Question Two. Whether it is necessary to posit in a Habit the idea of Active Principle with respect to Act

6. Alongside this question I propose another, in general, about habit: whether it is necessary to posit in a habit the idea of active principle with respect to act.

Argument that it is:

A habit is that which the possessor of it uses when he wills, from the Commentator on De Anima 3 comm. 18; ‘to use’ belongs to the agent, for the patient does not use a passive principle.

7. Further, we attribute four conditions to a habit and to what has a habit: that it operate with pleasure, easily, without impediment, and promptly.

8. From each an argument can be given for the intended proposition:

From the first, that an act which was first disagreeable to the agent does not become agreeable to it unless the agent itself, insofar as it is agent, be differently disposed; therefore when, through this habit, by which action belongs to it, action is agreeable to it and so pleasant, the agent itself is differently disposed insofar as it is agent.

9. From the second condition the argument is that what is of itself supremely disposed to undergo something does not need to be helped so that it might undergo it; but a habitual potency - of which sort is the intellect and will - is of itself supremely disposed to receiving act (because they do not have a contrary and, for this reason, they do not need motion in order to act); therefore the habit whereby the potency is helped disposes it to acting and not to undergoing.

10. From the third condition the argument is that absence of impediment belongs to that of which there is a being impeded; but being impeded belongs to the agent when its active power fails and is overcome by another; therefore the habit by which acting without impediment belongs to something belongs to it insofar as it is active.

11. From the fourth the argument is as follows, that promptness belongs to that of which there is an acting sluggishly or promptly; but ‘not to act promptly’ belongs to an agent insofar as it is active, not insofar as it is passive; therefore the promptness, which the habit bestows, belongs to the agent insofar as it is agent.

12. Further, to the principal point:

A habit inclines a power to act. But there is a double inclination, namely of a passive power to form and of an active power to act; habit does not incline in the first way, for act is received in the power immediately, otherwise perfect and imperfect act would not have the same thing susceptive of them; therefore it inclines in the second way, as an active principle for acting, - and this is the intended proposition.

13. Again, according to the Philosopher in Physics 8.4.255a30-255b5 and De Anima 2.5.417a21-28, the soul is, before knowledge, in essential potency, but when it has knowledge it is in accidental potency. But what reduces something from essential potency to accidental potency as regard operation seems to be the active principle with respect to it, because it is that whereby the possessor of it acts; hence the Philosopher intends, in De Anima 2.2.414a4-7, 12-13, that just as science is ‘that whereby we know’ so the soul is ‘that whereby we live and sense’ etc., and consequently, just as the soul is that whereby we perform vital acts, so science is that whereby we actively speculate.

14. Again, some habits are practical, and one such is active, as prudence, and another productive, as art; the idea of a practical habit in general, and of a productive one in particular, seems to involve in such habit the idea of active principle.

15. On the contrary:

Relation is not an active principle, nor anything that essentially includes relation; but habit is ‘in relation to something’, according to the Philosopher in Physics 7.3.246a30-b21;     therefore etc     .

16. A confirmation of the reason is that absolute real entity is no less required in the principle of motion than in its term; if therefore a habit lacks the absolute entity that would suffice for terminating motion (according to the Philosopher in Physics 5.2.225b11-13), much more does it lack the absolute entity that is required in an active principle.

17. Further, second, in respect of one action there is one active potency (the Commentator on Physics 5 com.38); but the habit alone is not the active power with respect to operation, because then the habit itself would be a power (because power is that by which we are simply able), and ‘what is perfected by it’ would not be power simply; therefore only that which is perfected by a habit is the active principle of operation.

18. A confirmation of this reason is that a single action requires a formal principle ‘per se one’ whereby to be elicited; something composed of power and habit is ‘per accidens one’ and not ‘per se one’; therefore this composite whole cannot be the ‘by which’ in respect of an operation ‘per se one’.

19. Further, an accident is not a principle of acting in its proper subject; but operation, for which habit is posited, is repeatedly received in the power to which the habit belongs; therefore with respect to operation the habit is not the active principle.

20. Further, some habits are in the sensitive appetitive powers; this appetite is not active, because according to Damascene On the Orthodox Faith ch.36, “sense does not lead but is led;” therefore neither can the form of it be an active principle, because if it were it ought to concur with the power in acting.

I. To the Second Question

A. Five Ways of Giving a Solution are Expounded and Examined

1. First Way

21. [Exposition of the opinion] - To this question it is said [by Henry of Ghent] that things are differently disposed as regard acquired habit and infused habit. For the natural act of a man, and the lack of impediment in the act, is from another, because of the indetermination that nature has with respect to that act, - and therefore acquired virtue is a perfection of nature, with nature presupposed under the idea of the principle of act; but if supernatural virtue belonged to nature (with nature presupposed in that to which such an act corresponds), then the supernatural virtue alone would facilitate nature, as acquired virtue does; but this is false, nay by the same thing there is ‘gratuitous existence’ and a gratuitous act, according to that [supernatural] degree, is simply elicited - the result being that acquired virtue is a virtue according to the idea of virtue that is posited in Nicomachean Ethics 2.5.1106a15-17, but theological virtue is not like that but accords with the idea of virtue by which it is laid down that virtue is ‘the utmost of power’ (De Caelo 1.11.281a10-12).

22. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion [n.21], if thus he [sc. Henry of Ghent] understands that a supernatural habit is simply principle with respect to act, I argue as follows:

That by which someone can act simply is a power; therefore a supernatural habit will be a power. The antecedent is plain, because power is that whereby we are simply and first able to act.Note by Scotus: “This is true of the genus of action, it is false of operation-action.” ¹⁴

23. Further, from this [sc. that a supernatural habit is a principle of act] it follows in addition that no more will the will be good if it acts through the habit of charity than a piece of wood is perfected in acting if it acts by the heat inhering in it accidentally;Note by Scotus: “By that action a subject, whose formal principle is ‘an accident through an accident’ of that subject, is not per se perfected.” ¹⁵ an example: for just as from this fact [sc. the wood acting through heat] no action belongs to the wood through the form of wood but only to the agent [sc. the heat] that is received in the wood, so also it seems that the action that would belong to charity as to principal principle would in no way belong to the will as will. And it also follows further that just as heat, if it were separated, would heat equally as much, so charity, if it were separated, would act equally as much, for every form that is the total principle of acting as it exists in a subject, can, if it exists per se, operate per se - and thus the intended proposition evidently follows, namely that the habit will be a power.Note by Scotus: “If heat were an active principle in respect of something which would be a perfection of wood, there would be nothing similar to ‘heat is active’ (each unfitting result rightly follows when one posits habit as the reason for receiving the operation); nothing would be similar about operation, - for a material cause of operation is lacking; nothing either about acting, about genus of action, because in this way it is only a principle of something immanent, not of something transient (but why is it not?).” ¹⁶

24. Further, an operation whose active principle is purely natural is not freely elicited; but a habit, since it is not formally the will, nor as a consequence formally free, will, if it is an active principle, be purely natural; therefore its operation will not be purely free, and thus no ‘willing’ will be free if it is elicited by the habit as by a total active principle.

25. Further, in that case a man who once has charity could never sin mortally, which is unfitting. - The proof of the consequence is that he who has some active form predominating in him can never be moved against the inclination of that predominating form, just as never can a heavy mixed body be raised upwards against the inclination of the dominating earth in it; but charity - if it is the total active principle - is predominant over the will itself, which has no power for that act; therefore the will always follows the inclination of charity in acting, and so it will never sin.

26. Further, that act is not mine which is not in my power; but the action of the habit itself is not in my power, because the habit itself - if it is active - is not free but is a natural principle; therefore the ‘loving’ will not be mine, such that it be in my power, and so I will not merit by that act.

2. Second Way

27. [Exposition of the opinion] - In another way it can be said that acquired and infused virtues do not differ in the aforesaid way [n.21], but both are compared as to substance of act in the same way; and then there is one way of speaking, that the act has its substance from the power but has such and such intensity from the habit, so that to the two things as it were in the act - namely the substance and the intensity - there correspond two things in the idea of the principle or the cause.

28. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this I argue that the intensity of an act is not something extrinsic, an accident of the act, but a degree intrinsic to the act, - such that an intense act is something ‘per se one’, just as an individual of this sort is one in species. There cannot, therefore, be one principle of the substance of this sort of act and another of its intensity, because that by which there is this individual is that by which there is an intrinsic degree proper to this individual; for it cannot receive nature, and a nature designated ‘this nature’, from something else without receiving it in a certain degree. - Following on from this, as if from the same middle term, one could argue the way it was argued before against the principal point [n.18], that since an intense act is ‘per se one’, and what is combined from potency and habit is as it were ‘per accidens one’, this whole cannot be the principle of that. But this form of arguing is not cogent (hence it will also be solved later [nn.73-74]), though the first form is, because that whereby it is ‘this one thing’ is that whereby it has a definite degree intrinsic to this.

29. Further, second, whenever a naturally active principle concurs with a free acting cause, the natural principle always jointly acts as much as it can (an example about the will and an inferior power acting naturally as much as belongs to itself); for although it be prevented from acting when the free principle does not act, yet - when the free principle is acting - it necessarily acts, because it acts by way of nature, as much as belongs to it, it jointly acts with the free principle as much as it can; therefore if a determinate habit in the will give a determinate intensity to the act, then, with the will operating on the substance of the act, the habit will necessarily give the intensity corresponding to itself, and thus, however much the will operates with a modicum of effort, its act would always be equally as intense, because, although the will causes the substance of the act, the habit - because it acts by way of nature - would necessarily cause what is its own.

30. Further, if the habit give intensity to the act, this would be in some designated degree (that degree will be given the mark a below); therefore the will can, along with this habit, have an act that is intense to that degree. Let there be another will, more perfect than this will in proportion to ‘degree a’ by relation to an act in the lowest degree (to wit, if a is the fourth degree in the act, let there be another will exceeding the first will by four degrees), then this will - without a habit - could have an act as equally intense as the will with the habit. Therefore the substance of the act is not so precisely from the power that the intensity is not from it.

31. Further, only an infinite will - excluding all idea of habit - has power for an infinite act; therefore too the will, in whatever degree of nature it is, has power for an act of a determinate degree. - The antecedent is plain, because a will, by the fact it is infinite, is not receptive of any habit, because there is not lacking to it any perfection that is possible to will. The proof of the consequence is that ‘as the highest is to the highest, so is the simply to the simply’ and so is any degree whatever to the degree corresponding to it.

3. Third Way

32. [Exposition of the Opinion] - In a third way, by attributing somehow to the habit the idea of active principle in respect of the act, one can say that the habit is a partial active cause, along with the power itself (which is also a partial cause), in respect of a perfect act proceeding from the power and the habit, although the power itself could be the total cause in respect of an imperfect act preceding the generation of the habit. And then one would have to speak about the distinction of these two partial causes, and how they per se make one total cause, in the way spoken above in distinction 3 in the question ‘On the Cause of Generated Knowledge’ [I d.3 nn.495-498].

33. [A doubt] - But then there is a doubt. Since these two [sc. power and habit] are not causes of the same order, as are two people hauling a boat, - which of them has the idea of prior cause?

34. It seems that the habit does, because it belongs to the prior cause to determine the second and not conversely; but the habit determines the power toward act; and it gives inclination to it, and not conversely; but to give inclination belongs to the superior in respect of the inferior, and not conversely

35. But the opposite of this seems to be the case:

First, because the power uses the habit and not conversely, - because what uses another in acting is more principal than it, and that which it uses is as it were the instrument or the second cause with respect to it [I d.3. n.562]

36. Likewise, the power is more unlimited in acting than the habit, because it extends to more things; but the superior cause seems to be more unlimited in extent;     therefore etc     . [ibid. n.559].

