2. About the Second Reason

50. The second principal reason [nn.19-24] does not seem valid, for when the extreme terms are immediate the distance between them is precisely as great as the one extreme is greater than the other.

51. The point is plain in a similar case, for the distance of God from creatures (even from the highest creature that can come to be) is as great as the greatness of God; and therefore, if the highest possible creature were posited, God would still be infinitely distant from it, because God is infinite.

52. It is plain too from an example to the opposite. Distance in quantities arises because of some intervening medium, and so the amount of the distance arises because of the amount of the intervening space. Therefore, by opposition, where there is no intervening medium, the amount of the distance will accord only with the amount of one extreme.

53. This is also plain by reason, for ‘distance’ here [sc. between God and creatures] is nothing but the excess of one extreme over the other. But when the exceeding extreme is immediate to the exceeded extreme, the quantity of the excess is the quantity of the exceeding extreme.

54. On the supposition of this major then [n.50], it is plain that, since some affirmation of creatable being is finite, the distance of this affirmation from the negation will be finite. For it is plain that the distance is immediate, since according to the Philosopher, Posterior Analytics I.2.72a12-13, “contradiction is the opposition of what has no per se middle.”

55. But if you imagine infinity on the part of nothing, this is nothing; because ‘nothing’ is not distant from anything save by deficiency, and the difference of ‘nothing’ from being is no greater than the greatness of the being it is different from.

56. This point too is plain, because there is no distance when one compares nothing with nothing.

57. So therefore the minor of the second reason is false [“between the terms ‘from which’ and ‘to which’ of creation, namely between nothing and being, there is an infinite distance,” n.19], if we understand infinite distance positively, that is, as infinitely exceeding every finite distance.

58. And thus must one understand ‘infinite distance’ in the major [i.e. “only an infinite power can extend over an infinite distance”, n.19] in order for the major to be true. For the infinity of the virtue of the agent that has power for that distance cannot otherwise be proved.

59. The minor [n.19] is disproved also in this way:

For in some contradictions there is a greater distance than in others, because God is distant from non-God more than the soul is distant from non-soul. And no virtue at all can make God from non-God or vice versa. But some virtue can make soul from nonsoul. Now if all contradictions were infinite, no contradiction could be greater than another, since the infinite cannot be exceeded.

60. Again, the virtue that has power for the whole ‘term to which’ has power for the distance between; for, once the ‘term to which’ is in place, the ‘term from which’ is destroyed by the ‘term to which’ that succeeds. But the term is finite, and so one cannot conclude therefrom other than that a finite virtue has power for it; therefore it also has power for the distance between.

61. Again, some natural generation is between form and privation, from Physics 5.1.225a12-16; but privation incudes contradiction (though contradiction in a subject), and so when there is passage from privation to form, there is a passage from negation to affirmation. But it is plain that this natural generation is done by created virtue. Therefore the distance is no problem.

62. How then will the common dictum be preserved that says, ‘between contradictories there is an infinite distance’ [nn. 19-24, 50]?

I reply: this dictum is simply false, taking ‘infinite’ for what infinitely exceeds simply any finite distance whatever. But in another way ‘infinite’ can be taken for ‘indeterminate’, and thus the dictum is true. For no distance is so small that it is not sufficient for contradiction. For however little one draws away from one of the contradictories, one is immediately under the other contradictory. Nor is there any distance so great (even were it possible to be infinitely greater than the greatest) that contradiction does not extend itself to it and to its extremes. And when taking ‘infinite’ in this way in the major [n.19], the major is false.

63. To the proofs, then, for the minor:

As to the first [n.21], when it is said that it is not possible to understand a greater distance than the one cited [sc. a greater than that between nothing and being], I say this is false positively and true permissively. That is to say that some distance does separate things more than some other one does, and that some contradiction does separate things more than some other one does. But the distance in question [between nothing and being] does permit any greatest distance, for it remains true in the greatest distance. An example: the term ‘ass’ indicates greater intensive perfection than the term ‘animal’, yet ‘animal’ permits, or can remain true, in something more perfect than ‘ass’, because it does so in ‘man’. And what is greatest in this way, namely permissively, is not the greatest formally.

64. As to the other proof [n.22], about certain kinds of contradictories, I say that although all contradictories whatever are equally incompossible with each other, yet they are not equally distant. For God is more distant from not-God than white from not-white (the way the first proof [n.21] proceeded), because the positive extreme is greater in comparison to the negation [sc. God is greater than white, though not-God and not-white are equally negations].

65. The same point makes plain the answer to the next proof [n.23]. For the totality of created being exceeds ‘nothing’ more than the soul exceeds not-soul, just as the whole of creatable being is more perfect than the soul. Yet ‘soul combined with not-soul’ is as equally incompossible as ‘nothing combined with the totality of being’. This argument, however, does not support the proposed thesis.

66. As to the reason made next [n.24], about the lack of proportion between nopower and some power, I concede that the distance between no-power and act does not have any proportion to the distance between some power and act. But this is because the latter is a positive distance (because it is between positive extremes) and the former is not a positive distance (because its other extreme is nothing), and there is no proportion of positive to not-positive, just as neither of being to nothing. But from this lack of proportion does not follow that a virtue that can cover one is not proportionate to the virtue that can cover the other. For one positive only lacks proportion with another positive because of infinity in one of the positives. But in the case of the distances in question, the lack of proportion was not because of infinity in one extreme, but because the other extreme did not have any quantity whereby to proportion it. An example: a point lacks proportion with a line because a point has no quantity. To say, then, ‘therefore the virtue that can do this lacks proportion with the virtue that can do that’ is a non sequitur. For a virtue and a virtue are of a nature to have some quantity of the virtue, and consequently to have likewise a proportion between them, unless one of them is infinite. But in the case here [n.24] the lack of proportion is because of a lack of quantity in the other extreme.