III. To the Arguments for the Opinion of Others

388. [To the arguments for the first opinion, that of Henry of Ghent] When it is argued [n.341] in the first opinion that to receive a species belongs to sense precisely because sense is an organic power, I say this is false because that is not the precise cause. But the precise cause of any power that has a species representing its object, as it is its object, is the following: that it is a cognitive power, and nature has given it the ability to have an object naturally present to it first before it knows. But what nature has given to an organic power is that an object be present to it, not in the power itself, but in an organ, that is, in the part of the body that the organic power perfects. And this presence suffices, because the organ is the whole made up of the appropriately mixed46 part of the body and the power. To this whole is the object sufficiently present when the species is in that part of the body. Since therefore nothing of perfection is taken away from the intellect, insofar as it is a cognitive power, by the fact it is not organic, indeed by this fact is perfection rather added to it, the result is that an object can be present to it before an act, just as in the case of the other cognitive powers. But the presence will not be through something impressed on the organ, for it does not have an organ. Therefore, it will be through something impressed on the power itself. Such an impressed representing thing, when it precedes the act of understanding in the intellective power, I call an intelligible species.

389. Briefly, then: the sense has an organ present in the part of the body that is called the organ of that sense. But the intellect has both that prior presence actually and the act itself, by reason of being the same recipient [for them].

390. And so it is false to take it that such a species only exists precisely because of the organ. For nature causes such part, thus mixed,47 of such body to be perfectible by such power of the soul and to be in agreement with the operation of it, because “matter is for the sake of form” and conversely, Averroes Physics 2 com.26, and in On the Soul 1 com.53, “for the bodily members of a lion only differ from those of a deer because soul differs from soul.” Form then is not for the sake of matter but conversely. And therefore is such part made receptive of such species, so that through such species the object may be present to such composite, which is the whole organ. Hence the first cause of the presence of the object in the species is not such disposition of the body, but there is a prior cause, so that the apprehensive power may have an object actually knowable present to it, whether in itself or in something that is part of the organ in such operation.

391. As to the next argument [n.342] from the Philosopher, that the intellect is the place of species, the exposition can be that the intellect is called the place of species because it is the preserver of them (the way it is said that it belongs to a place to preserve the thing placed in it), and other powers are not ‘places’ because they do not thus preserve them. The intelligible species, to be sure, does not seem to be destroyed as the sensible species is, because a sensible species is thus in an organ that is corrupted formally by a contrary, or by a disposition in the organ that does not fit such form - as is plain according to the Philosopher in On Memory 2.433a23-24, 453b4-7, that old men and young men and children are bad at reminiscence because of a too great abundance of humors, and even because of damage or indisposition in the organ. The intelligible species is not in the intellect in either of these ways so as to be per se destroyed by anything contrary to it, or by indisposition in what is susceptive of it. Many other areas of agreement could be assigned as regard this word ‘place’, which it is not necessary now to delay over.

392. As to what is added from the Philosopher [n.343], that “we contemplate the ‘what it is’ in phantasms etc.,” I say on behalf of all these sort of authorities that such is how, for this present state, the connection is between these powers of imagination and intellect, for we understand nothing in a universal save what we have a phantasm of a singular of. Nor is the turn toward phantasms other than that he who understands a universal is imagining a singular instance of it. Nor does the intellect see the ‘what it is’ in phantasms as if in idea of ‘seeing’ it; rather, he who understands the ‘what it is’ shining forth in the intelligible species, as it shines forth in the intelligible species, sees it in its own singular instance seen, through the imaginative power, in the phantasm.

393. As to what is adduced from Augustine [n.345], ‘who does not posit in the memory a sensible species but knowledge’, I reply: when he posits knowledge he at once posits something that includes an intelligible species, though he does not use this word. For since in On the Trinity 15.10 n.19 he had premised that “from the knowledge itself that we hold in the memory a word is born,” he adds that “the cognition formed by the thing that we know is a word.” And since, ibid. 11 n.20, he had premised, “the seeing of thinking is very like the seeing of knowledge,” he adds, “when a thing that is in knowledge is this thing in a word, then is it a true word.” And ibid. 12 n.22, “a word is most like the thing known from which it is generated; and from the seeing of science the seeing of thinking arises,” he adds, “Nor does it matter when he who speaks what he knows learnt what he knows.” Likewise ibid. 22 n.42, “When I turn the eye of my thinking to my memory, it is as if I am saying to myself that I know etc.” Again, On the Trinity 15.27 n.50, when he is speaking of the light in which truths are seen, “It itself,” he says, “shows you that a true word is in you when it is born from your knowledge, that is, when we say what we know.” So his words.