37. Further, third, a habit is a natural cause. Therefore if it be the principal cause, which moves the power, it would move it by way of nature and consequently the power, since it acts in the way in which it is moved, would act by way of nature; for an agent that acts insofar as it is moved - if it be moved by way of nature - also acts further by way of nature, and so every action of an habituated power would be natural and none free (at any rate none would be in the power of the will), which is a unfitting result.

38. Again, fourth, the habit would be the power, because it would be that by which the possessor of it can first act.

39. Again, fifth, when there are two ordered causes one of which is cause of the other, that which is cause of the other is the superior cause; but the power is the cause of the habit - at any rate by the mediation of acts - and not in any way conversely;     therefore etc     .

40. [Clarification of the opinion] - I concede, for these reasons [nn.35-39] that, by holding the habit to be a partial cause with respect to the act [n.32], the habit would be second cause and not first, but the power itself would be the first cause and absolutely would not need the habit for operating; yet it operates less perfectly without the habit than with it (and that when an equal effort on the part of the power is posited), just as, when two causes come together for one effect, one cause alone does not have power per se for an effect as perfect as both together do. And in this way there is saved why the act is more intense when from the power and the habit than when from the power alone; not indeed that the power is the cause of the substance of the act and the habit the cause of the intensity of the act (as if there were two causes corresponding to the two caused things [n.27]), but that both causes coming together are able to produce a more perfect effect than one alone [I d.3 n.296], - which effect, however, being a whole in itself and as ‘per se one’ is from the two causes, but causing in diverse order [nn.32-33].

41. [Against the opinion] - Against this opinion there is the following argument:

No things distinct in species are equivocal agent causes for each other; habit and act are distinct in species; therefore they are not equivocal agent causes for each other; but an act is necessarily an equivocal cause in the generation of a habit, an acquired habit at least, - not therefore conversely.

42. The proof of the major is that an equivocal cause contains eminently in itself the perfection of the effect; but two things distinct in species cannot eminently contain each other. - Further, in comparing the same first cause to two effects, it seems that the second of the effects would have a determinate order, immediate or mediate, prior or posterior - and that when speaking of the whole species of the second of those effects. The point is evident by induction in passions that follow the same subject, wherein there is necessarily a determinate order, that one follows the subject more immediately than the other, and that according to its whole species, so that this order does not vary in any individuals whatever of the species. Therefore with respect to the power - which is the common cause of the act and the habit - the two effects will have a determinate order, so that either necessarily the act according to its whole species would precede the habit or conversely; and since some act of necessity precedes the habit as the cause of it, the habit would not precede any act.

43. Further, if the habit is a partial and equivocal cause with respect to the act, then the cause of this cause will be more perfect than the equivocal cause of the same act (the consequence is plain, because in equivocal causes the cause of the cause is a more perfect cause than the cause closer to the thing caused); but the act is the cause of the generation of the habit; therefore if the power along with the habit can perform a perfect act [nn.32, 40], it could much more perform the same perfect act if it were under the act that generates the habit, - which seems an unfitting result, because two perfect acts cannot exist in the same power, or at any rate, if they could, it does not seem that one of them could in any way be the active principle with respect to the other.

44. Further, if the habit is as it were the second cause [n.40], supplying some degree of causality that is lacking to the power, then the habit could become so perfect that it would supply the place of the whole power; for universally, in agents of the same nature, it seems that the virtue of one could be so intensified that it would equal the two [I d.3 n.497].

45. Further, if it be held that, in the process of making more or less intense, the preexisting individual is corrupted, it would be necessary to posit that the habit is not the cause of the act, because it is corrupted in the act whereby it is made more intense; but a cause is not a cause when it is corrupted, because what does not exist is not cause of anything.

4. Fourth Way

46. [Exposition of the opinion] - He who would maintain the conclusion of these reasons [nn.41-45] could negate of habit all idea of active principle, and say that a habit only gives an inclination to operation as a sort of prior act agreeing with second act and giving a determination to that act - just as heaviness is a prior act, giving determination and inclination to a determinate ‘where’, although, according to some, heaviness is not a principle with respect to existing in that ‘where’.

47. [Approval of the opinion] - And this opinion seems probable, because to nothing should causality with respect to anything be attributed unless such causality is evident from the nature of the things (whether of the cause or of the thing caused); also to no cause should perfect causality be denied unless imperfection of causality appears manifestly in it, because no nature should be denied to possess a perfection which it does not evidently lack. But there seems to be no necessity of positing any active causality in the habit with respect to the act, because without this all the conditions commonly attributed to the habit will be saved [n.48]; also there is no necessity to take away from the power the perfect idea of causality so as to attribute a partial causality to the power. Therefore there is no need to attribute any causality to the habit.

48. The assumption is plain, because the four conditions that are attributed to the habit, namely that it is ‘that whereby the possessor of it operates easily, with pleasure, without impediment, and promptly’ [n.7], are saved by the habit’s inclination alone, which the habit attributes to the power as the power is receptive of operation.

49. Pleasure indeed exists because of the condition of the receiver, to whom belongs the operation received and the object about which the operation is. For pleasure is never in a making that is precisely a making, but because action is in the agent action can be pleasant because of the agreement of the agent with the object; but this agreement can be provided by the habit from the fact that it gives an inclination toward the action and the object. Pleasurability, therefore, does not include the idea of active principle, but only the agreement of the passive principle with the power and the object, and that as to action which is of the genus of quality, not action which is of the genus of action, - which difference in actions was stated above in distinction 3 [I d.3 nn.600-604]. Operation indeed is an action that is a quality, and it belongs to an habituated power that is, by the habit, inclined to such an act and to the object that terminates such an operation; but it does not thus belong to a non-habituated power, nor does such a form or such an object so belong.

50. Likewise as to the second condition. Difficulty in operation occurs from the fact that what is receptive of the operation is not disposed to receiving it, and not merely from a defect in the active virtue; therefore if what is receptive is disposed, there will be easiness in acting, to the extent the agent acts on such a receptive thing.

51. Likewise about absence of impediment and promptness. For impediment to, and slowness of, the agent in acting can be because of the indisposition of the receptive thing itself, especially when the same thing is agent and recipient, so that it will not itself operate promptly because it is indisposed to operating. This indisposition, then, is not for performing an action in the genus of action, but for having an action in the genus of quality; for nothing is said formally to operate insofar as it elicits operation but insofar as it receives it in itself.

52. Also, the way that the other things commonly attributed to a habit are saved, by attributing the whole action to the power and no activity to the habit, will be plain from solving the arguments to the principal point [nn.6-7, 12-14, 87-91].

5. What One should Think about the Four Ways

53. Thus then it is plain how, once the two first ways ‘about habit’ are abandoned as unfitting, the two last ways, namely the third and fourth, can be sustained as probable, by attributing, in line with the third way, some activity to the habit and not only ‘the idea of active principle’ to the power [n.32], - and, in line with the fourth way, by denying to the habit the idea of active principle and saying that it is as it were a form giving inclination to receive some further form, although it not be the idea of receiving with respect to it (as heaviness gives inclination downwards, although it is not the idea of that which receives what is downwards, but ‘a bodily magnitude’ is, insofar as it is receptive of some ‘where’ n.46]).

54. To the arguments that are against these two last ways, each of which ways can be sustained with probability, a response will be given later [nn.71-86], according to one of these two ways by maintaining it about the act either as to the substance of the act or as to the intrinsic degree.

6. Fifth Way

55. It remains now to inquire further about the accidental goodness of the act (which is the sort moral goodness is), and about moral habit, whether moral habit, insofar as it is a virtue, is in any way an active principle with respect to moral goodness in the act.

56. [Arguments for the fifth way] - It seems that it is

Because, according to the Philosopher Ethics 2.5.1106a15-17, virtue is “what perfects the possessor and makes his work good;” but it does not make it good in the idea of passive principle, because it is not the idea of receiving; therefore it does so in the idea of active principle

57. Further, virtue is “the disposition of the perfect in relation to the best”, from Physics 73.246b23; but it is not a passive disposition because - as before - it is not the idea of receiving; therefore it is in the idea of active principle. - There is a confirmation also for the reason, because ‘as good is to good so is best to best’ [Topics 3.2.117b22-26]; but since ‘the best idea’ belongs to the active principle, then according to this reason virtue perfects the power, and so perfects it for acting.

58. Further, virtue is moderator of the passions; but it does not moderate the passions through the idea of passive principle, because the object, by the fact it is the natural cause, causes the action according to the utmost of its power, - therefore as much as it can, if it is not impeded by some contrary agent; therefore the habit, by preventing the object from thus acting completely, moderates it in repressing the passion through the idea of active principle.

59. Further, Ethics 2.3.1105b7-9, the Philosopher says that ‘he who does not have justice, although he could do just things, not however justly’, - and so in the case of other acts; but moral goodness requires acting justly or formally, - and thus in other cases; therefore virtue, insofar as it is good, is such a principle of act, because without it an act could not be good.

60. [Arguments against the fifth way] - But there is an argument to the contrary of this through the fact that moral goodness in an act asserts only relation, because that an act is circumstanced with its due circumstances is not anything absolute in the act but is only a due comparison of it to the things it ought to agree with; therefore this does not have any proper active principle, just as neither does a respect have it.

61. Further, if a habit, insofar as it is a ‘virtue’, were the active principle of the moral goodness in an act, since the habit is not a virtue save in a respect, namely from its conformity with prudence (for it is “an elective habit of the mean, as determined by right reason” Ethics 2.5.1106b36-07a2), therefore some relative idea in virtue would be the idea of active principle, which is impossible.

62. [Response to the fifth way] - As to this article [n.55], it can be said that, just as beauty is not some absolute quality in the beautiful body but is the aggregation of all the things that become such a body (to wit size, figure, and color), and an aggregation too of all the respects (which are aggregations of all the becoming things in relation to the body and to each other), so the moral goodness of an act is as it were a certain comeliness of that act, including the aggregation of a due proportion with all the things that it has to be in proportion with (to wit, with the power, the object, the end, the time, the place, the manner), and that specifically in the way these are determined by right reason to be needing to agree with the act; the result is that we can say on behalf of all of them that the agreement of the act with right reason is that by which, once posited, the act is good, and that by which, when not posited - whatever other things it agrees with - the act is not good, because however much an act is about an object of some kind or other, if it is not according to right reason in the one who does it (to wit if he do not have right reason in his operating), the act is not good. Principally, therefore, the conformity of the act to right reason - a right reason determining fully all the circumstances due to that act - is the moral goodness of an act.

But this goodness has no proper active principle, just as neither does any respect, - especially since this respect is, from the nature of the extreme terms, consequent to the extremes posited; for it is impossible for any act to be posited in existence and for right reason to be posited in existence without there following in the act, from the nature of the extreme terms, such a conformity to right reason; but a relation that necessarily follows the extremes does not have any proper cause other than the extremes.

