Question Two. Whether one Angel can intellectually speak to a Second

6. Next to this, I ask about the speaking of the angels (because it is similar to the preceding question), namely whether one angel can intellectually speak to a second.

7. That he cannot:

The essence of an angel is more intimate to him than his intellection, and yet, notwithstanding that intimacy, one angel sees the essence of a second;     therefore in vain is speaking made about what was manifest before speaking; therefore etc     .

8. Further, second: if an angel can speak, he can speak thus to one distant as to one nearby (because this belongs to men too, in whom there is a more imperfect power). But the consequent is false for two reasons: first because it would then be necessary first to change the medium and afterwards the angel (for prior to any action on an extreme is action on the medium in between); but this is unacceptable, because nothing is generated in a bodily medium by an intellectual thing, and moreover nothing can be generated in an angel himself by a bodily medium; - second because it would then be necessary for him to speak to all the angels who are equally nearby, and necessary to speak first to a nearer angel than to a more distant one (in the same straight line), both of which seem unacceptable; for it seems he could speak to any of them without speaking to another.

9. Further, third: an angel only understands through innate species; but any angel has these about anything intelligible to him; therefore any angel has any intelligible present to him in the way it can be present to him. Therefore speaking is superfluous.

10. The first proposition [the major, n.9] is proved in many ways:

Because if angels could understand through acquired species, then they would have an agent intellect whereby potential intelligibles could become actually intelligible in them; but this is false, because since their object is of itself actually intelligible, there is no need for the actually intelligible to be made from the potentially intelligible. Likewise, there does not seem to be a possible intellect in them - therefore not an agent intellect either; the proof of the antecedent is that their intellect is not sometimes in act and sometimes in potency to first act.

11. Second, ‘as the angels are disposed to being so are they disposed to operation’ [n.20]; but angels do not depend in being on a body, therefore not in operation either; therefore they do not receive any species from a body. The reason is confirmed because the soul depends in understanding on the body for the reason that it is united to the body, and the reason for its union with the body depends on the fact it receives its perfection from the body.

12. Third, because there is no passage from extreme to extreme save through the middle; but imaginable being is the middle between sensible being and actual intelligible being;     therefore , since an angel cannot have anything in imaginable being (because he does not have phantasms), neither can anything pass from sensible being to intelligible being in an angel. Wherefore etc     .

13. Fourth, because as the celestial bodies are to other bodies, so is the angelic intellect to other intellects; but the celestial bodies have perfection co-created with them and do not acquire it through motion; therefore, by similitude, angelic intellects have their perfections co-created with them.

14. Fifth, because if the angels can have acquired species, then the object outside would act to generate those species - and one needs also to posit that the angelic intellect acts together with it, otherwise the possible intellect of the angel would be cheaper than our intellect;     therefore the two act at the same time to generate the species acquired from some object, namely the two of the intellect and the object. But this is false, because agents diverse in genus cannot produce the same effect; but these two are diverse in genus; therefore etc     . Proof of the major [sc. agents diverse in genus cannot produce the same effect], because either they are required as diverse in genus or they are not; if they are, then there corresponds to them some proportional diversity in the effect (and thus the effect will not be simple and homogeneous but heterogeneous); if they are not, then -without such distinction between them - there could be a power so intense that one of the joint agents would suffice for producing such an action. The proof of this last claim is that where there happens to be a distinction between two movers, the power in one can be so intensified that it can supply the place of the other; therefore the bodily object could be so intensified in its action that it alone could generate the species in the angel’s intellect. But this is false, both because ‘the agent is more excellent than the patient’ according to Augustine On Genesis 12.16 n.33, “Now no body is more excellent than the spirit, therefore no body acts on the spirit,” according to him; and also because this [sc. a bodily object alone generating a species in an angel] does not seem it can be understood more truly of the bodily object’s own agent power than of the agent power of another -therefore the body does not act on the angelic intellect by its own power but by the power of the angel’s intellect. So these joint agents will not be two partial causes of which neither acts by the virtue of the other [Ord. 1 d.3 nn.495-98].

15. Further, the like is known by its like -     therefore a singular would generate a singular species in the angel’s intellect; therefore his intellect, having been made to be like by the species, would know the singular through its proper idea, which is absurd; therefore etc     .

16. The opposite is maintained by Damascene, as above [n.5].

I. To the Second Question

A. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent

17. As to these questions [n.6] there is need first to see about the speaking of the angels.

18. And, passing over a number of opinions, there is one opinion that needs reading out, and here four things need looking at:

Namely, first, how the speaking angel knows the thing he speaks about (which, according to this opinion, is posited as being an individual singular); second, how what is known by one angel escapes another; third, how the thing is plain to the angel when - by speaking it - he expresses it; and fourth about illumination.

1. How the Angel who speaks knows Singulars

19. As to the first point, it is said that an angel knows the singular, not first and not through any proper idea, but through the universal that was co-created with his intellect.

20. The proof is fourfold:

First, thatThe Vatican editors put quotation marks round much of what follows because Scotus is following Henry’s words very closely. ¹³ “‘as each thing is disposed to being, so it is to knowledge’ (Metaphysics 2.1.993b30-31); but the form of a singular adds nothing to the universal save negation; therefore it adds nothing in knowledge either.”

21. Second, because “if an angel did not know the singular under the idea of its universal, then, since there is no other intrinsic reason by which he may know it (because neither the angel’s essence nor his habit is such a reason; for, to begin with, the habit is in respect of the universal), it would follow that the very singular would be presented to the angel’s intellect so as to move it as its first and per se object under the idea of singularity; but this is false, because things that are per se objects and not first do not move save through the idea of objects that are per se and first, in the way that size and figure do not move sight save with color at the same time.” But the singular is not the first object of the intellect, because “nothing is the first object of the intellect save the universal.”a

a. a[Interpolation] The first consequence is plain, because there is no other intrinsic idea whereby the singular may be known; because neither the essence of the angel is such an idea - nor the habit, because the habit is first with respect to the universal.

22. Third, thus: “Every cognitive power must, in apprehending, be determined proportionally to what it has to apprehend. Therefore the intellect, when understanding the singular, is determined proportionally to the determination of this singular - and as to this, either it is determined of its own nature or it is determinable by the species that it receives (namely by the species of the singular). And if in the first way, then the angel’s intellect would be more determined than our intellect is;” nay, in both ways a determination or determinability of the angelic intellect “greater than of our senses” follows, because our senses are not limited or determined of their nature, nor are they determinable by the species that they receive (“for the species of the singular is not received in the sense first but in the organ”). Further, the deduction is drawn that such determination to the singular object would be a certain limitation and impediment “to intellection of the universal, just as it is in the case of the senses,” - and much more in an angel than in the senses, because the sense does not receive the species of the singular [sc. since rather the organ does].

23. Fourth, because “just as through the apprehension of universals from without there is generated in our intellect the habit of science - so in the intellect of an angel, if it knew singulars first, there could be an acquired habit of science besides the science of his own universals, which is against the Philosopher in Metaphysics 7.10.1035b33-6a8 where he maintains that the scientific habit of universals is not other than that of singulars.”

24. As to this first article [n.18], the speaking angel’s mode of knowing the singular is set down thus:

“An angel’s intellect apprehends the form, by its own habit, according to the idea of a universal - but after the supposit has existence in fact or in revelation, the angel’s intellect at once apprehends the form in the supposit under the idea of a universal first and per se with the same apprehension as it apprehended it with before it was participated in by the supposit; and it is an accident of the angelic intellect that it apprehends the form in the supposit, just as it is an accident of the essence of a thing that something included under it is in the supposit. So first and per se the angel’s intellect knows the singular form under the idea of a universal (that is, under an indeterminate, confused, and undesignated idea), but because this very same form - as it is in the thing itself - is determinate and designated, the intellect secondarily understands this designation. And the knowledge of the universal is the same as the knowledge of the singular, save for the addition of a respect and a negation whereby the universal is understood as designated ‘in this’;” “for these [sc. knowledges] do not differ on the part of the thing known nor on the part of the act of knowing, but only in the manner of knowing without designation and knowing with designation, of which the latter adds to the former only the idea of negation, as has been said” [n.20].

