Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.12

“Then, from the other point of view of the good, see what a punishment ever goes with the wicked. You have learnt a little while past that all that exists is one, and that the good itself is one; it follows therefrom that all that exists must appear to be good. In this way, therefore, all that falls away from the good, ceases also to exist, wherefore evil men cease to be what they were.

“The form of their human bodies still proves that they have been men; wherefore they must have lost their human nature when they turned to evil-doing. But as goodness alone can lead men forward beyond their humanity, so evil of necessity will thrust down below the honorable estate of humanity those whom it casts down from their first position.

“The result is that you cannot hold him to be a man who has been, so to say, transformed by his vices. If a violent man and a robber burns with greed of other men's possessions, you say he is like a wolf. Another fierce man is always working his restless tongue at lawsuits, and you will compare him to a hound. Does another delight to spring upon men from ambushes with hidden guile? He is as a fox. Does one man roar and not restrain his rage? He would be reckoned as having the heart of a lion. Does another flee and tremble in terror where there is no cause of fear? He would be held to be as deer. If another is dull and lazy, does he not live the life of an ass? One whose aims are in constant and ever changed at his whims, is in no wise different from the birds. If another is in a slough of foul and filthy lusts, he is kept down by the lusts of an unclean swine.

“Thus then a man who loses his goodness, ceases to be a man, and since he cannot change his condition for that of a god, he turns into a beast.”

—from Book 4, Prose 3

Perhaps it may be too abstract for the taste of some, but the language of Aristotle can be of some assistance here. Understood in its most immediate way, it doesn’t have to be complex and obscure.

The distinction is between something being in potency, meaning what it is able to be, and being in act, meaning that it has now become what it is able to be. The acorn is a potential oak, while the grown tree is an actual oak. A slab of marble is a potential sculpture, while Michelangelo’s Pieta is an actual sculpture. The ingredients are a potential meal, while the skill of the chef crafts them into an actual meal.

This can, by extension, apply to anything in creation. Only God, as complete being, is perfect act, while all created things, subject to motion and change, as extensions and effects of that complete being, are constantly shifting between potency and act. It is the very process of growth, of transformation, of fulfillment. It is all moved to return to where it started.

In this sense, a man is only thoroughly a man when he has actualized all that it means to be a man. In the meantime, he remains, so to speak, a man in waiting. What is there has not yet blossomed into what it is meant to be. It is a work still in progress.

And some works progress, while some works regress. Sometimes there is an increase of being, and sometimes there is a decrease of being. Given the power of reason and choice, human beings will have control over whether they increase or decrease. They find union with the One, or they divide themselves from the One.

When Lady Philosophy says that a man ceases to exist as a man as soon as he follows vice, this might seem like quite a stretch. Here, one might say, we see philosophers spouting more of their usual nonsense. “How ridiculous, to say that I cease to be!”

Let me consider myself, since I should not dare to speak for anyone else. When my thinking is plagued by ignorance, and my will is shackled by greed, and my actions are motivated only by conformity to the pack, what might actually be left of me?

I still have a human body, and I still have a human mind, and I still have a human will. Yet that body is wasting away, for the simple reason that the mind is not working rightly at all, and the will is therefore distorted, and I end up as a shadow of a man. I have the appearance, with none of the content.

I remain only potentially a man, not actually a man.

Let any animal be what it is made to be, but when any man denies his own nature as a creature brought forth to know and to love, he degrades himself to an animal state far lower than what he was intended for.

He is now a shell, a dried out husk. He has withered away his potency, and so he is no longer a man in act.

The wolf will snarl when he is hungry, while the man will snarl when he has abandoned his ability to love.

Written in 11/2015