Forty Ninth Distinction. First Part. About the Natural Quality of Beatitude

Question One. Whether Beatitude Consists per se in Operation

1. “But after the resurrection,” [Lombard, Sent. IV d.49 ch.1 n.1].

2. About this forty ninth distinction I ask whether beatitude consists per se in operation.

3. That it does not:

Augustine On the Trinity XIII.5.8 (after rejecting other definitions [ibid. 4.7-5.8]) infers this one: “    Therefore the blessed is he who both has everything that he wants and wants nothing wrongly.” Therefore , beatitude consists in having everything that is willed well; many things are willed well that are different from operation; therefore etc     . This is confirmed from Boethius Consolation 3 prose 2 n.3, “Beatitude is a state perfect by aggregation of all goods;” then, as before, this does not consist in operation alone;     therefore etc     .

4. Again, beatitude consists in being conjoined with the beatific object; that conjoining is a relation; operation is something absolute;     therefore etc     . There is a confirmation: an absolute can remain, without contradiction, in the absence of a respect founded on it, because it is naturally prior to such respect; a respect to an object is founded on operation; therefore operation can remain without such respect to an object. But without it [such respect] there is no beatitude, otherwise there would be beatitude and not in a beatific object.

5. There is argument from the idea of beatitude: first from the definition; second from the object; third from permanence; it could, fourth, be argued from the subject, but this will be touched on in the next question [nn.61-65]. From operation the argument is: first from the agent cause; second from the proximate cause, which is a habit.

6. Again, according to the Philosopher Ethics 1.13.1102a5-6, it belongs to the idea of beatitude that it be present in a complete life (otherwise the happy man could become wretched, and otherwise too the blessed would not have the end of all his desires); because not only does anyone desire well-being but also to be in that good state permanently. Operation however is transient and in a state of becoming, and so it does not have in its idea that it is present in a complete life;     therefore etc     .

7. Again, no agent is more perfect from the fact that it produces something by its action; but he who operates is in some way a producing cause of his operation;     therefore he is not more perfect simply through his operation. But the blessed is more perfect simply through his, namely, through beatitude; therefore etc     . The proof of the first proposition is that the effect is not the perfection simply of the agent, since the agent is either equally perfect (namely if it is univocal with the effect) or more perfect than the effect (if it is equivocal with the effect). There is a confirmation, that if what is more perfect should thus come from what is more imperfect, then it is changed simply; but it is unacceptable for an agent, in the respect it is agent, to change, according to the Philosopher, Physics 3.1.201a27-b4, because then it would be in potency in the respect it would be in act. There is also a confirmation, that the blessed is not the effective cause of his beatitude, because then he would beatify himself; but he is the effective cause of his operation;     therefore etc     .

8. Again, a habit is a perfection simply more perfect than act; beatitude is the noblest perfection; therefore beatitude consists more in habit than in act. Proof of the first point: first because, according to the Philosopher Topics 3.1.116a13-14, “a more lasting good is better;” a habit is a good more lasting or permanent than act, because a habit is difficult to move, an act passes at once; and second because habit is a cause of act, otherwise he who has the habit would not act more easily or perfectly than he who does not have it. But it is only a cause as efficient cause (as is plain by running through the causes), and is not an univocal efficient cause (as is plain);     therefore it is an equivocal efficient cause; so it is nobler.

9. To the opposite:

Ethics 1.9.1099a30-31, 5.1097a15-b6, “Happiness is the best operation etc     .”

10. Ethics 10.8.1178b7-22 Aristotle makes this specific by the operation it consists in, when he deduces that the gods, whom we judge most happy, have operation because of the fact that “everyone supposes them to be alive (and not to be sleeping), therefore supposes them to operate; wherefore the operation of God will be excelling in speculative happiness.”

11. Likewise, Metaphysics 12.9.1074b17-18, when speaking about divine understanding, he says, “If God does not understand, what will be striking or worthy of veneration in him? But he is disposed as one sleeping.” Ibid. 7.1072b24, “and speculation is a thing most delightful and best.” And a little later [1072b26-28], “and life exists [for God], for the act of the intellect is life” and he adds, “the divine is the very act, and the act is the best life.”

12. Likewise Metaphysics 9.8.1049b4-50a3, “Act is prior simply to potency,” not only prior in time and definition, but also in substance, that is, in perfection; and this third member he proves [1050a4-b16] by the fact that potency is for the sake of act, as he shows by induction in both natural and artificial things; therefore act is ultimate, not for the sake of anything else, but especially when it is operation and not making. Hence he concludes “wherefore happiness too” (supply: consists in operation); and he proves it, “for [happiness] is a certain sort of life.”

13. Again On the Heaven 2.3.286a8-9, “Every substance that has an operation is for the sake of its operation.”

14. Likewise Augustine On Christian Doctrine 1.32 n35, “The supreme reward is that we enjoy him,” namely God; but the supreme reward is blessedness according to him, and to enjoy God is an operation.

Question Two. Whether Beatitude Perfects the Essence of the Blessed more Immediately than the Power

15. Following on from this I ask whether beatitude more immediately perfects the essence than the power of the blessed himself.

16. It seems that it more immediately perfects the essence:

To a nobler perfection corresponds a nobler perfectible as proper to it; beatitude is the noblest perfection; but essence is nobler than power if they differ in reality, or nobler at least in idea if they differ in idea; for the sort of order that distinct things have really is the sort of order that the same things have in idea, when they are distinct in idea.

As to the first proposition [sc. to a nobler perfection corresponds a nobler perfectible], although there is an objection to it in the case of perfections of different idea in genus, as with substantial and accidental perfection (since a substantial perfection, because it bestows being simply, has for perfectible a being in potency simply; but an accidental perfection, because it gives being in a certain respect, requires a perfectible that is simply being in act), yet, in the case of accidental perfections compared among themselves, it seems true when comparing them to the perfectibles that are receptive of accidents; because if something more imperfect is capable of some accident that most of all perfects it accidentally, something higher cannot be supremely perfected accidentally by that perfection, nor by any other perfection save a more excellent one.

17. Again, whatever is the most immediate receptive subject of some accident, if it could exist per se, could per se receive that accident; but no other subject could receive it save by the mediation of that one. Therefore, if the power of the soul could exist separate from the essence, it could receive beatitude and consequently be blessed, but the essence could not be blessed without the power; and so a nature that is not intellectual or alive could be blessed, because it is an accident [sc. of what is intellectual and alive] -and an intellectual nature, though it abides in itself, could not be blessed, because lacking the immediate subject of beatitude. This argument does at least seem to have a difficulty in positing power to be different from essence in reality; but the argument can be proportionally maintained about a distinction of reason, if such a distinction be posited there.

18. Again, third, an intellectual nature will not be blessed save per accidens, the way wood heats because it is hot; the consequent is unacceptable, because a perfection per accidens is not essentially the perfection of that to which it belongs per accidens. The proof of the consequence is that beatitude would be present per accidens in a beatifiable nature through some medium (according to one opinion about power [Henry of Ghent]), the way the action of heating is in hot wood by means of heat; or at any rate it would be present accidentally as it were (according to another opinion), because present through something distinct in idea, for if it were different in reality it would truly per accidens exist.

19. On the contrary:

Blessedness per se consists in operation (from the authorities brought forward for the opposite of the first question [nn.9-14]); but operation more immediately perfects power than essence, because operation does not belong to essence save through a power, from On the Soul 2.1.412a27-28, and Metaphysics 9.5.1047b31-48a24.

I. To the Second Question

A. Opinion of Henry of Ghent

1. Exposition of the Opinion

a. About the Opinion Itself and the Manner of Positing it

20. As to this second question the assertion is made [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 13 q.12] that beatitude perfects the essence more principally than the power.

21. The way of stating it is as follows: “Beatitude consists more principally in the object, which is uncreated beatitude, insofar as this is the good of the created will. Now the soul or the angelic nature is transformed by means of the will, so that, to the extent possible for it, it is converted into the object, and this by force of love, according to what Dionysius [Divine Names ch.4] says, that ‘love is a virtue that transforms and converts the lover into the beloved’; and Hugh of St. Victor says about ‘acute and super-fervent heat’ [Commentary on Celestial Hierarchy 6 ch.7] that ‘love wants to make you one with it’, namely the beloved; and later, ‘love inserts itself so that, if it could be done, the lover would be what the beloved is’, namely the one he loves, ‘and thus in a certain marvelous way it begins, by the force of love, to be expelled and go outside itself’.”

22. From this as follows: “That the nature which loves should go out of itself and begin to be what it loves can only come about by circumincession, a circumincession not of the soul and of a created nature that in-flows into deity, but rather the converse, so that in such created nature nothing should appear save divine dispositions, indeed, so that it should not appear to be anything other than God - just as iron glowing in fire shines and burns the way fire does, as if it not be, and not appear to be, other than fire.”

b. Reasons Adduced for the Opinion

23. From this way of understanding things an argument is made for the conclusion:

Since beatitude is by the in-flowing or circumincession of the beatific object in respect of the beatifiable subject, and since this in-flowing or circumincession is more in the essence than in the powers (for from the in-flowing into the essence there is a redounding or derivation into the powers, and not conversely, because derivation or redounding is from the prior to the posterior, not conversely, whether the order is one of being or of reason; for that is principally such by which something else is such, and not conversely) -     therefore etc     . The proposed conclusion thus follows.

24. Again, and it is as it were the same point: God, who is beatitude in its essence, is more principally possessed in his essence than in his powers; for he perfects essence in some way through essence, namely by in-flowing in the manner stated; but he only perfects the powers through operations terminating in the essence under the idea of the good and true. Now he perfects more principally what he perfects per se under his proper idea than what he perfects only terminatively under the idea of an attribute.

25. Again, grace is consummate glory; but grace is principally in the essence of the soul, and redounds, under the idea of habit and virtue, to the powers;     therefore etc     . [cf. Ord. II d.26 nn.11-23].

26. Again, distributive justice has regard to the worth of the receiver according to geometrical proportion, namely so that to the more worthy more good be distributed; but an intellectual nature is, in reality and in idea, more noble and more worthy than its power;     therefore etc     .

27. And this argument coincides with the first reason for this question [n.16]. But the addition is made that “perception of this perfection only belongs to the essence through the powers: through the intellect indeed in knowing the essence, through the will as tasting it, as Hugh says on the above cited chapter 7 [n.21], ‘Two there are: knowledge and love; knowledge illumines, love (as feeding) satisfies; in this does beatitude consist: to know and love the good’,” or it consists in knowledge and love of the good.

28. But as to the authorities of the philosophers for the opposite [nn.9-13], the response is made [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 13 q.12] that according to the intention of the philosophers “the beatitude of man or angel does not concern their essence but only their power, through the medium of its operation. And they said this because they did not see true beatitude, which true beatitude consists not only in act of will and intellect but principally in the object itself’ - and this by in-flowing or circumincession in the way stated [n.23].

2. Rejection of the Opinion

a. Against the Opinion in Itself

29. Against these views:

First as follows: God is not disposed in himself differently now than before, nor does he in-flow into this soul or angel differently now than before (if one considers essence precisely on each side), because there is always uniformity as to the in-flowing of the divine essence into the creature’s essence while the essence of the creature remains; so, if there is some newness in the beatified soul, it must be through some effect caused by God in the soul’s essence. The effect is said to be the beatitude of the soul formally, and this effect cannot be principally in the essence as the essence is distinguished from the power, because then it would be first act; but by no first act, distinct from second act, can a creature immediately attain the beatific essence.

There is a confirmation: nothing is properly speaking changed unless something new formally inhere in it; someone blessed is disposed now so differently than someone non-blessed before that he changes from misery to beatitude; but the divine essence is not by any in-flowing the essence of the blessed; therefore, something else must be in the blessed whereby he is formally blessed.

30. Again, in-flowing is prior in nature to any operation, since it is according to some first act, as was argued [nn.23-24, 29]; therefore it could, without contradiction, exist without operation, and consequently someone who is not operating but disposed as someone asleep could be principally blessed - which Aristotle considers unacceptable, Metaphysics 12.9.1074b17-18 [n.11]

31. Again a creature is blessed in some way proportionally to the way that God is blessed; but God is not blessed precisely by the fact he is the same as himself, but by the fact he understands and wills himself as object - otherwise, from the fact that he is blessed it could not be inferred that he is intelligent, because if he did not have an intellect he would still be the same as himself, just as a stone is the same as itself.

32. This point is argued briefly as follows: if divine beatitude does not consist, by way of its completion, in the identity of the beatifiable thing with the beatific object, then neither does the beatitude of the creature consist in any identity or internalizing of the beatific object through in-flowing; because if operation is required there [in God], over and above identity, much more is it required here [in the creature] over and above inflowing; because whatever were posited here as beatitude, something corresponding to it eminently would be beatitude principally there; but to the in-flowing by which the soul is said to be deified, as it were, identity corresponds there far more eminently.

b. Against the Reasons Adduced for the Opinion

33. As to the reasons adduced for the opinion [nn.21-28], some are against the opinion, and those for it are not compelling.

α. About the First Reason

34. For first, the way of positing it [n.21] seems to concede that this in-flowing is first in the power, and thus that beatitude is principally in the power.

Proof of the antecedent: for this way of positing states that through love, which is a transformative force, the lover begins to go out of itself and to be what it loves, and that this can only come about by circumincession or in-flowing. From this it follows that, through love, a circumincession or in-flowing of the beloved into the lover comes to be. But it is plain that love or affection, which Hugh is speaking about [n.21], are per se powers of the will.

35. Also the phrase ‘to go out of itself’ is metaphorical, as is apparent from the Philosopher in Politics 2.4.1262b7-13, for a thing is no less what it was because it loves something else [cf. Ord. I d.1 n.179]. But the reality of this sort of metaphor, and of all metaphors like it is this: that by receiving or valuing the beloved and by resting in the beloved the lover is more truly the beloved than it is itself. And this meaning is plainly stated by Hugh in the cited passage [n.21]: “He who longs only for what he loves even despises himself in comparison with what the loves.”

And this is what Augustine says City of God 14.28, “The city of God was made by a love of God proceeding to contempt of self (namely of the lover).” To this extent, therefore, does the lover go out of himself, because he thinks little of his own being in comparison with the beloved, so that he would prefer his own being rather than that of the beloved to be destroyed. But from this does not follow any circumincession or inflowing such as he argues for [Henry of Ghent, n.23].

36. The first reason [n.23] is not compelling, because it proceeds from the idea of this in-flowing [nn.34-35]. This in-flowing too, that in beatitude there be a certain special in-flowing - it is not an in-flowing of the divine essence into this [creaturely] essence as the divine essence is essence, but it is an in-flowing of the divine essence as beatific object into this [creaturely] essence as this essence attains the divine essence as object; but it attains the object more principally and immediately through the power.

37. What is argued there about redounding [n.23], that it takes place from the prior to the posterior and not conversely, is not compelling, because nothing prevents something being prior and posterior with respect to the same thing in different ways; and, in the way in which something is prior, it is possible for what is proper to this something to redound from it into something else which, in that sort of way, is posterior (just as, although ‘being’ redounds into heat from substance, yet conversely ‘to cause heat’ belongs to substance from heat). So, if there were a priority of the essence with respect to the power, and this by a redounding of a first act perfecting the essence (if there were any), the essence would come to be in the power; yet the second act, which belongs first to the power, will redound from it into the essence.

From this then the opposite can be argued as follows: that thing is more principal from which something redounds into another thing; but beatitude redounds into the essence as it is essence from beatitude as it is power, just as the attaining of the beatific object too belongs in this sort of order to the essence and the power.

β. About the Second Reason

38. The second reason [n.24] is not compelling. For, when speaking of ‘to perfect formally’, this proposition is false: ‘the divine essence more principally perfects the essence than it perfects the power’, because God does not, as in-flowing into the essence, perfect it formally but only as an extrinsic cause. But when in-flowing into the power he perfects it (as it is an extrinsic cause) the way an object does, and he perfects it formally by a created form, which created form is the operation that attains it [= the divine essence] as object. But if you speak of a ‘to perfect’ that perfects by in-forming in some way or other, and if you take it that the divine essence more truly perfects the soul than the power by in-flowing- if this were conceded, the proposed conclusion does not follow. For the ‘to perfect’ in question belongs to first act; it is not therefore the ‘to perfect’ that is the perfecting of the beatified person.

39. And if you say “it is enough for me that it be more truly a ‘to perfect’ than is any ‘to perfect’ of second act” (for from this follows that the essence will be more principally perfect with a nobler perfection than the power is, and therefore it will also be nobler, even more perfect, with beatitude, or with something, than beatitude is) - I reply: substance is more a being than any accident (Metaphysics 7.1.1028a33-b6); therefore the essence of an angel or a soul is more perfect simply that its inherent beatitude, which is an accident; therefore, it is not unacceptable that some perfection that is the first act of a soul or angel in substantial being be a truer perfection of it because more intimate. And let it also be a nobler perfection than beatitude or anything pertaining to second act; however, beatitude is the noblest second perfection, as was said in the preceding solution [nn.36-37, also nn.16, 21]; but some first perfection is simply nobler in creatures than any second perfection, where the first and second perfection are distinct in reality.

40. The proposition can also be denied that [n.24] ‘the deity by in-flowing more truly perfects the essence than the power [n.24]’, because the in-flowing into the essence as essence is in a way general to every creature, though in proportion to each according to its grade of being; but the in-flowing that is of the essence as object into the power is of a special most noble nature. There is therefore some in-flowing into the power nobler than the in-flowing that is into the essence, though that which is into the essence as to existence is more principal to the essence than to the power, just as also the existence is.

41. If it is argued against this that the in-flowing of the [divine] essence as object presupposes the in-flowing of the [divine] essence as making itself intimate to [creaturely] essence, and that that is more perfect on which another depends than conversely - I reply: “not everything prior in generation is prior in perfection” (Metaphysics 9.8.1050a2-10); but the preceding of the in-flowing that is by intimacy [into the essence] to the in-flowing that is in idea of object [into the power] [n.40] is not proved to be prior save in generation; for it is not a necessary active cause of the later inflowing, because it exists when the second cannot be had, as in the wayfarer.

42. Of these two responses to the second reason [nn.38, 40] the first seems truer, and it sufficiently solves the fact that some simply more perfect in-flowing is not beatific and that another simply less perfect in-flowing is beatific. An example: the most perfect in-flowing is into human nature as it is united in person to the Word, and yet this inflowing is not formally beatific, as is plain in Ord. III d.2 nn.10-23, though this doctor [Henry] say the opposite, as was said there; but the in-flowing of the Triune God into Michael, which is simply less perfect, is simply beatific.

