Forty Fifth Distinction

Question One. Whether the Separated Soul can Understand the Quiddities Habitually Known to it before Separation

1. “Further, one must know etc.” [Lombard, Sent. IV d.45].

2. About this forty fifth distinction I ask four questions:

First whether the separated soul can understand quiddities habitually known to it before separation.

3. That it cannot:

On the Soul 3.7.431a14-17, 8.432a9-10, “Phantasms are to the intellect as sensible objects are to the senses” [cf. Ord. I d.3 n.343]; but the senses cannot have any sensation unless moved by a sensible object; therefore neither does the intellect have any intellection unless moved by a phantasm. But then [after separation] it will not be moved by a phantasm; therefore etc.

4. Further, On the Soul 1.4.408b24-25, “Understanding is corrupted when something internal is corrupted;” that ‘internal something’ can only be the organ of imagination; now it is corrupted in death; therefore understanding is too.

5. Again, only the possible intellect understands, because the agent intellect does not understand; but the possible intellect does not remain after death, because On the Soul 3.5.430a23-25, “the passive intellect is corrupted;” the possible intellect is the passive intellect; therefore etc.

6. On the contrary:

On the Soul 3.4.429a27-28, “The soul is the place of species [forms], not the whole soul but the intellect;” it is the function of place to keep what is placed in it; therefore the intellect keeps the species; therefore etc.

7. Further, Boethius Consolation of Philosophy 5 prose 4 n.25, “The thing received is in the receiver according to the mode of the receiver;” but the soul that receives the sensible species is incorruptible; therefore it receives them incorruptibly.

8. Further, Avicenna On the Soul p.5 ch.6, “The separated soul will see truth more clearly than the conjoined soul,” and it agrees with Wisdom 9.15, “The body that is corrupted weighs down the soul.”

I. To the Question

A. Opinions of Others

9. There is an opinion here [Aquinas] about understanding by the separated soul through species infused by God; but the treatment of it is proper to the following question [nn.39-44].

10. The opinion about non-infused species, or species acquired in the natural way, seems to be Avicenna’s in On the Soul p.5 ch.6, that without the act of understanding the soul does not remain. For this is Augustine adduced On the Trinity 11.3 n.6, t These words imply that no intelligible species remains habitually in the intellect when the act ceases.

11. Another opinion [Henry of Ghent] is that there is no intelligible species in the intellect but only a phantasm in the imaginative faculty.

B. Scotus’ own Response

12. A treatment of this question is contained at length in Ord. I d.3 nn.340-345, II d.3 nn.355-363.

Hence, from the things proved there [ibid. I d.3 nn.348-378, II d.3 nn.388-394], let there be supposed here: first that an intelligible species is to be posited; second that it remains in the intellect when all act of understanding ceases - nor does it remain only as suddenly passing away, but as possessed under some idea of permanence. But whether it is a habit was touched on there, that when speaking of habit in the sense of some quality inclining to ease of consideration a species is not a habit but precedes it; indeed, it precedes the act by which the habit properly speaking is generated [ibid. I. d.3 n.378, II d.3 nn.378-387].

13. Now how Augustine and Avicenna [n.10] are to be expounded is plain there, because Augustine speaks only of the sensitive faculty that he calls the ‘faculty of cogitation’ [On the Trinity 15.22 n.42], and which will not remain in the separated soul [Ord. I d.3 n.393]. But Avicenna seems to posit a double mode of understanding: by an inferior and by a superior, as is said there [cf. Scotus, Rep. IA d.3 nn.236-238], and knowledge by the inferior indeed abides but not knowledge by the superior.

14. From these suppositions we get this conclusion, that there remains in the intellect in itself, after the act of understanding, an intelligible species.

15. From this the argument goes: in the intellect, as it is subject of the intelligible species, there is not requisite, not even necessarily requisite, a union of it with the body; therefore, when not united with the body, it is not differently disposed as to receiving the intelligible species.

The consequence is plain, because a subject is not differently disposed to receiving something because of variation in what is not the reason for receiving it, nor in any way necessary for receiving it.

I prove the antecedent, because the species is a form simply immaterial or spiritual, at least in that it is not extended and not extendable. Hence the Commentator [Averroes] says [On the Soul III com.18] that the object is transferred from order to order when it is transferred by the agent intellect from the phantasm to the order of the possible intellect [cf. Ord. I d.3 n.359], which I understand only to mean from the order of the material and extendable to the order of the immaterial and non-extendable. But nothing simply immaterial is received in the intellect insofar as the intellect is simply united with the body, because if this were so, it would be received either in the whole first, or union with the body will be a reason for the receiving; whether in this way or that, the thing received will not be thus altogether immaterial.

16. From this I get that the intelligible species can inform the separated and united intellect in the same way. And then further: since the intelligible species, joined with the agent and possible intellects, constitutes in the same way the idea of perfect memory (in the way said elsewhere about intellective memory, that it contains intelligible object and generative intellect [Ord. I d.3 nn.375, 395]) - it follows that a memory of the same idea will be able to exist in the separated intellect as existed in the united intellect; and further, since an equally perfect memory is equally parent of a perfect act in the intelligence, it follows that this sort of generating will be equally able to be present in the separated intellect as in the united intellect. Therefore, the separated soul will be able, by a retained intelligible species, to have actual intellection of anything that it was capable of having intellection of before.

17. With this agrees the intention of the Philosopher, who maintains, On the Soul 1.1.403a3-10, that if the soul cannot have an operation when it is separated, neither can it exist separated. He also puts knowledge properly in the intellect, On the Soul 3.8.431b21-23, saying that “just as the soul is made sensible through the senses, so is it made knowable through knowledge.” Now science is, on its own part, of a nature to abide incorruptibly, and consequently on the part of the subject too, since the subject is incorruptible. But what has science is in accidental potency to actual consideration, from ibid. 3.4.429b31-30a2, Physics 8.4.255a30-b5. Therefore, the separated soul is in accidental potency to understanding objects habitually known to it; therefore it can by itself proceed to act.

18. With this agrees also the statement of Jerome in his prologue to the Bible [Epistle 53 to Paulinus n.9], “Let us learn on earth things the knowledge of which will remain with us in heaven.” For it would be very unfitting to labor so much over science and truths if they ceased to exist in death, and very irrational that they should remain without being able to be actualized.

C. Doubts about Scotus’ Response

19. Against this view there seem to be some doubts.

First, that if many intelligible species be conserved in the intellect, either each of them will move the intellect to consider the object represented by it, or none of them will. The first is unacceptable because understanding many distinct things at once is unacceptable; therefore the second is left, that the intellect will turn out understanding nothing.

20. Besides, understanding without a phantasm is more perfect than understanding with a phantasm (the proof of which is that this agrees more with the understanding of God and angels, which is simply more perfect in the genus of understandings). Therefore, if the separated intellect could understand without a phantasm, it would have an understanding simply more perfect than when conjoined with the body, which is unacceptable.

21. Further, in a conjoined intellect the intelligible species without a phantasm is not sufficient for understanding, because the intellect needs to turn toward phantasms, On the Soul 3.8.432a8-9. But the intelligible species is as equally perfect in a conjoined intellect as in a separated one; therefore, the species by itself will not be sufficient in a separated intellect for understanding, nor will it be possible then for a phantasm to be had; therefore etc.

22. Further, an operation proper to the whole cannot be an operation proper to a part, because neither can the total being of the whole belong to a part, but understanding is the operation proper to man, Ethics 1.6.1098a3-4, 7. And there is proof from reason: because the proper operation of this species [man] is not other than this operation, therefore this operation cannot be an operation of the soul, which is only a part of the species.

23. To the first [n.19]: this difficulty (about the understanding of many or no objects first) is a common one, yet in the issue at hand it has a special difficulty, because there is no possibility here of having recourse to particular senses perceiving sensible things, nor to phantasms more or less efficaciously moving the intellect, as is the case with the conjoined intellect.

I say, then, to this briefly here (and consequently about this lack of simultaneousness everywhere), that objects habitually present are either equal in moving the intellect or one of them is a more efficacious mover of it than another. If in the first way, and if there were posited with this an equal inclination of the intellect toward all of them, then the intellect would understand none of them before another - but the hypothesis is impossible. If, however, one of them were a more efficacious mover (after removal of greater inclination in the intellect to one object than to another), then the more efficacious mover will move the intellect first and be first understood. But if one posits an equal inclination toward this object and toward that, then which of them will be understood first appears after one has weighed the moving force and the inclination on each side.