Therefore, as concerns this accidental condition of the act, which is moral goodness, there is no necessity for any habit to have any idea of proper active principle, save insofar as it has the idea of active principle with respect to the substance of the act -which act is of a nature to agree with the full determination of prudence;Note by Scotus: “This respect - aptitudinal respect - follows from the nature of the extremes [sc. habit and prudence], but actual respect does not; for this habit is fit, of its species, to be subordinate to prudence in acting, but it is not subordinate - in acting - from the nature of the very extremes, even when they exist together in the same thing; for when he [sc. who has both the habit and prudence] has an appetite in accord with this habit and not from the dictate of reason (if this is possible), then the habit is not subordinate, nor is the act morally good. On the contrary: he always uses it as a virtue, because he uses it as it is fit to be subordinate; for it is not a virtue precisely as actually subordinate in acting, because then someone who is not doing anything would not have any virtue. - Again, every respect that is not from the nature of the extremes has a proper cause. What is the cause here? To the first: he uses it but not as making it a virtue. In another way: although he uses that which is a virtue, not however as it is a virtue, because although being fit for subordination is sufficient for the being of virtue, nevertheless for using it ‘as it is a virtue’ requires it to be subordinated, because to use it is to be subordinated. To the second: the respect in an effect is from the two causes, conjoined in the acting; and not from the form of one in relation to itself, nor from the form of the other, nor of both and of both as conjoined in the subject, but of them as conjoined in actually acting, and thus of both as conjoined such that the habit moves to desire from the dictate of prudence. Such conjoining of them, therefore, in actually acting is the source whereby the relation is in the effect; not that it is the source whereby the acting is moral (because this would be got from prudence alone, without the other habit moving), but that it is the source whereby the acting is moral and easy and pleasant, - as in Ethics 2.5.1106a15-21. But what is the source of this conjunction of them in acting, because it is an extrinsic respect? - Response: from their absolute natures there is first this conjunction, and second the relation of them in the effect. But what is the ‘absolute’ from them such that this respect should be caused second? -Response: from prudence there is an absolute act in the intellect, - and from that act as prior cause and rule, and from the appetite as ruled, there is an absolute act of desiring. If the conjunction of the causes precedes in nature the common effect, nothing ‘absolute’ comes from the two causes before their conjunction does (a resulting difficulty: the source of the action primarily is not the source of the second conjunction in the action). If the first - in the order of nature - is a caused ‘absolute’, from it there is a relation of it to each cause, and from it conversely a relation of each cause to it, - from it the conjunction of one with the other. ¹⁷ and toward that act some habit inclines in itself from the nature of the habit, and from this - as a consequence - it inclines to the act which is conform to right reason, if right reason is present in the one acting.

65. What has been said of the moral goodness of an act [n.62] must be said proportionally of the habit, because moral virtue adds over and above the substance of the habit - as it is a form in the genus of quality - only an habitual conformity to right reason. For the same habit in nature, which might be generated from acts of abstinence elicited along with an erroneous reason in the one eliciting them, when it remains afterwards along with right reason, would afterwards be the virtue of abstinence and would before not be a habit of virtue, as long as there was no right reason of abstaining; nor yet has anything changed in that habit in itself but only now it is conjoined with prudence while before it was not.

66. To be conjoined, therefore, to prudenceNote of Scotus: “I do not say ‘conjoined in the same subject’ but, along with this, ‘conjoined to it as to a rule and prior cause’, to which this habit is subordinated insofar as it is a mover, - and this subordination or conformity is the essential idea of virtue; and the absolute form, as it is precisely mover under such a respect, is precisely active for an act that has a like respect (because what agrees with the ruled agrees with the rule), and thus the habit ‘as it is a virtue’ is precisely a mover to an act morally right, which - as it is absolutely such a form - is absolutely active for such an act ‘in its substance’, nor does it there have the idea of subordinate cause with respect to prudence.” ¹⁸ attributes to the habit (as it is a form in the genus of quality) the being of virtue, when the habit is of its nature naturally conform to prudence, - and so the habit that is a moral virtue indicates nothing in absolute entity other than is indicated by a habit such in nature, but does not indicate a virtue, if it be without prudence; and consequently it can have no other causality as it is a virtue than as it is such a natural quality, save that ‘as it is conjoined with prudence’ it is of a nature to be second cause - directed as it were by prudence - with respect to the common effect of both; but as it is without prudence it cannot be second cause with respect to the same effect (just as sight in a phrenetic cannot be a free power by participation, because he is unable to have use of will, which is a free power by essence -but in someone healthy sight does have use of free power by participation, and it is as it were a second cause with respect to the will). But still, when it is a second cause with respect to prudence, it has a proper causality - agreeing with it in its order of causing -precisely from the fact that it is such a form and a certain quality in nature, but not by respect of conformity or conjunction with prudence, because although a second cause joined to a first acts otherwise than when it is without it, yet it does not have its proper active virtue from such conjunction, but from its absolute nature.

67. [Conclusion to the fifth way] - Neither, therefore, on the part of the act insofar as it is morally good, nor on the part of the habit insofar as it is a moral virtue, can there be found any special idea according to which a virtue ‘as it is a virtue’ is a principle of an act insofar as the act is morally good save the one which is on the part of the habit and the act as concerns their nature.

68. [What one should think of the fifth way] - This fifth way, therefore, about the action of a moral virtue with respect to the act as it is morally good, should not be treated as other than the ways that touch on the substance of the habit and the substance of the act [n.67], - and so, in brief, as to the whole of the fifth way, one should hold either the third or the fourth way [nn.32, 46] about every habit.

B. Solution of the Question by Maintaining the Third Way

69. By maintaining the third way (which seems to attribute more to the habit), it can thus be said that, just as, if there were some heaviness in a stone that would not be a sufficient active principle with respect to descent downwards, yet it would be a partial active principle (as will be said in II d.2 p.2 q.6 nn.2-11 about a sufficient heaviness, because it is a total active principle with respect to descent downwards), that - I say -diminished heaviness, along with another moving power moving it to the descent, could act in a diminished way, such that, with the other moving power acting with equal effort, the descent that is caused by that other extrinsic moving power and by the diminished heaviness moving intrinsically would be quicker than a descent that is caused by the extrinsic moving power alone moving with equal effort, yet the extrinsic moving power could, with so much effort, move a neutral body (namely one which had no heaviness or lightness), just as this body would be moved by intrinsic heaviness and by an extrinsic moving power acting weakly; - so, in the proposed case, the habit moves the power as a sort of weight, which, however, is of itself not sufficient for actively eliciting the operation, but the virtue alone of the active power, without such weight, is sufficient; but when both come together, yet such that there is not on the part of the power a greater effort now than before, a more perfect operation is elicited now than could be elicited before by the power itself alone.

70. And common experience seems to be in favor of this way, because anyone can experience that, when he has been habituated, he can with equal effort have a more perfect operation than he could have when not habituated (which perfection of the act could not be attributed to the habit, if the habit were only an inclining passive principle), because at any rate, as it seems, in the prior instant of nature in which the operation is elicited - before it is received in the power - there would be an equal idea of active principle in the eliciting, and so a perfect operation would be elicited with equal effort by an habituated and by a non-habituated power.

C. To the Arguments when Maintaining the Third Way

71. [To the principal negative arguments] - To the principal arguments. By holding this way [sc. the third], I reply to the first argument [n.15]. Although it be said that a habit is not an absolute form, because of those words of the Philosopher in Physics 7 [n.15], yet, by holding any quality to be an absolute form (and a quality of the first species is no less a quality than one of another species [Categories 8.8b25-11a38]), it can be said that something which the relation is the same as can be an active principle, although relation is not an active principle; nor either is that which the relation is the same as an active principle by reason of the relation, but by reason of the absolute which the relation itself is the same as. The distinction between these things, namely relation and the absolute essence which the relation is the same as, can be plain from many other things said above, where formal non-identity is posited along with perfect real identity [I d.2 nn.388-410, d.8 n.191-217]; and this will be plainer in II d.1 q.4 nn.21-25, where it will be said that the relation of the creature to God is the same as the absolute essence of the created thing and yet is not formally the same. To this extent, then, can the Philosopher by expounded, that ‘habit is in relation to something’, because by identity it includes the respect;Note of Scotus: “There is a doubt about the respect with the per se object, whether it is identical with the habit. It is certain that the respect whereby it is said to be a virtue - which is respect to a rule - is an extrinsic addition; hence it is not, on account of Aristotle’s intention, necessary to proceed to a respect identical with the habit, but it is sufficient that any habit be not in relation to something in divisible degrees. On the contrary: that whereby the place ‘accident through accident’ is not divided, neither that of which it is the accident? - Perhaps one idea in Physics 7 is about identical respect, another about ‘per accidens’ respect. ¹⁹ and yet it is not a respect only, but something absolute, - and therefore action can belong to it as to a principle of acting.

72. In confirmation of the reason [n.16] it can be said that a greater absoluteness is required in a term of motion than in a principle of acting, because nothing can be the term of a motion that has the same relation to itself. It is not so with the active principle.Interpolated text: “Or what is more to the purpose, it can be said that the reason does not prove the proposition save in a diminished way, - and to get its conclusion, which it intends, one must handle it in a way other than the words primarily signify (on which matter I do not now wish to dwell), or one would have to make clear other reasons for it so as to prove principally the said conclusion (this conclusion ‘whether a habit is something absolute’ will be spoken of elsewhere).” ²⁰,Note of Scotus: “One must add to the Philosopher’s minor [n.15] as follows: ‘every habit is identically in relation to something not according to divisible stages.’ And in this way the major is true: ‘whatever is identically in relation to something not according to divisible stages cannot terminate motion’ [n.72]. - But it can well terminate change. Hence a habit is not generated by way of continuity (so that its generation should thus be motion), but if it has stages, each is indivisible and in each the object is indivisibly regarded; and each is generated by simple change, which does not terminate motion in that form (but perhaps motion in the passions or certain other things), for more and less in a form do not suffice for motion in that form unless each stage is divisible, so that one can proceed continuously from one to the other. For motion is not composed of changes. Therefor the Philosopher’s middle is not ‘habit is in relation to something’, - but it is this ‘in relation to something not according to divisible stages’, if in each stage it indivisibly regards that with which it is identically relative. And from this perhaps, as from something more manifest, it follows that the absolute itself - which it thus regards - does not have divisible stages; but this does not follow as from the cause; rather the fact the absolute does not have divisible stages is the cause of the fact that ‘the respect is not divisible’ (because a relation takes the more and less from its foundation), not conversely, although sometimes the converse could be the cause of its becoming known. But this indivisibility of respect identical with the absolute does not prove that it is not the principle of acting, as is plain about any active form - if any is indivisible, it has ‘a respect identical’ with God. Therefore it does not follow ‘it does not terminate motion because of an indivisible identical relation, therefore it is for that reason not a principle of acting’, because an identical indivisible relation is repugnant to a from acquired through motion, not however to an active form.” ²¹

73. To the second argument [n.17] I say that of one action there is one principle per se, and that in one order of being principle; however, there can be many principles in diverse orders of being principle, which do not have a unity insofar as they are principles save the unity of order, although sometimes along with unity of order comes the fact that there is a unity of subject and accident, but this is accidental.

So in the proposed case. Habit and power are two active powers of different order, each is in its order ‘a per se one’. And along with this unity of order there comes the unity of accident and subject among these ordered things, and this is accidental, because if the first cause could be conjoined to the second without such an informing of one by the other as they are conjoined with when one is informed by the other, they could in the same way have sufficient unity for causing one effect. When therefore it is said that ‘of one action there is an active cause per se one’, I concede that there is, namely in one order, - but in another order of being principle there can well be one cause and another cause, and that whether this and that cause constitute ‘a one per accidens’ or not but only ‘a one in unity of order’; and although there be here ‘a unity per accidens’, yet there is always still preserved a unity of order of principle to thing caused by the principle.

74. By this the response is plain to the confirmation about the unity of formal principle [n.18]; for I concede such unity in what is the principle ‘by which’ in one order of being principle.

75. To the other [n.19] I say that an accident can well be the principle of some effect that can be received in its subject, just as the intelligible species is the principle of understanding received in the possible intellect; and thus can a form be the principle ‘by which’ with respect to the change of its subject.

76. To the other [n.20], about sensitive appetite, I say that it has the idea of active principle in some way, although not of being active freely; and this is what Damascene means, that ‘sense does not lead but is led’; that is, it is not master of its own action, which is ‘to lead’, - but with respect to its own action it is determined by the agent itself to a definite operation, and this is ‘to be led’. Also, that the sensitive appetite is not free, although it is in some way active, and the sense itself similarly - this will be spoken of elsewhere [II d.29 q. un nn.3-4, Suppl. d.25 q. un nn.8, 24].

