III. To the Arguments for the Opinions

A. To the Arguments for the First Opinion

504. To the arguments for the opinions, in order.

First to the authorities of Augustine [nn.407-408] I say that the image which is posited by him to exist in the spirit needs to be understood to exist in the soul or in something of the soul as in a subject, and not precisely in a body physically thus mixed See fn. to n.120. ⁵⁰ - otherwise the conclusion would not follow that the image is nobler than every body, which however he himself says in Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.16 nn.32-33. Now what is in the soul or in something of the soul as in a subject is not the species which is commonly called ‘species’; that, rather, is received in an organ’s part [sc. the receptive part of the bodily senses] that is a body physically thus mixed [n.471]. See fn. to n.120. ⁵¹ But what is received in the soul or a power of the soul is the act of knowing; therefore by image Augustine himself means such sort of act.

505. This gloss [n.504] is proved from his remark On the Trinity 11.2 n.3, where he maintains that the informing of the sense, which is done by the body alone, is called vision. And the informing is the species proper which is received in a part of the organ, namely in such physically mixed body; this is plain from what he says [ibid.] that “it is generated by the body alone that is seen” [n.461]. Just as therefore what is properly an image is called vision, so conversely can vision be called an image, and much more truly, for vision, in truth, is a certain quality, and the sort of quality that is a certain likeness of the object, and is perhaps more perfect than the preceding likeness which is usually called a species.

506. On this understanding, the response to his authority [nn.407-408] is easily made clear. For I concede that the body does not, as total cause, cause in the spirit the image that a sensation is, but the soul causes it in itself with marvelous speed - not however as total cause, but it together with the object. Hence he says there that “as soon as it is seen etc.”, indicating that the presence of the object in idea of being visible is required for the soul to cause vision in itself; and it is required only as in some way partial cause, as he himself expresses it in On the Trinity 11 ch.2 n.3 [n.413] that “vision is generated by the seer and the visible.”

507. This conclusion [n.506], thus understood, is proved by his first cited reason [n.407], because this conclusion, that “the agent is more outstanding than the effect,” is not an immediate one but depends on these three statements, ‘the agent is more outstanding than the effect’ and ‘the effect of the agent is the form and act of what undergoes it’ and ‘act is nobler than potency’. Where these propositions are true, there the proposition that Augustine takes is true [n.407]; but that the agent is more outstanding than the effect is only true of an equivocal and total cause. And some cause can be partially an agent for a more noble effect than itself, as an element in virtue of the heavenly bodies can act for the generation of a mixed body, which is nobler than the element acting as partial cause [cf. Scotus, Ord. I d.2 nn.333, 331].

508. From this [n.506] is clear the response to the second authority of Augustine On the Trinity 10.5 [n.408]. For the soul forms an image in itself, that is, sensation; and forms it from itself, that is, it itself is in natural potency to sensation and not in neutral potency, as a surface is in neutral and not natural potency to whiteness; and he points to this naturality, because he says ‘from itself’. And he is speaking there only of sensations, as is apparent, because he says there that “the parts of the soul that are informed by likenesses of bodies we have in common with the beasts.” This is true of those parts that are informed by images, that is, sensations, extending the name ‘image’ to sensation.

509. As to the first argument for the [first] opinion [n.409]: it concludes for me, because thinking, since it is a living operation, does not come from a non-living thing as from a total cause; but a non-living thing can be a partial cause of something living or of a living effect, just as the non-living sun is a partial cause, along with the father, for generating a living son; and much more is this possible in the issue at hand, because here the more principal cause is life, as will be clear in the following question [nn.559-562].

