CRITIQUE OF MALEBRANCHES OCCASIONALISM

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2017.

The Occasionalism of Malebranche

The occasionalism of the rationalist Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715)1 rejects the proper
role of secondary efficient causality in creatures.2 It denies finite, creatural efficient causality
and ascribes all real efficient causality to God alone within a framework of finite, creatural
1
Studies on Malebranche: H. GOUHIER, La vocation de Malebranche, Librairie Philosophique, Vrin, Paris, 1926 ;
H. GOUHIER, La philosophie de Malebranche et son exprience religieuse, Librairie Philosophique, Vrin, Paris,
1928 ; R. W. CHURCH, A Study in the Philosophy of Malebranche, Allen and Unwin, London, 1931 ; A.
CUVILLIER, Essai sur la mystique de Malebranche, Vrin, Paris, 1954 ; M. GUROULT, Malebranche, 3 vols.,
Aubier, Paris, 1955-1959 ; P. BLANCHARD, Lattention Dieu selon Malebranche, mthode et doctrine, Descle
de Brouwer, Paris, 1956 ; G. DREYFUS, La volont selon Malebranche, Vrin, Paris, 1958 ; S. NICOLOSI,
Causalit divina e libert umana nel pensiero di Malebranche, CEDAM, Padua, 1963 ; G. RODIS-LEWIS,
Nicholas Malebranche, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1963 ; S. BANCHETTI, Il pensiero e lopera di N.
Malebranche, Marzorati, Milan, 1963 ; B. K. ROME, The Philosophy of Malebranche: A Study of His Integration of
Faith, Reason and Experimental Observation, Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1963 ; L. VERGA, La filosofia morale di
Malebranche, Vita e Pensiero, Milan, 1964 ; A. DE MARIA, Antropologia e teodicea di Malebranche, Ed. di
Filosofia, Turin, 1970 ; D. RADNER, Malebranche: A Study of a Cartesian System, Van Gorcum, Assen, 1978 ;
M. E. HOBART, Science and Religion in the Thought of Nicolas Malebranche, University of North Carolina Press,
Chapel Hill, 1982 ; C. J. McCRACKEN, Malebranche and British Philosophy, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983 ;
S. BROWN (ed.), Nicholas Malebranche: His Philosophical Critics and Successors, Van Gorcum, Assen, 1991 ; S.
NADLER, Malebranche and Ideas, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992 ; R. A. WATSON and M. GRENE,
Malebranches First and Last Critics: Simon Foucher and Dortius de Mairan, Southern Illinois University Press,
Carbondale, IL, 1995 ; T. SCHMALTZ, Malebranches Theory of the Soul: A Cartesian Interpretation, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1996 ; S. NADLER (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2000 ; D. SCOTT, On Malebranche, Cengage Learning, Boston, 2001 ; A. PYLE,
Malebranche, Routledge, London, 2003 ; R. J. FAFARA, The Malebranche Moment: Selections from the Letters of
Etienne Gilson & Henri Gouhier 1920-1936 (Marquette Studies in Philosophy), Marquette University Press,
Milwaukee, 2007 ; S. PEPPERS-BATES, Nicholas Malebranche: Freedom in an Occasionalist World, Continuum,
London, 2009 ; C. MOISUC, Mtaphysique et thologie chez Nicolas Malebranche, Zeta Books, Bucharest,
Romania, 2015 ; W. C. SWABEY, The Philosophy of Malebranche, Leopold Classic Library, South Yarra, Victoria
(Australia), 2016.
2
Studies on Malebranches occasionalism: S. NADLER, Occasionalism and the General Will in Malebranche,
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 31 (1993), pp. 31-47 ; D. CLARKE, Malebranche and Occasionalism: A
Reply to Steven Nadler, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33 (1995), 499-504 ; S. NADLER, Malebranches
Occasionalism: A Reply to Clarke, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33 (1995), pp. 505-508 ; S. NADLER,
Malebranche on Causation, in The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, edited by S. Nadler, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 112-138 ; N. JOLLEY, Occasionalism and Efficacious Laws in
Malebranche, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 26 (2002), pp. 245-257 ; K. DETLEFSEN, Supernaturalism,
Occasionalism and Preformation in Malebranche, Perspectives on Science, 11.4 (2003), pp. 443-483 ; A.
BAKER, Malebranches Occasionalism: A Strategic Reinterpretation, American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly, 79.2 (2005), pp. 251-272 ; S. LEE, Passive Natures and No Representations: Malebranches Two
Local Arguments for Occasionalism, The Harvard Review of Philosophy, 15 (2007), pp. 72-91 ; D. CUNNING,
Malebranche and Occasional Causes, Philosophy Compass, 3 (2008), pp. 471-490 ; S. LEE, Necessary
Connections and Continuous Creation: Malebranches Two Arguments for Occasionalism, Journal of the History
of Philosophy, 46 (2008), pp. 539-566 ; T. M. SCHMALTZ, Occasionalism and Mechanism: Fontenelles
Objections to Malebranche, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 16 (2008), pp. 293-313 ; A. R. J.
FISHER, Causal and Logical Necessity in Malebranches Occasionalism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 41.4
(2011), pp. 523-548.

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occasions. All efficient causal power would belong to God alone. The scholastic doctrine of the
secondary efficient causality of creatures and their various active powers, Malebranche thought,
was a carry over from paganism and he believed that it was his mission to purge the Greek
paganizing influence from the Christian religion, so that all religious devotion would be directed
to God alone. Eliminating the role of secondary efficient causality in creatures he maintained that
all the forces of nature are nothing but the will of (the solely efficacious) God.3 God, for
Malebranche, is the only true efficient cause; creatures cannot be true efficient causes since to
cause, for him, is to create,4 and the act of creation belongs solely to God, but he adds that the
Supreme Beings laws of motion are ineffective until determined by particular circumstances or
finite modes of soul (which Malebranche really means mind [lesprit]5, not soul in the
Aristotelian or Thomistic sense of substantial form of the body) and body, finite beings (entia)
providing the indispensable occasions for enabling Gods power to operate in the real, actual
world along definite lines. For Malebranche, Gods efficient causality his giving of that
mysterious, ultimate actual principle, source of all qualities as well as quantities, the act of esse
is translated into the clear and distinct terms of the geometrized philosophy by making God
simply the necessary and universal source of all movement. Movement is the only idea that will
accord with the clear and distinct idea of extension. Yet, adds Malebranche, when we consider
still closer, we see that there is nothing in the notion of extension that inevitably suggests motion.
Not only cannot body act on spirit, nor spirit on body, but body cannot act on body, for there is
nothing in the idea of material extension that would make it of its very nature possessed of
motion. All motion must derive from the ultimate efficacious principle, God. Moreover, there is
another reason for saying this, over and beyond the notional consideration of extension; namely,
the fact that every efficacity, no matter how small one suppose it, has something of the infinite
and the divine. Only God is cause. To act is to produce a new being, something which did not
yet exist; in other words, it is really to create. And creation is proper only to God.

