A. Five Ways of Giving a Solution are Expounded and Examined

1. First Way

21. [Exposition of the opinion] - To this question it is said [by Henry of Ghent] that things are differently disposed as regard acquired habit and infused habit. For the natural act of a man, and the lack of impediment in the act, is from another, because of the indetermination that nature has with respect to that act, - and therefore acquired virtue is a perfection of nature, with nature presupposed under the idea of the principle of act; but if supernatural virtue belonged to nature (with nature presupposed in that to which such an act corresponds), then the supernatural virtue alone would facilitate nature, as acquired virtue does; but this is false, nay by the same thing there is ‘gratuitous existence’ and a gratuitous act, according to that [supernatural] degree, is simply elicited - the result being that acquired virtue is a virtue according to the idea of virtue that is posited in Nicomachean Ethics 2.5.1106a15-17, but theological virtue is not like that but accords with the idea of virtue by which it is laid down that virtue is ‘the utmost of power’ (De Caelo 1.11.281a10-12).

22. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion [n.21], if thus he [sc. Henry of Ghent] understands that a supernatural habit is simply principle with respect to act, I argue as follows:

That by which someone can act simply is a power; therefore a supernatural habit will be a power. The antecedent is plain, because power is that whereby we are simply and first able to act.Note by Scotus: “This is true of the genus of action, it is false of operation-action.” ¹⁴

23. Further, from this [sc. that a supernatural habit is a principle of act] it follows in addition that no more will the will be good if it acts through the habit of charity than a piece of wood is perfected in acting if it acts by the heat inhering in it accidentally;Note by Scotus: “By that action a subject, whose formal principle is ‘an accident through an accident’ of that subject, is not per se perfected.” ¹⁵ an example: for just as from this fact [sc. the wood acting through heat] no action belongs to the wood through the form of wood but only to the agent [sc. the heat] that is received in the wood, so also it seems that the action that would belong to charity as to principal principle would in no way belong to the will as will. And it also follows further that just as heat, if it were separated, would heat equally as much, so charity, if it were separated, would act equally as much, for every form that is the total principle of acting as it exists in a subject, can, if it exists per se, operate per se - and thus the intended proposition evidently follows, namely that the habit will be a power.Note by Scotus: “If heat were an active principle in respect of something which would be a perfection of wood, there would be nothing similar to ‘heat is active’ (each unfitting result rightly follows when one posits habit as the reason for receiving the operation); nothing would be similar about operation, - for a material cause of operation is lacking; nothing either about acting, about genus of action, because in this way it is only a principle of something immanent, not of something transient (but why is it not?).” ¹⁶

24. Further, an operation whose active principle is purely natural is not freely elicited; but a habit, since it is not formally the will, nor as a consequence formally free, will, if it is an active principle, be purely natural; therefore its operation will not be purely free, and thus no ‘willing’ will be free if it is elicited by the habit as by a total active principle.

25. Further, in that case a man who once has charity could never sin mortally, which is unfitting. - The proof of the consequence is that he who has some active form predominating in him can never be moved against the inclination of that predominating form, just as never can a heavy mixed body be raised upwards against the inclination of the dominating earth in it; but charity - if it is the total active principle - is predominant over the will itself, which has no power for that act; therefore the will always follows the inclination of charity in acting, and so it will never sin.

26. Further, that act is not mine which is not in my power; but the action of the habit itself is not in my power, because the habit itself - if it is active - is not free but is a natural principle; therefore the ‘loving’ will not be mine, such that it be in my power, and so I will not merit by that act.

2. Second Way

27. [Exposition of the opinion] - In another way it can be said that acquired and infused virtues do not differ in the aforesaid way [n.21], but both are compared as to substance of act in the same way; and then there is one way of speaking, that the act has its substance from the power but has such and such intensity from the habit, so that to the two things as it were in the act - namely the substance and the intensity - there correspond two things in the idea of the principle or the cause.

28. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this I argue that the intensity of an act is not something extrinsic, an accident of the act, but a degree intrinsic to the act, - such that an intense act is something ‘per se one’, just as an individual of this sort is one in species. There cannot, therefore, be one principle of the substance of this sort of act and another of its intensity, because that by which there is this individual is that by which there is an intrinsic degree proper to this individual; for it cannot receive nature, and a nature designated ‘this nature’, from something else without receiving it in a certain degree. - Following on from this, as if from the same middle term, one could argue the way it was argued before against the principal point [n.18], that since an intense act is ‘per se one’, and what is combined from potency and habit is as it were ‘per accidens one’, this whole cannot be the principle of that. But this form of arguing is not cogent (hence it will also be solved later [nn.73-74]), though the first form is, because that whereby it is ‘this one thing’ is that whereby it has a definite degree intrinsic to this.

29. Further, second, whenever a naturally active principle concurs with a free acting cause, the natural principle always jointly acts as much as it can (an example about the will and an inferior power acting naturally as much as belongs to itself); for although it be prevented from acting when the free principle does not act, yet - when the free principle is acting - it necessarily acts, because it acts by way of nature, as much as belongs to it, it jointly acts with the free principle as much as it can; therefore if a determinate habit in the will give a determinate intensity to the act, then, with the will operating on the substance of the act, the habit will necessarily give the intensity corresponding to itself, and thus, however much the will operates with a modicum of effort, its act would always be equally as intense, because, although the will causes the substance of the act, the habit - because it acts by way of nature - would necessarily cause what is its own.

30. Further, if the habit give intensity to the act, this would be in some designated degree (that degree will be given the mark a below); therefore the will can, along with this habit, have an act that is intense to that degree. Let there be another will, more perfect than this will in proportion to ‘degree a’ by relation to an act in the lowest degree (to wit, if a is the fourth degree in the act, let there be another will exceeding the first will by four degrees), then this will - without a habit - could have an act as equally intense as the will with the habit. Therefore the substance of the act is not so precisely from the power that the intensity is not from it.

31. Further, only an infinite will - excluding all idea of habit - has power for an infinite act; therefore too the will, in whatever degree of nature it is, has power for an act of a determinate degree. - The antecedent is plain, because a will, by the fact it is infinite, is not receptive of any habit, because there is not lacking to it any perfection that is possible to will. The proof of the consequence is that ‘as the highest is to the highest, so is the simply to the simply’ and so is any degree whatever to the degree corresponding to it.

3. Third Way

32. [Exposition of the Opinion] - In a third way, by attributing somehow to the habit the idea of active principle in respect of the act, one can say that the habit is a partial active cause, along with the power itself (which is also a partial cause), in respect of a perfect act proceeding from the power and the habit, although the power itself could be the total cause in respect of an imperfect act preceding the generation of the habit. And then one would have to speak about the distinction of these two partial causes, and how they per se make one total cause, in the way spoken above in distinction 3 in the question ‘On the Cause of Generated Knowledge’ [I d.3 nn.495-498].

33. [A doubt] - But then there is a doubt. Since these two [sc. power and habit] are not causes of the same order, as are two people hauling a boat, - which of them has the idea of prior cause?

34. It seems that the habit does, because it belongs to the prior cause to determine the second and not conversely; but the habit determines the power toward act; and it gives inclination to it, and not conversely; but to give inclination belongs to the superior in respect of the inferior, and not conversely

35. But the opposite of this seems to be the case:

First, because the power uses the habit and not conversely, - because what uses another in acting is more principal than it, and that which it uses is as it were the instrument or the second cause with respect to it [I d.3. n.562]

36. Likewise, the power is more unlimited in acting than the habit, because it extends to more things; but the superior cause seems to be more unlimited in extent;     therefore etc     . [ibid. n.559].

37. Further, third, a habit is a natural cause. Therefore if it be the principal cause, which moves the power, it would move it by way of nature and consequently the power, since it acts in the way in which it is moved, would act by way of nature; for an agent that acts insofar as it is moved - if it be moved by way of nature - also acts further by way of nature, and so every action of an habituated power would be natural and none free (at any rate none would be in the power of the will), which is a unfitting result.