77. [To the arguments against the second way] - To the arguments that are made against the second way, which posits that the habit is an active principle of intensity in the act, because they seem to be against this way [sc. the third] (to this extent, that it posits the act ‘elicited by the habit and the power acting with equal effort’ to be more intense than the act elicited by the power alone), I show, by running through them, how they are not repugnant to this way.

78. About the first [n.28] it is plain that this way does not posit two distinct things in act possessing two principles, but the same ‘per se one’ act has two principles in diverse orders of being principle [n.40].

79. To the second [n.29] I concede the inference, namely that when the power is operating with equal effort ‘the act is always more intense when the habit is working along with it than when it is not’, but from this the unfitting result does not follow -which does result against that way [sc. the second] - namely that when the power is acting with any effort whatever ‘the act is always equally intense’; this does follow there, because all of the intensity is attributed to the habit, - but it does not follow here, because all of the intensity is attributed to two causes; and it is attributed to the power, indeed, according to its greater or lesser effort, - but to the habit always equally, as far as concerns itself [n.32].

80. To the third [n.30] I concede that a will could come to exist in pure nature that would elicit a more intense act than another will along with the habit does; and this is not unfitting if one posits these two to be ordered principles, as it would be unfitting if one posits the whole intensity to be from the habit or attributes the whole intensity to the habit and not to the power.

81. The same point answers the fourth argument [n.31].

82. [To the arguments against the third way specifically] - To the arguments made against the third opinion [nn.41-45].

To the first [n.41] one should deny the major, because one should say that two equivocal partial, but not total, causes of distinct species can be causes for each other.

83. To the proof of it, which is through ‘the eminence of an equivocal cause’ I reply: this proof holds of a total cause, and I do not posit a circle in total equivocal causes. - To the other proof I say that two effects, when compared to their one common cause, can have a mutual order to each other in nature of partial cause, - as intelligible species and understanding, when comparing the agent and possible intellect, because with respect to intellection the species is partial cause, and ‘intellection’ can be posited as a sort of cause of the species insofar as it includes it.

84. To the other [n.43] one can say that the generative act of the habit need not be the idea of acting ‘by which’, as the generated habit can be the idea ‘by which’, - just as the virtue of the sun cannot be the principle ‘by which’ with respect to every act with respect to which the form of what is generated by the sun is the principle ‘by which’. And when it is said that ‘whatever is the cause of a cause etc.’ [n.43] - this is true as the remote principle ‘by which’ (when there is a remote principle ‘by which’), but not as the immediate principle ‘by which’.

85. To the third [n.44] I say that a habit - at whatever stage - cannot supply the whole place of the power, because although its causality is diminished, and the causality too of the power is diminished, yet the causality of the habit is of a different idea from the causality of the power; because, although the causality of the power is diminished, yet the habit is ‘in its idea’ the second cause, namely which the power is able to use, - and thus, if it is increased to infinity, it could never become the principle that uses (as the generative virtue of the father, however much it is increased, cannot become the virtue of the sun). The causality of the power, therefore, is not of the same idea as the causality of the habit, nor can the habit, when made intense, reach to its level, but they are always of a different idea; and yet the habit, when causing along with the power, causes a more perfect act than would be caused by one of them alone.

86. To the last one [n.45]: the supposition will be denied in the following material ‘On the Increase of Charity’ [nn. 225, 249].

D. To the Principal Positive Arguments while Maintaining the Fourth Way

87. He who wishes to maintain the fourth way [n.46] is able to reply to the principal reasons adduced for the first part [nn.6-14]:

To the first [n.6]: the power (or the one who has the power) uses the habit, because the habit is itself a certain inclination to action; not indeed as a power active for acting, but as a prior form inclines to a posterior form, as heaviness downwards.

88. To the four conditions [n.7]. One would say that pleasure [nn.7-8] is from the agreement of the operation with the power and with the object which the operation is about; this agreement is of the object with the power insofar as the power receives the action, not insofar as it elicits it, because mere making as making is never pleasure, and therefore one should, because of the pleasure, never posit the idea of active principle [n.49]. - Likewise, ease, absence of impediment, and promptitude [nn.7, 9-11] are set down under the idea of the passive, because the passive can receive with difficulty, and with impediment and slowly or not promptly, when it is not disposed, and by reason of the indisposition of the passive thing there is difficulty there and slowness. Therefore the agent can act without impediment and promptly and easily because of the disposition of the passive thing, and habit is such a disposition in the passive thing [nn.50-51]. When it is said, therefore, that ‘there is no easiness for undergoing because the passive is supremely disposed’ [n.9], I reply: by the abnegation of the contrary it is supremely disposed, but not through the positing of an agreeable disposition. An example about dry wood and neutral wood: wood that is neutral indeed is supremely disposed to heat by way of privation, through lack of any opposed disposition, - but it is not disposed positively by the positing of an agreeable disposition of the sort that dryness is; and if this agreement was accompanied by sense the dry wood would be heated with pleasure, but not so the neutral wood, because the received form does not similarly agree with it.

89. To the other, about inclination [n.12], one could say that it inclines as the prior form to the taking up of the later form, as heaviness inclines to be downwards (even according to those who say that heaviness with respect to downward descent is not an active principle [n.69]); nor need what thus passively inclines be the reason for receiving the form to which it inclines, just as neither is heaviness the receptive principle ‘where’ [nn.53, 46].

90. To the other, about science [n.13], I say that science, by which the soul is reduced from essential potency to accidental potency, is the intelligible species of the object itself, and about that I concede that it is the active principle with respect to consideration [nn.83, 75]. But the species is not the habit we are speaking of, which is a certain quality left behind from acts frequently elicited; for the species itself naturally precedes the first act elicited about the object which it concerns, and although this species could be rooted in the intellect and - once it has been rooted - could be called a habit, it is however not the habit which is generated from acts repeatedly elicited, as was said [n.90]. Therefore all the words that are spoken about the species as about a habit do not progress to the understanding of this question, nor either do those words that take science for this species (the distinction of these habits, namely of the habit which is the intelligible species and the habit of the intellective part properly speaking, will be plain in II d.3 p.2 q.3 n.15). Through the same point is clear the response to what is added about the being ‘by which’ [n.13]; I say that science, taking it strictly for the habit acquired from speculations, is not properly that by which we speculate but is a certain inclination for easily and pleasantly speculating; but that by which as by the active principle - on the part of the object - we speculate is the intelligible species.

91. To the other [n.14] one can say that the intellective habit - or the practical habit - can be called active or making because it is inclined to action; not that action belongs to it as to the active principle, but as terminating its inclination, - such that the action belongs either to the habituated power itself or to another power as to the active principle; just as choice ‘practically right’ is actively elicited by the will and not by prudence which, however, is the practical habit with respect to that choice (because it inclines to it), although it is not the active principle of it.

E. To the Arguments for the Fifth Way

92. [At the same time to all of them] - To the arguments adduced for the fifth way, which seem to show that moral habit, insofar as it is a virtue, is an active principle of an act insofar as the act is moral [nn.56-59], I reply that moral goodness in an act (as was said before [n.62]) is the completeness of all the conditions and circumstances, and this principally so that these conditions be dictated by right reason as needing to be present in the act. Simply necessary, then, for the moral goodness of a moral act is that a complete dictate of right reason precede it, to which dictate it be conform as the measured to the measure.

93. But it is not necessary that the declaration be from some intellective habit, namely from prudence, nor that the act conform to the dictate be elicited by some moral appetitive power; for right dictate simply precedes prudence, because by it the first degree of prudence is generated, and thus right choice simply precedes the moral habit, because by the choice itself moral virtue in the first degree is generated; at that point, then, in a first act, and correctly, someone gives a dictate without generated prudence and rightly chooses morally without generated moral virtue. However, prudence, generated from the first act or from several other right dictates, inclines more to eliciting similar dictates, that is, to rightly drawing conclusions of practical syllogisms about all the circumstances that ought to be present in the act to be elicited; likewise moral virtue, generated after the first act, inclines more to eliciting acts similar to those from which it was generated.

94. However, one must understand that what is generated about moral virtue is a certain quality, in whose idea - as it is absolutely such a quality - is not included its conformity with prudence; for the same quality could be generated from similar acts, in the same species, elicited without prudence (nay with erroneous reason, if it were so [n.65]), but that quality - which is generated from those acts according to a species of nature - is not a virtue from the fact that it is a quality, but there is further necessarily required its conformity with prudence, or, which is more express, its coexistence with prudence in the same actor [n.66]. For always indeed, whether prudence is present or not, the habit is of a nature to be conform to prudence, if prudence were there (just as the habit of abstaining, generated from acts done from an erroneous reason, is always - as far as depends on itself - of a nature to be conform to prudence, although prudence not be present in it), in the way that another habit, generated from excessive acts, is not of a nature to be conform. When the quality, therefore, which is of a nature to be conform to prudence, coexists with prudence, then it has not only an aptitudinal but an actual conformity with prudence, because both habits incline to similar things [n.93], - and the act elicited according to the inclination of those two habits is morally good; but if any act were elicited according to the quality alone that is materially moral virtue, and prudence does not coexist in the same actor nor is inclining to that act, the act would not be morally good.

95. Thus, therefore, it is plain that the quality which is materially a moral virtue (which has completely the idea of moral virtue through this, that it coexists with prudence) is related to prudence - when prudence is present - as second cause to first cause, and this in respect of the same common effect to be elicited by them; for then prudence is as it were the prior cause and the moral habit as it were the posterior cause. But these two causes, when they come together at the same time to elicit the act, can attribute to the act the moral goodness which the latter habit alone, if it were without prudence or right reason, could not attribute to it; to attribute moral goodness, indeed, is to attribute conformity to right reason - and this is attributedNote by Scotus: “Nothing: the extreme [sc. prudence] to which the other [sc. the moral habit] is referred does not give anything to its correlative effectively but only terminatively.” I.e. [Vatican editors] the habit as it is completely a moral habit, just as it causes nothing in respect of the act, so it gives nothing to the act. ²² by that quality, not from the fact alone that it is a quality, but from the fact that in causing it coexists with prudence, which is inclining it at the same time.

97. And one must note that this goodness, as it is attributed to prudence so inclining, does not, as was said at the beginning [nn.92-93], necessarily belong to the habit of prudence, nor to it solely, but to the act which would be of a nature to be an act of prudence, which is right dictate; for if right dictate is present, and if appetite desires in accordance with it - as if in accordance with a measure - the act is morally right; and if that right dictate were not present, but prudence was present (according to which the intellect could dictate rightly), still the act - elicited without right dictate - would not be perfectly good. Therefore, when prudence is not present, the act which is right dictate suffices for dictating the right act; but, when prudence is present, prudence does not suffice without its own elicited act, and thus the rightness which prudence attributes to the moral act it attributes by the mediation of the proper act of prudence.

98. [To the individual arguments] - To the authorities, therefore, adduced on behalf of the fifth way, which seem to say that virtue, whereby it is virtue, effectively causes the moral goodness of the act:

First to the statement from Ethics 2 that virtue “makes his work good” [n.56], I say that either it does so by inclining, and this belongs to it from the fact that it is this quality in species of nature, - or, since this is not sufficient (for it would incline thus without prudence), it does so whereby it is virtue, that is, whereby it coexists with prudence; it does so indeed in its own class of cause, because it does so as second cause, - and this by virtue of the superior cause, which is prudence. If therefore the third way is maintained, namely about the activity of the habit [n.32], then it does so actively, but as partial and second cause; but if the fourth way be maintained [n.46], then it does so by way of inclination, and this, not from the fact alone that it inclines, but from the fact that the virtue itself along with prudence-virtue inclines.