394. From all these is it plain that what Augustine has attributed to memory, as to the idea of knowledge as to the generator of it, explains itself always of the object present in memory. And it is not the case that the object is present in memory, as memory is intellective, through knowledge as knowledge is a habit distinct from the species. Therefore, it must be that he understands this presence to be through the intelligible species, and under the idea under which it is also distinguished from the habit of knowledge properly taken.

395. And in this way [n.394] too must be taken the word of the Philosopher On the Soul 3.8.431b21-23, who, since he had premised that the soul is “in some way everything,” adds that “through the senses it is sensibles, through knowledge it is knowables” [n.371]. Knowledge, of course, is taken, both in Aristotle and in Augustine in the aforesaid places [nn.371, 345, 393], for the very habitual presence of the object in intellective memory, which habitual presence is knowledge about such object virtually, because in the object thus present is contained virtually all knowledge about such object.

396. This species [n.393] is the knowledge that reduces the intellect from essential potency to accidental potency [n.374] (according to Aristotle Physics 8.4.255a32-5b5 and On the Soul 2.5.417a21-b2), but not that which is properly called knowledge [n.394], which of course is the facility left over from acts because, before that facility, it is requisite that, for the first act of considering, the intellect have been reduced already from essential potency to accidental potency, otherwise it would not be operating. Nor is the species in which the quiddity shines forth unfittingly called knowledge [n.392]; not only virtually, because it contains the whole [nn.392, 395], but formally can it be called the cognitive habit, because the quality that remains in the intellect is dispositive of it as concerns act [cf. Scotus, Ord. Prol. n.145].

397. And from this, namely from the first condition [sc. virtually containing knowledge] is argument obtained for an intelligible species, because it does not appear how any total science could be said, by reason of its first object, to be one science save insofar as the knowledge is contained virtually in the first intelligible object. For a total science is not called one by an object insofar as the object containing that science shines forth in a phantasm, because that would not be the oneness of an intellectual habit but of an imagination.

398. [To the arguments for the other opinion, that of Godfrey of Fontaines]. As for what is argued after for the second opinion, that ‘a potency that is for some act is first made actual in accord with that act’ [n.347], I say that any apprehensive power at all, as it is apprehensive, is in potency to apprehending first with firstness of perfection, though not with firstness in the way of generation [nn.69, 71, 95]. And sometimes it is first with the firstness of generation, namely when the object in itself is present to such potency as actually knowable by it. For then there is no need, before the act, for anything else to come to be in it in which it may be present; but the first thing that comes to be from it is the act. But when the object is not of a nature to be in itself present under the idea of what is actually knowable by such potency, then any apprehensive potency is in potency toward apprehension and toward that in which the knowable will be present, and it is in potency first to having the presence, in order of origin, than to having the act. So is it in the issue at hand. Sensibles are not of a nature to be present in themselves to the intellect under the idea of being actual intelligibles, but they can only be thus present in the intelligible species - and this as to abstractive understanding, which the discussion in the issue at hand is about. And therefore is the apprehensive power with respect to such things in potency to a double act, and the prior act will it receive from the agent close to it first, in the order of origin, before the later one.

399. And yet I do not mean these acts to be so ordered that the prior is the receptive idea with respect to the posterior, in the way, namely, that a surface is the idea of receiving whiteness. For then the intellect could, with respect to no intelligible, receive the second act (which is the act of understanding), unless it had the first act (as the species of the same object) before; but I mean that the intellect of itself is the immediate reason for receiving both acts. However these acts have an order between them when the object is not of a nature to be present in itself, because then the act in which the object is present as intelligible must come naturally first before the act which is elicited about the intelligible object as it is present,a - and this is only preserved in the intelligible species.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] If it be objected against this solution [n.397] that a plurality is never to be posited save because of necessity (Physics 1.4.188a17-18), and here there does not seem to be necessity, because the object seems to be present sufficiently in the phantasm,     therefore etc     . - I reply: there is always a necessity to dignify a noble nature when there does not appear to be anything that is manifestly repugnant. But it seems a considerable cheapening of the intellective power, as it is intellective, that it cannot have an object present to it in itself without a presence begged from inferior powers (with which it is contingently joined in idea of power), and yet that the other inferior powers can have an object thus present in itself. Although the intellect could have an object present to it in an inferior power, yet not in the highest presentiality able to precede the act of understanding. But just as for the other cognitive powers, so much more for this power must it be conceded that the object is supremely present, to the extent it can be present, and this before an act of knowing [nn.368-369].

400. Also the highest perfection possible of the cognitive power is not posited if is not posited that it can preserve the intelligible species beyond the act, and thus that it can have its object, preserved without an act, present to it, for this is allowed to the sensitive power [sc. in imagination or sense memory]. And perfection in the intellective cognitive power is that it not depend on something else in its cognition, but that it can have an object present to it without dependence on another power.