Development Of The Human Soul

Appendix 10. (1228).

This is the source of the direct confutation of the pantheism of the School of Elea and, properly speaking, of Xenophanes, philosophers who fell into the error of pantheism because of their inability to uncover the mystery of transient acts. Xenophanes' starting point was a nihilo nihil fit [from nothing, nothing comes] (Aristotle, bk. on Xenophanes, Zeno and Gorgia). This meant: transient acts are in opposition to the principle of cause, and consequently are not. I reply: 'It is false that transient acts are in opposition to the principle of cause; these acts simply suppose a first cause which operates without the presence of transient acts. Now, because the transient acts have to remain distinct from the cause, it is necessary for them to be an effect of the operation of that cause, but not acts of which the cause is the subject. In other words, this cause, when operating immanently, creates immanent and transient acts outside itself.'

The following quotation from Aristotle, if considered carefully, also shows that this is the logical origin of Eleatic pantheism. Aristotle wanted to indicate how philosophers, in their search for a material cause, were forced by the connection of ideas to pass to an investigation of efficient cause. He says: 'But moving in this direction, they were led and forced to go further by the subject itself. If all corruption especially, and all generation, proceeds from something, whether a single thing or several things, how does this happen and what is its cause? A given subject is unable to change itself. For example, neither wood nor bronze is a cause of changes in itself; wood does not make itself into a bed, nor does bronze make itself into a statue; the cause of the change is something different. Searching for this, however, means searching for another principle (other than the material principle). Like ourselves, these people are searching for the beginning of movement. Those, however, who first raised this question and posited a single subject were unaware of any difficulty. But some of those who set up the One, were overcome as it were by this question and said that the One is both immovable and nature in its entirety, not only according to generation and corruption (this is an ancient opinion to which all adhered) but indeed according to every transmutation. And this is proper to them' (Metaph. 1).