Forgive my ignorance: how do you know this?
To cite from Treatise on First Principle
4.13 The proof is this: The first efficient cause is a per se agent, for according to Physics, Bk. II, every incidental cause is preceded by one that is not incidental but per se. Now every per se agent acts for the sake of an end. From this I draw a double argument: First, that every natural agent, considered precisely as natural, acts of necessity and would act just as it does now even if it had no end but was an independent agent. Therefore, if it acts only because of an end, this is so only because it depends upon an agent which loves the end. Therefore, etc. The second argument is this: If the first agent acts for the sake of an end, then this end moves the first efficient cause either as loved by an act of the will (in which case we have what we set out to prove) or else as loved naturally. But the latter is not the case, for the first agent loves naturally no end other than itself, as matter, for instance, naturally loves form or the heavy object the center [of the earth]. If it did the first agent would be oriented to it as an end, since it is inclined to it by its very nature. But if this end which it loves naturally is nothing other than itself, then we assert nothing more than that the thing is itself. In which case the twofold [causal] aspect would no longer be preserved.
4.14 Likewise, the first efficient cause directs its effect to some end. Therefore it does so either naturally or by consciously loving this end. It is not in the first way, because whatever lacks knowledge can direct something to an end only in virtue of something which does possess knowledge, for “to order ultimately” pertains to wisdom. What is first, however, does not direct in virtue of anything else, just as it does not cause in virtue of anything else.
4.15 Likewise, something causes contingently. Therefore the first cause causes contingently; consequently it causes voluntarily. Proof of the first implication: Every secondary cause causes insofar as it is moved by the first cause. If the first cause moves necessarily then every [other] cause is moved necessarily and everything is necessarily caused. Proof of the second implication: The only source of contingent action is either the will or something accompanied by the will. Every other cause acts by a necessity of its nature and consequently not contingently.
4.16 Objections: * To the first implication: Our volition would still be able to cause something contingently. 121 Furthermore, the Philosopher concedes the antecedent [that something is caused contingently] yet denies the consequent so far as God’s willing is concerned. For he assumes a contingency in things below which stems from motion. Though motion is caused necessarily insofar as it is uniform, it gives rise to difformity, and so to contingency, by reason of its parts. [3] To the second implication it is objected that it is possible to impede some things in motion and thus the opposite can occur contingently.
4.17 To the first objection, if God is the first efficient cause as regards our will, then the same holds for our will as for other things, for whether God moves our will immediately with necessity or whether he first moves something else necessarily and this latter in turn moves our will with necessity, in any case what is proximate to the will move it necessarily, and thus it would will necessarily and would be necessarily willing. And still another absurdity would follow, viz. that it would cause necessarily what it causes by willing.
4.18 As to the second objection, I do not call everything contingent which is not necessary and which was not always in existence, but only that whose opposite could have occurred at the time that this actually did. That is why I do not say that something is contingent but that something is caused contingently. Now I maintain that the Philosopher could not deny the consequent and still save the antecedent through the expedient of motion, because if the motion as a whole proceeds from its cause in a necessary manner, every single part of it is caused necessarily at the time it occurs. In other words it is inevitable, so that the opposite effect could not possibly be caused at just this moment. Furthermore, whatever is caused by any part of this motion is caused necessarily at the time it occurs and hence it occurs inevitably. Therefore either nothing ever happens contingently, that is, unavoidably, or else contingency is there at the very outset in that even the immediate effects of the first cause are such that it was possible for them not to be caused.
4.19 As for the third objection: If another cause can impede this one, it can do so now in virtue of a higher cause, and so on all the way back to the first cause. If the latter necessarily moves the cause immediately below it, this necessity will prevail throughout the whole chain of causes, right down to the impeding cause which will impede necessarily. At that time, therefore, the other cause could not contingently cause its effect.
CONTINUED…*