γ. About the Third Reason

43. The third reason [n.25] is taken to the opposite, because grace immediately perfects the power, not the essence, as was said in Ord. II d.26 n.24; for a form perfecting an active principle as that principle is unlimited and indifferent to several things perfects it indifferently in its order to those several things (just as that, if some form were to perfect the sun insofar as the sun is unlimited in action with respect to all things inferior to it, it would perfect it indifferently in its order to one action and another); but grace does not perfect the soul indifferently in its order to intellection and volition, but only in its order to volition; proof: for volition is graced primarily and nothing else is graced save by it.

44. If objection be made to the major [n.43] on account of the term ‘indifferently’, at least this proposition is true, that ‘a form perfecting an active principle as that principle is unlimited to several actions does not perfect it precisely in its order to one action’, because at once the opposite of the subject term follows, namely that the form perfects it as it is limited and determinate to one action; but grace perfects the soul precisely for intellection and volition such that an intellection preceding volition is not graced nor meritorious, and an intellection following volition is only graced because it is commanded by graced volition.

45. If objection be raised against the minor of the first reason [n.43], because ‘essence is not active but passive, with these powers being intermediaries’ - although this is false of the will at least, as was said in Ord. II d.25 nn.69-73, yet a similar minor can be taken about passive power, ‘no form perfects a receptive subject insofar as it is indifferent to several thing which perfects it precisely in its order to one of them’; grace is of this sort, as before [n.43]. Indeed, no habit seems to perfect essence save as essence has the idea of power.

46. Let there, at length, be a stand in this: ‘no form perfects something insofar as it is unlimited or indifferent to several things which would precisely perfect it if it were determinate to one of them’; but if the soul were only the intellect, it could not be perfected by grace because, even if it had an act, it could not have a graced act; but if, per impossibile, the soul were only the will, it could be perfected by grace, because if, per impossibile, it had an act, it would have that act a graced one.

δ. About the Fourth Reason

47. The fourth reason [n.26] is taken to the opposite, because he to whom a greater good is due should have it rendered to him in the way in which it can more be a good for him; but beatitude can more be a good for the soul if it is in the power than if it were immediately in the essence. Just as it is a greater good for the soul to see God through the intellect than through the essence (as it is essence), because ‘to see’ is not of a nature to be good for the soul save through the intellect, just as ‘to have the beatific object as beatific’ is not of a nature to be the soul’s good save through the power that, by operation, attains that object.

48. The point that is there added [n.27], that perception of beatitude principally belongs to the power, seems to prove the opposite of the proposed conclusion, because perception of the beatific object (by seeing and tasting it) is not accidental or adventitious to beatitude, as Hugh says in the authority that he brings forward, “In these,” he says, “does beatitude consist: to love and know the good” [n.27].

49. There is also proof by reason, because misery essentially includes perception of a disagreeable object, speaking of the complete misery that is accompanied with penalty; for the principal penalty, which consists in sadness (as was said in d.44 nn.83-112), is per se consequent to the perception of a disagreeable object; therefore perception of an agreeable object does not follow beatitude [sc. as something not essentially included in it], because then beatitude would not delight as equally necessarily as misery torments.

50. As to what is added from the philosophers [n.28], it does not seem probable that it contradicts them as regard this first mark of beatitude, that it consist in operation or not; for though they did err, or rather did not attain what object beatitude is in, or rather what idea it is under, yet this first mark of it wherein it is the fundamental perfection of a rational creature - namely whether it is in the power or the essence (whose distinction we get from them), whether too it is in operation or in habit (which we similarly get from them) - does not seem likely to have escaped their notice.

B. Scotus’ own Response

1. A Double Understanding of the Question is Possible

51. To the question, therefore, I say that there is a double understanding of the question:

One is: if the supposition is made that the perfection of essence is one thing and the perfection of power another, which of these is beatitude principally? And in this way does the aforesaid opinion [of Henry, nn.23-24] seem to say that the in-flowing that is in the essence as it is essence (which is prior in a way to the operation that is the perfection of power) is beatitude principally.

52. According to this understanding I say that beatitude does not consist principally in the essence, because nothing that perfects essence, as it is essence distinct in whatever way from power, can be other than first act, and perhaps not a habit. Now nothing such can be beatitude principally; indeed that ‘beatitude exists without operation’ includes a contradiction, but that ‘first act is without any second act whatever’ does not.

53. The other understanding of the question can be of this sort:

By positing that the perfection is the same and unique for the essence and power (wherein unique beatitude consists), does that unique beatitude perfect the essence more principally than the power?

54. And in the first understanding [nn.51-52] there is a comparison of two perfections perfecting the essence and the power - which of them is more principal?

55. In the second understanding [n.53] there is a comparison of the same perfection to two receptive subjects - which of them is more principally perfected by that perfection?

56. In this second understanding it would seem that diverse answers must be given according to diverse opinions about powers. Because if the powers be posited to be accidents, since that is ‘more principal’ by which something else is and not conversely, and since the ‘by which’ can be taken equivocally for prior and more remote cause or for posterior and more immediate cause - in the first way the essence is more principally perfected by any power whatever; in the second way not so, because the essence is the more remote cause with respect to anything of which the power is cause, but the power is the nearer cause.

2. What View Should be Held

57. Because, however, I do not believe this opinion [n.56] to be true (as was said [in Rep. IIA d.16 nn.11, 18-19]), neither also is it clear that it is the same thing to be more principal with respect to ‘being’ and with respect to any perfection consequent to ‘being’, since something can be cause of something in being and yet that other thing receives [perfections] through no other cause; rather, if it were uncaused, it would receive [them] - just as God is cause of a triangle in being, yet, if a triangle were uncaused, it would by itself have three angles equal to two right angles.

58. And this is most of all true where there is no process in the same order, as suppose if one thing be prior in order of active principle and after that the second thing is prior to a third in order of passive principle. Even in the same order this only holds if the priority is essential, understanding this as follows, that it be impossible for the second to be prior to the third unless the first be prior to the second and to the third (as is plain in efficient causes, where a posterior can cause without a prior that is not essentially or necessarily prior in this way).

59. But, in the issue at hand, there is in the idea of the receptive subject no such essential priority thus of essence to power in the receiving, because if the immediate receptive subject could exist per se without an intermediate, it could per se receive, with the intermediate receiving neither mediately nor immediately. But a hypothesis is necessary (on the supposition that this hypothesis is necessary for many things), that, in the case of things distinct in absolute being, either one of them can, without contradiction, exist without the other.

60. It seems, therefore, that if the opinion were probable [n.59], yet in no way would it have to be conceded that the essence received the operation more principally than the power.

61. Dismissing, therefore, these and other opinions about powers, and dismissing the equivocations about what is ‘more principal’, I say that that is simply more principal with respect to a which, when anything else whatever has been per possibile or per impossibile removed, would be disposed in the same way toward a, and that nothing else, with it removed, would be thus disposed toward a.

62. This reasoning is proved from the idea of firstness, that that is first with respect to something, which when taken away there is nothing that is of this sort with respect to that something; but, when anything else is taken away, it is disposed in the same way toward that something; and it simply is simply more principal. These clarifications are made on behalf of the major [n.61].

63. But now, whether a power is a perfection that is unitively contained in the essence, or whether it is an essential part of the essence, or whether it is disposed differently in this way and that (according to different opinions), the essence would not receive beatitude when the power is, per possibile or per impossibile, taken away; but when the essence is per possibile or per impossibile taken away, the power would receive beatitude. Therefore, in the way in which firstness is, in fact or in idea, possible there, the power receives beatitude more principally, and consequently beatitude perfects the power more principally.

64. The proof of the minor [n.63] is from the preceding solution [n.52], that beatitude, according to that solution, consists in operation; now operation would perfect the power if it existed alone without the essence, but would in no way perfect the essence if it existed alone without the power.

65. If to this proof of the minor an objection is drawn from the fact that no accident perfects another accident but perfects only a substance, yet one accident is prior to another - according to the Philosopher, Metaphysics 4.4.1007b2-4, 12-13, “For an accident is an accident of an accident only because both are accident to the same thing,” and later, “for this is no more an accident of that than that is of this” [cf. Ord. IV d.12 n.108]. So, if the power is an accident of the essence, then in whatever way it were, per possibile or per impossibile, to exist without the essence, it could not receive an accident; but the essence could receive a mediated accident, whether it received it afterwards or before, because it is receptive of both accidents, and immediately so under the idea of being the subject.

66. The minor of this objection [sc. the power is an accident of the essence] I do not reckon to be true, as I said [n.63], but let it be. The major, however [sc. no accident perfects another accident], is false, as was said in [Ord. IV d.12 nn.146-151].

67. And the fact is plain from Avicenna, Metaphysics II ch.1, because fast and slow are accidents of motion, and curved and straight accidents of line.

68. And it is plain too by reason, because whatever belongs to something per se in the second mode [Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 1.4.73a34-b18] is an accident of it, for in that mode the subject is put in the definition of the predicate as something added on that does not belong [to a definition] with respect to an accident save as to the subject of it. But there are many accidents that are present per se in the second mode in accidents and in no substance, as is plain of all the properties of the mathematical sciences, none of which is about any substance as about its first subject [Ord. IV d.12 n.143].

69. But what is adduced from the Philosopher [n.65] needs expounding, because if he means precisely that ‘because two accidents are accident of the same subject, therefore one is accident of the other’, it follows that surface is as accident of whiteness as whiteness is of surface.

70. The same follows from the second authority, that ‘this is no more accident of that than that is of this’ [n.65].

71. His understanding then is not about ordered accidents, one of which is the idea of receiving the other, but about the disparate accidents of which he gives examples, as ‘white’ and ‘musical’.

72. Now this suffices for his purpose there, as he wants it to be impossible for there to be an infinite regress in predications per accidens, as I have elsewhere expounded his intention [Ord. IV d.12 n.158].

C. To the Initial Arguments of the Second Question

1. Response to the Individual Arguments

73. As to the first argument [n.16]: the major could be conceded about perfectible things and perfections of the same order, but not when comparing something perfectible by a perfection of one order with something perfectible by a perfection of another order (and I mean here by ‘perfections of another order’ first act and second act). And when taking the inference in this way, all that follows is that the essence, if it have some perfection that is first act, will be more perfect than any perfection that is second act; now beatitude is not the noblest perfection simply, but the noblest among second acts.

74. Alternatively, and it reduces in a way to the same, the statement that ‘to a simply nobler perfectible thing there corresponds a nobler perfection’ is true in the order of perfections which have regard to that perfectible thing; now beatitude does not have regard to the essence, as essence, for first perfectible thing. But if you compare the order of perfections to the order of perfectible things, I concede that to a simply nobler perfectible thing there corresponds a simply nobler perfection, intrinsic or extrinsic; but there is no need to concede this determinately of something accidental or extrinsic if it is not capable, under the idea under which it is a nobler perfectible thing, of the accidental perfection. So it is in the issue at hand, even as to the accidental perfection that is a habit, which does not perfect the essence as it is essence - and much more so as to the accidental perfection that is operation.

75. As to the second argument [n.17], I concede that if the power could exist per se it could be perfected by operation, and the essence could not be perfected without the power. And therefore the argument does conclude well against those who say that the power is really other than the essence [nn.20-28]. But it is nothing to us who say that the same real thing is under one idea essence, and has the perfections that are first acts, and is under another idea power, and has the perfections that are second acts; nor do I say that these different ideas are caused only by an act of intellect, but they come from the nature of the thing, as was said in the question about the powers of the soul [Rep. IIA d.16 nn.11-13].

76. As to the third [n.18], I say that it is not unacceptable to concede that intellectual nature is beatified per accidens, that is, not first or not immediately, and this when speaking of priority or immediacy according to idea; though it would be unacceptable to say that it was beatified per accidens when speaking of an accident in some way real.

2. An Objection to these Responses and its Solution

77. Against these responses [nn.73-76]: the idea according to which God is blessed is no less noble than the idea according to which he beatifies. But he beatifies under the idea of essence; therefore under no less noble an idea is [anyone]The Latin says simply ‘he is beatified’, where the ‘he’, in grammatical context, would refer to God. The text can be read in this way, since God as subject may be said to be beatified by himself as object. However, it seems it might be better read, in logical context, as about any creature who is beatified by God. ⁴¹ beatified; the idea of power is less noble.

78. I reply: speaking of the fundamental idea under which [anyone] is beatified, it is true that the idea according to which [God] beatifies is not less noble in its fundamental and formal idea. Speaking of the proximate formal idea according to which [anyone] is beatified and of the formal idea according to which [God] beatifies (which, according to some [Richard of Middleton], is the idea of the true and good [n.24]), there is still no greater nobility on this side than on that. But by positing, in a third way, that [God] beatifies objectively according to the idea of essence, not only fundamentally but formally (and [anyone] would be beatified immediately according to idea of intellect and will), it is consistent to say that he beatifies immediately according to a nobler idea than [the idea according to which anyone] is immediately beatified. Nor is this unacceptable, that something receive a second perfection according to a less noble idea than it is perfect [by] with a first perfection.

II. To the First Question

79. To the first question: first as to the thing, second as to the name.

A. About the Thing of Beatitude

1. First Conclusion

80. Let this be the first conclusion as to the thing [of beatitude]: among all that is desirable to intellectual nature there is something essentially and simply supreme.

81. The proof of this is that there is an essential order in desirable things, and in such an order it is impossible to proceed to infinity (as was proved in Ord. I d.2 nn.52-53); therefore, the proposed conclusion [sc. something in the order is first or supreme, n.80] follows.

82. If there is not an essential order there, the proposed conclusion again follows, because whichever [member] is given it is essentially supreme, in the sense that nothing is essentially superior to it.

83. But this hypothesis is false because, as was shown there, Ord. I d.2 n.54, no process in things ordered accidentally can proceed to infinity, or can proceed through a continuing diversity [of things], save in virtue of something essentially superior to the whole diversity.

84. Corollary: that thing [sc. the thing essentially superior to the whole diversity] is infinite, because whatever infinity is not repugnant to is not simply supreme unless it is formally infinite; infinity is not repugnant to the desirable or wantable, since this is either perfection simply, or it convertibly accompanies some perfection simply, because it belongs to the whole of being, and whatever so belongs is perfection simply. Now infinity is not repugnant to perfection simply, because [if it were], then in the case of something, that is, something simply infinite, not-it would be simply better than it, which is against the idea of perfection simply (as is plain from Anselm Monologion 14-15).

85. From this corollary too the first conclusion [n.80] can, conversely, be inferred, because if something desirable or wantable can be infinite, and the infinite cannot be exceeded, then something can be a simply supreme wantable; and if it can be then it is, because if it were not and could be, it could only be by something different in essence, and so it would not be simply supreme in some perfection simply.

2. Second Conclusion

86. Second conclusion: the supreme desirable or wantable, and only it, is to be wanted by any intellectual nature simply because of itself.

87. My exposition of ‘simply because of itself’ is, namely: that to which it is repugnant, by its nature, to be wanted because of something else. Hence if the sensitive appetite desires anything because of itself (so as not to will it because of something else), this holds ‘in a certain respect’, because it comes from an imperfection in the power, which is not able to desire it because of something else, and not from an imperfection in the object to which being desired because of something else is repugnant.

88. My exposition of the other part is: ‘to be wanted by any intellectual nature’ and ‘by any will’ are convertible relative to the issue at hand, because ‘to have will’ and ‘to be an intellectual nature’ are convertible.

89. For the proof then of this second conclusion I argue as follows: anything for which the supreme wantable thing is a wantable object is something for which that object is alone to be wanted simply because of itself; but for any will the supreme wantable thing is a wantable object;     therefore etc     .

90. The proof of the major is that among wantable things there is something that is to be wanted because of itself, for if everything is because of something else there will be an infinite regress and nothing will be supreme; for a thing that is to be wanted because of something else is to be wanted less than that because of which it is to be wanted (from Posterior Analytics 1.2.72a29-20). Therefore, if there is something that is a simply supreme to-be-wanted (from the first [conclusion, n.80]), it is to be wanted simply because of itself (speaking on the part of the objects). And from this follows that it is to be wanted because of itself by any [subject] for which it is a wantable object; for [it is to be wanted] either by none, or by all, or by one and not another. But not the first [‘by none’], from what has been proved [sc. n.90 init., that the supremely wantable is to be supremely wanted by whatever has it as a wantable]; nor the third [sc. ‘by one and not another’], because there is no greater reason for it to be so by one rather than by another; [sc. therefore the second].

91. The same [major] is proved a priori, because although it be in the power of the will to will this or that, yet that which is to be wanted, and especially that which is to be supremely wanted, is not in the will’s power (for this precedes every determination of any will); therefore whatever will it is compared to, it always remains something that is to be wanted because of itself, and hence it is that it is to be wanted also by this will, because it is wantable by this will.

92. And this is proved in brief by application [of the argument] to wills, as also about willing in itself; because for any will there is something that is to be willed, since any will could will something rightly, and only that which is for it something to be willed, and no will can will something that is to be willed by it because of another thing and another thing and so on infinitely.

93. It is also proved from precision [of terms], namely that it alone is to be willed because of itself, for it is not repugnant to anything else that it be desired because of another thing (since nothing else is a simply supreme desirable thing); and a lesser good could rightly be desired because of a greater good.

94. The proof of the minor is that any will regards as its object the wantable thing under its most common idea; for the will is an immaterial power and consequently a power that regards the whole of being, or something of equal extent as being. This can be called the ultimate end with respect to such will, because any other to-be-willed thing is willed because of that.

3. Third Conclusion

95. Third conclusion: no intellectual nature is ultimately and completely perfected save in possessing the supreme desirable thing, and possessing it perfectly according to the way it can possess it.

96. This is proved from the second conclusion [n.86], because an intellectual nature is of a nature to be ultimately and maximally perfected in that alone which is for it something to be willed for its own sake; therefore, it can only be ultimately perfected in that thing when possessed by it in the way it can be possessed by it.

97. The third conclusion is also proved by the fact that the nature remains ultimately imperfect when what is supremely to be wanted is not possessed.

98. The conclusion is proved, third, by a more universal middle term, that in things possessing any appetite (whether animal or natural) the ultimate perfection is not had unless that is had which is desired because of itself by such an appetite. Hence a heavy object has some imperfection when away from the center [of the earth], and so does a sense appetite when lacking the highest agreeable thing.

99. However, one must understand about this conclusion that there is in beings a first perfection, a second perfection, or as it were a second perfection. The first perfection is when nothing is lacking that belongs to the first being, namely the essential being, of the thing; the second perfection is when nothing is lacking that belongs to the thing’s second being. Also, this second perfection is a certain intrinsic perfection and is not conjoint with the extrinsic perfective thing. But there is thus a certain second perfection, because it makes perfect by the fact that it is conjoint with the extrinsic perfective thing. Nor is it surprising that something be perfected in what is extrinsic, because by attaining what is extrinsic (and especially if this be more perfect than itself), it has a further perfection than it could have in itself or for itself or from itself.

For in this way are more ignoble things perfected by nobler things - not by being these things really, nor by having them formally inherent, but by attaining them, and so by having them in the way possible for them to have them. Hence a thing whose appetite is in relation to something more ignoble than is its nature itself, is not perfected by something extrinsic save in a certain respect.