38. Again, fourth, the habit would be the power, because it would be that by which the possessor of it can first act.

39. Again, fifth, when there are two ordered causes one of which is cause of the other, that which is cause of the other is the superior cause; but the power is the cause of the habit - at any rate by the mediation of acts - and not in any way conversely;     therefore etc     .

40. [Clarification of the opinion] - I concede, for these reasons [nn.35-39] that, by holding the habit to be a partial cause with respect to the act [n.32], the habit would be second cause and not first, but the power itself would be the first cause and absolutely would not need the habit for operating; yet it operates less perfectly without the habit than with it (and that when an equal effort on the part of the power is posited), just as, when two causes come together for one effect, one cause alone does not have power per se for an effect as perfect as both together do. And in this way there is saved why the act is more intense when from the power and the habit than when from the power alone; not indeed that the power is the cause of the substance of the act and the habit the cause of the intensity of the act (as if there were two causes corresponding to the two caused things [n.27]), but that both causes coming together are able to produce a more perfect effect than one alone [I d.3 n.296], - which effect, however, being a whole in itself and as ‘per se one’ is from the two causes, but causing in diverse order [nn.32-33].

41. [Against the opinion] - Against this opinion there is the following argument:

No things distinct in species are equivocal agent causes for each other; habit and act are distinct in species; therefore they are not equivocal agent causes for each other; but an act is necessarily an equivocal cause in the generation of a habit, an acquired habit at least, - not therefore conversely.

42. The proof of the major is that an equivocal cause contains eminently in itself the perfection of the effect; but two things distinct in species cannot eminently contain each other. - Further, in comparing the same first cause to two effects, it seems that the second of the effects would have a determinate order, immediate or mediate, prior or posterior - and that when speaking of the whole species of the second of those effects. The point is evident by induction in passions that follow the same subject, wherein there is necessarily a determinate order, that one follows the subject more immediately than the other, and that according to its whole species, so that this order does not vary in any individuals whatever of the species. Therefore with respect to the power - which is the common cause of the act and the habit - the two effects will have a determinate order, so that either necessarily the act according to its whole species would precede the habit or conversely; and since some act of necessity precedes the habit as the cause of it, the habit would not precede any act.

43. Further, if the habit is a partial and equivocal cause with respect to the act, then the cause of this cause will be more perfect than the equivocal cause of the same act (the consequence is plain, because in equivocal causes the cause of the cause is a more perfect cause than the cause closer to the thing caused); but the act is the cause of the generation of the habit; therefore if the power along with the habit can perform a perfect act [nn.32, 40], it could much more perform the same perfect act if it were under the act that generates the habit, - which seems an unfitting result, because two perfect acts cannot exist in the same power, or at any rate, if they could, it does not seem that one of them could in any way be the active principle with respect to the other.

44. Further, if the habit is as it were the second cause [n.40], supplying some degree of causality that is lacking to the power, then the habit could become so perfect that it would supply the place of the whole power; for universally, in agents of the same nature, it seems that the virtue of one could be so intensified that it would equal the two [I d.3 n.497].

45. Further, if it be held that, in the process of making more or less intense, the preexisting individual is corrupted, it would be necessary to posit that the habit is not the cause of the act, because it is corrupted in the act whereby it is made more intense; but a cause is not a cause when it is corrupted, because what does not exist is not cause of anything.

4. Fourth Way

46. [Exposition of the opinion] - He who would maintain the conclusion of these reasons [nn.41-45] could negate of habit all idea of active principle, and say that a habit only gives an inclination to operation as a sort of prior act agreeing with second act and giving a determination to that act - just as heaviness is a prior act, giving determination and inclination to a determinate ‘where’, although, according to some, heaviness is not a principle with respect to existing in that ‘where’.

47. [Approval of the opinion] - And this opinion seems probable, because to nothing should causality with respect to anything be attributed unless such causality is evident from the nature of the things (whether of the cause or of the thing caused); also to no cause should perfect causality be denied unless imperfection of causality appears manifestly in it, because no nature should be denied to possess a perfection which it does not evidently lack. But there seems to be no necessity of positing any active causality in the habit with respect to the act, because without this all the conditions commonly attributed to the habit will be saved [n.48]; also there is no necessity to take away from the power the perfect idea of causality so as to attribute a partial causality to the power. Therefore there is no need to attribute any causality to the habit.