25. From this it is plain how “the angelic intellect - as along an extended line -understands the singular.”

First, indeed, “the essence in the habit does not move under the idea of an object but under the idea of something inherent - but it terminates the act of understanding under the idea of something known and not of something inherent;” and so from the object to the habit “there is properly no circumflexion” but as it a were a line extended from point to point. “Next, from the object known in the universal, the intellect proceeds to the universal in the supposit, under the idea of universal, and finally from the object, known in the supposit under the idea of a universal, it proceeds to know the same object under the idea of a singular,” so that there is as it were a straight line from the object in the habit (as from a first point) to the singular (as to the last point) through two intermediate points.

2. How Knowledge of a Singular escapes another Angel

26. From this the second point is clear [n.18], namely how the intellection by this angel about a singular can escape another angel:

For - according to this position - by the same old apprehension, by which he was previously apprehending a quiddity set before him in his habit absolutely, he will now comprehend it “in whatever way it was (existent or revealed [24]), for it cannot escape him in any respect save only because what was conceived before is conceived by him now under a new respect.” An example: “if there were a single intellect one in number in everyone, then, from whoever’s phantasm a universal were abstracted - after the intellect had once abstracted it, and had understood it in him from whom it abstracted it, then if (while that intellect remains in place) it begins to understand it in someone else, it would not perceive a new universal with a new intellect; rather the old universal (that it had first perceived under the old respect) it would now perceive under a new respect, namely in this phantasm.”

27. So it is with the angelic intellect, because, without making some new thing under the universal concept but by renewing the concept - conceiving the universal many times in diverse particulars - this singular and that singular are conceived. And, because this angel sees a singular (which he did not see before) without any newness of concept, therefore “although another angel sees universal forms in the first angel (which are the ideas for knowing particulars), yet this other angel does not see the particulars that the first angel sees, whether they are existent or revealed;” or at any rate, if the second angel could see existent singulars through his own habit and through the universals that shine within him, yet he cannot see revealed ones. Nor even can he see - as the first angel sees - those singulars, because the first angel sees them without any newness of concept.

28. Briefly then, as to this article:

For this reason a singular - understood by one angel - is posited as escaping another angel, that although the intellect of the first angel (and the universal, which is for him the idea of understanding) is plain to him, yet his concept, as it is about the singular, is not plain to the second angel, because the fact that the first angel is using the universal form to conceive the singular produces nothing new in the intellect of the second angel. And if the singular is not existent, the second angel cannot see it - not even the very thing known - through his own habit or the first angel’s habit; but if it is existent and he can see it through his own habit, yet the singular, known or unknown, does not enable him to see the intellectual acts of the first angel. And so there is need of speaking [sc. by the first angel to the second] either because of the singular the first angel knows that escapes the second angel (as when the singular is a non-existing revealed singular) - or because of the first angel’s very act of knowing which escapes the second angel, and this whether the act of knowing is about a revealed singular or a naturally known one.

3. How Knowledge of a Singular is made Clear to Another Angel

29. On the third point [n.18] it is said that “just as we cannot express to another in speech designated singulars known to us save by expressing vague singulars (whatever the properties and accidents they are designated by), so neither can an angel by speaking manifest something to another angel under the same designation under which it was revealed to the first angel; rather he forms for the second angel a new concept - really different - about a vague singular” (which new concept in fact the second angelic intellect sees in the intellect of the first angel as if he were reading in a book), and by this concept the intellect of the seeing or second angel is changed so as to perceive the singular, not only as it is something in itself, but also as it is something in the speaker, as in the case of our own speech. Hence the second angel too “forms in his intellect a like vague concept, under the idea of a universal, about the particular - and hereby he is said to ‘hear’, because ‘to see in another angel’ and ‘to hear’ are the same thing; and, because the second concept is ordered only to indicating a hidden concept of the mind, therefore it is not properly called ‘to understand’ but ‘to speak’, even though it is in itself a sort of understanding.”

4. How One Angel illumines Another

30. On the fourth point [n.18] it is said that a superior angel’s illuming an inferior angel can be understood in four ways, namely: either by pouring in light, or by presenting light, or by removing an obstacle, or by making something by which, when made, light is caused in the receiver. In the first way the sun illumines the medium; in the second way someone carrying a candle illumines a house at night; in the third way someone who opens a window during the day; in the fourth way someone who cures an eye - which sick eye had no capacity for light before and now does - is said to illumine the eye.

31. Now it is said that only God illumines in the first way, and this either by causing natural light, or by impressing supernatural light, whether created light (of grace or glory) or uncreated, either as the reason for seeing or as the object seen (and this whether temporarily as in the enraptured, or permanently as in the blessed). In the second way one angel illumines another about some truth perfective of the intellect by speaking to him in the way stated [n.29]. An angel also illumines in the third way, as is proved from Augustine On the Psalms, psalm 118 sermon 18 n.4, Psalm 118.34, ‘Give me understanding’, when he says, “An angel can do something in a man’s mind so that it has capacity for God, just as someone who makes open a window is said to illumine the house.” In the fourth way too an angel can illumine another, as is proved from Augustine ibid. when he says, “God has made the angel such as to be able to do something whereby the human mind is helped to grasp the light of God.”

32. This is also proved by reason, because “all things are ordered” and “connected with each other” (according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 12.10.1075a16 and Dionysius Divine Names ch.7); and this order is noted not only in essences but also in operations. From this the argument goes: “An inferior angel is, through the natural influence on him of a superior angel, able to be reduced to his natural state and his state of ultimate natural perfection; but his ultimate perfection is through his best work (or in his best work), and the ultimate and most perfect work of an angel is to understand something as a divine work in a way over and above the common course of understanding by light of the natural intellect; therefore by the influence of a superior angel the inferior one is reduced from potency to act, so that he may be illumined in respect of such knowledge.”

B. Rejection of the Opinion

33. Against these views, and first against the first article [nn.19-25].

If ‘as each thing is disposed to being, so it is to knowledge’ (n.20, Metaphysics 2.1.993b30-31), and the singular adds some entity over and above the entity of the universal (from 2 d.3 nn.147, 168-70, 187-88, 192, 197), then the universal when known is not the total perfect reason for knowing the singular according to the total knowability of the singular - which is against him who holds this opinion [nn.24-25].

34. Further, where a plurality entails a greater perfection, a numerical infinity entails an infinite perfection. But so it is in the reasons about representation, because ‘to be apple to represent several things’ entails a greater perfection (for it entails that this single idea includes the perfection of two proper ideas, representative ideas, as I say); therefore being able to represent infinite things distinctly entails that the representing reason is infinitely perfect [2 d.3 nn.367-68, 1 d.2 n.127, d.3 n.352].

35. Further, the representing reason, uniform in itself and in the intellect, does not represent anything in a non-uniform way; nay, neither can the divine ideas - because they are reasons that naturally represent - represent to the divine intellect any diversity in the objects unless they necessarily naturally represent this, as was touched on in 1 d.39 on future contingents [not extant in the Ordinatio but in the Lectura]. Therefore this single idea (which is posited by Henry [nn.19, 24]) will either represent opposites at the same time, opposites pertaining to the existence of things, and this naturally (and then it will always represent opposites, and thus the angel will understand opposites and so nothing) - or it will represent one opposite determinately, and so never the other one. So if an angel at some time has a certain and determinate knowledge of one opposite - as to its existence - through this single idea, he will never through the same idea have a determinate and certain knowledge of the other opposite.

