summa-contra-gentiles
Summa
Summa
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226 THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES<br />
is from eternity<br />
: and consequently generation also is<br />
eternal. But if<br />
generation be eternal, an infinite number<br />
of men have died before us. if<br />
Consequently, the souls of<br />
the dead remain in their multitude after death, we must say<br />
that there is actually an infinite number of souls of men<br />
already dead. But this is impossible since the : actually<br />
infinite cannot exist in nature. Therefore it follows, if the<br />
world is eternal, that souls do not remain many after death.<br />
Again. That which accrues to a thing and departs from<br />
it without the latter being corrupted, accrues to it accidentally,<br />
for this is the definition of an accident.^ Hence<br />
if the soul be not corrupted when parted from the body, it<br />
would follow that the soul is united to the body accidentally.<br />
Consequently man is an accidental being, composed of soul<br />
and body. And it will follow moreover that there is no<br />
human species, since one species does not result from<br />
things united accidentally; for white man is not a species.<br />
Moreover. There cannot possibly be a substance that<br />
has no operation. Now all operation<br />
of the soul ends with<br />
the body which ; is proved by induction. For the nutritive<br />
powers of the soul operate through the bodily qualities,<br />
and through a bodily instrument, and act on the body<br />
which is perfected by the soul, is nourished and increased,<br />
and from which is severed the seed for the purpose of<br />
generation.<br />
Again, all the operations of the powers belonging<br />
to the sensitive soul are accomplished through bodily<br />
organs some of them :<br />
being accomplished with a certain<br />
bodily transmutation, for instance those which are called<br />
passions of the soul, such as love, joy, and the like. Moreover,<br />
though understanding is not an operation fulfilled<br />
through a bodily organ, yet its objects are the phantasms<br />
which stand in relation to it, as colours to the sight:'<br />
wherefore, as the sight cannot see without colours, so the<br />
intellective soul cannot understand without phantasms.<br />
Further, the soul, in order to understand, needs the powers<br />
which prepare the phantasms so as to make them actually<br />
namely the cogitative power and the memory,<br />
intelligible,<br />
1<br />
Porphyrias, Isagogt v. • Cf. 3 De Anima v. i ; vii. 3.
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