PROPOSITION CXII.

Evil, as such, has necessarily a material cause.

The material cause of a thing is that out of which the thing is evolved, or in which that characteristic entity or quasi entity by which the thing is constituted in its special nature, inheres, and by which it is sustained. This description will be most easily explained by an example or two. A statue is constituted hy an external form or delineation of some living figure, -- for instance, of Hercules. But that form could not exist by itself; it requires something out of which it may be chiselled, and by which it may be sustained in being. This something would be the stone from which the statue has been made. The stone, therefore, would be its material cause. Again; the vegetative life of a plant is that by which a plant is specifically constituted what it is; and is on this account denominated its substantial form. But this substantial form is generated, not created; that is, it is evolved out of something else which potentially precontained it. Further; as it is not a spiritual form, it requires something to sustain it in Being, -- something in which it is reduced to act. This is the organized matter in which it lives. Such, therefore, is its material cause. Once more; the redness, say of a rose, or that quality in the flower which produces in the sensile faculty of the soul the sensation of red, (for colour is not a representative sensation), is an accidental form which constitutes the rose such a kind of rose. Now, redness does not come of itself from without, but is evolved from the within of something. Moreover, redness cannot exist by itself. It is always a red something. That something, out of which redness is evolved and in which it exists and by which it is sustained in Being, is the flower; which is, therefore, its material cause.^{1} Thus much will suffice for the understanding of the present Proposition; and this is all that is aimed at. For the subject of causation will be discussed at length later on. Now, Evil may be regarded as a certain form; for it has just enough of reality to justify this mode of considering it, which is, besides, sanctioned by the ordinary way of speaking. For men talk of blindness in the eye, deafness in the ear, of a bad light, of lameness in a horse, of sterility in a cow, of imbecility in an idiot. Taking Evil, therefore, as a sort of form; the question is, whether it requires a material cause? To put it still more clearly, -- Does Evil require a Subject out of which it is, so to say, evolved and in which it exists? The answer is plain; it imperatively requires such a Subject. The reason is as follows. Evil is a privation, as we know. But a privation connotes a something that has been deprived. Blindness would be impossible; unless there were some eye that could be deprived of sight. We never talk of a blind elm, because an elm tree has no eyes; but we do talk of blind puppies, because they have eyes. In like manner, it would be absurd to speak of a lame diamond, but it is common to speak of a lame dog; because the latter has legs, and the former has not. Similarly, no one would dream of stigmatizing a zoophyte as wicked, that is, as morally evil; because it is not possessed of free-will. It is, furthermore, plain that this Subject must be a positive entity; for nothing, deprived, is no privation. Yet again: Privation is the want of some perfection which is postulated by the nature of the Subject; and, consequently, the Subject is capable of such perfection. Therefore, the material cause of Evil must be Good on two accounts: first, because it is a positive entity, and all Being is good; secondly, because it is capable of a given perfection, and capacity for a given perfection is evidently a Good. And, in this way, the truth of the hundred and ninth Thesis receives fresh confirmation.

DIFFICULTIES.

I. The above proof supposes privation and, consequently, Evil to be in some sense or another real Being. But formally it is nothing of the sort. For it is a mere negation, which excludes anything real and positive. Wherefore, it is only a logical entity. But a logical entity not only does not require a real Subject, but, properly speaking, cannot have one; because it has no existence outside the mind. Therefore, Evil can have no material cause.

ANSWER. Privation is not a mere negation; but a negation of something in a Subject, and of something which ought to be in that Subject. Therefore, its essential nature demands that it should be in a Subject, and in a Subject which naturally requires the perfection of which it has been deprived. It is precisely in these two points that privation differs from simple negation. Though, therefore, it is true that privation is formally a logical entity; yet it is not a mere logical entity. For the concept has a real foundation in the Subject which is deprived. This is abundantly apparent to common sense. No blind man could be brought to believe that his blindness was a mere figment of the mind; nor would an oculist desist from remedies, on the score that blindness is nothing real. Loss of any kind is a simple privation; but, if some one should attempt to console a merchant whose freight had gone to the bottom, by assuring him that his loss was a mere logical fiction, he would probably tell his Job's comforter that, if he had tried it in his own case, he would find out that it was a reality.

II. Evil destroys the Good to which it is opposed; therefore, it cannot be in the Good as in a Subject. For no form destroys the Subject in which it is.

ANSWER. An Evil is not opposed to every kind of Good, but only to that special Good of which it is the formal opposite; and, consequently, it is only this latter that by its presence it destroys. Now, the Good, of which the Evil is the formal opposite, is not the Subject; but a certain perfection of which the Subject has been deprived. Thus, the entity of a devil is good, although he has been deprived of every moral Good; so that his faculties of intellect and will are, entitatively, precisely what they were at the first instant of his creation. Against the above answer, however, it may be urged, that Evil often does much more than destroy the perfection of which it is the privation; for it corrupts the Subject in which it is found. Take, for instance, some sin, we will say, of incontinence. Not only does it deprive the action, to which the incontinence is attached, of the perfection of purity to which it was entitled, but it corrupts the nature of the man himself; since it disposes him to similar excesses, and weakens within him the power of resistance. Consequently, it diminishes, and sometimes goes so far as even to destroy, the capacity of his nature for purity. It is to be observed, by way of answer to the objection thus urged, that there is a twofold aptitude or capacity of a nature for a given perfection. The one is inherent in the nature itself; the other is superadded to it. The one is part of the nature and identical with it; the other is distinct from it and accidental. Again; there are two ways in which a capacity for good may be diminished; either by a subtraction, and diminution of the capacity itself, or by the cumulation of impediments in the way of its satisfaction. Now, in the case where the aptitude for chastity (to return to the instance given) is superadded by a formed habit, there is no difficulty in allowing that such Goodness in the subject may be diminished by the contrary act; because there is formal opposition between the two. But what is to be said about the natural aptitude in man? Can that be diminished? By a subtraction of capacity, certainly not; by an accumulation of external hindrances to the fulfilling of such capacity, yes. The nature of man has an innate capacity for continency, which can never be diminished; but evil habit, enervation of will which follows from indulgence, a diseased imagination, and similar impediments, may effectually hinder its reduction to act.

{1} There is no intention here of contravening the accepted theory of light and colour as taught by modern physical science. There is a cause, we will say, of the disintegration of the white ray and of the scattering of the red, etc. Metaphysically, all that is needed is a cause in the flower of the sensile phenomenon. That cause is metonymically called red, in accordance with common usage. The how of the phenomenon belongs to Physics; it concerns the metaphysician only indirectly and remotely.