24. To the second [n.20] I say that something can be called more perfect than something else either positively or permissively. An example: animal is more perfect than fly permissively, because the idea of animal permits ‘animal’ to be saved in man; but fly is more perfect positively, because any species posits a perfection over and above the genus.The term ‘animal’ is here being used broadly for any living thing that moves about, and therefore it includes flies and snakes, although we classify flies more properly as insects and snakes as reptiles. ¹¹

To the issue at hand, ‘to understand without a phantasm is more perfect than to understand with a phantasm’ is true permissively but not positively, that is, it does not posit more perfection. The proof is that an agent able to use an instrument does not act positively more perfectly if it not use the instrument; yet it is possible that action without an instrument is more perfect than action with an instrument.Punctuating the Latin as in the translation. The punctuation in the printed text seems misleading. ¹² So it is here with a phantasm, which is a sort of instrument. I concede therefore that intellection without a phantasm has some condition of perfection which intellection with a phantasm does not have, because the former has a likeness with the simply perfect intellection of a separate substance. But it does not follow from this that any intellection of that sort [sc. intellection without a phantasm] is positively more perfect than any intellection of this sort [sc. intellection with a phantasm].Intellection without a phantasm, while simply more perfect, is not more perfect in man’s case than intellection with a phantasm. ¹³

25. To the third [n.21] I say that although the intelligible species in a conjoined intellect is not sufficient without a phantasm, yet not for this reason is a phantasm required there as a principle of the act of understanding; rather it is required there precisely as a principle of the operation of the imaginative power, and this operation is required for intellection because of the connection of the powers in acting (namely the superior and inferior powers), since the superior does not perfectly act about any object unless the inferior powers (those that have power to operate) operate about the same object. And this is the reason that distractions in the powers of the soul about diverse objects impede the operations of those powers.

26. There is however some perfection that a phantasm bestows on intellection, because it regularly intends the intelligible species in any intellection, as was made clear in d.1 nn.44-49 [cf. Ord. I d.3 nn.499-500]. But this perfection can be had without a phantasm, and therefore, to this extent, one must concede that separated intellection would be less perfect than conjoined intellection unless there were something else reforming it that would suffice for restoring an equal perfection.

27. And from this is plain how necessary a conversion to phantasms is, not as to a principle of understanding, but as to that whereby an inferior power has to be used so that a superior power may have its operation; and this because of the order of the powers in acting, which powers must come together in acting about the same object for the acting to be perfect.

28. To the fourth [n.22]: in the case of any whole whose form is not of a nature to exist per se there can be an action proper to the whole that is not able to belong to the form. But contrariwise, in the case of a whole whose form, namely specific form, is of a nature to exist per se, there cannot be a perfect operation that could not belong to the form as the operater; because the most perfect operation cannot be present unless it be present in its most perfect form, and it cannot be present in a form able to exist per se unless it could be in it per se, because the form will be immediately receptive of it; and so, if the form exists per se, it can receive per se.

29. I concede therefore that intellection is the proper operation of the whole man, but according to the most perfect form in him as through the proper principle of operation; nor is this all but, because this form is separable, intellection is so in the form that it can belong to it, and therefore is so proper to the whole that it can belong to the part. I therefore deny the major in the proposed argument [n.22 init.].

30. To the proof about being [n.22 ibid.], although some may say [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.44 q.1 a.1] that the being of the whole is the being of the soul, yet this was disproved above in d.43 [nn.12-25]. Hence I concede that the being of the whole cannot be the being of the soul, nor conversely - speaking of total and precise being. And yet the most perfect operation belongs to this whole because it cannot be in it save according to the soul, and it cannot be in it according to the soul as the soul is proximate receiver unless it could belong to the soul when the soul per se exists. It follows that the operation of the whole can be the operation of the soul; hence I deny the consequence, that ‘the being of this [the whole] cannot be the being of that [the part], therefore neither can the operation of the former be the operation of the latter’.

As to the proof [n.22], that ‘operation presupposes being’: this is true, but not as the precise reason for receiving.A thing cannot operate unless it exists, but the precise reason it has the operation need not be its existence. So the soul, which is not the existence of man but a part of that existence, can yet be the precise reason man has the relevant operation. ¹⁴

II. To the Initial Arguments

31. To the initial arguments.

To the first [n.3]: the authority from On the Soul 3 must be understood as to the acquiring of intellection, and this the first acquisition firstly done. But it must not be understood of use; and the reason is that the intellect can use a form previously acquired, although those things are not had that were necessary before for acquiring the form. The senses, speaking of exterior sense, cannot thus use a form previously acquired, because the senses do not conserve for later operation a form or species previously received. In another way it could be said that this proposition [of the Philosopher] is understood as holding of this life, because the Philosopher knew by experience the intellection that fits us only for this life; for he had experience of no other.

32. To the second [n.4]: the intellect is corrupted, that is, impeded in its operation, and it is as if it is kept corrupt by something corrupted within, for without the operation of imagination it cannot proceed to its own act. But from this does not follow that it is corrupt or corruptible in itself, nor that something else is necessarily required for its act, but only that it is required according to the order of powers that is now found in human nature as to operation on the same object.

33. To the third [n.5] I say that the passive intellect is not there understood to be the possible intellect, but to be some sense power, which power some call the cogitative power. And it is true that every sense power is corrupted, and therefore that the passive intellect, taken in this way, is corrupted too. But the passive intellect is not corrupted in the sense in which we say the possible intellect is passive.

Question Two. Whether the Separated Soul can Acquire Knowledge of Something Previously Unknown

34. Second I ask whether the separated soul can acquire knowledge of something previously unknown.

35. That it cannot:

[Because if it could] it would then in vain be united to the body. Proof of the consequence: the soul is not united for the sake of the perfection of the body, because form is not for the sake of matter but conversely, Physics 2.8.199a30-32; therefore it is united for the sake of acquiring its own perfection, namely so that it may acquire knowledge through the use of the senses in the body; but this would be in vain if, when separated without use of the senses, it could acquire knowledge; therefore etc.

36. Again, passage from extreme to extreme is only possible through the middle; the thing outside exists altogether materially, in the intellect altogether immaterially; therefore, it must pass through the middle, wherein it exists in some way materially and in some way immaterially. But in the senses it thus exists in some way materially, because according to material conditions, and in some way immaterially, because, according to the Philosopher On the Soul 2.12.424a17-19, “sense is receptive of the species without matter” - without, I say, the sort of matter that a form really existing outside requires.

37. Again, if the soul could acquire knowledge of one unknown thing, then likewise too of any unknown thing, and so an object’s distance in place would not prevent knowledge of it - which seems against Augustine On Care for the Dead ch.15 n.18, where he maintains that separated souls do not know the things done here unless angels and souls coming to them express to them the things they know here.

38. On the contrary:

Nature is not without its proper specific operation - and this point is taken from On the Heavens 2.3.286a8-9 and from Damascene Orthodox Faith ch.59 [cf. Ord. I d.3 n.209]. Now the human soul is the most perfect form, and its proper operation according to the possible intellect is to understand, according to the agent intellect to abstract, according to the will to will. Therefore, no manner of being can belong to the soul according to its nature wherein it does not have power for these operations. But according to its nature the soul is such as to be able to have separate being, and this comes from the perfection of its nature (hence it does not belong to other, imperfect forms). Therefore it has, in that separate being, power for these operations. But it is possible for the soul not to have previously acquired any species of objects, as is plain of the soul of a deceased child; therefore it will be able to acquire them then.

I. To the Question

A. Opinion of Others

1. Exposition of the Opinion

39. Here the negative opinion is held, because of the second reason [n.36], virtually [cf. n.49].

40. For it argues [Aquinas, Sent IV d.50 q.1 a.1] that “there must be some agreement between receiver and received; now the species existent in the senses have agreement with the intellect insofar as they are without matter, and agreement with material things insofar as they exist with material conditions; and so it is agreeable that the senses receive from material things, and that the intellect receives from the senses -but not that the intellect receive immediately from material things,” because there is no such agreement in that case; and so, “in order for the intellect to understand after separation from the body, no forms received from things either then or before are required.”

41. How then will the intellect understand?

They say that it will understand “through influence from higher substances, namely from God or the angels” - and this when speaking of a natural influence and its natural knowledge.

42. The point is shown as follows:

“The intellect seems to be a mean between intellectual substances and corporeal things (hence the saying that ‘the soul is created on the horizon of eternity’ [Book of Causes prop.2 n.22]); and this for the reason that the soul attains intellectual substances through the intellect, but attains corporeal things insofar as it the act of a body; but the more any mean approaches one extreme the more it recedes from the other, and conversely.”

43. “Hence, since our soul comes closest to the body in this life, namely as being the act of the body, it does not have a relation to intellectual things, and therefore does not receive influence from higher substances so has to get knowledge, but it gets knowledge through species received from the senses. And so, even in this life, the more the soul is drawn away from the body so much the more does it receive the influx of knowledge from spiritual substances, and hence it is that it knows certain occult things when sleeping or in excess of mind. Wherefore, when it will be actually separated from the body, it will be most ready to receive the influence of higher substances, namely of God and angels, and thus, in accordance with this sort of influence, it will have a greater or lesser knowledge according to the mode of its own capacity.”

44. “And this is how the Commentator [Averroes] speaks in On the Soul 3 com.5, because he posits that the possible intellect [cf. Ord. I d.3 n.548] is a separate substance; and although he errs in this yet he does speak rightly to this extent, that from the fact the possible intellect is posited as a separate substance it does have a respect to higher intellectual substances, so as to understand them. But according to the respect in which it is compared to our intellect by receiving species from phantasms, it is not conjoined with the higher substances.”

