a. The Falsity of it in Itself is Shown

349. As concerns this opinion, there is only need to care much about the first conclusion [n.328] because of the second conclusion [n.329]. For the whole force of this question is: Since in certain changes that appear here (as change of place and the like), we can manifestly find some subject that remains the same under the terms of the change, and this by at least positing here, according to the common opinion [n.150], quantity alone without a subject, but since in a change whose terms are quantity it is not easy in this way to find a subject, then there cannot be here a change from quantity to quantity.

350. This difficulty is common, whether the whole succeeding quantity is new or a part of it is, because if a new part of change, however small, is granted, I will look for a subject of it. There is no need, then (as far as concerns the proposed view about a subject of change as to the quantity of what here appears), to reject the opinion that posits a whole new quantity more than to reject any other opinion that posits at least some new part of quantity - which everyone has to do, otherwise there would not then be more quantity than before.

351. However, Godfrey’s first conclusion [n.328] seems false.

352. The reason is that, if the subject does not remain the same, no accident of it remains the same; but for you the quantity of wine does not remain the same when it is rarefied [nn.328, 336]; therefore, no accident remains there the same because, according to the common opinion [n.150], any accident whatever is there in the quantity, whether mediately or immediately, and consequently the savor does not remain the same in number nor the color the same in number, and so forth.

353. And if it be said that it is an argument of the uneducated to take flight to the senses, because reason should judge about same and different if any objection is raised, since according to the Philosopher, Physics 8.3.254a30-33, it is fatuous to seek a reason there where we have something more certain than reason; it also seems strange if the senses cannot judge of the number of their proper sensibles, since number (according to the Philosopher On the Soul 2.6.418a17-20) is per se perceptible - these problems I give no weight to, because, as I have said elsewhere [Ord. II d.3 n.21], none of the senses judges whether the rays of the sun are continuously the same or different in a medium, although however that of which there is number or unity here is a proper sensible.

354. Passing this over, then, I argue as follows: it is not possible that agents, however much diverse, should induce the same form after corruption of the same thing; but whatever these sorts of species are rarefied by, whether by fire or the sun, such and such a savor and such and such a color are induced.

355. If you posit the accidents to be new [n.328], the argument goes more plainly as follows: The species of wine can be rarefied by fire; but all the qualities that appear there cannot be induced by fire, both because fire does not virtually contain in itself the qualities of mixtures, and because, if it does contain them, yet not accidents as greatly diverse in genus or species. But if the consecrated wine were here sweet and there bitter, the bitterness remains after rarefaction in these species and the sweetness in those, and so on as to any species at all of savor and any at all of colors (if, suppose, white wine is consecrated, or golden, or red). Therefore rarefying wine alone does not induce all these qualities; therefore they are not new. Therefore neither is the subject new, namely the quantity, without which they cannot remain the same.