100. In the case of a nobler thing, too, although there be some perfection for a more ignoble appetite of it, yet this is not its supreme extrinsic perfection. But if some nature be perfected in something non-supreme nobler than itself, there must be some nature that is immediately perfected by the supreme perfective extrinsic thing; for there is no infinite regress in things perfect and perfectible. Therefore, at least the supreme perfectible thing is not perfected save in the supreme extrinsic perfective thing.

101. Now the whole of intellectual nature is supreme according to this idea, as is plain from the second conclusion.

102. Nor is it necessary, according to the order of natures, that there are extrinsic perfective things that perfect completively, but it is enough that second extrinsic perfections, joining with the extrinsic perfective, correspond the same with the degrees of first perfections. Now although the first perfection in substances is simply more perfect than any intrinsic second perfection yet it is not the ultimate perfection because, when it is obtained, there is still expected and desired a further perfection. The second perfection, even if it conjoin with the more perfect thing not formally in itself but as more immediate to it, is in a way a more desirable perfection than the first perfection, to the extent that it is more immediately conjoint with the extrinsic desirable thing, which is more desired than its proper intrinsic being.

103. This however is especially true of the will, for any other extrinsic appetite desires the extrinsic thing because of the nature of that of which it is the desire, and therefore it does not join with anything simply more desirable than is the being of the nature it belongs to. But the will loves something more desirable than itself, and more than the nature it belongs to, and therefore it conjoins with something more desirable, both in itself and for the will, than is the nature it belongs to.

104. This conclusion, therefore, at least as to the will, is not only true as to what is meant by ‘to be ultimately perfected’, but also as to what is meant by ‘to be perfected with the most desirable perfection, and even with the greatest perfection’ [nn.95-96] -speaking of the extrinsic perfective thing and, by participation, of the intrinsic perfective thing insofar as it conjoins with the extrinsic one. The way the perfect is distinguished is also how the good is distinguished; hence although any being is, in its own goodness, good with first goodness, yet not with second goodness. And on this does Boethius especially seem to touch in his book De Hebdomadibus, where he maintains that goodness is an accident, and that things are not good by the fact that they are.“Hence, I observe that it is one thing in them that they are good, another thing that they are. For let one and the same substance be posited to be good, white, heavy, round. Then the substance itself would be one thing, its roundness another, its color another, its goodness another; for if these were individually the same as the substance itself, heaviness would be the same as color, color the same as good, and good the same as heavy, which nature does not allow to happen.” ⁴²

105. Now these facts (second goodness) we thus significantly express: ‘things are going well for it’. Hence, according to the third conclusion, this is plain, that for no will do things ultimately and completely go well save when that is had which is to be wanted because of itself, and had perfectly, in the way in which it can be had.

B. About the Name of Beatitude

106. About the second point, that is, the name of beatitude [n.79], this is taken as something known among philosophers and those who speak about beatitude [e.g. Aristotle, Ethics 1.5-6.1097a15-8a20]: that beatitude is the sufficient good, namely excluding defect and need; it is the perfect or complete good, excluding imperfection or diminution; it is the ultimate good excluding tending or orderability to another more complete good; it is the good that, when completely possessed, things go well with the possessor. In this way complete misery is need that is fixed; it is also lack of second perfection, and in this regard the diminution of the second good; it is also the exclusion of that which one would love because of itself if it were possessed; finally, things go completely badly for the person in misery.

107. Now although sufficiency, perfection, completeness, and goodness could belong to the first or second being of the thing, they could also include the things that belong as well to first or to second being yet, because what is sufficient is sufficient for someone and thereby supposes that for which it is sufficient, completion too completes what has already preceded and would, without it, be as it were a full or half full vacuum [sc. an absurdity].

108. The perfect also excludes defect, which is lack of what is of a nature to be present. ‘Things going well’ also only belongs to something already existent through something superadded to it as it were.

109. Therefore all these things belong more to second perfection than to first.

110. Also that a thing is only ultimately and completely perfected in an extrinsic perfective thing, because it is of a nature to be thus perfected; so these belong more to second perfection to the extent it is conjoint with the extrinsic perfective thing.

111. On the basis of these things beatitude could be distinguished into beatitude simply and in a certain respect, so that that would be beatitude simply which is second perfection immediately conjoining to the noblest extrinsic perfective object; but beatitude in a certain respect would conjoin with a less noble perfective object, and if indeed to an object more noble than the nature that is conjoined it comes closer to the idea of beatitude simply, but if to a less noble object it departs further from it.

112. The name ‘beatitude’ could also be distinguished in another way, because it can be taken for the conjunction with the extrinsic perfective object or for the proximate foundation of that conjunction - for indeed many denominations can be made in a certain order from relations, and abstractions made from those denominations.

C. Response to the Question

113. To the question I say, therefore, that beatitude consists in operation: either essentially, if beatitude be taken for the perfection that is the idea of conjunction with the beatific object, or proximately fundamentally, if beatitude be taken for the conjunction itself, so that, with the exception of the relation to the beatific object, the ultimate perfection intrinsic to the blessed and proximate to the beatific object is operation.

114. The proof of this: no intrinsic perfection is beatitude save insofar as it conjoins immediately to the extrinsic perfective object, which is the beatific object; but, with the exception of the relation, what immediately conjoins to the beatific object is operation;     therefore etc     .

115. The major is plain from the first article [nn.80-85; cf. nn.95-58, 104-105], because things cannot go completely and ultimately well for anything save when it possesses that which is for it supremely to be wanted; this is the extrinsic or quasi-extrinsic perfective thing, which is my statement for God, where the beatific object is the same as the Blessed One himself. But this supremely to-be-wanted thing is not possessed most perfectly unless it is conjoined immediately to the possessor. To be blessed is for things to go supremely well for oneself, from the second article [nn.86-94]; therefore no one’s beatitude consists in anything save in that by which he is more perfectly and more immediately conjoined with the supremely to-be-wanted thing.

116. The proof of the minor [n.114] is that neither essence nor power is conjoined with the extrinsic perfective object save through operation, which is the intrinsic such perfection. However, this operation does not abide in itself or for itself, but tends per se and immediately to the object, to the exclusion of any intermediary absolute form [nn.95-99].

D. To the Initial Arguments of the First Question

1. To the First Argument

117. As to the first argument [n.3] I say that it is not a definition of the blessed but a description, and truer than the rejected others, because it is given through what is necessarily concomitant to the blessed, unlike the other descriptions that are rejected by Augustine. An abstract [formulation] then, cannot be inferred about an abstract, because such a consequence holds only when in the antecedent there is predication of a concrete about a concrete in the first mode per se [n.68].In the first mode per se the predicate falls into the definition of the subject (as in ‘man is a rational animal’), and here the abstract formulation (‘humanity is rational animality’) does follow the concrete one. But not so in the case, say, of the description ‘man is capable of laughter’, which does not entail the abstract formulation ‘humanity is capability of laughter’. So, just because the blessed has everything he wants and wants nothing badly [n.3], it does not follow that blessedness is the having everything that is willed or wanted well. Some things wanted well (e.g. a blessed body) are not part of the definition or essence of beatitude but do accompany the blessed in fact. ⁴³

118. It can be said in another way that ‘everything that he wants’ is not taken divisively there for the things formally wanted, but for some one thing in which exist unitively all things that are rightly wanted, so that the sense is: the blessed is he who has perfectly, in the way possible for him, some object willed because of itself, in which object he has unitively and eminently whatever he can rightly will. And from this understanding the proposed conclusion follows, because in this way he has through operation whatever he wants.

119. As to the authority from Boethius [n.3], one must give as exposition either (1) that the name of ‘beatitude’ is equivocal, either (1a) for final or completive perfection taken extensively or (1b) taken intensively; and the former description (1a) is of beatitude taken according to its extensive totality, or one must say, if it is taken for its intensive totality (1b), that it is a state perfect by aggregation of all goods within one good eminently and unitively containing them. Or (2) if there is no aggregation in it because of its simplicity, then (in a third way) ‘by aggregation’ must be understood as what precedes or is concomitant to the perfect state but is not part of the essence of it.

2. To the Second Argument

120. To the second [n.4] the answer is plain from the distinction set down in the second article [n.112], that the name of ‘beatitude’ can be taken for the relation of conjoining, or for the proximate foundation of that conjoining. And as to the confirmation [n.4], I concede that any second perfection in a creature (which perfection however is an absolute form), can, without contradiction, exist without a relation of conjunction to the beatific object.

121. If, however, that sort of idea of intrinsic beatitude be posited here, since it could not exist without conjunction to the beatific object, it follows that beatitude is either a relation or includes an absolute and a relation. For if ‘to be blessed quidditatively’ is to have the beatific object, then beatitude is such a having of the object; but such a having of the object either includes the absolute and relative together, or it essentially states the relative and necessarily connotes the absolute; for if it were essentially to state the absolute, it would not necessarily connote the relative, which is something posterior to the absolute.

3. To the Third and Fourth

122. Answer to the third [n.6] will be stated below [question 6, nn.310, 327, 329].

123. As to the fourth [n.7], I concede that beatitude does not consist in an action of the category of action, because it is not simply the perfection of the agent, as is proved [there, n.7]; now operation is not such action but is action taken equivocally, as said in Ord. I d.3 n.604.

124. As to the first confirmation [n.7], the answer is plain through the same point, that the change from non-blessed to blessed is not from non-agent to agent, but is from non-operating to operating.

125. As to the second confirmation [n.7], a certain person says [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.2] that “in an act are two things, namely the substance of the act and the form by which it has its perfection; according to substance the principle is the natural power, but according to form the principle of it is the habit. If therefore the habit is acquired, we will be totally cause of our act; if it is infused, the perfection will be from the exterior cause that causes the habit. Now our act is not posited to be beatitude save by reason of its perfection; therefore, we are not cause of our beatitude but God is.”

126. Against this: the essentially prior cannot depend on any cause that the essentially posterior does not depend on; an act is essentially prior to its form, otherwise the form would not necessarily require the act for its being;The act of a habit, or the form here, falls into the definition of the habit, since a habit is the habit of such and such an act. But what falls into the definition of a thing is essentially prior to it. ⁴⁴ therefore if we are the cause of the substance [of the act], the form will depend on us, and only in some class of cause, because nothing seems to depend essentially on what is not a cause of it, speaking of any first act.

127. Again, the form is only a condition of the act; now the power that elicits the act does not elicit it bare, but with such and such a condition or circumstance; therefore, it is cause not only of the substance of the act but also of the form of the act.

128. Again, that the habit be a cause distinct from the power and a cause of something distinct (namely distinct from the power) does not seem probable; first because it is only a second cause in respect of the power (now second and first cause do not have distinct acts proper to them, because then with respect to neither would the former be first cause and the latter second); second because the effect, proper to the habit, would necessarily be an absolute form, if relation is not per se the term of an agent or an action; and it is not probable that the action is formed in this way, because then the action that reaches the beatific object would have to include two absolutes.

129. There is, then, another response, that the blessed is the second active cause of his beatitude as far as concerns the absolute that is in beatitude, and this if the will is the active cause of its beatific volition (about which later [in Rep. IVA d.49 q.10 nn.7-9, q.11 nn.3-9]).

4. To the Fifth

130. To the fifth [n.8] I say that the act is simply more perfect than the habit, both in idea of final perfection, because it more immediately attains the final object, and in idea of formal perfection, because there could not belong to the habit at its peak as great a perfection as belongs to such act at its peak.

131. To the Philosopher in the Topics [n.8], therefore, I say, in one way, that the consideration in question must be understood ‘other things being equal’. Hence he himself maintains (at the beginning of the book [Topics 3.1.116a4-6]) that he is not considering it “in things far apart,” that is, “in things having many differences,” but in things that have only that difference for which his considerations hold universally. And then the minor is false ‘habit and act are distinct in this alone’, namely ‘according to being more permanent or lasting and less lasting’.

But there is another response in the issue at hand, that this act is as equally lasting as the habit - on the part of the power and on the part of the object and on the part of the nature of this one and of that.

132. As to the second proof [n.8 “second because habit is a cause of act”], the answer is plain elsewhere, Ord. I d.17 n.32 (on charity), that a habit is only a partial cause of an act; and it is not unacceptable for a partial equivocal cause to be less noble than its effect, and especially as concerns a partial secondary cause, though the total or partial principal equivocal cause is nobler than its effect.

133. Briefly as follows:

Things go simply perfectly well for the blessed; things do not go thus well for anyone save in the simply perfect good, perfectly possessed, in the way possible for him; things cannot, from that good, go well for anyone else in that good save in his immediately attaining it; but he cannot attain it save by operation. Therefore, in this immediate attaining of that good, or in immediate conjoining with that good, does beatitude in its completion consist, and in the operation as in the proximate foundation.

134. The first proposition [n.133] is plain, because beatitude is the second perfection of a thing. For it is not the first perfection, because a thing is more perfect according to its first perfection (and by that first perfection alone can it be more wretched than others); now second perfection is properly expressed by the fact that ‘things go well’, for ‘things going well’ presupposes the first perfection of anything for which things go well. Further, there is an order in second perfections as in first perfections, because there is a correspondence of the latter to the former. And again, in the second perfections of any same thing there is an order such that some perfection is ultimate, short of which the thing is imperfect by way of privation, because it is of a nature to receive a further perfection; but when its ultimate perfection is obtained, if it is not simply perfect, its ultimate perfection remains something imperfect negatively, because lacking a perfection, though not a perfection of a nature to be received by it. To exclude further second perfection of the same thing, ‘perfectly’ is added to ‘well’; but to exclude further second perfection simply, at least in its kind, to ‘perfectly’ is added ‘simply well’, such that beatitude states a second perfection that excludes imperfection (both of privation and of negation), as being a supreme second perfection, at least in its kind.

135. The second proposition [n.133] is plain, because things do not go perfectly well for what can have that good if it does not have it, but go imperfectly for it by way of privation; and if it cannot have it, then things do not go perfectly well for it but imperfectly, at least negatively.

136. The third proposition is proved by the three conclusions of the first article [nn.80, 86, 95], that the whole of intellectual nature is of a nature thus to have that good, and it is imperfect unless it thus have it; but non-intellectual nature, as being inferior, if it is not of a nature to have it, then it remains imperfect, but not privatively so but negatively, that is, from the imperfection of its nature.

137. The fourth proposition is proved because there is no second perfection by which the perfect good may be more immediately attained than by operation, which of itself seems to be not for its own sake but for the sake of the object; and first perfection does not attain it save through the mediation of second perfection.

Question Three. Whether Beatitude Consists per se in Several Operations Together

138. Whether beatitude consists per se in several operations together.

139. That it does:

Augustine On the Trinity 13.5 n.8, “The blessed is he who has whatever he wills etc.” [n.3]; but man wills rightly not only one operation but several, because if he rightly wills enjoyment, he rightly wills vision, without which there is no enjoyment. Also, if he rightly wills vision he rightly wills enjoyment, because according to Anselm Why God Man? 2.1, “intellectual nature has received intellect for this purpose, to discriminate good from bad so that by his will he may love good and hate bad” (Anselm’s opinion, not his own worlds).

140. Again, from the same authority [Augustine] as follows: if by one operation he can have whatever he wills, therefore either through an operation of the will, and then it follows that Augustine’s description is equivalent to this: ‘the blessed is he who wills whatever he wills’ (because ‘to have’ is ‘to will’, since every operation of the will is a ‘to will’); but the wayfarer wills whatever he wills, therefore he has whatever he wills, therefore he is blessed. And if ‘to have’ is by act of intellect, then it follows that the blessed will understand whatever he wills, and then it follows, as before, that the wayfarer will be blessed, because he understands whatever he wills. One must say, therefore, that ‘to have this’ does not consist in one or other act alone, nor consequently in any single operation.

141. Again, beatitude consists in whatever the blessed is from the non-blessed per se distinguished by. But the blessed is distinguished by act of intellect, because the blessed sees, the non-blessed does not see, the beatific object. He is also distinguished by act of will, because if causes be distinct, acts are too; an act of intellect seems to be cause of an act of will, because when that cause is in place, the act is in place, and when that cause is removed, the act is removed.

142. On the contrary: in any essential order a stand is made at some one thing; therefore in the order of ends there will not only be one act for one extrinsic end, but also among intrinsic ends there will be thus some one supreme end; therefore, from the idea of intrinsic end, there are not two operations.

143. Response: to one simply first thing in one order there can be two things immediate to it, and consequently each is equally first - though not simply first but first in second place (example about efficient causes and effects).

144. On the contrary: On Generation 2.10.336a27-28, “The same thing, insofar as it is the same, is of a nature to do the same thing” [cf. Ord. II d.1 n.54]; therefore, to the same efficient cause only a single effect is of a nature to be proximate; therefore, by similarity, in the case of ends.

145. Response: unless an essential order of species prove that two species cannot be equally proximate to a first essence (and so unless the impossibility of a plurality be proved from the products themselves), it does not appear how this result could be produced from the unity of the producer, because it is not always necessary to assign two causes for two effects if every multitude is to be reduced to one thing as to the cause of the multitude.

146. An argument to the contrary in another way is that in things essentially prior in some order there is not a lesser unity essentially but rather a greater one; and, as it is, some simply extrinsic end under the end is attained through the single intrinsic end corresponding to it.

I. To the Question

A. Opinions of Others

1. Opinion of Richard of Middleton

147. Here is said [by Richard of Middleton, Sent. IV d.49 princ.1 q.6] that “beatitude consists in the act of intellect and will together.”

148. The reason for this is that “beatitude consists in the perfect union of the beatifiable person with God; now this includes union according to every power according to which the nature is able to be immediately one with God. Of this sort [of power] are both intellect and will, because just as God (under the idea of supreme truth) is the immediate object of the intellect, so is he (under the idea of supreme good) the immediate object of the will.”

149. Again, “the virtue through which anything is moved to its term is the same virtue by which it rests in its term; but intellectual nature is moved to God through both intellect and will; therefore it rests in him through both powers. But beatitude is perfect resting of intellectual nature in God.”

150. I add a third reason: when several things are required for the perfection of something in first act, several things, proportionable to those first ones, will also be required for the perfection of the same thing in second act; but intellect and will are required for the perfection of intellectual nature in first act, because intellectual nature would be perfect in first act when it lacks neither; therefore second acts corresponding to the first ones are required for the perfection of it in second act; beatitude, therefore, which is completive perfection of intellectual nature in second act, will include these two second acts.

151. The proof of the major is that nature cannot be perfectly at rest unless whatever belongs per se to its natural perfection be at rest; for grant that some such not be at rest, then nature, according to something or other intrinsic to it, is not at rest; therefore it is not perfectly at rest; therefore the resting perfection of the whole nature includes per se the resting of any first act belonging per se to that nature.

