merits which are
according to movements of the free-will.
Again. If things that are natural are not acquired by a
movement of the free-will ;
whereas the union of a rational
soul with such a body is acquired by the soul on account of
preceding merit or demerit according to the movement of
it would follow that the union of this soul with
the free-will ;
this body
is not natural. Therefore neither is the composite
natural. Yet man and the sun and the stars, according to
of rational substances and such and
Origen, are composed
such bodies. Therefore all these things which are the noblest
of corporeal substances, are unnatural.
Again.
If the union of this rational substance with this
body is becoming to this rational substance not as such a
substance, but as having so merited, its union with this
body is not an essential but an accidental union. Now, a
^
Ch. xxxix.