36. Further, fourth, there is particular argument:

An angel cannot, by this habit, know a revealed singular. - For it is posited [by Henry] that the singular is not known through the universal that shines in the habit save because the universal is participated in by the singular itself [n.24]. On this supposition I argue as follows: the singular is naturally known in revelation before the habit is the reason for knowing it; therefore the singular is naturally known distinctly before the habit is the reason for knowing it; therefore the habit is not the reason for the first distinct knowing of the singular - and thus we have the proposed conclusion [sc. set down at the beginning of this paragraph].

37. The proof of the antecedent is from their own statements, because the universal that shines in the habit is not the reason for knowing the singular save because the universal is in the singular, whether it exists in itself or in revelation [n.24]; so the singular naturally has such and such existence - and so naturally has the universal within it (the universal abstracted from it) - before the habit is the reason for knowing the singular.

Proof of the first consequence [n.36]: existence in revelation is nothing but the existence in actuality known by him to whom the revelation is made. For it is not existence in the intellect of the revealer, because this existence is eternal and perpetual; nor is it existence in any existence other than the knowledge of him to whom the revelation is made, because then - by the fact it would exist in such existence - it would be naturally known to anyone else, in the way this opinion posits that anyone can, by his habit, have distinct knowledge of anything existent [nn.27-28].

38. Further, from this position it follows that any existent singular will be naturally known to any other angel [nn.27-28], and so local distance will not impede the intellection of the angel, which is denied by many [including by Scotus himself, 2 d.2 n.205] and seems to be contrary to Augustine in his book On Care for the Dead ch.14 n.17.Here Augustine says, about Luke 16.19-31, that Abraham, because of distance in place, did not know that the rich man had five brothers but had to learn it from Lazarus. ¹⁴

39. Further, the reasons by which he proves that the singular cannot be understood by an angel [nn.20-23] seem to proceed from the view that knowing a singular is a mark of imperfection in the intellect; but this is false, because then the divine intellect would not know the singular. The reasons are also not conclusive, nor should the conclusion be conceded unless necessary reasons lead to it; for it is probable that just as some common sense can sense every sensible, so some created intellect can understand everything per se intelligible - of which sort the singular is.

40. Against the second article [nn.26-28] the argument is as follows:

Henry himself rejects species in blessedness, because one of the blessed would naturally see it in the intellect of a second blessed, and consequently he would naturally see what the species represents. So it is argued in the issue at hand: if the habit is the reason for naturally knowing the singular, then, since a first angel would see the habit naturally in another angel, the object that this other angel would see through this habit could not escape the first angel.

41. Further, when two intelligibles are compared to a same intellect which is not bound to the power of imagination, the more actual and more perfect intelligible - not exceeding the natural faculty of the intellect’s nature - is more intelligible to that intellect; but for Henry, a vague concept, formed in the intellect of the angel who does the speaking, is intelligible to the other angel by its natural power [n.29];     therefore much more intelligible to this other angel is the determinate concept which this vague concept expresses (because a determinate concept is more perfect and more intelligible; and the intellect of any angel whatever has any caused concept whatever for any intelligible not exceeding it, and this intellect is not bound to a phantasm, as is plain; therefore etc     .).

42. Further, third: either there is one act of understanding all singulars or there are different ones. If there is a single same one - and it is naturally of all singulars (for it is of them as it precedes the act of will of the one understanding, because it is through an action of understanding which precedes every commanded intellection and every volition) - then that act cannot be of one singular without being of another singular; just as neither can a natural cause, as far as concerns itself, be cause of one effect (to which it is naturally ordered) and not of another [sc. to which it is also naturally ordered] - and if by one action it is of all effects in general, then it is necessarily of all of them together. So if this act cannot be of all of them together, it cannot - as far as it is natural - be one and the same for all of them, because then it could (as such) be of all of them together. - If there are several acts, then one angel, seeing this and that act to be different in the intellect of the angel speaking to him, can distinctly see which object this act is of and which object that act is of; and thus it will not escape him what singular the speaking angel is considering, because of the identity of the non-varied act in that angel (for that angel will have different acts for considering different singulars).

43. Against the third article [n.29]:

First: it follows that in the intellect of the angel who is speaking there are two concepts about the same thing, one vague that designates and the other determinate that is designated [sc. which is unacceptable]; for it is then determinate when it is the reason for generating the vague designating one.a

a. a[Interpolation] Hence if the determinate conditions of the singular were in the hearer as they are in the speaker, the hearer would express that singular determinately to himself; but so it is in the case of an angel, because the habit he [Henry] posits is in the one angel just as in the other.

44. Further, it seems superfluous to posit this vague concept. For we express a determinate singular, known to us, through a vague singular, because we know we cannot cause a concept in the intellect of him to whom we speak and we know that the universal conditions of a vague particular are known to him; if we could make a distinct concept about what we were speaking about, a determinate singular known to us would not be expressed by a vague particular; therefore since an angel can make a distinct concept of a distinct singular known to him in the intellect of another angel (as will be plain in our solution [nn.49-52, 65]), in vain does Henry posit a vague indeterminate concept.

45. Against the fourth article [nn.30-32]:

First: it does not seem that the disposition for a purely supernatural form could be caused by an angel, because although for a form immediately producible by God (but as cooperating with the common course of nature) some natural cause could make disposition (as with the organic body in respect of the intellective soul) - yet for a form altogether supernatural (that is, without the common course of nature cooperating), that ‘a natural agent produce an immediate disposition’ seems unacceptable.

46. Further, the reason adduced for this article [n.32] would prove that the superior angel made the inferior angel see something revealed in the Word [nn.86-87]; for this is the ultimate perfection of the intellect, to see the Word, much more than to understand some revealed truth beyond the common course of natural intellection.

47. Further, against this whole opinion there are two difficulties:

First, how the speaking angel does not speak to just anyone. For if ‘to speak’ means precisely ‘to express a concept’ (which is seen in him as in a book [n.29]), and if this expressed concept can be seen by anyone equally - then he who expresses it speaks equally to anyone.

48. The other difficulty is how a first angel speaks to a second when he causes nothing in the second but only in himself [n.29]; for there seems no reason for the second to understand more now than before if nothing else comes to be in him. And this seems especially absurd in illumination [n.31], for it is clear that the first angel is illumined immediately by God and when God illumines he makes nothing in himself but the first thing he makes is in the intellect or angel illumined; therefore it is likely thus in the case of other inferiors who illumine, that the one who illumines does not cause anything in himself by the fact he illumines, but that the first thing caused is in the one illumined.

C. Scotus’ own Response

1. On an Angel’s Mode of Speaking

49. To the question then about speaking [n.6] I first reply that an angel speaks to an angel by causing in him immediately a concept of the object he is talking about.

For this I posit two reasons.