510. When argument is made next about perfect form [n.410], this argument concludes that it [the soul] has some activity with respect to its proper operation. But as to its seeming to prove total causality in it [the soul] with respect to its own operation - I reply that that form, by its own perfection, is ordered to having an operation about the whole of being, as is said in the third question of this distinction [nn.185-187]. But since it is not simply perfect, because it is not infinite, therefore does it not have the whole of being in itself. From its perfection, therefore, along with its imperfection, is concluded that it does have some activity, and yet not a sufficient activity, for it could not have total causality with respect to the whole of being unless it had the whole of being in itself. And therefore I say that more imperfect forms can well be total causes with respect to their own operations, because their operations are limited as to certain things, and having total activity with respect to these things does not prove any active perfection save a limited one. But in that perfect form, which is ordered to the whole of being, there cannot be posited such a causality with respect to knowledge of the whole of being (for then an unlimited active virtue would be posited in it). But a partial causality can be posited in it, and a partial causality in the object, so that it itself could thus cooperate with its own perfection about any object whatever, and also any object whatever could cooperate with it - a great object for a great perfection of it, and a little object for a little perfection of it.

511. The other two arguments, namely about action as distinguished from making, and that action denominates the agent [nn.411-412], I concede. For I posit that the act of understanding truly remains in the agent which is its partial cause - not just that it remains in the agent supposit (such that it not go outside the supposit), but that it does not go outside the intellective part into the sensitive part, nor outside the intellective part into the appetitive part, nor outside its active principle into another power, but that it remains in the intellective part, which is its partial cause. And it is not necessary that action properly speaking remain in its total cause, but it is enough that it remain in its own partial cause.

B. To the Arguments for the Second Opinion

512. To the arguments for the second opinion [n.422].

Although there it could be touched on whether the causality that is attributed to the intellective part belongs properly to the agent intellect or the possible intellect, yet I dismiss the difficulty to another place [Scotus, Quodlibet 15 nn.13-20, 24; cf. n.554 infra.].

513. When it is argued [n.422] that the possible [intellect] cannot have any causality, because nothing the same acts on itself, I reply that that proposition is only true of a univocal agent, and that the proof of it, that then the same thing would be in act and potency, only concludes when the agent is acting univocally, that is, when it is inducing in the passive subject a form of the same idea as that by which it acts. For if it were thus to act on itself, then it would at the same time have a form of the same idea as that to which it is being moved, and while it is being moved to it, it would lack it; so it would have it and not have it at the same time - at least this follows about two forms of the same species or about the same form. But in equivocal agents, that is, in those agents that do not act through forms of the same idea as that toward which they act, the proposition that nothing moves itself does not have necessity. Nor does the proof of it, that something would be in potency and act with respect to the same thing, conclude anything, for there the agent is not formally in act of the sort that the passive subject is formally in potency [cf. n.422]; but that the agent is virtually such in act and formally such in potency is not a contradiction.

514. This gloss [n.513] about univocal and equivocal agents is necessary because the Philosopher posited that what is moved is not only in the genus of quality but of quantity and ‘where’. And in quantity and ‘where’ no agent is univocal, because in the genus of quantity and ‘where’ there is no form that is the principle of inducing a similar form. Indeed, to speak generally, any motion that is not to an active form is not from a univocal agent, because, from the fact that a terminating form is not active, no form of the same idea is the principle of acting. There are with the Philosopher, therefore, many motions from an agent not univocal but equivocal; and there an agent is virtually such in act as the patient is formally in potency.

515. If you argue that therefore in all cases the same thing could be in virtual act and in potency to a formal act, and so anything can move itself [n.513] - I reply that in this inference a non-cause is put for the cause, for from the general idea of virtual act and of potency for formal act no repugnancy arises, because if there were a repugnancy from this idea, there would be a repugnancy in everything. Yet in something with virtual act there concurs something else on account of which it is sometimes repugnant for it to be virtually in potency or formally such in act. An example: being hot virtually in act and in potency formally do not of themselves include contradiction or repugnancy, and therefore in no subject do they include a repugnance that, because of this, they could not be together, or that one could not be there because the other is. However, the sun, which is hot virtually, cannot be hot formally, but this is not because of a primary repugnance between these things. For Saturn is cold virtually and yet cannot be hot formally, so the virtual act was not the reason in it for the repugnance, but something else was that is common to the sun and Saturn, namely that these are incorruptible bodies and heat is a corruptible quality. In medieval and ancient physics of the Aristotelian and some other traditions, the heavenly bodies are incorruptible and impassible because not made of contraries (hot/cold, wet/dry) or their mixtures (fire, water etc.). They suffer no change save change in place. They do, however, have effects in the sublunary world, as that the sun warms the earth because, although not actually hot, it is virtually hot, or has the power to heat other things. ⁵²