99. To the other, about ‘moderating’ [n.58], I say that moral virtue does not actively moderate passion, as if, when the passion has already been excited - by the object - it makes it to be less; for a pleasant object, when present, naturally moves according to the utmost of itself. But the habit can make the object less agreeable to an habituated power than to a non-habituated power; for just as it is more disagreeable for a heavy object to be upwards than for a neutral object (although heaviness were not the active principle of descent), so some pleasant excessive thing would be in itself agreeable to the power, but to the power when habituated by a habit inclining it to moderate acts that pleasant excessive thing is disagreeable - or is not as pleasant and agreeable. And to this extent, as if by formal or virtual repugnance to the habit, the habit moderates the disagreeable or excessive object, lest the pleasant thing give immoderate pleasure; and from this there does not follow any activity of the habit, just as neither of humidity in a piece of wood, although the humidity moderates the fire so that it does not heat immoderately or strongly, as it does a dry body.

In another way it can be said that virtue moderates a passion that is not already generated or inhering but coming to be, to the extent it inclines the power - and this with coexisting prudence - to flee immoderate pleasant things that are of a nature to introduce immoderate pleasures, and only to admit pleasant things that are of a nature to give moderate pleasure. And in this respect indeed it does moderate, not by diminishing an already existing pleasure, but by warding off in advance an immoderate pleasure - which would be present.

100. To the other, about the fact that ‘without justice no one can operate justly’ [n.59], I reply: I say that in the first act, when there is a right dictate generative of prudence and the choice of someone just is conform to it [n.93], there the chooser not only does what is just but does it justly. But one should understand that he operates non-justly - without justice - according to the whole perfection according to which someone could act justly, one of which perfections is pleasure and facility in operating, which does not belong to a non-habituated power as it does to a habituated power.

II. To the First Question

A. The Opinion which is Attributed to Peter Lombard

101. As to the first question, the opinion of the Master is said to be that the indwelling Holy Spirit alone, without any intermediate habit informing the will, moves the will to a meritorious act in a way other than he moves it to acts of belief and hope (for he moves it to acts of belief and hope through the medium of the habits of faith and hope), and in this way the Master is said to have denied any created charity.

1. Arguments for the Opinion attributed to Peter Lombard

102. One can argue for this conclusion in two ways.

103. [First way] - The first way is taken from form’s or habit’s imperfection, or from its non-necessity for causing movement.

104. Here the argument goes first as follows: as a natural act is related to a natural or acquired habit, so is the act of an infused habit to an infused habit; but an acquired habit only bestows pleasurable acting and a facility in the power for the act (but it does not give the substance of the act), as is plain from the preceding question [nn.47-51, 88]; therefore in like manner an infused habit bestows only pleasurable acting, or would so bestow it if it were present within. But he who was a sinner before and is now justified does not elicit an act of loving God with pleasure; for resistance by his vices and persistence in good works seem as difficult to him as when he was in his sins, or not much easier, until by battle and victory over his passions he has acquired some contrary habit, and then he will act with pleasure. Therefore the justified sinner has no infused habit, because in that case he would, if it were present in him, act with pleasure.

105. Further, if a supernatural good be shown to a will in its purely natural state, the will would love it well enough because it has the object sufficiently close to it; therefore an infused habit is not required for loving a supernatural good. The proof of the assumption is that if a lesser good when shown to the will has the wherewithal to be loved, then a greater good has it too; therefore if the will in its purely natural state can love something, it can love the supreme good if that good be shown to it.

106. Further, the act of loving that would belong to that supernatural habit would also be supernatural, and so it would be created immediately (for supernatural things are not brought into being by any transition from something, but only by creation), and if the act would be something created then it does not presuppose anything for its creation.

107. Further, a habit can be used when the possessor of it wants to (Averroes above, On the Soul com.18); but no one has experience of being able to use this habit when he wants to; for he cannot, when he wants, elicit with pleasure and ease fervent acts of loving God, - as is plain in the case of contemplatives, who sometimes after some effort experience themselves possessed of great devotion and sometimes after equal effort possessed of a lesser devotion or none.

108. [Second way] - The second way is taken from the fact that without a habit the Holy Spirit suffices for causing motion.

109. Here the argument goes first as follows: the first cause can do of itself what it can do along with a second cause when the second cause is only an agent cause (or the major is taken this way: ‘the first cause can do of itself whatever it can do with a second cause that is not part of the essence of the thing’; I add this because of the form and matter in a composite thing, - for God cannot make a composite thing without the intrinsic parts that compose it); but a habit, if it is present within, does not have a necessary causality with respect to its acts save after some manner of agent causality (plainly at least not after the manner of a formal cause, or of a material cause ‘about which’ [Prologue n.188]);     therefore its causality is extrinsic. Therefore whatever the Holy Spirit can cause in the act along with the habit, he can cause without the habit; plurality without necessity should, it seems, not be posited,Tr. A clear anticipation of Ockham’s razor, so called, namely that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. ²³ because it is superfluous, -therefore , etc     .

110. Further, in order for a will possessed of a habit to act in accordance with the habit, the cooperation of the Holy Spirit is necessary, otherwise he would not be the first cause in every action of creatures; but he does not cooperate because the will has the habit, because then a created will would use the Holy Spirit as a second cause, and the Holy Spirit would not be the first but the second cause with respect to the will that has the habit, because he would be determined by the will’s habit to act along with the will;     therefore , on the contrary, because he cooperates with the will therefore the will operates in accordance with the habit. But the Holy Spirit can cooperate as equally with a will - in the first instant of its nature - that has the habit of charity as with a will that does not have it; therefore etc     .

111. Further, the Son of God was thus united to our nature, because he was doing the works of that nature in such a way that the acts were truly said to belong to the Son of God as to the acting supposit; and yet there was by this fact no derogation from the assumed nature that prevented it being also the principle of its own operations. Therefore, by an argument from similars, the Holy Spirit can be in some way united to the will such that he himself does the works of the will without there being by this fact any derogation from the nature of the will in its idea as an operative power that would prevent it being able to be the principle of its own operations.

112. Further, the intellect is more passive than the will, and less active; therefore it is more in need of something to activate it so that it has power for its own act. But the intellect is posited as being capable, without any form informing it, of the beatific vision by the mere fact that the essence of God is as it were present to it by way of form [n.193]; therefore much more can the will be capable, without any form informing it, of every one of its acts by the fact that the Holy Spirit is for it as it were the form for performing acts of love.

2. Arguments against the Opinion attributed to Peter Lombard

113. Against this conclusion, whether it be according to the intention of the Master or not, one can argue in two ways assumed from the faith: the first is taken from the justification of the sinner or from divine acceptance, and this without any elicited act, - the second is taken from the nature of a meritorious act.

114. [First way] - From the first way the argument goes first as follows: the sinner before repentance is unjust, after repentance just, in the way the Scripture calls the sinner ‘unjust’ and him who has been freed from sin ‘just’. - From this the argument runs: injustice, since it is formally a privation, cannot be taken away from anyone unless the opposite habit is given to him, because ‘to deprive of a privation’ is to put a habit in its place, for opposites are immediate in the case of a subject naturally fitted for them (Metaphysics 10.4.1055a33, 55b3-6); the soul is naturally fitted to receive justice; therefore the one who is justified, having been made just from being unjust, receives the habit opposite to the privation; for if there were nothing formally more present in him now than before, he would not more lack the privation now than he lacked it before.

115. Further, a sinner before repentance is not worthy of eternal life, but after repentance he is worthy of eternal life; but he is not worthy save by something formally inhering in him to which, according to the rules of divine justice, it is judged that eternal life should be given, and he had nothing of this sort before; therefore something positive is in the just man formally, by which he is worthy of eternal life.

116. Further, God does not accept a sinner for eternal life, but he does accept him who has been justified. I ask then what it is ‘to accept for eternal life’? It is not ‘to will -with the will of being well pleased - to beatify him for the present now’, because then God would immediately beatify him; therefore it is ‘to will that person- in accord with the disposition he now has - to be worthy of such a reward’ whom before God did not will to be worthy of such a reward. The difference here cannot, as it seems, be posited in the divine will, because nothing is new there, for the divine will is immutable; therefore it is because of a difference on the part of the person, because the divine will wants any person disposed in the same way to be disposed in the same way.

117. The confirmation of this reason [n.116] is that divine volition, because it is in itself one act, does not have the idea of opposed or distinct acts - as acts of willing and not willing - in the absence of any distinction in the connoted objects; for this ‘divine willing’ is not some willing of being well-pleased - and likewise not some not willing -unless the objects are distinct, otherwise contradictories will be true without any distinction to cause that truth; therefore, since God wills the justified person for some being for which he does not will the sinner, on account of which difference he is said in Scripture ‘to love the just’ and ‘to hate sinners’ [Proverbs 15.9; Ecclesiastes 12.3, 7; Psalm 5.7], the consequence is that this difference - according to its idea on the part of the divine volition - necessarily requires an actual distinction on the part of the objects themselves. Therefore the person in question is disposed in himself in one way when he is said to be ‘beloved of God’ or ‘accepted for eternal life’ but in another way when he is ‘hated’.

118. Lastly there is, according to this first way, an argument as follows, that if there is in the soul of this person nothing after repentance other than what was there before, it does not seem that his soul is disposed any differently toward God, nor God toward him, because this difference does not seem to be on account of any change that has happened on the part of God. Therefore if it be conceded, as seems necessary, that he be in some way differently disposed toward God, and conversely God toward him, then this is because of a change in him, - and so something will come to be formally in him de novo; but faith and hope do not come to be in him de novo, because they have remained in the sinner, - therefore charity does.

119. One might also argue, according to his first way, that God, who was offended by the sinner before, remits the offence when the sinner later repents; this is not because of any change in the divine will (as there can be in me when I remit an offense); therefore it is because of the fact that he to whom the offense is remitted is differently disposed in himself.

120. But this argument is not conclusive, as will be plain in IV d.16 q.2 n.19, where it will be said that God remits the offense to the sinner first in nature before he gives the sinner grace. Hence the arguments - if any according to this first way are valid - must be taken from passive acceptance and from order or dignity for eternal life, which accord with a justified person and not with a sinner, as has just been argued [n.119]; but they must not be taken from mere remission of the offense [n.113], which is in itself a lesser thing than to be just.

121. [Second way] - From the second way, namely from the idea of a meritorious act [n.113], the argument goes as follows:

Nothing is said to act formally in any action unless the principle of the action is the form of the agent; this is taken from On the Soul 2.2.414a12-14 where, from the fact that the soul is ‘that whereby we live and sense’     etc . [n.13], the conclusion is drawn that the soul is the act and form of what performs those acts; therefore     , since meritorious action belongs to the will, or to the man working through his will, the result is that that by which he meritoriously acts is his form. But that by which he meritoriously acts cannot be pure nature, because then he could meritoriously act from his natural powers alone, which seems to be the error of Pelagius; therefore something supernatural is required; clearly not faith or hope, because these remain in a sinner, - therefore charity.

122. Further, no action is in the power of an agent unless that agent has a form by which it can act; for if it could act through something assisting it - something merely extrinsic - which is not in its power, such an action is not in its power, just as neither is the assistance of the extrinsic thing in its power. But the Holy Spirit assisting the will is not in the power of the will, just as neither is universally the action of a superior cause in the power of an inferior cause. Therefore if the will could act from the assistance alone and did not have a form in itself by which it was sufficiently able to proceed to a meritorious act, the result follows that the meritorious act would not be in its power, -which seems discordant.

123. Further, if the Holy Spirit is moving the will in a special way in the case of a meritorious action, the consequence is that the motion is cause of something in the will itself and that, with respect to it, the will does not have any causality but only a passive receptivity; either then that something is an act of loving, and then the result is that the act of loving is in no way from the will; or it is some other thing which naturally precedes the act of loving, - and this other thing I call ‘a habit’, because a perfection prior to act in a power (a perfection that is habitual or can be habitual) seems to be a habit.

