Leo XIII, 1878-1903

1905. 15. The third operation of absolute being creating the world is divine synthesis, that is the union of two elements, which are initial being, the common beginning of all finite beings, and finite reality, or rather different finite realities, the different ends of the same initial being. By this union finite beings are created.

1906. 16. Initial being through divine synthesis referred by intelligence, not as an intelligible but merely as essence, to the real finite ends, causes the finite beings to exist subjectively and really.

1907. 17. This alone God effects by creating, that He posits the entire act wholly as the being of creatures; this act then is properly not made but posited.

1908. 18. The love, by which God loves Himself even in creatures, and which is the reason why He determines Himself to create, constitutes a moral necessity, which in the most perfect being always induces the effect; for such necessity in many imperfect beings only leaves the whole freedom bilateral.

1909. 19. The Word is that unseen material, from which, as it is said in Wisdom 11:18, all things of the universe were created.

1910. 20. It is not inconsistent that the human soul, in order that it may be multiplied by human generation, may thus be conceived, proceed from the imperfect, namely from the sensitive grade, to the perfect, namely to the intellectual grade.

1911. 21. When being is capable of being intued by the sensitive principle, by this influence alone, by this union with itself, only sensing this first, but now, at the same time understanding, it is brought to a more noble state, it changes its nature, and becomes understanding, subsisting, and immortal.

1912. 22. It is not impossible to think that it can become a divine power, so that the intellectual soul is separated from the animate body, and it itself (being) still remains soulful; surely there would remain in it, as the basis of the purely soulful, the soulful principle, which before was in it as an appendage.

1913. 23. The soul of the deceased exists in a natural state, as if it did not exist; since it cannot exercise any reflection upon itself, or have any consciousness of itself, its condition can be said to be like the state of the perpetual shades and eternal sleep.

1914. 24. The substantial form of the body is rather the effect of the soul and the interior terminus of the operation itself; therefore, the substantial form of the body is not the soul itself.—The union of the soul and the body properly consists in immanent perception, by which the subject viewing the idea, affirms the sensible, after it has viewed its essence in this (idea).

1915. 25. When the mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity has been revealed,