Let us here take notice that "modern thought" ignores final principles altogether, and pretends that arguments from design have no value in science. In this pretension we unmistakably recognize the materialistic propensities and the lack of philosophical reasoning by which our age is afflicted. When our modern sages will prove that creation does not proceed from a will, or that a will can act without an object, then they will be entitled to the honor of a serious refutation. As it is, their negative position is sufficiently refuted by a simple appeal to common sense.
To those who, without denying final causes, maintain that we cannot ascertain them, nor make them an object of science, we reply that, although we do not know all the particular ends which each creature may be destined to fulfil, we nevertheless know perfectly well the general end of creation. Now, nothing more is needed for establishing the reality of the first extrinsic principle on which the existence of every contingent being depends.
Our second answer points out the efficient principle of creation—that is, God's omnipotent power. Rationalists and materialists have tried to do away with this most necessary principle. Besides the old pagan assumption of self-existent matter, which many of them adopted in order to supersede the necessity of a creator, they have tried to popularize other inventions of more recent thinkers, who for the God of the Bible have substituted what they style the Absolute, and pretend that what we call "contingent beings" are mere apparitions of the Absolute—that is, the Absolute manifesting itself. Without stopping here to refute such a strange theory, we shall content ourselves with observing that what is altogether absolute is intrinsically unmodifiable—a truth which needs no demonstration, as it immediately results from the comparison of the two terms; whence it follows that, if the Absolute wishes to manifest itself, it cannot do so by assuming any new form, but only by means of something extraneous to its own nature, and consequently through the instrumentality of some being produced by it, perfectly distinct from it, and which may admit of such modifications as we witness everywhere around us, and as we know to be irreconcilable with the nature of the Absolute. This suffices to show that no apparition or manifestation of the Absolute can be conceived without implying an exertion of efficient power.[182] We say, then, in our second answer, that it is through divine omnipotence that contingent beings were actually brought into existence by such a communication of reality as was proportionate to the design of their Creator. In other terms, God's omnipotent power is the efficient principle of all primitive contingent being.
Our third answer points out the terminus ex quo of creation—that is, the term out of which every contingent being is primarily educed. Such a term is mere nothingness; for whatever primarily begins to exist must come out of absolute non-existence. It is against this that our modern pseudo-philosophers most loudly protest, as they stoutly proclaim that "nothing comes out of nothing"—ex nihilo nihil fit. We may well smile at their useless protestation; for the fact is that nothing is ever brought into existence but from its contrary—that is, from its non-existence. It would be vain to object that, to build a house or a ship, materials are needed. Of course they are needed, but a house is a compound, not a primitive, being; and to build a house is not to produce the house, but only to effect the artistic arrangement of its materials. Now, undoubtedly, before the house is built, such an arrangement has no existence. The only thing, therefore, that the builder efficiently produces springs out of non-existence. We fully admit that a physical compound cannot be made up without materials—viz., without pre-existent components—but, to be sure, the first components do not themselves depend on other components, because the first components are primitive beings, and, as such, cannot be made of any pre-existing material. Yet they must have been made, since they exist and are contingent; and, if made of no pre-existing material, certainly brought out of nothing.
But as our readers need none of our arguments to be convinced of a truth of which they are already in possession, we will set aside all further discussion on this subject, and conclude, from the preceding remarks, that when we are asked whence a contingent being originally comes, our last answer must be that it comes out of nothing as the term of its eduction. Nothingness, in this case, holds the place of the material principle, which is wanting.
It is clear, then, that all primitive contingent beings can, and must, be traced to three extrinsic principles. This doctrine contains nothing difficult, far-fetched, or mysterious, and its great simplicity proves that metaphysics, after all, may be less frightfully abstruse than some people are apt to believe. This same doctrine is also the universal doctrine of all philosophers who did not lose themselves in the dreams of visionary systems. It is true that they do not always mention, as formally as we do, the final object of creation as a distinct principle; but they do not deny it. In treating of the origin of things, they usually consider the final and the efficient principle of creation as a single adequate principle, on the ground that finality and efficiency, viewed absolutely as they are in God, are but one and the same thing. They also omit very frequently the mention of the term out of which things are educed, not because they do not acknowledge it, but because they know that it has no positive causality. Nevertheless, a little reflection will show that such a course is not the best calculated to give a distinct idea of the principiation of things; on the contrary, the very nature of the metaphysical process demands that each of the three extrinsic principles be kept in view very distinctly and explicitly.