2. Rejection of the Opinion

a. Against the Opinion in Itself

45. There is reason against this position, even if no other reason save from the following principles: the first of which is that “a plurality is not to be posited without necessity” (Physics 1.4.188a17-18), the second of which is that one should not posit of any nature what derogates from its dignity, unless this be evident from something that agrees with such nature (this principle can be got from the Philosopher, On Generation 2.10.336b27-29, “we always say that nature desires what is better, and as in the whole universe, so also in each part, one must rather posit for it what is better, and provided it not evidently appear that it does not belong to it”). But now a plurality is being posited, because such species are infused by God or angels, and without necessity - because this nature has sufficiently in itself the resources to be able to reach its own perfection without such givens infused by God or angels. Hence it seems here that only because the perfection of this nature is not understood in itself is recourse being had to God or angels.

46. This opinion also cheapens the nature of the intellective soul. For just as a nature is cheaper simply that has power for no operation or only for a cheaper one, so proportionally is a nature that has no power for an operation that belongs to it cheaper than one that does have such power. Now the separated soul has for you [Aquinas] no power from its intrinsic resources (even when extrinsic factors are concurrent with it) for any operation that belongs to it unless God or an angel give it the sort of species in question - but a stone does have power from its intrinsic resources, without such a begged-for infusion, for an operation proportioned to it, because it can descend toward the center and remain there. Therefore, the soul is more cheapened by this position, in proportion to its nobility, than the nature of a stone is.

47. Again, he who has this opinion holds elsewhere [Aquinas, On Metaphysics 5 lect.12] that two accidents of the same species cannot exist together; but the infused species of a stone as object is of the same species as the intelligible species acquired by the soul here in the body; therefore either the infused species will not remain, or the one acquired here must not remain. But the second is false, because since the proper subject of this species is incorruptible, and since the species itself can of itself incorruptibly remain, it follows that it will in fact remain. Therefore, another species of the stone will not be given to it by God or an angel and, consequently, either it will never understand a stone, or it will be able to understand it through the species it previously received from things - which they [Aquinas and his followers] deny.

48. If you say that the species is not given to what possesses it already - this does not seem reasonable, that this soul [sc. the one that possesses it already] should lack the sort of perfect species given to another soul not possessed of it;The translation given here rejects the punctuation and grammatical markings in the printed text, which are hard to decipher. The sense of the argument seems to be that if an infused species is only given to a separated soul that does not have the species already, then first: the separated soul that does not receive the infused species (because it already has the species acquired from things) will lack this perfect infused species, though other souls will have it, which seems unreasonable; and second: this separated soul, which does not receive the infused species (because it has the acquired one), will understand, if it understands, through the acquired species, and this is opposed to the opinion being defended here, that separated souls understand only through infused species. ¹⁵ and this response is at least maintained against the opinion [in question here], because there will then be an intellection through a species previously received from the thing.

49. If you say the infused and acquired species differ in kind the way acquired and infused virtue (which exist simultaneously) differ - this is assumed as axiomatic, and was dealt with in Ord. III d.26 n.11, 22, 24-26, 102-111. But suppose the axiom is conceded to them as to the virtues; the proposed conclusion does not follow here, because infused virtue will have its own different rule from the one that acquired virtue has, and from difference of rule a virtue different in species will be able to be posited, because a virtue (by the essential idea of a virtue) depends on the rule it is conformed to. But it will not be possible to imagine here a specific difference between an infused species and an acquired species, because there is no difference here save only that of effective principle or of mode of effecting, and such difference does not distinguish effects into species, Augustine, On the Trinity 3.9 n.20“What is understood from each of two sources is perhaps single, but the things it is understood from are different, as that if the name of ‘the Lord’ be written in gold and in black ink, the first is more precious the second more cheap, but what is signified by each is the very same.” ¹⁶ [cf. Ord. III d.27 n.11].

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].

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

62. To the question, then, I say that the separated soul can acquire knowledge of an object previously unknown, and knowledge both abstractive and intuitive. The meanings of these terms were stated elsewhere [Rep. IVA d.45 q.2].

1. About Abstractive Knowledge

63. The proof of the first is that when a sufficient active and passive factor are sufficiently close, the effect can follow, and if the agent acts naturally, the effect does follow. But now, when the separated soul has present to it a stone or any object proportioned to it, there come together in the soul an active and a passive factor both sufficient for abstractive knowledge - or for the intelligible species of such object by which abstractive knowledge is had; therefore etc.

64. The proof of the minor is that the agent intellect together with an object is a sufficient active cause of an intelligible species, and no less so when with an external object than with a phantasm (which point they concede); because, as was said in arguing against the opinion [n.52], there is nothing in a phantasm to make it sufficient to cause an intelligible species that does not more eminently belong in the thing of which the phantasm is the phantasm; and the possible intellect is a power sufficiently receptive [of intelligible species].

2. About Intuitive Knowledge

65. This argument proves the second point, namely about intuitive knowledge. For the sufficient causes of this knowledge are the object present in actual existence and the agent and possible intellects; all these can come to be together. And so is it proved, as it seems, that the thing must itself immediately suffice for intellectual knowledge to be had of itself, because the phantasm alone does not suffice for intuitive knowledge of an object, since a phantasm represents a thing existent or not existent, present or not present, and consequently through it knowledge of the thing as it exists in its proper present existence cannot be had. Now such knowledge, which is called intuitive, can be intellective knowledge, otherwise the intellect would not be certain of any existence of any object. But this intuitive knowledge too cannot be had through the presence of the species, because the species represents the thing indifferently as existent and not existent, present and not present.

66. And from this follows that through species infused by God or angels neither intellection is possible for a separated intellect, because the second is not.The second kind is intuitive intellection and the first kind is abstractive, and the first depends on the second. ¹⁸ If then the second is possible, because it is also possible now, it follows that it will be about the thing in itself and not by such infusing.

67. Now the excessive distance of the object impedes this intuitive intellection of the object, because according to Augustine On Care for the Dead 15 n.18, “those souls do not know what is done here unless they learn it from angels or from other newly arriving souls who can tell them what they knew here,” in the way that John the Baptist predicted to the holy souls in limbo that Christ would come down to them, according to Gregory’s exposition [Ten Homilies on the Gospels, 1.6 n.1]“John says therefore, ‘Are you he who is to come or do we wait for another?’, as if he were to say openly, ‘As you deigned to be born for men, indicate whether you deign also to die for men, so that I who have arisen as precursor of your birth am also to be precursor of your death, and am to announce that you are to come in hell whom I have announced are already come in the world’.” ¹⁹ of John’s question in Matthew 11.31, “Are you he who is to come etc.?” But now, if they knew through infused species these conditions of the existence of things, such would not need to be announced to them by the saints, whether angels or souls, who know these matters.a

a.a [Interpolated text]. I specifically believe that it is impossible for any intelligible species to be equivalently in the soul through an influx from angels, because I do not believe that an angel can cause in these lower things any real form that I understand distinct in location, nor consequently cause in the soul an intelligible species (which is a form and a perfect one, though in respect of the object it be said to be intrinsic). Because for the same reason that an angel could impress this form it could impress an intellection on the intellect, since an intellection too is a certain form of intention with respect to a real object; yet an intellection could in itself impress a volition - which [sc. an angel impressing a volition on the soul] no one concedes.

II. To the Initial Arguments

68. To the first initial argument [n.35] I say that it does not follow the soul is in vain united to the body. For let it be that this union come about for the perfection of the soul, namely so that the soul acquire its perfection from such union; it does not follow that, if it could acquire it in another way, it is united in vain. For if something is ordered to an end, it does not come to be in vain if the end could be acquired in another way; just as if health could be acquired by surgery and medicine, surgery does not become vain though health could be acquired by medicine. So, if knowledge could be acquired by the use of the senses and in another way by the soul when separated, the union does not become vain from the fact that it agrees with one of these ways of acquiring knowledge.

69. An answer in another way, and more to the point, is that the union of soul and body is not ultimately either for the perfection of the body or for the perfection alone of the soul, but for the perfection of the whole that consists of these parts. And therefore, though no perfection could accrue to this part or to that which could not be had without such a union, yet the union does not come to be in vain because the perfection of the whole, which is principally intended by nature, could only be had in this way.

70. To the second [n.36] I say that something is a necessary medium for one virtue that is not a medium for another virtue, speaking of necessary medium, as in transferring a body from place to place, where some medium is necessary for the natural moving power, so that the natural power cannot transfer it from a distant ‘where’ to another ‘where’ saveThe word ‘save’ seems necessary for the sense though the printed text omits it, probably through a typographical error. ²⁰ through a ‘where’ in the middle; and yet it is not a medium necessary for divine power, which can at once transfer it from any ‘where’ to any other ‘where’. So, in the issue at hand, a perfect abstractive virtue needs a medium, namely imaginative being, between the sensible object outside and the pure intelligible thing; but a more perfect abstractive virtue does not need this medium. Hence the argument [n.36] can be turned toward the opposite, that if the virtue of the separated intellect were more perfect than that of the conjoined intellect, it could transfer the object from extreme to extreme without such a medium.

