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Objection 1: It would seem that no habit is caused by acts. For
habit is a quality, as we have said above (Question 49, Article
1). Now every quality is caused in a subject, according to the
latter's receptivity. Since then the agent, inasmuch as it acts,
does not receive but rather gives: it seems impossible for a habit to
be caused in an agent by its own acts.
Objection 2: Further, the thing wherein a quality is caused is
moved to that quality, as may be clearly seen in that which is heated
or cooled: whereas that which produces the act that causes the
quality, moves, as may be seen in that which heats or cools. If
therefore habits were caused in anything by its own act, it would
follow that the same would be mover and moved, active and passive:
which is impossible, as stated in Physics iii, 8.
Objection 3: Further, the effect cannot be more noble than its
cause. But habit is more noble than the act which precedes the habit;
as is clear from the fact that the latter produces more noble acts.
Therefore habit cannot be caused by an act which precedes the habit.
On the contrary, The Philosopher (Ethic. ii, 1,2) teaches
that habits of virtue and vice are caused by acts.
I answer that, In the agent there is sometimes only the active
principle of its act: for instance in fire there is only the active
principle of heating. And in such an agent a habit cannot be caused by
its own act: for which reason natural things cannot become accustomed
or unaccustomed, as is stated in Ethic. ii, 1. But a certain
agent is to be found, in which there is both the active and the passive
principle of its act, as we see in human acts. For the acts of the
appetitive power proceed from that same power according as it is moved
by the apprehensive power presenting the object: and further, the
intellective power, according as it reasons about conclusions, has,
as it were, an active principle in a self-evident proposition.
Wherefore by such acts habits can be caused in their agents; not
indeed with regard to the first active principle, but with regard to
that principle of the act, which principle is a mover moved. For
everything that is passive and moved by another, is disposed by the
action of the agent; wherefore if the acts be multiplied a certain
quality is formed in the power which is passive and moved, which
quality is called a habit: just as the habits of moral virtue are
caused in the appetitive powers, according as they are moved by the
reason, and as the habits of science are caused in the intellect,
according as it is moved by first propositions.
Reply to Objection 1: The agent, as agent, does not receive
anything. But in so far as it moves through being moved by another,
it receives something from that which moves it: and thus is a habit
caused.
Reply to Objection 2: The same thing, and in the same respect,
cannot be mover and moved; but nothing prevents a thing from being
moved by itself as to different respects, as is proved in Physics
viii, text. 28,29.
Reply to Objection 3: The act which precedes the habit, in so far
as it comes from an active principle, proceeds from a more excellent
principle than is the habit caused thereby: just as the reason is a
more excellent principle than the habit of moral virtue produced in the
appetitive power by repeated acts, and as the understanding of first
principles is a more excellent principle than the science of
conclusions.
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