Produced by Sandra K. Perry, with corrections and supplementation by David McClamrock ST. THOMAS AQUINAS SUMMA THEOLOGICA PART I ("Prima Pars") Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province BENZIGER BROTHERS NEW YORK _______________________ DEDICATION To the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculate Seat of Wisdom _______________________ NOTE TO THIS ELECTRONIC EDITION The text of this electronic edition was originally produced by Sandra K. Perry, Perrysburg, Ohio, and made available through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library <http://www.ccel.org>. I have eliminated unnecessary formatting in the text, corrected some errors in transcription, and added the dedication, tables of contents, Prologue, and the numbers of the questions and articles, as they appeared in the printed translation published by Benziger Brothers. Each article is now designated by part, question number, and article number in brackets, like this: > SECOND ARTICLE [I, Q. 49, Art. 2] > Whether the Supreme Good, God, Is the Cause of Evil? In a few places, where obvious errors appeared in the Benziger Brothers edition, I have corrected them by reference to a Latin text of the _Summa._ These corrections are indicated by English text in brackets. For example, in Part I, Question 45, Article 2, the first sentence in the Benziger Brothers edition begins: "Not only is it impossible that anything should be created by God...." By reference to the Latin, "non solum _non_ est impossibile a Deo aliquid creari" (emphasis added), this has been corrected to "Not only is it [not] impossible that anything should be created by God...." This electronic edition also differs from the Benziger Brothers edition in the following details (as well as the obvious lack of the original page numbers and headers): * The repetitive expression "We proceed thus to the [next] Article" does not appear directly below the title of each article. * Italics are represented by underscores at the beginning and end, _like this._ Quotations and other "quotable" matter, however, are ordinarily set off by quotation marks with no underscores in this edition, in accordance with common English usage, even where they were set in italics with no quotation marks in the Benziger Brothers edition. Titles of books are set off by underscores when they appear in the text with no parentheses, but not when the books are cited in parentheses. * Bible chapters and verses are cited with arabic numerals separated by colons, like this: "Dan. 7:10"--not like this: "Dan. vii. 10." Small roman numerals have been retained where they appear in citations to books other than the Bible. * Any matter that appeared in a footnote in the Benziger Brothers edition is presented in brackets at the point in the text where the footnote mark appeared. * Greek words are presented in Roman transliteration. * Paragraphs are not indented and are separated by blank lines.