124. Further, fourth, the identity of the Father with the Son is greater than any union of the Holy Spirit with the will can be; but the Father is not said, because of this identity, to do anything by the Son, as is plain from Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.1 n.2, because ‘the Father is not wise by generated wisdom’; therefore much less will the will be said to do anything because of the union with it of ‘the Holy Spirit at work’.

B. Scotus’ own Response

125. For the solution of this question three things need to be looked at: first, whether some supernatural habit needs to be posited that gives grace to a nature capable of being beatified; second, whether it is simply necessary to posit such a habit so that such a nature may be beatified; and third, what the Master thought on this question, on account of the many things imputed to him.

1. Whether some Supernatural Habit needs to be Posited that gives Grace to a Nature Capable of being Beatified

126. [A supernatural habit bestowing grace is present within] - As to the first article [n.125] one can say that from no act which we experience, whether from the substance of the act, or from the intensity of the act, or from the pleasure or ease in doing it, or from the goodness or the moral rectitude of the act, can we conclude that some such supernatural habit is present; because from none of them can anyone possessed of charity know with certitude that he exists in charity, namely from the fact that an act with such and such intensity is experienced to exist within him, or to be in him with pleasure and ease, or to be consonant with right reason.

127. Now the reason that one cannot conclude from the act or from any condition of the act that such a habit exists within is that either the act is able of its own power alone to have all the aforesaid features, when there is concurrence of right reason (as is the case when one holds the fourth way set down in the preceding solution [n.46]), or, if some habit would, because of any of the aforesaid conditions [n.126], be concurrent with the act, it could be some acquired habit; for acquired friendship could give just as much intensity to the act (as second cause, along with the power as first cause [n.40]), could also bestow just as much pleasure and ease, could even be a habit just as consonant with right reason, because an elicited act would have no clearly apparent condition from which the conclusion would necessarily follow that it was elicited according to a supernatural habit.

128. But if you say ‘the will is moved suddenly to acting intensely, easily, pleasurably, and this in a way consonant with supernatural reason (that is, consonant with the dictate of faith), but the will cannot suddenly acquire a habit of ordered friendship consonant with the faith, therefore it has some non-acquired habit whereby it is inclined suddenly to act’, - I reply: the will can be moved to natural acts with suddenness enough, and these natural acts are totally subject to its power, because - as Augustine says Retractions I ch.22 n.4 - “nothing is as much in the power of the will as the will itself”; therefore the proposed conclusion cannot be drawn from this suddenness.

129. I say, therefore, that over and above all the aforesaid conditions, namely the intensity of the act, pleasure and ease in acting, rectitude or goodness and conformity with right reason (right either according to the dictate of prudence or according to the dictate of faith), over and above - I say - all these, there is one condition in the act that is a matter of belief, namely that the act is acceptable to God; not indeed merely with the common acceptance by which God accepts every creature (which is even the way he wills the act that is substrate to a sin, otherwise the act would not have its existence from him), but with a special acceptance, which is in the divine will an ordering toward eternal life of this sort of act as of something condignly deserving of the reward. And in this way we have belief that our nature is capable of beatification, is just, is habitually accepted, -that is, that when it is not actually operating, yet still the divine will is ordering it to eternal life as being worthy of so great a good, in accord with the disposition that it possesses habitually in itself. And it is because of this habitual acceptance of a nature capable of beatification even when it is not operating, and because of the actual acceptance of an act elicited by such a nature, that one must posit a single supernatural habit whereby he who formally possesses it is accepted by God and whereby his elicited act is accepted as meritorious. So the nature or the act does not seem to be accepted without some habit informing them, because - in accordance with what has been argued [nn.116-117, 122] - God does not seem to have a will different in nature about an object that has in no way been made different [nn.116-117]; nor would even an act ‘as it is acceptable to God’ seem to be in the power of an agent unless that by which he formally acted were his form [n.122].

130. [Doubt 1] - But there is a doubt about how this habit may be the reason for accepting the nature and the act.

131. The reason indeed for accepting the nature seems to be just a sort of comeliness of nature, pleasing to the divine will, such that, whether the habit is posited as active or non-active, from the mere fact that it is such a form, beautifying and adorning the soul, it can be a reason of acceptance and a reason for accepting the nature.

132. But for the acceptance of an act more is required than that the agent have this spiritual comeliness, otherwise he who has such a habit could not have any act that was indifferent, nor could commit venial sin, which is discordant [II d.41 q. un nn.3-4]. - The proof of the consequence is that neither of these things [indifferent acts and venial sin] takes away the comeliness from the actor, and so each of them would be accepted, if an act were to be accepted merely from the comeliness of the actor.

133. One must therefore say that the habit, besides the fact that it is a spiritual comeliness, also inclines toward definite acts, and this either non-actively, according to the fourth way posited in the preceding solution [n.46], or (which seems more to be the case) actively, according to the third way [n.32].

134. The proof is as follows:

First, because otherwise it would seem that, without the habit, one could have a very intense act of loving God, and this both as a wayfarer and in the fatherland, and thus also have beatitude; for in the instant of nature in which an act is elicited by an active principle, if the will alone were the active principle, it would ‘insofar as active’ be a principle that was just as perfect without the habit as with it, and the power alone could, with equal effort, perform the act (as is plain [n.70]); therefore a most perfect act of loving God could be had without such a habit.

135. A second proof to the same effect is that otherwise what Augustine says [Pseudo-Augustine Hypognosticon III ch.1 n.20] about free choice would not seem to be true, namely that ‘grace is related to free choice as a rider to a horse’, because the rider actively directs and moves the horse, in some way or other. - Nor even would that remark seem to be true which he is says in a letter to Boniface [Augustine, Epist. 186 ad Paulinum ch.3 n.10]: ‘With the will accompanying,’ he says, ‘not going ahead; a foot follower, not a lord’. Now the will would not be a foot follower to grace if grace itself had no causality.Note by Scotus: “There is a position [from St. Thomas Aquinas and Godfrey of Fontaines] that for a meritorious act the will along with charity is not sufficient but a special influence is required, - not the influence of a permanent form but of a motion, just as an instrument has motion from the principal agent over and above its own form. The first reason: a natural form is given to something so that it might act, because such action is proportioned to it; grace is not given to us so that we might act but so that we might be acted on (Romans 8.14: “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”), and this because such action is not proportioned. - A confirmation comes from John 4.14: “the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up” etc. An example: grace is like a weight, not like art; a weight is not an operative principle, and grace is like the spherical shape given to a mass of lead. Another example: grace is compared to the active generative power of a mother; a mother has this force (because she has a human soul), but in a diminished way and not as capable of acting unless it be moved by the active force of the father. Second reason: grace now does not perfectly heal nature. The point is taken from Augustine On Nature and Grace I ch.26 n.29, where he says in general: ‘as the healthy eye cannot see without light, so neither can even the just soul live rightly without the spiritual light’. - A confirmation comes from Romans 7.25 about ‘the law of sin’, and 8.26 ‘we know not what we should pray for as we ought’ and ‘the Spirit makes intercession’. Third reason: an act is considered as it is from free choice, as it is from free choice informed by grace, third - in addition to this - as it is from free choice moved by the Holy Spirit. In the first way it is not even worthy of a reward; in the second way it is worthy (just as is also a baptized child) but not with condign worth (John 4.14: ‘a well springing up’ whose water does not rise above its beginning); in the third way then it does have condign worth.” ²⁴

136. [Doubt 2] - But then there is a further doubt about this habit when compared with the operating power - namely which of them should be called the first cause and which the second.

137. For it seems from what has been said [n.135] that grace is the first cause.

138. But it seems the opposite is the case:

First, because the power uses the habit and not conversely.

139. Second, because the action would not be free if grace were the first cause; for the will would be moved naturally, because grace would move it naturally, - and just as the will would not be moved freely, so neither would it act freely, since it would not act save because it was moved.

140. Third, because the will - once it has grace - would not seem able ever to sin, because the second cause always follows the inclination of the first cause, nor seem able to be moved to the opposite of that to which the first cause inclines it.

141. Similarly, fourth, the will is more without limit as to acts than the habit is; being without limit as to several effects seems to belong to the superior cause [cf. nn.33-39].

142. Here it can be said that in a meritorious act (about which the discussion now is [nn.129-135]) I am considering two things, namely: that which precedes the idea of its being meritorious, and in this rank are included the substance of the act and its intensity and its moral rectitude; over and above this I consider also the very idea of its being meritorious, which is that it is accepted by the divine will in order to a reward, or that it is acceptable or worthy of being accepted.

143. This second thing would be truer if the act had complete merit through something that is in him who merits; to accept is not in him but is a divine action; but divine action does not seem to be per se required for merit. - There is also proof for this in that there seems to be a merit [sc. in him who merits] with respect to this sort of ‘being accepted’, for some act is worthy to be accepted and another not; therefore before it is understood to have been accepted, there is something in the act whereby it is worthy to be accepted; therefore there is then in it the idea of merit, at least with respect to acceptance.

144. On the contrary: the idea of merit is not completely had unless the idea of being worthy or worthily ordainable to a reward is had (which reward is beatitude), and this ‘worthily’ accords with commutative or retributive justice; but no act has this order merely from what acts from within (for then God could not fail to reward beatitude to him who has so acted without unjustly depriving him of it, - this is false); therefore such order according to justice is from the divine will alone gratuitously ordering it, and thus the idea of merit will be complete from the divine will ordering this act to a reward.

145. And as to what is said about the second thing that ‘divine action is not of the idea of merit’ [n.143], - I reply: the relation to divine action in the action of him who merits belongs to the idea of merit, because there is no relation of the one who merits without divine action.

146. If you say that ‘then it is not in the power of the one who merits to merit, just as neither is the divine action in his power’, and similarly ‘the meriting would belong more principally to God than to me, because what is more principal in the merit comes from divine action’, - to the first point: the act which is merit is in my power, on the supposition of the general influence, if I have grace and the use of free choice; but the completion of the idea of merit is not in my power save dispositively, although disposivitely in such a way that the completion for my acting always follows from the divine disposition, just as animation always follows on the organizing done by the natural cause. The same thing makes clear the response to the second point, because although what is more principal in merit - that is, what is last and completive - is from God, yet it does not follow that ‘therefore God merits’, because merit is an act of a free power, and an act elicited according to the gift of grace, accepted by God as being rewardable with beatitude - and therefore to merit is to act thus; God does not act thus.

147. On the contrary: at least what is more principal in merit is from God. - I reply that if by ‘more principal’ is meant what does the ultimate completing, let it be conceded; if is meant the first reality or the more perfect reality, let it be denied, because an act is something absolute and prior in nature to ‘the passive acceptance’, and is more a being than it is.

148. To that which was adduced second for the second thing, which was ‘the act merits to be accepted’ [n.143] - I reply: there is in it the idea of merit ‘in a certain respect’, because the ordaining of the act to beatitude is not to it as to a reward that has to be justly rendered for such an act, - and let it be conceded that the passive divine acceptance is not included in the idea of merit ‘in a certain respect’, just as it is not required in the idea of merit by congruity, in the way that someone contrite merits to be justified.

149. And what has just been said [nn.144-148] must be understood of the divine eternal acceptance by which God, foreseeing from eternity this act being elicited from such principles, willed it to be ordered to a reward, and by the act of his will ordering it to a reward, willed it to be a merit; which act, considered in itself without such divine acceptance, would not, in strict justice, have been worthy of such a reward from the intrinsic goodness that it would have from its own principles; the fact is plain because a reward is always a greater good than the merit, and strict justice does not render a greater good for a lesser one. Therefore it is well said that God always rewards beyond condign worth, indeed universally beyond the worth of the act which is the merit, - because that the merit is condign merit is something beyond its nature and its intrinsic goodness, and comes from gratuitous divine acceptance; and perhaps further it is beyond that other merit which an act needing to be accepted would have by common law, whenever God rewards it from pure generosity.

