Thomas Aquinas

English

One proceeds thus to the second point. It seems that charity is not an accident. For no accident extends beyond its subject. But charity extends beyond its subject, since by charity we love others also. Therefore it seems that charity is not an accident.

Again, every accident is caused by a substance; because, according to Avicenna, a subject is what is complete in itself and affords another the occasion of being. But charity is not caused by the principles of the soul in which it is. Therefore it seems it is not an accident.

Further, no accident is better and nobler than its subject. But charity is better than the soul. Therefore it is not in the soul as an accident in a subject. Proof of the middle: that on account of which each thing is such, is itself more so. But the soul is good on account of charity. Therefore charity is better.

Again, the agent is always more honourable than the patient, according to the Philosopher. But charity acts upon the soul, cleansing it from sins. Therefore it is more honourable than the soul; and so the same as before.

On the contrary: whatever can be present and absent without the corruption of the subject is an accident. Charity is of this kind. Therefore, and so on.

I answer that everything which comes to a thing after its being is complete comes to it accidentally — unless perhaps it is taken up into a share of that substantial being itself, as was said above at distinction 8, question 5, article 2, concerning the soul. But this is still not enough for it to be called an accident in itself: for something can be a substance in itself and yet come to another accidentally, as clothing does. But if it comes after complete being as an inhering form, it is necessarily an accident. And because charity comes to the soul after its natural being, as a form perfecting it unto the being of grace — as was said in the preceding article — it must therefore be an accident.

To the first, then, it must be said that one and the same accident in number is never extended beyond its subject, that is, so as to be in another as in a subject; but it is indeed extended outside its subject as to the object of its operation — though differently in active and in passive operation. For in active operation it is extended to an extrinsic object, impressing a likeness of its own form upon it, as is clear in that the heat of fire actively heats another body, and that is an active operation. Likewise also when the operation is passive, it is extended to another extrinsic object whose likeness is received in it; and thus the soul, by the habit of knowledge, knows things that are outside itself, and by the habit of love loves those same things.

To the second it must be said that a subject stands differently to different accidents. Some are natural accidents, created out of the principles of the subject; and this in two ways, for either they are caused out of the principles of the species — and so are proper attributes, which follow upon the whole species — or out of the principles of the individual, and so are common properties following upon the natural principles of the individual. There are also certain accidents induced by violence, like heat in water, and these are repugnant to the principles of the subject. But there are others which are indeed caused from outside without being repugnant to the principles of the subject, but rather perfecting them, as light in air: and charity too is in the soul in this way, from outside. Yet it should be known that for all accidents, speaking generally, the subject is in a certain way a cause, namely inasmuch as accidents are sustained in the being of the subject — though not so that all accidents are drawn out of the subject's principles.

To the third it must be said that by the same reasoning one could prove that no perfection of the soul is an accident, nor any perfection of the body: because everything perfectible has its goodness from its perfection. It must therefore be said that simply speaking the soul is better than charity, and every subject better than its accident; but in a certain respect it is the other way about. The reason is that being, according to Dionysius, is nobler than all the other things that follow upon being: whence being simply is nobler than understanding, if understanding could be understood without being. Hence that which exceeds in being is simply nobler than anything which exceeds in some one of the things consequent upon being — although in another respect it may be less noble. And because the soul, and every substance, has a nobler being than an accident has, it is therefore simply nobler. But as to some particular being, or according to some accident, an accident can be nobler, because it stands to substance as act to potency; and this consequent goodness substance has from its accidents, though not the first goodness of being.

To the fourth it must be said that charity is not said to act upon the soul after the manner of an efficient cause, but only formally; and according to what it is as a form, in respect of second being, it is nobler.

Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson · cc-by · published at bonaventure.wrootpress.com. This page quotes it; that is its home.

Latin

Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis I d.17 q.1 a.2 (Parma vol. VI, 1856, archive.org sanctithomaeaqu06thom; text located via Corpus Thomisticum) · pd

Notes

The price of the answer given in the previous article, stated without flinching: what comes to a thing after its being is complete, as an inhering form, is an accident — and charity comes to the soul as a form perfecting it unto the being of grace, ergo oportet quod sit accidens. The third objection is the one that hurts (no accident is nobler than its subject, but charity is nobler than the soul), and Thomas concedes half of it: simply speaking the soul is nobler, but in a certain respect the accident is, because it stands to substance as act to potency. ⭐ The reply to the fourth objection is the seed of everything later on this page: caritas non dicitur agere in animam per modum efficientis, sed solum formaliter. That sentence survives the Parma OCR as unreadable prose but unambiguously the same six words — ⭐ confirmed against Parma vol. VI (1856) 2026-09-06, see raw/thomas/verification/PARMA-LEONINE-VERIFICATION.md.

Threads

• → contests · Bonaventure
  The answer to the Master carries a cost, and this article names it. Because charity comes to the soul after its natural being, ut forma perficiens ipsam ad esse gratiae, oportet quod sit accidens. The charity the Master had identified with God is, on the created answer, an accident of the soul; the divisio is the witness carrying Lombard's own text on this page.
• ← transmits · John Capreolus
  The distinction Capreolus answers the fourteenth century with is the last sentence of this article. Thomas: caritas non dicitur agere in animam per modum efficientis, sed solum formaliter. Capreolus: Spiritus Sanctus facit hominem dignum vita aeterna effective, sed gratia habitualis vel charitas facit hominem dignum formaliter — with Thomas's own painter and white wall for the illustration. A hundred and seventy years, and the instrument is unchanged.
• ← parallel · Gabriel Biel
  Biel disposes of the Master's sentence with the same couple, and uses it the other way — not to explain what charity does to the soul but to say in what sense Lombard was right: Spiritussanctus charitas est et amor quo nos diligimus deum. Quod si intelligitur formaliter, non tenetur. Si effective, verum est: quia ipse infundit habitum charitatis. Read beside Thomas's per modum efficientis … sed solum formaliter, the whole later argument is a redeployment of one thirteenth-century reply to a fourth objection. Neither names the other.
• ← transmits · John Capreolus
  Capreolus proves the third conclusion out of the De veritate, and the division he takes from it answers what this crux asks: ad hoc datur gratia; ad inclinandum autem affectum in hunc finem datur charitas; ad exsequendum autem opera … dantur aliae virtutes. Thomas's article had established only that charity is an accident of the soul; the division of the gifts is where the Thomist bench says what each of them is for.
• ← parallel · Thomas Aquinas
  Thomas twenty years later, saying what the Master did not mean and why he said it — non quod ipse motus dilectionis sit spiritus sanctus, and propter excellentiam caritatis — where the Scriptum had simply drawn the ontological consequence. The same author on the same question, and the later text is the one that gives Lombard a motive.