2. Rejection of the Opinion

301. This opinion, then, states two things: both that the bread is not annihilated and that after the conversion it is not nothing but in some way something. And the second of these it deduces from the first.

302. Against the second I argue in four ways.

First as follows: a term of change, insofar as it is a term, includes the non-being of the other term. The proof is that, insofar as it is a term, it has some incompossibility with the other term; therefore, as it is a term, it does not include a something-ness of the other term, nor does it include the other term’s being in any way something, because it is a contradiction that, as it includes that other term’s non-being, it include a something-ness of that same term.

303. Second, because the body of Christ after the consecration is not disposed in any different way than before, therefore, neither does anything have being in it in any different way. But the non-converted bread does not in any way have its something-ness in the body of Christ, nor does it have any something-ness of the body of Christ; therefore it does not have it after the consecration either. Proof of the first consequence: to be in a certain way in something is because of the being simply of that something; for because something is in itself such, therefore does it thus or thus have something in itself. So there is no difference in the way something is in something save because of the difference in itself of that other something.

304. Again, that of which there is a something-ness is formally something by that something-ness. If therefore a something-ness of the body [of Christ] belong now to that which was the substance of bread, then that which was the substance of bread is now formally something by that something-ness. I ask what that something is. Not bread because the bread is not, and it seems a contradiction that by the something-ness of the body it be formally something that it is, namely bread. Nor is that which was the substance of the bread the body by that something-ness, because that which was the substance of bread has simply ceased to be, and the body remains simply in the same being. Nor can it be said that by this something-ness there is something else besides the bread or body.

305. Next, ‘something’ and ‘thing’ are convertible terms, according to Avicenna in his Metaphysics 1.5. That then of which there is a something-ness is formally a thing; and so it would follow that that which was bread would now be a thing. And ‘thing’, according to this doctor, is taken in two ways: in one way for a thing that is opinable, as ‘thing’ is said to come from ‘I think’, ‘you think’; or, in another way, from ‘ratified thing’, insofar as this is said to come from ratification [cf. Ord. I d.3 n.310].Latin ‘res’ ‘thing’ from Latin ‘reor, reris’ ‘I/you think’, or ‘res rata’, with ‘rata’ also coming from the same verb ‘reor’. The etymology is dubious but adopted by Henry and many others. There is no such etymological connection in English between ‘thing’ and ‘think’, or of course ‘ratify’. The English translation nevertheless tries, if fancifully, to capture something of the Latin word play. ²⁹ By this something-ness, therefore, ‘that which was bread’ will be a thing in the first way; and then it follows that it is not more a thing than a chimaera is, for a chimaera is a thing in this way, according to him; and then the annihilation of the bread stands very well with such something-ness (just as if anything were converted into a chimaera it would truly be annihilated). If thing is taken in the second way, then (as before) either the thing is quidditatively bread, and then the bread quidditatively is not converted, or the thing is quidditatively what the body is, and this is impossible because of the quidditative distinction between that which was of the bread and that which was of the body.