1. First Conclusion

80. Let this be the first conclusion as to the thing [of beatitude]: among all that is desirable to intellectual nature there is something essentially and simply supreme.

81. The proof of this is that there is an essential order in desirable things, and in such an order it is impossible to proceed to infinity (as was proved in Ord. I d.2 nn.52-53); therefore, the proposed conclusion [sc. something in the order is first or supreme, n.80] follows.

82. If there is not an essential order there, the proposed conclusion again follows, because whichever [member] is given it is essentially supreme, in the sense that nothing is essentially superior to it.

83. But this hypothesis is false because, as was shown there, Ord. I d.2 n.54, no process in things ordered accidentally can proceed to infinity, or can proceed through a continuing diversity [of things], save in virtue of something essentially superior to the whole diversity.

84. Corollary: that thing [sc. the thing essentially superior to the whole diversity] is infinite, because whatever infinity is not repugnant to is not simply supreme unless it is formally infinite; infinity is not repugnant to the desirable or wantable, since this is either perfection simply, or it convertibly accompanies some perfection simply, because it belongs to the whole of being, and whatever so belongs is perfection simply. Now infinity is not repugnant to perfection simply, because [if it were], then in the case of something, that is, something simply infinite, not-it would be simply better than it, which is against the idea of perfection simply (as is plain from Anselm Monologion 14-15).

85. From this corollary too the first conclusion [n.80] can, conversely, be inferred, because if something desirable or wantable can be infinite, and the infinite cannot be exceeded, then something can be a simply supreme wantable; and if it can be then it is, because if it were not and could be, it could only be by something different in essence, and so it would not be simply supreme in some perfection simply.