ore can any other
creatures.

_I answer that,_ It sufficiently appears at the first glance,
according to what precedes (A. 1), that to create can be the action
of God alone. For the more universal effects must be reduced to the
more universal and prior causes. Now among all effects the most
universal is being itself: and hence it must be the proper effect of
the first and most universal cause, and that is God. Hence also it is
said (De Causis prop., iii) that "neither intelligence nor the soul
gives us being, except inasmuch as it works by divine operation." Now
to produce being absolutely, not as this or that being, belongs to
creation. Hence it is manifest that creation is the proper act of God
alone.

It happens, however, that something participates the proper action of
another, not by its own power, but instrumentally, inasmuch as it acts
by the power of another; as air can heat and ignite by the power of
fire. And so some have supposed that although creation is the proper
act of the universal cause, still some inferior cause acting by the
power of the first cause, can create. And thus Avicenna asserted that
the first separate substance created by God created another after
itself, and the substance of the world and its soul; and that the
substance of the world creates the matter of inferior bodies. And in
the same manner the Master says (Sent. iv, D, 5) that God can
communicate to a creature the power of creating, so that the latter
can create ministerially, not by its own power.

But such a thing cannot be, because the secondary instrumental cause
does not participate the action of the superior cause, except inasmuch
as by something proper to itself it acts dispositively to the effect
of the principal agent. If therefore it effects nothing, according to
what is proper to itself, it is used to no purpose; nor would there be
any need of certain instruments for certain actions. Thus we see that
a saw, in cutting wood, which it does by the property of its own form,
produces the form of a bench, which is the proper effect of the
principal agent. Now the proper effect of God creating is what is
presupposed to all other effects, and that is absolute being. Hence
nothing else can act dispositively and instrumentally to this effect,
since creation is not from anything presupposed, which can be disposed
by the action of the instrumental agent. So therefore it is impossible
for any creature to create, either by its own po