e
laden, it is necessary that it go more slowly; and experiments on the
impact of bodies, as well as reason, show that twice as much force [141]
must be employed to give equal speed to a body of the same matter but of
twice the size. But that indeed would not be necessary if the matter were
absolutely indifferent to repose and to movement, and if it had not this
natural inertia whereof we have just spoken to give it a kind of repugnance
to being moved. Let us now compare the force which the current exercises on
boats, and communicates to them, with the action of God, who produces and
conserves whatever is positive in creatures, and gives them perfection,
being and force: let us compare, I say, the inertia of matter with the
natural imperfection of creatures, and the slowness of the laden boat with
the defects to be found in the qualities and the action of the creature;
and we shall find that there is nothing so just as this comparison. The
current is the cause of the boat's movement, but not of its retardation;
God is the cause of perfection in the nature and the actions of the
creature, but the limitation of the receptivity of the creature is the
cause of the defects there are in its action. Thus the Platonists, St.
Augustine and the Schoolmen were right to say that God is the cause of the
material element of evil which lies in the positive, and not of the formal
element, which lies in privation. Even so one may say that the current is
the cause of the material element of the retardation, but not of the
formal: that is, it is the cause of the boat's speed without being the
cause of the limits to this speed. And God is no more the cause of sin than
the river's current is the cause of the retardation of the boat. Force also
in relation to matter is as the spirit in relation to the flesh; the spirit
is willing and the flesh is weak, and spirits act...

_quantum non noxia corpora tardant._

31. There is, then, a wholly similar relation between such and such an
action of God, and such and such a passion or reception of the creature,
which in the ordinary course of things is perfected only in proportion to
its 'receptivity', such is the term used. And when it is said that the
creature depends upon God in so far as it exists and in so far as it acts,
and even that conservation is a continual creation, this is true in that
God gives ever to the creature and produces continually all that in it is
positive, good and perfect