Appendix. [Reportatio IC d.8 p.1 q.3] Eighth Distinction. First Part.

Question Three

[Point D. See n.104]

Again, the Philosopher says this in Metaphysics 7.101034b21-22, for “just as the nature - that is the definition - is to the thing, so are the parts of the definition or of the nature to the parts of the thing;” therefore, just like in a definition, there are several real parts, which should not always be set down as matter and form, but as other realities, one of which is the necessary in potency to another.

Again, by reason: the intellect, when conceiving a genus, has a concept about something which is in the thing from the nature of the thing, otherwise it would not conceive anything that might be said of man in the ‘what’; and I am not speaking here of the second intention of genus, but of that which is objectively conceived. Likewise, when conceiving the difference, I conceive something which is in the thing objectively. If therefore the genus or the difference were to state the whole reality of the defined thing, then - by joining the genus to do the defining - the same thing would be said totally twice, which is one discordancy, and the other discordancy is that the definition would not be first the same as the defined, which is false, because the quiddity of anything is the same as itself.

On the contrary: if everything finite is in a genus, since the personal properties in divine reality are not infinite, because they are not perfections simply, - therefore they are finite, because between the finite and the infinite there is no middle, - therefore they are in a genus.

I reply: they are formally neither finite nor infinite. Not infinite because then one person would have some perfection which another would not have; nor are they formally finite, because then they would not be the same really as the divine essence, which is formally infinite. Hence, just as the finite and infinite, properly speaking, are congruent in quantity of amount and in nothing else (Physics 1.2.185a33-b3), so these transumptively said things only agree with something possessing a virtual quiddity of which there are entities said quidditatively, and of these entities the intrinsic grades are the finite and infinite, and not the personal or individual hypostatic idea.

[Point E. See n.117]

Note here for the intention of the Philosopher that something can be formally repugnant to the subject which is not repugnant to the property, although it is virtually repugnant to it. An example: it is formally repugnant to man to be in the genus of accident, but it is not formally repugnant to risible, which is a property of man; but infinity thus belongs per se to it [sc. some supposed line]; therefore although it is repugnant to line, it is however not repugnant to straight as it is straight. And therefore, as to the idea of straight, a straight line is not well defined when it is said to be “that whose middle does not extend outside the extremes” (Topics 6.11.148b23-32), because straight, whence it is straight, does not essentially include either middle or extremes, because, if a straight line were infinite, the idea of straight would remain and yet it would have neither middle nor extremes. - This as to the intention of the Philosopher, why he takes exception to this definition of straight line.