Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, with Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations. Christian Thomasius
and his procedure in the division of the qualities. He says:
There is on the one hand intellectual virtue, on the other the virtue of the will; among the intellectual virtues one is simple, that is, intelligence, which belongs equally to theoretical and practical principles, while the other is composite. This composite intellectual virtue is either theoretical—that is, wisdom and science—or practical—that is, prudence, the guide in moral affairs, and diligence, which is the guide in matters of art. The virtue of the will is either moral, the secondary subject of which is the sensitive appetite of desire or anger; or it is artificial, that is, art, the secondary subject of which is the locomotive power of the mind as well as the body.
§36. However, as far as I know, this observation is my own, for in the same chapter 1, §23, I disclose a blatant error, contrary to Christian theology, on the difference between theoretical and practical faculties: it is illuminated by dissertations 5 and 6 of the Platonic philosopher Maximus Tyrus.41 There you will discover many arguments which he formulated on the superiority of theoretical over practical philosophy and which smack of the pagan hypothesis that the essence of God consists in contemplation
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and that the approach of man to God is through theoretical contemplation. I remember that among the speeches of my blessed father there was one, the 21st,42 in which he himself defended the superiority of a life of theoretical contemplation. But it is not true that he disagrees with me; in fact, he confirms my opinions in many respects. The purpose of this speech is to demonstrate the superiority of the theoretical life based on the prerogative of the first table of the Decalogue over the second. We do not deny this prerogative, but we do deny that the first table pertains to a life based on theoretical contemplation, and so we disagree in the definition of the terms. For the entire Decalogue regulates human duties, and these are the subject not of theoretical philosophy, but of practical philosophy, and the duties of man toward God will always concern practice, not mere theory. Our blessed father’s statements concerning pagan opinion on the superiority of theoretical philosophy over practical at the beginning of the said speech do, however, amply confirm what we have posited in the said chapter 1, §§24ff.
§37. What requires some explanation, however, is my statement in §24, toward the end, that “it is a false opinion of the pagans that God’s essence consists in contemplation”—that is, pure contemplation—and one which does not have any action as its end. You must therefore beware of mocking my words, perhaps by inferring that I declare God’s essence to consist in external action and so avoid Charybdis by being wrecked on Scylla and adopt the error of those pagans who say God is necessarily joined to prime matter from all eternity. For, leaving aside other matters, this argument would apply only if God were human. But as God’s essence is infinitely superior to that of humans, you would not even be able to infer that (if I had denied completely that God contemplated, which, however, you see I have not done) because contemplation is not the essence of God; it must be action. Similarly you would not be able to infer that if someone says a stone cannot see, he concludes the stone to be blind. For just as there is something in between seeing and being blind—that is,
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not seeing—which can be predicated of the stone because of its imperfection, so I believe that there can be a third term between contemplation and human action in God which I do not know because of his supreme perfection. For, based on Scripture, I know nothing of God’s essence; but I admire it, and without philosophical knowledge I believe those things which Scripture has revealed to me about it. Now if it is permissible to speak in the human way of God’s infinite essence, then my father’s words in the said speech, pages 504ff., will be found to be very pleasing:
God is happy not only in contemplation, but also in action. For even if he undertook infinite tasks in one moment they would not burden this supremely powerful and pure being. God’s beatitude is derived from himself, not from elsewhere. We by contrast owe whatever we have that is good to God, not to ourselves. What worms we are when compared to the divine majesty.
§38. In the same chapter 1, §29, I say that “Law is always binding, pacts are not.” Of course the consent of two or more parties produces an obligation (Scripture tells us so repeatedly and confirms that we are bound by promises). I discuss this in detail in chapter 6, book 2, on preserving faith; but I want the obligation that follows from the pact not to be the product of the consent itself, but of the will of the legislator who commands the keeping of promises. Thus I immediately subjoin that “a law is binding if there is a pact.” But I have done this in order to contradict more firmly some people who ultimately derive the power of obligation from a pact. Among these the foremost, if I am not mistaken, is Hobbes.43 At the same time I contradict Grotius, who asserts that the laws of nature would be binding even if we assumed that there were no God, etc.44 Yet, even if you preferred to replace the phrase that “law is sometimes binding because of a pact” with the statement that “a pact is binding because of a law” I will not contradict you, because I believe that these two phrases are compatible,
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since either suggests that a law can be binding in the absence of a pact but not without a legislator.
§39. In §31 of the same chapter I say that the eternal law is a scholastic fiction. By that I do not mean the thing denoted by that term, whether they mean divine justice or the entire order of nature established according to God’s will and decree. For who but the most blatant atheist would claim that these are the product of nothing? I declare, however, that the use of the term law by the Scholastics in explaining their concept is most improper and a fiction: Thus it follows that God does not act according to a law. You may think this is a harsh way of putting it, since what is poorly expressed is entirely different from a fiction, and fictions are not what is expressed in inappropriate words, but what does not exist outside the mind of the author of the fiction or of those who accept it. I would reply that a distinction needs to be made between different kinds of unsuitable expressions. For some of these expressions are such that they are held to be improper even by those who use them; others are such that those who use them claim that the predicate, which is applicable to the subject only in a very improper fashion, can be applied to it properly. I admit that it is not accurate to call the former inappropriate expressions fictions; but as far as the latter are concerned, these are real fictions, because the improper predication, while it is claimed to be proper, does not exist as such outside the conception of the author of the fiction, but he invents it entirely by saying that it is proper. Thus, if someone presented a portrait of somebody as the person himself, or wanted Herod to be a fox in the proper sense of the word, or the meadows to be smiling in the literal sense of the word, he would without doubt be inventing this. But it is evident that most of the Scholastics defended the idea that eternal law is a law in the proper sense of the word. On this basis they initiated wide-ranging controversies concerning the definition of this law, all in order that this general definition of law could be adapted better to God. Mr. Osiander discusses these at greater length in his Typum legis naturae.
§40. The doctrine that beasts are without sense perception clearly does not belong to theology. And if the interest of religion is mixed up with this controversy, the argument for the lack of sense perception of animals even
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triumphs over the contrary opinion. The words of the true and genuine critic Pierre Bayle on this matter are elegant; compare the Excerpts from the Republic of Letters, March 1684, pages 26ff.:
Religion comes to be involved in this cause because the anti-Cartesians hope thereby to undermine the machines of Descartes; but they are not able to see the benefit which the philosophers’ followers have derived from this. For they believe they have shown that in attributing a soul capable of cognition to animals, all proofs of the natural immortality of the soul are overthrown. They have shown that their opinion has no more obstinate enemies than the godless and the Epicureans, and that there is no better way of attacking these philosophers than by robbing them of all their false arguments, when they bring up the soul of beasts and claim that there is no difference between the soul of beasts and that of men, except that the former have a little less, and the latter a little