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].

b) Second Reason

65. Second principally, for the solution [n.49], I argue thus: an inferior angel knows himself intuitively by essence (as is plain above, 2 d.3 nn.269-71), therefore a superior angel too knows the inferior intuitively by essence (proof of the consequence, that every object knowable by an inferior can be knowable by a superior with equal or more perfection; but no abstractive knowledge of any object is more perfect than intuitive knowledge, because abstractive knowledge through a species can be about something not existent and not present in itself, and thus such knowledge does not know it nor reach it most perfectly [n.98, 2 d.3 nn.318-323, 392]); and it is not necessary that angels be immediate to each other locally for a superior angel to know intuitively an inferior one; therefore, given that they are distant locally, the superior will intuitively know the inferior. But this knowledge is not through any species or habit that could be present in something not existent; therefore it comes about in the angel intuiting that intuitive knowledge, and yet the known essence does not generate in the medium anything of the same idea - or of another idea - , because the medium is not capable of intellection nor of a species purely intelligible [nn.56, 60-61]; therefore, by similarity, if something actually intelligible is posited in an angel, something of a nature to generate some knowledge (though not intuitive) in a passive or receptive intellect, then that something actually intelligible can generate actual knowledge in the intellect of a distant angel without generating anything in the medium.a

a. a[Interpolation] (in place of ‘in the intellects medium’) but the intellect of a distant angel is receptive of such knowledge; therefore that something intelligible in act, existing in the intellect of an angel, can cause actual knowledge of itself in the intellect of a distant angel.

2. Further Clarification of the Question

66. For further clarification of the proposed position [n.49] two things remain to be seen: first, what is generated in the intellect of the hearing angel by the speaking angel - second, how an angel can speak to one angel and not another if both are equally present.

a) What is caused in the Intellect of the Hearing Angel

67. On the first point [n.66] I say that the speaking angel can then cause the act only (such that he does not cause the species), and can cause the act and the species together, and can cause the species only.

68. Proof of the first claim [n.67]: the speaking can be about something habitually known to the hearing angel, because just as we can speak imperfectly about what we would perfectly know by communicating our concepts to others (although we would know that others know those same concepts), so it seems possible in the case of angels that the speaking is about what is habitually known to both; but then no species is generated by the speaking angel other than the one that is had by the hearing angel (because then there would be two species in the same angel with respect to the same object) - nor even is the already possessed species intensified, because we may posit that the already possessed species is most perfect.

69. Likewise, the speakings - for the most part - are about propositions pertaining to the actual existence of things; now such propositions are not evident from the terms; therefore, although someone may have the species of the extremes, not for this reason is his intellect capable of some propositional intellection (or knowledge) about those extremes, namely one that is determinately to one side of the contradiction (as about the thing’s existence or non-existence). There can in that case be caused some act of knowing such a proposition without the causing of any species.

70. I prove the second [n.67] because if the hearing angel does not have the species of the singular about which the speaking angel is speaking, his intellect is receptive both of the species and of the act and lacks both - and the intellect of the speaking angel is in first act, sufficient for generating both; this is plain about the species, because an intelligible species can generate an intelligible species of the same nature, just as also the species of a sensible thing in the medium can generate a sensible species of the same nature; it is likewise plain about the act, because the species that in the speaker is the principle of knowing what it is the species can also be the reason for generating actual intellection of the same object in another intellect capable of it.

71. I prove the third [n.67] because a lesser active virtue cannot hinder a greater virtue from its action; therefore if the greater considers something in its proper genus, for instance a, the inferior - wanting to speak to him about b - will not be able to impede his actual intellection; so he will not then cause actual intellection of b, because there cannot be two in the superior angel. But the inferior angel will cause something, as far as he will be able, because he wants to communicate something to another as far as he can; therefore he will cause a species of b, if it is not already possessed in the superior angel’s intellect.

72. Also from the same major as before [sc. that a lesser virtue cannot hinder a greater virtue, n.71] and from this minor, namely that ‘a superior and an inferior can together speak to the same angel’, it follows that the superior will make that same angel understand what he himself is speaking about but the inferior will not, though he will make something compossible with that intellection, namely the species of what he himself wishes to speak about.

73. In these two cases [nn.71-72] the speaking angel can generate a species such that he cannot generate then an act; given too that there is nothing on the part of the hearer to prevent him being able to receive both (the species and the act), the speaker -from the fact he wants to cause (as will be said later [n.177]) - can cause one [the species] and not the other [the act] (namely causing the first but not the second), because the two need not always accompany each other.

74. And in this last member [n.67, 71-73] the speaker speaks and yet the hearer does not perfectly hear, because hearing is an intellection of the intelligible thing expressed by the speaker; it is just as if a man were to speak to a man distracted by study, whose ear would receive the species of sound and yet he would not hear (that is, he would not conceive it distinctly under the idea of sign), and he would not have an understanding of what was expressed; rather only the species of the sound would generate in his memory or imagination some residual species, and he would be able later - recovering from the distraction - to consider what it was a sign of; and so the preceding speech would be an occasion for him of understanding, although he had earlier heard nothing distinctly through it. However, in the other two members [nn.67-70], where actual intellection is expressed by the speaker when he says something, the hearer hears.

75. But what sort of understanding is this act called ‘hearing’?

I reply:

An angel can understand an object a in four ways (besides seeing it in the Word [2 d.3 nn.328-330]), namely intuitively in itself, intuitively in the intellect of another angel that knows it, abstractively through an habitual species (co-created or acquired), and none of these intellections is hearing, because none of them is per se expressed by someone understanding qua understanding - rather it is accidental to the first angel that the one understanding is understanding (for he would remain just the same if the one understanding were not understanding); and in these three ways, if some intellect causes something, it is the intellect of the one understanding (and not of someone else), and the object concurs there with the object as partial cause, as was said before [1 d.3 nn.486-94]. In the fourth way an angel can understand a such that the intellection is brought about in him through another ‘expressing’ intellect, and the first angel’s intellect has no causality with respect to this act but is passive only; this knowing alone is hearing, and it is expressed by the one understanding insofar as he is understanding.

76. The difference is plain, then, between hearing and the other three ways of knowing (which ways can generally be called ‘seeing’), because in the case of hearing the intellect of the hearer is as it were passive, and whatever is in it, as that it has an habitual species of what is heard - that species too does not act on the hearing; also, whatever is present there does nothing for the hearing, for if the same singular were intuitively present to the hearer as is present to the speaker, it would not - as present to the hearer - generate hearing but would only generate vision in him. Therefore only the intellect of the speaker or the things that are in it as it, or that are present to it as it, are active with respect to hearing; and they are so with respect to hearing as to a proximate effect, for they first cause, as present to the speaker, actual intellection in the speaker before they cause hearing in the hearer.

77. And from this is plain how the will of the speaker makes for this speaking, because as the will, after the first intellection, makes for the union of memory and intelligence for any second act that needs to be had in the angel whose will it is, so it can make for the later act to be had in the hearing angel; for if the prior effect, without which the posterior one is not caused, is in the power of someone, then if the prior is not, neither will the posterior be.

78. And from this something else is also apparent, namely how the actual intellection in the speaking angel is not the reason for him of his acting insofar as he speaks, but something pertaining to the speaker’s memory is - because in ordered effects of the same nature, as it were, one of which is of a nature to be generated by an equivocal cause, the prior effect need not be the cause of the posterior effect but each can be caused by the same equivocal cause; and this is specifically the case in the issue at hand, because actual intellection does not have the idea of being parent so much as the memory does (hence the Father in divine reality does not generate by intelligence [but by memory, I d.2 nn.221, 291]).

79. Evident also, third, is what the order is of hearing to the intellection that is ‘vision’ [n.76]. For although vision in Michael - whether of the object or of the intellection of the object - could be followed by Gabriel’s speaking about the same thing, yet Gabriel does not then cause knowledge of anything not already known [sc. by Michael]. Nor is speaking as necessary then as when Gabriel’s speaking precedes either vision [sc. of Michael]; for when Gabriel knows something in its proper genus or as revealed, which Michael does not know in particular, he can cause a concept in Michael’s intellect which may properly be called hearing - and when it has been caused, Michael can turn himself to see Gabriel’s intellect, and therein will be seen the intellection that Gabriel has, and in that intellection too will in some way be seen the object of Gabriel’s intellection; and if that object cannot be seen further (neither in itself nor in the Word), then it [sc. Gabriel’s intellection] is the ultimate perfection that Michael can have of the known object, namely to see it in Gabriel’s intellect. Thus, therefore, insofar as hearing is ordered to having knowledge of something unknown, it precedes all vision, both of the thing in itself in the intellect of the other who sees it, and of the thing through its habitual species - and this triple vision was said to be distinct from hearing [n.75].

