III. About the Other Transcendentals

167. Now that these points about being have been seen [nn.129-166], a further doubt remains: whether any other transcendental that seems to have an equal commonness with being could be posited as the first object of the intellect.

And it is posited that there is, and this is that true is the first object of the intellect, and not being. There is a threefold proof.

168. First as follows [Henry, Summa 48 q.1]: distinct powers have distinct formal objects, from On the Soul 2.4.415a17-22, 6.418a10-17; intellect and will are distinct powers; therefore, they have distinct formal objects, which does not seem possible to sustain if being is posited as the first object of the intellect; but if true is so posited, distinct objects can well be assigned.

169. Second as follows [Henry, ibid., a.34 q.3]: being is of itself common to the sensible and the non-sensible; but the proper object of any power is the object of it under some proper idea; therefore, in order for being to be the proper object of the intellect, it must be determined and contracted to intelligible being by something by which sensible being is excluded. But such contracting thing seems to be the true, which asserts of itself the idea of what manifests or is intelligible.

170. Again, third as follows [Henry, ibid.]: an object is not the proper object of a power save according as it is the proper mover of the power; but something only moves a power as it has some relationship to it; therefore being, according as it is something absolute and not possessed of any relation to the intellect, is not the proximate and immediate object. But that according to which being has formally a relation to the intellect is truth because, according to Anselm On Truth ch.11, “truth is correctness perceptible only to the mind.”

171. But against this conclusion about truth I argue as follows: the first, that is, the adequate object [of a power] is adequated to it either in commonness or in virtuality or in both primacies run together; the true is in none of these ways adequated to the intellect; being is so adequated, as was made plain [n.137]; therefore etc.

Proof of the first part of the minor [“the true is not adequated to the intellect in commonness.”]: the true is not asserted in the ‘what’ of all per se intelligibles, because it is not asserted in the ‘what’ of being, nor of anything per se under being.

The second part of the minor [“the true is not adequated to the intellect in virtuality”] is proved along with the third [“there is a double primacy in being, of commonness and virtuality”], because things under the true, although they include it essentially, do not include all intelligibles virtually or essentially, because this trueness, which is in a stone, does not essentially or virtually include stone but, conversely, the being that is stone includes truth - and so on about any other beings and their truths.

172. Again, true is a property of being and of anything under being; therefore, when being or anything under being is understood precisely under the idea of the true, it is only understood per accidens and not in its quidditative idea. But knowledge of anything according to its quidditative idea is the first and most perfect knowledge of it, from Metaphysics 7.1.1028a31-b2. Therefore, no knowledge of anything precisely under the idea of true is the first knowledge of an object, and so neither is truth the first idea, precisely, of knowing an object.

173. The argument [n.172] is confirmed from Prior Analytics 2.21.67a33-36, since knowledge of a mule as mule stands along with ignorance of this mule as this mule. For just as, when making comparison with a habit, an inferior element is extraneous to its superior, about which superior that habit first is, so much more will the object be extraneous to its property, in comparison either with the habit or the power. The habit or science of physics, which is a habit in the power of the intellect, has for first object being as movable or changeable (what today we might call the elemental energies of things). Living beings are movable or changeable things under that general heading, but they are extraneous as such to the first object of physics. Similarly, the property of living objects that is their character (as tame or wild) is extraneous to the first object of physics. ³³

174. Again, the object of a habit does not naturally precede the object of the power; but the first object of metaphysics, which is a habit of the intellect, is being, which is prior naturally to the true (and it is not true that what is a property of being is first the subject of metaphysics); therefore etc. The science of metaphysics is a habit in the intellect, the power of knowing. The first object of metaphysics is being. Being is prior to the true, for the true, like one, is a property of being, and a property of the first object of a science cannot be the subject that that science first deals with. So, if the first object of the power of the intellect were the true, the first object of the habit of metaphysics would precede the first object of the power. The consequent is false; therefore etc. [NB. The punctuation of the translation of this paragraph does not entirely follow the punctuation of the Latin text printed by the Vatican editors.] ³⁴

175. I reply to the arguments for the opposite, reducing them to the opposite side.

To the first as follows: that, just as the will cannot have an act about something unknown, so it cannot have an act about an object under some formal idea of the object which idea is thoroughly unknown. Therefore any idea according to which something is an object for the will is knowable by the intellect; and so the first idea of the object of the intellect cannot be an idea that is distinguished from the idea of what can be willed, if in any way there be such [cf. canceled note to n.151].a

a.a [Interpolated text] Again, the intellect sets down a difference, and an agreement, between the good and the true; therefore etc.

176. This is also plain about any properties of being whatever of which there is distinct knowledge - of good under the idea of good just as of true under the idea of true -because, according to Avicenna Metaphysics VI ch.5, “if some science were about all causes, that would be noblest which was about the final cause,” the idea of which cause, according to many, is goodness [cf. Ord. Prol. n.195].

