The Summary Cause for the
Stability or Downfall of Human Societies
CHAPTER 2
The universality and logical necessity of the first criterion
7. Here I must make an observation. From what has been said, it is clear that anyone who errs in politics, must first err in logic. To attribute greater value to the accidental ornaments of a society than to its subsistence is a logical error and false calculation.
Let us extend the observation further. All mistakes in practical human conduct, whether in private or public, or in political or moral matters, are always preceded by errors in human understanding, which, although often willed, remain errors of understanding. They are not willed of course in the effect they produce but in themselves. Thus, in the case we have considered, it is certain that no government intends to destroy the society it is governing. Nevertheless, while wishing to improve and perfect the society, a government can ruin it completely or almost completely. And the sole cause is a mental error, because the government does not justly calculate the overall effect of the provisions it decides to adopt for the good of the society it is governing.
This demonstrates once again the universality of the rule we have mentioned. When we apply it to government, we are simply applying a much wider rule pertaining to universal logic.
8. In fact every error of logic can be reduced to a very simple formula: `To attribute to a subject what is accidental as though it were essential’, or: `To reason from the supposition that what is essential to a subject is only accidental.’ Let us examine any sophism: for example, the popular one which claims to prove that we can satisfy our thirst by eating salted meat. This says: `Salted meat makes us drink. But drinking satisfies our thirst. Therefore salted meat satisfies our thirst.’(3) Clearly the error lies entirely in making our need for drink an essential property of salted meat. However of the only thing essential to salted meat is its production of thirst; drinking follows simply as an accidental, not a necessary consequence of thirst. Anyone who eats salted meat and has nothing to drink certainly suffers thirst; this would not be so if salted meat truly satisfied thirst.
9. This opinion, which reduces all logical errors, speculative and practical, to a single formula, is not mine; the ancient logicians seem to have reduced every kind of sophism to it.
St. Thomas himself, following the greatest ancient writer on logic, reduces every error to this sole mistake of considering the accidents as the substance.(4) A multiple question is reduced to its minimum terms; an excellent solution, in my opinion, to the complicated problem of finding the single thread leading us out of the labyrinth of infinite errors to which human reasonings are subject. Using this simple truth, St. Thomas divides the whole mass of knowledge, or better all that can be contained in the human mind, into two great classes, both of infinite extension, according to the two kinds of objects possible to human thought. The first class includes that which is truly cognition and merits the title knowledge. The second class is called sophistry and includes the whole series of possible mental errors and illusions. In the second case the mind, when reasoning about something, neglects to consider the essence of the thing and confines itself to what is accidental; it then uses the very vague and imperfect ideas it draws from this consideration to judge and reason about the thing as a whole.
10. Enlarging on the concept of this great thinker, we see that the only things presented to us in the entire universe are composed of substance and accidents; or, to state it more generally, all things, whatever their kind and mode of being, are presented to our intellect divided into two classes. Some appear to us as existing per se, so that they do not need other things in order to be conceived as subsistent. Some however are presented to us as things not endowed with their own existence, that is, they are presented as things subsisting by means of and in other things, as colours, for example, which subsist through bodies and seem to adhere to bodies. The two classes can be confused by our mind which may forget beings that exist per se and rest solely in those which exist per accidens, (that is, exist in others and through others, without being necessary to them, so that beings which exist per accidens can disappear without the disappearance of the being to which they are joined — colours, for example, can disappear from bodies without the bodies disappearing). When we are confused in this way, our mind is deluded and forms a sophism. Because this mental error, which results from neglect to note carefully the relationship between what is accidental and what is substantial, attributes a stable existence to only a precarious, accidental existence, our spirit also is deceived and misled, and in preference to something permanent and stable readily loves a momentary, unstable thing, unworthy of love. Consequently, reason endowed with knowledge or cognition of a being per se is a certain and faithful guide, whatever a human being undertakes to do or direct. It brings to a successful conclusion whatever has been undertaken. On the other hand, when reason is deluded by sophistry and follows accidents instead of the substances of things, it proves an unfaithful guide. In this case everything eventually perishes, whatever enthusiasm and apparent hope has been engendered.
