3. Argumentation from the Third Middle Term, namely from the Comparison of Act with Act, and the Weighing of it

234. The third middle term is from comparison of act with act.

First as follows: an equivocal efficient cause is nobler than the effect; an act of intellect in respect of an end is cause of an act in respect of the will, because when the former is posited the latter is, and when the former is removed the latter is - and it is plainly an equivocal cause.

235. To the contrary, from the same middle term [n.234]: the will gives commands to the intellect; therefore, an act of will is an equivocal efficient cause in respect of intellection.

It is confirmed by Anselm, Virginal Conception 4 [n.199].a

a.a [Interpolation] where he says that the will moves itself against the judgement of the other powers, and that it moves all other powers according to its own command; and Augustine City of God 19.14 [in fact 14.5-6, 28] says that the will uses all the other powers.

236. Similarly, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a4-5, “What is posterior in generation is prior in perfection;” volition is posterior in generation; nor is it this alone, but it has the idea of end with respect to intellection, according to Anselm Why God Man 2.1; and Augustine City of God 19.14, “The rational soul is present in man so that he may contemplate something in his mind and do something accordingly,” and later, “so that he may cognize something useful and manage his life and morals according to that knowledge.”

237. I reply: neither is an act of intellect total cause of an act of will, but a partial cause (if it is any cause), nor conversely is the will total cause of intellection.

238. The major [sc. “an equivocal efficient cause is nobler than the effect,” n.234] is true of a total equivocal efficient cause, but if it is about a partial cause this will be [true] about a cause of a higher order. And in this way is the will, in commanding the intellect, a superior cause of the intellect’s act; but the intellect, if it is a cause of volition, is a cause subservient to the will, as having an action first in the order of generation.

239. And so this middle term concludes probably on behalf of the will, but proves nothing on behalf of the intellect.

240. But that intellection is not the total cause of volition [n.237] is plain, because, since the first intellection is caused by a cause merely natural, intellection too is not free; further, it would cause with like necessity whatever it would cause, and thus, however many circularities may occur in acts of intellect and will, the whole process would merely be by natural necessity - which however is unacceptable. But, in order that freedom in man may be preserved, one must say that, after intellection has been posited, a total cause of volition is not obtained, but the will is more principal with respect to volition - and the will alone is free.

241. As to the proof that “when the former is posited the latter is, and when the former is removed the latter is” [n.234] - the antecedent was rejected in Ord. I d.1. nn.100-146.

242. An argument in another way is given [Thomas Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.1; cf. Richard of Middleton, Sent. IV d.49 princ.1 q.7 arg.5]: that is better which, without anything else, would be more choice-worthy; but intellection alone is more choice-worthy than volition alone, because intellection alone would be a perfect act and an act proper to intellectual nature; volition alone would be only a certain inclination (as of a heavy thing to the center [of the earth]).

243. On the contrary, from the same consideration: that by which what has it is simply good is more choice-worthy than that by which what has it is not simply good; but Augustine, On the Trinity 11.28, “neither is a man rightly called good who knows what the good is, but he is who loves the good,” and from this he concludes there that “in the case of men who are rightly loved, the love itself is more loved,” which is the conclusion here intended.

244. Again, in the case of goods that do not include each other, that good is more choice-worthy whose opposite is more to be hated. But prescinding from these things, namely how they do not include each other, the opposite of intellection cannot be as hateful as the opposite of love.

245. Proof of this:

First about the contrary opposite: because no ignorance of God, even the ignorance of infidelity, can be as hateful as hatred of God, if it could be present in the will.

Second about the contradictory opposite: because not to love God is blamable and a sin, when namely it can be had by the proximate power [sc. power of loving]; because he who actually understands God and in no way loves him sins, and he who actually thinks of sin, and does so without any displeasure, sins. But not to understand when, however, one is in proximate power to understanding, is not blamable or a sin.

246. This middle term [n.244] concludes probably in favor of the will.

247 To the argument in favor of the intellect [n.242], I reply: if love were alone it would not only be a natural inclination, as of the heavy to the center of the earth, but it would be an operation proper to intellectual nature; for the fact that it is now operation, and is this sort of operation, it does not have from the intellect formally but concomitantly.

248. An argument is given in another way [Thomas Aquinas, ST Ia q.82 a.3; Richard of Middleton, Sent. IV d.49 princ. 1 q.7]: that is more perfect which in its perfection is less dependent, because ‘to depend’ is a mark of imperfection; an act of intellect does not depend on the will, but conversely.