516. But if you object that such metaphysical principles [‘nothing acts on itself’, nn.422, 513] should not, because of the fact they are general, be denied on account of some special difficulties, I reply: no principles that have many false instances are metaphysical principles. But if one has the understanding that nothing is in virtual act and in potency to a formal act, and that this repugnance is taken from the idea of act and potency, there are many instances that are sufficiently plainly false, and from this it sufficiently follows that this is not a metaphysical principle. But that nothing is in formal act and in potency in respect of the same formal act is true, namely that nothing is thus in act and in potency at the same time.

517. And if you altogether contend that, even when speaking of virtual act and potency to formal act, it is a metaphysical principle - how were others so blind, and he [sc. Godfrey of Fontaines, n.422] alone seeing, that they could not conceive the idea of the common metaphysical terms and from them apprehend the truth of such a proposition as he posits to be a metaphysical principle, which is not only not posited by others to be a principle, but is in many cases false, and never necessary by reason of the terms?

518. When, second, it is argued [n.422] about material and efficient cause that they do not coincide - this is true of matter that is in pure potency but not of matter in a certain respect, of which sort is a subject in respect of an accident. For it is necessary that something that is the same is sometimes matter and efficient cause with respect to the same thing - which is apparent because otherwise a property would not be predicated of a subject per se in the second mode. Proof: because if it [a property] is predicated of it [a subject] per se in the second mode, it [the subject] is the material cause of that [the property] as matter is in the case of accidents, because it [the subject] is put in the definition of it [a property] as an addition. If too the predication is per se, then it is also necessary; but what is only a material cause with respect to something does not have necessity with respect to it; therefore, to save necessity, one must posit in the subject, besides a causality of matter, a causality of efficiency.

519. As to what is argued afterwards about opposite real relations [n.422], I say that some real opposites are incompossible in the same nature, some incompossible not in the same nature but in the same supposit, some neither in the same nature nor in the same supposit. Hence a repugnance of them in the same thing cannot be proved by reason of real relations generally. Examples of the aforesaid: cause and caused in the same nature or in the same supposit are repugnant because, if not, then the same thing would depend on itself. Producer and produced are not repugnant in the same nature if the nature can be communicated without division, of which sort is the divine nature; yet they are repugnant in the same supposit. Mover and moved are repugnant neither in the same nature nor in the same supposit, because there is not posited here an essential dependence of the sort they posit relations to be of cause and caused; nor is it posited there that the same thing exists before it exists, which the idea of producer and produced seems to posit; but there is only posited here that the same thing depends on itself as far as concerns an accidental act, as the moved depends on the mover as to the accidental act that it receives from it. The incompossibility, therefore, of some real relations must be reduced to some prior incompossibility, and where that prior incompossibility is not found, there the incompossibility of opposite real relations will not be proved.

520. This is also made clear further, because just as these relations of producer and product, which are repugnant in the same supposit, can be founded on the same unlimited nature, as in the divine essence, so these relations of mover and moved, which have a much lesser repugnance, can be founded on the same somehow unlimited nature. And whatever is in potency to some act formally, and yet along with this has the same actuality virtually (as when the same thing moves itself), it is in some way unlimited; for it is posited to be not only capable of that perfection but as causing it. So there those opposite relations are, because of some sort of unlimitedness, very well compatible.