80. Hearing is also said to differ from all vision as far as certitude is concerned -and this difference can perhaps be inferred from the idea of ordered effects, of which the posterior [sc. hearing] is more imperfect etc.The Vatican editors quote from Rep IIA d.9 q.1-2: “There is a difference in certitude, because certitude is greater when something is caused by itself than when it is caused by another, because certitude when something is heard from another is no greater than is the believability of the speaker; but proper vision is greater, just as I believe more when I see a man in church than if someone tells me this... For vision is caused in the seer before speaking in the speaker, such that hearing follows vision - not as an effect follows its cause but as two ordered effects do, one of which (as vision) is more immediate to the cause.” They also quote from Lectura 2 d.9 n.81: “But when one angel hears from another angel and gets from him knowledge of some proposition (because he does not speak about a simple concept but about some true proposition), he does not then have evident knowledge but believes the speaking angel who causes the knowledge, because the speaking angel precisely has the act and the conception about some proposition (as that the Son of God is incarnated); however he [sc. the hearing angel] has the certitude of believability, because he knows that he who is speaking is truthful - and this is only the knowledge of faith.” ¹⁵

b) How an Angel speaks to One Angel and not to Another

81. On the second principal point, namely how an angel can speak to one angel and not to another [n.66], I say that just as it is in the power of an angel - as concerns the first intellection - to use this species or that in the memory for actual intellection of this object or that, so, if he had several intelligences, he would have it in his power to generate knowledge in this intelligence or in that; for what is naturally passive is not more determined to undergoing than what is naturally active is to acting. So just as the active power that is of itself subject to the will can of itself act and not act (because of the will’s command to act and not to act), so it can be determined to act on this passive thing and not on that; and just as a determination would be made for intelligences intrinsic to an angel, if there were several intelligences in it, so a determination could be made for this or that extrinsic intellect, which intellects - to this extent - are passive in the same way as the intrinsic ones are passive, in that the intrinsic active power would act by command of the will.

82. Further, there follows a corollary from this, that there are as many speakings as there are hearings - because however many angels be present (or whether one of them is nearer and one further away), then, just as memory would not generate [sc. actual intellection] in Michael save by command of his will, so neither does memory generate it in the intellect of one angel and not of another save by determination of the will of the speaking angel.

83. But then a doubt arises about how many angels one angel can speak to at once, because a natural agent cannot have at the same time any number whatever of adequate effects - and so one act of generating is not sufficient for many angels to hear, because one act of generating is of one intellection in one angel, which intellection that angel alone hears.No response to this doubt is found in the Ordinatio, or in the Reportatio or the Lectura. ¹⁶

II. To the First Question

84. To the other question, about illumination [n.1], I say that illumination in an angel is a sort of speaking about a truth that is perfective in second existence; for just as not every intellection is simply the perfection of the angelic intellect but the vision of the Word is, and not the vision of quiddities (whether through habitual species or intuitively), so not every knowledge of singulars - knowledge other than vision of the Word and knowledge of quiddities - equally perfects the angelic intellect in a secondary way as it were; but vision of a revealed truth perfects it in second existence, while knowledge of a singular in its proper genus does not so perfect it.

85. I say then that a superior angel, to whom some particular is in the common course first revealed, causes a certain concept in an inferior angel - a concept about the thing revealed - which is called ‘hearing’; and this causing, which is a sort of spiritual speaking, is illumining. It also seems probable that the illumining angel causes something in the angel illumined and not in himself, because God too - illumining the first angel -causes nothing in himself but in the angel illumined [n.48].

86. But there is a doubt whether a superior angel can make an inferior see anything in the Word [n.46] - and whether an inferior angel can illumine a superior (it seems that he can, if something is first revealed to him).

87. To the first it seems that just as knowledge of the Word is purely supernatural, such that it is not subject to the causality of any created cause, so neither is the vision of anything in the Word thus subject. Yet a superior angel, when illumining an inferior in the way stated [n.85], can act dispositively so that the inferior see something in the Word; for the hearing makes disposition that the hearer turn himself to the intellect of the speaker and see there what the speaker is speaking about (and this seeing is in some way more perfect than the hearing); and makes disposition further that the inferior angel, seeing something in the superior angel, see the same in the Word, because, if he desires to see in a perfect mirror what he sees in the superior angel as in an imperfect mirror, he will see it, rejoicing, and then he is perfectly illumined (perfectively by the Word indeed and dispositively by the superior angel).

88. To the second doubt [n.86] I say that God, of his absolute power, could reveal something to an inferior angel that was not revealed or known to a superior, and then the inferior could in some way speak to the superior about what the superior does not know -and this speaking would in some way be illumination; but he could not have as much efficient power over the intellect of a superior as the superior has over the intellect of an inferior, and so he could not necessarily make the superior hear (the way it works the other way around), because if the superior were considering something in its proper genus, the inferior would not make him hear simply [n.71] (but the superior can make an inferior hear simply, and can prevent his understanding some intelligible thing). In fact, however, it is likely that God distributes his illuminations in ordered fashion (just as he distributes the angels in their orders), first to the superior indeed, and then to the inferior.

III. To the Principal Arguments of the First Question

89. To the principal arguments.

To the first [n.2] I say that an angel can cause the hearing, that is, perfect vision in second existence. And when you say ‘therefore he will create’, it does not follow, as will be plain in the question on seminal reasons;Not in the Ordinatio but the Lectura 2 d.9 n.92, d.18 nn.66, 70-72. ¹⁷ for creation is an action with no concurrent cause of any genus but only with the first efficient and first final cause, and nothing such is an action of a creature.

90. To the second [n.3] I say that vision of the Word is the most perfect perfection, and therefore the intellect - when possessing it - is said to be perfectly luminous (or illumined), however much it may not have the knowledge which, with respect to vision of the Word, is said to be as darkness to light; and therefore neither is the lack of any other intellection said, in one who has the vision of the Word, to make his intellect dark. Yet it can be conceded that just as the blessed angels are in potency to something which is light, so they are in potency to something which is dark.

91. To the third, which is taken from corporeal light [n.4] - it is in a certain respect false; for the sun does not prevent the other stars from multiplying their rays to the surface of the earth; the point is plain because if someone were in a deep well he would see the stars at middayVatican editors: A point made by Pliny Natural History 2.14 and Roger Bacon Multiplication of Species 2.2. ¹⁸ (for their rays would not reach his eyes if they did not first reach the surface of the illumined medium [sc. the air]). However the sun itself prevents the lesser lights from any action (namely from the action they would have on sight), because the lesser lights cannot be seen in the presence of the sun; and the reason is that the presence of an excelling visible acts excellingly on sight, so as to activate it in its total capacity (and perhaps it afflicts sight in some way with pain), as Alhazes says Optica 1.5 n.32. But as to this, “it is not the same with intellectual light in respect of the intelligible (as is plain from the Philosopher On the Soul 3.4.429a29-b4), for after excelling intelligibles we understand other ones not less but more, while after excelling sensibles we sense other ones less,” because the power or the organ is weakened.

