II. To the Principal Arguments

25. As to the first principal argument [n.2], it is plain how there is here [in the command to love] only one object. And when the proof is given that there is a different idea of goodness proper to God and to one’s neighbor, I say that the idea of goodness proper to one’s neighbor is not the determining idea of the act of love as object of the act, but only the idea of the divine goodness is; for although there is a tending to the good of one’s neighbor, this is only in the reflex act, and this reflex act always further tends to the object of the direct act, as was said before [n.15].

26. The second argument [n.3] is answered in the same way, because the virtue of charity has God for its per se quietening object; however, it can have something created for its proximate object in the reflex act (thus perhaps the act of vision in the fatherland could have some elicited act about something created, though not however by resting there; rather by tending further to God).

27. To the third argument [n.6] I say that through the habit of the premise one tends to the premise according to the truth proper to the premise that it has from the terms; through the habit of the conclusion one tends to the conclusion through the truth proper to it that it has different from the truth of the premise. It is not so in the case of the matter at hand, but there is only one goodness, which is the reason for tending to God in himself and to one’s neighbor as he tends to God; for the goodness of my neighbor does not move me more than if a clod of earth could love God; but if I love God perfectly I want him to be loved by everything capable of loving him in ordered way, and whose love is pleasing to him. What holds of objects of the intellect and of ostensive objects is not generally like what holds of objects of the will and of attracting objects.