II. To the Initial Arguments

A. To the First Initial Argument

83. To the first initial argument [n.8] I say that by taking ‘being per se’ and ‘being in another’ uniformly, namely as ‘being per se’ denies aptitude for inhering and ‘being in another’ affirms that aptitude, the two are thus in proportional agreement, the first with substance and the second with accident; and then nothing more follows save that an accident cannot be a being per se to which inhering is repugnant, just as neither can substance be that to which the aptitude of inhering belongs.

84. And if you wish to take each actually, namely ‘actually being per se’ and ‘actually being in another’, I say that, as such, they do not divide [being] nor are substance and accident proper to these dividing terms. And no wonder, because on the part of the ‘per se’ the first understanding entails the second; for repugnance to being in [another] entails not being in [another]. But on the other part [sc. ‘being in another’] it is not so, but there is a fallacy of the consequent: ‘it is naturally apt to be in [another], therefore it is in [another]’.

85. And suppose that, as to the aptitude or lack of aptitude for inhering, you ask what it is and how it is disposed to whiteness, namely whether it is in it, and whether in it by another inherence, and so on ad infinitum;

86. Suppose too you ask about the quantity or also about the per se existing whiteness, whether it has a mode of inhering opposite to the one it has when it is in another (it seems that it does, because ‘to be per se’ and ‘to be in another’, however they are taken, are opposites to each other; but it seems the opposite is the case, because it is the same ‘to be’ (as was said before [n.83]), and consequently the same mode of ‘to be’);

87. Suppose, third, the question is asked whether the accident could, by its own aptitude, actually be present, if a substance actually came to be that was of a nature to be informed by the accident;

88. As to the first [n.85]: an aptitude is nothing other than the nature of that of which it is the aptitude. That it is not anything absolute is plain. That it is not anything else, such as an actual real respect, [is plain], for it only states that such a ‘what’ would be fitting to such a nature; and that is why it belong to this nature, or is not repugnant to it, because this nature is this nature.

89. As to the second [n.86], I say that modes of being can be understood to be because either they vary the ‘to be’ itself or because they posit some diversity posterior to the ‘to be’. In the first way, since the ‘to be’ of the accident is the same in the bread and without the bread, so there is the same mode. In the second way there is variation, because the ‘to be’ in the bread was the subject of a certain real respect to the bread, but when the ‘to be’ is per se, it is deprived of that respect; and hereby it is plain that ‘to be in the bread’ and ‘to be per se’ state a diverse mode in the ‘to be’, by positing and taking away the respect to another.

90. As to the third [n.87], the answer is plain from the fourth doubt solved before [n.78], because an accident cannot effectively unite itself to the subject. Hence if God were to be bring back the substance of the bread and do nothing else, the accident would remain without a subject, as it does now [sc. after the consecration], nor would it be united to the substance of the bread as a form by virtue of the accident (I mean by virtue of it effectively).

91. And if you argue that it is a miracle that the accident is not in a subject, therefore, when the impediment of non-inherence, namely of the non-existence of the subject, ceases, the miracle will cease, and the accident will be totally in the subject - I reply: something miraculously posited in being remains in that being until it is changed by some agent.

B. To the Second Initial Argument

92. To the second [n.9] I say that prior and posterior can be understood either actually or in aptitude. If you take them uniformly I concede that the posterior cannot naturally be without the prior. But if you take it that ‘posterior in aptitude’ cannot be without ‘prior actually’ it is not true; for if what is prior in aptitude does not exist, it is not prior actually, and also if it does exist, and the dependence of the posterior on it is taken away by something else that is prior to both, neither thus is it actually prior. And this is the way it is in the issue at hand. Hence I say that the accident is not actually posterior to the substance of the bread but only apt naturally to be posterior to it as to what is aptitudinally prior.

93. And if you argue that it has no special respect of posterior to God that it did not have before; therefore the priority of the bread is not more supplied now by divine action than before (and this could be an objection against the third main conclusion [n.30] and against its proof [nn.39-41], namely how the first extrinsic cause could supply the causality of any other extrinsic cause, since it could not have in itself the priority of the second cause, nor consequently does it seem to be the term of the posteriority in the caused thing that properly corresponds to that priority [sc. of the second cause]) - I reply: an unlimited unique priority can be the term of the posterior simply.

94. On the contrary: it is not the term now in a way different than before; but it was not the term totally before.

95. I reply: some respects were prior in the posterior (which is the foundation) that are not prior now; and this is possible because they came to the foundation extrinsically; those respects therefore had a term previously and do not have a term now (I concede), because they do not exist now. But the unique respect which before had a term in the simply First thing has a term in it now, and the termination of it by that one thing is sufficient for the being of the foundation of this sort of respect.

96. On the contrary: therefore the foundation did not before essentially depend on those other dependencies, because without the terms of those dependencies the foundation’s first respect to the simply First was totally sufficient for the being of the foundation; for what has whatever is required for its being in a prior stage does not depend for anything in a second stage.

97. I reply: this deduction seems well to touch on the order of second causes, and on the necessity of that order, because of which order the Philosopher is said to deny posteriority in the issue at hand [n.9]. Or if this order is not necessary, it is difficult to see how a second cause is cause of the effect, since that is not a cause without which the caused thing has the totality of its being from something else naturally prior (see on this point Ord. II d.1 n.143; also I d.8 n. 306).

C. To the Third and Fourth Initial Arguments

98. To the third argument, about definition [n.10], response has been made by the response to the doubts moved against the third conclusion [nn.68-69].

99. One word remains there, however, because of the proof that that which falls there in a definition is necessarily required for its being, as a correlative is for the being of a correlative [n.11].

100. I say that this is for the reason that it is a relative; nor is there any other reason why it necessarily requires another term. For it is not because it is an accident; rather, if it were a relation and not an accident (as is relation in divine reality) a term would still be required. But the defined thing of which we are speaking is an absolute; therefore it does not require something added as a term of the respect, but as an extrinsic cause - and any such extrinsic cause is not necessarily required save the first cause.

101. To the fourth argument [n.13] I say that ‘white’ can be understood in two ways:

In one way as it imports such a form under such a mode of signifying, and this it signifies per se. Hence, according to the Philosopher in the Categories [n.13], ‘white’ signifies the quality alone - which is true, but under a different mode of signifying than ‘whiteness’.

In another way as we commonly conceive (through ‘white’ and these sort of concrete terms) the whole composed of subject and form.

102. If in the first way the argument has more evidence, for about the second way it is plain that if there is whiteness, there is no necessity that there is a white [thing]. But about the first way I say that, by virtue of the word, there is then no necessity to concede that if there is whiteness, there is white, because although the form is naturally apt to inhere in a subject, there is no necessity that it be under such a mode of being, namely under actual inherence in a subject; but ‘white’ signifies the form under such idea of actually inhering.

103. Or if you object that a noun, both adjectival and substantive, abstracts from time, therefore ‘white’ does not signify actual inherence of a form in a subject, because then it would co-signify present time - I reply: then the concession would be that as there is whiteness, so also is there white; and it would not follow that therefore something as a subject is white, because this is not posited in the antecedent either (not by the thing signified nor by the mode of signifying). This concession would be more easily made about quantity; for just as concession is here made that there is quantity, so too that there is a quantum, yet no concession is here made that some matter or substance is perfected by quantity.