b. Against the Reasons for the Opinion

50. The reasons for the opinion do not prove it.

[To the first reason] - The first [n.40], for the negative side [n.39], will either have four terms, or will not prove the conclusion intended, or one proposition will be false.

For if you take for the major ‘there must be an agreement between receiver and received’ and for the minor ‘an external material thing does not have an agreement with the intellect’, what follows? That therefore ‘the intellect does not receive the external material thing’, nor conversely [sc. ‘the external thing does not receive the intellect’]. But if you conclude that ‘the intellect does not receive from an external material thing’, there will be four terms, because the predicate [sc. ‘does not receive from an external material thing’] was not in the major. Now if you take the following major (which however you do not put down in what was written but rather the first one), namely ‘there must be an agreement between receiver and what it receives from’, I say that it would be more proper to say ‘proportion’ than ‘agreement’, because the receiver has the idea of passive thing and that from which it receives has the idea of agent. Now agent and passive thing are proportional but not properly in agreement, save by extending ‘agreement’ to mean ‘proportion’; nay rather, proportion between them requires disagreement, because proportion requires that one be actually such and the other potentially such.

51. So this new major, then, will either be false, if it is understood of agreement properly speaking; or if it extends agreement to mean proportion, let it be conceded. And then the minor ‘the external thing does not have agreement in this way [sc. by proportion] with the intellect’ is false; for it is at least virtually in act such as the intellect is formally in potency.

52. A first confirmation of this is that you concede a phantasm has such an agreement with the intellect, and yet a phantasm is of a condition opposite to what is received in the intellect, because it only represents the object as it is here and now, which object in its universal idea is understood abstracted from these conditions [of here and now]. Nor does the other agreement, namely that the phantasm is without extrinsic matter, make the phantasm to be something active. For the phantasm is truly in matter, that is, in an extended organ, and this would as much prevent action on the immaterial intellect from existing in this extended matter [sc. the extended organ] as from existing in that extended matter [sc. the external thing]. But a phantasm acts on the intellect only in this way, that it is representative of the object; so the thing itself can in itself equally be this, because it is equally representative of itself. And this I believe to be true, that although the intellect can abstract from a phantasm, which persists apart from the thing, yet it can take knowledge immediately from the external thing, as is contained in a comment [by Averroes] On the Soul 3 com.20.“For one must suppose that when this intellect, which is in potency, is declared to be eternal and of a nature to be perfected by material forms, it is of greater dignity than to be naturally perfected by non-material forms that in themselves are understood.” ¹⁷

53. A second confirmation is that it follows that an angel could not receive knowledge from an external thing, which was something rejected in Ord. II d.3 n.383.

54. [To the second reason] - The second reason [n.42], which is for the affirmative conclusion about that influence, either fails by equivocation over the middle term, or one of its premises is false. For when you take in the major “the more any mean approaches one extreme the more it recedes from the other” - if you understand the mean to approach and recede as to the same form, I concede it; if as to different forms, it is false. So, for instance, if it is a medium in being and it recedes from this extreme in being, it approaches the other extreme in being; likewise, if it is a mean in operating and it recedes from this extreme in operating, it approaches that one in operating. But if it is a mean in operating or being, and it recedes from one extreme in being, it will not for this reason approach the other in operating.

55. Now the minor can be understood, first, of a middle in being - and this is true, because the soul (even when conjoined to the body) in some way holds the mean between separate substance and bodily existence. And conclude then: ‘therefore when the separated soul recedes from body in being, the more it approaches separate substance in mode of being’ (I concede this). But from this nothing follows as to the proposition “it approaches closer to receiving from separate substance an influx pertaining to operation.” And if the argument were adduced for this purpose, it manifestly does not prove it; for then the soul when separated would be more capable of such influx than when conjoined to a glorious body, because when conjoined to a glorious body it approaches closer to body in being than it does when separated, indeed it approaches closer, that is, approaches more perfectly, than when conjoined to a corruptible body.

56. But if, second, you take in the minor that the separated soul recedes more from the body in operating than when it is conjoined, this is false as meaning that it recedes from the object about which it operates. For the soul can know body when separated just as it can when conjoined; and so the result does not follow that it approaches more to separate substance as to its knowable object, or as to that from which it receives its knowable object.

57. What they adduce for confirmation of this position (the one about dreams and ecstasy, the other about the statement of the Commentator On the Soul 3 [nn.43-44]) seem to be figments.

58. For it is not because the soul in its operating recedes from the body as from its object that certain truths are seen in dreams; for then the deeper the dream the more such things would be seen; but this is false, because dreams do not happen in very deep sleep but in light sleep; also epileptics would then regularly see truths coming from those spirits [God and angels].

59. Hence, this basis of argument seems to be taken from the fictions of Mahomet, who is said to have been an epileptic and, so as to give a deceitful covering to his wretchedness, he said he had to fall down when the angel was speaking to him. And, according to this fiction of Mahomet’s, Avicenna, when speaking with reverence of Mahomet’s law, imagines (in Metaphysics 9.7) there are such abstractions from sense so that there may be revelation from angels.

60. But we Christians do not say that anyone sees anything in sleep or ecstasy, unless there be some positive cause there, as that God acts then on the person’s intellect. But the person then is disposed more fittingly by the removal of an impediment, namely because he is not distracted by other objects; and vehement occupation with another object impedes operating intensely about this one. Indeed, it seems more a miracle that truth is revealed in sleep than in being awake and in an intellect not too intent on sensible things, for it is natural for man to have use of reason when awake and not when asleep.

61. The second example, from Averroes [n.44], is plainly all made up for the purpose, that that separate substance receives from higher beings, and yet as conjoined with us it does not so receive. For it is a contradiction that a separate nature could be conjoined with us save by reason of efficient or moving cause. But something active, if in its being it receive something from a superior, receives it therefrom insofar as it is active [sc. insofar as it is active in moving the conjoined body].