521. To their ‘Achilles’ [their key argument, n.422], that ‘anything would move itself’, I say, as was argued against the first opinion when excluding a cause ‘sine qua non’ [n.415], that nothing is a total and perfect and natural effective cause of anything without causing it when it is proximate to the whole receptive subject and not impeded. Now wood is always proximate to itself, and sufficiently so, and a persistent impediment cannot be posited when fire is not present; because, if this impediment be posited, let it be removed and it will not exist, if that impediment be posited, let it be removed; and so, by running through them one by one, one will get to wood that is present to itself and in no way impeded. Therefore, if it were the total active cause with respect to heat, and it is itself the total receptive cause, then it would always be hot, as a brute is always able to sense. Therefore, since an absence of total causality cannot be posited because of an impediment, nor because of non-proximity, nor because of receptive subject, the conclusion will be that there is not a total active causality in the wood, which is the point intended. So, therefore, not everything will move itself as total cause, because no cause, which does not always have its act, is a total natural cause of the act.

522. If you say, ‘at least I will say the wood is a partial cause, so that, when fire is present, it acts along with it for the heating of itself in idea of partial effective and active cause’ - this cavil is not of any value either, because two partial causes are not posited with respect to the same effect when one of them precisely has the total effect, univocally or equivocally, in its own power. Proof: for if one of them has the whole effect in its own power, it can produce the whole of it, or the same thing would be produced twice; but fire, which from the preceding argument [n.521] was proved to have activity with respect to heat in the wood, has in itself virtually the whole heat of the wood; therefore the wood here has no partial causality.

523. To the issue at hand then: because the soul is not always in act with respect to any intellection (although, however, it is receptive of any intellection whatever, and is itself proximate to itself and not always impeded), the conclusion is that it is not the total active cause but something else is; that something else is proved to be the object, because when it is present the effect follows, when it is not present the effect cannot be had. Some sort of primary causality then is proved to be in the object; and not total causality, because the object (on account of its imperfection) cannot have intellection (on account of its perfection) totally in its power, and so it is proved that, along with the object, is required some other partial active cause - and not any cause other than the intellective power because, when it concurs with the object, there is intellection. So therefore is it here proved that there are two partial active causes, and in many other cases that nothing the same moves itself, either totally or partially.

This argument too, which is held up as the Achilles [n.522], does not seem capable of effecting much; for this seems to be a certain defensive move, by diverting [attention] from the side of the opponent to the side of the respondent; for, because of their lack of arguments, they take on the sort of form that respondents take one, so that the [other] respondents may make an argument to prove something necessary, namely that wood does not heat itself.

524. An objection to the response [n.521] to the Achilles is that wood will not heat itself unless the other ‘sine quo non’ thing [sc. fire] is present, just as the will, for you [Scotus], does not make itself to will save when an object through cognition is present. Also, if you argue that one of the two [sc. wood and fire] will always heat something else, because it has the power of heating, the response is that it will heat itself before something else, and do this first only when the sine qua non cause is present. Or perhaps it will never heat something else, just as neither does the will make another will to will. Indeed, having conceded that some action of the genus of action is immanent, will it be said, or why will it not be said, that any is?

525. The Achilles is removed in another way: when diverse pieces of wood, similarly disposed, are present to fire, they are all made hot; when the same object is present to diverse wills, they do not all similarly make themselves to will (City of God 12.6); therefore the fire acts here, and not there the object, because then [the object] would act equally on every will.

526. An objection against this [n.525] is that if wills are not similarly affected when a sine qua non cause is present, this is because, for you [Scotus], they act freely. Pieces of wood when a sine qua non cause is present act naturally; therefore, prove that fire here is a cause other than a sine qua non cause. But [in reply], all that is said is that wood is a natural [cause], the will is not.

