SOLUTION OF THE OBJECTIONS

The principal objection against the doctrine that the intellective soul is the only form of the body is the following. An intellective power cannot be the form of a body. But an intellective substance is more noble than its power. Therefore an intellective substance cannot be the form of a body.

St. Thomas replied: "The human soul is not a form immersed in corporeal matter, or completely comprehended by matter, because of the perfection of the soul, and therefore there is nothing to prohibit some power of the soul from being the act of the body, although the soul by its essence is the form of the body."[1303]

In other words, the intellective soul is the form of the body inasmuch as it is eminently and formally vegetative and sensitive, or inasmuch as the intellective soul does for the human body what the sensitive soul does for the animal and what the vegetative soul does for plants. In this manner the intellective soul is virtually multiple.

This teaching is sometimes misunderstood to mean that the intellective soul is virtually sensitive and vegetative. On the contrary, according to the interpretation of Cajetan, Ferrariensis, and John of St. Thomas, the intellective soul is eminently and formally vegetative and sensitive. It is God alone who virtually possesses vegetative and sensitive life, as He possesses other mixed perfections which He can produce, and God cannot be the form of the human body.

The intellective soul contains vegetative and sensitive life eminently and formally, just as God in the sublimity of the Deity formally contains the absolutely perfect perfections, such as being, intellection, love. The soul therefore can be the form of the human body, but this would be impossible if the soul were only virtually and not formally vegetative and sensitive.

But, as in God the absolutely perfect perfections are only virtually distinct, so the sensitive, vegetative, and corporeal forms are only virtually distinct in the intellective soul. This is the clear teaching of St. Thomas. Some have caused confusion on this point by saying that the vegetative and sensitive parts are only virtually in the soul because St. Thomas said that the intellective, sensitive, and vegetative parts are only virtually distinct. The term "virtually" refers to "distinguish" and not to the verb "is," as when we speak of the absolutely perfect perfections in God.

Moreover, it would be repugnant for the soul to be the immediate principle of such diverse operations as those of vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life, but it is not repugnant that the soul produce these operations through the mediation of various subordinate faculties. No created substance, not even the angel, is immediately operative; it cannot understand except through the intellective faculty, nor can it will except through the will. The created essence is ordered to being, but the operative faculties are ordered to operations and are specified by the formal object of these operations.[1304]

The twofold principle for the solution of the objections against this traditional doctrine is: the intellective soul is the form of the body, and yet it is in no way immersed in matter. This teaching is well stated as the sixteenth of the Thomistic propositions approved by the Sacred Congregation of Studies (1914): "This same rational soul is united to the body in such a way that it is the only substantial form of the body, and through this form man is man, animal, living, a body, substance, and being. This form therefore confers on man every essential degree of perfection; besides this the soul confers on the body the act of being by which it itself is." For the Thomists this proposition is certain according to the principles that refer to the distinction between potency and act, and between essence and being. Suarez, on the contrary, who conceived these principles otherwise, held that it was only probable that the rational soul is the only form of the body.[1305] Denying the real distinction between created essence and being, he said that the substantial being of man cannot be one, but that there is a twofold being just as there are two parts in the essence of man, namely, matter and form. As in the question of creation, so here also Suarez differs considerably from St. Thomas.

From St. Thomas' principles concerning the distinction between potency and act it follows that the human soul and body unite in the one being of man in such a way that the soul does not depend on the body for being, but communicates its being to the body; and after the separation from the body, the soul can again communicate its being to the body, as happens in the resurrection of the dead. From the same principles it follows that there is one being in Christ, namely, the being of the Word, communicated to the human nature, which does not subsist except in the Word.[1306]

This doctrine of the spirituality and personal immortality of the soul shows how St. Thomas Christianized that Aristotelianism which the Averroists interpreted in a pantheistic sense. We see this likewise in the question of free creation from nothing. In these two questions the holy doctor shows how the principles supporting the preambles of faith are demonstrated and explained by the Aristotelian teaching on potency and act.[1307]