Final Causality

A cause is anything that contributes, in any manner whatever, to the producing of a reality. Now, the producing of a reality is either a total production (no elements, seedlings, or materials being presupposed or required) and then the act of producing is called creation; or the producing is the employment of existing things in such way that a new reality (substantial or accidental) comes into being. Only God, the Infinite Being, can create; and God is the First Creating Cause of all reality. God is the first or primary cause; creatures, inasmuch as they are active, and hence effective, produce substantial or accidental effects and are secondary causes.

Many clements enter into the complete concept of causality. For a cause is anything whatever that has an influence or bearing on the thing produced, that is, on the effect. A boy whittling a piece of pine into the shape of a boat illustrates for us many types of cause and causality. The boy, by his own activity, produces the result (that is, the boat), and is therefore a cause of the result or effect. But he requires some material to work with; this material makes its contribution to the finished effect, and is therefore a true cause. The boy has some notion (clearly envisioned or vaguely sensed) of what the finished product will be, and this serves him as a direction or pattern in his work ; hence this too is a cause, for it has a bearing upon the effect. The boy requires some suitable tool with which to shape the material, and this, in its own way, contributes to the producing of the effect, and is therefore a cause, The finished effect is of a definite substantial kind, and of definite accidental determinateness (such size, such weight, such precise shape extending to the Icast line or scratch) ; in other words, the effect is definitely formed, as to substance and accident, and here again we discern a contribution to the product and therefore true causality : the “form” (substantial and accidental) is a cause of the effect which it constitutes or qualifies. Then the whole work depends upon some end, motive, purpose. The boy had some endin-view in starting his work and in carrying it on. This end may have been vaguely sensed or conceived ; the boy may have begun whittling without any notion of turning out a boat, and only later (led perhaps by the shape that the wood was assuming under careless strokes of the knife) set deliberately to work to fashion the boat. But there was some purpose in the whittling to start with. And there was some purpose maintained or changed as the work went on. It may have been mere “‘idle” activity at first, the purpose being to pass the time, or to experience the simple pleasure of drawing a sharp knife through soft wood. Then the purpose may have been a newly formed intention of making a boat. At any rate, some purpose or motive entered into the activity, and this purpose or motive makes its contribution to the finished product, and is therefore a true cause.

The boy is the active producer of the boat ; he is the effecting cause, the making cause, the actively producing cause of the boat; technically he is called the efficient cause of the boat. The tools he uses are instrumental causes of the boat. His preconceived notion of what he is making or to make; or the picture or image or actual vessel which he uses as a pattern or model, is the exemplar cause of the boat. The wood used,—not merely considered as “stuff,” but as this precise kind of substance,—is the substantial formal cause of the boat: it “forms” the boat substantially as a wooden thing, not a thing of metal or of other substance. The accidents of the boat,—such as size, shape, weight, coloring, and all other accidental determinants actually present in the boat, down to the last and least line and scratch,—determine or “form” the boat in its non-substantial character, and these are called the accidental formal causes of the boat. The wood used by the boy,—considered merely as “stuff” out of which the boat is made,—is the material cause of the boat. The motive or purpose which stirs the boy to the work of making the boat, and keeps him at it, is the final cause of the boat.

Notice how every one of the causes mentioned justifies in itself the definition of cause. For a cause is that which contributes in any manner to the producing of a thing. And a little attention and reflection will make clear the fact that each of the causes named and described above is a true contributing factor to the complete finished product or effect. Without any one of the causes mentioned, the boat would not be precisely and in all respects the actual thing it is; hence each of the causes has made a contribution, and is rightly called a cause.

Notice that some of the causes are right in the effect. The material cause (the stuff out of which the boat is made) and the substantial formal cause (that which makes wood wood, and makes the wooden boat a wooden boat) are right in the finished boat. They are therefore called intrinsic causes. Every material or bodily effect has, of necessity and intrinsically, a material cause and a substantial formal cause. Notice, too, that the accidental formal causes are right in the effect; they are determinants that are there. But the efficient cause and the final cause are not right in the effect. The boy who made the boat does not enter in any way into its being or construction; nor is the purpose which led to its making an element resident in the effect. For this reason we call the efficient cause and the final cause extrinsic causes. Notice that the exemplar cause and the instrumental cause are also extrinsic to the effect, even though the effect is like its exemplar or model, and a careful examination might disclose what instruments were used in making the effect.