Malebranche, then, would reduce all efficacity to movement and reabsorb all movement
into the single-univocal source of all creativity, God. There is only the Creator who can be the
mover. But what about all the actions of nature going on about us? If movement is creative, and
since only God can create, it might at first glance seem that the slightest trembling of a leaf or the
least flicker of a sensation in a human body would require for its explanation a special divine
fiat. Malebranche will not accept the scholastic notion of a creation of natures endowed with
some efficacity of their ownthe notion of a nature able to operate and cause by itself
Nevertheless, Malebranche will admit that creation is endowed with a certain structure. For God
has deigned to move according to a series of general laws of motion, or volonts gnrales,
covering every sphere of activity and eliminating the need for a special divine intervention at
each moment. God has decreed that his activity proceed always in a manner regulated, constant
and uniform (as befits a reasonable world); therefore he consents to act regularly, as the
occasion demands, we might say.6 But what is the occasion that demands? Precisely the
general laws set down for how each sphere of reality should act under certain circumstances. Just

3
N. MALEBRANCHE, The Search after Truth, 7, 2, 3.
4
Cf. M. FAZIO and D. GAMARRA, Introduzione alla storia della filosofia moderna, Apollinare Studi, Rome,
1994, p. 89.
5
Cf. F. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, Book II, vol. 4, Image Doubleday, New York, 1985, pp. 188-190
6
Cf. N. MALEBRANCHE, Trait de la nature et de la grce, 2me discours, Part I, art. 3.

2
what this means will become clearer if we consider the various sorts of laws, or general kinds of
occasions, that govern respective areas.

First, there are the general laws of the communications of movement, putting some
structures into the movements of bodies. The shocks of bodies are the occasions, in this area,
according to which the divine power moves. Secondly, there are the laws governing the union of
soul and body. A movement in the body is the occasion for God to create a corresponding
movement in the soul; just as, reciprocally, my thought that I should live to move a leg provides
the law according to which God will regularly send forth his efficacity to move a limb. A third
sort of occasional relation exists between the human soul and the divine source of all universal
Reason. Here the occasion is our attention; that is to say, on the occasion of my attention being
brought to bear on an eternal truth God will move to present that truth to the soul. Movements of
physical bodies, reciprocal movements of the human soul and its body, and the movements of the
spirit are all regular, uniform, intelligible, because God has deigned to make of his all-englobing
creative activity not an arbitrary chaos, but the orderly and reasonable movement of the Creator
of a universe.7

Malebranche makes use of his occasionalism in order to attempt to resolve the

philosophical problem of the soul-body relationship. He holds that res cogitans and res extensa
cannot directly interact with one another. For Malebranche, the mind cannot cause the body to
move and act, nor can res extensa cause changes in res cogitans since he stresses that God alone
is the true cause. Copleston notes that Malebranche accepted the Cartesian dichotomy between
spirit and matter, thought and extension; and he drew the conclusion that neither can act directly
on the other. He speaks, indeed, of the soul (lme), but this term does not mean soul in the
Aristotelian sense; it means the mind (lesprit). And although he speaks of the souls dependence
on the body and of the close union between them, his theory is that mind and body are two things
between which there is correspondence but not interaction. The mind thinks, but it does not,
properly speaking, move the body. And the body is a machine adapted indeed by God to the soul,
but not informed by it according to the Aristotelian sense of the term. True, he traces at length
the correspondence between physical and psychic events, between, for example, modifications in
the brain and modifications in the soul. But what he has in mind is psycho-physical parallelism
rather than interaction.8 For Malebranche, the dispositions of the body and the soul serve only
as occasions for the intervention of God, who directly and exclusively causes all actions. All
operative activity comes solely from God. The human mind, for example, only seems to move the
human body; in reality, it is God alone who causes the actual movement. Corporeal beings seem
to be the real causes of movement in other things, for example, we see a dog actually moving a
small rubber ball to a corner of the living room with its nose, but for Malebranche, it is God
alone who actually causes the movement. Creatures are thus devoid of their own proper
secondary efficient causal activity, being merely occasions for the exercise of efficient causality
by the only true cause, God.

7
. GILSON and T. LANGAN, Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, Random House, New York, 1964, pp. 101-
102.
8
F. COPLESTON, op. cit., pp. 188-189.

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 Coffeys Critique of Malebranches Occasionalism

Peter Coffey gives us a critique of Malebranches occasionalism in his Ontology: (1)

Against the doctrine that creatures generally are not, and cannot be, efficient causes, we direct
the first argument already outlined9 against Phenomenism and Positivism, the argument from the
universal belief of mankind, based on the testimony of consciousness as rationally interpreted by
human intelligence. Consciousness testifies not merely that processes of thought, imagination,
sensation, volition, etc., take place within our minds; not merely that our bodily movements,
such as speaking, walking, writing, occur; but that we are the causes of them.10 It is idle to say
that we do not efficiently move our limbs because we may not be able to understand or explain
fully how an unextended volition can move a material limb.11 Consciousness testifies to the fact
that the volition does move the limb; and that is enough.12 The fact is one thing, the quomodo of
the fact is quite another thing. Nor is there any ground whatever for the assertion that a cause, in
order to produce an effect, must understand how the exercise of its own efficiency brings that
effect about. Moreover, Malebranches concession of at least immanent activity to the will is at
all events an admission that there is in the nature of the creature as such nothing incompatible
with its being an efficient cause.

