III. To the Reasons for the Opinion of Others

54. Using the same point in response to what is adduced for the opinion, about proportion to intellect [n.6] - I say that this proportion is a relation of the thing known to the knower, and this relation is the diminished being on which it is founded, as has been made clear [nn.34-35]; but it is not necessary that the ‘diminished being’ relation require along with it the entity simply of the being which it determines. And when you say there is no such proportion ‘of the impossible’ to the divine intellect [n.6], - I say that it can well be that the altogether black is not white, and yet not for this reason is ‘a man white in teeth’ simply white; so it can be that an im-proportion in every way is ‘impossible’ to the divine intellect, and yet that some proportion is ‘possible’ to his intellect, but not through being simply.

55. To the point about permutation of proportion [n.7], I say that that way of arguing takes its rise from Euclid, in the sixteenth conclusion of the fifth book: “If,” he says, “four quantities were proportional, they will be proportional by permutation;” which is proved by the fifteenth, preceding conclusion: “The proportion of multiples and of sub-multiples is the same.”

56. And this permutation, certain and known in the case of quantities, is used by some people in arguments. Now the Philosopher used it in Prior Analytics 2.22.68a3-8, 11-16 (in two rules): ‘If a is converse of b and c of d, and if a and c contradict, then and b and d will contradict’ and conversely. The consequence is necessary because about anything one or other of a pair of contradictories is said; and because what is convertible with one contradictory does not receive the predication of the other (nor conversely), therefore it is the converse of the other contradictory. And generally whenever some true proportion (corresponding to the fifteenth conclusion of Euclid) can be got through which a permutation holds (corresponding to the sixteenth conclusion), then the permutation is good, - and when not, not.

57. To the issue at hand then: generally such a permutation never holds when comparing extremes to an inferior and superior; nay there is a fallacy of the consequent, because the extremes of two contradictions when compared with each other have a converse proportion in inferences and not the same one (for the opposite of the consequent entails the opposite of the antecedent and not conversely), and therefore to argue ‘as the first is to the third, so the second is to the fourth’ commits the fallacy of the consequent. But one should argue conversely (when drawing inferences), and so argue thus, ‘as the first is to the third, so the fourth is to the second’, - and so in the issue at hand, ‘as every being is possible, so every impossible is a non-being’.

58. And as to what is added there, that then ‘one nothing would be more nothing than another nothing’ [n.8], - I reply:

A negation is present in something in three ways. Sometimes not because of repugnance of the positive to the affirmation of the negative of it, but only because of the negation of the cause that posits the effect - just as if some surface were neither [sc. neither black nor white], it would indeed be non-white not because of the repugnance of the surface to the affirmation opposite to this negation, but only because of the negation of the cause, not positing whiteness to be present on the surface. But sometimes there is a negation in a positive because of its repugnance to the affirmation and to the opposite of that negation, and this in two ways: for sometimes there is precisely such a repugnance because of some one thing that belongs to the understanding of both - just as in the ultimate species of the same proximate genus their negations are said mutually of each other, because of their repugnance, which repugnance is however because of one thing included in the understanding of both, namely because of the ultimate embracing difference; but sometimes because of several things included in the understanding of both or of one of them, - just as, if the most special species be taken of two most general genera, the affirmations are indeed repugnant to each other because of the many things included in them, namely as many as are the predicates stated in the ‘what’ of each one in its own genus; for nothing is said in the ‘what’ of white which is not a middle term for showing this proposition ‘man is not whiteness’, also nothing is said of man in the ‘what’ which is not a middle term for showing the same proposition - and therefore this proposition ‘man is not whiteness’ is true because of the repugnance of the terms simply, or because of the many things included in the understanding of the repugnant things, each of which would be on either side a sufficient reason for such repugnance.

59. And yet in all these inherences in negations, although they are present from diverse causes, nothing is said to be more or less negated, but that each simply is ‘not such’; for flavor is simply as much nothing of whiteness as man is, and likewise a surface has nothing of whiteness, in the case posited above [n.58]; and the reason why this one is not more a negation than that one is because any negation negates the whole of the affirmation opposed to it, for whatever reason it is ‘such’, and whether because of one reason or several.

60. So in the issue at hand: in man in eternity there is present that ‘he is not anything’, and in chimaera there is present that ‘it is not anything’; but the affirmation ‘he is something’ is not repugnant to man but there is only negation because of negation of the cause, not positing it - but the affirmation is repugnant to a chimaera, because no cause could cause in it that ‘it is something’. And the reason that this is not repugnant to man and is repugnant to chimaera is that this is this and that is that, and this for any intellect conceiving them, because - as was said [n.50] - whatever is repugnant to something formally of itself is repugnant to it, and what is not repugnant formally of itself is not repugnant.

61. Nor is it necessary to imagine here that it is not repugnant to man because he is a being in potency and is repugnant to a chimaera because it is not a being in potency, - nay rather conversely, because it is not repugnant to man therefore he is a possible with logical potency and because it is repugnant to a chimaera therefore a chimaera is impossible with the opposite impossibility; and this possibility is followed by objective possibility, and that on the supposition of God’s omnipotence which has regard to everything possible (provided it is other than himself), yet that logical possibility can stand - by reason of itself - absolutely, although per impossibile no omnipotence were to have regard to it.

62. Therefore the reason altogether first and irreducible to another as to why ‘being’ is not repugnant to man is that man is formally man (and this whether really in itself or intelligibly in the intellect), and the first reason why ‘being’ is repugnant to a chimaera is the chimaera insofar as it is a chimaera. Therefore the negation ‘nothingness’ is present in different ways in eternity in man and in a chimaera, and yet not for this reason is one more a nothing than the other.

63. Or it could also be said that from man is removed only being and nothing else consequent on being (of the sort that ‘possible to be’ is), but from chimaera is removed being and its consequent; and therefore ‘being’ is negated of a chimaera for more reasons than it is negated of man, but this negation is not more in one than in the other. But the first response [nn.61-62] seems more real.

64. To Augustine [n.9]: capacity for form - according to him - is matter, because it has some true entity, and not only some such entity as the soul of Antichrist has before it is created. About this in the second book, distinction 12 q. un. nn.1-9.

65. To the remark from On John [n.9]: I concede that, when there are two ordered causes, both cause the effect, - and in different ways because the higher one causes more; and so if the heart is the higher cause and the hand a lower one with respect to letters, each causes (both the heart and the hand), but it is not the case that the heart produces the letters in some true being before the hand does and that the hand later adds to them some respect!

66. To the last one from Avicenna [n.11]: he is speaking of the flowing of forms from God insofar as these are understood, and of the flowing of everything that exists (that is, the flow of things in true being); and I concede that just as the ‘being’ of something understood insofar as it is understood is different from true being (which is of essences outside the soul), so ‘this and that’ flowing are different, and things flow from God by each flowing. It is not so in us because the things pre-exist outside the soul - or in the cause - so that they may then move our intellect to an act of understanding. But Avicenna does not say that the flow ‘in understood being’ is the flow in quidditative being, because ‘understood being’ is a distinct being from all real being, both quidditative and of existence.