V. To the Principal Arguments

136. [To the first] - To the first principal argument [n.39] I concede that this concept said of God and creatures in the ‘what’ is contracted by some contracting concepts that assert a ‘what sort’, but it is not the case either that this concept said in the ‘what’ is the concept of a genus, or that those concepts asserting a ‘what sort’ are concepts of differences, because this ‘quidditative’ concept is common to the finite and infinite, which community cannot be in the concept of a genus, - and those contracting concepts assert an intrinsic mode of the contracted thing itself, and not some reality perfecting it; but differences do not assert an intrinsic mode of reality of some genus, because, in whatever grade animality is understood, rationality or irrationality is not on this account an intrinsic mode of animality, but animality is in that grade still understood as perfectible by rationality or irrationality.Note by Scotus: “Note how some intention is first about a and b indifferently, and nothing of one idea corresponds to it in reality, but the formal objects first diverse are understood, in one first intention, although both imperfectly.” This note is marked as ‘o’ by Scotus, see above footnote to n.112. ⁷⁷

137. But there is a doubt how a concept common to God and creatures can be taken as ‘real’ save from some reality of the same genus, - and then it seems that it is potential to the reality from which the distinguishing concept is taken, as was argued before ‘about the concept of genus and difference’ [n.39], and then the argument made above for the first opinion stands, that, if there were some reality in the thing that distinguishes and another reality in it that is distinguished, it seems that the thing is composite, because it has something by which it agrees and something by which it differs [n.47].This paragraph is marked as ‘y’ by Scotus, see above footnote to n.112. ⁷⁸

138. I reply that when some reality is understood along with its intrinsic mode, the concept is not so simply simple that the reality cannot be conceived without the mode, but it is then an imperfect concept of the thing; the concept can also be conceived under that mode, and it is then a perfect concept of the thing. An example: if there were a whiteness in the tenth grade of perfection, however much it was in every way simple in the thing, it could yet be conceived under the idea of such an amount of whiteness, and then it would be perfectly conceived with a concept adequate to the thing itself, - or it could be conceived precisely under the idea of whiteness, and then it would be conceived with an imperfect concept and one that failed of the perfection of the thing; but an imperfect concept could be common to the whiteness and to some other one, and a perfect concept could be proper.

139. A distinction, then, is required between that from which a common concept is taken and that from which a proper concept is taken, not as a distinction of reality and reality but as a distinction of reality and proper and intrinsic mode of the same, - which distinction suffices for having a perfect or imperfect concept of the same thing, of which concepts the imperfect is common and the perfect is proper. But the concepts of genus and difference require a difference of realities, not just of the same reality perfectly and imperfectly conceived.

140. This point [n.139] can be clarified. If we posit that some intellect is perfectly moved by color to understand the reality of the color and the reality of the difference, however much the intellect may have a perfect concept adequate to the concept of the first reality, it does not have in this concept a concept of the reality from which the difference is taken, nor conversely, - but it has there two formal objects which are of a nature to terminate distinct proper concepts. But if the distinction in the thing were only as of reality and its intrinsic mode, the intellect could not both have a proper concept of the reality and not have a concept of the intrinsic mode of the thing (at any rate as of the mode under which it would be conceived, although this mode itself would not be conceived, just as is elsewhere said ‘about conceived singularity and the mode under which it is conceived’ [I d.2 n.183]), but in the perfect concept it would have one object adequate to it, namely the thing under the mode.This and the previous two paragraphs [nn.138-140] are marked by Scotus with a reference back to n.111. ⁷⁹

141. And if you say ‘at any rate the common concept is indeterminate and potential with respect to the special concept, therefore the reality too is indeterminate and potential with respect to the reality, or at any rate the concept will not be infinite, because nothing infinite is potential with respect to anything’, - I concede that the concept common to God and creatures is finite, that is, it is not of itself infinite, because, if it were infinite, it would not of itself be common to the finite and infinite; nor is it of itself positively finite, such that it of itself include finitude, because then it would not belong to the infinite, - but it is of itself indifferent to the finite and the infinite; and so it is finite negatively, that is, it does not posit infinity, and in such negative finitude it is determinable through some concept.

142. But if you argue ‘therefore the reality from which it [sc. the above concept] is taken is finite’, - it does not follow; for it is not taken from any reality as a concept adequate to that reality, or as a perfect concept adequate to that reality, but it is diminished and imperfect, to such an extent even that if the reality from which it is taken were to be seen perfectly and intuitively, he who intuits it would not there have distinct formal objects, namely the reality and the mode, but one and the same formal object [n.140], - yet he who understands it with abstractive intellection can, because of the imperfection of the intellection, have it for formal object although he not have the other one.

143. As to the ‘I concede...’ [n.141 near the middle]: the concept is not the finite act [sc. whereby we conceive] but is the formal object [n.65]. If it is determinable [n.141], then it is formally finite and potential, and then not common to an infinite thing.

The final consequence [sc. the clause immediately preceding] is to be denied, because the infinite thing is in the formal finite object understood imperfectly to the extent that the infinite object would be of a nature to cause in the intellect such a formal object if it were to be moving it in diminished fashion [n.142], just as also a created object moving in diminished fashion is of a nature to do the same; and therefore it is common to both, as a sort of common and imperfect likeness.

144. To the contrary: an infinite thing is not anything finite; God is the object in question, if the object is predicated of God in the ‘what’, in the way ‘man is an animal’ -similarly, God is not anything potential.