71. Or it could in another way be said that under one of the two extremes falls imaginable being, because this is simply sensible being. But this extreme has under it diverse things and in diverse degrees, because the sensible thing outside is in some way in a more remote sensible degree from intelligible being than the sensible thing is as it is in imaginable being. But as it is, some virtue in some degree in the extreme is able to act and some lesser virtue is not able to act, but it can act from some degree closer. So here, although the abstractive power of our conjoined intellect cannot act by abstracting the intelligible thing from the sensible thing save from this lowest sensible degree, namely the imaginable, yet the higher or more efficacious virtue can abstract from a more distant degree, namely from the degree of the sensible thing outside.

72. To the third [n.37]: conceded that knowledge can be acquired of anything ceteris paribus.

73. And when you say about distance in place that it is not a hindrance, I reply that this does not follow, because a determinate presence of the object to the power is required; but a disproportionate distance prevents this determinate presence. And no wonder, because at least an object that is in some way here active cannot act on a passive object however much in the distance it is; and consequently I concede that knowledge of an object however much in the distance it is cannot be caused in a separated intellect, as not in a conjoined one either.

74. If it is objected against this that, according to Boethius Hebdom. PL 64, 1311, “it is self-evident that incorporeal things are not in place” [cf, Aquinas, ST Ia q.2 a.1], therefore they do not require distance in place in their operation - I reply: the Philosopher seems to posit that a determinate distance is required for the operation even of separated substance; hence in Physics 8.1.267b6-9 he seems to posit that the intelligence moving a sphere is in some part of the sphere, from which part the motion begins, as if at least a definitive presence to place of the mover were doing something for the action of moving. Likewise in Physics 7.1.242b24-27, 2.243a3-6 [On Generation 1.6.323a22-31] he maintains of express intention that agent and patient are present together - which is understood either of presence together by contact, where it cannot be greater, as in bodies, according to him [sc. of two bodies in contact, one body is not more in contact with the other than the other is with it], or where presence can be greater, but the greater one, namely mutual presence, is the one meant [sc. one thing can be more present to another than the other is to it, as in affection, but the greater presence is mutual presence, when the affection is on both sides]. But a spirit can have a greater presence to body than by contact; therefore, by Aristotle’s express intention, presence together by contact will [for a spirit] be by mutual presence, and consequently too great a distance does impede action.

Question Three. Whether the Separated Soul can Remember Past Things it Knew when Conjoined

75. Third I ask whether the separated soul can remember past things that it knew when conjoined.

76. That it cannot:

The Philosopher On Memory 1.450a11-14 lays down memory as a sense power, and Damascene ch.34 does the same; but no sense power remains in the separated soul with the possibility of being active; therefore etc.

77. Again, the object of the intellect is the universal, Physics 1.5.189a5-8, On the Soul 2.5.417b20-22, but the universal abstracts from the here and now, the ‘has been’ and ‘will be’, and from these sorts of conditions that concern existence; but memory has regard to a determinate condition that concerns existence, namely the past; therefore memory is repugnant to the intellective part of the soul; therefore it does not remain in the separated soul.

78. Again, it then follows [sc. if separated souls did have memory of the past] that, for like reason, blessed souls would have recollection of everything past, and consequently the soul of a blessed would have recollection of sin committed. The consequent is false, because Isaiah 65.16-17 says, “Behold I make a new heaven,” and there follows “former tribulations shall be handed over to oblivion;” and Gregory [Moralia 4.35 nn.71-72], when expounding this statement,a says it is because the blessed will suffer no misery. But this memory [of sin committed] would be cause of great misery, because cause of great displeasure; for the blessed could not be pleased with any sin committed, nor be indifferently disposed, as though neither pleased nor displeased, because this would not stand with perfect charity; therefore the blessed would have displeasure about something irrevocable; therefore, sadness too.

a.a [Interpolated text] which Gregory expounds thus [in fact Jerome, on Isaiah 18.65, nn.17-18, as cited by Lombard Sent.IV d.43 ch.5 n.3], saying, “Perhaps, in the future, memory of former behavior will be altogether destroyed, with every eternal good succeeding to it, so that there be nothing left to remember of the evils of former tribulation.”

79. On the contrary:

Luke 16.25, “Son, remember that you received good things in your life, and Lazarus bad things in like manner.”

80. Again, Augustine maintains this on Psalm 108.17 “Let his sons be orphans,” and in Confessions 9.10 nn.23-25, 4.4. n.8, where he says that the dead have memory of us.

81. Again, if [the dead] did not remember, then they would not have ground for giving thanks to God for his mercy; and this is the argument of Gregory Moralia 4.36 n.72 who, basing himself on Psalm 88.2 “I will sing the mercies of God forever,” says, “How does he sing mercies forever who does not remember his misery?”

I. To the Question

82. As to this question one must ask first whether memory properly speaking (namely, memory that has the job of remembering the past) is in the sensitive part of the soul; second whether it is in the intellective part.

A. Things Needing to be Noted Beforehand about Memory Properly Speaking

1. There Exists in us an Act of Knowing the Past as Past.

83. Now, presupposed to these two questions [n.82] is something certain common to both, namely that there is in us some act of knowing the past as past.

84. The fact is plain, because otherwise we would lack the first part of prudence, which according to Tully [On Invention 2 n.53] is memory of the past.

85. Second it would follow that the virtuous could not rightly know that they are to be justly rewarded, nor the vicious that they are to be justly punished, for reward and punishment are so carried out because of past good or bad; and, ex hypothesi, neither the former nor the latter have knowledge of the past within themselves; therefore justice neither in reward nor in punishment would be known. This conclusion destroys all political life [cf. Ethics 8.12.1160a31-36], because it destroys all agreement as to the just imposition of reward or punishment according to law.

86. Again, the past has more of truth than the future (the proof of which is that the truth of the future is contingent, of the past necessary - according to Ethics 6.2.1139b10-11: “God is deprived of this alone: to make undone what has been done”). But we can have some knowledge of the future as future (as we experience), otherwise we could not have foresight for ourselves and procure what is suitable for our life and avoid what is unsuitable. Therefore, much more can we have some knowledge, and so memory, of the past as it is past.

87. Taking this supposition as certain (that there can exist in us an act of knowing the ‘past as past’ as object of knowing), I add that the act called ‘remembering’ is not directly of just any past, but only of an act that was present in the one supposed to be remembering and that was in him a human act (to exclude acts of the vegetative power and casual acts or acts generally imperceptible); for I only remember the fact that you sat down because I remember that I saw or knew that you sat down. Hence, although I know I was born or that the world was created, yet I do not remember the one or the other, because I do not know any act of mine in the past being about the one or the other.

88. From this meaning of the term, then, ‘memory’ is knowledge of some past act, and of it insofar as it is past, by the very one who remembers.

89. And certain things follow from the fact that memory is said to be of the past, and some follow from the fact that it is memory of this sort of past object [sc. a past object as past].

2. Four Certainties Consequent to Memory, or to Knowledge of a Past Act

90. Now from the fact that memory is of the past, four things follow that are certain.

The first of these is this, that the remembering power acts after passage of time, otherwise it would not be of the past as past, and this is what the Philosopher says in On Memory 1.449b27-28. The fact that memory acts after passage of time must be understood per se, so that the act of remembering per se follows the remembered thing; and the Philosopher’s words are: “all memory happens after passage of time.”

91. The second is that the remembering power perceives the flow of time between the instant or time when the object remembered existed and the instant of present perception.

92. The third is that the object of memory, when it is the object of memory, is not in itself present, because then there would be no memory of it as past.

93. The fourth is that since the object must in some way be present to the act of memory, and it cannot be present in itself, it must be present through its species, and then the remembering power will be a power of conserving the species, and this in the sense of the total power required for memory. For whether there are two powers, one of which conserves the species and the other remembers, or a single one that performs both acts, I care not; at least there is required for remembering the conserving of the species of the object that can be remembered.

3. Three Certainties Consequent to Knowledge of this Sort of Past Act

94. Now from the idea of ‘this special object’, namely the past act of the very one remembering, three things follow that are certain:

The first is that memory will be of a double object: one as remote or ultimate object, namely the thing about which the one remembering at some point performed a human act; and the next as proximate object, namely the human and past act tending toward that other object.

95. The second thing is that, since the act of remembering must possess the species [of the object] (and by this meaning the whole complete species required for remembering), the species could not be impressed by the object when the object does not exist or is not present; but the proximate object is the past human act; therefore, while this act existed the necessary species was being impressed. Therefore, since the species of the past human act could not be impressed on any power save the power of which this act was the object, it follows that the act of knowing the past is the object of the remembering power.

96. The third is that no one can have a memory save of his own act, and this a human act, because only through the act as proximate object known is its object as remote object known - and consequently there cannot be memory of an act in another of the same idea as the act there is memory of in oneself.

B. First Article: about the Memory of the Past in the Sense Part of the Soul

1. Whether the Remembering Power Knows the Act while it Exists

97. In this regard a doubt can be introduced, and it is whether the remembering power knows the act while it exists, of which act as past, as of immediate object, it is the memory. For it seems that if it does not then know it, neither will it remember it afterwards. But the proof is not necessary, because one sense does not seem to reflect on the act of another sense; and though it not perceive the act of another sense while it is present, there is no clear proof that it will not be able to perceive that act as past after it has passed. At any rate, let the conclusion of this article be examined on the supposition of the above certainties [nn.90-96].

