C. To the Arguments for the Opinion

116. To the arguments for Avicenna’s opinion:

As to the first [n.73]: the proposition ‘from a principle altogether one there cannot immediately come several things’ is false if it is understood of something altogether one in reality. For, in the case of an agent acting through intellect and will, a distinction of known things, or a distinct knowledge of several things, is sufficient for several things to be produced from it. And thus is it sufficient here, if the knowledge is the substance of the knower and is consequently not numbered - it is otherwise if the knowledge is not the substance of the operating agent, but is an accident and numbered.

17. As to the second argument [n.75], one must say that the proposition of the Philosopher is true in the case of things where it is not repugnant for the nature to be communicated by something alike in species. But not everything perfect in a species can communicate the nature, because neither is the nature itself communicable to something like itself.

118. And if you argue ‘at least those things will be more perfect that can communicate their species than those that cannot’ - I say rather that in the matter at issue they are more imperfect. For, in the matter at issue, it is because of the perfection of the nature that the nature cannot be communicated save by the most perfect agent and in a way of communicating that agrees alone with the first agent. And it is more perfect to have such a perfect nature, which because of its perfection cannot be produced save immediately by God himself, than to have a nature able, because of its imperfection, to be caused by a created nature.