48. The assumption is plain, because the four conditions that are attributed to the habit, namely that it is ‘that whereby the possessor of it operates easily, with pleasure, without impediment, and promptly’ [n.7], are saved by the habit’s inclination alone, which the habit attributes to the power as the power is receptive of operation.

49. Pleasure indeed exists because of the condition of the receiver, to whom belongs the operation received and the object about which the operation is. For pleasure is never in a making that is precisely a making, but because action is in the agent action can be pleasant because of the agreement of the agent with the object; but this agreement can be provided by the habit from the fact that it gives an inclination toward the action and the object. Pleasurability, therefore, does not include the idea of active principle, but only the agreement of the passive principle with the power and the object, and that as to action which is of the genus of quality, not action which is of the genus of action, - which difference in actions was stated above in distinction 3 [I d.3 nn.600-604]. Operation indeed is an action that is a quality, and it belongs to an habituated power that is, by the habit, inclined to such an act and to the object that terminates such an operation; but it does not thus belong to a non-habituated power, nor does such a form or such an object so belong.

50. Likewise as to the second condition. Difficulty in operation occurs from the fact that what is receptive of the operation is not disposed to receiving it, and not merely from a defect in the active virtue; therefore if what is receptive is disposed, there will be easiness in acting, to the extent the agent acts on such a receptive thing.

51. Likewise about absence of impediment and promptness. For impediment to, and slowness of, the agent in acting can be because of the indisposition of the receptive thing itself, especially when the same thing is agent and recipient, so that it will not itself operate promptly because it is indisposed to operating. This indisposition, then, is not for performing an action in the genus of action, but for having an action in the genus of quality; for nothing is said formally to operate insofar as it elicits operation but insofar as it receives it in itself.

52. Also, the way that the other things commonly attributed to a habit are saved, by attributing the whole action to the power and no activity to the habit, will be plain from solving the arguments to the principal point [nn.6-7, 12-14, 87-91].

5. What One should Think about the Four Ways

53. Thus then it is plain how, once the two first ways ‘about habit’ are abandoned as unfitting, the two last ways, namely the third and fourth, can be sustained as probable, by attributing, in line with the third way, some activity to the habit and not only ‘the idea of active principle’ to the power [n.32], - and, in line with the fourth way, by denying to the habit the idea of active principle and saying that it is as it were a form giving inclination to receive some further form, although it not be the idea of receiving with respect to it (as heaviness gives inclination downwards, although it is not the idea of that which receives what is downwards, but ‘a bodily magnitude’ is, insofar as it is receptive of some ‘where’ n.46]).

54. To the arguments that are against these two last ways, each of which ways can be sustained with probability, a response will be given later [nn.71-86], according to one of these two ways by maintaining it about the act either as to the substance of the act or as to the intrinsic degree.

6. Fifth Way

55. It remains now to inquire further about the accidental goodness of the act (which is the sort moral goodness is), and about moral habit, whether moral habit, insofar as it is a virtue, is in any way an active principle with respect to moral goodness in the act.

56. [Arguments for the fifth way] - It seems that it is

Because, according to the Philosopher Ethics 2.5.1106a15-17, virtue is “what perfects the possessor and makes his work good;” but it does not make it good in the idea of passive principle, because it is not the idea of receiving; therefore it does so in the idea of active principle

57. Further, virtue is “the disposition of the perfect in relation to the best”, from Physics 73.246b23; but it is not a passive disposition because - as before - it is not the idea of receiving; therefore it is in the idea of active principle. - There is a confirmation also for the reason, because ‘as good is to good so is best to best’ [Topics 3.2.117b22-26]; but since ‘the best idea’ belongs to the active principle, then according to this reason virtue perfects the power, and so perfects it for acting.