We may sum up the causes we have here been considering in the following schema

intrinsic material ‘ 6 formal (substantial; accidental) came | efficient (served by instrumental and extrinsic exemplar) final

b) THE FUNCTION OF THE FINAL CAUSE

The final cause has been described as the purpose or end-in-view which leads the efficient cause to action and sustains it in action. It is that ‘on account of which” or “because of which” the efficient action is undertaken and carried through. Now, the efficient cause may be a cause equipped with knowing-power, or it may be a non-knowing cause. In the former case, the efficient cause, when led by knowledge of an effect as “good” or desirable, goes after it as an end (Latin finis) to be achieved; the efficient cause acts with finality, or in virtue of a final cause, known and desired. If the knowledge which leads on to the efficient action be of the senses only (as, for example, the smell or sight of food), we say that the efficient cause is led by sentient appetency to the achievement of its end. If the knowledge be that of the mind or intellect, the efficient cause which acts in the light of such knowedge is led by intellectual appetency to the achievement of an end. Another name for intellectual appetency is wzll. If the efficient cause is not equipped for knowing, or if its action is in no way influenced by its knowledge, it is led by natural appetency to attain its end; and for such an end the efficient creature will have a certain need, fitness, capacity, or aptitude. A dog secking its food illustrates sentient appetency or sentient tendency to an end. A man choosing freely to eat or to fast illustrates intellectual appetency ; and, inasmuch as the man may choose to fast despite hunger, we see that an end may be envisioned intellectually and freely chosen, even when an opposite end makes its appeal to the senses. A tree in its tendency to grow to maturity and fruitfulness and to maintain itself in that state illustrates natural appetency or natural tendency to an end; so does a stone in its tendency to follow the laws of cohesion, gravitation, inertia; so also does man and animal in their purely material or bodily tendencies and in the tendencies of their vegetal life. In every case, an efficient cause tends to produce its effect under the appeal, or in the direction, of an end or a final cause. An efficient cause exhibits in its action a true final tendency.

Final tendency, which takes its name from the Latin finis “end” (and the Latin adjective finalis “related to an end; final’) is sometimes called teleological tendency, a term which derives from the Greek telos which is the same as the Latin finis. The scientific discussion of ends is often called teleology.

It is the function of the final cause to invite the activity of the efficient cause, or, at least, to serve as a goal towards which such activity is directed. In the case of creatures (that is, limited causes, or secondary causes) the final cause is often the motive (more or less accurately so called) of their efficient causal action. In the case of God, however, the sole primary cause, there can be no question of a literal motive. For a motive, taken literally, is a moving power or force which affects the efficient cause “from the outside” so to speak, and moves it to its action. Now, God is not moved. He is the Infinite Being. No external cause can affect Him. Indeed, there exists no positive reality which has not come from God, and it would be absurd to think of God as moved by that which has its whole power and all its influence from Himself. It would come, in last analysis, to the thought of God moving Himself through the medium of a creature. Therefore, since God is not moved by external force or power, He is not, in the literal sense, motivated. He acts efficiently for the most perfect reason; He acts with the most sublime purpose; He acts to a perfect end or final cause; but He does not act under motive. The science of theodicy demonstrates the truth that God, the First Efficient Cause of all things, is also the Ultimate Final Cause of all. God’s efficient causality in the creating, conserving, and governing of creatures is, first and foremost, to the end that His glory be manifested externally, formally, objectively ; in other words, God Himself is the end of the divine casual efficiency. Cosmology, however, cannot undertake this question in detail, although we shall deal with it summarily in the next Article. Here we stress the point that the efficient action of secondary causes is often exercised (and, in one sense, always exercised) under the appeal, the motive force, of a final cause ; whereas the efficient action of God, the primary cause, is directed to a purpose or end freely set to be achieved. Of both creatural and divine efficient action we accurately say that it tends to an end, a purpose, a final cause, a goal; but of creatural action alone may we say that it has a motive.

To sum up: the function of the final cause is to serve as the reason, the justification, the explanation of efficient causal action. The final cause is “that on account of which the efficient cause acts.” It is the goal freely set to be attained, or the goal already set and determined towards which appetency (natural, sentient, intellectual) inclines the efficient cause in action. The final cause can always be called the endin-view, the reason, the objective, the goal, the purpose of efficient action; for creatures, it can also be called the motive of efficient action.

