2. Scotus’ own Opinion

50. As to this article [n.37] I say as follows, that a predicate belongs to the whole ‘first’ as ‘first’ is distinguished from that which is according to a part (as is said in Physics 5.1.224a21-34), because it does not belong to it precisely for the reason that it belongs to a part of it.Vatican editors: for example, ‘capable of laughter’ belongs first to man not because it belongs to a part of him, because it does not belong first either to his soul or his body [n.52]. ⁵² And contrariwise, nothing is said to belong to any whole because of a part save what belongs to a part and is, through that part, said of the whole - as is plain from the Philosopher in the Physics [ibid.] in his example: “The man is healthy because his thorax is healthy;” the ‘to be healthy’ is said formally and first of the thorax, and by this it is said of the whole, of which whole the thorax is part.

51. A predicate that inheres first in some whole is sometimes in no part of that whole, and sometimes it is in some part of it.

52. An example of the first case: triangle is what first has angles equal to two right angles, and yet no part of the triangle (speaking of integral parts) has this predicate, namely ‘to have three angles equal etc.’; likewise man is what first is capable of laughter, and yet this property is not first in any part of man; and the composite is what is first generated, although no part of it [sc. form or matter] is first generated, speaking of this way ‘of that which is generated’; and so universally in all heterogeneous substances and their properties. And the reason is as follows, that the nature of such a subject is adequate to such a predicate, which adequacy is indicated by such primacy (as is plain from the definition of ‘universal’ in Posterior Analytics 1.4.73b32-33), and the nature of that adequate whole is not saved in any one part, and so its property does not belong to any one part of it.

53. An example of the second case [n.51] is: if fire is what is first hot, any part of fire whatever is hot. So too does the Philosopher in Physics 7.1.241b32-242a15 argue that no body can be moved by itself first, because then it would rest on the resting of a part; for it would not be first moved unless motion were in every part of it; for if motion were not in some part of it, motion would not be in the whole ‘first’. And so it is universally in homogeneous substances and their properties, because the nature to which first - that is, adequately - such property belongs is of the same nature in the part as in the whole; therefore a predicate adequate to such a nature is in every part in which that nature is, and in this way it belongs to a part.

It is not therefore because of the idea of primacy that a predicate - which belongs to the whole - must belong to the part, nay never should it for this reason belong to the part, but rather when the nature of the whole is the same in such whole and in its part.

54. As to the intended proposition [n.37] I say that this way of being ‘in’ [sc. circumincession] is not in the way that nature is in a supposit or form is in matter, but as a subsistent is in a subsistent, according to Hilary On the Trinity ch.7 n.41 when he speaks as follows: “The being-in is not as one thing is in another, the way body is in body, but it is to be the way that to subsist is in the subsistent, but to be in it such that it itself also subsist.” Now to subsist, that is, ‘to exist per se incommunicably’, belongs first to the person (for it is not said of the person because it is said of the essence or the relation), just as also ‘to act’ in the case of creatures, or ‘to be produced’, belongs first to the supposit of the whole (that is, does not belong to it because it belongs to a part). Therefore also ‘to be subsistently in’ belongs first to the person; for although the nature is first in the Father, as nature in a supposit, this however is not the subsistence or the in-being of a subsistent in a subsistent, but is precisely the in-being by which the whole Son by presence and intimately is in the whole Father; and to this alludes the remark of Ambrose in his hymn [Splendor of the Father’s Glory]: “The whole Son in the Father, and the whole Father in the Word.”