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.