For creatures, final causes may be many and various, even in the one act of efficient causality. Final causes may be linked up like the sections of a chain or the steps of a stairway. Some are proximate, ready to hand; others are farther off or remote, and, in any series, one will be the most remote of all, it will be the ultimate end, and it will give reason and existence to the whole series which is directed towards it. In a similar way, the steps of a stairway confronting a man who wishes to get to the next floor, are proximate, remote (intermediate), and ultimate (or most remote). The first step is proximate; it is to be taken first of all; the others are remote. When the first step is taken, then the second is proximate, the others remote. The last step of all gets the man to his desired destination, and it was for the sake of getting there that each and all of the other steps were taken. Thus the ultimate end is one that gives meaning and force to all the other ends in its series. The ultimate end, in the old saying, is “first in intention, last in execution,” that is, it is first in the intention or the drive of the efficient cause; it is the thing really set as a goal; but it is the last to be obtained, for the ends which lead to it must first be gone through and achieved. The proximate and intermediate ends (that is, the proximate end, and the remote ends that lie between the proximate and the ultimate end of a series) are thus seen to be no ends in themselves, but rather means to the ultimate end.

To illustrate all this. A young man wishes to become a lawyer. He enters the law school, a callow freshman, with this ultimate end in view. Without the ultimate end he would not undertake the achieving of any of the ends (which serve as means to the ultimate end) in this special series; just so, without the will to get to the next floor, the climber would not take any of the steps of the stairway. The young man has, in his freshman year, the proximate end of passing his examinations and being promoted to the next class. Once there, he fixes on the further promotion as the next end or objective. And so on through his course. He has, as ultimate end of this series, the attaining of his degree and the status of a recognized man of the law. That is the ultimate end of this particular series. Yet that ultimate end is not absolutely ultimate. No, in its turn, it is subordinated to other ends, to wit, the holding of a certain social station, the possessing of the means of gaining an honorable livelihood, and so on.

It is the task of ethics and of rational psychology to prove that man, in his human actions ( that is, in his deliberate and responsible efficient causal activity) tends towards one absolutely ultimate end, one infinite master end, which is boundless good and happiness in the possession of that good. Presently, we shall undertake a task proper to cosmology, and show that the whole bodily universe exhibits a tendency to the one absolutely ultimate end, the summum bonum, the boundless good, which is God Himself. (Cf. Article 2 of this Chapter)

c) THE EXISTENCE OF FINALITY IN THE WORLD

No one in his senses can deny the wondrous order and action observable in the bodily world. We cannot deny that bodies hold their being, and that they do things, and by doing achieve what they set out (consciously or unconsciously) to do. And where we note failure in achievement, we are still forced to acknowledge the drive, the effort, so to speak, in the direction of an end

Nobody, in fact, denies that ends are achieved in this bodily world; nobody denies that things tend towards their proper and proportionate ends. What many do deny is that this tendency to ends is intended by any power or person, worldly or other-worldly. These objectors to the doctrine of finality regard the world as a universe that has somehow been shaken out of a chaotic state into an ordered one, but they deny true design, and they deny true finality, which is always, in the last analysis, something which comes from an intelligent and purposive power.

When we assert the existence of finality in the world, we assert that the order, design, and action observable in the bodily universe is the product of an Ultimate Intelligence which meant and intended things to function so. We not only assert that ends are worked for and obtained; everybody must admit so much. We assert that these ends are also intended.

Those who deny true finality are, among others, pantheists, Kantians, atheists, materialists, philosophical naturalists. The pantheists make the world itself divine, in one way or another, and thus render all bodily activity meaningless, for it is but a function (real or apparent) in the infinite Being and an end unto itself. The followers of Kant deny all objective (or trans-subjective) reality to the world, and therefore render futile all attempts to know whether there is any true causal activity in things. The atheists (misnamed, for the human mind cannot formulate sheer negation, and atheism is never a simple denial of God but always a replacement; it is a substitution of some false God,—nature, force, energy, etc..—for the true God) deny true final causality because their ugly and untenable theory of “no God” will not allow them to acknowledge a First Cause which has set the world in being and applied it to its ends. The naturalistic philosophers will not look beyond the functioning of “nature” for the ultimate explanation which reason insists upon pointing out, and hence they do not concern themselves with the roots of finality and purposiveness observable in the bodily world.

Against the mistaken and shortsighted theories here mentioned, we take our stand, aligning ourselves upon the side of reason. We assert that natural bodies, —and the bodily world, in consequence,—exhibit a true finality. Further, we declare that this finality is not merely extrinsic to bodies (that is, it is not a matter of external moving or “shoving” of bodies towards their ends, as billiard balls are driven by the impact of the cue), but is a true intrinsic finality whereby bodies are, in their very nature, formed and inclined to the active attainment of due and proportionate ends. Now, a “due and proportionate end” of any bodily reality is one that is fitted to round out the perfection of such reality or to hold it in its perfected state; in a word it is something good for the reality itself (that is, it is bonum sibi), and, secondarily, such a “due and proportionate end” may be a service which the perfected reality may render to other things (that is, it is bonum alits).