98. It seems that memory cannot be set down as an act of the sense part.

First, from the condition that it perceives time; but “time is nothing but the number of motion according to before and after,” Physics 4.11.219b1-2, and this cannot be perceived without collating the after with the before; but the senses are not able to collate, because this is proper to the intellect.

99. Again, it was said in the fourth inference [n.93] that the remembering. power must perceive the act while it is present. But the sense power cannot perceive the act of sensing while it is present (at least not universally), because the act of the supreme sense power cannot be perceived by any sense, neither by a lower nor a higher one (as is plain), nor by itself, because that power does not reflect back on itself or its act, and yet there can be memory of any sensation in us (as we experience); therefore this remembering does not generally belong to any sense power.

100. But since the argument here is from something that was earlier said to be doubtful [n.97], the argument therefore is taken from something else supposed certain as follows: not only does the sense power not perceive first anything but some sensible quality (hence the Philosopher On the Soul 2.425b17-20, in order to concede that vision is in some way perceived by sight, says that vision is in some way colored), but also it does not receive the proper species of anything other than some such quality. But the sensation of which it is the remembering cannot in any way be set down as a sense quality, because any sensation (whether of color, or sound, or flavor) can equally be remembered; therefore the species required for remembering is not that of any sense as of the receptive power.

2. It Seems that No Sense Operation is to be Posited in the Sense Part that Cannot be Conceded to a Brute

101. Again, one should not posit in the sense part any sense operation that cannot be conceded to a brute (the proof of this is that there can be a sense part in some brute that excels as to all the sense acts that we experience); but this remembering cannot be proved to exist in a brute from a brute’s acts.

102. Proof of the minor [n.101]:

There are all these acts of brutes we see from which the conclusion [sc. brutes have remembering] could the more be drawn, as those that seem to be acts of prudence or foresight, as is plain of ants gathering grain to the same place and at a definite time (as in summer).

103. Similarly, acts of revenge or exacting justice, as it were, such as yielding to benefactors and punishing those that offend, seem to belong to brutes insofar as they know the past as past.

104. Likewise, third, about acts pertaining to preservation of the species (as the nest-building of birds and feeding young and the like), which do not seem regularly to belong to them without knowledge of the past as past.

105. Fourth, because some brutes are teachable (as the Philosopher maintains On Memory 1.430a15-22 and On Sense 1.437a9-14), but teaching is not without memory of the past as past.

106. Now all these acts can be carried out without remembrance of the past as past; therefore, no act proves that this act of remembrance exists in brutes.

107. The minor of this argument [n.106] is proved by running through the acts in question.

For as to uniformity with respect to place and time (as appears in ants [n.102]), this can be saved by mere apprehension and retention of a species of what is delightful, without apprehension of the past as past. For if it was delightful to this ant to deposit grain here, and if the delightful species remains in imagination, it will move the sense appetite to seeking it as delightful, and so to coming again to this place. But as to why ants gather at one time and not at another, explanation must be given from the side of their [bodily] complexion, or why it is delightful for them to gather grain in this way and not in that. And whether this is attributed to natural industry or some other cause, at least this does not prove remembrance of time, for although an ant born this year has never experienced want in winter it gathers in summer just like an ant ten years old (if an ant could live so long); therefore it does not get this act for such time from the remembrance of the past. But if the frequenting of the same place shows it comes from the past, the response is that it comes from the delightful previously apprehended, without apprehension of the past as past.

108. Similarly to the second [n.103], about revenge or benefit from a wounded or placated animal for, in brief, the delightful image of what pleases, or the saddening image of what offends, is formally impressed and always pushes the sense appetite to motion in conformity with the object (namely of avenging or benefiting), at least when any other delightful or saddening thing ceases that was moving more strongly. Therefore, if in the intermediate time this action is suspended by something present, at the end of the time the phantasm at once moves, and there follows in the sense appetite a motion proportioned to the object, which motion did not follow before because it was impeded by some object moving more strongly. There is here, then, no apprehension of the past as past but only of the thing that is past, whose persisting species moves to revenge or thanks when some other thing that was moving more strongly ceases.

109. Likewise about the third [n.104]: because [building nests and feeding young] is delightful to these brutes wherever they are from, it is necessary that at least some intrinsic cause (from a [bodily] complexion disposed or altered now in this way) must convince them to gather such and such twigs for making a nest and for constructing it in such and such way; and this is not delightful otherwise, when their complexion is disposed differently; and from this delight they operate, not from the apprehension of the past as past. The proof of this is that if there were a brute animal propagated in its first year, it would just as much provide for itself things necessary for building a nest as if it were however many years in age; therefore nest building is not from knowledge of the past as past.

110. Fourth, about learning [n.105], this is more easily solved, as it goes along with the second [nn.103, 108]. And it is solved by the fact that, from frequent sensing of things delightful and saddening conjoined, there is impressed on the animal a delightful and saddening phantasm, and in the following way, that when one of them moves it, the other from the conjunction at once moves it. Therefore, when present food moves the appetite to consume, at once the phantasm of a rod beating it moves it at the same time, and consequently moves it as something saddening to be fled from; and if from much frequency the phantasm of the latter is impressed on it as very saddening, the brute withdraws itself from the delightful thing more than the delightful thing attracts it.

3. The Contrary Position of Aristotle, which is more Probable

111. These arguments can be responded to by upholding the intention of the Philosopher in On Memory [n.76], that memory is in the sense part, and by turning the arguments to the opposite.

112. For first about the perception of time [n.107], the Philosopher concedes it there saying that by the first sense part by which we perceive magnitude we also perceive time. Nor is it an objection that time is successive, because motion is successive and yet motion is of itself sensible (from On the Soul 2.6.17-21); nor is it an objection that time is number, because number is of itself sensible (ibid.). Also, the Commentator maintains, Physics 4 com.98 ‘On Time’, that if the motion alone of phantasms is perceived, time is perceived. But the exposition of this could be that such motion is perceived by the intellect, not by the power of imagination.

113. To the next [n.108] it will be possible to say that some sense can receive the species of the act of sensing and retain that species after the act passes away and, consequently, it can by that species have an act after passage of time and so remember.

114. And when you make objection about the act of the supreme sense power [nn.108, 99], one can concede that memory of its proper act does not belong to a sense, just as neither does it belong to any other sense to remember its proper act (as is taken from Augustine Free Will 2.3 n.9-10), but this belongs only to a superior sense with respect to the act of a lower sensitive part.

115. If can be said in another way, as the Philosopher seems to think (On the Soul 3.2.425b17-25), that sight in some way senses that it sees, because sight is in some way colored; and so it could be conceded that the sensing of the supreme sense part is in some way continued under the object of the supreme remembering part. And if you evidence the reflecting of that sense part on itself, this proves no more than Aristotle proves about sight perceiving vision.

116. To the final one [n.109], although the acts of brutes could probably be saved by positing, not memory properly in them, but only imaginative knowledge of the object that is past (though not as past), yet the things we see in their acts are more easily saved by positing memory in them.

C. Second Article: about Memory of the Past in the Intellective Part

1. About the Authorities of the Ancients

117. About the second principal article, Aristotle seems to say certain things in the book [On Memory 1.449b18-21] from which it follows that memory is in the intellective part. For he says that we remember certain intelligibilities, as that a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles etc. “because we have learnt and considered them.”

118. A response is given [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 6 q.8] according to Aristotle’s own remark, for later in the same place [ibid. 1.449a12-13] he says “memory of intelligibilities is not without a phantasm.”

119. On the contrary: not for this reason must memory be denied to be in the intellect, just as understanding is not denied to be in the intellect and yet, according to his opinion there, we do not understand without a phantasm.

120. Another response [Henry, ibid. q.8] is that we remember intelligibilities per accidens; hence Aristotle says there [On Memory 1.450a12-13], when speaking of intelligibilities, that intellection will be per accidens. And Damascene (as cited before, n.76), “we remember intelligibilities just as we learn them, but we do not have memory of the substance of them.”

121. On the contrary: any power that knows an act as the act is of an object, in some way knows the object; but this object ‘a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles’ as it is a demonstrated and known truth can only be known by the intellect, such that no sense is similarly able to know this act ‘I have considered the fact that a triangle has etc.’

122. Again the Philosopher concedes there [On Memory 1.450a16-18, 2.453a8-10] that recollection is present only in man (and Avicenna maintains this above [nn.8, 10; On the Soul p.4 ch.3;]), because there is a sort of syllogizing in it. From this there is a twofold argument. First, that the knowledge proper to man himself seems to belong to the intellect itself; second, more efficaciously, that knowledge through syllogistic discourse pertains to the intellect alone; of this sort is recollection, for recollection proceeds discursively from certain known things to what has in some way fallen away, which it wants to recover the memory of. And although, because syllogism is always from premises to conclusion, there is no syllogism there (for recollection proceeds from contraries or similars, or from something that has, in its being sensed, an ordering toward what we are looking for), nevertheless neither can such conferring belong to the sense power, as it seems; rather the discursive process and the cognition that terminates it belong to the same power, and recollection terminates this discursive process; therefore etc.

