Friday, August 14, 2026

From Him, and through Him, and for Him

 All things that are beneath God have an efficient, an exemplary, and a final cause. For from Him, and through Him, and for Him, are all things. If then we consider things as constituted by the efficient causality of God, we call them beings (entia), since it is because of this efficiency that they participate in being (esse). If we consider them as conforming to and according with the Divine exemplars which we call Ideas, and according to which God has created them, namely, being, unity, truth, goodness, something, thing -- the two last due to the disciples of Avicenna --, we call them true. The true picture of Hercules is, for example, said to be that which conforms to the true Hercules himself. If, again, we consider things as tending to God as their last end, we call them good. And finally, if each thing is considered absolutely, according to itself, we call it one. Now, the order is such that each thing must first be conceived under the idea of being, since every thing, whatever it be, must be produced by an efficient agent before being anything particular in itself, lest that which it is do not depend in its totality from the efficient cause. Thus it happens that a thing which comes after God cannot be conceived without being immediately thought of as a dependent being: finite being is being by participation. To being succeeds unity. Third comes truth, since it is only when a thing exists as such that one can inquire if it corresponds to the exemplar according to which it has been formed. If it resembles that exemplar, it has only to turn towards it by its attribute of goodness, in virtue of a sort of affinity or relationship.

[Pico della Mirandola, On Being and One, Chapter VIII.]