III. To the Arguments

226. To the argument on behalf of the opinion of Godfrey [n.199] my response is: the term ‘from which’ is per se a privation of the degree to be introduced.

227. But what is the positive term ‘from which’ that is necessarily required? I reply: an imperfect degree.

228. On the contrary: the imperfect degree remains in the term ‘to which’ [n.225]. - I reply: it does not remain in a distinct act, the way the term ‘from which’ was, but it remains in the whole potentially, the way a part does.

229. On the contrary: it remains the same in every absolute sense; a respect is not the idea of a term ‘from which’ or ‘to which’. There seems to be the same difficultly about water when divided and united, namely what the term is ‘from which’ and ‘to which’; for if all the water is the term ‘from which’ of the division, and if ‘this separated part and that separated part’ are the term ‘to which’, each term was before the same in number in respect of anything absolute; some other force is here involved, because the two divided waters are separately counted, - therefore when the same numerical unity of each remains, they are always separately counted; but the same numerical unity of each remains in the whole, otherwise neither would remain the same in number, and thus there would be no continuation of the things preexisting but simply a corruption of them and generation from them of a third thing. Whoever would say that the parts in an absolute whole have the absolute existence of the whole, with respect to which the proper being of the parts is material (Metaphysics 5.2.1013b19-21), could say that the prior degree remains in the whole according to some absolute existence which was not there before; likewise about the water united to another water.

230. But the question still remains what the term ‘from which’ is that is incompossible with anything absolute? - No answer is assigned, so I briefly reply:

Per se the term ‘from which’ is incompossible with the term ‘to which’, - it is its privation; but the positive term ‘from which’ is not incompossible with the term ‘to which’ save by being put in the combination ‘the per se term from which’:The sign ‘(—)’ was put here for this clause by Scotus. ⁵⁰ unless one asserts the incompossibility, that ‘this is not this’ - or that ‘the same thing is not perfected at the same time by this and this’ as they are acts in distinct act. In this way indeed the prior degree is in two ways incompossible with the term ‘to which’: because it is never it, even when it is in it, and also because it is never the distinct act of that of which the term ‘to which’ is the distinct act.

231. But of these two ways of ‘unless one asserts’ etc. [n.230] the first is not sufficient for terms of motion, because whiteness is not sweetness [sc. and these are not terms of one and the same motion]; the second cannot posit the opposition of the term ‘from which’ on account of anything absolute in it, because being a distinct act adds to the absolute degree - in the way this degree remains - nothing but an exclusion, the exclusion of ‘being in another’ (the way a part is in the whole), and so to posit a term in this way is to posit it formally under the denial of a relation: therefore hold to the first remark, at ‘(—)’ [n.230 and footnote].

232. To the other point, about the divided water [n.229], I reply: just as a part in a whole does indeed exist, and in the act which terminates its generation (because division is not generation), yet it does not exist in a distinct act, which is an act along with exclusion of being a part; so there corresponds to it the unity that accords with the first idea of act [sc. the act that terminates its generation], and this unity remains with it in division and in union, - but according to the idea of distinct act [sc. act along with exclusion of being a part] there properly corresponds the unity that is the principle of number.

233. To the form. The first consequence [n.229] holds, speaking of unity in the second way [sc. unity as principle of number], because number is of discrete things; all the parts of a continuous thing are one in number, speaking of number strictly. - Further, the minor [sc. ‘there would be no continuation of the things preexisting but simply a corruption of them and generation from them of a third thing’] is false of numerical unity in the second way; it is true of it in the first way. Yet it does not follow that the same thing has two numerical unities; rather the same thing has, according to its absolute being, a unique and perpetual unity while it remains; but according to its exclusive being there corresponds to it a unity that is separately counted. And just as exclusive being is accidental to it, so its having a separately countable unity is accidental to it; for when its being is exclusive, its proper unity is separately countable, - when its being is not exclusive but it exists in another precisely as some part of it, then its proper unity is not separately counted but is a part of some separately counted unity, such that, in brief, ‘to be a separately countable unity’ properly requires exclusive being, because number is of discrete things.

234. To the argument for the opposite [n.196] I say that this consequence does not hold ‘the same form remains in the imperfect and perfect individual, therefore it is changed in subject’, because it does not remain as a subject of change but it remains as a nature in individual things, to which nature any individual whatever adds something. And the reason for the failure of the consequence is because that which is the subject of one individual of the nature is also the subject of another individual of it, and because the subject is possible and changeable from individual to individual; but the form itself, just as it is not the subject of one individual, so it is not the subject of another individual, and consequently it is not changeable from one to the other.

a [Interpolation] To the principal reason [see interpolation to n.196] I say that the form is not the subject of the change but is related to diverse degrees of it as a species to two individuals that possess the being of the species de novo; and the form is not the subject of them because, when individuals are multiplied de novo, the species begins now to be in one individual and now to be in another; hence there is no change of form according to those degrees, because they are not accidents superadded to the nature of the form but they are intrinsic modes, asserting a certain degree of virtual quantity of that form.