11. This fact, I say, was observed by others and frequently suggested by people of good sense, although they did not reduce it to a theory. There is no better or truer description of a prudent human being than that found in the words of our outstanding writer, Daniello Bartoli, when he praised the wisdom and insight of Jacopo Lainez:
When he attended to business and sought a satisfactory outcome and balance, his grasp of the total complex mass and confused body of elements was greatly admired. He unravelled it, dissected it and divided it up into parts, and then simply discarded as an encumbrance all that was unnecessary. He could foresee and distinguish consequences and how, as effects, they would of themselves need no attention because they are naturally present in their cause. In this way he restricted what was purely substantial, that is, the business in its entirety, to the greatest immediate truth and clarity, as happens when large proportional numbers are reduced to their lowest terms.(5)
12. This same natural logic continuously moves nations to look for substantial, not accidental qualities in their rulers. Montaigne, a perceptive author, writes:
To praise those things in a human being which do not become his ministry or should not be his principal qualities is to deride and harm him. For example, a person who wishes to praise a prince says that he is a good painter or architect, or a good archer. The only honour given him by such praise is when it serves as an embellishment to the praise proper to him, that is, to justice or the art of governing his people in peace and in war. In this way agriculture honours Cyrus; eloquence and knowledge of the arts honour Charlemagne. Demosthenes, on hearing that Philip was praised for his beauty, eloquence and capacity for drink, replied: `Such praise certainly becomes a woman, an advocate and a sponge, but not a king.’(6)
13. The rule, therefore, that we have laid down about substance and accidents, is confirmed by common sense. And just as neglect of this rule in the government of human societies is the summary cause of their destruction, so, considered speculat-ively and in general, the rule is also the summary cause of all errors of human understanding, of which political errors are only particular, practical consequences.
If we act upon a speculative error, our action will certainly be defective and produce more or less guilty and harmful effects, dependent on the circumstances and the order of the things to which our action pertains. Whatever the order of things, the effect will always be pernicious and harm that particular order. Let us apply the same logical principle to the fine arts.
In this application our principle becomes one of the most important, if not the first tenet of aesthetics. It offers us perhaps the safest of all possible criteria for judging good taste in the arts.
14. In fact, we are able to see how, in works of art, any superfluous embellishment or decoration not required by the intimate nature of the thing in question is defective, overdone and distasteful. We see that the decoration does not derive as a necessary consequence from the thing`s nature; it is simply a false embellishment, not applied to help us understand the beauty of the whole and the perfection of the substance of the work itself. An infallible symptom of the decadence of the arts is present when artists begin to lose sight of the connection between exterior ornament and the interior structure of the work. Once this connection is lost sight of, there is no longer any limit to the multiplication of ornament. This explains the heavy, baroque taste of the 17th. century: artists lost sight of the whole, of the totality, and of what is substantial to the work, and concerned themselves solely with accessory, accidental parts.
15. The principle, therefore, which we have given as the summary cause for the stability and downfall of societies, as the first rule for their government and as the first criterion for evaluating political means, is a universal principle. It is one of those principles seen as true in all cases, which dominate and regulate without exception all orders of things whether ideal, or practical and effective.
Notes
(3) A contemporary economist presented this very argument about salted meat when he wrote: `If fashion induces a woman to sell, it induces a man to work in order to buy what the woman is selling. But an increase in work equals a decrease in corruption. Therefore fashion, which induces a woman to sell, diminishes corruption.' Cf. Esame delle opinioni di M. Gioia in favor della moda in Opuscoli Filosofici, Milano, 1828, vol. 2, f. 107 ss.
(4) S.T., I, q. 18, art. 1, ad 2; I-II, q. 7, art. 2, ad 2.
(5) Dell' Italia, bk. 4, c. 15.
(6) Essais, bk. 1, c. 39.