58. Further, virtue is moderator of the passions; but it does not moderate the passions through the idea of passive principle, because the object, by the fact it is the natural cause, causes the action according to the utmost of its power, - therefore as much as it can, if it is not impeded by some contrary agent; therefore the habit, by preventing the object from thus acting completely, moderates it in repressing the passion through the idea of active principle.

59. Further, Ethics 2.3.1105b7-9, the Philosopher says that ‘he who does not have justice, although he could do just things, not however justly’, - and so in the case of other acts; but moral goodness requires acting justly or formally, - and thus in other cases; therefore virtue, insofar as it is good, is such a principle of act, because without it an act could not be good.

60. [Arguments against the fifth way] - But there is an argument to the contrary of this through the fact that moral goodness in an act asserts only relation, because that an act is circumstanced with its due circumstances is not anything absolute in the act but is only a due comparison of it to the things it ought to agree with; therefore this does not have any proper active principle, just as neither does a respect have it.

61. Further, if a habit, insofar as it is a ‘virtue’, were the active principle of the moral goodness in an act, since the habit is not a virtue save in a respect, namely from its conformity with prudence (for it is “an elective habit of the mean, as determined by right reason” Ethics 2.5.1106b36-07a2), therefore some relative idea in virtue would be the idea of active principle, which is impossible.

62. [Response to the fifth way] - As to this article [n.55], it can be said that, just as beauty is not some absolute quality in the beautiful body but is the aggregation of all the things that become such a body (to wit size, figure, and color), and an aggregation too of all the respects (which are aggregations of all the becoming things in relation to the body and to each other), so the moral goodness of an act is as it were a certain comeliness of that act, including the aggregation of a due proportion with all the things that it has to be in proportion with (to wit, with the power, the object, the end, the time, the place, the manner), and that specifically in the way these are determined by right reason to be needing to agree with the act; the result is that we can say on behalf of all of them that the agreement of the act with right reason is that by which, once posited, the act is good, and that by which, when not posited - whatever other things it agrees with - the act is not good, because however much an act is about an object of some kind or other, if it is not according to right reason in the one who does it (to wit if he do not have right reason in his operating), the act is not good. Principally, therefore, the conformity of the act to right reason - a right reason determining fully all the circumstances due to that act - is the moral goodness of an act.

But this goodness has no proper active principle, just as neither does any respect, - especially since this respect is, from the nature of the extreme terms, consequent to the extremes posited; for it is impossible for any act to be posited in existence and for right reason to be posited in existence without there following in the act, from the nature of the extreme terms, such a conformity to right reason; but a relation that necessarily follows the extremes does not have any proper cause other than the extremes.

Therefore, as concerns this accidental condition of the act, which is moral goodness, there is no necessity for any habit to have any idea of proper active principle, save insofar as it has the idea of active principle with respect to the substance of the act -which act is of a nature to agree with the full determination of prudence;Note by Scotus: “This respect - aptitudinal respect - follows from the nature of the extremes [sc. habit and prudence], but actual respect does not; for this habit is fit, of its species, to be subordinate to prudence in acting, but it is not subordinate - in acting - from the nature of the very extremes, even when they exist together in the same thing; for when he [sc. who has both the habit and prudence] has an appetite in accord with this habit and not from the dictate of reason (if this is possible), then the habit is not subordinate, nor is the act morally good. On the contrary: he always uses it as a virtue, because he uses it as it is fit to be subordinate; for it is not a virtue precisely as actually subordinate in acting, because then someone who is not doing anything would not have any virtue. - Again, every respect that is not from the nature of the extremes has a proper cause. What is the cause here? To the first: he uses it but not as making it a virtue. In another way: although he uses that which is a virtue, not however as it is a virtue, because although being fit for subordination is sufficient for the being of virtue, nevertheless for using it ‘as it is a virtue’ requires it to be subordinated, because to use it is to be subordinated. To the second: the respect in an effect is from the two causes, conjoined in the acting; and not from the form of one in relation to itself, nor from the form of the other, nor of both and of both as conjoined in the subject, but of them as conjoined in actually acting, and thus of both as conjoined such that the habit moves to desire from the dictate of prudence. Such conjoining of them, therefore, in actually acting is the source whereby the relation is in the effect; not that it is the source whereby the acting is moral (because this would be got from prudence alone, without the other habit moving), but that it is the source whereby the acting is moral and easy and pleasant, - as in Ethics 2.5.1106a15-21. But what is the source of this conjunction of them in acting, because it is an extrinsic respect? - Response: from their absolute natures there is first this conjunction, and second the relation of them in the effect. But what is the ‘absolute’ from them such that this respect should be caused second? -Response: from prudence there is an absolute act in the intellect, - and from that act as prior cause and rule, and from the appetite as ruled, there is an absolute act of desiring. If the conjunction of the causes precedes in nature the common effect, nothing ‘absolute’ comes from the two causes before their conjunction does (a resulting difficulty: the source of the action primarily is not the source of the second conjunction in the action). If the first - in the order of nature - is a caused ‘absolute’, from it there is a relation of it to each cause, and from it conversely a relation of each cause to it, - from it the conjunction of one with the other. ¹⁷ and toward that act some habit inclines in itself from the nature of the habit, and from this - as a consequence - it inclines to the act which is conform to right reason, if right reason is present in the one acting.

