C. Scotus’ own Response

1. On an Angel’s Mode of Speaking

49. To the question then about speaking [n.6] I first reply that an angel speaks to an angel by causing in him immediately a concept of the object he is talking about.

For this I posit two reasons.

a) First Reason

50. The first reason is as follows: every speaker would, if he could, cause a concept immediately in him to whom he is speaking about what he is speaking of; an angel can do this in respect of a second angel;     therefore etc     .

51. Proof of the major, because a speaker intends principally to express his concept to the intellect he is speaking to; but every natural agent would, if it could, at once introduce what it principally intends.

52. Proof of the minor: that which is sufficiently in first act with respect to some effect can cause that effect in something receptive that is proportioned to it and nearby; but an angel, possessing actual knowledge of some object - let it be a - , is sufficiently in first act for causing actual intellection of a; therefore it can cause that effect in any intellect that is receptive of the effect. Now the intellect of a second angel, which does not conceive a distinctly, is receptive; therefore the first angel can cause in this intellect knowledge of the object. - Proof of the major here, because the first extremes of an active and passive proportion are the most universal ones (being abstracted from any active and any passive extreme), because the proportion is present in the particulars under each extreme by its common idea and therefore is present in the extremes. Proof of the minor here: an angel has in himself the act of knowing a and has the species (whatever species be posited as necessary for knowledge), and through what he has he can make his understanding to be in a second act by causing in himself intellection of a as an effect; so it follows that he can cause this in a second angel’s intellect, a passive one (which is of the same nature as his own intellect).

53. An instance against this reason [n.50] is that it is not conclusive save about two angels absolutely taken - because if they are distant from each other, the distance will be an impediment because of one’s not being able to act on the other; for a distant thing cannot act on a distant thing unless it first act on the medium between them; but the medium cannot receive the speaking of an angel nor can it hear an angel speaking;     therefore etc     . [Lectura 2 d.9 n.52].

54. There is confirmation from the Philosopher in On the Soul 2.7.419a15-20, where he maintains that if there were a vacuum nothing would be seen, because the visible species cannot reach the eye; hence the Philosopher maintains Physics 7.2.243a3-6 that ‘mover and moved are simultaneous’, and this when speaking of what is immediately moved, which must be moved by the mover before the thing mediately moved is moved.

55. To exclude these objections I show first that a distant angel can cause a concept in a distant angel: for if the action on the medium not be prior in nature to the action on the term, the action on the term would not depend on the action on the medium (the point is clear from the idea of natural priority, because a sufficient cause of two things - neither of which is naturally prior to the other - can cause either without the other); but in the issue at hand there is no such priority; therefore an angel can act on a distant term while not acting at all on the medium.

56. Proof of the minor. Action on the medium only naturally precedes action on the term for two reasons: either because the action is of the same nature on the medium as on the term, and then the action is naturally received in the medium first, just as the nearer passive thing is naturally affected before the more remote one; or because, if the action is not of the same nature, the agent has two active forms (or a same form that includes virtually two active forms), one of which is naturally prior to the other, and the agent is of a nature to act on the medium according to the form that is active first and to act on the term according to the other form. An example of the first is when the sun illumines the parts of the medium [sc. the air]; an example of the second is when the sun generates minerals in the bowels of the earth [1 d.37 n.4] or generates a worm in the earth, and illumines the interposed medium. - Therefore, when each of these causes is excluded (namely that neither is the medium receptive of the same action as the term, nor does the agent have another active form really or virtually by which it is of a nature to act on the medium with an action of a nature other than the action on the term), then in no way does action on the medium precede the natural action on the term. And so it is in the issue at hand; for the corporeal distance, which is between the distant angels, is of a nature to receive neither an action of the same nature as the distant and listening angel, nor another action of a different nature prior to it, because the speaking angel has a form neither virtually nor formally active for an action prior to the action which is his speaking.

57. This point is confirmed in three ways:

First, by positing an impossibility, namely that were God not everywhere in his essence, he would yet be omnipotent (according to what was said above in 1 d.37 nn.7-8), and he could immediately cause anything anywhere (although he were not present there by his essence); and yet he would not act on the medium by an action of the same nature nor of another nature, because the thing caused would come from him immediately.

58. Second, if this impossible position be not admitted, since the idea is manifest as impossible - the conclusion is sufficiently obtained because the sun immediately causes a worm (or some other generable and corruptible substance), and yet it does not act on the medium with an action of that nature (namely, of generation), nor with an action of another nature, save because the sun has another active form (namely a quality, light) whereby it is of a nature to act in some way before it acts through its substantial form, just as alteration precedes generation.

