II. To the Principal Arguments

115. To the first argument [n.100] I say that if it were conceded that the alteration precedes the incarnation in time, it could be said that, along with the alteration, there was occupation of a lesser place (as is universally the case with any condensing), and so there would be posited one per se local motion there, by which the matter was removed to a place appropriate for generation, and another per accidens local motion concomitant to the generation of the denser body, by which a lesser place would be occupied; and, in the ultimate instant of condensing, all the partial forms and the whole form of the organic body would be induced and, in that instant, the whole would be assumed, though in a certain order of nature. - But if it be posited that the alteration did not precede, then it can be posited that the occupation of a lesser place was sudden, and this by divine power, provided however that created virtue could not cooperate with it (discussion of which is contained in d.4 n.46 infra).

116. The same point must be made in answer to the second argument, about figuration [n.101].

117. To the third [n.102] I say that alteration properly speaking is between privation and form, as is plain in Physics 5.1.225a7-18, and not between negation and form [cf. 4 d.10 p.1 q.2 n.19]; but privation is a negation in something naturally fit [sc. for the relevant form, Categories 10.12a29-31]; and therefore, when the form is produced simultaneously with what receives it, there is properly no alteration to that form,a but only alteration to what is receptive of it. But since here [sc. the hypostatic union] the intellective soul is induced (even in our own case) simultaneously with the being of the organic body, there is properly no alteration to the soul but only to the being of the organic body; and the subject of this alteration is the matter that existed before under the form of blood. - And when in the major is taken [n.102] that ‘every generable and corruptible form, if it is not immediately created, receives being through alteration of the subject’, this proposition must be denied if it is understood to mean that being is received through an alteration of which the form is first the term, and if it is understood to be about alteration properly speaking; however the proposition can be conceded if, namely, it is about an alteration of a thing some part of which is the term, and it is about alteration commonly speaking. So here [sc. the hypostatic union] the term of the alteration properly speaking is the organic body, which is some part of the animated body.

a.a [Interpolation] because what is receptive was not under privation before it was under form, nor was it naturally fit to have form before it had it.