123. An objection against this reasoning [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.4 q.4] is as follows:

The Philosopher [On Memory 1.449b6-8, 450b5-12; Book of Six Principles 4 nn.46-47] says that some are good at recollection and others bad, because of diversity in the organ; therefore he attributes recollection to the sense part.

124. Again [Henry, ibid. a.1 q.10] an argument that recollection is impossible is taken from Themistius [On Posterior Analytics 1 ch.1] about a fugitive slave, whereby it is proved that it is impossible to learn anything, because either it was something already known and so it is not learnt, or it was not and so, if it occurs to the intellect, the intellect does not know it to be what it is looking for.

125. This argument there indeed [n.124] lacks evidence, because whatever is necessarily inferred from necessary premises is known by this very fact; nor is it necessary for me to know [sc. first] what I [sc. later] acquired knowledge of, or not necessary for me to know it save in general, because I sought to know whatever I could infer from things I knew.

126. But in the issue at hand there is a difficulty. For the argument goes as follows: has he [the one recollecting] completely forgotten the thing that a is [sc. the thing he is looking for] or not? If he has then, if he could through recollection get back to the memory of it, he does not know it to be what he sought the memory of, and consequently he does not recollect it; because in recollecting he remembers it anew, as a thing having been remembered before and forgotten in the meantime. If he has not completely forgotten a, then he cannot recollect a.

127. The first member of this argument is confirmed by Avicenna from before [n.122]: the desire to remember in particular belongs to no brute, “for if brutes do not remember, neither do they desire to remember.” Likewise the Philosopher [On Memory 1.450a27-30] seems to posit that memory belongs to the imaginative part, “the habit of which,” he says, “we assert to be memory.”a And Damascene, as above [n.76] says, “Memory is imagination left behind by actualized sense.”

a.a [Interpolation] namely, it is manifest that memory is a part of the soul: when and of what there is imagination, of that there is also memory.

128. For the understanding of these authorities [n.127] I say (as was said before [n.94]) that the act of memory has a double object, namely proximate and remote. Now past-ness is sometimes required in each object as it is object, and sometimes in one of them only.

129. Because the senses do not know their object according to any condition save the one they have when they are sensing, according to Metaphysics 7.10.1036a6-7, “when sensible objects are away from the senses, it is not clear whether these objects are or are not,” and so they cannot have memory of their past act as past without also having memory of the sensed object as past, because they have memory of it only in the way it was as sensed when the act of sensing remained.

130. Now the intellect does not require past-ness in each object but only in the proximate one. For because its act can be of something as that something is necessary, as considering ‘a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles’, so its act of remembering this act of considering can have a remote object, not as past, but as always being the same way.

131. As concerns the condition, then, of ‘regarding a past object as past’ [n.88], that is, both remote and proximate object, such that both are known precisely and necessarily as past - memory as concerns this condition belongs necessarily to the sense part and not necessarily to the intellective part, although it could belong to the intellective part, as will immediately be said in the solution [n.136ff.].

132. Another thing [sc. to understand,[n.128] is that memory in the sense part is enough for operation without the intellect, as is plain in brutes; but, conversely, the intellective memory is not enough for operation without the sense memory, just as we cannot understand without a phantasm. And therefore Aristotle [Metaphysics 7.10.1036a6-7] would not say that a man is good or bad at remembering because his intellect is good or bad at conserving the species of something previously understood, but because his sense memory (which goes along also with the intellective memory for intellective remembering) is good or bad at retention. For perhaps any intellective memory always conserves the species, but it has not the power for act because the species has been destroyed from sense memory, without which the intellective memory is not enough for operation.

133. Proof of this:

First because what is received seems to be in the receiver according to the manner of the receiver, and consequently, since the intellect is an immaterial power and not changeable by these bodily undergoings [sc. of the senses], it does not seem that its species remains indelibly. For this reason, therefore, Aristotle [n.129] assigns a falling away of species in the sense memory only, because the sense organ is affected or moved in this way or that.

134. The same is proved secondly because, when someone remembers, he must have something remaining in himself through which he knows that thing to be what he first remembered and later forgot (in the way the argument about the fugitive slave proceeded [n.124]). But this something that remains cannot be placed in the sense part, because it has been destroyed, at least it does not remain perfectly or sufficiently for an act of remembering; therefore it is probable that it is the species remaining perfectly in the intellect. And thus when the species that somehow fell away has been recovered in the sense memory then, by collation of it with the intelligible species that remains, this ‘remembered object’ is known to be that which was known in memory before.

135. So therefore, as concerns primacy or radicality or sufficiency in itself for acting, memory is not in the intellective part but the sense part, even in our case.

2. Scotus’ own Explication

136. I say therefore as to this article [nn.117, 82] that memory and the act of remembering properly speaking are in the intellective part.

137. For given that the intellect not only knows universals (which indeed is true of abstractive intellection, about which the Philosopher is speaking, because this alone is scientific intellection), but also knows intuitively what the senses know (for a more perfect and higher cognitive power in the same thing knows what the lower power knows), and also knows sensations (and both these points are proved by the fact that the intellect knows contingently true propositions, and from them it forms syllogisms; but to form propositions and to syllogize is proper to the intellect; and the truth of these propositions is about objects as intuitively known, namely known under the idea of existence under which they are known by the senses) - given all this, it follows that in the intellect can be found all the conditions previously said to belong to remembering: for it can perceive time and has an act after passage of time, and so of the rest [nn.90-96].

138. And the intellect can, in brief, remember any object that sense memory can remember, because it can intuitively know the act (which is the proximate object) when it exists, and so can remember it after it has existed. It can also remember many proximate objects that the sense part cannot remember (as every past intellection and volition). For the proof that man remembers such things is that otherwise he could not repent of evil volitions, nor too could he collate a past intellection as past with a future one, nor consequently direct himself, from the fact that he has studied them, to study other things that follow from them; and in brief, if we do not remember past intellections and volitions, they are destroyed.

139. But no sense can remember these things, because they do not fall under the object of any sense; therefore this remembering is proper to the intellect, and this by reason of its proximate object. There is also another remembering proper to the intellect, not by reason only of proximate object but also of remote object, namely the remembering that tends to the necessary as necessary as to its remote object, of which sort is the remembering that has for remote object ‘a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles’; for the proximate object of remembrance, namely the act that tends to such [remote] object, can only be an act of the intellective part.

140. Thus therefore it is plain that some remembering is proper to the intellect by reason of both objects of its act, namely both the proximate and the remote object; also some remembering is, by reason of proximate object, so proper to the intellect that it could not belong to the senses, and some remembering belongs, by reason of proximate object, to the intellect, yet it can belong to the senses (as would be if the intellect has intuitively understood that I am seeing white, and the intellect afterwards understands or remembers that I saw white). Here indeed both the proximate and the remote object could be the object of intellective remembering (for also sometimes there occurs a discursive collating from such remembering to syllogistic conclusion of something else); however, the past sensation in some sense part, namely the supreme part, cannot be the proximate object save only of intellective remembering, as was touched on in the preceding article [n.98].

141. However, no remembering belongs to the intellect insofar as it understands precisely by abstraction; also no remembering requires, from the fact that it belongs to the intellect, a double past, namely a past in both objects; also no remembering belongs to the intellect as primarily and radically sufficient for an act of remembering.

142. And it is on account of these three conditions, or some of them, that all the authorities of Aristotle and others denying that memory is in the intellective part [nn.118, 123-124] must be understood and expounded.

143. When therefore objection is made against the second argument in this article (which proceeds from the act of remembering, [n.122]), by the fact that the Philosopher posits that there are rememberers and non-rememberers because of disposition of organ [n. 123] - the answer is plain from what has been said [nn. 125, 128-131], and especially from the third condition [n.116], and it was sufficiently explained above [nn.139-141].

144. As to the objection about the fugitive slave [n.124], it has been solved if it is true that the intelligible species always remains, and the sense species that has in some way been lost is perfectly recovered through a certain collating or use of other like species; for then the fact that this thing now remembered is that thing before remembered (and afterwards forgotten) is known through the species resting in the intellect. It is just as if some species of Peter as seen is resting in the imaginative power, though I never use it, and afterwards when Peter comes into sight I at once recognize it to be Peter by collation with this knowledge (as Augustine teaches On the Trinity 9.6 n.10, 8.6 n.9). But if nothing were set down as remaining in such forgetting, by collation with which it could be known that this is what through recollecting was being sought after, it does not seem that it could in the end be known that it is this, more than in the case of the unknown fugitive slave.

145. To the next objection that is set down [n.127], a habit of imagination at any rate is only got from it as to sense memory. For the fact that, besides sense memory, there is some firmness of intellect is plain later from On Memory 2.451b2-3, where Aristotle says, “science or sense, the habit of which we say is memory,” ‘science’ stands for the intellect, ‘sense’ for imagination, of which he said before that memory was the habit. However, this authority would require expounding if sense memory were posited to be a power distinct from imagination; but it is not to the purpose to discuss this here.

