B. To the Principal Arguments

189. And from this the response to the first principal argument [n.143] is clear. For when the conclusion is drawn that ‘every individual where the nature can be contracted is more composite than the nature itself’,Not express in n.143 but implied. It is express however in Lectura 2 d.3 n.140. ⁶¹ I say that composition can be understood properly, insofar as it is composition of an actual and of a potential thing; or less properly, as it is composition of a reality and of an actual and potential reality in the same thing. In the first way the individual is not a composite with respect to the specific nature, because it adds no reality (for it adds neither matter nor form nor composite in the way the argument proceeds [n.143]). In the second way the individual is necessarily composite, because the reality from which the specific difference is taken is potential with respect to the reality from which the individual difference is taken, as if they were thing and thing; for the specific reality does not of itself have that whereby it includes by identity the individual reality, but some third thing includes by identity those two.

190. And this composition is of such sort as cannot stand along with the divine simplicity. For the divine simplicity not only does not allow a composition with itself of thing and of actual and potential thing, but not a composition either of actual reality and potential reality; for, when comparing anything essential with anything whatever in divine reality, the essential is formally infinite, and therefore it has of itself that whereby it includes by identity whatever can exist along with it (as was often touched on in the first book, 1 d.8 nn.194, 209, 213, 215-217, 220-221, d.5 nn.117-118, 127, d.2 n.410), and the extremes [e.g. wisdom and goodness, deity and paternity] are not precisely the same perfectly, because some third thing includes them both perfectly. But in the issue at hand neither does the specific entity include by identity the individual entity nor the reverse, but some third thing - of which both are as it were per se parts - alone includes those two by identity, and therefore the most perfect composition which is of thing and thing is removed; not however every composition for, universally, any nature that is not of itself a ‘this’ but determinable to being a ‘this’ (either so as to be determined by some other thing, which is impossible in anything whatever, or so as to be determined by some other reality) is not simply simple.

191. To the second argument [n.144] I concede that the singular is per se intelligible, as concerns it on the part of itself (but whether it is not per se intelligible to some intellect, namely to ours - about this elsewhere [n.294]); at any rate any impossibility in its being able to be understood is not on its part, just as neither is the impossibility of seeing or of vision in an owl on the part of the sun but on the part of the eye of the owl.

192. To the argument about definition [n.146] I say that if any account could express whatever comes together in the entity of an individual, yet that account will not be a perfect definition, because it does not express the ‘what it is to be’, and according to the Philosopher, in Topics 1.5.101b39, a definition is what expresses the whatness of a thing. And therefore I concede that the singular is not definable by a definition other than the definition of the species, and yet it is a per se being, adding some entity to the entity of the species; but the per se entity which it adds is not a quidditative entity.

193. From this is plain the answer to the other arguments about science and demonstration [n.145], because the definition of the subject is the middle term in the most powerful demonstration; but the singular does not have a proper definition but only a definition of the species, and so there is of it no demonstration proper but only a demonstration that is of the species (for it does not have its own particular property but only the property of the species).Tr. The most powerful demonstration demonstrates a property of a subject through the definition of the subject, and an individual has neither property nor definition. ⁶²