249. I reply: things posterior in generation depend on things prior, and yet they are more perfect, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a4-7 [n.236].

250. Similarly, the end depends in its being on that which is for the end and not conversely [n.236]; form also depends on matter and not conversely; bodily quality depends too on quantity insofar as, according to them, ‘being white without a surface’ is a contradiction; and still in all these cases the greater opposite is true, and universally in these generations, where there is dependence on something prior in order of generation. However, it is true that the simply most perfect thing is altogether independent, because as there is first in perfection so also in generation, Metaphysics 9 [nn.249, 236]. Act precedes in time every power, because if there be a circle in the priority of act to power and conversely, yet there is a stand at him who is always moving first; but where two priorities do not come together, the greater opposite is more commonly true.

251. Likewise it could be said that the intellect depends on volition as on a partial but superior cause; conversely volition depends on intellect as on a partial but subservient cause.

252. Another way of arguing is as follows [Thomas Aquinas, ST Ia q.82 a.3]: the act of intellect is purer because it contracts no impurity from the object, because ‘to understand evil’ is not evil; but an act of will contracts impurity, because ‘to will evil’ is evil.

253. Besides this, there is another impurity in the volition [Richard of Middleton, Sent. IV d.49 princ.1 q.7], because it is a movement of the soul to the thing in itself; intellection is not so but is a movement of the thing to the soul or of the thing as it is in the soul, from On the Soul 1.4.408a34-b18 and Metaphysics 6.4.25-31, “True and false are in the soul, good and bad in things outside.”

254. To the contrary: from Topics 2.9.114b20-22, that is purer and better whose corruption is impurer and worse; but the corruption of the will is such, because ‘to will evil’ is evil for you [Thomas, n.252], not so ‘to understand’.

255. Similarly, the reasoning [n.252] is otherwise at fault in two ways:

In one way because it should compare understanding the corrupt thing, which is false [understanding], with willing the corrupt thing, which is evil [willing], and then the proposed conclusion follows through the reason already stated [n.252, sc. the intellect contracts impurity from the object, because it contracts falsity, therefore it is not purer than the will].

256. In another way because the will can have a good act about any object whatever [sc. including an evil object], just as can also the intellect; for the will can hate evil well, just as the intellect can understand well that evil is to be hated.

257. If, finally, this proposition be taken, ‘that act is impurer which is rendered impure by impurity of object’ - I reply: an act of the intellect is such, because it is necessarily false from the fact it is of a false object [a false object is not a thing but a proposition about a thing, and if the intellect has a false proposition for its object it is necessarily false]; but an act of will is not impure and evil because it is of an evil object, save concomitantly [sc. because an evil object is not evil as an object, but as willed in an evil way].

258. But if you say that an act of will is impure from its object, by impurity of malice, not so an act of intellect - the conclusion does not follow, because then an act of sense would be nobler than an act of will, because it is less impure [sc. therefore lack of impurity, as per n.252, is not a good way to prove nobility].

259. The second reason [n.253], namely about tendency to the thing in itself, concludes to the opposite:

First from their own statements [Thomas and Richard], because they concede that an act of will in respect of things superior to the will itself is nobler than an act of intellect. From this follows, ‘therefore this act in genus is nobler than that act in genus’, because, if the best is nobler than the best, the genus too is nobler than the genu and the species than the species, for a whole species together is superior to any other whole species.

260. Second: an act is not perfect unless it conjoins with a perfect object; but an act of will conjoins with the object in itself as it is in itself, and an act of intellect conjoins with it only as the object is in the knower. Now the beatific object is simply nobler in itself than as it is in the knower; therefore, an act of will conjoins with the beatific object simply under a nobler idea.

261. As to the authority of the Philosopher in Metaphysics [n.253], I say that both intuitive knowledge and the love that follows it tend to an object as it is existent in itself; but abstractive knowledge and the consequent love tend to an object that has known being; so in this respect there is no difference between intellect and will, because each power can tend to its object as it is in itself and to the object as it has diminished being in the intellect. However, the Philosopher was speaking in common of abstractive intellection and of will as it is desiderative, how it tends to a thing not now existing but future (and this as to the term or effect of the act of desire). But to the same thing, as to its object, the will only tends as the thing has being in the intellect, because when it is desired the thing has no other being that it could be object by.