146. And as to what is adduced from Damascene [n.120] “we do not have memory of the substance of them” - it is true as of past objects, and in this way there is no remembering of them that requires a double pastness.That is, pastness of proximate and remote object. For we have memory of learning them (proximate object), but we have knowledge, not memory, of them (remote object), n.130. ²¹

D. Scotus’ own Conclusion

147. As to the question, then, it is plain that, since in the soul conjoined with the body there is an intellective memory, that memory remains in the separated soul, and consequently so does habitual knowledge of everything that remained in the soul up to separation. Consequently too, the separated soul can use what remains for acts of remembering, just as the conjoined soul could, because (as was said in the preceding question [n.16]) all the intelligible forms and consequent operations that could have been had by the conjoined soul will be able to be had by the separated soul. But the sense memory (speaking of the whole power of it) does not remain in the separated soul, just as no sense power remains either. I said ‘whole power’, however, because although the soul is that which is formal in the sense power, yet the sense power formally includes a certain form of the whole that is composed of this sort of mixed body and a soul that perfects it proportionally for acts corresponding to such a whole; and consequently, since remembering belongs to the whole sense part, it cannot belong to the separate soul.

148. Briefly, then, the separate soul can remember all the things that the conjoined soul remembers, because there exists intellective memory of whatever there was sense memory of, on account of the intuitive knowledge that accompanies all sense perceived knowledge; but the separate soul cannot remember with every remembering that the conjoined soul could remember with.

149. If it is objected that the mere species in the intellective memory was not sufficient for remembering in the conjoined soul without another species in the sense memory (as was said in the second article [n.132]), so it is not sufficient now, because it is not more perfect now than before - the response is in the preceding question, in the like case [n.27], because neither can we now use the intelligible species without a phantasm, but then we will be able to, not because of a new perfection but because the order of powers in operating will not exist that exists now.

II. To the Initial Arguments

A. To the First

150. As to the first main argument [n.76], I concede that there is sense memory in man, but from this does not follow that there is no intellective memory in him; for what belongs to the perfection of a lower cognitive power should not be denied to a higher cognitive power. Hence if God could have an act after passage of time (and would not have an act stationary in eternity), he could remember; and thus does Scripture concede that he remembers, “Remember, Lord, what has happened to us” (Lamentations 5.1), namely insofar as the act that is not in him after passage of time is considered as coexistent with a prior time, and as coexistent now with this ‘now’ as if after passage of time. But the angels, because they do not have all their intellections permanently, can absolutely remember; for it is fatuous to say that Lucifer does not remember that he sinned, or that the good angels do not remember that they had such and such intelligible acts, or had also some exterior acts about a body.

B. To the Second

151. As to the second [n.77], that authority is speaking of the intellect as it has scientific intellection, of the sort that is abstractive only - and yet the precise cause does not thus come from the nature of the intellect, because the singular can also be understood by that abstractive knowledge, although not by us now (on which elsewhere, Ord. II d.9 n.122, d.3 nn.320-321).

152. If you object that a power that does not know the singular as singular does not remember, because a rememberer cognizes something as it is here and now, which is proper to a singular - I reply: actual existence belongs to nature first; hence ‘this nature’ is not formally existent because it is ‘this’, but because of nature; now nature, as existent, is what the intellect intuitively knows, and the knowledge of an existent as existent is sufficient for remembrance of it to be possible. When, therefore, you say that the remembering power knows this as this, I deny it. When you give as proof that it knows something as it is here and now, if by ‘now’ you mean ‘existent’ and by ‘here’ you mean

‘present in itself’, I concede that it knows something as existent in its presence in itself. If so, then there are proper singulars beyond the ‘here’ and ‘now’, so that they can be singulars of nature but not as of a singular - though they are not of anything save what is singular by intrinsic or adjunct singularity; however, they do not include, nor do they per se presuppose, singularity as the precise reason whereby they are present.

C. To the Third

153. To the third [n.78] it is said in one way [Richard of Middleton] that the blessed remember the sins they committed, and yet it is not a punishment for them but they rejoice in the mercy of God remitting sin and in their freedom from punishment. And this is proved by Psalm 88.2, “The mercies of God,” where Gregory says [Moralia 4.36 n.72], “How does he sing mercies forever who does not remember his misery?”

154. On the contrary: although the fact that God remitted Peter his sin includes the fact that Peter sinned, yet these are simply distinct intelligibilities, and the second does not include the first in being (the fact is plain about when Peter did the sin), nor consequently does it include it in being understood; therefore it is possible for Peter’s intellect to stop thus at his having sinned without considering that God has forgiven these sins. And though you may contend one act was never without the other in Peter, yet there are at least two objects and two distinct intellections, and also the intellection that Peter sinned is prior in nature.

155. I ask a question therefore about this remembering by which he remembers that he sinned: which act of will does it follow? Either the willing it or being pleased, or the not willing it and being displeased - or neither, not pleased nor displeased? If the first Peter is evil, because he is pleased with the sin he has committed; if the second, he is wretched, because his not wanting to have happened what he knows did happen causes sadness (from Augustine, On the Trinity 14.15 n.21, “Sadness comes from things that have happened against our will” [cf. Ord.IV d.14 n.48]). If neither the one nor the other, he is again bad; for if the wayfarer cannot remember with full remembrance the sin he committed without detesting it or being displeased at it (otherwise he sins at least by omission), how much more are the blessed held to do this! For the common reason binds the blessed more than the wayfarer, which reason is perfect love of God, and this love always impels one to hate what is contrary to God when it is actually thought on.

156. But as to what is added from the Psalm, and Gregory’s argument from this “How does he sing mercies forever who does not remember his misery?” [nn.153, 78, 81] - I reply: he remembers his misery in general terms, because he now knows he is blessed.

157. I say it is possible for God to destroy every sin totally from the memory of the blessed; nor in this is anything taken from the blessed; rather it would seem to belong to some accidental blessedness in them. For if the innocent will rejoice over their innocence with a special joy (as was touched on in Ord. IV d.1 n.356), though these others not be able to rejoice over innocence (because this would be a false joy), yet their guilt can be destroyed from their memory so that they not have any matter for sadness about it.

158. Also, God is able, while habitual memory of committed sin remains, to preserve the blessed from ever proceeding to actually considering they committed it; and this again would suffice to exclude the proximate occasion for sadness, though not the remote one. Nor would privation of such habitual knowledge make one imperfect in anything because, according to the Philosopher [Topics 3.6.119b11-15], it is better to forget certain things, as base things, than to remember them, and this is especially true when speaking of something base one did, the memory of which is penal. Scripture too [Isaiah 43.25, Jeremiah 31.34, Hebrews 10.17, Psalm 31.1] says that God forgets sins and that they are covered up for God. And although one should give exposition of this, because of the infinity of the divine intellection which nothing positively or privatively knowable can escape, yet that they are really hidden or forgotten for those who committed them would not be at all unacceptable.

159. If this view does not satisfy, but it is held that there will always remain habitual memory of sins in them and that they will sometimes proceed to actual remembering, then, to avoid sadness, one must say that either God suspends the causality that memory would be of a nature to exercise with respect to sadness (and this is indeed possible, just as God suspended the natural action of fire with respect to the young men in the furnace [Daniel 3.49-50]), and then it is a miracle that they are not saddened as often as they remember. Or if a miracle is eschewed, one must say that a natural cause can be impeded by a contrary that excels it so that it not cause its effect, and especially when the contrary totally fills the capacity of the passive thing.

160. Thus, in the issue at hand, joy in the beatific object totally fills the capacity of the blessed, and therefore they are not capable of the sadness that is of a nature to follow this memory. For the beatific object in causing joy overcomes the power of the memory in causing sadness, according to the Philosopher Ethics 7.15.1154b13-14, “Strong delight expels every sadness, not only the contrary sadness but also any chance sadness.”

161. On the contrary: the blessed have a ‘not wanting’ with respect to the remembered thing, therefore they do not have what they want; therefore they are not blessed, from On the Trinity 13.5 n.8.

162. I reply: the blessed have whatever they want as regard the present or the future; but as regard the past they do not have whatever they want, that is their wanting it not to have been; and this does not argue misery, because it is impossible for the past not to have been.

Question Four. Whether the Blessed Know the Prayers we Offer to Them

163. Lastly I ask whether the blessed know the prayers that we offer to them.

164. That they do not:

Isaiah 63.16, “Abraham did not know us and Israel has ignored us.”a And Jerome On Isaiah there (look in the original).“You, Lord, who have bestowed so much on your people.. .that you considered us worthy to be fellows also of your Spirit, now too hear from heaven and see our works, if yet they are worthy of you. Why do you turn your face from us?” ²²

a.a [Interpolation] There “Augustine says that the dead do not know, indeed the saints do not know, what the living do, even their sons” [Gloss, from Nicholas of Lyra].

165. Again, God alone knows secrets; mental prayer, which is most acceptable to God, is of this sort; therefore etc.

166. Again, they do not need to know save for the purpose that they may pray for us; but the consequent is unacceptable, because they are not in state of merit; therefore they cannot pray, because in prayer, per se, consists merit.

167. On the contrary:

This is an error that Jerome touches on in his Epistle to Vigilantius chs.4-11.

I. To the Question

168. Here three things must be looked at:

First, whether the blessed know our prayers by natural cognition; second, whether by supernatural cognition; third, whether, as knowing them, they pray for us.