2. Opinion of Thomas Aquinas

152. Another opinion [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.1] is in the opposite extreme, that beatitude consists only in a single operation, because, from the definition of the Philosopher, Ethics [1.13.1102a5-6, 6.1098a16, 18-20, 10.1100a1-5], “happiness is the best operation according to the best virtue and in a perfect life;” and then it is impossible for there to be several operations of the same thing that are simply best, because neither are they of the same species, since one such perfect operation suffices in one thing.

153. It is plain too that the operations of intellect and will would not be of the same species, nor can there be several best operations of another species, because “species are disposed like numbers,” Metaphysics 8.5.1044a10-11. And especially is this true of the species proximate to the first, because this species is only one; for it is first in genus with respect to the others, just as the ‘simply first’ is first outside the genus.

154. Likewise it is not possible for there to be several best virtues of the same nature, whether ‘virtue’ is taken there for natural potency (because the supreme power of one nature is single), or whether virtue is taken there for an acquired or supernatural habit; for always, this way or that, the best is only one.

B. Scotus’ own Response

155. To the question it can in a way be said (by mediating between the opinions) that, by speaking of beatitude not as it states an aggregation of all goods belonging to beatitude [n.152, Aquinas ibid. a.5; Boethius, Consolation III pr.2 n.3; Richard of Middleton ibid. n.147], but as it states that by which the beatific object is immediately attained ultimately [n.148], a distinction can be drawn as to beatitude of intellectual nature and beatitude of power. Because although nature is only beatified through a power yet, as nature, it is a beatifiable power, whose beatitude is not simply beatitude of nature, for things do not go simply perfectly well for the nature in that but in something else more noble than it, though things do, from this, go simply well for the power.

156. According to this, then, it can be said that the beatitude of intellectual nature consists in a single operation alone, because only in a single operation do things go simply perfectly well for it such that nothing is lacking to it - not as if this include everything belonging to the ‘going well’ of nature, but as it state in ‘going well’ the fulfilment of everything. The proof of this is that just as the beatific object, single in thing and idea, is that in which, as in the extrinsic perfecting cause, things go perfectly well for this nature and do so only insofar as the beatific object is attained by this nature simply immediately by operation - so such operation will be simply one.

157. In a second way [n.155], when saying that every power is beatifiable that can immediately attain the beatific object [n.155], one must draw a distinction in ‘immediately’; for either this excludes a medium of the same order (which, namely, would be for it a medium for attaining [the beatific object] in its own order, as operation is a medium for the power in attaining the object), or it excludes a medium of another order (because, namely, nothing would attain the object more immediately or perfectly than it, or be for it the reason for its attaining the object or not). An example of this distinction: a prior and posterior cause immediately attain the same passive subject, such that neither agent cause is a medium through which the other cause attains the common passive subject; yet the prior cause attains it more immediately, because more intimately and perfectly, for the whole attaining by the posterior cause is in the virtue of the prior cause.

158. In the first way [n.157, ‘excludes a medium of the same order’], one must concede that both intellect and will are beatified, because the term more immediately of the operation of each power is the object itself, such that neither is medium as regard the other in idea of object, nor in idea of attaining the object as it is attained by the act. And thus, the total extensive beatitude that is possible in an intellectual nature (because it is the beatitude of its two powers, each of which is beatifiable in its own way) - this, I say, consists in several operations.

159. And in this way, if there could be ten powers in intellectual nature, each of which would, through operation, attain God immediately, the total extensive beatitude would consist in ten operations. Nor is this a problem unless it be said that God is the beatific object under a single idea alone, and cannot be attained under that idea save by a single power and a single operation, and so a power attaining that idea according to another operation, though doing so immediately, is yet not beatified save in a certain respect.

160. And according to this, it would have to be said that beatitude, simply and as a whole according to its powers, consists, like beatitude simply, in a single operation of that very nature.

161. Speaking of immediacy in the second way [n.157, ‘excludes a medium of another order’], it is plain that beatitude consists only in a single operation, because only a single power in nature most perfectly attains the object. Speaking thus, then, about the beatitude of nature, namely the beatitude by which things go simply best for nature itself, at least on the part of the object and of the best object (and as the best that nature is conjoined to), beatitude is only in a single operation of a single power -

162. - likewise too when speaking of the beatitude of the power as it includes immediacy in both ways stated [n.157].

163. In no way, then, can beatitude be said to consist in two operations save by positing that, for the beatific operation, a single operation suffice without another,That is, beatitude could consist in two operations if each of the two operations was individually sufficient for the beatific operation, so that, though in fact both go together, each would be enough by itself. ⁴⁵ which however is a doubtful matter.

C. To the Arguments for the Opinion of Richard

164. To the arguments for the first opinion:

To the first argument [n.148]: the minor is not true save of one immediacy without the other, and from this does not follow save that beatitude is only in one or other of them, to the extent beatitude includes each immediacy. Likewise, beatitude of nature only consists in that by which nature most immediately attains the object; but that is single, though some power of it may, through another operation, attain it most immediately with the immediacy possible for that power.

165. To the second argument [n.149] it can be said that ‘to tend to the end’ only belongs to appetite properly, and this as the ‘to tend’ is compared to motion; because although the intellect tend to an object present, here however, when taking the ‘to tend’ equivocally, it yet never tends to anything as to acquiring, namely through motion, a term of motion.

166. In another way, having conceded that there is a tending to the beatific object through both powers, namely by a certain imperfect operation that can be had about something absent, the point can be conceded: one tendency is that whereby nature tends to it principally, and thus does a single resting follow it, which is the resting of nature principally; but the other tendency is a less principal tendency of it, and in this way does the resting follow. Also, when comparing the powers with each other, these tendencies are not to the object with a double immediacy most immediately, but only one is, and so that one will be the immediate resting which follows. The beatitude then is the beatitude of nature, to the extent that beatitude includes a double immediacy of operation to object.

167. To the third [n.150] I say that the total resting of nature, speaking of extensive totality, requires that whatever is restable in nature be at rest; and in this way the beatitude of man is not without resumption of, and reunion of the soul with, the body, because some appetite is in the soul for the body as for its proper perfectible object, or at least because conversely there is some appetite in matter (as in what is properly perfectible) for form, namely for the soul. But among these restings there is one resting of the nature simply, which namely is the resting of what is simply noblest in that nature, insofar as it is restable.

168. I say therefore that, just as there are some many things pertaining to the first act of something, so there can be many restings of those many, and one total resting, with extensive totality, of the whole, which includes those many restings. But there is of them all a single resting, which is the ultimate rest in the object, which also is alone the simply total resting of nature, speaking of intensive resting.

D. To the Reason for the Opinion of Thomas

169. The reasoning for the other opinion [n.152] can be conceded when understanding the conclusion of the single beatific operation (as to each immediacy) simply; when speaking too of the completive beatific operation of the whole nature. But if it be understood of the beatitude of the whole with extensive totality, the reasoning is not compelling, because many operations, one of which is simply nobler than the other, can come together in the best in this way, namely extensively.

II. To the Initial Arguments for Each Part

170. To the first main argument [n.139] I say that the ‘whatever’ is not taken there for all desirable things separately, but for one desirable thing in which all are unitedly contained; and thus, in having the beatific object, by whatever act it be said to be had, ‘he has whatever he wants’, because he has it eminently in that act on account of which alone it is rightly to be wanted; and in this act he has every act rightly to be wanted. When, therefore, you take under the minor that this and that operation are rightly to be wanted in themselves, it is plain that it is not rightly taken under the major.

171. To the next [n.140] I say, as will be said in the following question [nn.271, 304], that ‘to have’ is taken there for an act of willing, not for any act of willing whatever, but for the perfect act of willing, which follows bare vision; and he who by such act has whatever he wants, that is, has the one thing that is eminently everything wantable, is blessed. But it does not follow that ‘therefore whoever wants whatever he wants is blessed’, because a definition or description proper to something can be given through a lower level predicate but not through a higher level one, because a higher level one belongs to more things; hence in the form [sc. of the argument] a consequent is drawn from a lower to a higher level along with distribution [sc. at that higher level -which is fallacious].

172. As to the third [n.141], I deny the major, because many aspects in something can be distinctive of it from something [else], nor yet is each of them of the essence of that something insofar as it is distinct, but only that which first and essentially distinguishes it - and if you take this to be the understanding from the fact that ‘per se’ is stated in the major, namely essentially and per se in the first mode [cf. footnote to n.117], I concede the major; and then the minor is false, because by act of will alone is the blessed distinguished in this per se mode from the non-blessed - about which more in the following question, ‘On Enjoyment’ [nn.297-299].

173. As to the argument for the opposite [nn.142-146], it can be conceded when one understands it about beatitude simply of the nature, and about any operation simply beatific, namely in each way of immediacy in immediately attaining the object. And this appears probable since, when people posit beatitude to be in each operation or in both, they say that one of them is per se ordered to the other [nn.155-163]; and consequently, neither are each nor both one ultimate perfection simply of the nature, since even a single one of them is simply the ultimate perfection of the power.

Question Four. Whether Beatitude Consists per se in an Act of Intellect or of Will

174. Whether beatitude consists per se in an act of intellect or of will.

175. Proof that it consists in an act of intellect:

John 17.3, “This is life eternal, to know you etc.”

176. Again, Augustine On the Trinity 1.9 n.18, “Vision is the whole reward.”

177. Again, the Philosopher, Ethics 10.8.1178b7-32, proves by express intention that the happiness of separate substances consists in contemplation, and from this he concludes that our happiness is in contemplation, because in this are we made more like them.

178. Again, Ethics 1.5.1097b14-16, “Beatitude is the sufficient good;” but of this sort is vision, according to the remark of Philip, John 14.8, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”

179. On the contrary:

Augustine, On the Trinity 1.10 n.20, “To be enlightened and have joy in that alone [sc. the intellect] will suffice.”

180. Again, On the Trinity 13.5 n.8, “The blessed is he who has whatever he wills” [cf. nn.3, 139]; therefore, beatitude consists most of all in willed action. The will more wills its own operation than the operation of the intellect, because it is its proper perfection, and each thing desires more its own perfection than the perfection that per se belongs to another, although it be in some way its own.

181. Again, Augustine On Christian Doctrine 1.32 n.35 “The supreme reward is that we enjoy him [sc. God];” but to enjoy is an act of the will, because it is to “inhere with love” [ibid. 1.4 n.4]; our supreme reward is beatitude; therefore, it should consist in the will.

I. To the Question

182. In this question all who hold that beatitude consists in operation agree in holding that it consists only in some operation of the intellective part [of the soul] as distinguished from the sensitive part, because only an immaterial power can by its operation attain the perfect good, in which alone (as in its object) is beatitude. But as to the operation of which of these powers alone it consist in (if it consists in a single one), or principally consist in (if it consists in both), opinions arise.

A. Opinion of Thomas Aquinas

1. Exposition of the Opinion

183. One opinion [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.1] posits that beatitude consists in an act of intellect principally and essentially, and in act of will as in a certain perfection extrinsic to and supervening on vision - in which vision is the substance of beatitude.

184. The reason for this is of the following sort: beatitude either is the ultimate extrinsic end, which a thing attains by its operation, or is the ultimate intrinsic end, and is that operation alone which conjoins first with the exterior end; an act of will is the ultimate end in neither way; therefore beatitude too does not consist, in this way or that, in the will as an act of it - though it is in the will as object, because the idea of good is the object of the will, and beatitude, as it is the ultimate end, has most of all the idea of good.

185. Proof of the minor [n.184]:

As to its first part [‘an act of will is not the ultimate extrinsic end’]: first because the object of the will is the end, so every willing is a certain being ordered to the end; second because willing cannot be the first thing willed (for it presupposes that something other than willing is willed first, because a reflected act presupposes a direct act that has its term in something other than an act of the power, otherwise there would be an infinite regress). Something like this appears in the intellect, because [an act of] understanding cannot be the first thing understood, but something other than the very [act of] understanding is the object first of a direct act of understanding.

186. Proof of the second part of the minor [n.184, ‘an act of will is not the ultimate intrinsic end’], because the operation that first conjoins with the exterior end is the operation by which the attainment of the exterior end first comes about; an act of will is not of such sort, because there is one act of will before attainment of the end, namely desire, which is a sort of motion toward something not possessed, and another act of will is a sort of resting in the end. It is plain that the will does not first attain the end through the first act, because it lacks the end when it has that act. Nor does it do so through the second act; the proof is that the second act follows attainment; for the will is only now at rest in the thing it was tending to before because it is disposed differently now to the thing than before, or conversely. Therefore, what makes the will to be thus disposed to the end, so as to be (in it or through it) at rest in that which before it was tending toward, is the ultimate attainment of the end; such is the act of vision, because through this a certain contact of God with the intellect comes about (for the thing known is in the knower). Through this contact the object is so disposed to the will that the will can now be at rest in what before it could not.

187. This is confirmed by an example in the sense appetite, that if the sensible object is the extrinsic end, sensation is the intrinsic end, because the sensible object is first possessed through the sensation in such a way that the sense appetite can be at rest in it.

188. This is plain too in another example, that if money is the extrinsic end, possession of money is the intrinsic end, which intrinsic end is followed by the resting of the will in the loved money.

2. Rejection of the Opinion

189. Against this:

The extrinsic end is simply best and supremely to be willed, therefore, among the things that are for it, what is more immediate to it is more to be willed; but willing is more immediate to it, because it immediately tends to it as to ultimate end, since the ultimate end, as such, is the proper object of the willing.

190. Proof of the major:

That is more to be willed by a free will which is naturally more to be desired by natural appetite; of this sort is what is closer to the ultimate, because it is simply more desired naturally.

191. Again, the will can will its own act just as the intellect can understand its own act; either then it wills its willing on account of understanding, or conversely, or it wills neither on account of the other (and I am speaking of ordered willing). Not the first because, according to Anselm Why God Man 2.1, it would be a perverse order to will to love in order to understand;Anselm, “For this purpose has man received the power of discriminating, so that he might hate and avoid the bad and love and choose the good... For otherwise in vain would God have given this power of discriminating, because man would discriminate in vain if.he did not love the good and hate the bad.” ⁴⁶ nor the third, because, in the case of things ordered per se to the same end, there is some order among them as if to an end under the end; therefore the second - and this is what Anselm maintains in the above cited place.

192. Again, if extrinsic beatitude were simply supremely to be willed, then that most of all is intrinsic beatitude, which, among things intrinsic, is supremely to be willed; of this sort is some willing; for the will more desires its own perfection in the ultimate end than the perfection of the intellect (and this, when speaking of correct free appetite, it does rightly), just as it naturally more desires it by natural appetite.

193. To the reasoning [n.184-85], then, I concede the first part of the minor and the first part of the conclusion, namely that the act of will is not the ultimate end altogether.

194. But neither so is the act of the intellect (according to them [n.185]); however, the act of will does approach more to the simply ultimate end - just as the first reason [n.184] proves about attaining, through this act, the end as proper object, and the third [n.184] about the greater wantability of this act, and the second about the idea of end in this act in respect of the act of intellect [n.184].

195. Nor do the proofs for the first part [n.185] prove more than is given:

For the act of will is ordered or orderable thus to the end simply because it is more immediate to it in the order of the things that are for the end; but the act of intellect, if it is not ordered, is yet orderable and mediately so, and for this reason it participates less of the idea of end.

196. The second proof [n.185] shows that something is willed prior to the willing itself; and I concede this, because the object is extrinsic; but the object is not intellection, at least when speaking of what is willed first in perfection, whatever may be true of firstness in generation; for that firstness does not prove anything for the proposed conclusion, namely that what is first willed is more an end.

The second part of the minor [n.184] I deny.

As to the proof [n.186] I concede that through an act of desire, which is for something absent, there is no attainment of the end; but through another act, which namely is the love of the thing present, there is attainment of the end first, speaking of the firstness of perfection, though through an act of intellect there is some sort of prior attaining of the end by priority of generation. But now, according to the Philosopher, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a4-5, “things posterior in generation are prior in perfection,” which is true of the posterior that is simply more immediate to the ultimate, which ultimate is what is simply perfect. So it is here.

197. When the proposed conclusion is proved about second act, that it is a resting in the end and consequently posterior to the attaining of the end [n.186], I say that resting can be understood either for delight properly speaking (which is a perfection supervenient to operation, as beauty to youth), and thus do some [Richard of Middleton] understand this reasoning, as if this opinion [of Thomas, nn.183-188] posit that with respect to the present object the will have only a delight consequent to the vision of the intellect; and if resting be thus taken for delight, I concede that it follows the attainment of the end, and the attainment first not only in generation but in perfection, because it follows the act of loving or enjoying the end seen, which is truly an elicited act of the will. But it is false that the will not elicit any act but have only passive delight about the lovable object present. Therefore does Augustine say On the Trinity 9.12 n.18, “The appetite of the seeker becomes the love of the enjoyer.”

198. Now this appetite or desire is not passion only: first because “we are not praised or blamed for our passions,” Ethics 2.4.1105b31-32 (but the greatest part of the merit and laudability of the just wayfarer consists in holy desires), second because for an object presented in the same way the will elicits desire sometimes more intensely, sometimes more laxly, according as it elicits it with greater or lesser effort.

199. It is also reasonable that if the will in desiring elicit an act, as is said in Lectura II d.25 n.36 (for which there is the authority of Augustine, City of God 14.6, about two similarly affected people,“For if two people, equally affected in mind and body, see the beauty of a single body and, when it is seen, one of them is moved to illicit enjoyment, the other perseveres settled in chaste will, what do we think is the cause that a bad will come to be in the former and not in the latter?” ⁴⁷ and of Anselm Virginal Conception 1“God has subjected us and what is in us to the will, so that on its command we not be able not to move and do what it wills. Indeed, it moves us as its instruments and does the deeds that we are seen to do. Nor are we able to resist it by ourselves, nor can the works that it does not come to be. The mistress, which God has given us, we neither should, nor can we, not obey.” ⁴⁸), that it also elicit an act about the end present, because if by acting it move itself toward a thing not possessed, it is reasonable that by acting it give itself rest in the thing present.

200. If then ‘resting’ is taken in another way for the quietening act elicited by the will, which act namely conjoins immediately with the ultimate end, in the way ultimate rest is in it, I concede that the resting is a second act of the will [n.197]. But I deny that it follows the first attainment of the end, I mean first in firstness of perfection; rather, in this way is it the first attainment, though it does follow some attainment, that is, the presence of this enjoyable object, which presence is by act of intellect.

201. But when speaking of first attainment in this way, namely the first presence of the object so that the will might be able, through its own act, to rest itself in it, I deny that this operation is the ultimate intrinsic end, through which is the first attainment of the extrinsic end; because the operation that is in this way first in attaining does not conjoin with the extrinsic end immediately, to the exclusion of all mediation of anything else nearer to the end.

