II. To the Principal Arguments of the Second Question

34. To the principal argument of Damascene [n.10]: it can be expounded of the cognitive power naturally given to us by which we can know from creatures that God exists, at rate in general ideas (he subjoins there how he is known from creatures! On the Orthodox Faith 1 ch.3), or it can be expounded of the knowledge of God under common ideas that agree with himself and with creatures, which are known more perfectly and eminently in God than in other things. But that Damascene is not speaking of actual and distinct knowledge of God is clear from what he says there: “no one knows him save to the extent he himself has given revelation.”

35. To the second [n.11] I say that Anselm does not say that that proposition is self-evidently known, as is clear, because from his deduction it cannot be inferred that the proposition is true save through at least two syllogisms, one of which is this: ‘being is greater than any non-being, nothing is greater than the supreme thing,     therefore the supreme being is not a non-being’, from oblique forms in the second mood of the second figure [of syllogism]; the other syllogism is this: ‘what is not a non-being is a being, the supreme thing is not a non-being, therefore etc     .’ But how his reasoning is valid will be explained in the following question, in the sixth argument [n.137], about proving infinity.

36. As to the proof of the major [n.11] (I say the major is false when ‘it is self-evidently known’ is taken; however the major is true, though not self-evidently known), when it is proved that ‘the opposite of the predicate is repugnant to the subject’, I say that it is neither self-evident that the opposite of the predicate is repugnant to the subject nor is it self-evident that the subject possesses a simply simple concept or that its parts are united in fact; and both these are required for that proposition to be self-evidently known.

37. To the third [n.12] I say that the inference ‘it is self-evidently known that truth in general exists, therefore it is self-evidently known that God exists’ does not follow but is the fallacy of the consequent;The argument in n.12 is of the form: it is self-evident that truth exists; this truth (namely God) exists; therefore this truth is self-evident. The argument commits the fallacy of the consequent because the premise proceeds from self-evidence to truth, and the conclusion does the reverse, proceeding from truth to self-evidence; cf. Aristotle Sophistical Refutations 1.5.167b1-13. ⁶² alternatively, the major can be denied. And when it is proved ‘if there is no truth, it is true that there is no truth’, the consequence is not valid, because truth is taken either for the foundation of truth in reality, or for truth in the act of the intellect combining and dividing; but if there is no truth, neither is it true that there is no truth, whether by the truth of reality, because there is nothing, or by the truth in the intellect combining and dividing, because there is no intellect. However the inference does indeed follow, ‘if there is no truth, therefore it is not true that there is any truth’, but the further inference does not follow, ‘therefore it is true that there is not any truth’; it is the fallacy of the consequent, from a negative having two causes of truth to an affirmative which is one of those causes.The conditional ‘if there is no truth, it is not true that there is any truth’, is a double negative; the conclusion ‘it is true that there is no truth’ is an affirmation of the antecedent. But to conclude to the affirmation of the antecedent of a conditional is to commit the fallacy of the consequent. ⁶³

38. To the last principal argument [n.13] I say that propositions are not said to be self-evidently known because the extremes have a greater necessity in themselves, or a greater necessity in reality outside the intellect, but because the extremes, as they are the extremes of such a proposition, show evidently that their combination is in conformity with the natures of the terms and with the relation of them, and this whatever being the terms have, whether in reality or in the intellect; for the evidence of this conformity is the evidence of the truth in the proposition, which is the proposition’s being self-evidently known. But, as it is, the propositionInterpolation: “in my intellect the proposition ‘infinite being is’ is of a nature to be evident from the terms, but.” ⁶⁴ ‘every whole is greater than its part’, or anything similar, in any intellect that conceives the terms, naturally has such evidence from the terms, because from the terms it is evident that the combined proposition is in conformity with the relation and nature of the terms, whatever being the terms have; and therefore although there is less necessity in the terms, it does not follow that there is less evidence in the propositions.