527. Argument in a third way [nn.521, 525] against the Achilles [sc. ‘anything would move itself’]. Whatever is acted on, it is acted on by something; when therefore it cannot be acted on by itself, it must be posited that it is acted on by something else. The will cannot be acted on by something else (not speaking about God), both because then volition would not be in its power and because then some other mover, disposed in the same way and with respect to the same passive subject, would have power indifferently for both opposites; for the will can will and not will the same thing presented to it in the same way. Therefore, it is necessary to attribute principally to the will the motion of itself toward [act of] willing, because it alone has the indifference in acting that is proportioned to itself in its idea as passive subject. But wood does not have in acting the indifference that is proportioned to itself in idea of passive subject; for it is receptive of disparate qualities, and also of contraries, one of which, when made intense, corrupts it. And it does not have that many univocal principles (as is plain, because also nothing univocally moves itself), nor does it have a single univocal principle, because how would [a single principle] be unlimited unless one says that anything at all has power for all the qualities it is susceptible of, even those corruptive of it? In the case of the will anything it all that it is capable of is an operation of it and some sort of perfection.

C. To the Things Said in the Third and Fourth Opinion

528. For the third and fourth opinion [nn.450-451] there are no arguments adduced to which it may be necessary to reply. He who wants to believe what is said about the first simple act and about the second of distinct knowing, or the statement of the second opinion [n.451, the second opinion of Henry] that the species ‘inclines’, let him believe it. For him who does not believe it, since it is not an article of faith, let this be shown by the arguments [nn.452-453].

529. However, these two opinions, namely the third and fourth, which seem opposed to each other, are in agreement and in conformity with each other, and that as follows: There is required for acting a formal idea of acting and an idea of an agent. The agent is the supposit, the idea of acting is the form elicitive of action. Therefore, the agent in the first action on the possible intellect is the phantasm, but the ‘what it is’, shining forth in the phantasm, is the idea of acting, and this insofar as the ‘what it is’ stands in the light of the agent intellect and is penetrated by the light and is embraced by the agent. And what is first by this idea of acting impressed on the possible intellect is the beginning of the scientific habit, which beginning is not the intelligible species nor the form that moves to act of understanding, because the object in itself is present insofar it shines forth in the phantasm, for the phantasm is present to the intellect because it is in a place in the body. So some other species is not required whereby the object may be thus present, nor is anything required holding the place of the object or representing it. Yet the first impression has the idea both of the ‘by which’ and the ‘what’ with respect to intellection. The ‘by which’ because by it the intellect is proximate and in accidental potency to an act of understanding, just as a body is by its weight in potency to a ‘where’; and ‘by which’ also in this regard, that it remains in the intellect when the intellect is prevented from actual intellection. The first impression is also the ‘what’ because it comes to it [the intellect] first (just as, according to Avicenna, On the Soul p.2 ch2, the first sensed thing is the species) - not as the terminating object, but as what leads to the object, not through comparison but by continuation. In this way, then, do the first and second opinion [of Henry, nn.450-451] agree as to this, that the first denies the species and the second admits an inclination preceding the act.

530. But as to this point, that the first opinion [n.450] posits the intellect to be passive with respect to the first act and active with respect to the second act, and that the second opinion [n.451] seems to posit that the soul itself elicits the act - these agree in this way that when on the possible intellect such an impression has first been made, the intellect itself meets with the impressed effect, because everything acted on strives, when meeting an agent, to preserve its being. Augustine also maintains this in On Music 6.5 n.11, where he speaks of the numbers that come to us, and of other numbers. These ‘numbers’ are characterized as progressive (pronouncing of words), sounding (sounds), occurring to us (hearing), memorable (memory) and judgeable (judgment of sensing). ⁵³ And, in this meeting, the intellect imbibes the confused intellection and transmits it within into itself and then receives it more intimately from itself than it could receive it from the object. Also, the intellect meets with the impression, thus intimate, a second time, and in that second meeting it immerses itself in it by penetrating it - and in this lies the intellect’s distinct and perfect knowledge.

531. However it may be with these opinions which this middle view strives to expound, there is argument against much of what is here said [nn.529-530].