We admit, of course, that the final and the efficient principle of creation, viewed absolutely as they are in God, are really and entitatively the same thing; but we consider that the intention, or volition of the end, has its connection with created beings, not on account of its absolute entity, which is necessary, but on account of its extrinsic termination, which is contingent; for, evidently, no act can be conceived as the principle of a being, except inasmuch as it is connected with the same being. Accordingly, God's volition is the principle of things, not inasmuch as it is an absolute act, entitatively necessary, but inasmuch as it is an act having a contingent termination. On the other hand, God's infinite power must indeed be conceived as connoting an infinity of beings that can be created, but is not conceivable as connoting determinate beings that will be created, unless something be found that connects it especially with the same determinate beings. Now, what is it that connects God's omnipotence with any determinate being which is to be created but his volition of a contingent determinate object—that is, his volition as having a contingent termination? Omnipotence, therefore, acquires a special connection with a determinate contingent being only on account of the extrinsic termination of divine volition; and thus divine omnipotence and divine volition have, under this consideration, a kind of relative opposition, on account of which the one that induces the special connection is to be distinguished from the other that acquires it.
Moreover, in the investigation of first principles we must continue our analysis as far as we can—that is, until we reach the ultimate terms into which the subject of our investigation can be resolved. Now, it is evident that omnipotence, as freely connected with the production of a determinate being, is not the ultimate term of analysis; for we can go further, and assign the reason of that free connection—viz., the actual volition of an end. Hence the final and the efficient principle of creation, though not really distinct in God, afford a real ground for two distinct concepts, and are to be considered as two distinct extrinsic principles with respect to all created things.
The third extrinsic principle—that is, the term out of which contingent beings are originally educed—is very frequently overlooked as irrelevant, because it has no reality. We are of opinion that it should be kept in view by all means, and prominently too, for many reasons which will be hereafter explained, and especially for the easier refutation of pantheism. Such a term has, indeed, no reality; but it is not necessary that all the extrinsic principles of being should be realities. Common sense teaches, on the contrary, that when a thing is to be first brought into existence, it is necessary that it should pass from its non-being into being; whence it is manifest that its non-being is the proper term out of which it has to be educed. Now, the non-being of a thing is its nothingness; and, therefore, its nothingness is the proper term out of which it must be educed. For the same reason, the schoolmen uniformly taught with Aristotle that privation also was to be ranked among the principles of things, although privations are not positive beings;[183] and therefore the nothingness of the term from which creatures are educed is no objection to its being placed among the extrinsic principles of contingent beings.
As, however, that which is looked upon as a principle is always conceived to connote the thing principiated, and, on the other hand, absolute nothingness has no such connotation (for connotation is virtual relativity, and cannot spring from nothing), it follows that nothingness, when conceived as a term out of which a being is educed, is to be looked upon, not as an absolute negation of being, but as a negation out of which divine omnipotence, by the production of an act, brings the creature into being. In other terms, nothingness is to be considered, under God's hand, as a negative potency of something real, which can be actuated; and, with regard to any individual reality, as the potency of that individual reality. When viewed in this manner, nothingness assumes a relative aspect, in opposition to that reality of which it is the potency, and thus becomes apt to connote that same reality, in the same way as silence connotes talk, darkness light, absence presence, informity form. Hence we took care to say that a thing is brought into being out of its non-being; because, as the fool only by divesting himself of his foolishness can grow wise, so a reality which is to come out of nothing—say, a point of matter—cannot be educed out of the non-being of an angel or of any other thing, but only out of its own non-being. Consequently, non-being, or nothingness, as the term out of which a point of matter is to be educed, means nothing but the potency of that real point; and thus nothingness, under the hand of the Omnipotent, acquires, in regard to that which is educed out of it, that relativity which is sufficient to make it a principle, according to the nature and manner of its principiation.