IV. To the Principal Arguments of the Second Question

92. To the arguments of the second question.

To the first [n.7]. Although some say that ‘an angel can by an act of will hide his intellection and not hide it’ (and this ‘not hiding’ is a speaking), yet there does not seem any reason that something actually intelligible should be present to a passive intellect and not be able to affect it; nor does there seem a greater reason that an angel could through his will more hide his intellection than his essence. Also, why can the other angel, from whom he wills to hide his intellection, not see that volition? If one posits that the volition is hidden too, then it would be hidden by another volition, and so on ad infinitum. - And therefore, if one concedes that the knowledge of this angel is open to another, just as is his essence, but his speaking cannot be - the speaking by which this knowledge (or known thing) is expressed - yet this is not for the reason that, without such expression, it could not be seen, but because, without the expression, it would not be known by the knowledge that is hearing; and also often, without previous hearing, there would not be vision of this cognition.

93. And if you say that at any rate in that case it could be vain to speak about that by which, without speaking, the thing he wants to speak about is manifest [n.7], I say that although an angel may see another angel’s intellection before he hears from him, yet the hearing would not be vain, because it would be ‘a per se perfection’ communicated liberally to the angel (by the other angel); and it is for this most of all that speaking exists among intellectual beings, that they may liberally and freely communicate their concepts to each other. But if the knowledge of this concept is seen in this angel [sc. without this angel speaking it], then this angel does not liberally communicate his concept to another; for he is disposed in this seeing [sc. the seeing of him by the other angel] as someone not understanding and not willing, because his knowledge is naturally visible (and what is naturally active - and what naturally moves when seen - would act in the same way even were it not in someone understanding and willing). Likewise hearing too, when it precedes, stimulates to seeing the intellection of the speaking angel - such that, although the vision could exist without the stimulation, yet it does not exist without it.

94. There is also a confirmation of the fact that speaking is not posited here in vain [n.93], because the angels are conceded to speak to God, and yet they cannot make anything more manifest to him than it was before, nor even manifest in another way to him than it was before (which are however possible in the case of an angel), but they can will from liberality alone to make this plain to God (they desire everything as much as they can, so that if they could cause a concept in him they would cause it [n.71]) - and this is speaking to God. So the speaking [sc. of angel to angel] is more necessary.

95. To the second argument it is plain from what has been said how one angel can speak to another distant angel while doing nothing to the medium [nn.55-60] - and how he can speak to one and not another, whether this other is nearer or further away [nn.81-82].

96. To the third [n.9] I say that although it is most true that God has communicated to an angel the species of all quiddities, yet, if those species had not been communicated (or co-created), it would not be unacceptable for an angel to acquire them, because what is a matter of perfection in an inferior intellect is not to be denied to a superior and more perfect intellect; but it is a matter of perfection in our intellect that it has something whereby it can actively acquire the species of all quiddities, so that, although ‘to be able to receive such species’ is a mark of imperfection, yet ‘to be able actively to acquire them’ is a mark of perfection (making up for the imperfection), such as commonly are all the perfections of creatures.

97. Likewise too, given that God has co-created the species of the quiddities, yet one need not say that he co-created the species of all singulars intelligible to an angel; for it is not likely that a singular would be able to come to be of which an angel could not have a distinct knowledge - and yet if the world were to last to infinity (as is possible), there would be an infinity of singulars, each of which an angel could distinctly know, and yet he would not have infinite co-created species at the same time; therefore he could acquire the species of something de novo.

98. Given also that God co-created with the angel’s intellect the species both of singulars and of future quiddities, yet the angel cannot have through them all the knowledge possible to him - because he does not have intuitive knowledge; for this cannot be had through the species of an object that can remain while the object is absent; for this is contrary to the idea of intuitive knowledge, that it be of a thing not actually existent and not present to hand (2 d.3 nn.318-323). So let the assumed proposition be denied, that ‘an angel can know nothing save through innate species’ [n.9].

99. And given, fourth, that this assumed proposition were true, there could still be a speaking about propositions whose terms an angel has innate species of, because those species of the terms would not be a sufficient cause of knowing a contingently true proposition about those terms, because a contingent proposition is not known to be true from the terms [n.69, d.11 n.15].

100. To the adduced proofs that an angel cannot have acquired species [nn.10-15]

I reply:

To the first [n.10], that he has an agent intellect and a possible intellect.

101. And when argument is made against this as concerns the agent intellect [n.10], I say that an angel’s first (that is, adequate) object is not his essence, but the whole of being, comprehending under itself intelligible and sensible species. Now although his essence is actually intelligible yet a singular sensible is not, when we are speaking of what is intelligible by abstractive intellection of the sort that the universal is known by.

102. Also, when argument is made against this as concerns the possible intellect, because an angel’s intellect is not in potency to first act [n.10] - I say that even if a surface were created along with whiteness, it would no less be of itself receptive of whiteness, because a receptive potency need not precede in duration, but only in nature, the act for which it is in potency. Thus the intellect of an angel, although it were created along with all the species of intelligible things, would yet truly be possible and of itself in potency to first act even if it never preceded first act in duration; neither too would the possible intellect be denied in us if it had been created along with all intelligible species, because simultaneity in duration does not take away the idea of its passivity.

103. The same way too on the other side [sc. about the agent intellect]. Given that an angel would not need to abstract any species (if he had all such species co-created with him), he would no less have the power of abstracting, because active potency - which is a mark of perfection in an inferior nature - should not be denied to a superior nature [n.96], although the superior cause [sc. God, by co-creating species] prevented the action of the active power of the inferior cause; just as the agent intellect should not be denied in us such that our agent intellect could not have any act of abstracting - not because of its own nature, but because it was prevented by another superior agent which produced the effect that could be produced by our agent intellect.

104. To the second [n.11]. If the argument is made in uniform way, I concede the whole of it; for an angel is without a body that may be a part of it or an organ of it in operating - and so conclude that it does not depend on a body as on a part or organ as to what it operates on. But it does not follow that it does not depend on a body as on an object; for every passive intellect that is unable to have in itself the whole perfection of the object depends on the object about which it operates, and proportionally according to the proportion of the object.

105. And as to what is said about the union of the soul [n.11], I say that the soul is united not only so that it may operate about the body as an object, but is also united so that the whole composite of which it is a part might exist - such that the whole operating thing has the body not only for object but for part of the operator; but it is not so with an angel.

106. To the third [n.12] I say that it would prove that God could not understand the singular, because he cannot have an object in that middle, namely in the imaginable; therefore I say that a middle that is a middle for an inferior agent is not a middle for a more perfect agent. And as was said in the questions on the motion of an angel [2 d.2 nn.428-31, 515], although succession in the middle is possible, yet there is no actual succession save by reference to a limited power, for which the middle is what is of itself a middle between extremes and cannot make the movable to be simultaneously in the middle and at the extreme, or to be at once at the extreme as if there were no middle; but it is otherwise with infinite power. Likewise, if an imperfect heat had to proceed through many degrees up to degree a, then all those degrees would, for a perfect heat, not be in between, because it would at once begin from a itself; thus I say that a more perfect agent intellect can cause at once from a sensible object an intelligible species (in which species the thing would have being as actually intelligible), but a more imperfect virtue can require imaginable being as an intermediate disposition for intelligible being.

107. One can reply otherwise by saying that imaginable being is not a middle in the present case but an extreme - because the two extremes are these: ‘non-intelligible in act’ and ‘intelligible in act’. And though the extreme that is ‘non-intelligible in act’ could have many extremes (for example, sensible being, imaginable being), yet it is matter of accident in which of the extremes this extreme [sc. non-intelligible in act] is, because all of them have this extreme; and from this extreme, as it is in one of the many extremes, there can be some power of acting for the other extreme [sc. intelligible in act] - but this extreme [sc. non-intelligible in act], as it exists in another supposit, requires other things as well so as to act on the other extreme [sc. intelligible in act].a

a. a[Interpolation] [it is a matter of accident] that this extreme is in something that has all those extremes; for some power from this extreme can act immediately for the other extreme, but some power cannot.

