II. To the Initial Arguments of the First Part

340. To the initial arguments.

As to the first argument [n.293], if the first member of the disjunctive set down at the beginning of the solution [n.310] is held to, the major of the argument is to be denied [n.293: ‘that which existed before, and of which nothing remains, is annihilated’]; for one must add that ‘nothing of it remains and nothing simply succeeds to it as a per se term’.

341. As to the second [n.294] the same point holds: although it is nothing in itself or in another, yet its being is not succeeded by altogether nothing.

342. As to the third [n.295], one must deny that the form is annihilated in corruption.

343. And as to the proof that ‘it only remains in the potency of the matter’, I say that ‘its remaining in the potency of matter’ is ‘the other part of the composite remaining per se’; and so does the form too remain per accidens; but that of which something either per se or per accidens remains is not annihilated.

344. And when you argue that the numerically same thing could return through a natural agent, I say that this does not follow, because the potency in which the form remains must be understood as a potential principle, and not as a respect. For when the form is corrupted, the respect of the potency to the form does not remain, because the respect of the potency is not to what is altogether past, just as neither is it to what is altogether impossible. But the potential principle remains per se, and the form (which was something of the whole) remains per accidens according to some part of itself. Or one could say briefly that although nothing of the form of what is corrupted remains, yet the negation that succeeds to it is a negation in a fitting subject, and so is a privation. And a privation is not of a nature to be the term of annihilation.

345. And when this is applied to the issue at hand, then although [the bread] is required to remain so as to be said not to be annihilated, and although the form of the bread does not thus remain because its matter transitions into matter, I say that for many reasons, as stated before [n.314], corruption is not said to be annihilation; and although these two points suffice, namely that the subject remains and the negation that is the term is a privation [ibid.], yet if the negation that is the term were some negation in a genus, as in some disparate positive thing, still the transition to it would not be annihilation.

346. To the fourth argument [n.296] it can be said that not every production of the whole substance is creation, but the production that is from a term ‘from which’ as from what is purely nothing; and so the answer here is by assertion of the opposite, if the second member of the disjunctive posited in the solution to the question is held to [nn.310, 340]. But from this the conclusion does not follow that the bread is annihilated by this conversion, but only that its annihilation is concomitant with this conversion.