D. Three Conclusions for the Solution of the Question

1. First Conclusion

201. This conclusion thus follows (and let it be the first for the solution of this question), namely that a separated accident can in no way be a principle of action for substance, and this an instrumental principle, by virtue of a substance that does not exist [n.194]. And along with this, it has also been made clear that not even a conjoined accident can be per se an attainer of substance as term [n.194], because the authorities adduced (from On the Soul and the like [n.186; Ord. IV d.1 n.317]) only take an instrument to be a dispositive agent.

202. And if it be argued, against this, that some form attains the term of generation immediately but the substantial form does not (because it is a principle not of acting immediately but mediately) - I concede the first proposition, but the second is false, because nothing is an instrument of any cause save of a superior cause in the genus of efficient cause. Therefore, if a conjoined accident is, for them [sc. Thomas, n.186], an instrument of substance, the substance will be the superior agent. But a superior agent naturally acts first and, if it is a natural agent, it does whatever it can; therefore, the substance, in the prior instant of nature but in the same instant of time in which it acts, acts as the superior agent, and the accident acts as its instrument. The substance will produce the term that it will be able to produce; but it can produce the whole substance, because the perfection of a produced substance does not exceed the perfection of the acting substance; therefore it will, in the instant of nature, produce the whole substance; therefore the accident will not produce the substance in any way, or the same thing would be produced twice.

203. Again, every merely passive power is in potency of contradiction,That is, has a potency for contradictory results. Cf. Thomas, On Metaphysics 9 lectio 9: “Every power is a power simultaneously for contradiction. But this is said of passive power, according to which something is said to be able to be or not to be, either simply or in a certain respect.” ⁴⁴ Metaphysics 9.8.1050b8-9; but substance is not in potency of contradiction for its proper attribute; therefore, it has some causality, different from the causality of matter, with respect to that attribute - and only the causality of the efficient cause, because not of the formal cause (the thing is plain). As to the final cause, it is not in discussion here.

204. And it seems that they [sc. Thomas and followers] must, according to what they say, concede this. For they say that the powers [of the soul] flow from the essence of the soul, and they say here [n.186] that an accident has instrumental virtue because it is caused by the essential principles of substance; but these features cannot be understood only in a passive way, for a receptive subject.

205. Again, if an accident is produced, and by some immediate productive principle which (according to you [n.186]) is an accident, I ask about the essential order in these accidents (not speaking of the accidental infinity in generators and generated of the same species that philosophers speak about [Ord. I d.2 n.46, II d.1 n.169]). For wherever there is an accidental order in generators, there must be (outside that whole order) some cause essentially more perfect [Ord. I d.2 n.54]. Therefore, with respect to singular accidents in the species of heat, give me a proximate cause essentially ordered to that whole species (and I argue the same way about individuals of the species). And there is no infinite process in an essential order. So, there will be a stand at some species of accident that will be caused, and not caused by any accident but immediately by substance. And consequently, substance will have the idea of active principle immediately with respect to accident.

206. This is confirmed by the Philosopher Metaphysics 7.9.1034b16-19, where the Philosopher says that “a property of substance can be grasped from these facts, that some other actually existing substance must necessarily pre-exist to make it the case that there is an animal, if there is an animal; but that a quality or a quantity pre-exist is not necessary save only in potency.” He maintains, therefore, that, in order for a substance to come to be, another substance must pre-exist to produce it; but in order for a quantity and a quality to be produced, there is no need for a quality or a quantity to pre-exist save only in potency. Therefore, something that is not actually a quantity or a quality can be the immediate productive principle of a quantity and a quality.

207. Again, Meteorologica 4.12.390a10-12 says, “A singular is that which exists as long as it has power for its own proper operation.”

208. And the like is got from Damascene, Orthodox Faith ch.60 [“Things that have the same substance, have the same will and operation”].

209. And although there is against these authorities [nn.206-208] an objection drawn from imperfect beings, yet it seems very unacceptable that the being among created things the most perfect as to genus should lack activity, such that its form could not be the immediate and proximate productive principle of some action.

210. And this argument is in accord with one of their principles [Thomas, ST Ia q.4 a.3]: that form is a principle of acting wherein the generator and generated are like each other; but the generated is like the generator principally in substantial form, and in accidents in a certain respect.