(2) Although Malebranche bases his philosophy mainly on deductive, a priori

reasonings from a consideration of the Divine attributes, his system is really derogatory to the
perfection of the First Cause, and especially to the Divine Wisdom. To say, for instance, that
God created an organ so well adapted to discharge the function of seeing as the human eye, and
then to deny that the latter discharges this or any function, is tantamount to accusing God of
folly. There is no reason in this system why any created thing or condition of things would be
even the appropriate occasion of the First Cause producing any definite effect. Every thing
would be an equally appropriate occasion, or rather nothing would be in any intelligible sense an
appropriate occasion, for any exercise of the Divine causality. The admirable order of the
universe with its unity in variety, its adaptation of means to ends, its gradation of created
perfections is an intelligible manifestation of the Divine perfections on the assumption that
creatures efficiently co-operate with the First Cause in realizing and maintaining this order. But
if they were all inert, inoperative, useless for this purpose, what could be the raison dtre of
their diversified endowments and perfections? So far from manifesting the wisdom, power and
goodness of God they would evidence an aimless and senseless prodigality.

(3) Occasionalism imperils the distinction between creatures and a personal God.
Although Malebranche protested against the pantheism of le misrable Spinoza, his own
system contains the undeveloped germ of this pernicious error. For, if creatures are not efficient

9
Section 100.
10
We may reasonably ask the occasionalist to suppose for the moment that we are efficient causes of our mental
processes and to tell us what better proof of it could he demand, or what better proof could be forthcoming, than this
proof from consciousness.
11
M. MAHER, Psychology, ch. X., p. 220.
12
Should anyone doubt that consciousness does testify to this fact, we may prove it inductively from the constant
correlation between the mental state and the bodily movement: I will to move my arm, it moves; I will that it
remain at rest, it does not move; I will that its movement be more or less strong and rapid, the strength and rapidity
vary with the determination of my will. What more complete inductive proof can we have of the efficiency of our
will-action on the external world?(D. MERCIER, op. cit., section 231).

4
causes not only are their variety and multiplicity meaningless, as contributing nothing towards
the order of the universe, but their very existence as distinct realities seems to have no raison
dtre. Malebranche emphasizes the truth that God does nothing useless; Dieu ne fait rien
dinutile. Very well. If, then, a being does nothing, what purpose is served by its existence? Of
what use is it? What is the measure of a creatures reality, if not its action and its power of
action? So intimately in fact is this notion of causality bound up with the notion of the very
reality of things that the concept of an absolutely inert, inactive reality is scarcely intelligible. It
is almost an axiom in scholastic philosophy that every nature has its correlative activity, every
being its operation: Omne ens est propter suam operationem; Omnis natura ordinatur ad
propriam operationem. Hence if what we call creatures had really no proper activity distinct
from that of the First Cause, on what grounds could we suppose them to have a real and proper
existence of their own distinct from the reality of the Infinite Being? Or who could question the
lawfulness of the inference that they are not really creatures, but only so many phases, aspects,
manifestations of the one and sole existing reality? Which is Pantheism.

(4) Occasionalism leads to Subjective Idealism by destroying all ground for the
objective validity of human science. How do we know the real natures of things? By reasoning
from their activities in virtue of the principle, Operari sequitur esse.13 But if things have no
activities, no operations, such reasoning is illusory

It only remains to answer certain difficulties urged by occasionalists against the

possibility of attributing real efficiency to creatures.

(1) They argue that efficient causality is something essentially Divine, and therefore
cannot be communicated to creatures. We reply that while the absolutely independent causality
of the First Cause is essentially Divine, another kind or order of causality, dependent on the
former, but none the less real, can be and is communicated to creatures. And just as the fact that
creatures have real being, real existence, distinct from, but dependent on, the existence of the
Infinite Being, does not derogate from the supremacy of the latter, so the fact that creatures have
real efficient causality, distinct from, but dependent on, the causality of the First Cause, does not
derogate from the latters supremacy.

(2) They urge that efficient causality is creative, and therefore infinite and
incommunicable.

We reply that there is a plain distinction between creative activity and the efficient
activity we claim for creatures. Creation is the production of new being from nothingness. God
alone, the Infinite Being, can create; and, furthermore, according to the common view of Theistic
philosophers a creature cannot even be an instrument of the First Cause in this production of new
being from nothingness. And the main reason for this appears to be that the efficiency of the
creature, acting, of course, with the Divine concursus, necessarily presupposes some pre-existing
being as material on which to operate, and is confined to the change or determination of new
forms or modes of this pre-existing reality. Such efficiency, subordinate to the Divine concursus
and limited to such an order of effects, is plainly distinct from creative activity.

13
Cf. Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 69.

5
 (3) But the creature, acting with the Divine concursus, either contributes something real
and positive to the effect or contributes nothing. The former alternative is inadmissible, for God
is the cause of everything real and positive: omne novum ens est a Deo. And in the latter
alternative, which is the true one, the concursus is superfluous; God does all; and creatures are
not really efficient causes.

We reply that the former alternative, not the latter, is the true one. But the former
alternative does not imply that the creature produces any new reality independently of the First
Cause; nor is it incompatible with the truth that God is the author and cause of all positive
reality: omne novum ens est a Deo. No doubt, were we to conceive the co-operation of God and
the creature after the manner of the co-operation of two partial causes of the same order,
producing by their joint efficiency some one total effect like the co-operation of two horses
drawing a cart, it would follow that the creatures share of the joint effect would be independent
of the Divine concursus and attributable to the creature alone, that the creature would produce
some reality independently of the First Cause. But that is not the way in which the First Cause
concurs with created causes. They are not partial causes of the same order. Each is a total cause
in its own order. They so co-operate that God, besides having created and now conserving the
second cause, and moving the latters power to act, produces Himself the whole effect directly
and immediately by the efficiency of His concursus; while at the same time the second cause,
thus reduced to act, and acting with the concursus, also directly and immediately produces the
whole effect. There is one effect, one change in facto esse, one change in fieri, and therefore one
action as considered in the subject changed, since the action takes place in this latter: actio fit in
passo. This change, this action considered thus passively, or in passo; is the total term of each
efficiency, the Divine and the created, not partly of the one and partly of the other. It is one and
indivisible; it is wholly due to, and wholly attained by, each efficiency; not, however, under the
same formal aspect. We may distinguish in it two formalities: it is a novum ens, a new actuality,
something positive and actual superadded to the existing order of real, contingent being; but it is
not being in general or actuality in general, it is some specifically, nay individually,
determinate mode of actuality or actual being. We have seen that it is precisely because every
real effect has the former aspect that it demands for its adequate explanation, and as its only
intelligible source, the presence and influence of a purely actual, unchanging, infinite,
inexhaustible productive principle of all actual contingent reality: hence the necessity and
efficacy of the Divine concursus. And similarly it is because the new actuality involved in every
change is an individually definite mode of actuality that we can detect in it the need for, and the
efficacy of, the created cause: the nature of this latter, the character and scope and intensity of its
active power is what determines the individuality of the total result, to the total production of
which it has by the aid of the Divine concursus attained.