A. Whether the Blessed Know our Prayers by Natural Cognition

169. The first was touched on in the solution of the second question of this distinction [nn.62-67], about how the separate soul can acquire knowledge not only abstractive but also intuitive, not only of sensibles (as the conjoined soul can [n.50]) but also of any intelligibles that are proportioned and proportionately present. What is proportioned to the separate soul is any created intelligible; therefore prayer, whether vocal (which the conjoined soul too could know through the bodily senses) or also mental (which will then be proportioned to the separate soul), it will be able to know intuitively for that ‘then’, provided however that extreme distance not get in the way, which was touched on in the second question [n.67].

170. Nor is it valid to say that the intellect’s own proper act is hidden from every creature, and its act of will hidden for equal reason, because these acts are intimate to the creature and consequently nothing can know them save what is intimate to the creature; such is God alone, who is immanent [in creatures]. This argument is not sound, because it is manifest that my intellect can know every act of my will; but another intellect, created more perfect, has power for the object that my intellect has power for, if a determinate order to other intelligibles, or defect of proportioned presence, does not get in the way.

171. Now the separate intellect is as equally perfect as the conjoined intellect, or more perfect, and it is not by any order determined to not knowing the operations of another intellect or will; nor is the requisite presence necessarily lacking, because this can exist without immanence; otherwise an angel could have no presence made demonstrable in respect of another than himself, since an angel is immanent to none, for this is repugnant to a creature.

172. As to your saying ‘such operation is intimate’ [n.170] - I reply: essence is more intimate to the intellect than operation, and yet another separate intellect can understand this essence. Nor is it valid to say ‘this is intimate by inherence or, what is more, by being, therefore nothing knows it save what is intimate by immanence’. Indeed, the reasoning seems to proceed as if what is extrinsic to a thing more than what is intrinsic and spiritual could be known by a separate intellect, which is not true; indeed the intelligible essence of a thing or its intrinsic operation is an object more proportioned to the separate intellect than any sense object, because to a pure intellect a pure intelligible is a more proportioned intelligible, provided however it is finite.

173. If you object that the conjoined and separate intellect have the same first object, but operation is not contained under the first object of the conjoined intellect, therefore not under the object of the separate intellect either - I reply: it was said elsewhere that the first object of the intellect as it is such a power is more general than the object that moves it in this present state; andPunctuating the Latin as in the translation and not as in the printed text, whose sense is obscure. ²³ any created being is contained under the first object taken in the first way but not under the object taken in the second way. And the reason is that now it is determinately moved by sensibles, or by what is abstracted from them, because of its immediate order to the imaginative power, which will not exist then. Taking first object in the first way, then, the major [sc. ‘conjoined and separate intellect have the same first object’] is true and the minor [sc. ‘operation is not contained under the first object of the conjoined intellect’] is false; taking it in the second way, the minor is true and the major false.

B. Whether the Blessed Know our Prayers by Supernatural Cognition

174. About the second article [n.168] I say that it is not necessary by reason of beatitude that the blessed regularly or universally see our prayers: not in the Word (because seeing our prayers is not something that is as it were a necessary accompaniment of beatitude), nor that the prayers be revealed to the blessed (because neither does such revelation necessarily follow beatitude). For beatitude of intellect in created objects does not go beyond quiddities, or things whose seen essence is the necessary reason for seeing them.

175. However, because it is fitting for the blessed to be fellow helpers of God in procuring the salvation of the elect, or leading them to salvation, and to do so in the way that this can belong to them - and for this is required that our prayers be revealed to them, especially those that are offered to them, because these prayers specifically rely on the merits of the blessed as on one who is a mediator leading us to the salvation that is being requested; therefore it is probable that God reveal to the blessed the prayers offered to them or to God in their name.

C. Whether, Knowing our Prayers, the Blessed Pray for us

176. About the third article [n.168] I say it seems doubtful, because if it is revealed to them that such and such a person is seeking salvation through them, or anything pertaining to salvation, then either they see that God wills such a person to be saved or wills against it or non-wills;Latin has two ways of negating ‘to will’ or velle’, namely non velle and nolle. Scotus uses the first to mean simple negation, or not having an act of will, and the second for positive negation, or having an act of will against something. The English ‘I do not want/will’ is ambiguous as between these two. To bring out the difference where it is relevant for Scotus’ meaning (for nolle can sometimes connote simple negation), the translation uses, perhaps a little awkwardly, ‘will against’ for nolle and ‘not want/will’ for non velle. ²⁴ if God wills it, then they know such a one will be saved, so they pray in vain; if God wills against it, they won’t pray for anything willed against by God; if God non-wills, they know it would not happen, so they would pray in vain.

I reply: the statement ‘the blessed pray for someone’ can be understood either of habitual prayer or of actual prayer (and we are speaking here only of mental prayer, which is desire offered to God with the intention that it be held as accepted by him). If of habitual prayer, this is perpetual and general for all the elect (but about this there is no difficulty); if of actual prayer, some saint has this prayer specifically when it is revealed to him that someone is invoking him, because it is reasonable that he should want his merits to avail the latter for salvation when he specifically invokes God to help this latter through his merits.

177. Now this prayer is not repugnant to beatitude, because someone who has attained supreme perfection can very well wish that, through his own merits whereby he has attained that perfection, another should attain it by his prayer, so that his merits should be proper not only to himself alone but should, by the benevolence of God’s acceptance, avail for another. Just like someone who has attained by his services the supreme degree in friendship of a king could want to pray for others, not so that through that prayer he may attain a greater degree of friendship [sc. for himself], but so that the merits by which he attains such degree may be of aid to others, who have recourse to those merits - and this, on the supposition of his liberality, namely the king’s, in accepting them, not only for him but (by the king’s liberality) for others, whereby for a lesser good he returns not only a greater good but also more goods, provided however that, by a new act of will, many apply this good to themselves and, as it were, make it their own.

178. When therefore you argue “the blessed see that God either wills or non-wills or wills against” [n.176], I reply: it is not necessary to grant any of these options - not, surely, as to the final salvation of him who prays, but not even as to the hearing of the prayer that he now prays. For this does not follow: God reveals to Peter that John is now asking for a through the merits of Peter, therefore it is revealed to Peter that John is to be saved or not to be saved; nor does this follow: therefore it is revealed that John is to be heard or not to be heard in this petition. However let it be that it were revealed to him that this person is to be heard or not heard in this petition; it does not follow that therefore he prays in vain, because just as God wants to save him, or hear him, so he wants to achieve this through determinate means (namely through the prayer of such a blessed). But if it be revealed to Peter determinately that God wills against hearing this prayer, Peter would not be a mediator for John in praying; but if it not be revealed to Peter that God wills nor revealed that he wills against, Peter prays expecting that a determinate revelation of his being heard would follow his prayer, or at least a determinate effect of his being heard as to his own asking.

II. To the Initial Arguments

179. To the first principal argument [n.164] I say that Abraham, at the time for which Isaiah 63.16 is meant, was in limbo, and consequently not blessed, and therefore he did not know his Jewish sons living in the land of Israel; for he did not know by intuitive knowledge (which was impeded by the extreme distance, as was said in that second question, nn.169, 67), nor by knowledge of special revelation, because he did not have that vision in the Word which such revelation regularly accompanies. The argument, therefore, does not hold of the blessed, to whom are regularly revealed in the Word the things that concern them, whether as increasing their beatitude or as pertaining to their causality with respect to the beatitude of others.

180. To the second [n.165] I say that there is not anything in the mind, namely any operation of intellect or will and any property or real condition of either of them, without the whole of it lying open to an unimpeded angel proportionally present, or to an unimpeded soul proportionally present - just as a present whiteness is apparent to a conjoined soul through the senses.

The statement, then, that “God alone knows the hidden things of the heart” [n.165, Psalm 43.22] is true universally and by his proper perfection, such that it is impossible that they be hid from him by any impediment. He also knows them as universal Judge of all such hidden things, in this way knowing them as neither the good angels nor the bad angels nor separate souls know them. Indeed, as a matter of fact, the blessed do not know many such movements because of lack of due presence, and the bad angels do not know many such things, even those that are proportionally present, as God prevents them and, because of his prevention, they cannot do many things that yet could not be naturally prevented.

181. To the third [n.166] I say that our prayer now has a double effect: one because it is meritorious for him who prays, indeed is a natural meritorious work; the other because, from the fact it is directed specifically on behalf of another, it is meritorious for him for whom it is offered. And the blessed do not have prayer in the first way but in the second. Nor is it unacceptable for someone, who is now, as to himself, at his final goal, to merit for another by his prayer; just as we see in polities, where a king gives what he wants but he wants to give it through the intercession of another to someone who would not be worthy to be heard immediately; and he most wants to give it if someone intercedes who has most acceptance with him, which accepted person yet merits no greater degree of friendship with him.

182. It could be said in another way (and it returns as it were to the same) that just as someone blessed obtains things for others and not for himself, so he causes merit for others and not for himself; for his prayer is a disposition by way of congruity, so that through it God grants to him for whom he asks what he obtains; and so his merit is not for himself but for him to whom is rendered what, as if in place of an immediate reward, corresponds to this merit.