211. Nor can this result be avoided by adding to these statements that they prove the substantial form to be the principle of acting, but a remote one, both with respect to substance and with respect to accident, and that about these do the arguments proceed [nn.202-205]. This is not enough, because no one denies that there is some form in God that is the proximate principle of acting (not because God may act without intermediate causes, but because in his own order of causing he acts through nothing intermediate -beyond his own form). And so, in the issue at hand, let it be the case (which however has been disproved [n.200]) that an accident have some action for substance that is posterior to the action of substance; yet substance will be by its own proper form the principle of the action proper to it in its own order of acting.

2. Second Conclusion

212. The second conclusion for this solution is that an accident cannot be a principle for principally generating substance.

213. I prove this: every total agent is either univocal, and so it is as equally perfect as its product, or equivocal, and so it is more perfect; but an accident is altogether more imperfect than substance;     therefore etc     .

214. It is said in reply to this [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet IV q.14] that some equivocal agent can be more ignoble than its effect, as whiteness in respect of the intellection of whiteness, and as the Commentator [Averroes], on Metaphysics 7 [com.31], relates from Galen about the virtue he calls ‘divine’, which is formative of the fetus and yet, if it is an accident, is not simply nobler than the formed fetus. And there can be a like difficulty about each living thing generated through putrefaction, which living thing is nobler than the heaven by which it is generated.It was a common opinion, derived from Aristotle, that some flies and grubs were generated by the sun from putrefying matter. That they are in fact generated from eggs, invisible to the naked eye, laid by parent flies and grubs was unknown. Still the sun would be needed to keep the eggs, and the decaying matter, warm enough for incubation. ⁴⁵

215. On the contrary: although the proposition ‘what is simply more imperfect in species or genus cannot be the total active principle with respect to something more perfect’ is as equally known to me as any proposition in philosophy - on whose denial I would not know how to prove any order of beings, or that there was a most perfect being; indeed [on this denial] it could be said, turning impudent, that the whole universe and everything in it was made by a fly; for if you argue that a fly is imperfect so, and if you say that the same thing which is more imperfect can produce what is more perfect, then, with this point in hand, there is no reason why something more imperfect so could not produce something more perfect so; nor, once this impudence is in place, can it be proved that the first cause is most perfect, excelling everything else in the creation - not even with the addition that it is an equivocal cause; indeed, the view could herewith stand, according to this impudence, that the first thing was most imperfect, or more imperfect than the things it caused - yet [although all this be so] I prove and argue the said proposition in a different way:

216. First as follows: a univocal cause has a univocal effect as the adequated term of its power; but, for you, a total equivocal cause is more imperfect than a univocal cause; therefore, it is impossible for the equivocal cause to be the total cause with respect to the effect, and thus God could not bring about the effect of any creature at all, which is an absurd thing to say. The consequence is plain, because an effect adequated to a more perfect power can in no way be from a more imperfect power.

217. Second as follows: whenever a univocal and an equivocal cause come together for the production of the same effect, the equivocal cause is simply more perfect. The point is plain from Metaphysics 12.6.1072a9-18; for, because of this, it is necessary to reduce the whole accidental order to some species essentially superior in causing, because a uniform difference of form must be reduced to a uniform cause; and so there must be for all generable and corruptible things some superior cause that is the cause of uniformity in the continuing of generation and corruption. - From this I have the proposition that ‘where a univocal and equivocal cause come together for the same effect, the equivocal cause is more perfect’. But that the equivocal cause could not act without the univocal cause, this belongs to some sort of imperfection in the equivocal cause. The thing is plain, for God can act without a univocal cause, but the sun does not have power for a perfect animal, although it does for an imperfect one; therefore any equivocal cause that has power by itself for the effect is simply more perfect than an equivocal cause that could come together with a univocal cause for causing the same thing. And consequently, an equivocal total cause has a double preeminence of causality over an effect: one that an equivocal cause universally has when concurring with a univocal cause, and it has another, because it has the perfection that the univocal cause adds in the causing and that many equivocal causes lack, even though far more perfect than univocal ones.

218. A third argument as follows: if the form of an equivocal cause were to give being formally to something, it could not give it a being simply more perfect than itself; therefore, if it more imperfectly than formally give being to something, it cannot give to it what is more perfect than itself. But when it gives being to something as efficient cause it gives it being in a more imperfect way than when it gives it formally; for it is not possible that any mode of giving being should be as perfect as the giving of being formally, just as neither can the divine essence give being to something in any genus more perfect than is the being that it gives formally.