(4) But God can Himself produce the total result under both formalities without any
efficiency of the creature. Therefore the difficulty remains that the latter efficiency is superfluous
and useless: and entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

We reply that as a matter of fact the effects produced in the ordinary course of nature are
produced by God under both formalities; but also by the created cause under both formalities:
inasmuch as the formalities are but mentally distinct aspects of one real result which is, as
regards its extrinsic causes, individual and indivisible. The distinction of these formal aspects

6
only helps us to realize how de facto such an effect is due to the cooperation of the First Cause
and created causes. That God could produce all such effects without any created causes we must
distinguish. Some such effects He could not produce without created causes, for such production
would be self-contradictory. He could not produce, for instance, a volition except as the act of a
created will, or a thought except as the act of a created intellect, or a vital change except as the
act of a living creature. But apart from such cases which would involve an intrinsic impossibility,
God could of course produce, without created agents, the effects which He does produce through
their created efficiency. It is, however, not a question of what could be, but of what actually is.
And we think that the arguments already set forth prove conclusively that creatures are not de
facto the inert, inactive, aimless and unmeaning things they would be if Occasionalism were the
true interpretation of the universe of our actual experience; but that these creatures are in a true
sense efficient causes, and that just as by their very co-existence with God, as contingent beings,
they do not derogate from His Infinite Actuality but rather show forth His Infinity, so by their co-
operation with Him as subordinate and dependent efficient causes they do not derogate from His
supremacy as First Cause, but rather show forth the infinite and inexhaustible riches of His
Wisdom and Omnipotence.14

Renards Critique of Occasionalism

Henri Renard critiques occasionalism in his Philosophy of Being as follows: A good

number of philosophers have thought that only the Supreme Being could be a cause in the true
sense of the word; what we call the action of creatures was not causative action. Hence, their
actions could at best be said to be merely occasions for the manifestations of Gods actions. This
doctrine has been called Occasionalism and its exponents, Occasionalists.

The most celebrated of the Occasionalists was Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715)

Because of Cartesian exaggerated dualism and the consequent impossibility of interaction
between mind and body, he proposed the doctrine called Occasionalism. According to
Malebranche the very concept of cause indicates something divine. For him, therefore, the most
dangerous of all errors in philosophy is to attribute causality to creatures whether spiritual or
corporeal. Even men cannot be said to be the true cause of the motion of their own bodies. Only
the will of the infinite being is the true cause. Consequently, Malebranche held that there is only
one cause, God; that there is no moving force, vis motrix, in created things; that what we call
natural causes are only occasions which determine the Author of nature to act in such or such a
manner.15

Causality of Creatures. Before giving a formal refutation of the doctrine of the

Occasionalists, it is of the greatest importance to establish a clear-cut distinction between the
cause of the to be and the cause of becoming. Only God, says St. Thomas, can cause the to
be. Thus, inferior agents, creatures are causes of things in the natural order in so far as regards
their becoming, but not in regard to their to be if we would speak exactly. God, however, of
Himself is the cause of the to be.16 And in the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 104, a. 1, c., he explains

14
P. COFFEY, Ontology, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1926, pp. 398-403.
15
Cf. N. MALEBRANCHE, De la recherche de la vrit, Book 6, ch. 3, p. 2.
16
Huiusmodi inferiora agentia (creaturae) sunt causae rerum (naturalium) quantum ad earum fieri, non quantum
ad esse eorum per se loquendo. Deus autem per se est causa essendi(De Pot., V, 1, ad 4).

7
the reason for this assertion. After having given the example of a house that is being built, he
shows that the agent (in this case, the builder) is the cause of the becoming and not of the to
be of the house. He then continues: The same principle applies to natural things. For if an agent
is not the cause of a form as such, neither will it be the cause of the to be which results from
that form, but it will be the cause of the effect in its becoming only. Now it is clear that of two
things in the same species, one cannot directly cause the others form as such, since it would be
then the cause of its own form, which is essentially the same as the form of the other; but it can
be the cause of the others form inasmuch as this form is in matter, that is, in order that this
matter receive this form. And to be a cause of this manner is to be the cause of becoming, as
when man begets man, and fire causes fire.

Creatures, then, are clearly real causes not of the to be but of the becoming. By means
of these quotations from St. Thomas we may now show some of the erroneous suppositions of
the Occasionalists, and some of the absurdities that must follow from their false doctrine.

It is false to say that the true notion of cause must be said of God only, St. Thomas
declares: (1) Because the order of cause and effect would be taken away from created things; and
thus would imply lack of power in the Creator; for it is due to the power of the cause that it
bestows active power on its effect.17 (2) Because the active powers or faculties which are seen to
exist would be bestowedto no purposeIndeed, all things would seem to be purposeless, since
the purpose of everything is operation.18

In the third book of the Contra Gentiles, chapter sixty-nine, the Angelic Doctor
proposes many arguments against those who withdraw from natural things their proper actions.
The lack of space prevents us from mentioning more than a few. After explaining the tenets of
the Occasionalists, St. Thomas says: It is contrary to the notion of wisdom that any thing should
be done in vain in the works of a wise man. But if creatures did nothing at all toward the
production of effects, and God alone wrought everything immediately, other things would be
employed by him in vain for the production of effects. Therefore, the above position is
incompatible with divine wisdom.