150. In addition, just as in a meritorious act there are the two aforesaid things (namely the substance of the act along with rectitude, and the idea of merit [n.142]), likewise the habit of grace is a certain quality, - and the proof is that besides the relation which it has to right reason insofar as it is a morally good habit, it has a special relation to the divine will accepting it or accepting the subject that has it.

151. This habit according to its substance actively inclines to act, and this it does actively as a partial cause (when one holds the third way in the preceding solution [n.32]), and in this causality the habit is second cause and the power first cause, as was said in the preceding solution about the habit in general and about the power, when positing the habit as ‘active’ [n.40]; and this is proved by the reasons already adduced [nn.138-141].

152. But when one takes the act according to its idea of being meritorious, one can say that this condition belongs principally to the act from the habit and less principally from the will; for the act is more accepted as worthy of reward because it is elicited by charity than because it is freely elicited by the will, although both are necessarily required. An example of this can be posited about the cutting up of a body by means of a knife; the cutting, to be sure, is itself absolutely more from the moving power of the cutter than from the knife, and therefore a stronger moving power cuts more quickly; but yet insofar as this cutting is compared to sight under the idea of being acceptable - as pleasing to someone - it is attributed more to the knife, because the smoothness of the cut parts, which pleases sight, comes more from the sharpness of the instrument than from the efficacy of the virtue that principally does the cutting. Likewise, a sound is more from the percussion of the sounding body than from the orderedness of the percussion, and yet, as acceptable to hearing, it is more from the orderedness of the percussion than from the efficacy of the percussive power; nay the percussive virtue could be more efficacious and less acceptable, - nay altogether not acceptable to hearing, because the sound is not harmonious. Another example: if the father is the principal cause with respect to the son and the mother is less principal, yet she can be a more principal cause of the son insofar as he is loved or lovable by someone, such that the son is more loved because he is the mother’s as his bearer than because he is the father’s as his begetter.

153. So it is possible for God to have ordained to accept some act as worthy of reward - or as acceptable or to be accepted - because some habit inclines to that act as the partial active principal of it, and which because of this is more principally accepted or more principally acceptable than because it is from the remaining partial cause.

154. In this way [nn.152-153], then, can the remark of Augustine be expounded that ‘charity is like a rider to a horse’ [n.135], and also the remark that ‘the will in respect of grace follows on foot behind and does not go ahead’; this is indeed true with respect to the act insofar as it is meritorious, but not insofar as it is the act ‘in its substance’.

155. And the first example [about rider and horse] would be altogether similar if the horse were free and the rider were directing the horse by way of nature to a definite end. The horse’s course would be more pleasing, and that to some ordained will, from the fact that it was according to the natural inclination of the rider himself to a definite end than from the fact that the horse was by its own motive force running quickly. Then too the horse could of its own liberty throw off the rider, or move itself to something else at a tangent to the rider’s direction to the end; and in the first case indeed the horse would become altogether non-acceptable, because it would not have the rider on account of which it would be accepted by such a will, - in the second case, although such a horse would be acceptable, yet its course would not be accepted, because it would not be according to the direction of the rider. - This is how it is in the proposed case. The will is as it were a free horse, and grace as it were the rider by way of nature, inclining it to an object in a determinate way; a course of the will in accordance with this sort of inclination would be pleasing, - a different course would not be pleasing, as when there is venial sin or an indifferent act; but when the rider is thrown off, which is done by mortal sin, the will itself becomes altogether displeasing.

156. In this way too the will is a foot follower, because it does not of itself as determinately incline to the term (on account of which inclination the act is accepted) as grace inclines, and the will participates that inclination from grace, because the inclination belongs more to grace by its essence than to the will; and in this respect is the will itself a second cause, not because in causing ‘something intrinsic to the act’ it is second cause, but it is so in being that because of which the act is accepted, because it states a respect of the act to what is extrinsic; certainly it is possible enough for some relation to what is external to belong less principally to an effect because of a more principal cause of the effect than because of a less principal cause of it, as is plain in the examples set down above [n.152].Tr. As that the directing of the horse to an end by the rider, which is a relation to something extrinsic to the horse caused by a more principal cause (for the rider is such a more principal cause), is less principally a property of the horse than the running of the horse (for the running belongs more to the horse than the direction of the running), which running is caused by the less principal cause that is the horse itself. ²⁵

157. But this habit, just like any other moral habit also, has to incline itself determinately to the object - or to the end - by virtue of the object which in some way it participates; for just as an intellectual habit has the object in some way in itself as present to it under the idea of intelligible object, so a moral habit has the object in some way in itself under the idea of lovable good, - and thus, just as the former by virtue of the object has in some way to act in the presence of the object, so the latter by virtue of the object it in some way contains has to incline toward the object; from this it is clear how the habit inclines more determinately to the object than the power does, because it more determinately includes the object.

158. And in accord with this [n.157] one could also say that the partial causality which is attributed to the habit [nn151, 40, 32] comes to it from the part of the cause by which the object is said to be active with respect to the action and not from the part of the cause by which the power is said to be active, because a habit has its force more from the object which it determinately includes than from the power itself.

159. And if it is then argued, as was argued in the aforesaid solution, that ‘the habit determines and inclines the power, therefore it is a prior cause’ [n.34], - look for the response there [n.85].

2. Whether a Supernatural Habit giving it Grace has to be posited so that a Nature Capable of Beatification may be Beatified

160. About the second article [n.125] I say that God could of his absolute power have very well accepted - with the special acceptance stated before [n.129] - a nature capable of beatification that was existing in its pure natural state; and likewise, the act of it, for which it had a purely natural inclination, he could have accepted as meritorious. But he is not believed to have so disposed things that he should thus accept its pure nature or act, because to say that ‘an act from purely natural powers is meritorious’ comes close to the error of Pelagius [n.121]. Therefore the more likely belief is that he accepts nature and its act as meritorious on the basis of a supernatural habit.

161. But there is a double doubt here.

One as to how something in created nature could be a reason for acceptance by the divine will (whether absolutely or in such a way [sc. of special acceptance]), since nothing in nature is a reason for divine action, whether in itself or as it tends about such an object.

162. The other doubt is because, when every supernatural gift of God is excluded, there is a distinguishing between friend and enemy, - so that an enemy is said to be he in whom sin has not been destroyed (and so the offense remains), and a non-enemy is said to be he in whom it is not an offense; but in advance of the conferring of any spiritual gift an offense could be removed from someone who was ‘an enemy before’, as will be said in IV d.16 [n.120].

163. I reply. A non-enemy is not a ‘friend’; because someone who forgives an offense in another - for the reason that he no longer seeks punishment for the offense -does not become that other’s enemy more; but it does not follow because of this that he at once recover him as a friend, nor that he repel him as an enemy in some contrary way, but in a negative one - that he neither will him evil as an enemy nor good as a friend.

164. As far as this article [n.162] is concerned, then, there is no necessity to posit a supernatural habit conferring grace when speaking of the necessity that regards God’s absolute power (especially since he could give beatitude without any preceding merit), although however this may be necessary when speaking of the necessity that regards God’s ordained power, which ordaining we pick up in Scripture and from the sayings of the saints, where we have it that a sinner is not worthy of eternal life and that a just man is worthy.

3. About the Opinion of Peter Lombard

165. As to the third article [n.125], one could say that the Master does not deny every supernatural habit. He himself indeed, in d.37 of the first book, in the chapter ‘That also is marvelous’, ch.2 n.338, adduces Augustine to Dardanus [On the Foreknowledge of God ch.6 n.21] saying that “to the temple of God belong sanctified children, who are not able to know God”; therefore God dwells in a child who, however, cannot have an elicited act about God. This indwelling, which belongs to a regenerated child and not to some other, cannot exist in the child without a supernatural habit; for it cannot be posited there either because of an act, because a child has (and can have) no such act, or because of nature alone, because God does not indwell some other non-regenerated child, although the same nature nevertheless exists in him.

166. Likewise, in d.26 of book II, ch.1 nn.228-229, he seems to posit created grace in the soul.

167. Therefore it can be said that the Master posited one habit whereby, when it informs the soul, the Holy Spirit indwells and, as indwelling, perfects the soul’s powers as it were with supernatural habits: perfects two powers indeed - namely intellect and will - with faith and hope, for act of believing and hoping; but he perfects the will - for act of loving - with no habit other than that by which he is said to indwell, because the act of loving is so perfect that it can be attributed immediately to the habit by which, when it formally inheres, the Holy Spirit indwells, as by a most perfect habit. Acts of believing and hoping cannot thus be immediately attributed to the habit by which the Holy Spirit indwells, on account of the imperfection of those acts and the perfection of the habit whereby the Holy Spirit indwells the mind; for that habit should be thus perfect, because it will not be removed even in the fatherland, when the soul will be the temple of the Lord; for believing and hoping will not remain there [n.101].

168. And in this way the authorities from Augustine [nn.1-3] make for the Master, not because there is no supernatural habit formally giving the soul grace, but because it is not a different habit from that by which the Holy Spirit indwells the soul in the way that the habit of believing and hoping is other than the habit by which he indwells; and this will be plain from solving the reasons that are adduced for the first part of the question [nn.171-177].

169. In this regard, then, the Master does not seem to disagree with others save because they either posit grace to be a habit other than charity, or at least say that this habit - which in reality is grace - is formally in the will and not in the essence of the soul, for then the Holy Spirit would not indwell by a single as it were radical habit with respect to faith and hope as these first come to be, but he would indwell by a habit formally inherent, informing the will, which habit would be posterior, in some order of nature, to faith and hope.

170. But when one holds that the same habit is in reality charity and grace [II d.27 q. un nn.3-4], it seems that this habit would inform the essence of the soul first, and thus the virtues that inform the powers would flow first from the Holy Spirit indwelling the essence of the soul, - or that this habit is in the will formally, on the presupposition already of faith and hope in the powers (on which point see II Suppl. d.26 q. un); at any rate charity does not seem to be a different habit in reality from that by which the Holy Spirit indwells the soul, and thus the Holy Spirit does not move to act of love through a ‘mediating’ habit [n.101] - supply ‘habit other than that by which he indwells’ - as he does so move to act of belief and hope.

C. To the Principal Arguments

171. To the principal arguments [nn.1-6].

To the first [n.1] I say that the argument of Augustine holds as follows: ‘everyone who loves his neighbor loves his own love formally, if he turns himself toward it; but everyone who loves his own love formally loves the Holy Spirit who is by essence love; therefore everyone who loves his brother loves the Holy Spirit who is by essence love’. -The second proposition in order here (which however would be the major if one arranges it in a syllogism) is proved as follows, that everyone who loves a lesser good in an ordered way ought to love more some greater good, especially when the reason for lovability in the lesser good is only from the greater good; but my love is formally a lesser good than the love by essence that is the Holy Spirit, and in particular it gets from that love its own reason of lovability. The reasoning of Augustine,     therefore , has to be reduced to two syllogisms as follows: ‘he who loves his love-act loves love by essence; but he who loves his neighbor loves his love-act; therefore he who loves his neighbor loves love by essence. But God is this sort of love; therefore etc     .’Text cancelled by Scotus: “This argument of Augustine, then, proves that God is to be loved and yet not that he is my love formally, nor that there is in me another love formally. Two arguments must, indeed, be understood in Augustine’s argument, one of which is: ‘he who loves his brother loves the love by which he formally loves; but that love is participated love; therefore he loves participated love’. Further, the other syllogism is: ‘he who loves participated love ought to love love by essence; God is love by essence; therefore etc.’ ²⁶

172. About his second argument, namely about the most excellent gift [n.2], one could say that the argument holds as follows: ‘no created gift is more excellent than created charity, therefore charity is perfection simply, and includes of its nature no imperfection or limitation’. - The proof of this consequence is that more eminent than any gift which is not perfection simply is some other gift in creatures that is perfection simply. Further: every perfection simply belongs more formally to the Holy Spirit from his being himself the simply most excellent gift, and thereby from God being so (because God can give himself), and so the most excellent gift is God; therefore the Holy Spirit, from his being the simply most excellent gift, is every perfection simply. But there stands along with this the fact that this ‘perfection simply’ is participated in by us and is essentially other than the divine person who is perfect by this perfection simply.