59. Third, if this is not conceded, it is plain that every natural generator generates a natural body (not a surface merely), and yet it is not present immediately save by its surface, and it acts on the surface of the thing generated; therefore a generator acts where it is not either by essence or by mathematical contact; yet it is there [sc. beneath the surface] by virtual contact and this suffices for action, just as if it were present by essence or mathematically. And that a thing act first on the medium between itself and what it is thus present to is not absolutely required for it to act on what it is thus present to, but just because the medium has a capacity for an action of the same nature as the term.

60. A more apt example for the issue at hand, after these three, is about the act of knowing, because the intuitive knowledge of sight is not of the same nature in the medium as in the organ [sc. because then the medium itself would see; 1 d.3 nn.471-472, Rep. IIA d.9 q.3] - and if an action happen in the organ of another nature than in the medium, vision is what happens to sight, insofar as it is an effect of the visible thing, by the fact that the visible thing is of a nature to generate both the species [sc. in the medium] and vision [sc. in the organ] as two ordered effects. Therefore, this remote receptive thing [sc. the organ as receptive of vision] receives something of which nothing of the same nature is received in the medium; but a received thing of another nature is received in the medium, and this is what happens to it, because the thing received in the medium is not the cause of the thing received in the term [the organ], but is as it were a prior effect, when comparing both effects to the same cause.

61. Hereby is the response plain to the instance from On the Soul [n.54], namely that nothing would be seen unless there were a medium; not that it is per se of the idea of visible color to cause something in the medium so that it may be seen, but that vision and the species of the visible thing are ordered effects of the same object (of the color), such that the species is of a nature to be generated before vision is (as first act before second act), and the species is in a nearer medium or organ before it is in a remoter medium or organ, just as in fact in general a form of the same idea is caused in a nearer thing before it is caused in a remoter one [1 d.3 nn.239, 254-55, 388-90, 473, 504-505, 2 d.3 n.295].

62. And by the same fact the response is plain to the quote from the Physics [n.54], for the agent is immediate to the proximate passive thing, and this by an immediacy corresponding to mathematical contact, when the medium is receptive of an action of the same nature (or of another nature, with respect to which the agent has the form [n.56]) -or by an immediacy corresponding to virtual contact, because the agent is present to the distant thing mathematically (so as to cause the effect in it) just as if it were present to it in its essence [n.59]; and in this way ‘to be present in essence’ is thus not that its power is there but that it is able by its power to cause the effect as if it were there, although neither it nor its power is there.

63. But there is an objection against this, that then local distance will not impede the speaking of an angel; for if a distant angel may immediately cause illumination in another distant angel, while causing nothing in the medium, that medium will be for it -in its action - as if it were no distance; for, as far as its action is concerned, it will be just as if the two angels were immediate to each other. Therefore the result will thus be that local distance will not impede the speaking of an angel.

64. I reply that between agent and patient there can be a mathematical distance in three ways. [No response to the objection given here; see Lectura 2 d.9 nn.60-63].

b) Second Reason

65. Second principally, for the solution [n.49], I argue thus: an inferior angel knows himself intuitively by essence (as is plain above, 2 d.3 nn.269-71), therefore a superior angel too knows the inferior intuitively by essence (proof of the consequence, that every object knowable by an inferior can be knowable by a superior with equal or more perfection; but no abstractive knowledge of any object is more perfect than intuitive knowledge, because abstractive knowledge through a species can be about something not existent and not present in itself, and thus such knowledge does not know it nor reach it most perfectly [n.98, 2 d.3 nn.318-323, 392]); and it is not necessary that angels be immediate to each other locally for a superior angel to know intuitively an inferior one; therefore, given that they are distant locally, the superior will intuitively know the inferior. But this knowledge is not through any species or habit that could be present in something not existent; therefore it comes about in the angel intuiting that intuitive knowledge, and yet the known essence does not generate in the medium anything of the same idea - or of another idea - , because the medium is not capable of intellection nor of a species purely intelligible [nn.56, 60-61]; therefore, by similarity, if something actually intelligible is posited in an angel, something of a nature to generate some knowledge (though not intuitive) in a passive or receptive intellect, then that something actually intelligible can generate actual knowledge in the intellect of a distant angel without generating anything in the medium.a

a. a[Interpolation] (in place of ‘in the intellects medium’) but the intellect of a distant angel is receptive of such knowledge; therefore that something intelligible in act, existing in the intellect of an angel, can cause actual knowledge of itself in the intellect of a distant angel.

2. Further Clarification of the Question

66. For further clarification of the proposed position [n.49] two things remain to be seen: first, what is generated in the intellect of the hearing angel by the speaking angel - second, how an angel can speak to one angel and not another if both are equally present.

a) What is caused in the Intellect of the Hearing Angel

67. On the first point [n.66] I say that the speaking angel can then cause the act only (such that he does not cause the species), and can cause the act and the species together, and can cause the species only.