177. As to what, therefore, is taken in the argument [n.168] about the distinction of objects, I reply: distinct powers are disposed to each other in three ways - either they are altogether disparate or they are ordered, and then either in the same genus (as the higher and lower cognitive power), or in another genus of powers, as the cognitive power in relation to its appetitive power.

178. In the first way powers that are distinct have objects altogether distinct, because none of them (from the fact they are disparate) operates per se about the object that the other operates per se about. Such are the exterior senses, as sight and hearing.

179. In the second way distinct powers have subordinate objects, such that, just as the superior power can have per se an act about anything that the inferior power can have per se an act about, so the first object of the superior power contains under itself the first object of the inferior power - otherwise that object would not be adequate to the superior power. Hence the first object of sight is, in its commonness, contained as inferior under the first object of the common sense.

180. In the third way powers are so disposed to each other that if the appetitive power is adequate to the cognitive power in operating about certain objects, the same thing would be the first object of each power, and under the same formal idea on the part of the object. But if the appetitive power have an act about some knowable things and not others, then the object of the appetitive power will be inferior to the object of the cognitive power.

181. To the issue in hand. Intellect and will fall into the third member [n.177], and if the will be posited to have an act about everything intelligible (whatever idea it is understood under), the same thing will be posited as the object both of the will and of the intellect and under the same formal idea. If not, but it is case that the will only has an act about intelligibles that are an end, or beings for an end, and not about things able merely to be speculated about, then the object of the will would be posited as in some way a particular with respect to the object of the intellect; but it will always be the case that being is the object of the intellect

182. The second reason [n.189] I bring to the opposite side, because an object proportioned to the superior power is common to the object proper to the inferior power (from the aforesaid distinction [nn.177, 179]) - and so being, according as it is something that abstracts from the sensible and non-sensible, is truly the proper object of the intellect, because the intellect, as the superior power, can have an act about the sensible as about the non-sensible. Hence this abstraction, which seems to be a non-appropriation [sc. of the sensible and non-sensible], is sufficiently an appropriation as to the superior power.

Herewith do I reply to the argument, because the commonness of being to the sensible and the non-sensible is the reason for appropriating it to the power that is operative about each object per se, of which sort is the intellect. And although the sensible is contained under being as thus common, yet it is not sensible, that is, not the object of sense, in common, but an intelligible, adequate to the intellect, for a respect proper to an inferior does not have to be proper to a superior. That which the sensible is states such a respect [proper to an inferior], a respect that belongs to some quality, to all and only it [sc. sensible quality]. But the intelligible, although it belongs to some being in a way that the sensible does not, yet not to all and only it; rather, it belongs to nothing only but to being in common; not as being is ‘this something’, as a certain intelligible singular, but as it is common to every intelligible, and this according to a mode of commonness stated before [n.137].

183. The third argument [n.170] I bring to the opposite side, because I say that the idea of an object is that according to which it is mover of a power, just as the idea of what is active or acts is said to be the form according to which the agent acts. Now such idea of an object cannot be a respect to a power; and the Philosopher speaks in this way in On the Soul 2.7.418a26-30. Where he assigns the first object of sight, he says that “that of which sight is as of its object is the visible,” not in the first mode per se but in the second, so that it is put in the idea of the visible. But if the formal idea of the object of a power were the relation to such power, then the first object of sight would be the visible per se in the first mode, because visibility itself would the formal idea of the object. And then it would be easy to assign first objects, because the first object of any power would be the correlative of such power - as visible the correlative of sight, audible the correlative of hearing. In the second mode per se the subject falls into the definition of the predicate, and in the first mode per se the predicate falls into the definition of the subject. So, in the statement ‘the object of sight is the visible’, if it is per se in the second mode, the term ‘visible’ is being defined by ‘object of sight’ and not ‘object of sight’ by ‘visible’. But if the statement is meant per se in the first mode, as it will be if the formal idea of the object of a power is a relation to that power (which is the claim of the third argument, n.170. being rejected here), then ‘object of sight’ is being defined by ‘visible’, and defining objects of powers becomes easy, in fact, directly verbal, as ‘the object of seeing is the seeable’ etc. But things are the other way round, and the object of a power precedes and is understood before the power is, as Scotus shows from Aristotle. ³⁵ And in this way did the Philosopher not assign first objects of powers, but he assigned certain absolutes [sc. not relations], for example color of sight, sound of hearing etc. [ibid. 6.418a10-17]. Hence if ‘true’ state a formal respect to the intellect (about which elsewhere [Scotus, Quodlibet q.8 nn.13-14, and infra n.323]), the consequence is the opposite of what is proposed on this point [sc. by Henry, n.170]. From this follows that that idea is not the formal idea of the object, but things other than it.

184. It is plain, then, from what has been said [from the beginning of the question, n.129, onwards], that nothing can be as fittingly posited to be the first object of the intellect as being - neither some virtual first, nor some other transcendental; because about any other transcendental there is proof through the same means as there was about the true [nn.171-183].