We may sum up our doctrine on this point in the following statements : There is in natural bodies a true intrinsic finality by which they tend towards what is good for themselves (bonum sibi). Secondarily, this tendency may result in what is good for things other than themselves (bonum aliis). In this final tendency of bodies, we discern the plan or design of an intel- ligence, and, in last analysis, of the supreme and infinite Intelligence. To prove these several points:

I. Natural bodies have a true intrinsic finality—We notice that bodies act in a manner that is consistent, constant, uniform, each in its kind. Now, what is consistent, constant, and uniform, can in no wise be considered as something that merely happens or chances to occur. For chance is defined as “something that happens without being intended”; it is never a cause, but an effect which is unforeseen or unintended. And such an effect is, by its very nature, an exceptional and unpredictable thing. But what occurs consistently, uniformly, and constantly, is neither exceptional nor unpredictable. What occurs consistently, uniformly, and constantly, is an effect intended and directed to an end. Further, what is intended and directed to an end has true finality. Therefore, we may, and indeed must, conclude that natural bodies, by reason of their constant and uniform activity, have true finality. But is this finality intrinsic? We answer that it is, and for this reason: consistency and uniformity, especially as manifested under various extrinsic conditions, indicate an intrinsic source or principle. Natural bodies tend always to produce the same effects ; a plant tends to grow, to achieve and maintain maturity and fruitfulness; fire tends to burn combustible matter ; chemical substances tend by their affinities to combine in certain invariable proportions, and so on. It is manifest that this tendency in bodies is an inner tendency, a tendency that comes from the very nature of bodies, and not from some set of external circumstances, even though certain circumstances may be required as conditions for the tendency to have its full effect. For the tendency or drive will be manifest, even when the conditions are not right for its full exercise. A tree planted in suitable soil will grow; in unsuitable soil, it will die or will fail to develop properly ; but even in the unsuitable soil, it will give evidence of its tendency ; it will, as we may say, “try” to grow. So with nonliving bodies. A piece of coal will hold to its nature, and will lose it only under the action of a strong external force; intrinsically it “hangs on” to its being. We are fully justified, then, in our assertion that natural bodies exhibit a true intrinsic finality or tendency to an end.

2. The intrinsic finality of bodies ts towards what is good for them—By the ‘‘good” of a thing, or “what is good for it,” we mean, first of all, what holds it in being, develops it fully, maintains it in the complete possession and play of its powers or activities. Now, the world manifests the fact that bodies tend to conserve themselves (‘“‘self-preservation is the first law of nature”), and they give up their being only under the force of external agencies. The stone wears away only under the action of wind and water or under the blows of other bodies; the plant sends out root and radicel to hold its place firmly and to take in food; plant and animal tend to repair all reparable wounds or injuries and to carry on, even if in a hampered way ; the spider spins its web, the bird builds its nest. In all this we see the tendency of bodies to keep themselves in being and to achieve what is useful or necessary for their permanence and effectiveness. Living things tend not only to hold the individual plant or animal in existence and to bring it to maturity and perfected activity, but they tend also to propagate and make permanent their kind or species. Thus there is manifest in the world of bodies an indubitable tendency towards an end that signifies the good of the bodies themselves and of their kind.

3. The intrinsic finality of bodies is sometimes, secondarily, for the good of other things—Thus the prodigality of nature in the matter of seeds. The oak may seem to waste uncounted acorns, most of which will never survive to develop into trees; but there is no true waste. The acorns serve as food for animals, as fertilizer for the earth. And even though the inner drive of the seed towards its own development and fruitfulness is never to come to realization, the secondary tendency is carried out in the benefit bestowed on other bodies. Scientists tell us that flies, fishes, frogs, and indeed all animals, give off millions of germinal cells or “seeds” which are never brought to development ; here again, the prodigality of nature manifests, on the one hand the determination of nature (the intrinsic finality) to get some seeds into circumstances and conditions favorable to growth and development, and, on the other hand, it manifests a bounty of goodness to the other things which benefit by the undeveloped seeds. There is yet a third good for others (bonum aliis) which nature shows in her unstinted gifts; intelligent creatures (that is, men) must be impressed by her bounty with the utter goodness, the limitless generosity, of the Giver of all good gifts.

4. The intrinsic finality of bodies indicates the plan or design of an intelligence and, in last analysis, of the supreme Intclligence—That bodies tend to due and proportionate ends which are good for themselves, and often for other things, is, as we have seen, a manifest fact. But there are some stubborn minds which will not admit that this tendency is the product of any intelligence; that it is not something foreseen and intended. This theory of denial boils down to the theory that the order and harmony of bodily activity, as well as the arrangement and plan of the bodily universe and all individual bodies in it, are products of sheer chance. Surely, only stubborn minds that will not even look at the evidence furnish the sole explanation of this absurd opinion. For consider the complexity of a single body, nay, of a single atom.