108. To the fourth [n.13] I say that the symmetry about the celestial bodies is not conclusive; for if those qualities [sc. those that constitute the perfection of celestial bodies) were not co-created with the celestial body, there is nothing given that body whereby it could acquire those qualities - and thus it would always be non-perfect in reference to itself and to every natural cause, because no natural cause can produce those qualities in that body; but in general, any perfection that nature cannot supply is supplied immediately by God. But it is not so in the issue at hand, because an angel has that whereby (along with the cooperation of its other natural powers) it may act and be able to acquire such perfection - namely the species of all things - , given that they were not cocreated with it; for his intellect can from its natural virtue have intellection of any object whatever, and from these two [sc. intellect and object] as from partial causes, that is, by the action of the intellect and the object, he can have the species of the quiddity of any object whatever, and can afterwards use the species for abstractive intellection.

109. And when it is next argued that ‘then the object would act on the intellect of an angel’ [n.14] - I concede that it truly does, along with the intellect of the angel.

110. And when it is supposed that ‘two things of diverse genus cannot be cause of one effects’ [n.14] - I say that this is universally false; for an essential order is not of individuals of the same species (the thing is plain from Avicenna Metaphysics 6 ch.3); for individuals of the same species are not ordered to each other, therefore there is no essential order of the sort either [2 d.3 nn.13, 15]. Nor is there an essential order of individuals of diverse most specialized species; for of such kind are contraries and the means [sc. between them], which are not essentially ordered for causing the same thing.     Therefore all diverse efficient causes, which are essentially ordered, are diverse in genus.

111. And when the division is proved that ‘either they are required insofar as they are other in genus or insofar as they are the same in genus’ etc     . [n.14] - I say that either member of the division may be granted, because of the argument made against him [sc. against the proponent of this division, which argument now follows, nn.111-112].

For if it be said that they are required insofar as they are other in genus, then it cannot but follow that the effect is homogeneous; for the most simple effect can be caused by essentially ordered causes that differ in genus, from what was said [n.110]; this is plain in the case of heat, which is generated by the celestial body and by fire or by substance and quality, the first two of which [sc. celestial body and fire] differ in physical genus, and the second two [sc. substance and quality] differ in genus of category - and yet the effect is simple, not composed of things diverse in genus. Or as follows: it is universally false that effects ordered in the cause require two natures in the effect, one of which is caused by a superior and the other by an inferior cause; for then they would not be effects ‘ordered’ in respect of the one cause or in respect of the other, for this effect would be immediately caused by one cause and that effect would be immediately caused by the other cause.

112. But if the other member is granted [n.111], that the causes are not required insofar as they are other in genus - it does not follow that then one cause alone could be intensified so as to suffice for acting; for some perfection of causality in both is required (although they do not have to be other in genus), and this perfection could not be in one of them however intensified it is, and so the effects of both could not be in it either.

113. But setting aside the consequences here (which are not valid for establishing the truth), I say that agents diverse in genus are not per se required insofar as they are diverse in genus by an absolute diversity. Two causalities are, however, required well enough for intellection (one of which causalities is on the part of the intellect and the other on the part of the object), but sometimes the two causalities can come together in one nature, as when the intellect understands itself; for one of these causalities is common to the whole of being (namely that on the part of the object), but the other is determined to a determinate nature (namely to intellectual nature), and thus, in the case of intellectual nature, the common causality comes together with the special one; these causalities are not then per se required for causing insofar as they are diverse in genus by an absolute diversity. And I concede (not because of the argument in itself) that, in truth, each causality can come together in the same thing; for where there is the entity that the causality of the object follows and the entity that the causality of the intellect follows, the same thing can - according to the same causality - be the total cause with respect to intellection [n.75, 2 d.3 n.70, 1 d.3 nn.486-494].

114. But if an objection is still made that although things diverse in genus can cause the same thing, yet not things as diverse in genus as the intelligible and sensible; or at any rate, they cannot so cause without at least one acting in virtue of the other - and thus either the object would act in virtue of the intellect or conversely, and they will not be two causes acting for the effect equally.

115. I reply that if the argument is taken from the idea of diversity in genus and applied to the intelligible and the sensible [n.114], as if it were more conclusive here than in other things, then there is a departure from the middle term. So from this the argument is that there is not a greater diversity here than in other things; for substance and accident (which are diverse most general genera) are more diverse than are sensible and intelligible substance (which belong to the same most general genus); for substance and accident can be agent causes with respect to the same effect (as with respect to simple heat [n.111]).

116. And in the issue at hand too I say that for an action that is consequent to every being, the sensible must operate just as also the intelligible (for the sensible is some sort of being); but the affecting of the intellect is such an action, and therefore the difference in genus that the sensible has from the intelligible is accidental to the sensible insofar as the sensible happens to affect the intellect, because this does not belong to the sensible insofar as it is non-intelligible but would belong to it if it were intelligible. Nor can anything so differ in genus from the intelligible as if it were in a disparate genus, because any being whatever, however much it is a sensible, is yet an intelligible; for whatever an inferior power can do per se and first, that a superior power can do per se and first.

117. When therefore it is said that ‘things diverse in genus, as are the sensible and the intelligible, cannot cause the same thing nor come together for the same action’ [n.114] - this is false of the action where the sensible is a sort of intelligible.

118. And when you add that ‘one cause acts in virtue of the other’ [n.114], I say that a acting in virtue of b can be understood in two ways: either that a receives from b the form by which it acts, or that - once the habit has been formed - it receives the action from it. Now in the second way, the efficient cause does not act in virtue of another, for fire - possessing the active form by which it acts - does not receive from the sun the action of heating nor does it receive from it a special motion for heating. Therefore in this case the inferior is said to act in virtue of the superior only because it in some way receives the form from the superior - just as ordered natural agents have their forms in ordered way such that an element receives its form in some fashion from the celestial body as the superior agent.

119. In the issue at hand [sc. of the sensible and intelligible] one partial cause receives from the other neither first act nor second act; and so in neither way [n.118] is one cause said - in the issue at hand - to cause in virtue of the other. Nor indeed does this belong to the idea of ordered agent causes, namely that one act in virtue of the other; but it is sufficient that one act more principally than the other [1 d.3 nn.559-560, 496].

120. To Augustine on Genesis [n.14] response was made in 1 d.3 nn.506-507. For Augustine proves that body cannot be the total cause of any action on spirit, which I concede. However it can be a partial cause, because what undergoes can exceed in nobility an agent cause that is partial; for the proposition from Augustine [sc. the agent is more excellent than the patient, n.114], as was said elsewhere [sc. 1 d.3 nn.506-507], depends on these propositions, that ‘the agent (or cause) is more excellent than the effect’ and ‘the effect as act is more excellent than what is as potency receptive of act’ - of which the first is only true of a total agent and the second only true of perfection simply; therefore the inferred proposition about the active thing in comparison with the passive thing [sc. the agent is more excellent] will not be true when speaking of a partial agent -and there is no need that the acting be in virtue of the partial agent.

121. As for the final argument [n.15], when it is said that ‘the like is known by its like’ - in the case of an angel nothing unacceptable follows, because an angel can have both abstractive and intuitive knowledge of a singular in its proper idea; for a perfection should not be denied to that intellect when there is no manifest reason for the denial; but it is mark of perfection in an intellect ‘to be able to know the singular distinctly’, otherwise this would not belong to the divine intellect.

