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Objection 1: It would seem that a person does not contract affinity
through the marriage of a blood-relation. For "the cause of a thing
being so is yet more so." Now the wife is not connected with her
husband's kindred except by reason of the husband. Since then she
does not contract affinity with her husband, neither does she contract
it with her husband's kindred.
Objection 2: Further, if certain things be separate from one
another and something be connected with one of them, it does not follow
that it is connected with the other. Now a person's blood relations
are separate from one another. Therefore it does not follow, if a
certain woman be married to a certain man, that she is therefore
connected with all his kindred.
Objection 3: Further, relations result from certain things being
united together. Now the kindred of the husband do not become united
together by the fact of his taking a wife. Therefore they do not
acquire any relationship of affinity.
On the contrary, Husband and wife are made one flesh. Therefore if
the husband is related in the flesh to all his kindred, for the same
reason his wife will be related to them all.
Further, this is proved by the authorities quoted in the text
(Sent. iv, D, 41).
I answer that, A certain natural friendship is founded on natural
fellowship. Now natural fellowship, according to the Philosopher
(Ethic. viii, 12), arises in two ways; first, from carnal
procreation; secondly, from connection with orderly carnal
procreation, wherefore he says (Ethic. viii, 12) that the
friendship of a husband towards his wife is natural. Consequently even
as a person through being connected with another by carnal procreation
is bound to him by a tie of natural friendship, so does one person
become connected with another through carnal intercourse. But there is
a difference in this, that one who is connected with another through
carnal procreation, as a son with his father, shares in the same
common stock and blood, so that a son is connected with his father's
kindred by the same kind of tie as the father was, the tie, namely of
consanguinity, albeit in a different degree on account of his being
more distant from the stock: whereas one who is connected with another
through carnal intercourse does not share in the same stock, but is as
it were an extraneous addition thereto: whence arises another kind of
tie known by the name of "affinity." This is expressed in the
verse:
Marriage makes a new kind of connection,
While birth makes a new degree, because, to wit, the person begotten
is in the same kind of relationship, but in a different degree,
whereas through carnal intercourse he enters into a new kind of
relationship.
Reply to Objection 1: Although a cause is more potent than its
effect, it does not always follow that the same name is applicable to
the cause as to the effect, because sometimes that which is in the
effect, is found in the cause not in the same but in a higher way;
wherefore it is not applicable to both cause and effect under the same
name or under the same aspect, as is the case with all equivocal
effective causes. Thus, then, the union of husband and wife is
stronger than the union of the wife with her husband's kindred, and
yet it ought not to be named affinity, but matrimony which is a kind of
unity; even as a man is identical with himself, but not with his
kinsman.
Reply to Objection 2: Blood-relations are in a way separate, and
in a way connected: and it happens in respect of their connection that
a person who is connected with one of them is in some way connected with
all of them. But on account of their separation and distance from one
another it happens that a person who is connected with one of them in
one way is connected with another in another way, either as to the kind
of connection or as to the degree.
Reply to Objection 3: Further, a relation results sometimes from a
movement in each extreme, for instance fatherhood and sonship, and a
relation of this kind is really in both extremes. Sometimes it results
from the movement of one only, and this happens in two ways. In one
way when a relation results from the movement of one extreme without any
movement previous or concomitant of the other extreme; as in the
Creator and the creature, the sensible and the sense, knowledge and
the knowable object: and then the relation is in one extreme really and
in the other logically only. In another way when the relation results
from the movement of one extreme without any concomitant movement, but
not without a previous movement of the other; thus there results
equality between two men by the increase of one, without the other
either increasing or decreasing then, although previously he reached
his actual quantity by some movement or change, so that this relation
is founded really in both extremes. It is the same with consanguinity
and affinity, because the relation of brotherhood which results in a
grown child on the birth of a boy, is caused without any movement of
the former's at the time, but by virtue of that previous movement of
his wherein he was begotten; wherefore at the time it happens that
there results in him the aforesaid relation through the movement of
another. Likewise because this man descends through his own birth from
the same stock as the husband, there results in him affinity with the
latter's wife, without any new change in him.
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