As to what it first posits, that the ‘what it is’ shining forth in the phantasm is the formal idea of acting for the phantasm [n.529] - on the contrary: how is a thing the idea of acting for something which it is not formally in? Or if the ‘what it is’ is somehow posited to be in the phantasm, then since it is the being of it in a certain respect, for it is the being of what is represented, and is not there according to any being of existence, how will the ‘what it is’ be, according to this being, the formal idea of doing some real action? And thus, since the phantasm, by the fact that this being belongs to it, is not the principal cause of acting according to them [Henry etc., n.529], neither is the ‘what it is’, according as it exists in the phantasm, the principal idea of acting, which is against them.

532. Besides this, I ask what is it to say that the ‘what it is’ stands in the light of the agent intellect [n.529]. If it is nothing other than that the agent intellect is in the soul, and that in the imagination of the same soul there is a phantasm, then as long as the phantasm is in the imaginative power the penetrating and surrounding takes place, and so it will exist in a madman and a sleeper, which he whose opinion is being expounded denies. If it is something other than that the two are together, some new action takes place whose term will not be in the phantasm; therefore, it will be in the possible intellect. Therefore the ‘what it is’ does not act by any penetration (which penetration would precede the action of the ‘what it is’), but it only acts along with the agent intellect by causing some new impression in the agent intellect. This is what that other first opinion says [sc. of Scotus himself, nn.366, 381-382].

533. If you will say that the other opinion posits an impressed intelligible species [nn.339, 349, 370], this one does not but posits the beginning of a scientific habit - on the contrary: this opinion posits that the impression is the principle by which the intellect is in accidental potency [n.529], although however it was in essential potency first. If the intelligible object is, by this impression, not present more than it was before, it is not in accidental potency now more than it was before. If it is present in any way now that it was not present in before, the way it is now present is the intelligible species. This is even more apparent from the fact that [the intellect] is posited to meet with it first as with something displaying the object on account of natural continuation with it [n.529]. This could not be unless the object were to shine forth in it, and so unless it had the idea of a species.

534. Similarly, what is said of ‘precede’, ‘beginning of scientific habit’, is not true, because a habit properly speaking, as the Philosopher says in Ethics 2.1.1103b21-22, is generated by some elicited act; and just as the ultimate degree of a habit is generated from the ultimate act, so is the first degree generated from the first act, so that any degree of a habit is posterior to some act. Therefore, that which is simply first in the possible intellect is not something of the habit itself. This is confirmed by the opinion of the doctor who is being expounded, because he posits the beginning to be the whole essence of the habit.

535. As to what is said further about ‘meeting’ [n.530] - I reply: ‘meeting’ is not well assigned, nor is it to Augustine’s intention. For what is acted on when it ‘meets’ an agent strives to preserve itself and to act against the agent corrupting it; this agent acts for the preservation and perfection of the passive subject, so, for this reason (that it may preserve itself), it does not ‘meet’ it. Nor is that the intention of Augustine; for he maintains that the soul, when meeting an effect made in the air in the ear, more strongly acts on the air, and in this way causes the hearing that the sound alone did not cause. This ‘meeting’ then is a ‘co-acting’.

And then I respond in brief to the arguments of Augustine. When an impression of a sensible species is made on the organ, or of an intelligible species made on the intellect, the soul ‘meets’ with it through such power, that is, so that along with the impressed species it ‘co-act’ for some more perfect act than the species of itself alone could cause.

536. And when it is added further about that double meeting, that it first meets with the effect as touching it, later with the imbibed effect [n.530], I ask what these metaphorical words mean. If they mean that by the second meeting something more perfect is caused than by the first, and that it perfects more intimately (as matter is said to be more intimately perfected by a more perfect form that more actuates it), then in the second meeting the effect is not taken up inwardly more than before; but the soul, coacting with the effect, causes something more perfect, and this is more intimately in the soul than the effect first caused.

