a) First Reason

50. The first reason is as follows: every speaker would, if he could, cause a concept immediately in him to whom he is speaking about what he is speaking of; an angel can do this in respect of a second angel;     therefore etc     .

51. Proof of the major, because a speaker intends principally to express his concept to the intellect he is speaking to; but every natural agent would, if it could, at once introduce what it principally intends.

52. Proof of the minor: that which is sufficiently in first act with respect to some effect can cause that effect in something receptive that is proportioned to it and nearby; but an angel, possessing actual knowledge of some object - let it be a - , is sufficiently in first act for causing actual intellection of a; therefore it can cause that effect in any intellect that is receptive of the effect. Now the intellect of a second angel, which does not conceive a distinctly, is receptive; therefore the first angel can cause in this intellect knowledge of the object. - Proof of the major here, because the first extremes of an active and passive proportion are the most universal ones (being abstracted from any active and any passive extreme), because the proportion is present in the particulars under each extreme by its common idea and therefore is present in the extremes. Proof of the minor here: an angel has in himself the act of knowing a and has the species (whatever species be posited as necessary for knowledge), and through what he has he can make his understanding to be in a second act by causing in himself intellection of a as an effect; so it follows that he can cause this in a second angel’s intellect, a passive one (which is of the same nature as his own intellect).

53. An instance against this reason [n.50] is that it is not conclusive save about two angels absolutely taken - because if they are distant from each other, the distance will be an impediment because of one’s not being able to act on the other; for a distant thing cannot act on a distant thing unless it first act on the medium between them; but the medium cannot receive the speaking of an angel nor can it hear an angel speaking;     therefore etc     . [Lectura 2 d.9 n.52].

54. There is confirmation from the Philosopher in On the Soul 2.7.419a15-20, where he maintains that if there were a vacuum nothing would be seen, because the visible species cannot reach the eye; hence the Philosopher maintains Physics 7.2.243a3-6 that ‘mover and moved are simultaneous’, and this when speaking of what is immediately moved, which must be moved by the mover before the thing mediately moved is moved.

55. To exclude these objections I show first that a distant angel can cause a concept in a distant angel: for if the action on the medium not be prior in nature to the action on the term, the action on the term would not depend on the action on the medium (the point is clear from the idea of natural priority, because a sufficient cause of two things - neither of which is naturally prior to the other - can cause either without the other); but in the issue at hand there is no such priority; therefore an angel can act on a distant term while not acting at all on the medium.

56. Proof of the minor. Action on the medium only naturally precedes action on the term for two reasons: either because the action is of the same nature on the medium as on the term, and then the action is naturally received in the medium first, just as the nearer passive thing is naturally affected before the more remote one; or because, if the action is not of the same nature, the agent has two active forms (or a same form that includes virtually two active forms), one of which is naturally prior to the other, and the agent is of a nature to act on the medium according to the form that is active first and to act on the term according to the other form. An example of the first is when the sun illumines the parts of the medium [sc. the air]; an example of the second is when the sun generates minerals in the bowels of the earth [1 d.37 n.4] or generates a worm in the earth, and illumines the interposed medium. - Therefore, when each of these causes is excluded (namely that neither is the medium receptive of the same action as the term, nor does the agent have another active form really or virtually by which it is of a nature to act on the medium with an action of a nature other than the action on the term), then in no way does action on the medium precede the natural action on the term. And so it is in the issue at hand; for the corporeal distance, which is between the distant angels, is of a nature to receive neither an action of the same nature as the distant and listening angel, nor another action of a different nature prior to it, because the speaking angel has a form neither virtually nor formally active for an action prior to the action which is his speaking.

57. This point is confirmed in three ways:

First, by positing an impossibility, namely that were God not everywhere in his essence, he would yet be omnipotent (according to what was said above in 1 d.37 nn.7-8), and he could immediately cause anything anywhere (although he were not present there by his essence); and yet he would not act on the medium by an action of the same nature nor of another nature, because the thing caused would come from him immediately.

58. Second, if this impossible position be not admitted, since the idea is manifest as impossible - the conclusion is sufficiently obtained because the sun immediately causes a worm (or some other generable and corruptible substance), and yet it does not act on the medium with an action of that nature (namely, of generation), nor with an action of another nature, save because the sun has another active form (namely a quality, light) whereby it is of a nature to act in some way before it acts through its substantial form, just as alteration precedes generation.

59. Third, if this is not conceded, it is plain that every natural generator generates a natural body (not a surface merely), and yet it is not present immediately save by its surface, and it acts on the surface of the thing generated; therefore a generator acts where it is not either by essence or by mathematical contact; yet it is there [sc. beneath the surface] by virtual contact and this suffices for action, just as if it were present by essence or mathematically. And that a thing act first on the medium between itself and what it is thus present to is not absolutely required for it to act on what it is thus present to, but just because the medium has a capacity for an action of the same nature as the term.

60. A more apt example for the issue at hand, after these three, is about the act of knowing, because the intuitive knowledge of sight is not of the same nature in the medium as in the organ [sc. because then the medium itself would see; 1 d.3 nn.471-472, Rep. IIA d.9 q.3] - and if an action happen in the organ of another nature than in the medium, vision is what happens to sight, insofar as it is an effect of the visible thing, by the fact that the visible thing is of a nature to generate both the species [sc. in the medium] and vision [sc. in the organ] as two ordered effects. Therefore, this remote receptive thing [sc. the organ as receptive of vision] receives something of which nothing of the same nature is received in the medium; but a received thing of another nature is received in the medium, and this is what happens to it, because the thing received in the medium is not the cause of the thing received in the term [the organ], but is as it were a prior effect, when comparing both effects to the same cause.

61. Hereby is the response plain to the instance from On the Soul [n.54], namely that nothing would be seen unless there were a medium; not that it is per se of the idea of visible color to cause something in the medium so that it may be seen, but that vision and the species of the visible thing are ordered effects of the same object (of the color), such that the species is of a nature to be generated before vision is (as first act before second act), and the species is in a nearer medium or organ before it is in a remoter medium or organ, just as in fact in general a form of the same idea is caused in a nearer thing before it is caused in a remoter one [1 d.3 nn.239, 254-55, 388-90, 473, 504-505, 2 d.3 n.295].

62. And by the same fact the response is plain to the quote from the Physics [n.54], for the agent is immediate to the proximate passive thing, and this by an immediacy corresponding to mathematical contact, when the medium is receptive of an action of the same nature (or of another nature, with respect to which the agent has the form [n.56]) -or by an immediacy corresponding to virtual contact, because the agent is present to the distant thing mathematically (so as to cause the effect in it) just as if it were present to it in its essence [n.59]; and in this way ‘to be present in essence’ is thus not that its power is there but that it is able by its power to cause the effect as if it were there, although neither it nor its power is there.

63. But there is an objection against this, that then local distance will not impede the speaking of an angel; for if a distant angel may immediately cause illumination in another distant angel, while causing nothing in the medium, that medium will be for it -in its action - as if it were no distance; for, as far as its action is concerned, it will be just as if the two angels were immediate to each other. Therefore the result will thus be that local distance will not impede the speaking of an angel.

64. I reply that between agent and patient there can be a mathematical distance in three ways. [No response to the objection given here; see Lectura 2 d.9 nn.60-63].