202. If against this be adduced the proof that the will can now, not before, be at rest, therefore ‘it is disposed differently now to the end than before, or conversely’ [n.186], I reply that the consequence does not hold, but it is enough that some power, prior to the will in operating, be differently disposed to the object, by the positing, namely, of whose different disposition the will has power for the act for which it did not have power before, not by alteration of itself but of what was previous to it in acting.

203. Briefly then: the first part of the deduction [n.185] is not against any opinion, because no one posits that the act of the created will is God; nor is the second part [n.186] about the first act of will, namely desire, doubtful to anyone. The force then [of the deduction] rests in this: whether any act of will, other than desire, could be first in reaching the ultimate end.

204. And the proof adduced there about resting [nn.197, 186] is a failure of equivocation. For if resting is taken for the delight consequent to perfect operation, I concede that perfect reaching of the end precedes that resting; but if resting is taken for the act of resting in the end, I say that the act of loving, which naturally precedes delight, gives rest in this way, because an operative power only rests in an object through the perfect operation through which it attains the object. And then the proposition ‘the first, that is, the perfect, attainment of the object precedes resting in the object’ is false, though having an appearance of truth from comparison with the motion by which a movable thing attains the term and attains rest in that term, since movement to the term precedes rest in the term.

205. But this comparison with the proposed conclusion is not valid, because the same operation is here perfectly attaining, and perfectly giving, rest, because the resting is in the perfect attainment of the object. And universally, when applying such likenesses taken from motions to operations, one must give up what, because it is a mark of imperfection, is therefore proper to motion. But so is here its distinction from rest; and, by opposition to it, the following are in operation in a unitive way: attainment of the object (as if by motion, or rather by tendency toward it), and resting in the object (since indeed such tendency toward it gives rest in it).

206. But if every operation of the will about a present object be denied other than delight - this is irrational, because if the will is operative about an absent object, but an object known imperfectly because obscurely, much more perfectly will it be able to operate about an object present perfectly, because seen.

207. If it is argued that the will can be at rest in the object now, not before, therefore it is differently disposed to the object (or conversely) than before [n.186] - I reply: the consequence is not valid, but it is enough that some power, a different one prior in operating, be disposed differently to the object than before [cf. n.202, repetition]; nor is it a wonder that a power, which in operating requires another operating power, is not altogether in proximate potency to operating save when the other is operating.

208. If it is argued that at any rate through that new thing, through which as new the will can be at rest now, the will was not able to be so then, therefore the attaining of the end is through that and is prior to the resting of the will (as is plain), therefore the first attainment of the end will be in that other act - I reply: first by firstness of generation, not by firstness of perfection; but beatitude is first attainment by firstness of perfection.

209. But if you argue that altogether, before any resting of the power, the possession or attainment of the end precedes, namely because the power can operate now and was not able to before, because it is not without some change, which change is only to possessing of the object - it follows that in no operation, even of the intellect, could there be a first attainment of the object, and so not beatitude either. And then the reasoning goes to the other opinion, that beatitude is not in operation but in some possessing of the object preceding all operation, which was spoken about in the first question [n.121].

B. Scotus’ own Response to Each Part of the Question

210. As to this question, argument from a number of middle terms is made for each part.

1. Argumentation from the First Middle Term, namely from the Object, and the Weighing of it

211. One middle term is from the object.

On behalf of the understanding, as follows: the true is nearer to being than the good is.

212. On behalf of the will, as follows: the idea of good is nobler because it is good by its essence, the true is good by participation; likewise, the universal good is nobler than a particular good, the true is a particular good because the good is an object of the intellect.

213. This middle term seems efficacious for neither opinion, because the major in both cases seems false, for the true and good are not really distinct, and consequently neither is one really nobler than the other.

214. But if one of them is said to be nobler than the other in idea (understanding ‘idea’ for something caused by the intellect), this is a relation of reason arising from the intellect comparing these things to others - this nobility does not make for the proposed conclusion, because a relation of reason is not the formal idea of the first object of intellect or will.

215. Likewise, to what will the comparison be made? If to the divine persons (to the Son, namely, to whom true corresponds in being, and to the Holy Spirit, to whom good corresponds), the divine persons are not different in nobility. But if they [the true and good] be compared to things posterior to them, namely to the acts of which they are the objects, there is now a circle in the reasoning.

216. And if they are posited to differ in real idea, as was said of the attributes in Ord. I d.8 nn.192-193, then some nobility in one of them (according to the proper idea of it) with respect to the other can well be preserved, and this before an act of intellect; because just as there is a distinction between things of a different idea, so is there inequality between them, especially if the distinction is quidditative, not hypostatic, and between absolutes. But perhaps neither true nor good assert absolute ideas beyond being.

217. The minor, too, of each reason is dubious as to the part that says ‘the good is the object of the will’ and false as to the part that says ‘the true is the object of the intellect’, as was said in Ord. I d.3 nn.171-174.

218. Both the major, then, and the minor require a lengthier discussion than may concern the present question.

219. Giving weight, then, to this middle term [sc. ‘from the object’] in favor of neither side, I respond to the reasons taken from this middle term:

As to the first [n.211] the inference is to the opposite effect, because just as being is potential with respect to any particular idea so what is more potential will be closer to it.

220. But against this: the idea of being precisely taken is nobler than any idea superadded to it precisely taken, just as the idea of the subject is nobler than the idea of the accident; therefore, what is closer to it as it is most perfect will be more perfect. Hence it is false that being is disposed to other things as matter is to form, but rather it is as it were an active potency (as subject to property).

221. In another way it is said that something can be closer in one order to what is most perfect and another thing closer in another order; just as quantity is more immediate to substance than quality in one order, and yet quality is a more perfect thing and consequently closer [to substance] in another order. But that is simply more perfect which is in a nobler order, or according to a nobler condition, closer to what is most perfect, as good is closer to being in the order of communicating perfections or being the term and completing the perfection of another (because of which good is said, in one way, to be communicative, according to Augustine Christian Doctrine 1 ch.31-32, in another way to be the end, Physics 2.3. 24-25, Metaphysics 5.2.1013b25-27, Ethics 1.4.1097a33-34) -though true be nearer to being in its order to powers operative about the whole of being.

222. As to the reason to the contrary [n.212], a first objection is that one could argue similarly about the true. For the true is true by essence, but the good is true by participation; therefore, the true is truer, therefore also greater, because thus does Augustine negatively argue On the Trinity 8.1 n.2, “if not truer, not greater,” where the context is only about things convertible.

223.     Therefore I reply that all these transcendentals [sc. good, true] denominate each other mutually, and for this reason ‘being essentially true’ is of equal perfection as ‘being essentially good’, unless it be proved that the idea of true is nobler than the idea of good, and conversely.

224. Another response is realer, because the ‘more’ [sc. in ‘nobler’, ‘closer’ etc     .] can be referred to the inherence or to the predicate; inherence follows the identity of the extremes. Therefore, what is essentially present is more present to the extent it determines inherence or identity, but not to the extent it determines the inhering extreme (an example: a white animal is not a more white thing than a man who is white).The term ‘white’ in the phrase ‘a white animal’ inheres in the term ‘animal’ more than ‘white’ in the phrase ‘a man who is white’ inheres in the term ‘man’ (for in the first the noun is directly qualified and in the second only by apposition); but the white animal is not thereby said to be a whiter thing than the man. ⁴⁹

2. Argumentation from the Second Middle Term, namely from the Habit, and the Weighing of it

225. Argument is made, second, from habit, because an act is nobler that a nobler habit disposes to. Some habit of the intellect is nobler than any habit of the will because, according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 1.2.983a4-7, wisdom is the noblest habit and the same is expressly said in Ethics 6.7.1141a16-20 and 10.7.1177a22-25. But no habit [of the will] is nobler, in the Philosopher, than justice or at any rate than friendship, about which it is plain that they are, according to him, far below wisdom.

226. To the contrary, I Corinthians 13.13, “But the greater of these is love;” and Augustine On the Trinity 15.18 n.37, “Among the gifts of God no gift is greater than charity, nor equal to it” (plainly speaking about a gift of a different idea).

227. The response [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.1] made to the Apostle and Augustine is that their understanding holds for the state of this life, but for the state of the fatherland the light of glory is nobler. The proof is that that to which, because of its perfection, belonging to something imperfect is repugnant is more perfect than that to which this is not repugnant; the light of glory, because of its perfection, is repugnant to being present in a wayfarer but not to being present in charity.

A confirmation: what distinguishes the perfect from the imperfect is more perfect than what is common to both; the light of glory distinguishes the comprehender [in heaven] from the wayfarer; charity is common.

228. Argument against this response:

First from the authority of Hugh [of St. Victor] On the Celestial Hierarchy 6.7 [supra n.21], about the “acute, super-fervent, hot,” says “love is supreme over knowledge;” hence the supreme order [of angels] is denominated from its ardor, the next to it from its knowledge.

229. Again, by reason:

The most perfect habit of will on the way [for the wayfarer] perfects the will according to the capacity that it has at that time; therefore, if it is nobler than any habit of intellect [as the response to the Apostle and Augustine conceded, nn.226-227], the capacity of the will on the way is greater (or for something greater) than the capacity of the intellect; therefore it is greater in the fatherland too, because either there is the same capacity here as there (speaking of remote capacity, which is according to the rank of the nature with the capacity), or the capacity there will correspond proportionally to the capacity here (speaking of proximate capacity); for the first capacity [capacity on the way] can only be totally satisfied by something proportionally perfecting it, so only by something more noble than it; but it is for something more noble [sc. than the intellect is for, as was conceded, nn.226-227].

230. This middle term [n.225] seems rather to conclude in favor of the will, especially when speaking of infused habits, which dispose to the true beatitude that the theologians speak of.

231. As to the authority of the Philosopher [n.225], it could be said that, although wisdom were a nobler acquired habit, it does not follow that it dispose to a nobler act, speaking of supernatural act, of which sort is beatitude.

232. But to the contrary [sc. to the concession, n.231, that wisdom is a nobler acquired habit]: the will is a power able to be habituated by an acquired habit just as the intellect is; therefore, the supreme acquired habit of the will can exceed wisdom just as its supreme infused habit exceeds the supreme habit infused in the intellect.

233. It could also be said that the Philosopher commonly did not distinguish intellect from will in idea of operative principle, or operative in extrinsic operation; hence he holds this principle, as it is distinct from nature, to be the same, now art or intellect, now intention [Ord. I d.2 n.351]. Likewise, neither does he distinguish the principle in its intrinsic operation in regard to the end; hence too he does not distinguish wisdom’s speculation from love, but rather its speculation includes love - or at any rate he does not assert that intellection suffices without volition, because, as intellection is distinguished from this other act (which act [of volition] is less manifest), he neither affirms nor denies it.

3. Argumentation from the Third Middle Term, namely from the Comparison of Act with Act, and the Weighing of it

234. The third middle term is from comparison of act with act.

First as follows: an equivocal efficient cause is nobler than the effect; an act of intellect in respect of an end is cause of an act in respect of the will, because when the former is posited the latter is, and when the former is removed the latter is - and it is plainly an equivocal cause.

235. To the contrary, from the same middle term [n.234]: the will gives commands to the intellect; therefore, an act of will is an equivocal efficient cause in respect of intellection.

It is confirmed by Anselm, Virginal Conception 4 [n.199].a

a.a [Interpolation] where he says that the will moves itself against the judgement of the other powers, and that it moves all other powers according to its own command; and Augustine City of God 19.14 [in fact 14.5-6, 28] says that the will uses all the other powers.

236. Similarly, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a4-5, “What is posterior in generation is prior in perfection;” volition is posterior in generation; nor is it this alone, but it has the idea of end with respect to intellection, according to Anselm Why God Man 2.1; and Augustine City of God 19.14, “The rational soul is present in man so that he may contemplate something in his mind and do something accordingly,” and later, “so that he may cognize something useful and manage his life and morals according to that knowledge.”

237. I reply: neither is an act of intellect total cause of an act of will, but a partial cause (if it is any cause), nor conversely is the will total cause of intellection.

238. The major [sc. “an equivocal efficient cause is nobler than the effect,” n.234] is true of a total equivocal efficient cause, but if it is about a partial cause this will be [true] about a cause of a higher order. And in this way is the will, in commanding the intellect, a superior cause of the intellect’s act; but the intellect, if it is a cause of volition, is a cause subservient to the will, as having an action first in the order of generation.

239. And so this middle term concludes probably on behalf of the will, but proves nothing on behalf of the intellect.

240. But that intellection is not the total cause of volition [n.237] is plain, because, since the first intellection is caused by a cause merely natural, intellection too is not free; further, it would cause with like necessity whatever it would cause, and thus, however many circularities may occur in acts of intellect and will, the whole process would merely be by natural necessity - which however is unacceptable. But, in order that freedom in man may be preserved, one must say that, after intellection has been posited, a total cause of volition is not obtained, but the will is more principal with respect to volition - and the will alone is free.

241. As to the proof that “when the former is posited the latter is, and when the former is removed the latter is” [n.234] - the antecedent was rejected in Ord. I d.1. nn.100-146.

242. An argument in another way is given [Thomas Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.1; cf. Richard of Middleton, Sent. IV d.49 princ.1 q.7 arg.5]: that is better which, without anything else, would be more choice-worthy; but intellection alone is more choice-worthy than volition alone, because intellection alone would be a perfect act and an act proper to intellectual nature; volition alone would be only a certain inclination (as of a heavy thing to the center [of the earth]).

243. On the contrary, from the same consideration: that by which what has it is simply good is more choice-worthy than that by which what has it is not simply good; but Augustine, On the Trinity 11.28, “neither is a man rightly called good who knows what the good is, but he is who loves the good,” and from this he concludes there that “in the case of men who are rightly loved, the love itself is more loved,” which is the conclusion here intended.

244. Again, in the case of goods that do not include each other, that good is more choice-worthy whose opposite is more to be hated. But prescinding from these things, namely how they do not include each other, the opposite of intellection cannot be as hateful as the opposite of love.

245. Proof of this:

First about the contrary opposite: because no ignorance of God, even the ignorance of infidelity, can be as hateful as hatred of God, if it could be present in the will.

Second about the contradictory opposite: because not to love God is blamable and a sin, when namely it can be had by the proximate power [sc. power of loving]; because he who actually understands God and in no way loves him sins, and he who actually thinks of sin, and does so without any displeasure, sins. But not to understand when, however, one is in proximate power to understanding, is not blamable or a sin.

246. This middle term [n.244] concludes probably in favor of the will.

247 To the argument in favor of the intellect [n.242], I reply: if love were alone it would not only be a natural inclination, as of the heavy to the center of the earth, but it would be an operation proper to intellectual nature; for the fact that it is now operation, and is this sort of operation, it does not have from the intellect formally but concomitantly.

248. An argument is given in another way [Thomas Aquinas, ST Ia q.82 a.3; Richard of Middleton, Sent. IV d.49 princ. 1 q.7]: that is more perfect which in its perfection is less dependent, because ‘to depend’ is a mark of imperfection; an act of intellect does not depend on the will, but conversely.

249. I reply: things posterior in generation depend on things prior, and yet they are more perfect, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a4-7 [n.236].

250. Similarly, the end depends in its being on that which is for the end and not conversely [n.236]; form also depends on matter and not conversely; bodily quality depends too on quantity insofar as, according to them, ‘being white without a surface’ is a contradiction; and still in all these cases the greater opposite is true, and universally in these generations, where there is dependence on something prior in order of generation. However, it is true that the simply most perfect thing is altogether independent, because as there is first in perfection so also in generation, Metaphysics 9 [nn.249, 236]. Act precedes in time every power, because if there be a circle in the priority of act to power and conversely, yet there is a stand at him who is always moving first; but where two priorities do not come together, the greater opposite is more commonly true.

251. Likewise it could be said that the intellect depends on volition as on a partial but superior cause; conversely volition depends on intellect as on a partial but subservient cause.

252. Another way of arguing is as follows [Thomas Aquinas, ST Ia q.82 a.3]: the act of intellect is purer because it contracts no impurity from the object, because ‘to understand evil’ is not evil; but an act of will contracts impurity, because ‘to will evil’ is evil.

253. Besides this, there is another impurity in the volition [Richard of Middleton, Sent. IV d.49 princ.1 q.7], because it is a movement of the soul to the thing in itself; intellection is not so but is a movement of the thing to the soul or of the thing as it is in the soul, from On the Soul 1.4.408a34-b18 and Metaphysics 6.4.25-31, “True and false are in the soul, good and bad in things outside.”

254. To the contrary: from Topics 2.9.114b20-22, that is purer and better whose corruption is impurer and worse; but the corruption of the will is such, because ‘to will evil’ is evil for you [Thomas, n.252], not so ‘to understand’.

255. Similarly, the reasoning [n.252] is otherwise at fault in two ways:

In one way because it should compare understanding the corrupt thing, which is false [understanding], with willing the corrupt thing, which is evil [willing], and then the proposed conclusion follows through the reason already stated [n.252, sc. the intellect contracts impurity from the object, because it contracts falsity, therefore it is not purer than the will].

256. In another way because the will can have a good act about any object whatever [sc. including an evil object], just as can also the intellect; for the will can hate evil well, just as the intellect can understand well that evil is to be hated.

257. If, finally, this proposition be taken, ‘that act is impurer which is rendered impure by impurity of object’ - I reply: an act of the intellect is such, because it is necessarily false from the fact it is of a false object [a false object is not a thing but a proposition about a thing, and if the intellect has a false proposition for its object it is necessarily false]; but an act of will is not impure and evil because it is of an evil object, save concomitantly [sc. because an evil object is not evil as an object, but as willed in an evil way].

258. But if you say that an act of will is impure from its object, by impurity of malice, not so an act of intellect - the conclusion does not follow, because then an act of sense would be nobler than an act of will, because it is less impure [sc. therefore lack of impurity, as per n.252, is not a good way to prove nobility].

259. The second reason [n.253], namely about tendency to the thing in itself, concludes to the opposite:

First from their own statements [Thomas and Richard], because they concede that an act of will in respect of things superior to the will itself is nobler than an act of intellect. From this follows, ‘therefore this act in genus is nobler than that act in genus’, because, if the best is nobler than the best, the genus too is nobler than the genu and the species than the species, for a whole species together is superior to any other whole species.

260. Second: an act is not perfect unless it conjoins with a perfect object; but an act of will conjoins with the object in itself as it is in itself, and an act of intellect conjoins with it only as the object is in the knower. Now the beatific object is simply nobler in itself than as it is in the knower; therefore, an act of will conjoins with the beatific object simply under a nobler idea.

261. As to the authority of the Philosopher in Metaphysics [n.253], I say that both intuitive knowledge and the love that follows it tend to an object as it is existent in itself; but abstractive knowledge and the consequent love tend to an object that has known being; so in this respect there is no difference between intellect and will, because each power can tend to its object as it is in itself and to the object as it has diminished being in the intellect. However, the Philosopher was speaking in common of abstractive intellection and of will as it is desiderative, how it tends to a thing not now existing but future (and this as to the term or effect of the act of desire). But to the same thing, as to its object, the will only tends as the thing has being in the intellect, because when it is desired the thing has no other being that it could be object by.