Besides, he who gives a principle, gives everything naturally connected with that
principle [dat omnia quae consequuntur ad illud]. Now, to make a thing actual [actu] results
from being actual [esse actu] as we see in the case of God; for He is pure act, and also the first
cause of beingIf therefore He bestowed His likeness on others in respect of being, in so far as
He brought things into being, it follows that He also bestowed on them His likeness in the point
of acting, so that creatures too should have their proper actions

Besides, if effects be produced not by the act of creatures but only by the act of God,
the power of a created cause cannot possibly be indicated by its effect: since the effect is no
indication of the causes power, except by reason of the action which proceeds from the power
and terminates in the effect. Now the nature of a cause is not known from its effect except in so
far as this is an indication of its power which results from nature. Consequently, if creatures
exercise no action in producing effects [non habeant actiones ad producendum effectus], it will

17
Cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 22, a. 3, c.
18
Summa Theologiae, I, q. 105, a. 5, c.; cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 115, a. 1.

8
follow that the nature of a creature can never be known from its effect: and so all knowledge of
physical science would be denied us, for it is there that arguments from effects are chiefly
employed.19 Clearly then, not only God but creatures should be considered as real causes.20

Benignus Gerritys Critique of Occasionalism

Benignus Gerrity critiques occasionalism in his Nature, Knowledge, and God as follows:
When some philosophers and theologians, overwhelmed, as it were, by the universality and
intimacy of Gods operation and causality in natural things, made such use of this truth as to
deny that natural things have any operation or causality of their own, we find St. Thomas taking
a firm and unequivocal stand against them. God operates in every operation of His creatures and
produces the effects which they produce; nevertheless they, too, really operate and really
produce these effects: that is St. Thomas position.

This position was denied and attacked not only by philosophers and theologians of St.
Thomas own age but by some important modern philosophers, notably Nicolas Malebranche
and Gottfried Leibniz in the seventeenth century. Malebrance regarded the Thomistic view as a
species of naturalism. He denied all causality to corporeal substance; what seemed to be causal
action on the part of a material thing, as, for example, when one body sets another in motion, is
in truth only an occasion for God, the only cause, to cause the effect apparently produced by the
material thing.

Arguments Against the Reality of Secondary Causes. Those medievals who denied the
reality of the operation and causation of natural agents did so on either or both of two grounds:
(1) that natural beings, that is to say, corporeal things, are of their nature incapable of acting or of
producing any real effect; (2) that to attribute real activity and real causation to created beings is
to detract from the infinite power and activity of God. They supported the first proposition by the
argument that corporeal things, being the very lowest members of the order of being and most
remote from God, who is pure activity, must be pure passivity; hence they can only be acted
upon and cannot act. The arguments in support of the second proposition were many, but they all
reduce to one, namely, that since God operates in every operation and since His power is infinite,
it is superfluous and, in fact, contradictory to attribute any operation or any effect in any way to
any agent other than God.

Reply to These Arguments. In reply to the first set of arguments, St. Thomas gives the
following answers. (1) That which is lowest in being and most remote from God, and hence is
pure passivity, is not any actual corporeal substance, but is primary matter. Corporeal substances
are composites of substantial form and primary matter; because they possess form, which is the
principle of activity in anything, they can act; and because other corporeal substances possess
matter, which is the principle of passivity, they can act upon these other substances. (2) One
corporeal substance, acting upon another one, can induce in the latter, if it is suitably disposed, a
likeness of its own substantial form as well as of its own accidental forms; it can do this because
the forms of natural substances are not separated forms, as the Platonists held, and are not
brought into the substances from outside, but are educed by the generating agent from the

19
Summa Conra Gentiles, III, 69.
20
H. RENARD, The Philosophy of Being, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1950, pp. 132-136.

9
potentiality of the matter of the patient. The form which is potentially in the matter is moved to
actuality by the corporeal agent which already possesses it in actuality. Hence, corporeal agents
are real causes of the substances which they produce.21

To the second set of arguments the Angelic Doctor opposes one reply, which he repeats
as often as the arguments are put forward. God acts adequately in every operation of a created
agent, but He does so as first cause; and the operation of the created agent as second cause is not
on that account superfluous. The same effect may have two causes, each adequate in its own
order, as long as they are causes in distinct orders. In every operation of a created thing God is
the first and principal agent and cause, while the creature is the secondary and instrumental agent
and cause.22

Proofs of Secondary Causality. Having thus turned aside the arguments which pretend
to show that if God operates in all the operations of created things these things do not themselves
really operate, St. Thomas goes on to advance positive arguments showing why we must
attribute real activity and real causality to natural things. He treats the subject most fully in
Chapter 69 of Book III of the Summa Contra Gentiles. Here he advances several proofs, based
variously upon the principle that diverse effects come from diverse causes, upon the wisdom,
power and goodness of God, and upon the order of nature and the validity of natural science.

1. If God alone works in everything, His operation will not be diversified by any
diversity of secondary causes, since there will in fact be no secondary causes; hence there will be
no diversity of effects following from diverse causes. But this latter is just what we experience;
for freezing never follows from the application of heat, nor elm trees from acorns.

2. If God alone wrought everything, and created causes did nothing, their employment
by God in producing diverse effects would be futile and meaningless, which is certainly
incompatible with the divine wisdom. All the powers, forms, and forces of natural things would
be given to them in vain, for powers are to no purpose in a being which never operates.23

3. Those who wish to deny real causation to creatures think that by so doing they exalt
the power of God. In fact they detract from it; for they regard it as a power capable of producing
only an inert mechanical world, not an active organic one. They conceive of God as able to
produce only creatures which can be pushed around, but which cannot act. Instead of exalting
Gods power, they belittle it: The perfection of the effect indicates the perfection of the cause,
since a greater power produces a more perfect effect. Now God is the most perfect agent.
Therefore things created by Him must needs receive perfection from Him. Consequently to
detract from the creatures perfection is to detract from the perfection of the divine power. But if
no creature exercises an action for the production of an effect, much is detracted from the
perfection of the creature; because it is due to the abundance of its perfection that a thing is able
to communicate to another the perfection that it has. Therefore this opinion detracts from the
divine power.24

21
Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 69; De Potentia Dei, III, 7, c.
22
Summa Theologiae, I, q. 105, a. 5, ad 1 and ad 2; De Potentia Dei, III, 7, ad 3, ad 4 and ad 16.
23
Cf. De Pot., III, 7, c.
24
Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 69.