219. Fourth as follows: if the thing caused be simply more perfect, although it be simple, yet it can, according to this understanding, be divided into two, namely into that in which it is equaled with the cause and into that in which it exceeds the cause. Let the first be called a, the second b; the effect according to a is precisely an effect adequate to its cause, because it is simply as equally perfect a being as the cause; therefore b either will be from itself or will be from nothing, because it cannot be from a or from the cause itself, because something more excellent over and above the effect adequate to the cause cannot at the same time be from the cause. And this argument can be taken from Avicenna in his Metaphysics, 6 ch.2.

220. I say therefore that, on account of no particular objections, must this universal proposition, which is known from its terms, be denied, namely that ‘what totally causes something cannot be more imperfect than what is caused (speaking of effective cause), and that an equivocal total causer is more perfect’, for it cannot be equally perfect, for species are disposed as numbers are [sc. a higher number is not equal to, but does include, a lower number].

221. Now the objection about whiteness and intellection [n.214] is not valid, as is plain from Ord. I d.3 nn.452-455, where the argument proves that whiteness is not the total cause with respect to intellection but only a partial cause. Hence it can very well be that the effect excels such a partial cause in some real perfection, which perfection it can have from the partial cause that is left, and so it is more perfect from the two together than from one of them, as was said there [ibid. nn.486-503].

222. The second and third objection [n.214], which go to the inducing or educing of the soul in living things (and that by the heaven, whether in propagated or putrefied things), where I reckon the difficulty to be almost the same - these objections have to be solved in Ord. II d.18.Missing in fact in the Ordinatio as it now stands. Scotus’ view must be looked for instead in Lectura II d.18 nn.27-39, 66-72. ⁴⁶

223. And let it be that there not appear that any other created cause could be found nobler than the soul (which is the term of such generation), one should concede that it was immediately from God first before denying the above now proved proposition [n.220].

3. Third Conclusion

224. Let the third conclusion be about the two actions contrary to the others [ nn.201, 212, instrumental or principal actions for substance], namely actions on the intellect and sense. I say that a separated accident (at any rate in the way that a quality of the third speciesThe reference is to the several species of quality listed by Aristotle, the third of which is the perceptible qualities that affect the several senses, Categories 8b26-10a11. ⁴⁷ is here separated, namely without a substance) can be the principle of both actions in the way it was before [sc. before when it existed in a substance, nn.194-195] - and this to the extent it is from itself (the reason for this addition will be plain in the solution of the following doubts [nn.230-238]).

225. I prove this as follows: in the case of any action of which some form is the total active principle, that form could, if it were to exist per se and in a manner fit for acting, be the principle of the same action; but quality is the total and formal principle of both the aforesaid actions [n.224], and when it is separated from substance, it is yet in quantity or, having extension as it is here [sc. in the Eucharist], it remains in a manner fit for acting, which is an extensive manner;     therefore etc     .

226. The major is plain, because when a total principle is in place and is under the idea under which it is of a nature to be principle, it can act as principle for that of which it is posited to be the principle.

227. The minor is proved in one way as follows, that nothing is taken away from this form by the fact that it exists per se save its subject; and the subject only makes a unity per accidens with it, but a per se principle of acting in a single order is a per se unity; therefore, the taking away of this subject takes nothing away from the per se principle of acting.

228. But this argument [n.227] only proves that the subject does not have the per se idea of principle in the same order as the accident; but there is no obstacle to prevent it being a per se principle of acting for the same action, yet in a different order (as is plain about ordered causes [cf. Lectura I d.3 n.372, II dd.34-37 nn.124-126]); and the per accidens unity of them [subject and accident] does not prevent unity of order.

229. Therefore the minor is proved in another way as follows: that form is the total principle of action which is the total principle of assimilating the passive object to itself - not only really, as in a real action, which is action on a contrary, but in intentional action, which is action on the senses. The first point is plain, because the formal term simply is like to the accidental form; therefore the accident can be the principle ‘by which’ of acting. The second point has a proof, because if the likeness in the senses falls away in some respect from the real likeness in the passive object [sc. the perceived object], then, on the part of this form as agent, it can as well be the total principle of this action as of the former; but if there is some further perfection in the sensation, this is not insofar as the sensation is from the sensible quality but insofar as it is from the sense power.