II. To the Initial Arguments

262. To the first main reason [n.175] I say, according to what was said in the preceding question [n.11], Metaphysics 12.9.1072b26-28, that “the act of the intellect is life, and eternal life if it is eternal.” If you take it that it is eternal blessed life, this is not in the Gospel [n.175] but is added. So I add “to know you and to love you;” and the second addition is no more against the text than the first.

263. To the next [n.176], which is from Augustine, I concede that vision is the whole reward, that is, the supreme reward, of the intellective power; but it is not the supreme reward of the whole man. And in this way can many authorities that are verbally for the intellect be glossed, that they are meant for the supreme power or about nature according to its power, but not simply about the supreme perfection of nature.

264. To the third [n.177], about habit, the answer is plain in the second way that proceeded from the middle term taken from habit [n.225].

265. To the next [n.178] I say that love is a good more sufficient than intellection, because when it is had the haver of it needs less.

266. For proof of the minor [n.265] I say that Philip’s statement [n.178] must be understood as it concerns instruction about the Trinity, for he had not then completely understood it. For he (namely Philip) had frequently heard talk about the Father, and so he conceived that when the Father was shown to him he, and others with him, would sufficiently grasp the truth of the faith about the Trinity. But he was not speaking of the beatific vision, as if that would suffice without love, as is plain from Christ’s response [John 14.9], “Am I so long with you etc. Philip, he who sees me^,” as if Christ is saying, “if you have already seen me in my deity, also with the perfect vision of faith, you have seen my Father too with similar vision.” But he did not mean that the Apostles had seen him in the beatific vision; for then he would be supposing them to have been blessed.

Question Five. Whether Beatitude Simply Consists in the Act of Will that is Enjoyment

267. Whether beatitude simply consists in the act of will that is enjoyment. That it does not:

268. The act of enjoyment does not distinguish the blessed from the non-blessed because, by the definition of ‘to enjoy’ [n.181], the act belongs to the wayfarer.

269. But I say that the wayfarer has only desire, which is relative to what is not had, and therefore he does not enjoys.

270. On the contrary: the wayfarer no more wills God a good not present in him than the comprehender does; therefore he no more has an act of love of friendship with respect to a good not possessed by the beloved than the comprehender does; but ‘to enjoy’ is an act of friendship, not concupiscence.

271. Again, if someone who does not have charity see the divine essence bare (which does not involve a contradiction) he can enjoy it; and yet without charity he cannot be blessed, Augustine On the Trinity 15.18 n.32, “[Charity] alone is what makes division between the sons of the kingdom and the sons of perdition.”

272. Again, all things lower than intellectual nature are in their own way (that is, in a certain respect) made blessed in completing an act of concupiscence; therefore the will too [is made blessed] in a like act, though a more perfect one; but enjoyment is not any act of concupiscence.

273. Again, possessing succeeds to hope, therefore possessing is an act of will; therefore beatitude is in that act, because the will is of itself the power according to which intellectual nature is beatified; but possessing is not enjoyment.

274. To the contrary:b

[That it does] because beatitude is not actively elicited by the will; first because the will would beatify itself; second because a reward is conferred on the rewarded by the rewarder; third because a gratuitous act of love is of itself meritorious (for it is of the same idea as what is meritorious, because it makes itself worthy with him whom it thus loves, though no one may merit because of his state); fourth because nothing that is or can be a merit as concerns what is from itself is essentially a reward; fifth because a more intense act of enjoyment is preserved if it is from God. Proof in general: because the passive capacity in creatures is for a greater perfection than is their active virtue; proof in particular, about the soul of Christ [sc. who received by incarnation, not by act of will, supreme beatitude].

b.b [Text canceled by Scotus]: On the contrary, Augustine Christian Doctrine 1 [n.181], “The supreme reward is that we enjoy him.”

I. To the Question

A. Two Possible Conclusions

275. There are two conclusions for the question: first, that the beatitude simply of intellectual nature consists in the sole act that is enjoyment; second what enjoyment it consists in, because not in every enjoyment.

1. About the First Conclusion

276. The first conclusion is made clear by division thus: in genus there is only a twofold act of will: ‘to will’ and ‘to will-against’.Or, more colloquially, ‘to will’ and ‘to refuse’. Not to will at all, or to be indifferent, which is possible, is not an act but an absence of act. ⁵⁰ ‘To will’ too is double in genus: either because of the thing, or the good of the thing, willed; or because of the thing, or the good of the thing, that wills.

277. The first ‘to will’ is said to be the willing of the love of friendship, the second the willing of the love of concupiscence; and only the first is enjoyment, for to enjoy is to inhere with love [n.181] because of the thing itself, namely the thing loved.

278. Against this second distinction an objection is made through Augustine, On the Trinity 9.12 n.18, “The appetite of the seeker becomes the love of the enjoyer” [n.197]; the appetite of the seeker belongs to the love of concupiscence;     therefore etc     .

279. I reply: the wayfarer, as to the willing of concupiscence, wills a good for himself and, as to the willing of friendship, he wills well-being for God. The first appetite, in respect of a good to be possessed [sc. the love of concupiscence, or ‘the appetite of the seeker’], becomes the love of satisfaction for him in the good possessed, and so it becomes ‘the love of the enjoyer’ - it does not, however, become the love by which he formally enjoys, but it becomes his love who, by the other love [sc. the love of friendship], enjoys the same object in itself that, by this love [sc. the love of concupiscence], he loves for himself. The second appetite [love of satisfaction], that is, imperfect love, becomes the perfect love of the enjoyer by which, namely, he enjoys.

280. Having set down the division [nn.276-277] I give proof of the principal conclusion, not including nor excluding the passions (about which there will be question later, nn.413, 426, 431-433), but only speaking here of these acts of will [n.277].

281. It is plain that beatitude cannot consist in any willing-against; first because willing-against has evil for per se object, which cannot be the beatific object; second because the beatific act is first and immediate in respect of the ultimate end, and so is not had by virtue of any prior act of will. But it is plain that willing-against is not first with respect to the ultimate end; indeed it is not simply first among acts of will, but is either not had or not commonly had save by virtue of some willing, according to Anselm Fall of the Devil 4, “No one deserts justice save by wanting something else that does not stand with justice,” as he exemplifies about a miser and coin and bread.“For a miser, when he wants to keep the coin and prefers bread, which he cannot have unless he gives the coin, first wants to give it, that is, to give up the coin, before he does not want to keep it.” ⁵¹

282. Second, beatitude does not consist in an act of concupiscence:

First because although [such act] could be good when duly circumstanced, yet it is not good by reason of itself or by its object, even by God, because it can be immoderate. This is plain from Augustine 83 Questions q.30, “Perversity lies in using what is to be enjoyed” (just as above, in Ord. II d.6 nn.34-73, it was said that the angel first sinned by immoderate concupiscence of the beatific object for himself), as Anselm maintains in Fall of the Devil 6, where he maintains that the [fallen] angels desired what they would have had if they had stood; but they desired nothing before, or more than, beatitude, because to that does the affection of advantage first and supremely incline. Now an act of friendship in regard to God is good by reason of itself and of its object, at least because it cannot be immoderate by excess, though perhaps by deficiency.

283. Second, because an act of concupiscence is not and cannot be the first act of the will in regard to the end, for every act of concupiscence is in virtue of some act of friendship; for I desire a good for this [person] with concupiscence because I love him for whom I desire it.

284. Third, because an act of friendship is in the will according as it has an affection for justice; for if it had only affection for advantage, it could only supremely will things of advantage, according to Anselm [ibid. n.282, chs. 12, 14. But an act of concupiscence is present in the will according as the will has an affection for advantage, because it is necessarily present according to that affection, even were that affection alone present; but the affection of justice is nobler in idea than the affection of advantage, because the former is ruler and moderator of the latter, according to Anselm [On Concord q.3 n.11], and is proper to the will insofar as the will is free, because the affection of advantage would belong to the will even if the will were not free.

285. Then, fourth, because the act of friendship tends to the object as it is good in itself, but an act of concupiscence tends to it as it is good for me; but nobler is an object in itself than as had by something else - at least this relation of the object to the haver, which is in an object as desired by concupiscence its formal idea, diminishes the objective perfection that this good has as it is in itself.

2. About the Second Conclusion

286. The second main conclusion is plain, for a wayfarer can enjoy God since he can inhere in him by love because of himself [n.277].

287. If you say ‘not by love but by desire’ [n.269], this is false, because although God is not had by the [wayfaring] lover, and therefore could be desired as something to be had, yet not by desiring some good to be had by God that God does not have, but his infinite goodness only is pleasing to me, which, by accepting and being pleased with, I will every good to be present in that is present in it.

288. The proposed conclusion is also plain from Augustine 83 Questions q.30 [n.282], that virtue consists in enjoying what is to be enjoyed.

B. A Difficulty

289. But there is a difficulty here as to how beatific enjoyment and non-beatific enjoyment are distinguished.

1. First Solution

290. Not in species it seems, because when per se sufficient causes are of the same species the effects are too. So it is in the issue at hand, because the same will, the same charity, the same enjoyable object, and under the same idea on the part of the object. In accord with this, then, it would be posited that they only differ as greater and lesser in the same species.

291. Against this is objected that then the wayfarer would be blessed, though less blessed than the comprehender.

292. I reply: the consequence is not valid, because ‘beatitude’ is not imposed to signify the nature as to its species the way the name enjoyment is. Hence it is well conceded that both [sc. wayfarer and comprehender] enjoy, but one more, the other less; however, the name ‘beatitude’ is imposed to signify enjoyment in a determinate degree, so as not to be below that degree. And this degree the wayfarer never has, neither as to more nor less.

293. But [sc. to the contrary], diverse comprehenders have it thus [sc. more and less], and so one of them is more blessed than another.

294. ThisParagraphs 294-296 are an added extra in Scotus’ own ms. ⁵² is shown as follows, that if there are only there degrees of the same species, let the lowest degree of a blessed be taken and the highest degree of a wayfarer; if they are equal, then the wayfarer is blessed.

295. But this act [sc. of the wayfarer] does not fall short of that act [sc. of the blessed] to an infinite degree, as is plain. Posit then that it fails short to four degrees. It is possible for the enjoyment of the wayfarer to increase through four degrees, because knowledge also can. Since then too knowledge of the same species may have as many degrees as enjoyment also has, yet, once intensification of the knowledge is posited, the enjoyment of the knower can be intensified proportionately; therefore, it is still possible for the wayfarer to be blessed; therefore, it is also possible for a wayfarer to reach that degree [of enjoyment] and be blessed.

296. A similar argument can be made about a given degree of beatific enjoyment, from which the supreme degree of a wayfarer (suppose the blessed Mary) is distant by a certain number of degrees; yet if it is of the same species within the species of beatific enjoyment, let a descent be made to lower and lower degrees - a length there will be some beatific enjoyment equal to the non-beatific enjoyment, or less than it.

2. Another Solution

297. It can be said in another way, and more probably, that beatific and non-beatific enjoyment differ in species - formally indeed in themselves, but causally from their causes, or the disposition of their causes.

298. For if it be posited that the intellect is cause, though a partial cause, of volition, and the intellection of the wayfarer and the vision of the blessed differ in species, then the effects that necessarily require these diverse causes differ in species; for never does an individual of the same species necessarily require a cause of a different species from the cause that another individual requires.

299. But if intellection be said to be a cause sine qua non, it is at least essentially required, and then, as before, diverse things of the same species do not necessarily require in their causes any of a different species. So this opinion too [n.297] has to concede that volitions are distinguished in species by their objects, and yet the object, according to them [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet I q.15], is a cause sine qua non. But then the distinction of enjoyments can be saved by distinction of visions, just as an effect varies by the differing closeness of the agent to the passive subject (for an agent that is opposite to the passive subject in a direct line acts differently from one that is opposite to it in a reflex or broken line), and cognition here is as it were the coming close of the object to the will.

3. Conclusion

300. Holding to this second way then [nn.297, 299] one need not concede that, by God’s absolute power, can be caused in the soul of a wayfarer, at least of one not seeing God bare, any enjoyment equal to the lowest enjoyment possible for any blessed; because the supreme of the lowest species cannot be made equal to the lowest of the higher species, for the whole of the former is below the whole of the latter.

301. But it is difficult according to the first way to prevent in the soul of the wayfarer (while his obscure knowledge persists intense to such and such a degree) the possibility of some enjoyment being there equal to some given beatific enjoyment.

II. To the Initial Arguments

302. The answer to the first main argument [n.268] is plain from the second article [nn.286-287].

303. To the second [n.271] it is said [Godfrey of Fontaines, Henry of Ghent] that if someone without charity see God, he would not have supernatural enjoyment because neither any first supernatural act, without which he is not able to be acted on nor to act, and consequently he would not have beatific enjoying either [cf. Ord. I d.1 n.88].

304. Another answer was stated in Ord. I d.1 nn.141-142, that a habit is not that whereby the haver can simply elicit the act; and so, after the presence as it were of the object is posited, the will can proceed to some act about the object, and the supernatural act [n.303] comes from the object and the presence of the object, but not from something that is in potency eliciting it. Nor yet is that enjoyment beatific, because it is not as great as is of a nature to be had by such a will about an object thus shown to it; for a greater enjoyment would be had if the charity were present by which the act is in some way intensified, as was said in Ord. 1 d.17 nn.202-205. But beatitude of will is not in any act save the highest that the will can have about an object represented to it in such a way.

305. To the third [n.272] I say that the will alone among all appetites can will a good for something because of the thing willed. And so there is no likeness here between other appetites and it, as neither is there generally when what the argument is about is the sole thing such. On the contrary, the argument is to the opposite when it is about something pertaining to the perfection of this sole thing; for it agrees with things more imperfect than itself in some respect and differs from them in some respect proper to itself: it is more perfect according to what is proper to it than according to what is common, because the common cannot be more perfect than any imperfect thing that incudes it. And so, if excelling perfection, as beatitude, belongs to that sole thing, the conclusion that beatitude agrees with it not according to that in which it is like the inferiors is more drawn than the opposite conclusion is.

306. To the fourth [n.273], not everything that succeeds to the theological virtues in the wayfarer, or to their acts, is of the essence of beatitude, but only the most perfect unique act; therefore, let it be that possessing is the act of will that succeeds to hope, it does not follow that beatitude consist in it, but it suffices if it be concomitant to beatitude.

Question Six. Whether Perpetual Security of Possession Belongs to the Essence of Beatitude

307. Whether perpetual security of possession belongs to the essence of beatitude. 308. That it does:

Augustine, On the Trinity 13.4 n.7-7 n.10 adds after other things belonging to beatitude: “And because it is altogether most blessed, so will it be most certain that it will always be.”

309. Again, it is of the essence of beatitude that it is the ultimate perfection;     therefore , by its idea, it excludes from the subject all opposed privation; therefore , by its idea, it makes the subject incorruptible and unchangeable in respect of that perfection.

310. Again, Aristotle Ethics [1.13.1102a5-6, 6.1098a16-20, 10.1100a1-5], “the best activity in a complete life is happiness;” this, according to him, includes a certain perpetuity, otherwise a happy man could become wretched, which he considers unacceptable [ibid. 6.1098a19-20, 11.1100a27-29]; therefore etc     .

311. Again, faith, hope, and charity come together essentially for the wayfarer’s first perfection, and actions according to them come together for his second perfection [n.39]. So, for the perfection of him who comprehends, the perfect acts corresponding to those acts come together essentially. The proof of the consequence is that the second perfection of the blessed in its degree does not require a lesser integrity of perfection than the second perfection of the wayfarer in its degree, otherwise the blessed, by that wherewith they are blessed, would not have all the perfection per se of which they would be capable. But, as it is, to the act of hope only possession succeeds; but possession seems to be nothing but security;     therefore etc     .

312. On the contrary:

Aristotle, Ethics 1.4.1096b3-5, “Nothing is more perfect from the fact that it is more lasting” (he gives an example of a white thing lasting one day and one year); and this point is altogether true of permanent perfection, because to such perfection time, or any greater or lesser duration, is an accident. Therefore, security of possession, which includes perpetuity of duration, does not per se belong to beatitude, which is total simultaneous perfection.

313. Again, this security of possession, if it is an act, is an act of intellect or of will; if an act of intellect it does not belong to beatitude save as being the way to it (from questions 3 and 4 of this distinction [nn.156, 194-202]); if an act of will, it is not enjoyment; rather it has enjoyment for object; but beatitude is in enjoyment alone (from the preceding question [nn.275-288]);     therefore etc     .

I. To the Question

314. Here two things need to be looked at: first the perpetuity of beatitude; second the security of the blessed.

A. About the Perpetuity of Beatitude

1. About the Reality of Such Perpetuity

315. About the first point [n.314] the thing is plain because it is so from Scripture, Matthew 25.46, “The just will go to eternal life;” and id. 22.30, “They will be like the angels of God;” and Psalm 83.5, “They will praise you for ages of ages;” and it is repeated elsewhere.

316. Similarly there are many sayings of the saints to the same effect. Let it be enough to adduce Augustine On the Trinity XIII ch.8 n.11, “There cannot be blessed life if it is not immortal.” He proves this by the fact that, if such life can be lost, then the blessed loses it willingly (and then he is not blessed because he does not have what he wants), or he loses it unwillingly, or neither willingly nor unwillingly. And on each of these last two members it follows that he is not blessed; for he does not have beatitude, but rather: if he loses it willingly, he hates it; if he loses it neither willingly nor unwillingly then he does not value it; therefore it is not blessed life either. The like can be argued if beatitude is lost through loss of natural life; for if he loses life, he loses it either willingly or unwillingly or in neither way.

317. And this three-membered distinction of Augustine’s must not be understood to hold for the moment at which blessedness is posited as being lost (because the result, namely that he is not then blessed, would not be unacceptable); but it must be understood for the ‘now’, or the time, for which he is blessed. For if he then does not want to lose blest life and yet does lose it, he does not have whatever he wants. Whether, then, he wants to lose it, or he does not care about it, he does not love that life for the future, even while he has it; therefore he is not blessed.

318. Nor is it reasonable to object that he may lose it but that he does not, while he is blessed, consider the fact, and so he is neutral as regard his will - not indeed by not caring about the apprehended good’s being possessed forever, but by not understanding anything about that ‘being possessed forever’. This, I say, is unreasonable, because how is it he would never consider the perpetuity of the life that he supremely loves if that life is blessed life? Or if he does consider it and believes the life to be perpetual, then he is deceived. But nothing is more unacceptable than that someone be blessed by a false opinion, according to Augustine City of God XI.4.