68. Proof of the first claim [n.67]: the speaking can be about something habitually known to the hearing angel, because just as we can speak imperfectly about what we would perfectly know by communicating our concepts to others (although we would know that others know those same concepts), so it seems possible in the case of angels that the speaking is about what is habitually known to both; but then no species is generated by the speaking angel other than the one that is had by the hearing angel (because then there would be two species in the same angel with respect to the same object) - nor even is the already possessed species intensified, because we may posit that the already possessed species is most perfect.

69. Likewise, the speakings - for the most part - are about propositions pertaining to the actual existence of things; now such propositions are not evident from the terms; therefore, although someone may have the species of the extremes, not for this reason is his intellect capable of some propositional intellection (or knowledge) about those extremes, namely one that is determinately to one side of the contradiction (as about the thing’s existence or non-existence). There can in that case be caused some act of knowing such a proposition without the causing of any species.

70. I prove the second [n.67] because if the hearing angel does not have the species of the singular about which the speaking angel is speaking, his intellect is receptive both of the species and of the act and lacks both - and the intellect of the speaking angel is in first act, sufficient for generating both; this is plain about the species, because an intelligible species can generate an intelligible species of the same nature, just as also the species of a sensible thing in the medium can generate a sensible species of the same nature; it is likewise plain about the act, because the species that in the speaker is the principle of knowing what it is the species can also be the reason for generating actual intellection of the same object in another intellect capable of it.

71. I prove the third [n.67] because a lesser active virtue cannot hinder a greater virtue from its action; therefore if the greater considers something in its proper genus, for instance a, the inferior - wanting to speak to him about b - will not be able to impede his actual intellection; so he will not then cause actual intellection of b, because there cannot be two in the superior angel. But the inferior angel will cause something, as far as he will be able, because he wants to communicate something to another as far as he can; therefore he will cause a species of b, if it is not already possessed in the superior angel’s intellect.

72. Also from the same major as before [sc. that a lesser virtue cannot hinder a greater virtue, n.71] and from this minor, namely that ‘a superior and an inferior can together speak to the same angel’, it follows that the superior will make that same angel understand what he himself is speaking about but the inferior will not, though he will make something compossible with that intellection, namely the species of what he himself wishes to speak about.

73. In these two cases [nn.71-72] the speaking angel can generate a species such that he cannot generate then an act; given too that there is nothing on the part of the hearer to prevent him being able to receive both (the species and the act), the speaker -from the fact he wants to cause (as will be said later [n.177]) - can cause one [the species] and not the other [the act] (namely causing the first but not the second), because the two need not always accompany each other.

74. And in this last member [n.67, 71-73] the speaker speaks and yet the hearer does not perfectly hear, because hearing is an intellection of the intelligible thing expressed by the speaker; it is just as if a man were to speak to a man distracted by study, whose ear would receive the species of sound and yet he would not hear (that is, he would not conceive it distinctly under the idea of sign), and he would not have an understanding of what was expressed; rather only the species of the sound would generate in his memory or imagination some residual species, and he would be able later - recovering from the distraction - to consider what it was a sign of; and so the preceding speech would be an occasion for him of understanding, although he had earlier heard nothing distinctly through it. However, in the other two members [nn.67-70], where actual intellection is expressed by the speaker when he says something, the hearer hears.

75. But what sort of understanding is this act called ‘hearing’?

I reply:

An angel can understand an object a in four ways (besides seeing it in the Word [2 d.3 nn.328-330]), namely intuitively in itself, intuitively in the intellect of another angel that knows it, abstractively through an habitual species (co-created or acquired), and none of these intellections is hearing, because none of them is per se expressed by someone understanding qua understanding - rather it is accidental to the first angel that the one understanding is understanding (for he would remain just the same if the one understanding were not understanding); and in these three ways, if some intellect causes something, it is the intellect of the one understanding (and not of someone else), and the object concurs there with the object as partial cause, as was said before [1 d.3 nn.486-94]. In the fourth way an angel can understand a such that the intellection is brought about in him through another ‘expressing’ intellect, and the first angel’s intellect has no causality with respect to this act but is passive only; this knowing alone is hearing, and it is expressed by the one understanding insofar as he is understanding.

76. The difference is plain, then, between hearing and the other three ways of knowing (which ways can generally be called ‘seeing’), because in the case of hearing the intellect of the hearer is as it were passive, and whatever is in it, as that it has an habitual species of what is heard - that species too does not act on the hearing; also, whatever is present there does nothing for the hearing, for if the same singular were intuitively present to the hearer as is present to the speaker, it would not - as present to the hearer - generate hearing but would only generate vision in him. Therefore only the intellect of the speaker or the things that are in it as it, or that are present to it as it, are active with respect to hearing; and they are so with respect to hearing as to a proximate effect, for they first cause, as present to the speaker, actual intellection in the speaker before they cause hearing in the hearer.

