In
all created things, in all things not complete in themselves, in
all save God, in whom there is no development possible, for He
is, as say the schoolmen, most pure act, in whom there is no
unactualized possibility, the same law holds good. Development
is always the resultant of two factors, the one the thing itself,
the other some external force co-operating with it, exciting
it, and aiding it to act.
Hence the praemotio physica of the Thomists, and the praevenient
and adjuvant grace of the theologians, without which no one can
begin the Christian life, and which must needs be supernatural
when the end is supernatural. The principle of life in all
orders is the same, and human activity no more suffices for
itself in one order than in another.
Here is the reason why the savage tribe never rises to a
civilized state without communion in some form with a people
already civilized, and why there is no moral or intellectual
development and progress without education and instruction,
consequently without instructors and educators. Hence the value
of tradition; and hence, as the first man could not instruct
himself, Christian theologians, with a deeper philosophy than is
dreamed of by the sciolists of the age, maintain that God himself
was man's first teacher, or that he created Adam a full-grown
man, with all his faculties developed, complete, and in full
activity.
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