319. And with this also agrees the authority of the Philosopher On Generation 2.10336b27-29, “We say that in all things nature desires what is better; but it is better always to be than not to be,” at least in the way in which it is possible ‘to be always’; but it is possible for a perpetual nature to be ultimately perpetually perfect; therefore it naturally desires this. And so, in the case of beatitude, where natural desire is completed so as not to be vain, this condition will be obtained.

2. Doubts about Such Perpetuity

320. But what the cause is of this perpetuity is matter for doubt; likewise too what sort of thing is this perpetuity; and third how it is present in beatitude.

a. Three Positions or Opinions are Set Down About the First Doubt

321. About the First

Either [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet VIII q.9] the position is that beatitude is essentially necessary of itself, and then beatitude cannot not be perpetual - of itself indeed formally, but causally by a causality other than extrinsic cause [cf. Ord. I d.8 nn.232-249].

322. Or, second [Aquinas ST IaIIae q.5 a.4], the position is that beatitude is perpetual from the fact that the will necessarily enjoys the object seen, for there is not any idea of evil or deficiency of good shown in the object. And this position differs from the first [n.321] in the way opinions about the heavens differ - the opinion that posits the heavens to be moved necessarily because of the uniform relation that the mover has to the movable [n.322], and the opinion that would posit the motion of the heavens to be formally necessary of itself [n.321]. The first opinion but not the second would be the one posited by a philosopher, as is plain from Averroes Metaphysics 12 com.41 [cf. Ord. I d.8 nn.232-293].

323. Or, third [Aquinas ST Ia IIae q.2 a.8, q.3 a.8, q.10 a.3; Richard of Middleton, Sent.IV d.49 Princ.1 q.6], the position is that the power is determined to action and is so by a necessary habit, namely that the intellect is determined to seeing by the light of glory, and the will is determined to enjoyment by consummate charity.

α. Reasons for and against the First Opinion

324. Argument for the first of these positions [n.321] is as follows: some bodily form is simply incorruptible, not only some substantial bodily form (as the form of the heavens) but also some accidental one, provided it is the proper perfection of an incorruptible body (as perspicuity in the heavens and luminosity in the stars); therefore the supreme perfection of spiritual nature will be formally incorruptible.

325. Again, a form that takes away every privation from its matter constitutes an incorruptible composite (the point is clear about the heavens [below, n.417]); but beatitude takes away every privation from a nature capable of beatitude, because it takes away imperfection and potentiality, since beatitude is ultimate act in its own order more than is the form of the heaven in the order of substantial forms.

326. There is a confirmation of the reason in that, to the extent an extrinsic end includes eminently the perfection of every other end, it removes, as regards the extrinsic end, all privation or lack; for no extrinsic end is here lacking to him who perfectly has that end. Therefore similarly (or by way of causality) the ultimate intrinsic end, because it joins one to the ultimate extrinsic end, takes away all privation of a further intrinsic end, and so it will constitute a composite that is formally incorruptible intrinsically and in its conjunction with the extrinsic end.

327. Again, third, if beatitude were of itself a potential form, then it could be destroyed (and yet be so while nature remains, because the nature is incorruptible), and consequently someone blessed could become wretched, and thus someone blessed would not be blessed, because he would not have whatever he wants (for he wants never to become wretched [nn.3, 118]).

328. Against this [n.327]: created beatitude is an accident; therefore it is not less dependent than its subject is; but the subject depends on being conserved by God contingently conserving it, and consequently the subject does not have necessary existence formally; therefore much less does an accident have it.

329. I reply: although beatitude have an absolutely contingent being yet, from the fact of its once existing in a nature, it necessarily remains while the nature remains; and so it has necessary existence from its having been brought into being - and this as it is in its own order of being (although, as the argument proves [n.328], it is not absolutely necessary).

330. Against this [n.329]: God can conserve the essentially prior without the posterior; the nature, because it is the subject, is essentially prior to beatitude; indeed it is prior in time. There is a confirmation: a third has no greater necessity in relation to a first than a third has in relation to a second; but here the relation of the third to the second is a contingent relation only; (as is plain from the idea of the terms);     therefore etc  . [cf. Ord. I d.1 nn.139-140].

331. I concede, therefore, that, other than God, nothing has formally necessary existence, but simply contingent existence. Nevertheless, a created thing is said to have incorruptible being insofar as it does not have a contrary, or insofar as it cannot be destroyed by any created thing but can only be annihilated by God not conserving it. And in this way can it be conceded that beatitude is incorruptible. But what is thus incorruptible is only perpetual of itself in possibility; because just as it has its existence from God contingently conserving of it, so too does it have its perpetuity.

β. Reply to the Aforesaid Reasons

332. To the reasons for the first opinion:

To the first argument [n.324] the answer is plain from what has been said, that neither the heavens nor any accident of them is incorruptible save in the aforesaid way [n.331].

333. To the second [n.325] I say that no form can take away privation from a subject susceptive of it (namely a subject that is of a nature to receive another form) save to the extent the subject is of a nature to receive that other form, because, while the subject remains in some aptitude for receiving, a lack cannot be taken away unless that [sc. the subject being of a nature to receive] is posited, and it is not removed in another way save as that [sc. the subject being of a nature to receive] is removed.The Latin here is obscure. The sense seems to turn on what it means for a subject to have a privation, namely that a subject can only be deprived of something if it is of a nature to receive that something. A blind man, for instance, is deprived of sight because a man is of a nature to receive sight, but a stone is not deprived of sight because it is not of such a nature. So, if a form is to take away a privation from a subject, the subject must first be posited as being of a nature to receive that form. The only other way of removing a privation would be to remove from the subject its being of a nature to receive the relevant form, for then the absence of the form would no longer be a privation. ⁵³ Since the form of the heaven, therefore, does not include in itself the forms of inferior things simply (but neither does it include them eminently, the way that infinite being includes all other things), the result is that the form does not take away from its matter the privations of those forms (provided, however, its matter has the capacity for those formsThere is a view, derived from Aristotle, that the matter of the heaven is matter only for the form of the heaven, in which case the heaven would be incorruptible because its matter would be incapable of receiving another form. But then the analogy between the form of the heaven and beatitude would cease to hold, since the argument says that beatitude, like the heaven, is incorruptible because it includes everything else one could want just as the form of the heaven is incorruptible because it includes all forms. But the heaven will not be incorruptible for this reason if its matter is incapable of other forms. ⁵⁴). Hence this seems an irrational way of positing that the heaven is incorruptible, because corruptibility is not in this way removed as far as concerns the intrinsic principles it comes from -although the view is saved that the heavens could not be corrupted by a natural agent, for this form so contains others that it cannot be expelled by any natural agent.The form of the heaven does not remove privations by supply of what is lacking, for it does not contain simply or eminently the inferior forms that the matter of the heaven is of a nature to receive. Neither does the form of the heaven remove privations by taking from the matter of the heaven its being of a nature to receive other forms (for the aptitude for other forms remains in the matter). So the heaven remains corruptible in principle, because it remains still of a nature to receive forms other than the form it has. The heaven is only incorruptible, then, in the sense that no natural agent could corrupt it (no natural agent could remove from the heaven its form), but not in the sense that the heaven is intrinsically incorruptible. For its matter still has a nature to receive other forms and so, in principle, to lose the form it has in favor of those other forms. ⁵⁵

334. An example of this is plain: the intellective soul, which is a more perfect form than the form of the heaven, does not take away from matter the privation of other forms; indeed, it does not even constitute something incorruptible with respect to a natural agent, insofar as it requires some concomitant form [sc. bodily form] that a natural agent, by corrupting, can reach to. Only an infinite form, then, if it could perfect matter, could in this way (that is, by taking away privation), constitute an incorruptible composite. Yet there would still be a doubt whether the susceptive subject would be in potency to the forms in their proper ideas which, in that infinite form, it possesses eminently. Therefore, it is plain that the antecedent is false [sc. “a form that takes away every privation from its matter constitutes an incorruptible composite,” n.325], speaking of what is incorruptible, that is, indestructible; but if the discussion be about something not corruptible by a natural agent as by something contrary to it, I concede the antecedent, and thus concede the conclusion.

335. To the next [n.326] I say that, as regard the intrinsic end, the consequence does not hold that the intrinsic end removes every privation formally from a subject as the extrinsic end removes every defect of the extrinsic end. For the extrinsic end is formally infinite while the intrinsic end is finite, and so the latter cannot include intrinsic things the way the former includes extrinsic things.

336. On the contrary: another intrinsic end cannot succeed to this intrinsic end unless it join one to another extrinsic end; therefore if it joins one to an extrinsic end that excludes every defect, it will also intrinsically exclude every defect of the [intrinsic] end that does the joining.An intrinsic end is the condition in the subject that joins it to the extrinsic end. This paragraph and the next ones are about arguments to show that an intrinsic end joining one to an extrinsic end that is without defect will itself be without defect. The arguments, their responses, and the Latin are obscure in their terseness. ⁵⁶

337. I reply: this [intrinsic] end, while it remains, excludes defect (as whiteness, while it is present, excludes the defect of blackness); but it is not simply present necessarily, because it is not in itself necessary; but the extrinsic end is in itself necessary.

338. And when you say that ‘another intrinsic end can join one to another extrinsic end’ [n.336], I concede the fact; but then the extrinsic end is not the end for it,Sc. the extrinsic end is not the intrinsic end for the subject - nor is it an intrinsic end supplying all defects of any extrinsic end. ⁵⁷ nor an end supplying every defect of any extrinsic end whatever. The response to the confirmation [n.326] is plain from this, because then it [the ultimate intrinsic end] is not in conjunction with it [the ultimate extrinsic end].

339. To the third argument [n.327] I say that if the nature remain the same, the nature is always capable of beatitude and misery, and consequently it is not contradictory that, with the cessation of beatitude (which is a per accidens accident in that nature), misery should be present. And when you say that ‘then it did not have before whatever it wanted’, I reply that it did have whatever it wanted when the ‘whatever’ is taken unitively, not when taken distributively, in the way expounded above [n.334], that is, that it had God in whom it had eminently everything rightly want-able.

γ. What is to be Said about the Second Opinion

340. Against the second position [n.322] argument is given in Ord. 1 d.1 nn.139-140.

341. And I concede that although the intellect see, with natural necessity, a proportioned object present to it, yet the will does not, with natural necessity, enjoy this seen object, as was stated there [ibid., n.340].

342. Nor too is the necessity of seeing a necessity simply but only a necessity if the object remain present - and this supposing the object is merely contingent, because the object moves any created intellect voluntarily and contingently. If too the will contingently enjoys the thing seen, it also contingently joins intelligence with memory, provided however the will there has its act.

343. As to the argument that in the object nothing of evil nor any defect of good is shown, response was given before [ibid. n.340].

δ. What is to be Said about the Third Opinion

344. Against the third position [n.323] it can be argued that the habit cannot be a cause of operation before the power is, but it is always second, because a power is that whereby we have the ability simply. Hence the habit does not use the power, but the power uses the habit as second cause and as instrument; now a prior cause is not determined to act, nor consequently is it necessitated, by a second cause, but the reverse holds.

345. Again, the Blessed Virgin had as wayfarer a greater charity than the charity of any of the blessed of lower degree, and yet her charity did not necessitate her to enjoyment, even when she was contemplating God.

346. Again, let it be that the light of glory necessitate the intellect to seeing the object present to it, yet if the will is the cause that commands the seeing, the will is able not to command it; for it contingently conjoins the intelligence to the memory of the object that it contingently loves. But it seems that it would there [sc. according to this position] have to conjoin it thus, because, from Augustine in many places of On the Trinity [9.8 nn.13-14; 15.10 n.19, 27 n.50], the will in the generation of a perfect word concurs in joining it thus; now the seeing is the perfect word, according to Augustine ibid. [15.12 n.22].

347. I concede, therefore, that no necessity or necessary perpetuity arises from the habits determining powers to their acts, but that from the habit of glory there is only a necessity in a certain respect, because the habit has its natural inclination from charity; and there is no such necessity in the will, because the will can freely use or not use charity.

ε. Scotus’ own Opinion

348. I say, therefore, that the cause of this perpetuity is neither the form of beatitude (as if beatitude thereby be formally necessary), nor the nature of these powers (as if it necessarily operate perpetually about the object), nor the habit in the powers (as if it necessarily determines the powers to operating perpetually), but the cause is from the divine will alone, which just as it perfects such nature intensively so it conserves it in such perfection perpetually.

ζ. A Doubt and its Solution

349. But now occurs a doubt how Blessed Michael will be impeccable, because by nothing intrinsic to himself is he able to prevent his enjoyment from being contingent, and consequently he is able not to enjoy and so to sin. The consequent is false, since Augustine says in Against Maximinus 2.13 n.2, “To whatever nature is given that it not be able to sin - this comes not of nature proper but the grace of God” (and it is in Lombard I d.8 ch.2 n.3). The same Augustine in Enchiridion ch.28 n.105, “Just as our soul now has ‘not wanting unhappiness’, so will it always have ‘not wanting iniquity’.” But now our soul so has ‘not wanting unhappiness’ that it cannot want unhappiness; hence Augustine says ibid., “not only do we not want to be miserable, but in no way can we want it.”

350. I reply: it is plain that Blessed Michael is impeccable in the sense of composition, that is, he cannot be blessed and at the same time sin. But in the sense of division, that while he remains blessed he not have power and possibility for sinning, this can be understood in two ways: either by something intrinsic to him that would remove such power, or by an extrinsic cause that would remove proximate power from him. For example: although someone possessed of sight have the intrinsic power to see any material body, yet through some extrinsic cause he can be made perpetually incapable of seeing with proximate power, as that if the power [sc. extrinsic cause] makes distance of sight from that body perpetual, as would be if there were a perpetual obstacle between the empyreal heaven and the eye of the damned. That eye would not be able to see the empyreal heaven, speaking of proximate power, and this by an extrinsic cause perpetually hindering the power; yet it could by remote and intrinsic power see it, so that there would be no intrinsic cause of impotency.

351. So I say that there is no intrinsic cause in the will of Michael, now blessed, by which the power otherwise to sin would, in the sense of division, be removed; there is no intrinsic cause altogether preventing the power from being altogether reduced to act. But by extrinsic power does the intrinsic power to sin lack possibility, namely by the will of God forestalling the will so that it always continue the act of enjoyment and so can never reduce to act its remote power of not enjoying, or of sinning - since indeed a second cause, hindered by a superior cause that is acting for one of a pair of opposites, can never, by its proximate power, issue in the other opposite.It is easy enough to see how an extrinsic barrier can prevent the damned from seeing the heaven, though they have the intrinsic power to see it. It is less easy to see how God’s extrinsic power can put a barrier in the way of Michael exercising his intrinsic power to sin. Perhaps it is simply that God makes himself always so present to Michael that this presence is itself the barrier to Michael’s sinning. At all events Michael retains the power freely to sin but God ensures, extrinsically, that he never exercises it. There is some similarity here to so-called ‘Frankfurt cases’, where a person is free to choose between a and b but, if he is about to choose b, some outside agent intervenes to prevent it and ensure choice of a. In fact, however, the person chooses a without ever being about to choose b, and the agent does not have to intervene. The person, then, freely chooses a without in fact being able to do otherwise and choose b. Blessed Michael’s case, on Scotus’ view, seems similar: Michael actually chooses enjoyment, but remains free not to choose it and to sin, save that God would prevent that choice - not intrinsically by removing the power, but extrinsically by preventing its exercise. Or, as Scotus puts it [n.352], Michael remains able by remote power to do otherwise and sin, but not by proximate power [n.353]. ⁵⁸

352. I concede, therefore, the inference that, when one speaks of remote power, beatified Michael is, in the sense of division, capable of sin.

η. To the Authorities from Augustine

353. To the authorities of Augustine:

To the first [n.349] I say Augustine means ‘that it not be able’ by proximate power ‘to sin’; ‘this comes not of nature but the grace of God’, that is, of God gratuitously forestalling and conserving the nature in right action.

354. As to the next [n.349], Augustine does not say that just as now the soul necessarily has ‘not wanting unhappiness’ so then does it necessarily have ‘not wanting iniquity’ - for neither is true when speaking of ‘not wanting’ as it is an elicited act; but just as now the soul perpetually has ‘not wanting unhappiness’ so then will it have ‘not wanting iniquity’.

355. And when you argue: “now our soul so has ‘not wanting’ that it cannot ‘want’,” I say that our soul is not able to want unhappiness, notRemoving the misleading punctuation ‘.. .non. Ideo non potest...’ in the printed text, and replacing it with ‘.. .non ideo non potest.’ ⁵⁹ for the reason that it necessarily has ‘not wanting it’, but because unhappiness cannot be the object of an act of willing. On the other hand, it does not follow that thus our soul could never want iniquity, because iniquity - speaking of what is the substrate in sin - can be the object of a created will. Or one could say briefly that just as now the soul never wants unhappiness but always has ‘habitually not wanting’, so will it then never want [iniquity] - and thus the cases are alike de facto on this side and that.

356. And if you argue, “the soul now is not able to want unhappiness, therefore it will then not be able to want iniquity” - the consequence is not valid, because there can well be a likeness on this side and that as regard ‘is not’ although not as regard ‘cannot’.Sc. the likeness between the soul not wanting unhappiness now and not wanting iniquity then carries over only as regard the fact and not as regard the ability. The soul now both does not and cannot want unhappiness; the soul then does not but can want iniquity (in the way explained above in n.351). ⁶⁰

357. Against this: the indifference of the will is taken away by its determination by a higher cause no less than by a lower cause; therefore if, by reason of its own causality, the will is indeterminate as to operation, it is as repugnant to its nature that this indifference be taken away by a superior cause as by an inferior cause; just as, therefore, it is against the nature of the will that a habit necessarily determine it, so is it against its nature that God determine it.

358. There is a confirmation, that a superior cause more determines an inferior cause than the reverse; therefore, a superior determining cause takes away the indifference in acting of an inferior cause more than if the inferior cause were to do the determining.

359. Again, it is not in the power of the will to act thus or not to act thus, because what a thing is determined to by a superior cause cannot be in the power of the determined thing, for the determined thing acts as it is moved by what determines it; therefore, its act will not be praiseworthy, nor properly voluntary.

360. I reply: the fact that the will in its order of causing causes this thing is proper to this cause [sc. the will]. I reply further that, since contingency on the part of the will is in every way contingency on the part of the effect, this requires the contingency of everything else that concurs in the effect. Now it is repugnant to the will’s nature (or to its freedom) that the contingency that exists necessarily on its part not simply posit the contingency of the effect (as far as the side of all the lower concurring factors is concerned), because this takes away from it its being a cause in an order superior [to those lower factors]. But there is no repugnance to the will’s nature that its own contingency not posit contingency simply in the effect as far as the side of a superior cause is concerned, because a superior cause is not determined by the will. Therefore, it is not simply against the will’s nature that it be determined by a superior cause (that is, that doing the opposite not be against its natureThe meaning of this remark here is obscure. ⁶¹), as it would be against its nature to be determined by a habit or by an inferior nature.