10
 4. Natural science is no more than the playful building of a pretty dream world if natural
things do not truly have their own powers, actions, and effects: If effects are not produced by
the action of created things but only by the action of God, it is impossible that the power of any
created cause should be manifested through effects; for an effect does not show the power of a
cause except by reason of an action which, proceeding from the power, terminates in the effect.
But the nature of a cause is not known through an effect except in so far as through the latter a
power is known which follows from the nature. If, therefore, created things do not have actions
producing effects, it follows that the nature of no created cause will ever be known through an
effect. And, consequently, we are deprived of all knowledge of natural science, in which, pre-
eminently, demonstrations are made through the effect.2526

Garrigou-Lagranges Critique of Occasionalism

William Turner observes that although Malebranche protested against the pantheism of
le misrable Spinoza, posterity has rightly pronounced his occasionalism to be Spinozism in the
stage of arrested development pantheism held in check by faith in Christian revelation.27 In
his critique of occasionalism, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. writes that, for the
occasionalists, God alone acts in all things, that it is not the fire that gives out heat but God in
the fire or that the fire is the occasion of this. If it were so, remarks St. Thomas, secondary causes
would not be causes and could not act, and their existence would be to no
purposeOccasionalism leads to Pantheism, for operation follows being; and the mode of
operation, the mode of being. If there were only one operation, the divine operation, then there
would be only one being; creatures are absorbed in God.28

Answer to Malebranche: The Causality of the First Efficient Cause (God) and the
Causality of Secondary Efficient Causes (Creatures)29

25
Ibid.
26
BENIGNUS GERRITY, Nature, Knowledge, and God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1947, pp. 587-591.
27
W. TURNER, History of Philosophy, Ginn and Co., Boston, 1929, p. 465.
28
R. GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, God: His Existence and His Nature, vol. 2, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1946, p. 146.
29
An efficient or agent cause is the primary principle or origin of an action which makes something simply to be, or
to be in a certain way. Explaining the limits of created causality and how, in the final analysis, secondary causes
(creatures) have need of a First Cause, God, Who is the cause of the act of being (esse), Alvira, Clavell and Melendo
write:
Becoming and Forms Constitute the Proper Object of the Efficient Causality of Creatures. The action of a
created agent is the cause of the coming into being (fieri) of the effect; however, it does not produce the being of
the effect as such. It effectively brings about the production of a new reality, (in the case of generation and
corruption) or the acquisition of a new mode of being by an already existing being (in accidental changes).
However, once the action of the natural agent ceases, the effect remains in its being, which reveals the effects
actual independence with respect to the cause which produced it. When an architect builds a house, for instance, he
imparts a new accidental form to already existing materials, making them suitable for dwelling. In this way, he
effectively brings about the construction of the building or its coming into being (becoming). Once the construction
activity is finished, however, the house preserves its being by virtue of certain principles which no longer depend on
the builder in any way. The same thing happens in the case of a new animal begotten by its progenitors.
The proper terminus of created causality, in the processes of generation and corruption, is the form, which is the
primary act of a corporeal substance. In the case of accidental changes, the terminus is a new accident of the
substance. The proper effect of the causality of creatures is always the eduction of a form. We can see this clearly if
we recall that a substance is a cause to the extent that it really influences its effect, or, in other words, to the extent
that the latter cannot exist if the former is suppressed. It is obvious, however, that what disappears when a created

11
efficient cause is removed is the process of in-forming some matter or the production of a new form, which is
where the influence of the agent of itself ends. The very reality of the effect, which continues in its own being, is not
eliminated.
Consequently, the created agent is not the sole or the absolute cause of its effect; rather, it is the cause of the
production of the effect. Generation, which is the most profound type of causality in material things, has to be
considered as a via in esse or as the way by which an effect comes to be, namely, by receiving a new substantial
form. Consequently, when the action of the agent in generation is removed, the transition from potency to act,
which is the coming into being (fieri) of the begotten, ceases, but the form itself, through which the begotten has the
act of being, does not cease. Hence, when the action of the agent in generation ceases, the being of the things
produced persists, but not their becoming (De Potentia Dei, q. 5, a. 1, c.).
Creatures are Particular Causes of Their Effects. The finitude of created causes becomes even more manifest as
we take into account the way in which they act:
a) Natural agents always act by transforming something. Both in the case of accidental changes and the
production of a new being, creatures act by merely altering an already existing reality.
b) Hence, in their activity, created causes presuppose a preexisting object. If they are bringing about an
accidental change, they need an actually existing subject that will be affected by this modification. If they are
generating a new substance, they also need prime matter from which they can educe the new substantial form, while
divesting it of the form it previously had. Fire engenders fire in another material substance; plants grow from seeds,
with the help of some other elements provided to them by their material surroundings. Animals beget their offspring
by means of their own bodies.
c) The efficient causality of finite beings is limited by their own active capacity and by the conditions of the
subject on which they act. It is evident that one cannot produce more perfection than what he himself possesses (no
one can transmit knowledge which he does not have or generate a substantial form different from his own). Besides,
the efficient power of a cause is restricted by the potentiality of the matter which it transforms or influences. No
matter how intelligent a scientist may be, he can never transmit more knowledge than what his students are able to
grasp. Similarly, the skill of a sculptor is hampered by the poor quality of the marble be carves.
d) Consequently, the act of being of their effects is not the immediate and proper effect of the causality of
creatures. The causality of a creature cannot account for the effect in its totality; it can do so only for some of its
perfections, which the efficient cause is able to impart, and the subject, because of its conditions, is able to receive.
Consequently, no created cause produces the total being of its effect. Even in the case of generation, it does not
produce being from absolute non-being (from nothingness); rather, it produces this thing from something which was
not this thing. This is how a new plant grows from seed.
What the created cause immediately and directly influences is the effects manner of being, (as a substance or as
an accident), rather than its act of being. Strictly speaking, its causal influence ends in the form. A horse, for
instance, is the immediate cause, not of the colts being (its having the act of being), but of its being a colt.
This does not mean that the created cause does not influence the being of the effect (otherwise it would not
really be a cause). It truly does, but in an indirect and mediate fashion, that is, through the form, which is its proper
effect. No creature can be a cause of being as such, since its activity always presupposes something which already is
or has the act of being (esse). Created agents are not the cause of the act of being as such, but of being this of
being a man, or being white, for example. The act of being, as such, presupposes nothing, since nothing can preexist
that is outside being as such. Through the activity of creatures, this being or a manner of being of this thing is
produced; for out of a preexistent being, this new being or a new manner of being of it comes about(Summa Contra
Gentiles, II, 21).
Hence, it must be said that in relation to the act of being, created causes are always particular causes; in other
words, they attain their effect not insofar as it is being but only insofar as it is a particular kind of being. Besides,
everything acts to the extent that it is actual, and since creatures possess a limited act of being (they are not pure act
of being), they necessarily have to cause limited effects in the ontological order.
Created Causality Requires a First Cause Which is the Cause of the Act of Being. Summarizing the conclusions
of the two preceding sections, we can say that the efficient causality of creatures is not sufficient to explain the being
of an effect. We have underlined the fact that it extends only to the latters coming into being or becoming.
At the same time, we have also emphasized that the created cause is a real cause. Hence, to say a created thing
causes a new substance is perfectly valid. Even though the form is the end of the act of generation, the effect is a
new substance. But it is also evident that this new substance proceeds not only from the active power of the agent,
but also from the preexistent passive potency of matter (ex materia).

