2. Second Conclusion

212. The second conclusion for this solution is that an accident cannot be a principle for principally generating substance.

213. I prove this: every total agent is either univocal, and so it is as equally perfect as its product, or equivocal, and so it is more perfect; but an accident is altogether more imperfect than substance;     therefore etc     .

214. It is said in reply to this [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet IV q.14] that some equivocal agent can be more ignoble than its effect, as whiteness in respect of the intellection of whiteness, and as the Commentator [Averroes], on Metaphysics 7 [com.31], relates from Galen about the virtue he calls ‘divine’, which is formative of the fetus and yet, if it is an accident, is not simply nobler than the formed fetus. And there can be a like difficulty about each living thing generated through putrefaction, which living thing is nobler than the heaven by which it is generated.It was a common opinion, derived from Aristotle, that some flies and grubs were generated by the sun from putrefying matter. That they are in fact generated from eggs, invisible to the naked eye, laid by parent flies and grubs was unknown. Still the sun would be needed to keep the eggs, and the decaying matter, warm enough for incubation. ⁴⁵

215. On the contrary: although the proposition ‘what is simply more imperfect in species or genus cannot be the total active principle with respect to something more perfect’ is as equally known to me as any proposition in philosophy - on whose denial I would not know how to prove any order of beings, or that there was a most perfect being; indeed [on this denial] it could be said, turning impudent, that the whole universe and everything in it was made by a fly; for if you argue that a fly is imperfect so, and if you say that the same thing which is more imperfect can produce what is more perfect, then, with this point in hand, there is no reason why something more imperfect so could not produce something more perfect so; nor, once this impudence is in place, can it be proved that the first cause is most perfect, excelling everything else in the creation - not even with the addition that it is an equivocal cause; indeed, the view could herewith stand, according to this impudence, that the first thing was most imperfect, or more imperfect than the things it caused - yet [although all this be so] I prove and argue the said proposition in a different way:

216. First as follows: a univocal cause has a univocal effect as the adequated term of its power; but, for you, a total equivocal cause is more imperfect than a univocal cause; therefore, it is impossible for the equivocal cause to be the total cause with respect to the effect, and thus God could not bring about the effect of any creature at all, which is an absurd thing to say. The consequence is plain, because an effect adequated to a more perfect power can in no way be from a more imperfect power.

217. Second as follows: whenever a univocal and an equivocal cause come together for the production of the same effect, the equivocal cause is simply more perfect. The point is plain from Metaphysics 12.6.1072a9-18; for, because of this, it is necessary to reduce the whole accidental order to some species essentially superior in causing, because a uniform difference of form must be reduced to a uniform cause; and so there must be for all generable and corruptible things some superior cause that is the cause of uniformity in the continuing of generation and corruption. - From this I have the proposition that ‘where a univocal and equivocal cause come together for the same effect, the equivocal cause is more perfect’. But that the equivocal cause could not act without the univocal cause, this belongs to some sort of imperfection in the equivocal cause. The thing is plain, for God can act without a univocal cause, but the sun does not have power for a perfect animal, although it does for an imperfect one; therefore any equivocal cause that has power by itself for the effect is simply more perfect than an equivocal cause that could come together with a univocal cause for causing the same thing. And consequently, an equivocal total cause has a double preeminence of causality over an effect: one that an equivocal cause universally has when concurring with a univocal cause, and it has another, because it has the perfection that the univocal cause adds in the causing and that many equivocal causes lack, even though far more perfect than univocal ones.

218. A third argument as follows: if the form of an equivocal cause were to give being formally to something, it could not give it a being simply more perfect than itself; therefore, if it more imperfectly than formally give being to something, it cannot give to it what is more perfect than itself. But when it gives being to something as efficient cause it gives it being in a more imperfect way than when it gives it formally; for it is not possible that any mode of giving being should be as perfect as the giving of being formally, just as neither can the divine essence give being to something in any genus more perfect than is the being that it gives formally.

219. Fourth as follows: if the thing caused be simply more perfect, although it be simple, yet it can, according to this understanding, be divided into two, namely into that in which it is equaled with the cause and into that in which it exceeds the cause. Let the first be called a, the second b; the effect according to a is precisely an effect adequate to its cause, because it is simply as equally perfect a being as the cause; therefore b either will be from itself or will be from nothing, because it cannot be from a or from the cause itself, because something more excellent over and above the effect adequate to the cause cannot at the same time be from the cause. And this argument can be taken from Avicenna in his Metaphysics, 6 ch.2.

220. I say therefore that, on account of no particular objections, must this universal proposition, which is known from its terms, be denied, namely that ‘what totally causes something cannot be more imperfect than what is caused (speaking of effective cause), and that an equivocal total causer is more perfect’, for it cannot be equally perfect, for species are disposed as numbers are [sc. a higher number is not equal to, but does include, a lower number].

221. Now the objection about whiteness and intellection [n.214] is not valid, as is plain from Ord. I d.3 nn.452-455, where the argument proves that whiteness is not the total cause with respect to intellection but only a partial cause. Hence it can very well be that the effect excels such a partial cause in some real perfection, which perfection it can have from the partial cause that is left, and so it is more perfect from the two together than from one of them, as was said there [ibid. nn.486-503].

222. The second and third objection [n.214], which go to the inducing or educing of the soul in living things (and that by the heaven, whether in propagated or putrefied things), where I reckon the difficulty to be almost the same - these objections have to be solved in Ord. II d.18.Missing in fact in the Ordinatio as it now stands. Scotus’ view must be looked for instead in Lectura II d.18 nn.27-39, 66-72. ⁴⁶

223. And let it be that there not appear that any other created cause could be found nobler than the soul (which is the term of such generation), one should concede that it was immediately from God first before denying the above now proved proposition [n.220].