65. What has been said of the moral goodness of an act [n.62] must be said proportionally of the habit, because moral virtue adds over and above the substance of the habit - as it is a form in the genus of quality - only an habitual conformity to right reason. For the same habit in nature, which might be generated from acts of abstinence elicited along with an erroneous reason in the one eliciting them, when it remains afterwards along with right reason, would afterwards be the virtue of abstinence and would before not be a habit of virtue, as long as there was no right reason of abstaining; nor yet has anything changed in that habit in itself but only now it is conjoined with prudence while before it was not.

66. To be conjoined, therefore, to prudenceNote of Scotus: “I do not say ‘conjoined in the same subject’ but, along with this, ‘conjoined to it as to a rule and prior cause’, to which this habit is subordinated insofar as it is a mover, - and this subordination or conformity is the essential idea of virtue; and the absolute form, as it is precisely mover under such a respect, is precisely active for an act that has a like respect (because what agrees with the ruled agrees with the rule), and thus the habit ‘as it is a virtue’ is precisely a mover to an act morally right, which - as it is absolutely such a form - is absolutely active for such an act ‘in its substance’, nor does it there have the idea of subordinate cause with respect to prudence.” ¹⁸ attributes to the habit (as it is a form in the genus of quality) the being of virtue, when the habit is of its nature naturally conform to prudence, - and so the habit that is a moral virtue indicates nothing in absolute entity other than is indicated by a habit such in nature, but does not indicate a virtue, if it be without prudence; and consequently it can have no other causality as it is a virtue than as it is such a natural quality, save that ‘as it is conjoined with prudence’ it is of a nature to be second cause - directed as it were by prudence - with respect to the common effect of both; but as it is without prudence it cannot be second cause with respect to the same effect (just as sight in a phrenetic cannot be a free power by participation, because he is unable to have use of will, which is a free power by essence -but in someone healthy sight does have use of free power by participation, and it is as it were a second cause with respect to the will). But still, when it is a second cause with respect to prudence, it has a proper causality - agreeing with it in its order of causing -precisely from the fact that it is such a form and a certain quality in nature, but not by respect of conformity or conjunction with prudence, because although a second cause joined to a first acts otherwise than when it is without it, yet it does not have its proper active virtue from such conjunction, but from its absolute nature.

67. [Conclusion to the fifth way] - Neither, therefore, on the part of the act insofar as it is morally good, nor on the part of the habit insofar as it is a moral virtue, can there be found any special idea according to which a virtue ‘as it is a virtue’ is a principle of an act insofar as the act is morally good save the one which is on the part of the habit and the act as concerns their nature.

68. [What one should think of the fifth way] - This fifth way, therefore, about the action of a moral virtue with respect to the act as it is morally good, should not be treated as other than the ways that touch on the substance of the habit and the substance of the act [n.67], - and so, in brief, as to the whole of the fifth way, one should hold either the third or the fourth way [nn.32, 46] about every habit.