| (On St. Thomas's fifth proof for the Existence of God) |
| Thomas Aquinas, in the fifth way, employs extrinsic finality as a medium of demonstration because it is the most apparent and most manifest kind of finality. It would do equally well to posit an ordered multitude of "free" elements, or of elements not bound to one another as parts of a machine, and to posit this multiplicity in time, in order to see that such a multiplicity could not preserve in being, as an ordered multitude, if it were not directed. In establishing that the movement of the world in time is itself ordered or tends in a certain definite direction, modern science confirms and , so to speak, strengthens the certainty of this conclusion. |
| Let it be noted at this point that St. Thomas might have employed as means of demonstration the intrinsic or immanent finality which characterizes living beings. A living organism tends toward an end which remains within it, and which is itself, or rather its own preservation and its owm fulfillment in being, and its own perpetuation (nutrition, growth, reproduction). But since the living organism does not tend toward such an end by knowing it, willing it and taking the means of attaining it (plant, animal or man, it lives but is entirely unaware of the ways and means of its own life), it is quite obvious that the tendency to the end, which proceeds in it from something which is consubstantial with it (what Aristotle called its form or its "entelechy"), must depend on an intellect outside of it in which the intention of the end exists. |
| Finally, St. Thomas could have used, as means of demonstration, the primitive or radical finality which is the raison d'être of the very causality of every efficient cause. No agent would act if it did not tend toward an end. Then it is apparent that the immediate end of the action of any agent whatever (which is the reason-for-being of its activity) is itself - being good, but not Absolute Goodness - ordered to a superordinated better end. The common good of the universe is better than the immediate good or end of any whatsoever of its parts. One is therefore, in the last analysis, necessarily led to an end which is the ultimate end of, or reason for, the action of every agent (and of the common good of the universe of nature, which is itself not the Absolute Good either): such an end, is necessarily subsistent Good itself, or subsistent Goodness. One must further conclude that no agent would act, or tend toward its end, if it were not primarily tending toward the subsistent Good. It is in virtue of their movement toward God, the transcendent ultimate End, and of the love with which every being naturally loves God more that itself, that all agents whatsoever in action in the world move toward their proper end. |
| (From: APPROACHES TO GOD) |