IV. To the Arguments for the First Opinion

400. To the arguments for the first opinion [nn.359-363].

To the first argument from Ethics 2 [n.359] I concede that, by proceeding through the division of things in the soul, species can truly be called habits, and habit can truly be predicated of the species as a universal and per accidens predicate; and if this has to be rightly expressed per se and in particular, such a thing is called an intelligible species. But the Philosopher does not mean that nothing is in the soul save what is a per accidens habit; on the contrary, that to which the idea of habit belongs is a sort of universal predicate.

401. To the second [n.360] I say that an angel cannot generate in himself any habit from his acts (I mean a habit that is a thing other than a species), because a habit is not generated in things inclined or determined naturally to one thing (as the reason for falling in a heavy thing is not generated by its falling however many times); nor in things moved violently is an inclination generated in conformity to the mover or to the operation of a habit (as is plain if a heavy thing is projected upwards however many times),a - but a habit is generated in powers that are in themselves indeterminate to an act frequently elicited. Now it is not a feature of imperfection that some created intellect is supremely habituated to intellection; but if there is any such intellect it will be the angelic, and so in it (as in what is supremely habituated to act) an aptitude that may be called a habit in the above way [sc. as a habit is ‘a thing other than the species’] will not be able to be generated from any action; or if it lacks such a habit (a habit that was an aptitude for considering this intelligible thing) and the intellect is capable of it, then I say it is not unacceptable for it to be able to generate such a habit in itself.

a.a [Interpolation] [nor in things moved violently] is there generated, by their being so moved however many times, any idea or habit facilitating and habituating them to such violent motion, as is plain of a stone moved upwards.

402. And when you say ‘therefore it is potential, as our intellect is, not only to second act but also to first’ [n.360], I deny the consequence; because the first act in an intellect is that which is presupposed to second act (which second act is intellection), but this habit (which is an aptitude for understanding and is distinguished from a species) does not naturally precede the act but follows it; therefore it is posterior to second act (and so it is not first act), and thereby the potency for it is not an essential potency (rather it is quasi posterior to accidental potency), because an essential potency is properly for a first act preceding second act; hence the science, for which the intellect, according to Aristotle, is said to be in essential potency, is not a scientific habit (which is generated from acts), but an intelligible species.

403. Hereby is plain the answer to the third argument, from Dionysius [n.361]. I say that ‘the highest in an inferior is lowest in a superior’ when what is placed as highest in an inferior is not repugnant to the superior. Here however it is repugnant, because in us the habit of science is a perfection supplying the imperfection of our intellect, inasmuch as our intellect is not of itself supremely habituated; even when a man has an active reason whereby the object is sufficiently present, such a supreme inclination as is required for the most perfect act is still lacking.

404. Although this perfection in us supplies an imperfection, yet it is repugnant to an angel, because there cannot be an imperfection in an angel that may be supplied by this perfection; so could it be said in many other cases, because if what is supreme in an element is to generate something like itself, there is no need that it be lowest in any mixed body proximate to it, for some mixed bodies do not generate something like themselves, because such a perfection supplying imperfection in an inferior is repugnant to them (so too can what is lowest in a superior be repugnant to an inferior, and then the converse is not valid, namely that the lowest of the superior are the highest of the inferior). Hence this argument [sc. taken from Dionysius, n.361] would entail many falsehoods; for it would follow that the sensitive soul (which is the supreme form in brutes) would be formally in the intellective soul.

405. To the fourth [n.362] I say that if there were no other reason save that the species, when it is perfect, suffices for perfect intellection without a habit (and in an angel the species perhaps necessarily suffices without a habit, if a habit as it is distinguished from a species is impossible in it; or if a habit is possible there, it does not suffice without a species) - this alone suffices for denying in an angel a habit other than the species as a necessary principle for the act of understanding.

406. To the fifth and last argument [n.363] I say that if the appetible object were present to the appetite by some proper presence different from that by which it is present to the cognitive power of the appetite, then proper reasons would be required in the appetite whereby diverse objects might be present to it; but this supposition is false, because an object present to some cognitive power is present by the same fact to the appetitive power that corresponds to the cognitive power.

407. And then if you argue that ‘the will does not require diverse reasons, so neither does the intellect’ [n.363], I say that the antecedent is false if it is understood of the reasons by which an object is present to the intellect (for the reasons by which objects are present to the intellect are reasons that are diverse); but if you mean that the reasons by which the objects may be present would not be required in the will, I say that this is not valid, because the appetitive power is not of a nature to have an object in itself in the way that an object is present to the cognitive power. Nor is it valid to raise an objection against this from ordered cognitive powers, for the order between themselves of things that are of the same genus is not like the order of the intellective and appetitive powers, which are of different genera; and     therefore ordered cognitive powers that are diverse have diverse reasons (by which their objects may be present), just as the cognitive power has diverse reasons in relation to its appetitive powers.