The preceding remarks have been made with the object of preparing the solution of a difficulty concerning the creation of matter. For matter is potential, whilst God is a pure act without potency; but a pure act without potency cannot produce anything potential, since it does not contain in itself any potentiality nor anything equivalent to it. Therefore the origin of matter cannot be accounted for by creation.
The answer to this difficulty is as follows: We grant that the matter, as distinguished from the form which gives it the first being, and therefore as a potential term of the primitive substance, cannot be created, for it is no being at all, but only a potency of being; and yet it does not follow that the material substance itself cannot be created. Of course God does not contain in himself, either formally or eminently, the potentiality of his own creatures, but he eminently contains in himself and can produce out of himself an endless multitude of acts giving existence to as many potential terms. And thus God, by producing any such act, causes the existence of its correspondent potency, which is not efficiently made, but only formally actuated, as has been just explained. Creation is an action, and action is the production of an act; hence “the term of creation is a being in act, and this act is the form,” as St. Thomas teaches; the matter, on the contrary, or the potency of the created being, is a term coming out of nothingness by formal actuation, and consequently having no being of its own, but owing whatever existence it has to the act or form of which it is the term; so that, if God ceased to conserve such an act, the term would instantly vanish altogether without need of a special annihilation. Nothingness is the source of all potentiality and imperfection, as God is the source of all actuality and perfection. Hence even the spiritual creatures, in which there is no matter, are essentially potential, inasmuch as they, too, have come out of nothing. This suffices to show that God, though containing in himself no formal and no virtual potentiality, can create a substance essentially constituted of act and potency. For we have seen that, to create such a substance, God needs only to produce an act ad extra, and that such an act contains in itself the formal reason of its proportionate potency; because “although the essence of a being is neither the form alone nor the matter alone, yet the form alone is in its own manner (that is, by formal principiation) the cause of such an essence.”
And let this suffice respecting the general notions of first matter and substantial form.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE LEADER OF THE CENTRUM IN THE GERMAN REICHSTAG.
The Catholics of Germany have suffered a great loss in the death of Herman von Mallinkrodt, deputy to the Reichstag. Germany now realizes what he was, and it is indeed a pleasure for us to honor in this periodical the memory of this extraordinary man by giving a short sketch of his life.
Herman von Mallinkrodt was born in Minden (Westphalia), on the 5th of February, 1821. His father, who was of noble birth and a Prussian officer of state, was a Protestant; his mother, née Von Hartman, of Paderborn, was an excellent Catholic. All the children of this marriage were baptized Catholics—which is very seldom the case in mixed marriages—and were filled with the true Catholic spirit.
Like Herman, so also did his brother and sister, who were older than he, distinguish themselves by their decidedly Catholic qualities. George, who had become the possessor of the old convent of Boeddekken, founded in the year 837 by S. Meinulph, cherished a special devotion towards this the first saint of Paderborn, and rebuilt the chapel, destroyed in the beginning of this century by the Prussian government. This chapel is greatly esteemed as a perfect specimen of Gothic architecture, and is now held in high honor, as being the final resting-place of Herman von Mallinkrodt. His sister, Pauline, the foundress and mother-general of the sisterhood of “Christian Love,” has become celebrated by the success she has achieved in the education of girls. (The principal teacher of Pauline was the noble convert and celebrated poetess, Louisa Aloysia Hensel, in whose verses, according to the criticism of the Protestant historian Barthel, more tender and Christian sentiments are expressed than are to be found in any German production of modern times.) These excellent Sisters were also expelled, as being dangerous to the state, and sought as well as found a new field of usefulness in America, the land of freedom.