summa-contra-gentiles

8o
THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES
which they had under consideration. For since all our
knowledge begins from the senses which are about singulars,
human speculations proceeded from particular to universal
considerations. Wherefore those who sought the principle
of things considered only the particular makings of beings,
and inquired in what manner this particular fire or this
particular stone was made. At first, considering the
making of things more from an outward point of view than
it behoved them to do, they stated that a thing
is made only
in respect of certain accidental dispositions, such as rarity,
density, and so forth ;
and they said, in consequence, that
to be made was nothing else than to be altered, for the
reason that they understood everything to be made from an
actual being. Later on, they considered the making of
things more inwardly, and made a step
forward to the
making of things in regard to their substance for they
:
asserted that a thing does not need to be made, except
accidentally, from an actual being, and that it is made
per se from a being in potentiality. But this making,
which is of a being from any being whatsoever, is the
which is made for as much as
making of a particular being,
it is this being, for instance a man or a fire, but not for as
much as it is considered universally
: for there was previously
a being which is transformed into this being.
Entering still more deeply into the origin of things, they
considered at last the procession of all created being from
one first cause ;
as appears from the arguments given above^
which prove this. In this procession of all being from God
it is not possible for anything to be made from something
already existing ; since it would not be the making of all
created being.
The early natural philosophers had no conception of such
a making, for it was their common opinion that frovi nothing
naught
is made. Or if any of them conceived the idea, they
did not consider that the name of making was applicable
thereto, since the word making implies movement or change,
whereas in this origin of all being from one first being, the
1
Ch. xvi.