Having introduced logic, cosmology, and psychology, we will now introduce the fourth discipline in our program of Philosophia Perennis: ethics. We have already said (but it would not hurt to review) that with the Greeks there were three parts to philosophy, three divisions of philosophic thought. They are logic, physics ( or cosmology) and ethics. They are all derived from Greek words meaning respectively, thought, nature, and behavior. Our present course is the last of these three, ethics. It is the study of human behavior. The corresponding Latin name is philosophia moralis (moral philosophy). These three Greek divisions correspond to three very fundamental verbs in any language: To know, to be, and to do. Logic deals with the processes of knowledge. Physics studies what is; and since everything that is must have a nature, we call physics the philosophy of nature. Lastly, ethics deals with what man does or ought to do. Since the conclusions in ethics presuppose and depend upon conclusions from the previous courses, it is fitting that we give a brief review of what we have discussed previously. This review will show how all of the other disciplines lead to ethics.

We saw that the word "nature" can be used in two ways. Every physical entity — from a little grain of gold to a molecule of water, to a tree, to a fish — every one of these is a physical entity, what the philosophers call an unum per se. All these form part of what is real — reality. Physics is the study of reality, and that which is real has a nature. When we put all the natures of all the real things together, we have the order of nature. It is important to know that when we put them together they do form an order (the universe), and that is the reason why physics is also called cosmology (the study of the cosmos, or universe). The reality of order in the universe is one of the things that a philosophic study of nature teaches us. We then speak of nature in a larger sense, in the more common understanding of "the study of nature," the understanding of all things put together, of the whole universe with all the realities that are in it.

So in physics (or cosmology) we study the different types of substance. We learn that every material substance is a composite of matter and form. The true philosophy of material reality, which philosophers call hylomorphism, gives us, if we properly understand it, the concepts of order and of purpose. If we see order and purpose in reality, it leads us in the direction of the ultimate cause. The climax of the course in cosmology, then, is to prepare the mind for the knowledge of God.

We find that every material thing is contingent. That is a term that one of the great philosophers of our century Etienne Gilson (1884 - 1978) used to emphasize in his philosophy. He spoke of the radical contingency of every thing in the material universe. A contingent being is a being that in its very existence depends on one thing or on another. We are all examples of contingent beings. Correct philosophic thought will lead us to know that if there is one contingent being there must be one being that is not contingent. We should try to grasp the truth of this very deep philosophic judgment, since so much depends on it. Out of the contingency of what we are and what our world is we get a concept of a Being that is beyond contingency, a being that is not dependent on any other. This, of course, is God. A philosopher thinking correctly, using the powers that were given to him the way they should be used, has to reach a knowledge of God. This has always been true philosophically; now it is even a dogma of the Faith. Vatican I defined it as a dogma, with anathema attached to one who denies it. Here is the infallible pronouncement:

"If anyone shall have said that the one true God, our Creator and our Lord, cannot be known with certitude by those things which have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema. (Denz. 1806)

On this account Holy Scripture says, "The fool said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ (Psalm 13:1)" If we consider the world today, seeing that most of the powers running it are atheists, we can conclude that we are being run by fools. Holy Scripture also says, "The number of fools is infinite (Eccles. 1:15)." So, if one tries to become a wise man (and that is our goal), then he is going to be in the minority, the minority that counts.

We then learned that in the study of nature we are led to that tremendously important phenomenon called life. It is so important that it is its own study; the philosophers call it psychology. Psychology in the philosophic sense is the study of the psyche, which means the soul. And everything living must have a soul, the soul being defined as the principle of life in a material being.

In other words, in the course of psychology we graduate from the study of a material entity that could be alive or not alive, into the study of one that is alive. And in psychology we learn concepts like "soul" and "spirit." As we said before, most people think that the two words mean the same thing. And to many people today neither of them means anything. But the words do mean very much, and they are very distinct concepts. A good way to see the distinction is to put it like this: Not only men have souls, but even trees have souls. Anything alive must have a cause, a principle of its vital activities. An angel is not a soul. An angel is indeed something living . It is living and existing, but by a life not dependent on matter. An angel is an immaterial living being. Birds, fishes and trees have souls, but these souls are not spirits. The angels are spirits, but they are not souls. In man those two realities meet. In man there is a soul but that soul is spiritual. That is one of the great truths that psychology teaches, and here we mean true psychology, that which is part of philosophia perennis, and part of eternal wisdom.

Were we to tell most people that plants have souls, they would think we were implying that when it dies a tree will go to heaven or hell. This is not what we are saying. What happens to the souls of trees — and for that matter, of animals — when they die? The philosophers say that they return to the potency of matter. The non-spiritual souls, even though they are substantial forms, behave in this regard like accidental forms. Let us take for example a snowball — what happens to its roundness, its spherical shape, when the snow melts? It returns to the potency of matter. Why? Because shape is dependent on matter; it has no existence apart from matter. In the same way, souls that are not spiritual have absolutely no independence, no superiority over matter. Therefore, when the material body is unfit for that kind of a nature, the substantial form in it (the soul) ceases to be except as potency in matter. Every soul is a substantial form. But not every substantial form is a soul. The substantial form of a living man is what makes the matter a human body. It is the cause of why the body digests its food, of why it breathes, of why it feels, and of why it thinks. The same principle in a man that is capable of saying a prayer is also the thing that keeps his blood flowing as long as he is alive.

We have been noticing what great truths philosophic psychology leads us to, and what necessary foundations for a philosophy of ethics these truths are. We can prove by reason the spirituality and immortality of the human soul, and will do that in due time. We can prove that the human soul can subsist even apart from the body, but always with a kind of proclivity to return, to be united with it. But we cannot prove from natural philosophy that there will be a resurrection of the body. That is a purely supernatural truth that we take only on Faith. We would never know it, were it not for the revelation that comes to us from God. All that we can know by reason is that, when we die our souls will continue to exist. They will be everlasting. They will continue forever. What we would not know is that those souls will return to animate the body. For that we need God’s revelation, which clearly affirms the truth of the resurrection of the body.

Only when we realize the Omnipotence of God can we make the resurrection of t
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