D. To the Arguments of the Fifth Opinion

537. To the authority of the Philosopher On the Soul 3 [n.457], that “to understand is to undergo,” which is adduced for the fifth opinion,a I say that the Philosopher spoke about the powers of the soul in common, to the extent they are that by which we are formally in second act, namely about the senses insofar as they are that by which we formally sense and the intellect insofar as it is that by which we formally understand. But we formally understand by the intellect insofar as it receives intellection because, if it cause it actively, yet I am not said to understand by the intellect insofar as it causes but insofar as it has intellection as its form. For to have a quality is to be of that quality, and so the fact the intellect has intellection, or receives it (which is the same thing), is to be oneself understanding. We understand, therefore, by the intellect insofar as it receives intellection; therefore, the Philosopher, speaking thus of the intellect, necessarily had to say it was passive, and that ‘to understand’ is ‘to undergo something’, that is, that intellection, insofar as it is that by which we formally understand, is a certain form received in the intellect. But we do not understand by it insofar as it is something caused by the intellect, if it is caused by it, for if God were to cause it and were to imprint it on our intellect, we would by it no less understand.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] but not by determining it

538. Just as I have spoken about intelligence actually [n.537], so do I speak about knowing habitually - that the intellect is that by which we know habitually insofar as it receives a habit, not insofar as it causes it, if it causes it.

539. I say, therefore, that all the authorities [of Aristotle] that read for the passivity of the possible intellect can be expounded about it insofar as by it we know habitually, or insofar as by it we cognize actually, and in this way I concede that it is passive. And if it be active, yet not according to this idea; but it is an accident of it that it is active according to this idea. Now the authorities [n.457] affirm of the intellect what is true - not speaking of the intellect under the idea of something active, but asserting that it has the idea of something receptive, although they do not say that it is not active. Now a place from an authority does not hold in a negative way [sc. it must not be taken as denying what it does not say].

540. And from these points [nn.537-539] is response made to the authority about essential and accidental potency [n.457]. For the intellect is not in essential potency because there is lacking to it some idea of causality insofar as concerns its own part; rather the intellect is in essential potency when there is not present to it another partial cause that needs to be present for the purpose that action follow; and when that partial cause is proximate to it, it is in accidental or proximate potency to acting.

541. But the authority by which it is said that the possible intellect is nothing of the things that are before it understands [n.457] requires a different exposition - which authority, however, others so far treat of as to say that the possible intellect is in pure potency in the genus of intelligibles, as matter is in the genus of beings. This is not the intention of the Philosopher, because a potency for an accident is only ever based on a substance; now an intellection or an intelligible species is not a substantial form but an accident; therefore what is immediately receptive of it is something in substantial act, or at least that is which is mediately receptive of it (and then what immediately receives it will be some accidental act, in the way a surface is related to whiteness). Therefore, the possible intellect, according as it is that in which intelligible form or intellection is received, or is that according to which the species is received in the soul, will not be a pure potential but will be something in first act, although the respect itself of the potency is not anything in act. For when I speak of a potency receptive of whiteness, I am not speaking of a potency that states a respect to whiteness; for that respect is not anything in act, because the whiteness that it is for is not anything in act either, and a respect does not exist without a term. But that in which the power is or is said to be is something in act, as a surface is receptive of whiteness. So it is here. Although in advance of intellection the power, which is a respect to intellection, is not, before act, anything in act, as neither is the intellection to which it is, yet that in which the power is or is said to be, which is what is receptive of intellection, is something in act, and it is the possible intellect.