12
 Therefore, all causality of creatures necessarily demands the act of being that is presupposed. The cause of this
act of being (esse) is God, the Subsistent Esse, the First and Universal cause, in contrast to which other beings are
merely secondary causes. Only divine causality can have esse as its proper object.
God has the act of being as the proper object of His causality, both in terms of creation and the conservation of
all things in being. Creation is the act of giving the act of being (esse) to creatures out of nothing. In God, creation is
an act co-eternal and one with Himself (ab aeterno), but from mans point of view, creation is carried out in time.
The duration in time of that divine act is known as conservation, which is not really distinct from the act of creation.
As a consequence, if God had not created, nothing would exist; seen from the angle of conservation (which is the
same as creation), everything would fall into nothingness if God would not maintain in being what He had created.
To give the act of being ex nihilo is exclusive of God, for only God is the Subsisting Act of Being, as well as the
only universal and omnipotent Cause. Let us consider this briefly:
a) He is the Subsisting Act of Being and Being by essence. Only the Absolute and Unlimited Being, the Fullness
of Being, can have the act of being of creatures as its proper effect. In contrast, a particular manner of being, with a
finite and participated esse, lacks the power to reach anything which transcends that restricted mode of being.
b) He is omnipotent. We have already seen that creatures presuppose some substratum on which they act. To the
extent that this substratum is more or less distant from the act which it is to acquire, a more or less powerful efficient
cause is required to actualize the potency. For instance, to make a piece of iron red-hot, a thermal power greater than
what suffices to set fire to a piece of wood is needed, since the latter, compared to iron, is in much more proximate
potency to ignition. Since the act of being does not presuppose anything, an infinite power is needed to cause it. It is
not simply a matter of bridging a great gap between act and potency, but of overcoming the infinite chasm between
nothingness and being. Omnipotence is an attribute of God alone, since He alone is Pure Act which is not restricted
by any essence.
c) He is the only universal cause. The act of being is the most universal effect, since it embraces all the
perfections of the universe in terms of extension and intensity. It includes the perfections of all beings (extension)
and all the degrees of perfection (intensity). Hence, no particular cause immediately affects the act of being; rather,
esse is the proper effect of the first and most universal cause, namely, God, who has all perfections in their fullness.
God alone, then, is the agent who gives being (per modum dantis esse), and not merely one that moves the agent
or alters (per modum moventis et alternantis)(In IV Metaphysic., lect. 3).
This does not mean that God creates continuously out of nothing. It means rather that in His creative act, God
created all being whether actual or possible. This act gave rise not only to those beings God created at the
beginnning of time, but also to those that would come to be through natural and artificial changes in the course of
time(T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, Metaphyiscs, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 1991, pp. 234-239).
Characteristics of the Causality of the First Cause (God):
Explaining the characteristics of the causality of the First Cause (God), Alvira, Clavell and Melendo write: The
terms First Cause (God) and secondary causes (creatures) are equivalent to others which are also often used: cause
of being (esse) and cause of becoming (fieri); universal cause and particular cause; transcendental cause and
predicamental cause.
The cause of the act of being is the first cause since it is presupposed by any other cause, just as being is
prerequisite to every other effect. It is an absolutely universal cause since it embraces each and every created
perfection, whereas particular agents only influence a certain type of effect. It is a transcendent cause for the same
reason, since its proper effect, being, transcends all the categories; in contrast, predicamental causes only produce
determinate modes of being.
In contrast to secondary causes, the First Cause can be defined by the following characteristics: a) It is the cause
of the species as such, whereas secondary causes only transmit them. A man, for instance, cannot be the cause of
human nature as such, or of all the perfections belonging to it, for he would then be the cause of every man, and,
consequently, of himself, which is impossible. But this individual man is the cause, properly speaking, of that
individual man. Now, this man exists because human nature is present in this matter. So, this man is not the cause of
man, except in the sense that he is the cause of a human form that comes to be in this matter. This means being the
principle of generation of an individual manNow, there must be some proper agent cause of the human species
itself ; This cause is God(Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 65).
b) It is also the cause of matter, whereas creatures only give rise to successive changes of the form. As we have
seen, in the production of any new effect, creatures presuppose a prior subject, which in the case of generation is
matter. Matter, which is the ultimate substratum of all substantial changes, is the proper effect of the causality of the
supreme cause.