77. And from this is plain how the will of the speaker makes for this speaking, because as the will, after the first intellection, makes for the union of memory and intelligence for any second act that needs to be had in the angel whose will it is, so it can make for the later act to be had in the hearing angel; for if the prior effect, without which the posterior one is not caused, is in the power of someone, then if the prior is not, neither will the posterior be.

78. And from this something else is also apparent, namely how the actual intellection in the speaking angel is not the reason for him of his acting insofar as he speaks, but something pertaining to the speaker’s memory is - because in ordered effects of the same nature, as it were, one of which is of a nature to be generated by an equivocal cause, the prior effect need not be the cause of the posterior effect but each can be caused by the same equivocal cause; and this is specifically the case in the issue at hand, because actual intellection does not have the idea of being parent so much as the memory does (hence the Father in divine reality does not generate by intelligence [but by memory, I d.2 nn.221, 291]).

79. Evident also, third, is what the order is of hearing to the intellection that is ‘vision’ [n.76]. For although vision in Michael - whether of the object or of the intellection of the object - could be followed by Gabriel’s speaking about the same thing, yet Gabriel does not then cause knowledge of anything not already known [sc. by Michael]. Nor is speaking as necessary then as when Gabriel’s speaking precedes either vision [sc. of Michael]; for when Gabriel knows something in its proper genus or as revealed, which Michael does not know in particular, he can cause a concept in Michael’s intellect which may properly be called hearing - and when it has been caused, Michael can turn himself to see Gabriel’s intellect, and therein will be seen the intellection that Gabriel has, and in that intellection too will in some way be seen the object of Gabriel’s intellection; and if that object cannot be seen further (neither in itself nor in the Word), then it [sc. Gabriel’s intellection] is the ultimate perfection that Michael can have of the known object, namely to see it in Gabriel’s intellect. Thus, therefore, insofar as hearing is ordered to having knowledge of something unknown, it precedes all vision, both of the thing in itself in the intellect of the other who sees it, and of the thing through its habitual species - and this triple vision was said to be distinct from hearing [n.75].

80. Hearing is also said to differ from all vision as far as certitude is concerned -and this difference can perhaps be inferred from the idea of ordered effects, of which the posterior [sc. hearing] is more imperfect etc.The Vatican editors quote from Rep IIA d.9 q.1-2: “There is a difference in certitude, because certitude is greater when something is caused by itself than when it is caused by another, because certitude when something is heard from another is no greater than is the believability of the speaker; but proper vision is greater, just as I believe more when I see a man in church than if someone tells me this... For vision is caused in the seer before speaking in the speaker, such that hearing follows vision - not as an effect follows its cause but as two ordered effects do, one of which (as vision) is more immediate to the cause.” They also quote from Lectura 2 d.9 n.81: “But when one angel hears from another angel and gets from him knowledge of some proposition (because he does not speak about a simple concept but about some true proposition), he does not then have evident knowledge but believes the speaking angel who causes the knowledge, because the speaking angel precisely has the act and the conception about some proposition (as that the Son of God is incarnated); however he [sc. the hearing angel] has the certitude of believability, because he knows that he who is speaking is truthful - and this is only the knowledge of faith.” ¹⁵

b) How an Angel speaks to One Angel and not to Another

81. On the second principal point, namely how an angel can speak to one angel and not to another [n.66], I say that just as it is in the power of an angel - as concerns the first intellection - to use this species or that in the memory for actual intellection of this object or that, so, if he had several intelligences, he would have it in his power to generate knowledge in this intelligence or in that; for what is naturally passive is not more determined to undergoing than what is naturally active is to acting. So just as the active power that is of itself subject to the will can of itself act and not act (because of the will’s command to act and not to act), so it can be determined to act on this passive thing and not on that; and just as a determination would be made for intelligences intrinsic to an angel, if there were several intelligences in it, so a determination could be made for this or that extrinsic intellect, which intellects - to this extent - are passive in the same way as the intrinsic ones are passive, in that the intrinsic active power would act by command of the will.

82. Further, there follows a corollary from this, that there are as many speakings as there are hearings - because however many angels be present (or whether one of them is nearer and one further away), then, just as memory would not generate [sc. actual intellection] in Michael save by command of his will, so neither does memory generate it in the intellect of one angel and not of another save by determination of the will of the speaking angel.

83. But then a doubt arises about how many angels one angel can speak to at once, because a natural agent cannot have at the same time any number whatever of adequate effects - and so one act of generating is not sufficient for many angels to hear, because one act of generating is of one intellection in one angel, which intellection that angel alone hears.No response to this doubt is found in the Ordinatio, or in the Reportatio or the Lectura. ¹⁶