542. Therefore that the possible intellect is nothing in act is not held by the Philosopher the way they take it [n.541 init.], but one must expound the authority in this way: we naturally understand first the things that first come to us from phantasms, as was said in the second question of this distinction [nn.73, 187]. Nothing, therefore, can we understand in proximate potency before the intellection of something imaginable; therefore we cannot understand the intellect before having an understanding of another intelligible; therefore neither can the intellect be understood by us before having the understanding of another intelligible; therefore the intellect is not intelligible before the intellection of another intelligible. Just as the first antecedent is true [“we naturally understand first.. .from phantasms”], so also is the consequence [sc. the series of consequents up to the final one of “the intellect is not intelligible before.. .of another intelligible”]. For that reason, therefore, the remark ‘it is not anything of the things that are before it understands’ [n.541, 457] namely ‘of the intelligibles’, must be understood not in the sense that before it understand it is nothing in act, but that it is not anything that could be in proximate potency understood by us before having the understanding of another [intelligible], on account of our natural intellection, which begins now from phantasms [n.187].

543. When argument is next made [n.458] about likeness, that it is the reason both for making and for acting, I say that in a maker that makes well the form is the idea of the making, by which the maker assimilates the thing made to itself; but in action nothing is a product save the action itself, for action is the final term and does not have another term. And, therefore, there is no need that in an agent the idea of the acting be in the producer’s being assimilated to some second product, or in the agent’s being assimilated to the object about which it acts, because the agent does not assimilate the object to itself.

544. And if you say that that at least is the idea of acting wherein the agent assimilated the product to itself, namely the action itself - I do indeed admit that the species, which is the likeness of an object and by which the intellect is assimilated to the produced knowledge, is some idea of generating; but it is not the whole idea, nor even the principal idea, as will be clear in the following question [n.562]. But, when two causes come together, in the nearer one a formal likeness suffices and in the remoter one a virtual or equivocal likeness suffices; and thus the intellect, a sort of superior cause, is assimilated virtually to intellection; the species, a sort of nearer cause, is assimilated to it univocally, as it were, and formally.

545. When argument is later made about the indetermination of the intellect to diverse acts and objects [n.459], I reply that some indetermination is material, because of defect of act, and some is indetermination of the agent, because of unlimitedness of active virtue, as the sun is undetermined as to the many things it is generative of. Something indeterminate in the first way does not act unless it be determined by some act, because otherwise it is not in sufficient act but in potency. Something indeterminate in the second way is determined by no form different from itself, but it is determined by itself to producing whatever effect it is of itself indeterminate to, and this when the passive recipient is present - just as the sun, when a passive subject is present to it, generates anything that, from the fact it is of a nature to be generated, is generable. The indetermination of the intellect is not the indetermination of a passive potentiality in its own order of causality, but is the indetermination of an as it were unlimited actuality; and therefore is it not determined by a form that is a determinate idea of acting for it, but only by the presence of the object, about which determinate object intellection is of a nature to be determined. Or it could be said in another way that, just as a superior cause is determined to acting (as the sun to generating a man when a man concurs as agent, and an ox when an ox concurs), but not by some form received in itself, so the intellect, which is a superior and unlimited cause, is determined to this object when a particular determinate cause concurs, as to acting about this object when this species concurs. Now an inferior cause does nota effectively determine a superior indeterminate cause, nor does it do so formally as the idea of acting, but it determines it like this, that is, the indeterminate active superior power produces something determinate when such and such a determinate inferior power concurs.

a.a [Canceled text by Scotus, replaced by ‘Now an inferior cause does not’] For this determining cause [sc. the particular determinate cause just mentioned] does not

546. There is an opinion that the intellect is the principle of intellection as to substance, but that the object is the principle as to modifying or specifying the act. On the contrary: nothing is the principle for nothing; intellection, when modification or specification is bracketed, is nothing;     therefore etc     . The major is understood of a nothing that includes a contradiction. The proof of the minor is that the intellect is first by nature precisely something possible to be; but an intellection without the fact that it is, in the same now of nature, the intellection of some object, is a contradiction, otherwise intellection would be a purely absolute form. For a reply to the sixth opinion, nn.461-462 (no separate reply is given by Scotus), the Vatican Editors refer to nn.505-506, 535, and the note added to n.493. ⁵⁴