Overthrowing the Doctrine of a Final Cause

Doctrine of a final cause considers the cause as an effect, and vice versa. It considers:

• that which is by nature first to be last
• that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect.

The questions of cause and priority as self—evident.

• The effects produced immediately by God are most perfect, as shown by Props. 21, 22, 23.
• The effects which require intermediate causes for its production are more imperfect.

But if the things made immediately by God attained his end, then the things which come afterwards are necessarily the most excellent of all.

Further, this doctrine does away with God’s perfection.

• If God acts for an object, he necessarily desires something which he lacks.

Theologians and metaphysicians distinguish between:

• the object of want and
• the object of assimilation.

Still, they confess that God made all things for the sake of himself, not for the sake of creation.

• They are unable to point to anything prior to creation, except God himself, as an object for which God should act
• They therefore admit (as they clearly must), that God lacked those things and that he wanted them.

The followers of this doctrine are anxious to display their talent in assigning final causes.

• They have imported a new method to prove their theory.
• This method is a reduction to ignorance, instead of impossibility.

For example, if a stone falls to someone’s head and kills him, this new method shows that the stone fell to kill the man.

I answer differently, that it came from the wind blowing the stone.

They will ask why the wind was blowing.

:

I reply that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before the weather being previously calm.

They will again ask why was the sea agitated.

They will go from cause to cause, until finally you take refuge in God’s will – in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance.

They are ignorant of the causes of the human body. They conclude that it:

• has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and
• has been so put together that one part shall not hurt another.

They denounce anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles and strives to understand natural phenomena.

• They know that with the removal of ignorance, their authority would vanish also.

Men persuaded themselves that everything is created for their sake.

• This led them to consider the most useful qualities of everything for themselves.

• This also led to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, demerit, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, etc.

The belief that men are free agents arose the further notions of praise and blame, sin and merit.

• They have called “good” everything which conduces to health and the worship of God.
• They have called “bad” everything which hinders these.

Those who do not understand the nature of things do not verify phenomena in any way.

• They merely imagine them.
• They mistake their imagination for understanding.

The Order and Disorder of the Universe

People firmly believe that there is an order in things when they are really ignorant both of things and their own nature.

• When phenomena are easy on our senses, requires little effort of imagination, and can consequently be easily remembered, we say that they are well—ordered.
• If the contrary, that they are ill—ordered or confused.

Things which are easily imagined are more pleasing to us.

• People prefer order to confusion—as though there were any order in nature, except in relation to our imagination.

They say that God has created all things in order.

• Thus, they attribute imagination to God

But there are an infinite number of phenomena, far surpassing our imagination.

The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected.

• The ignorant consider the abstract notions as the chief attributes of things since they believe that everything was created for themselves.
• They call it good or bad, healthy or rotten, depending on how they are affected by it.

There are even men lunatic enough to believe that God takes pleasure in the harmony of sounds.

• Philosophers have persuaded themselves that the motion of the heavenly bodies gives rise to harmony.

Skepticism

All of these show that everyone judges things according to the state of his brain, or rather mistakes for things the forms of his imagination.

• This has led to controversies, and finally skepticism.

Human bodies agree in many respects.

• But they differ in very many others.

What seems good to one seems bad to another.

• What seems well-ordered to one, seems confused to another.

What is pleasing to one displeases another, and so on.

It is commonly said that “So many men, so many minds. Everyone is wise in his own way. Brains differ as completely as palates.”

It shows that people:

• judge things according to their mental disposition, and
• rather imagine than understand.

If they understood phenomena, they would be convinced by what I have urged, as mathematicians attest.

All the explanations about nature:

• are mere modes of imagining, and
• do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination.

Although they have names as if they were entities existing externally to the imagination, I call them “imaginary entities” than real ones.

Therefore, all arguments against us drawn from such abstractions are easily rebutted.

Many argue in this way: If all things follow from a necessity of the absolutely perfect nature of God, why are there so many imperfections in nature such as:

• things that go putrid,
• loathsome deformity,
• confusion, evil, sin, etc.

But these reasoners are easily confuted.

For the perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power.

Things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind.

Why did God not create everyone to have reason?

This is because he could create anything with every degree of perfection, from highest to lowest.

• The laws of his nature are so vast.
• He can produce everything.