2. Rejection of the Opinion

a. A First Rejection of the Opinion

310. Against these points.

So that these words may be understood, I distinguish three things according to the doctor [Henry of Ghent] on whose statements this opinion seems to be based. For, according to him ‘thing’, res, is in one way said to be from reor, reris, which means to ‘think’; in a second way ‘thing’ is said to be from ratification. In place of these words I take plainer words: for ‘thing’ as said from ‘think’ I take ‘thinkable reality’, which is common, according to him, to figments and non-figments; for ‘thing’ as said from ‘ratification’ I take, according to his intention, quidditative reality, because he posits that a quidditative thing is ratified by the fact it has an exemplar, which does not belong to figments. Beyond these two there only remains the reality of actual existence. We have, therefore, three things in order: thinkable reality, quidditative reality, and reality of existence.

311. I ask, then, what he means by ‘somethingness’? [n.302].

For if he means thinkable reality, since that is common to something and to nothing, it is of itself nothing. Therefore. if ratification be founded on somethingness taken in this way [n.302], it is founded on nothing; therefore it is nothing, because what is nothing relative to itself is nothing relative to another thing, On the Trinity 7.1 n.2 [“Wherefore if the Father is not something in relation to himself, he is altogether not one who may be said in relation to anything”]; therefore ratification is nothing; therefore, the total thing, composed of ratification and somethingness, is two nothings.

312. If somethingness be called quidditative reality, I ask what he means by ratification, either quidditative reality or reality of existence. If quidditative reality, then to say that ratification is founded on somethingness [n.302] is to say that quidditative reality is founded on quidditative reality, which is to say nothing, because then the same thing would be founded on itself according to the same being. If he means reality of existence -on the contrary: then ratification is presupposed to it, because a thing, according to this opinion, has ratified being truly before being of existence, and so the first ratification of it cannot be the being of existence.a

a.a [Interpolated text] Or better:
If by ratification you mean the reality of actual existence - on the contrary according to you: presupposed to that reality of actual existence is, according to you [n.302], somethingness, on which ratification. or the reality of actual existence, has to be founded, as on a foundation, so that it may be this sort of ratified somethingness. If, therefore, somethingness is presupposed as foundation for ratification (and so somethingness will, as such, have being of existence and ratified being before ratification gives it ratified being), then it follows that ratification, taken for the reality of actual existence, cannot give to somethingness itself first ratified being, or first being of existence, since it would have that from itself, just as a foundation has ratified being and being of existence before what is founded on it does. So neither does the respect give ratified being to anything, for it presupposes a subject in ratified being and in being of existence on which it is founded.

313. If you say that the somethingness that is opinable reality is a ‘what’ common to something and nothing, but there is another somethingness that is proper to a thing that is able to be and that does not belong to figments (from which somethingness, and from being as from its own ratification, a thing having somethingness is composed) - on the contrary: this is to say that there is a double somethingness, one of something and nothing, and another of something only, just as if it were said there is a double whiteness, one of white and black, another of white only. And in addition to this, as to the somethingness proper to possible being, I ask: either it is a respect only and is founded on the somethingness that is common (because that alone precedes it), and then it will be founded on nothing, as was said [n.311], and then it will be nothing; or the somethingness that is proper is an absolute, and thereby, for you, the thing that has it is distinguished from fictions; so this is the first ratification of a thing and is an absolute, and thus a respect will not be the first ratification of a thing.

314. Further, second [n.313], as follows: humanity has of itself a concept to which it is not repugnant that something falls under it in fact, or to which it is repugnant of itself that something falls under it in fact, or to which of itself something does fall under it in fact. Not in the third way, according to every opinion, for the reason that this is proper to God alone.

If it be granted that it is repugnant of itself to the concept that something falls under it, then by no respect that comes to it from without can belong to it that something could fall under it; for what is repugnant to something by some part of it cannot not be repugnant to it while its nature remains, and so cannot become non-repugnant to it by any respect that comes to it from without. Therefore, the concept of humanity is such that to it of itself is not repugnant that something in fact falls under it; but such concept is a concept of a ratified thing, according to the opinion of this master [Henry of Ghent], because to be in fact is repugnant to the concept of a figment [cf. n.310].

315. Besides, third: the Philosopher, Metaphysics 4.6.1011a19-20, infers from the opinion of those who say that all appearances are true this impossibility, that everything will be relative to something. And he does not mean this only by way of denomination, because in that way is it true that everything is relative to something, at least every other than God; therefore he means to infer it as something maximally unacceptable that everything is essentially relative to something. But this opinion posits that everything is essentially relative to something; therefore, this conclusion, namely that all things are relative to something, is more unacceptable than that all appearances are true.

316. If you say that the Philosopher is saying that all things will be relative to another, surely “relative to opinion and sense” - on the contrary: in an argument a conclusion leading to something impossible must be equally or more impossible than the premises; the inferred conclusion here, insofar as it is inferred, does not differ from the premise that posits all things to be true on account of their appearing to sense or to opinion - save in this that it infers ‘everything is relative to something’ [cf. n.307]; therefore if in anything it has a greater impossibility than the premises, it is this impossibility, that all things are relative to something simply.

317. Fourth as follows: humanity, insofar as it is humanity, either has only the ‘what’ of the name or it has the ‘what’ of the real thing that is repugnant to figments [cf. Henry, Summa a.24 q.3]. If in the first way, then there is knowledge of humanity, as it is humanity, no more than there is of a chimaera, and consequently metaphysics, which is about quiddities, will no more be a science than if it were about figments that are unintelligible because of the contradiction included in them. But if humanity, as it is humanity, has the ‘what’ of a real thing that is repugnant to figments, then humanity, whence it is humanity, is a ratified thing [cf. n.303].

318. The reply is made that humanity, whence it is humanity, has a definition, but the definition does not indicate a ratified being because figments can have genus and difference; but, in order to get the complete idea of a ratified being, one must add a respect to unparticipating being [cf. n.304].

319. This [n.318] does not make reply to the argument [n.317] without making metaphysics to be a non-science. Likewise too, what it says about figments (that they have genus and difference) is false, because all such things have an idea that is in itself false, because including a contradiction, because one part contradicts the other; but such parts are never a genus and difference, for a difference is per se determinative of a genus and is, consequently, not repugnant to it.

b. Another Rejection of the Opinion

320. Second, argument is made against the opinion [n.302] from his own statements [n.310].

First as follows: each thing is active formally by its ratification,a the proof of which is that by ratification is it formally in act; but nothing is in itself formally active by a relation, because a relation is not a principle of acting [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.39 qq.3,4]; therefore ratification is not a relation.

a.a [Interpolated text] But according to him [Henry] God is ratification only and yet supremely active; therefore, a thing is active by its ratification, not by its somethingness.

321. Again, according to him no creature, insofar as ratified, differs in species from the being that is God [Henry, Quodlibet 7 qq.1-2]; but the very being that is God, according to every opinion, is absolute; how then does that which is formally a relation differ from that which is absolute?

322. Again, according to him, a being of reason participates ratified being or first being, but is not formally a ratified being [ibid., 5 q.2]. Therefore, this sort of participation is formally ratification itself [n.304].