Though I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Jesuit, I’ve had multiple and diverse chats with card-carrying Sons of Ignatius. Some of them prompt philosophical inquiry. Here’s an example.

Me:  Will Fr. S come home from Georgetown to celebrate the Feast of St. Ignatius?
Fr. R:  Nope. Well, probably not.
Me:  How come?
Fr. R:  Can’t say; he hasn’t for years.
Me:  What do you think? Maybe this year?
Fr. R:  Nah, he’s too old to change. It wouldn’t be natural.
Me:  You mean it’s against his nature?

Here Fr. R, a historian, sighs and shrugs. But as a philosopher I can’t rein in my curiosity. Blimey, my last blog closed with the question of just what a nature is.

Perhaps, gentle reader, you recall that I’d been exploring the puzzling case of angels and stones. St. Thomas Aquinas writes, “Although an angel, considered absolutely, is better than a stone, nevertheless two natures are better than one only; and therefore, a universe containing angels and other things is better than one containing angels only” (Sent. I, D44, Q. 1, A2, Resp. SC5). Well, maybe. But what if the “other things” are, for example, a single stone and a solitary slug?

To be sure, what counts as a “nature” is a hard question. I admit that a particular leopard can’t just change its spots. It wouldn’t be natural. Even so, we hope—do we not?—for the day when “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).

A helpful way to understand human nature, and thus the nature of Fr. R, is to consider what it is for us to act naturally. NOR columnist Marcus Peter highlights the pivotal role of speech. He cites St. Thomas Aquinas, and I’ll do so a bit more fully. Thomas writes that  “Language is proper to men, since it is a peculiarity of theirs in comparison with the rest of the animal world that they possess the knowledge of good and evil, of the just and the unjust…. In these things men communicate one with another naturally.” And what does this show? He continues, “Since, therefore, this communication constitutes the household and the city, man is naturally a domestic and a civic animal” (In Libros Politicorum Aristotelis Expositio, Lib. I, lect. 1). Care to fast forward? The philosopher–novelist Walker Percy thought that extraterrestrials would be flabbergasted by how much we chatter among ourselves!

To be sure, bats and Bonobos communicate, but they do not do so as freely, much less so  imaginatively, as we do. They exhibit complex behaviors, but they are neither moral agents nor civic animals. Unlike us, they are not—to use Aristotle’s designation—rational animals; they have their own natures. But not only does Aristotle properly define us, he defines what it is in general to have a nature. For him, the nature of a substance both causes it to be what it is and accounts for its motion or, in our case, action. “Nature is the principle of motion and rest in those things to which it belongs properly” (Physics II, 1). Norris Clarke, a Jesuit Thomist, suggests that we think of nature as “the abiding center of acting (and being acted upon) in a being.”

Human beings, unlike bats and Bonobos, are moral agents because by nature they can act freely. Determinists are right about bats and Bonobos, and stones and slugs as well. Their behaviors are caused by either internal or external conditions over which they have no control. Not so with us; we immortals are ordered to, and freely seek, an eternal destiny.

Indeed, our Creator freely brings creation into existence and with it our freedom. Yet within creation much is determined and must be if it is to function. Nor could this universe, as it actually is, function without the multiplicity and diversity that its long evolution shows. Thomas notes that necessity comes about when an existent cannot be otherwise brought about. Thus, he writes: “Supposing that God intends to make a man, it is necessary and due that He gives him a rational soul and an organic body, without which there is no such thing as a man.” So, too, it is with the universe.

Given that He wished to make the universe such as it is, it was necessary that He produce such and such creatures whence such and such a form of universe would arise. And seeing that the perfection of the universe requires both diversity and multitude in things…it was necessary on the supposition of that intended form that God should produce many and diverse creatures; some simple, some compound, some corruptible, some incorruptible. (De Potentia, q. 3, art. 16.)

Even as we humans have a necessary ordering, so too does the universe. But unlike the universe, we, by our nature, reflect both on its ordering and our own. Indeed, therein our freedom flourishes!

Upon my own due reflection, it seems to me that we humans could freely reduce our actual world to a barren plain in which only stones remained, and not one upon another. Here, pace the Common Doctor, I would ardently wish for a legion of angels to replace a multiplicity of diverse rocks!

Nonetheless, I cannot close this post without cauterizing a pair of loose ends. The first is whether Fr. S returned from Georgetown. He did not, but he was free to do so. Gifted with the nature of a rational animal, he could consider alternative courses of actions and choose among them. The second, to take a single example, is whether a young lion could be at peace with a calf. Why, yes, it could happen. Might we not find a way to tranquilize the lion? Might we not find a dietary substitute for beef? (Note: Wittgenstein opines in his Philosophical Investigations that “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” But neither a drug nor a dietary adjustment could change the lion’s nature which, regardless of audible sounds, precludes intelligible speech.)

But, golly, all the above is the upshot of only one of my many chats with the Sons of Ignatius. What next? Maybe a student sampler?