Consider the wild variety of bodily beings, and of parts and elements in the same body. Yet with this complexity and variety there is beautiful balance, harmony, interrelation of part with part, of function with function. And this not once or in a single item of the world’s array of bodies, but everywhere, in everything, and (most amazing of all!) all the time. If a wondrously complex, yet balanced and harmonious, bodily substance were found once, one might be tempted to say that it could have happened without intention; yet, even then, the temptation would be brushed aside as nonsensical. Design and balance amid complexity is always recognized, by the very skeptics and agnostics, as clear evidence of mind and intention. The crudest tool fashioned by our remote ancestors is recognized as a thing made with purpose and with some understanding of use; in a word, it is recognized as intended by an intelligent artificer. And no one would think of saying that the more complicated examples of man’s skill and ingenuity (say a watch, a radio, an automobile, a telescope) merely happened to fall into ordered arrangement by unintentional chance. Yet the finest of man’s works of art or skill are as nothing compared to the meanest natural body. And when we remember that the bodily world is undergoing constant change, that atoms and atomic parts are in a whirl of motion, that accidental and substantial change are the continuous “order of the day,” and that, notwithstanding, the harmony and balance of bodies are faultlessly preserved throughout the process of change, we are speechless with amazement, we are powerless to conceive or to express appreciation, and we are overwhelmed with the crass stupidity of the silly theory of mere chance. Such things as these,—these natural bodies of marvellously exact and balanced construction, of plain and resistless tendencies to their good,—are certainly things planned and intended by a wondrous intelligence; they are things known and intelligently directed to the attainment of their ends. More: since every positive reality must be ultimately traced to a First Reality, supreme and infinite; since every perfection must be ultimately founded in the First and Infinite Perfection, it is manifest that the perfection called intelligence must come to creatures, and affect finite things, as the manifestation of the ultimate and supreme Intelligence.

Sometimes we hear objections to our doctrine from those who are puzzled by what they call the imperfections of the world and of the bodies. At the outset, it must be clearly noticed that anyone who talks of imperfections acknowledges the existence of perfection; for imperfections are only deficiencies noticed in a plan or product that offers knowledge of a standard, that is, of perfection. Hence the objectors who point out this or that fact as an imperfection in the world of bodies acknowledge, by that very action, their own recognition of the order, plan, and balance of intelligently planned and directed existences. They find fault with the intelligence which has arranged things so; but to find fault with an intelligence is to admit that the intelligence exists. To lay blame upon a being, is to acknowledge that the being is an existing and responsible actuality, an intelligent author of its acts and operations.

The so-called imperfections in the world, or physical evils as they are called, cannot long engage the attention of the student of cosomology ; the science of theodicy deals with these things in detail, and proves conclusively that physical evils are in no wise inconsistent with the divine wisdom or with the decrees of providence. All the cosmologist has to do is to show that the world in general, and some individual worldly bodies in special, are manifestly directed to an end by an intelligent power, which ultimately is the divine power. That here and there we find bodies whose purpose we do not understand is nothing ; we cannot expect to understand every detail of the vast universe with our strictly limited minds. And we have had telling lessons in the unwisdom of concluding that anything lacks purpose because we do not understand that purpose. A few years since, men of science were of the opinion that the pituitary gland was a “vestigial organ,” a thing now meaningless in the human structure ; we know better today; we know that this gland has a tremendously important purpose, a purpose bound up with the functions of growth and bodily development, and fraught with issues of life and death. It was recently thought that the vermiform appendix was a thing useless and purposeless; it is now known that it has a definite function in the economy of the human body, although we have no perfect agreement among medical men on the exact nature of that function. Even if there were bodies which we could justly call purposeless (ignoring the tendency of every bodily being towards its own conserving and maintenance as a bonum sibi), we should find in these no obstacle to our doctrine on finality. Even if nine-tenths of the bodies in the universe could be called purposeless, we should still find, in the remaining tenth, proof positive of our position: that an intelligent power (and ultimately the infinite power) has set these in their place and directed them, intrinsically, to their ends. Just so, even a disorderly and cluttered house, filled with meaningless bric-a-brac, presents clear evidence of purpose, for it is manifestly meant for a refuge, a shelter, a human habitation, a home.

SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE

In this Article we have set forth the definition of cause, and have listed and explained the more important types of causes. We have dwelt in detail upon the meaning and the function of the final cause. We have noticed the inescapable fact of a final tendency or a teleological tendency in natural bodies. We have seen