1. To the First Doubt

583. To the first [n.581] I reply that the image can be assigned in two ways, according to the fact Augustine assigns it in two ways: in one way On the Trinity 9.5-11, as mind, knowledge, and love; in another way according to the fact he assigns it, ibid. 10. 10-12, as memory, intelligence, and will. And about this double assignment of the image Augustine, speaking in ibid. 15.3 n.5, says that what was set down in ibid. 10 is more evident.

584. I say, then, when treating of the first assignment, that by ‘mind’ we can understand first act with respect to both second acts, namely fertility for generating and for spirating. For in this the mind has perfectly the idea of parent, because it perfectly includes both fertilities; and then the two others, namely knowledge and love, are two things produced by the soul in a certain order. And then there will not be a quaternity, because in the parent having the perfect idea of parent the double first act comes together.a And in this way is it in divine reality, because in the Father there is not only fertility for generating but for spirating, and this from himself; because if the Father did not of himself have fertility for spirating, but had it by way of leftover from the production of the Son (as some say [Henry of Ghent, Summa a q.8, a.54 q.6]), this impossible result, it seems, follows, that the Father would never have that fertility. For no reality, whether absolute or relative, does the Father have in any way by production, and therefore whatever reality he does not have in the first moment of origin (insofar, namely, as he is pre-understood in order of origin to the Son) he never has. Therefore, if that double fertility he does not have in himself in the first moment of origin, he will never have it.

a.a [Note by Scotus] We experience two acts, and acts that originate in a certain order, and are in our power (On the Soul 2, n.560). Therefore, the principles of them are, in us, either the same thing or united in the same thing. That thing will be fertile with a double fertility and from itself (a stand here [sc. no reduction further]); and the two products are distinct and in some way the same as the first fertile principle, taking powers precisely under acts. And they show the first supposit to be fertile of itself with both fertilities, and two products to be adequate to that fertile principle, distinct and originated; therefore an image. On the contrary: the second part does not produce the third.
Reply: here the image falls short.

585. But if mind be taken precisely as first act, having only fertility with respect to generated knowledge, the image in this way is imperfectly assigned, because in this way the mind does not have perfectly the idea of parent.

586. So I say, about the other assigning, that if memory be taken precisely for the parent with respect to generated knowledge it is a parent imperfectly; but a parent perfectly has not only that whereby it generates but that whereby it spirates, because it cannot have that from something else; and it must have it totally; and therefore it must be had in a parent of itself. But if memory be taken for the whole soul, as it aptitudinally has in first act that double fertility, then in this way it has perfectly the idea of parent. But although memory be more evidently a parent, as one must concede because of the word of Augustine On the Trinity 15 ch.3 n.5 [n.583] - namely insofar as it expresses more than the mind does the relation of generator to generated - yet the mind seems to import more perfectly the idea of parent if it be taken as it includes both fertilities.

587. Briefly, then, however a trinity is assigned in the image, whether this way or that, there is no quaternity, because a double relationship and fertility come together in a parent, if is perfectly parent.