122. But if argument is made about our intellect that ‘the phantasm in us - which is of the singular object - generates the intelligible species, therefore it reduces the intellect to act with respect to the singular’, I say that there is in this inference a fallacy of the consequent. For a likeness does not prove (or does not include) every likeness; the phantasm does indeed generate a species like itself (and representative of the object) with natural likeness, but not with likeness of determination or indetermination - for the natural likeness can be carried off by reason of the co-causing agent intellect, which intellect is able to attribute to the effect a greater indetermination than the effect could have from the phantasm alone, such that the likeness is of the nature represented whether the phantasm is a partial or a total cause; but it is not altogether the same with the likeness of determination and indetermination when a greater agent concurs that can attribute a greater indetermination.

V. To the Arguments for Henry’s Opinion

123. To the arguments for the first opinion recited, which were set down for the first article [nn.18-23], I reply:

To the first [n.20] it is plain that the minor is false, and it was refuted earlier [2 d.3 nn.46, 48-56].

124. To the second [n.21] I say there is equivocation over ‘first’ and ‘per se’ object.

For in one way that object is said to be first which has per se the idea of moving a power - and that object is said to be per se which does not have of itself that it move a power but moves it along with another; and in this way the Philosopher speaks in On the Soul 2.6.418a8-21 of the ‘first’ sensible, of which sort is a proper sensible, and of a ‘per se’ sensible, of which sort is a common sensible. In another way the first object is sometimes said to be the adequate object, and adequate to power or to act - and when contained under the first object adequate to the power it is called ‘the per se object of the power’, but when included in the first object adequate to the act it is called ‘the per se object of the act’.

125. Although therefore an object ‘per se and not first’ (in the way Aristotle speaks of it in On the Soul [n.124] cannot move a power save in virtue of the first object (or along with the first object [nn.21, 124]) - yet when speaking of ‘the per se object’ not adequate to the power but contained under the adequate object, it can move the power under its proper idea as well, to the extent it adds something to the first object.

126. Now when the proposition is taken that ‘the universal is the first object of the angelic intellect’ [n.21], it is false of the first adequate object, speaking of the universal insofar as it is universal; because although what universality is incident to, as to being, is in this way first object, yet being is saved equally in the singular as in the universal - and so being under the idea in which it is universal is not the adequate object such that universality is included in the adequate object.

127. Likewise, the universal is not ‘first’ in the way in which the Philosopher speaks in On the Soul [n.124], and the singular is not ‘per se’ in the way in which the sensible is common in respect of the senses, because the singular includes the same moving idea as the universal does; and yet the argument would not proceed without equivocation unless one provided a gloss or took the major of it in the first way.Vatican editors: There would be equivocation if the first object adequate to the power were understood to include the singular and the universal; but the equivocation can be avoided if one glosses it by saying that the first object adequate of itself is neither the singular nor the universal, and that as neither singular nor universal it moves the angelic intellect. ¹⁹

128. To the third [n.22] I say that proportionality does not always include likeness, but very often unlikeness instead; for four is double of two (and is proportional to it in double ratio), and three is to two in sesquialterate proportion, and the agent is proportional to the patient (because the former is in act and the latter in potency), and matter is proportional to form - and yet in all these unlikeness is more required than likeness. So I say in the issue at hand that the power must be proportioned to the object but not assimilated to it, because neither if the object is indeterminate (namely infinite) need the power be infinite (because a finite intellect knows the infinite as infinite finitely), nor if the object is determinate need the power be determinate, for an infinite intellect knows the finite as finite infinitely.

129. When therefore the proposition is taken that ‘the power must be determinate because the object is determinate’ [n.22] - if it is understood to mean that the power must thus be of a determinate object (and this in a determinate proportionate object), it is true; and in that case when - in the minor - the proposition is taken that ‘the intellect of an angel cannot be thus determinate’ (that is, does not have a proportion to an object thus determinate)A point not found in n.22 above but rather in the Lectura 2 d.9 n.24. ²⁰ it is false.

130. And when you ask ‘by what is the intellect thus determinate, by its own nature or by the species?’ - I say in neither way, for without a species it can know the singular as singular by intuitive knowledge, and by a species it can know the singular as singular by abstractive knowledge [2 d.3 n.394].

131. And when it is concluded against the first member here that ‘then the intellect of an angel would be more determinate than our intellect’ [n.22], and against the second that ‘then it would be more determinable than our senses’ - I say that this determination is not intrinsic to the power (neither of itself nor by the species) but is relative to a determinate object, and in this way the divine intellect is relative to a determinate singular; and it is not unacceptable that a more perfect intellect is determinate and determinable with respect to an object in a way that a more imperfect intellect is not determinate or determinable with respect to the same object.

132. But if it is concluded that ‘therefore it is more limited, because this determination introduces imperfection’ [n.22] - I deny the consequence, because this determination is not one of limitation but of perfection; for the intellect is altogether determinate to knowing the object altogether most determinately.

133. And if it is objected that ‘the angelic intellect will be more passive than our intellect, because affected by more objects’, I reply (see.. Scotus Metaphysics 7 q.15 nn.28-29: “Every actual entity is the idea for acting immediately on an intellect that has the capacity, not for any action immediately, but for action from such entity; thus the intellect of an angel has a capacity for action from any actual entity, both quidditative and individual, but ours now [sc. in this life] is not capable of action from an individual entity... And therefore the angelic intellect can be moved by any entity because it is more perfect than ours - nor is ‘being actable on by more things’ more imperfect when perfection is not possible save by being acted on; just as something transparent is not less perfect because it can be illumined by any light source than one that can be illumined only by the sun.” know them; and therefore a power that can know more things (even through receiving) is more perfect than a cognitive power that cannot know as many things - just as it is plain that our intellect is more perfect than any sensitive power because it can know more things. Hence generally in the case of cognitive powers that lack knowledge of some objects, it is a mark of greater perfection to be able to know more things, and consequently to be capable of being acted on by more objects - although in the case of the divine intellect (which actually knows everything) it is impossible for it to know anything de novo, as to be acted on by any object or to receive knowledge of it. ²¹).a

a. a[Interpolation] and I say that although the receiving of intellection is a certain imperfection (since it is a certain undergoing), yet it is in a sense a perfection, because in a cognitive power -which does not know things actually of itself - it is a mark of perfection to have the capacity to

134. To the fourth [n.23] I say either that ‘habit’ cannot be in an angelic intellect, taking habit for the quality that follows act (whereby it is distinguished from first act by which a thing is present under the idea of being actually intelligible), and this even if that intellect were supremely habituated of itself; or I say that if that intellect had the capacity and if such habit were not co-created with it, then I concede that it could generate in itself such a habit from acts, as was said before (to the similar argument about the generation of a habit in the angelic intellect [2 d.3 nn.360, 401-402]).

135. And when Aristotle is adduced, who maintains that ‘the habit of universals is not other than the habit of singulars’ [n.23] I say (as was said in the question on individuation [2 d.3 n.193]) that a singular does not have proper features that are knowable of it, and so there is properly no science about it; and thus neither is there a habit about it, speaking of the habit whereby singular knowables are present to the intellect - which are called by the Philosopher ‘proper knowables’, namely those that contain properties demonstrated of them as of their subjects.Scotus Exposition on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 11 s.3 ch.2 n.60: “Each of the sciences considers the proper subject according to that science, namely by demonstrating the proper features of the proper subject.” ²² However the habit that is a facility for considering - left behind by acts - can well be different for a singular than for a universal; for an intellect that has distinct knowledge of a singular can frequently consider the singular and not frequently consider the nature in general - and thereby a quality would be made habituating for similar acts of considering the singular, but not universally inclining to considering the nature in general; if therefore there is a different habit consequent upon the acts, namely a habit that is a quality habituating to consideration more in respect of the singular than the universal, yet it is not a different scientific habit in the way in which the Philosopher speaks there [n.23] of scientific habit.