C. To the Principal Arguments

276. To the principal arguments of this fifth question.

To the first, from Metaphysics 4 [n.189]. It is said that Aristotle infers that ‘everything is relative to something’, that is, ‘relative to opinion and sense’. - But on the contrary: the consequent should differ from the antecedent in a proposed conclusion [1 d.3 n.316].

Therefore I say that it is unacceptable to say that ‘all things are relative to something’ such that their being is formally to be relative to something else, as the opinion said which posits that all appearances are true [n.189] - which opinion also said that the being of a thing is formally appearance. And I do not in this way concede that ‘all things are relative to something’ such that their being is formally relative to something -rather their being is formally to themselves, although this being contains by identity the being of things that are relative to something else.

277. As to the second [n.190], although its conclusion could be denied of relatives or of things in diverse genera (and they would then be said to be primarily diverse as far, namely, as concerns their formal reasons, such that none of them formally includes another or anything of another, although by identity in existing one contains another), yet it can be said - in consequence of what has been said elsewhere [n.231] - that this sort of relation is transcendent, because what belongs to being before it descends to genera is transcendent; but what belongs to every being belongs to it before it descends to genera; therefore anything such is transcendent and does not belong to any genus. And so these relations that follow being before it descends to beings of any genus will, since they are transcendent, not be of any determinate genus.a

a.a [Interpolated note by Richard of Sloley] against the first response [n.277]:

    Then, for the same reason, the powers of the soul could be set down as qualities and yet be really the same as the substance of the soul, because the reason that something in one accidental category - for instance relation - is the same in reality with substance is also a reason that something in another accidental category should also be. Again, nothing finite includes by identity anything primarily diverse from it; therefore substance does not include a relation of the genus of relation.

    Against the second response [n.277]:

    That which is of a determinate genus cannot be the same as that which is of some other genus but is transcendent. Again, what is a substance to one thing is not an accident to anything (from the Philosopher and Commentator, Physics 1.3.186a32-b12). Again, then an absolute thing and a comparative thing would not be contraries nor the first differences dividing being, because -according to Aristotle - great and small are not contraries because they are present in the same thing [Categories 6.5b11-6a11]; the second point is plain, because the first differences divide more than the second ones (but the second differences dividing being, when one says ‘another substance, another quality, etc.’ are primarily diverse; therefore). Again Avicenna Metaphysics 3.10, f 83rb, “There is no relation which is not an accident;” again On the Soul 5.2, f 23va, “Substance is not of itself referred to anything in any way.”