361. To the form of the argument then: it is against the will’s nature to be determined in its own order, and nothing else is primarily repugnant to it; but, as a result, it is against the will’s nature to be determined by an inferior cause, because then it would itself not be the superior cause. Yet it is not against its nature to be determined by a superior cause, because there stands along with this that it is cause in its own order.

362. On the contrary: if the superior cause determines it, then the will is determined in its own order of causing; therefore, in its own order of causing it is not contingent.

363. I reply: by its nature, or because of its determination in its own order, the contingency is as equal as that of the effect which proceeds from it and from other causes. But that the will is not altogether contingent comes from its own contingency, that is, because some prior cause is determinate for that effect.

θ. Further Explanation of the Aforesaid, to Make it More Evident

364. Note [added by Scotus]: operative power does not prove that the possessor of it can operate, unless one understands ‘can in a certain respect’, namely as for as its own part is concerned. But ‘can simply’ requires that there be possibility on the part of all the other concurring factors, namely that these requisite factors can come together and put a stop to impediments. But, over and above this possibility, the proximate power, or rather possibility, requires that the appropriate things be present and that impediments cease. For just as nothing is in proximate passive potency save (Metaphysics 9.7.1049a8-14) “when nothing stands in the way, nor must anything be added or removed or changed” (understand anything other than the form to be induced), so an operative thing is not in proximate power to operating save when nothing extrinsic is lacking to its operating.

365. As to the matter at issue: a will that is blessed is the same power as it was when it was not beatified, and consequently he who has it is, as far as the part of the power is concerned, capable of the act he was capable of before. Further, it is simply possible for him to act, because nothing simply necessarily gets in the way or, being required, is lacking. But he is not able with proximate possibility to sin, because proximate possibility is impeded or prevented (not suspended) on account of the action of a superior cause preventing him and continually acting for the opposite, namely for the beatific act. And just as a superior cause is, with absolute power (yet not with ordained power), able not to act for the opposite, so it is simply possible for the impediment to cease and for the will to sin. But it is not possible for what is an impediment by ordained power to cease, nor even is it in the proximate power of the will to sin; for it is not in its power that the impediment cease, just as the action of a first cause is not in the power of a second cause.

366. It is contrary to the liberty of a cause that it so be necessarily determined that the opposite to willing well through the habit of charity not be in its power. For you, therefore, it is equally contrary to liberty that the will be thus determined by a superior cause.

367. I reply: to be absolutely determined to willing well, such that the opposite not be under the will’s power, is simply not against its liberty (thus is the will determined now by the divine will, otherwise it could now simply proceed to act, just as it can while a wayfarer, though it never will exit into act - and let this be fixed by law, and so let it be against [divine] ordained power). But that it thus were determined to willing well through an inherent habit - this would not be against its liberty in this way. Because the will would not be the will unless it were a prior cause as regard its own habit, and so of a nature to use habit and to determine it to acting and not to be determined by it such that the opposite is not in its power; for then it would (as far as this is concerned) be totally under the habit. But it is not thus against the will’s liberty or its nature, that it be impeded from one action and determined to another by a cause prior to itself, of which sort is the divine will.

368. But does it not have the power of sinning?

I reply: an abstract term indicating the principle of an act construed with the gerundiveSuch a case is ‘the power of sinning’ itself: ‘the power’ is here the abstract term (the concrete term would be the thing having the power), and ‘of sinning’ is the gerundive. A power without the gerundive would be, for example, ‘the seeing power’ or ‘the visual power’, as later in this paragraph. ⁶² signifies the principle of an act as the act proceeds from the supposit; and if the power is with the gerundive it signifies the proximate power. Thus Metaphysics 9.5.1048a16-19: “there is no need to add ‘with no exterior thing standing in the way’. For it has power as it is a power of doing. Now this is not in all but in certain circumstances, where external impediments are excluded.” In other respects, ‘the visual (or seeing) power’ and ‘the power of seeing’ do not say the same thing, because the first states the principle for seeing and the second the possibility for seeing, and then distinctly the remote and the proximate power.That is, ‘visual power’ states the remote power and ‘power of seeing’ the proximate power. ⁶³

369. As to the second [n.359], the act is praiseworthy to the extent the will in its own order contingently determines itself.

370. In another way can it be said that the contingency of the will in its own order entails the contingency simply of its effect, because the contingency of any cause proves a contingent effect, and consequently it is simply contingent that the will does not sin, although this never happens, because the superior cause always preserves it.

371. If you say ‘it is at least in the power of the will that it happen’, one can say that the will is not for this reason less blessed if the happening of it be in the will’s power, provided however it never do happen; but for this reason will it never happen, because the divine will always will prevent it.

b. About the Second Doubt

372. About the second doubt [n.320], namely what sort of thing this perpetuity is, whether one of aevum or of time: it is plain that it is not perpetuity of time, because time belongs to something successive.

373. The assertion is made [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.2 q.3] that it is not perpetuity of aevum, “because the aevum, as it is distinguished from eternity, belongs to immutable creatures; now beatitude exceeds the natural potency of a creature, since no creature can attain to it by its natural resources; hence the proper measure of beatitude is eternity; therefore beatitude is eternal life.”

374 Against this, first from this person’s statements: in the next question he says that “the principle of an act as to substance is the power, but as to form its principle is the habit; and if the habit is infused, the perfection of the act is from the exterior cause that causes the habit.”

375. From this the argument is:

It is impossible for an act, insofar as it has been formed (according to which idea, he says, the act is beatific), to be more, or more immutably, permanent than being according to substance, because it is impossible for that which something is in per accidens to be more immutable than that in which it is [as to substance]. Therefore, if an act is as to substance measured by the aevum, because its being (according to him) is measured by the aevum, the result [sc. according to him] is that the act insofar as it has been formed, or insofar as it is beatified, would have a greater immutability than the aevum [sc. which however, as just stated, is impossible].

376. Again, as to the thing [that beatitude is], it seems manifestly false, because ‘something created, as it is distinct from eternity, would be measured by the aevum’; for whether the aevum includes succession or possibility of failing, it seems to belong to any created thing whatever that is not properly temporal (for the eternal, as it is a whole in act at once, lacks thus the potency for not being).

377. His reasoning does not prove the conclusion, for this inference does not hold: ‘the intellectual creature has no power for beatitude from its natural resources; therefore, beatitude is in its nature something of greater permanence than is an intellectual creature’ [n.373]. For beatitude is an accident of the creature, and yet such accident - which does not follow the principles, nor is subject to the causality, of this subject - is nevertheless something less noble in itself and less permanent.

378. As to the addition [n.373], ‘beatitude is eternal life’ - ‘eternal’ is not there taken strictly as it is distinguished from ‘aeviternal’, but for the aeviternal that is perpetually permanent. Thus indeed is ‘eternal’ often taken in Scripture, as in Matthew 25.41, 46 there, “Go, you cursed, into eternal fire,” and immediately afterwards, “these will go into eternal punishment,” although it is not eternal with an eternity distinct from the aevum or perpetual time.

α. Scotus’ own Response

379. I say, therefore, that this perpetuity is not that of eternity nor of necessary existence; rather it is the eternity of an aevum able to be and not to be but yet perpetually conserved.

And if you ask what this perpetuity adds over and above the aevum itself, this requires another question first: whether the aevum include succession. For if it does, perpetuity states a certain greater increase of quantity in the aevum itself, indeed a quasiinfinite increase, by acquisition always of one thing after another. But if the aevum is indivisible, then its perpetuity does not seem to state some positive new thing over and above that, but only negation of failing or of ceasing to be. And then one would have to say that God gives to Michael, whom he conserves blessed for eternity, nothing more positive or greater, by way of what is intrinsically greater, than he would if he were to annihilate him at once. On this see Ord. II d.2 p.1 [also Lectura II d.2 p.1].

c. About the Third Doubt

380. About the third doubt [n.320], namely how this perpetuity is related to beatitude, it seems one must say that it is included in the idea of beatitude:

First because [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.1] “beatitude includes the fact that it is the end of all desires” and consequently, when it is obtained, every other appetite ceases; therefore “it is necessary that beatitude thus include everything desirable, because nothing further remains to be desired; but anyone at all naturally desires to remain in good” and perpetually so, just as his nature is perpetual; therefore beatitude includes this permanence.

381. Second because [Aquinas, ibid. a.3] “eternity belongs to the idea of the punishment of damnation,” because “it must be infinite so as to correspond to the guilt, which is infinite in malice, for it turns away from the infinite Good; but it cannot be infinite in intensity; therefore included in the idea of punishment, insofar as punishment is proportioned in desert to guilt, is extensive infinity or eternity” [cf. Ord. IV d.46 nn.105, 150-151]; therefore similarly eternity is included in the idea of beatitude as reward.

α. Rejection of Thomas’ Reasons

382. About this, then, it is certain that, if blessedness be taken for some permanent perfection, however intense it is as permanent, perpetuity is not included in its idea; for a permanent perfection, and one that is however much the same and essential, can for an instant, or for some brief time, be what and how much it is for the whole time: “the whiteness of one day is as equally perfect as that of one year,” Ethics 1.4.1096b3-5.

383. Beatitude can, in another way, be taken for some permanent and intense perfection, not however by precisely stopping at the perfection of intensity but by including also the perfection of extension - and this either properly when positing the aevum to be successive, or eminently, namely by denying all cessation, when positing the aevum to be indivisible. And in this second way nothing is perfect by extension save because it endures as much as it can endure, whether the duration be extended really or virtually or imaginatively.

384. Now beatitude is plainly of a nature to abide perpetually; therefore, as taken for supreme perfection thus intensively and extensively, it includes perpetuity. But beatitude in this second way is not anything per se one, as neither is perfect operation and the whole aevum, if it is successive, or operation and negation of defect or of cessation of existence.

385. However, many seem to speak of beatitude in this second way [Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, Richard of Middleton], because natural desire is not only for intense perfection but also for having it as extensively as the desire also is; it is not only for natural ‘good being’ but for as ‘always being’ as can belong to nature.

386. Hereby to the first argument [n.380]: beatitude taken in the first way is ‘the end of all desires’ such that unitively, on the part of the object, ‘it includes everything desirable’ - as has often been said [nn.171, 180, 339], because in Augustine’s definition [On the Trinity 13 ch.5 n.8] the ‘whatever’ in “whatever he wants” is not taken there distributively [sc. for everything] but for one thing unitively, containing everything rightly wantable.

387. Beatitude in the second way includes the end of desires not only intensively in this way but also extensively as to duration, understanding extension either real or virtual, that is, as not failing to be [n.383].

388. Briefly however, though the argument [n.380] belong to a certain doctor, it is at fault in form: ‘beatitude is the end of all desires, therefore it includes all desired things’ does not follow; but what follows is: ‘therefore it includes or pre-demands whatever is necessarily requisite in order to the completing of desires’.

389. To the other argument [n.381], about reward, there is a doubt whether this extensive perfection, namely perpetuity or not failing in being, is included in the idea of beatitude in itself insofar as it is the reward for merits - namely doubt whether it falls per se under merit or is only something annexed to that which per se falls under merit.

390. And I say that, speaking of strict justice, God is debtor to none of us, for any merits at all, to return perfection so intensely, on account of the surpassing excess of that perfection beyond those merits - but let it be that, of his liberality, he had determined to confer so perfect an act as reward for merits, indeed with such justice, so supererogatory in reward, as befits him. Yet it does not necessarily follow from this that perennial perfection should, by that justice, be returned as reward; nay, return would be abundantly made with beatitude of a single moment. If therefore perennity pertains to reward as falling under merit, it must be that the correspondence is determined by justice and overflowing liberality.

Nor is it more unacceptable to say that God made disposition to reward man perpetually because man merited the end perpetually for his merit, and that by a liberal such justice, than to say that God made disposition in justice to render such intense perfection for merits, and that, over and above this, as if not from justice but from sheer liberality, he should add perpetuity.

391. The argument adduced, however, about the perpetuity of damnation [n.381], is not compelling, because perpetuity does not fall under merit as congruously there as it does here. For it is well congruous with the divine will that, by law, it determined to return for merits a perfection not only intense but also perennial; not so that it acted thus by returning for demerits a punishment not only severe but also perennial. On this matter there was discussion above, Ord. IV d.46 q.4 nn.105, 150-151.

B. On the Secure Possession of the Blessed

392. About the second principal question [n.314]:

To security is opposed fear; now fear is about inflicting evil or about the continuing of evil inflicted, with however apprehension of such evil; and it is not necessary that this apprehension be doubt. Hence doubt and fear are far distant, not only because doubt pertains to intellect and fear to appetite, but because fear in the appetite does not necessarily pre-require doubtful apprehension of such evil. But whatever may be the case here, security is placed in the will as something opposed to fear, and certitude about conferring good, or continuing the good conferred, precedes it in the intellect.

393. Such certitude about beatitude is had by the blessed, not indeed because they see beatitude to be of itself perpetual (as was proved when arguing against the first position about the cause of perpetuity, in the preceding article [nn.328-331]). Nor even do the blessed have such certitude by natural reason only, because to no creature can that be known by natural reason which contingently depends on the divine will alone; the continuation of beatitude already conferred is of this sort (and this is plain from that article [nn.328-331]); therefore this certitude is only in the intellect of someone blessed by a revelation made to him by God.

Now whether certitude is made thus to the damned about the continuance of their damnation is not equally as certain.

394. From what has been said the solution of the question is plain, that security is not of the essence of beatitude.

395. First, because security presupposes certitude about the continuation of beatitude; but that certain apprehension follows, in the order of nature, the whole of beatitude, since it is an act not tending to the beatific object but is a reflecting on the act; and consequently the whole of beatitude will be essentially able to be without certitude -much more, therefore, without security.

Second because perpetuity, which this certitude is about that security follows, is not of the essence of beatitude, in the way stated in the preceding article in the solution of the third doubt [nn.382-385].

396. This reasoning, however, does not prove the conclusion when beatitude is taken in the second way stated there [n.383], because in this second way beatitude includes not only intensive but also extensive or never-failing perfection. Also, when taking beatitude in the first way [n.382], perpetuity is not anything added as an accident of the act. The first reason, then [n.395], is valid and this third reason here, that security is in the irascible power, as is also the fear opposed to it, if indeed opposites are in the same subject; but beatitude is in the concupiscible power, since it is the love of friendship.

1. Explication of Possession, Taken in Four Ways

397. Because of certain arguments and words that are asserted about possession [nn.273, 306, 311; Ord. III d.26 n.33], one must understand that ‘possession’ can be taken in four ways:

In one way properly memory possesses the object, and this either by impressed form (if the object is there in species) or by impressed habit, or at least by falling back on actual existence - at least memory possesses the object in the way the object comes together for idea of parent.

398. In another way intelligence can be said to possess the object in actual consideration, and to this can pertain the fact that the will is said to possess intelligence’s keen look turned back to memory [implicit references to Augustine On the Trinity 11.8 n.15].

399. In a third way possession pertains to the will as the will is concupiscible, and it is said to succeed to hope in the way that the will by hope desires the good to be had for itself, and that it loves by possession the good when added to it - and in this way possession is love of concupiscence of the present good [ibid. 10.11 n.17].

400. In a fourth way possession is said to be a certain act of keeping hold of, or a passion consequent to hope as a passion, and in this way it is in the irascible power.

401. In none of these ways does possession belong to the essence of beatitude.

In the first way it precedes beatitude, precedes indeed every second act; in the second way it is second act, pertaining to intelligence and preceding the beatitude that is in the will, or it is an act of will with respect to that preceding act; in the third way it is love of a present advantage, and plain it is from the preceding question [nn.282-284] that this love does not pertain to beatitude, but that the love of good in itself does; in the fourth way possession is in the irascible power, and in this way it approaches more to the security that succeeds to hope as a passion, not to hope as a virtue.

II. To the Initial Arguments

402. To the first argument [n.308] one can say that Augustine understands by it that what is ‘most blessed’, that is the greatest perfection of beatitude, “is what is most certain always to be thus,” - greatest, I say, in extension. And what follows is not taken for the act of certitude but for the object, as though Augustine were to say ‘perpetual continuation itself, about which certitude is had, is something greatest in beatitude, because it is quantity of extension superadded to quantity of intension; and it is called ‘greatest’ because it includes something and superadds something further. Thus this extension includes perfection of intension.

403. As to the next [n.309], the answer is plain from the first article of the solution [nn.325-326], because no finite form can exclude all privation from the susceptive subject. Yet beatitude, to the extent it is most perfect, does most of all exclude from its subject privation of perfection; and this suffices for it to be the intrinsic end (which is necessarily finite), but does not suffice for incorruptibility.

404. To the next [n.310], about the Philosopher, I say that his genius was never able to attain to the true felicity of human nature, whether by denying it or affirming it; not by denying it because what is false cannot be demonstrated; not by affirming it because things of sense do not sufficiently lead to it. Hence he seems, as if in doubt, now to think that what misery could succeed to would not be true happiness, and now that there cannot be another happiness for man; for he did not know about a life other than this one, and in this life happiness is not impossible of being lost. Therefore, one should not rely on his authority in this matter.

405. As to the next [n.311], I concede that to the three theological virtues in the wayfarer succeed three perfections in the blessed, whether virtues or acts I care not. But it is not necessary that this succeeding be of the essence of beatitude in the way we take beatitude for the supreme perfection of a beatifiable nature, joining it supremely to its most perfect object.

Notice from the Editors

The Quarrachi editors write that in the text at this point (between question 6 and the second part of distinction 49) a scribe noted the absence in the Ordinatio of a number of questions that Scotus nevertheless dealt with in his lectures. The text of these questions was supplied in the Ordinatio mss. from student reports of the lectures now preserved in the Reportatio [Rep. IV A]. Distinction 50 and its several questions, which are also missing in the Ordinatio, were again supplied from the Reportatio. For sake of completeness, the editors give the titles of these missing questions.

First, those that would have come between question 6 and the second part of d.49:

Q.7: Whether Joy in the Beatific Object is of the Essence, or Pertains to the Essence, of Beatitude.

Q.8: Whether Human Nature is the Lowest Nature Capable of Beatitude

Q.9: Whether All Men of Necessity and Supremely Will Beatitude

Q.10: Whether Everything that is Desired is Desired for the sake of Beatitude

Q.11: Whether Man Could Attain Beatitude by his Purely Natural Resources

Q.12: Whether Man could Attain Beatitude in this Mortal Life

Second, those that would have come in d.50:

Q.1: Whether Anyone Could, by Right Reason, Desire not to Exist so as to Escape Misery

Q.2: Whether the Damned Desire not to Exist for the sake of Escaping Misery

Q.3: Whether the Blessed See the Punishments of the Damned

Q.4: Whether the Punishment of the Damned is Equal

Q.5: Whether the Beatitude of all the Blessed is Equal

Q.6: Whether the Beatitude of the Bodies is Equal