Chapter 097 - Man's Original State as Regards the Preservation of the Individual

Man in a state of innocence would have been immortal; for death entered into the world by sin.

There are, however, three kinds of incorruptibility: first, where there is no matter, as with the angels; or if there be matter, as in the Heavenly Bodies, it is susceptible of only one form. Secondly, incorruptibility may be due to the form itself; when it possesses an inherent virtue which prevents the dissolution of that which would be otherwise corruptible, as will be the case in the State of Glory; or, thirdly, it may be due to the efficient cause. Thus man in a state of innocence would have been an immortal man; not that his body possessed any inherent power of incorruptibility, but because a supernatural gift was bestowed upon his soul in virtue of which the body would have been preserved from corruption as long as he remained subject to God.

For man's soul was made rational, and because the rational soul belongs to a higher order than corporeal matter, it was fitting that power should be given to it for the preservation of the body, beyond what was natural to corporeal matter.

But, after the Fall, although Adam recovered grace and the power of meriting glory, he did not recover the virtue of immortality. That was reserved for Christ, Who should give us the Resurrection.

Nor would man in a state of innocence have been, properly speaking, passible, in the sense in which passibility implies a change of the natural disposition inflicted by something else; but as, in common language, it signifies change consequent upon understanding and feeling, he would have suffered in body and soul; for such suffering belongs to the perfection of our nature.

And since there was animal life, there existed also the necessity for food; while in the State of Glory there will be spiritual life not requiring food. For the human soul is both soul and spirit; that which man has in common with other animals and which is the principle of bodily life, is called soul, while spirit signifies that which is proper to himself, as an intellectual being. Therefore in man's original state the rational soul communicated to the body that which belonged to it as soul, and the body was called animal inasmuch as it received from the soul a life of which the natural operations were the use of food, generation, and growth. These belonged to man in his original state; but in his final state the soul will in some manner communicate to the body those things which belong to it as spirit, namely, immortality to both the good and the bad, and to the good, whose body will then be spiritual, impassibility and glory.

Moreover, the Tree of Life was, in a certain manner, a cause of immortality, but not absolutely so; for man in his original state had two remedies for the conservation of his life against two causes of decay. The first cause consists in the waste of moisture, from which he was preserved by eating the fruit of other trees; as we are now by food. The second cause of decay arises from the union of something extraneous with the pre-existent moisture by which the active virtue of species is gradually weakened, as wine is weakened by the addition of water until at last it becomes watery. Thus we see, among ourselves, that the active virtue is at first so strong that it produces growth and the power of increase; later on it suffices to repair waste without increase, while in old age it is insufficient even for this; thence follow decay and the final dissolution of the body. Against this defect man was preserved by the Tree of Life, which had the virtue of strengthening the species, and prevented decay by way of medicine. It did not, therefore, produce immortality absolutely, nor could it communicate a virtue by which the body would never decay, for its power was finite; but it preserved the body for a time, after which man would either have been translated to a spiritual life, or have had recourse to it again.