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We are dealing not with the creation of the human soul but
with the generation of brute animals and plants. St.
Thomas replied that the answer depends on the manner of
conceiving the pre-existence of forms in matter.
If we say that forms pre-exist actually in matter, as
the atomists and Anaxagoras (theory of the involution of
forms), there is no substantial becoming or substantial
change. This opinion reveals an ignorance of the nature
of matter because those who hold it were not able to
distinguish between potency and act.
If we say that forms in no way pre-exist in matter but
are caused by some superior agent, then they are created.
This seems to have been the opinion of Avicenna, and it
is based on an ignorance of the nature of form, as though
the form were that which is and not that by which a thing
is.
But if forms really pre-exist in the potency of matter,
they are not created but educed, and that which becomes is
not the form but the composite. The form, as we know,
is that by which something is such a being or in such a
species.
Hence St. Thomas concludes: Creation is not mingled
in the works of nature and art; it is found nowhere except
in the production of the spiritual soul, which, as
spiritual, is not in the potency of matter and cannot be
educed from matter. The soul is intrinsically independent
of any organism in its specific act, and therefore it is
also independent of the organism in its being and its
becoming because operation follows being.[854]
By way of an appendix some commentators explain:
1. that many worlds are possible,[855] because the
creation of one world does not exhaust the infinite power
of God;
2. that actually there is but one world, one by unity of
coordination and subordination;
3. that the world is perfect, not the best of all
possible worlds, but perfect in the sense that whatever
imperfections are in the world exist for the perfection of
the universe, as the shadows in a painting serve to
accentuate the colors.[856] Moreover, things that
are harmful in one way are useful in another, as, for
example, certain poisons like arsenic, which in
moderation serve as medicine.[857]
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