I. Solution of the Question

559. I respond. It seems that the intellective part has a more principal causality with respect to the intellections that are now naturally fitting for us.

First because when one of two ordered causes is indeterminate to many effects and is quasi unlimited, and the other is, according to the utmost of its power, determined to a certain effect, the one that is more unlimited and more universal seems to be more perfect and more principal - example about the sun and particular generating causes. The intellect also has a quasi unlimited and indeterminate virtue with respect to all intellections, but the objects naturally known by us have a power determinate in respect of the determinate intellections that focus on them, and this according to the utmost of their power, just as does anything relative to the intellection of itself;     therefore etc     .

560. Second, because the cause by which, when it is acting, another cause acts along with it (and not conversely), is more principal than the other; but when our intellect is acting for an intellection, the object in itself or in the species acts along with it; for it is in our power to understand, because we understand when we will, On the Soul 2.5.417b24. This is not principally because of the species (which is a natural form) but because of the intellect, which we can use when we want,a and the action of the species, which is of a nature to be always uniform on the part of the species, principally follows the action of the intellect.

a.a [Note by Scotus] Whence is it proved that it is more in the power of the will to use the intellect than the intelligible species? Each is of itself a natural agent. And why is not each free by participation? Response: nothing is by participation primarily free save what is in the same essence along with the will. On the contrary: organic powers and organs (and external ones too) are free by participation Similarly, there is not in our power any act of the vegetative soul. This middle term, then, is obscure, because it is doubtful what things in us are subject to the will and what are not.

561. However, some object that much exceeds the faculty of the intellective part, for example the beatific object as clearly seen, could be posited to have total causality with respect to the vision, or a more principal causality than the intellective part, and this on account of the excellence of such object and of the deficiency on the intellective part, but about this in the fourth book [Ord. Supplement d.49 a.2 q.3 n.9].

562. But as to the objects that we now naturally know, the first part of the response seems to be true [nn.559-560]. For it seems that, as to the intelligibles naturally understood by us, the species of them in the intellect is, as it were, the instrument of the intellect - not something moved by the intellect so as to act (as if namely the species receive something from the intellect), but what the intellect uses for its action; as that, when the intellect acts, the species acts as less principal agent along with it for the same thing, as for a joint effect.