173. Absolutely, then, the arguments of Augustine [nn.1-2] presuppose [nn.171-172] that God is formally charity and love, - not only effectively, as ‘hope’ or ‘my patience’ is so effectively, because it effects patience as a non-perfection simply, and so as not agreeing with itself formally; but he effects in the soul charity - and love - as a perfection simply, and therefore as agreeing with himself formally. In this way he in one way makes humanity in a man and in another way goodness; from the fact, to be sure, that he makes humanity it does not follow that he is formally man, but only that he is effective cause of man; but from the fact that he causes goodness it does follow that he is formally goodness, - and the reason is that every perfection simply that exists in the caused thing is reduced to a cause that formally possesses that perfection. It is not so with a limited perfection.Tr. In this way Scotus shows and preserves the truth in Platonism that good things are good by participation in the perfect form of goodness but not that men are men by participation in some perfect form of man. ²⁷

174. But what do these authorities [nn.1-3], so understood [n.173], do for the proposal of the Master [nn.165-170]?

I reply that the habit by which the soul is inclined toward meritoriously loving is a perfection simply, insofar as the ‘perfection simply’ belongs to the Holy Spirit; it follows therefore that this habit could be an immediate habit with respect to the love that is perfection simply, and hereby the Holy Spirit - as indwelling through this habit - more immediately causes that act of love than do acts of believing and hoping, with respect to which acts there cannot be any proximate cause that is perfection simply.

175. But against this response there is the following argument:

First, that the proposition on which it relies is false, namely that ‘more eminent or more perfect than any perfection non-simply in creatures is some perfection simply’ [n.172]; for it seems to have an instance against it in the case of the essence of the supreme angel, which is not a perfection simply and yet nothing more noble than it seems to exist in the whole of creation.

176. Besides, the intention and reason of Augustine seem badly adduced for the intention of the Master [n.174], because from the first reason [n.1] is had that the Holy Spirit is formally love by essence [n.171], and from the second [n.2] - if it is valid - is had that the Holy Spirit is formally charity by essence [n.172]. How then from this is it inferred that there is not in us some habitual love, or charity, different from the habit by which the Holy Spirit is said to indwell? The habit indeed by which the Holy Spirit indwells is either not a perfection simply but some limited perfection, - or, if it is, there does not fail to follow that a habit other than it could be posited as the proximate principle for eliciting my act of meritoriously loving, for that act is limited and a limited ‘perfection’; one cannot speak about the reason of Augustine otherwise for the proposal of the Master.No response was given by Scotus to these two objections [nn.175-176]. ²⁸

177. To the other argument [n.9] it is plain how charity is a good by participation from I d.8 n.213, where it was expounded how a simple form participates its own cause.

D. To the Arguments for the Opinion attributed to Peter Lombard.

178. To the arguments for the opinion imposed on the Master, namely the opinion that denies a supernatural habit bestowing grace [nn.101-112].

179. [To the arguments for the first way] - To the first [n.104] I say that the habit in question gives acceptable acting [nn.150, 129], and that it gives some activity with respect to act, as some second cause with respect to it [n.151]; but it does not give pleasurable or easy acting, which belong to an acquired habit insofar as it is distinguished from an infused habit, on account of its being acquired from repeated acting.

180. To the second [n.105] I say that although some say the will in its purely natural state cannot have any act about a supernatural object seen bare, yet this was rejected in I d.1 nn.88-89, 141-142. I concede, then, that the will could have an act about such an object whether shown bare or by an act of faith, - but the act about an object shown by faith would not be meritorious, because it would not be according to the inclination of the habit by which alone God makes disposition to accept the act; nor even in the fatherland would it be beatitude, because it would not be as perfect as it could be possessed by such a power if the power were perfect in a way proportionate to the supernatural habit.

181. And if you object that the act about the divine essence as seen could be so perfect that it would give rest to the will, because the act would be elicited in accord with its total effort and would consequently be beatific, - which seems to be the case also because such a will would have ‘whatever it wanted and would want nothing badly’ (but this is ‘to be blessed’ according to Augustine On the Trinity XIII ch.5 n.8), - I reply that it would not be blessed, not only because it would not have whatever it wanted in the way it should want it (for it should want ‘to love acceptably’ and this it would not have), but also because it would not have an act as perfect as to agree with it in the grade of its nature. For no power capable of being habituated can have, without that habit, an act as perfect as it can with it [nn.40, 70, following the third way, n.32]; nay, the more perfect the power the less can it, if it lacks all habit, have an act proportional to its perfection, because, from the fact that the geometrical proportion between two unequal powers is like proportionally perfective habits, there will be therefore another proportion, arithmetical proportion - and thus a more perfect power, if it has not been habituated, will be simply more deficient than a lower and more imperfect power [III Suppl. d.27 q. un. n.19]

182. As to the remark added that ‘it has whatever it wants’, - I reply: not with as much volition as it can in an ordered way desire the object with. For it can in an ordered way desire to have it with an act as great as would agree with it from the nature of the power and the habit proportional to it, and not merely with an act as perfect as agrees with it from its purely natural resources; now it would not have [sc. whatever it wants] in the first way but only in the second.

183. Against this [nn.181-182]:

It seems then that no will would be blessed that did not have the greatest charity it was capable of.

184. Further, as was argued in the preceding solution [n.30], by that reason by which a power in the supreme grade of the power is perfect, it is capable of the supreme act such that nothing is lacking to it from lack of the habit; therefore to a will in any grade nothing in that grade is lacking to it because of lack of the habit.

185. To the first [183] I say that it cannot in an ordered way will to have the beatific object with a greater act than corresponds with its merits; such an act is not the greatest ‘it is capable of’, although always greater than the one it could have existing in its purely natural state.

186. To the second [184] I say that an infinite will contains eminently in itself by identity every perfection or the whole perfection of the habit, and so it does not give any lesser perfection to its act on account of not being understood to be informed with the habit; but a finite power does not include by identity the habit proportional to it, and so it can in its acting fail of the proportion that agrees with it, if be not perfected with the habit.

187. To the third [n.106] I say that this act is not created, speaking of creation properly; both because there is, with respect to it, the concurrence of some active second cause, while creation belongs to the first agent alone without a second cause, - and because there is presupposed here something that is receptive of the act (namely the will), while in creation nothing is presupposed that is susceptive of creation. When therefore it is said that ‘everything supernatural is created’ [n.106], if it be conceded of every supernatural first act, yet it should not be conceded of something supernatural that is a second act, because there is for this latter the concurrence of created power, both in idea of what is active in some way [nn.152-153] and in idea of what is receptive; and yet it can be called supernatural by reason of the form or the habit that concurs in its production, even though it be not immediately created.

188. One can in another way say [to the third, n.106] that the act is not properly supernatural the way the habit is, because although ‘the presupposed habit’ is immediately from a supernatural cause, yet it is, when posited in existence, a natural cause with respect to its act; and so the act that is produced by such a habit is not supernatural; for the form that is supernaturally produced can be as naturally related to its act as a form that is merely natural is related to its act, so that the difference in the production of the forms does not cause nor entail a distinction between them in comparison to their acts.

189. To the fourth [n.107] one can say that a will thus habituated has in its power the use of a habit of this sort; and when the will operates with equal effort, the habit cooperates equally along with it, because a habit acts, on its own part, by way of nature. However, there will not always be an equal pleasure following on the elicited act; the pleasure is, to be sure, from the object that is attained by the act and not only from the power acting about the object; but now [sc. in this present life], when the object is not present in itself but in figure, the pleasure can be caused by a limited object in diverse ways, now more now less, although an equally intense act with equal effort be elicited about it. - As for what is said of contemplatives [n.107], it is true about the devotion, that is, about the pleasure consequent to the act; but it is not true about the elicited act of loving itself, which is sometimes more intense and sometimes more meritorious, although a lesser pleasure or almost none follow upon it, - and sometimes a lesser act, lesser both in itself and in divine acceptance, is accompanied by a greater pleasure, for attracting little ones so that they might more eagerly pursue that whose sweetness they have had advance taste of.

190. [To the arguments for the second way] - To the first argument about the second way [nn.108-109], I concede that the Holy Spirit could cause an act immediately in the will, and could accept that act - as caused by himself - as worthy of eternal life; but then that act would neither be of the will nor in its power; nor do we believe that he accepts such an act, but he makes disposition to accept an act of free choice - which act is in the will’s power.

191. To the second [n.110] I say that the Holy Spirit’s cooperating with fire for it to heat is not a miracle; but his cooperating with water for it to heat (provided however some causality with respect to heating could, without contradiction, be said to belong to water), this would be miraculous. Thus I say in the proposed case that the Holy Spirit’s cooperating with an habituated human will for it to elicit an act in accord with the habit, that this is part of the common law by which God assists a second cause in doing its act; but his cooperating with a non-habituated will would be miraculous, provided however the will itself could operate. I say, therefore, that the Holy Spirit cooperates with a will possessed of charity; not indeed because the will possesses it such that its charity is the prior cause, namely moving the Holy Spirit to cooperate, - but because the Holy Spirit cooperates generally with a second cause in the act to which the second cause, according to its form, is ordered, the way it is with act of love in an habituated will. - When you say, therefore, that ‘the Holy Spirit cooperates before the will has charity’ [n.110], this is false unless it be understood of priority of nature, as a superior cause is prior. The Holy Spirit, to be sure, cooperates with a will possessed of charity at the same time as the will operates, - or if it be conceded that the Holy Spirit cooperates with the will before the will have charity, it does not therefore follow that ‘he could be cooperating equally with a will not possessed of charity’ [n.110], because he does not cooperate with a will not possessed of a form for acting as he does with a will that is.

192. To the third [n.111] I say that although by the communication of properties [sc. between the two natures in the incarnate Christ] human operations are truly asserted of the Word, yet the proper acts of the Word in his divine nature were not in the power of ‘this man’ [sc. Christ] so that he could, insofar as man, merit by those acts; for Christ did not merit for us in this act, namely if the Son of God - who was in the flesh - created souls along with the Father and the Holy Spirit; and so as to the proposed case, the will will not merit if the Holy Spirit, in whatever way he is joined to it, were to cause in it an act of loving.

193. To the final argument [n.112] I say that although it cause difficulty for those who hold that the species is first act with respect to the intellect whereby the intellect is capable of second act (as hot wood heats by heat), because if this were true it would be difficult to save the proposition that the intellect ‘when not informed by any form’ would be capable of operation [I d.3 nn.456-459]; yet according to the way that I stated in distinction 3 of this first book [d.3 nn.494-498], that ‘the object - whether in itself or in the species - is a sort of partial cause, concurring with the intellect in causing intellection’, this argument does not cause any difficulty, because the object when present in itself (the way it will be in the fatherland) suffices without any informing for causing vision, or suffices of itself alone along with the intellect.

194. And if it be argued ‘if vision can be perfect without an informing habit, then the enjoyment can be most perfect too [sc. without a habit]’, - I reply: no one commonly denies that in glory there is ‘a habit of the light of glory in the intellect’ [I d.3 n.114; III d.14 qq.102 nn.2-4, 8; IV Suppl. d.49 p.2 q.3 nn.9-10], - and this habit on the part of the intellect can be set down as corresponding to charity on the part of the will.Interpolation, see the immediately follow appendix. ²⁹