Response. Although there is in the intellect a composition of concepts, yet the conception is on behalf of the external thing. Just as signs are taken for the things signified, and just as several concepts can be the signs of the same thing (although one is common, another proper), so the composition of the concepts is a sign of the identity of the things signified by those concepts. Because, therefore, the thing signified by the finite concept, as by the common sign, is the very thing which is signified by the concept of God, therefore, by compounding the finite concept in the intellect with the concept of God, this proposition is true ‘God is a being’; but the composition is not on behalf of the finite thus signified, but on behalf of the infinite signified in common.

145. Then to the proposition ‘God is the object in question, a being’ [n.144, init.], I reply: God is that which in reality is signified by being as by a common sign, and therefore in the intellect this composition is true ‘God is a being’, which composition is a sign of that identity.

146. When you say ‘God is not anything finite’ [n.144, init.], the statement is true, when speaking of identity in the thing, namely the identity which is signified and belongs to the signified things; but, when speaking of being as it is a composition in the intellect, the statement that nothing which in the intellect is a finite sign can be predicated of God in a composition is false. An example of this: ‘a man is an animal’, - in the intellect ‘animal’, as it is there the formal object, is a diminished being. But no diminished being is true of [the man] Socrates existing in reality.

147. So this is false, then, ‘Socrates existing is an animal’? - I reply: a composition is always made of concepts, and it is a sign and of things signified; but it is on behalf of material objects, which are signified by the concepts, and of identity, which is signified by the composition, such that if there is an identity of the things signified, namely of the material objects, the composition of the concepts, which are the formal objects, is true.

148. The point [n.139, 140] can also be further clarified. If there is posited for any universal a proper individual (to wit in reality, a proper individual for substance, a proper individual for animal, a proper individual for man, etc.), then not only is the concept of genus potential to the concept of difference, but the proper individual of the genus is potential to the proper individual of the difference. But if we take the proper individual of this concept ‘being’ which is individual in God, and if we take the proper individual of this which is ‘infinite’, it is the same individual, and it is not potential to itself.

149. But you ask at any rate: why does entity not have a proper individual in reality, which individual would be in potency to the individual of the determining feature, so that ‘this’ being is first understood before ‘infinite’ being is?

I reply, because when something is existent of itself, and is not merely capable of very existence, it has of itself whatever condition is necessarily required for existence; but being as it belongs to God - namely being through essence - is infinite existence itself and not something to which existence itself merely belongs (God is of himself ‘this’ and of himself ‘infinite’), so that infinity is in some way as it were first understood to be a mode of being through essence before it is understood to be ‘this’; and therefore one should not ask why ‘this’ being is infinite, as if singularity first belonged to it before infinity. And so is it universally in the case of things that can be beings through essence. Nothing such by participation is first of itself determined so as to be such by essence, both so as to be an infinite such and so as be of itself ‘this’.

150. And if you argue that individual includes individual, therefore common includes common, therefore if ‘this’ being includes ‘this’ infinity, and if being in common includes infinity in common, - I reply that the consequence is not valid, because individual includes some perfection which common does not include, and on account of this perfection it can formally include the infinite, and yet the common - by reason of the common concept - does not include it as an included concept, but is in some way determinable by it.

151. [To the second] - As to Avicenna Metaphysics II [n.40], the answer is plain from himself in Metaphysics VIII, as was said [n.122].

152. [To the third] - As to Damascene [n.41], the answer is plain from the Master [Lombard] in distinction 19 [Sentences I d.19 ch.9 n.182], because he puts species there ‘for some likeness of species to individuals’; there is however a greater unlikeness, according to Augustine, and therefore Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.6 n.11 denies species there as he also denies genus. Hence the definition of Porphyry [Book of Predicables ch.3] ‘species is said to be that which is predicated of many things in the what’ should be understood as meaning that the species in those many is multiplied as to its nature, but in the divine persons the divine nature is not multiplied; the species too has in itself a reality corresponding to it, potential to the proper reality of the individual, but the divine essence is in no way potential to the relation, as was said in distinction 5 question 2 [I d.5 nn.70, 113, 118-119, 132, 138].

153. [To the fourth] - To the final one, about wisdom [n.42], I say that wisdom is not a species of a genus as it is transferred to divine reality, nor is it transferred according to that idea, but according to the idea of wisdom as it is transcendent. But how such a thing can be transcendent was said in the principal solution, the third article [nn.114-115].

154. There is, however, a doubt about the wisdom which is in us, whether it is an individual of transcendent wisdom and of quality, or whether only of something else.

And it seems not to be an individual of either.

Because nothing contains the same thing under diverse predicates which are said in the ‘what’ about the same thing and are not subalternate; but transcendent wisdom and quality are not subalternate;     therefore etc     .

155. Again, transcendent wisdom is a property of being, - therefore being is not said of it in the ‘what’, nor conversely, from distinction 3 [I d.3 nn.131, 134-136]; therefore neither does anything in which transcendent wisdom is included include a being in ‘what’, because then it would be a being per accidens; for it would essentially include the idea of subject and property, and these do not make anything one per se but only per accidens.

156. If these arguments [nn.154-155] are valid, and the wisdom in us is only an individual of transcendent wisdom or only an individual of the genus of quality - the second of these does not seem it should be granted, because then wisdom would not be in us a perfection simply, which seems to be contrary to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.4 n.6: ‘Every creature around us cries out’ etc. [n.71]; if the first of them is granted, then not every habit is formally in the genus of quality, but all that indicate perfection simply are transcendent.The Vatican editors remark that nn.154-156 have the nature of notes (not of finished discussion). ⁸⁰