C. About the Third and Fourth Opinion

1. Exposition of the Opinions

450. [Third opinion] The third opinion [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 5.25] posits that the intelligible [object], as present simply to the intellect (not through an intelligible species [n.340], but through a phantasm as it is illumined by the agent intellect), is thus simply present to the possible intellect as in memory. And, as it moves to an act of understanding, it is there as in the intelligence, whose knowledge has its term in the object itself. And as concerns these two the intellect is passive, namely both as it is memory having an object simply present to it, and as it is intelligence moved by the object thus present to the first act of understanding. But the intellect, when brought to be in first act, can by natural insight dig down and run through any ‘what it is’, by conjoining and dividing the appropriate differences with the thing divided, and by thus investigating, as regard simple understanding, the ‘what it is’ and, as regard complex understanding, the ‘because of what’ as regard a knowable conclusion. And in this discursive reasoning the intellect, insofar as it thus reasons, is active; insofar, however, as it conceives, it is passive.

451. [Fourth opinion] This same doctor as to this position (about passiveness with respect to the first simple and confused knowledge, and about activity with respect to investigated distinct knowledge) seems to retract it and to correct it in another place where, asking about the active principle of vital actions (namely actions of sensation and intellection), posits that that principle is something in the animate thing itself and not an object outside it. And in the way he posits in the senses that the species impressed on the organ inclines only, and, by inclining, excites the power and, as it were, calls it forth to its operation, so does [he posit that] the phantasm in the imaginative power inclines the intellect so that the inclined intellect is in ultimate disposition to elicit intellection as its own proper operation - And on behalf of this position he there introduces a reason for these actions, that they are to be vital actions and that no action transcends the perfection of the agent. And he introduces another reason about the action that remains in the agent, and these are actions proper and denominate the agent properly, the way ‘to shine’, but not ‘to illumine’, is related to the ‘shining’ thing. With this agrees the reason of Augustine [On Music 6.5 n.9], that the soul forms in itself images of things known.

These three reasons were introduced before, for the first opinion [nn.409, 412, 408].

2. Rejection of the Opinions

452. Neither of these opinions, neither the one retracted nor the one retracting it, seems to be true. Not the retracted one [n.450], because the intellect, when brought to be in act according to the first confused knowledge, is active with respect to second intellection either by virtue of itself, or by virtue of the first confused knowledge itself. If by virtue of itself, it does not seem reasonable that some cause could be active with respect to a more perfect cause in some species and could in no way be active with respect to a more imperfect cause of the same idea; now the confused and distinct intellection of white seem to be intellections of the same idea, because intellections of the same object; therefore it seems unacceptable that the intellect could of itself be causative with respect to the second intellection, which is the more perfect, and not with respect to the first. And if you say that in respect of the second act it is active by virtue of the first act, on the contrary: an imperfect act cannot be the formal idea of causing a more perfect act, because then, if an effect could surpass in perfection its total cause, there would be no way in which it could be proved that God is the most perfect being; but distinct knowledge is nobler than confused knowledge; therefore the confused knowledge is not the formal reason for eliciting or causing the distinct knowledge.

453. The retracting opinion too [n.451] does not seem to be true, because I ask what is understood by ‘inclination’? Either that there is some form in the intellect by which it is inclined, or that nothing is in the intellect. If nothing, the intellect is not more inclined now than it was before. If some form, either an act of understanding - and then the opposite of their opinion, because the object will cause the act - or something prior to the act of understanding, as a species, which they deny [n.340].

454. Response: it is not a habit nor an act nor a species but some fourth thing. -On the contrary. Although this would seem at once to be unacceptable, yet it is argued as follows: Let that fourth thing be a; either without it there is in the intellect the total active virtue with respect to intellection, or there is not. If there is, then without it the intellect is capable of this intellection, and so of any required determination (because a ‘this’ as ‘this’ is most determinate), and so it will be necessary because of nothing. If there is not, then a gives active virtue, whether total or partial, to the intellect itself, and so such action will not be from the intellect, or from within, as from a total active principle.

455. Again, in ordered causes an inferior does not include a superior but conversely;a and with respect to intellection the intellective part is a cause superior to the species of any object, as will be plain in the following question [nn.559-562]; therefore the object does not incline the intellect.

a.a [Note added by Scotus] But this is false; rather each inclines each. An example: a habit inclines a power [cf. n.446].