13
 c) It is the most universal cause, in contrast to creatures, which are only particular causes. Acting, by way of
transforming, all secondary causes produce a type of particular effects, which necessarily presuppose the action of a
universal cause. Just as soldiers would achieve nothing for the final victory of the army without the overall plan
foreseen by the general and without the weapons and ammunition provided by him, no creature could exist or act,
and consequently produce its proper effects, without the influence of the First Cause, which confers the act of being
both on the cause and on the subject which is transformed.
d) It is a cause by essence, whereas creatures are only causes by participation. Something has a perfection by
essence when it possesses it in all its fullness. In contrast, the perfection is only participated if the subject possesses
it only in a partial and limited way. Since everything acts insofar as it is actual, only that which is Pure Act or
Subsisting Act of Being can act and cause by essence. Any creature, however, which necessarily has the act of being
restricted by its essence, can only cause by participation, that is, by virtue of having received the act of being and in
accordance with the degree it is possessed.
Consequently, God alone has causal power in an unlimited way, and for this reason He alone can produce
things from nothing (create them) by giving them their act of being. Creatures only possess a finite and determinate
causal capacity proportionate to their degree of participation in the act of being. Besides, for their proper effects,
they presuppose divine creative action which gives the act of being to those effects.
Creatures produce their proper effects, which are only determinations of being, insofar as they are conserved
by God. That which is some kind of thing by essence is the proper cause of what is such by participation. Thus, fire
is the cause of all things that are enkindled. Now, God alone is Being by essence, while other beings are such by
participation, since in God alone is Esse identical with His essence. Therefore, the act of being (esse) of every
existing thing is the proper effect of God. And so, everything that brings something into actual being does so
because it acts through Gods power(Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 66)(T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T.
MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 239-241).
The Relationship Between the First Efficient Cause (God) and Secondary Efficient Causes (Creatures):
Illustrating the relationship between the First Efficient Cause (God) and secondary efficient causes (creatures),
Alvira, Clavell and Melendo write: The being and the causality of creatures are, as we have seen, based totally on
God who is the First Cause and the Cause by essence. This entails a relationship of total subordination, and not
merely of parallel concurrence in which Gods power and that of creatures would combine to produce a single
effect. To illustrate the relationship between Gods efficient causality and that of creatures, we can recall the
relationship between the principal cause and an instrumental cause, instead of that between two partial causes which
are extrinsically united to attain a single result (as two horses joining forces to pull a carriage). Just as a paint brush
would be unable of itself to finish a painting, a creature would be devoid of its being and its power to act if it were to
be deprived of its dependence on God.
Nonetheless, some clarification has to be made regarding this matter: a) A created instrumental cause is truly
dependent on the agent only with respect to the action of the instrument, whereas the creature is also subject to God
with regard to its own act of being.
b) A creature possesses a substantial form and certain active powers which truly affect it in a permanent way;
these are the root of its activity, to such an extent that in natural activity, the actions of secondary causes are
proportionate to their causes. In an instrument, however, in addition to the form it has, by which it can produce its
own non-instrumental effects, there is also a new power present in a transient manner, capable of producing an
effect disproportionate to the instrumental cause. Hence, in the stricter sense, creatures are called instruments when
they are used by God to produce effects which exceed their own capacities, especially in the realm of grace. They
are called secondary causes when they act in the natural order.
Three consequences can be drawn from the total subordination of secondary causes to the First Cause: a)
Compared with the secondary cause, the First Cause has a greater influence on the reality of the effect.
Analogously, a painting is more correctly attributed to the artist than to the paint brush or palette which he used. In
the case of ordered agent causes, the subsequent causes act through the power of the first cause. Now, in the order of
agent causes, God is the first causethus, all lower agent causes act through His power. The principal cause of an
action is that by whose power the action is done, rather than that which acts; thus, the action springs more strictly
from the principal agent than from the instrument. Therefore, compared with secondary agent causes, God is a more
principal cause of every action(Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 67).
b) Both the First Cause and secondary causes are total causes of the effect in their own respective order, since
the effect is entirely produced by each of them, and not partly by one and partly by another. The same effect is not
attributed to a natural cause and to divine power in such a way that it is partly done by God, and partly by the natural

14
agent; rather, the effect is totally produced by both, in different ways, just as the same effect is wholly attributed to
the instrument and likewise wholly attributed to the principal cause(Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 70).
As we have seen, the proper and adequate effect of a secondary cause is the form (substantial or accidental), and
creatures receive a particular degree of participation in the act of being through the form. The immediate proper
effect of God, however, is the act of being of all things, and through the act of being, His own power influences all
the perfections of creatures. The all-encompassing character of divine causality arises from the special nature of esse
as the act of all acts and the perfection of all pefections of a created substance. Since any creature as well as
everything in it shares in its act of beingevery being, in its entirely, must come from the first and perfect cause(In
II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2).
Therefore, divine Providence embraces everything which exists in the universe. It includes not only the
universal species but also each individual, not only the necessary or predetermined activity of inferior beings but
also the free operations of spiritual creatures. It extends not only to the most decisive actions of free creatures (those
which alter the course of mankinds history) but also to their seemingly unimportant daily activities, since both
kinds of actions share in the actuality of the esse of the person doing them. This act of being is the immediate effect
of divine efficient causality.
c) The subordination of secondary causes to God does not diminish the causal efficacy of creatures; rather it
provides the basis for the efficacy of their activity. Gods action increases and intensifies the efficacy of subordinate
causes as they progressively get more closely linked with God, since a greater causal dependence entails a greater
participation in the source of operative power. This is somewhat like the case of a student who faithfully follows the
instructions of the professor guiding him in his studies, or that of the apprentice who conscientiously does what the
accomplished artist tells him. They experience greater efficacy in their activity.
Secondary causes have an efficacy of their own, but obviously they have their power by virtue of their
dependence on higher causes. A military officer, for instance, has authority over his subordinates because of the
power invested in him by higher officers of the army; the chisel transforms the marble because of the motion
imparted to it by the artist.
Hence, the power of a lower agent depends on the power of the superior agent, insofar as the superior agent
gives this power to the lower agent whereby it may act, or preserves it, or even applies it to the action(Summa
Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 70). Since God not only confers operative power on secondary causes but also maintains
them in their being, and applies them to their effects, their efficacy is multiplied as they become more submissive to
divine action.
The great significance of this profound reality can be seen in practical activity, especially in the sphere of
human freedom. Submission to Gods law does not in the least diminish the quality of mens actions. On the
contrary, it invigorates them and confers on them an efficacy that surpasses natural standards(T. ALVIRA, L.
CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 241-244).

15