First Part. About the Knowability of God

Question One. Whether God is Naturally Knowable by the Intellect of the Wayfarer

1. About the third distinction I ask first about the knowability of God. And I ask first whether God is naturally knowable by the intellect of the wayfarer.a

a.a [Interpolated text] “For the Apostle says” [Lombard, Sent. I d.3 ch.1 nn.35]. About the first part of this distinction, in which the Master deals with the knowability of God, five questions are asked: the first is whether God is naturally knowable by the intellect of the wayfarer [nn.1, 10, 24]; second whether God is the first thing known by us for this state of life [nn.6, 69]; third, whether God is the first natural object, that is, adequate object, with respect to the intellect of the wayfarer [n.108]; fourth, whether anything transcendent other than a being of equal commonness with God could be set down as the first object of our intellect [n.167]; fifth, whether any certain and pure truth can be naturally known by our intellect without special illumination of uncreated light [n.202]. About the first.

I argue that he is not:

The Philosopher On the Soul 3.7.431a14-15 says, “Phantasms are to the intellect as sensibles are to the senses;” but the senses only sense sensible things; therefore the intellect understands only that of which it can, through the senses, apprehend a phantasm. But God is not a phantasm, nor is he anything of which there can be a phantasm; therefore etc.

2. Again, Metaphysics 2.1.993b9-11, “As the eye of an owl to the light of the sun is our intellect to the things that are most manifest in nature;”a but there is an impossibility there; so also here.

a.a [Interpolated text]: which are the first principles or the separate substances, according to the Commentator [Averroes, Metaphysics II, com.1]

3. Again Physics 1.4.187b7-8, “The infinite, insofar as it is infinite, is unknown;” and Metaphysics 2.2.994b22-23, “It is not possible to know infinites,” therefore not an infinite thing either, for there seems to be the same disproportion of a finite intellect to the infinite as to infinite things, because the excess is equal, or not less.

4. Again, Gregory On Ezekiel II hom.2 n.14, “However much our mind has advanced in the contemplation of God, it reaches, not to what he is, but to what is below him.”

5. On the contrary:

Metaphysics 6.2.1026a21-23, “Metaphysics is theology about God and about divine things principally;” therefore etc. And in the act of metaphysics, namely in the actual consideration of separate substances, does the Philosopher locate human happiness, Ethics 10.7.1177a12-17.

Question Two. Whether God is the First Thing Naturally Known by Us in this State of Life

6. Next after this I ask whether God is the first thing naturally known by us in this state of life.

Argument that he is:

“As each thing is disposed to being, so is it disposed to knowledge,” from Metaphysics 2.1.993b30-31; but God is the first being; therefore he is the first known thing.

7. Again, nothing is perfectly known save when it has been perfectly known; therefore, nothing is simply known save when it has been simply known. The consequence is clear, because in the case of things that exist per se, ‘as the greatest is to the greatest, so is the simply so to the simply so’, and conversely; from Topics 5.8.137b20-27.

8. Again the simply first object is the object of a power’s most perfect act; but God is the object of the most perfect act, Ethics 10.7.1177a12-17; therefore, God is the simply first knowable object.

9. On the contrary:

All our knowledge arises from the senses, Metaphysics 1.1.980b28-81a12 and Posterior Analytics 2.19.100a3-b5; therefore God, who is furthest removed from the senses, is not the first thing known by our intellect.

I. Clarification of the First Question

10. In the first question [n.1] a distinction should not be made to the effect that God can be known negatively or affirmatively [Alexander of Hales, ST I q.2 n.1 ch.2], because negation cannot be known save through affirmation, On Interpretation 14.24b3-4, Metaphysics 4.4.1008a17-18.

Plain too is that we do not know any negations about God save through the affirmations that we use to remove, from those affirmations, the things incompossible with them.

Also, we do not supremely love negations.

Likewise too, a negation is conceived either precisely as a negation, or as a negation said of something. If a negation is conceived precisely, such as ‘non-stone’, this belongs as much to nothing as to God, because a pure negation is said of being and of non-being. Therefore, God is no more known in this than nothing is or a chimaera. If the negation is understood as a negation said of something then, about the underlying concept that this negation is understood to be true of, I ask the question: will it be an affirmative concept or a negative one? If negative I ask the question as before: is the negation conceived precisely or as said of something? If in the first way this belongs as much to nothing as to God; if said of something, I ask the question as before. And however far one proceeds with negations, either God would not be understood more than nothing is, or a stand will be made at some affirmative concept that is first.

11. Nor, second, should a distinction be made about knowledge what a thing is and knowledge whether it is [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.24 q.3], because in the issue at hand I am asking about a simple concept, the ‘it is’ of which is known by an act of the intellect combining or dividing. For I never know of anything whether it is if I do not have some concept of the term that I know the ‘is’ about; and the question being asked here is about that concept.

12. Nor third should a distinction about ‘whether it is’ be made as this ‘whether it is’ is a question about the truth of a proposition or as it is a question about the being of God [Henry of Ghent, ibid.]. Because if there can be a question about the truth of a proposition in which the ‘is’ serves as predicate of a subject, one must, in order to conceive the truth of the proposition or question, first conceive the terms of the question; and about the simple concept of that subject, whether it is possible, is the question [‘whether it is’] now being asked.

13. Nor, fourth, is it valid to draw a distinction between a natural concept and a supernatural concept [Henry of Ghent, ibid. and q.2], because the question is about the natural concept.

14. Nor, fifth, is it valid to draw a distinction about ‘naturally’ by speaking of nature absolutely or of nature in this present state [Bonaventure, Sent. I d.3 p.1 a.1 q.1; Henry of Ghent, ibid., q.6], because the question is precisely about knowledge in this present state.

15. Nor, sixth, is it of value to draw a distinction about knowledge of God in creatures or knowledge of him in himself [Alexander of Hales, ST I tr. Intro. q.2 m.2 ch.2], because if knowledge be obtained through a creature such that discursive knowledge begin from the creature, I ask in what term does the knowledge come to rest? If in God in himself, I have the intended conclusion, because I am asking for the concept of God in himself. If it does not come to rest in God in himself but in a creature, then the same thing will be the end of the discursive reasoning and the beginning of it, and so no knowledge will be had of God - at any rate the intellect is not in the final term of discursive reasoning as long as it rests in some object that is the beginning of the discourse.

16. About knowledge of ‘whether God is’ and ‘what he is’ (Godfrey of Fontaines in Quodlibet 7.11 rejects Henry of Ghent [ibid., a.22 q.4] on the distinction between ‘whether he is’ and that it is possible for there to be knowledge of ‘what he is’), note: the ‘what’ that is spoken of using the name is the ‘what’ that is the ‘what’ of the thing, and it is inclusive of ‘whether it is’, because Metaphysics 4.7.1012a23-24, “the idea of which the name is the sign is the definition.” However, the ‘what is’ of the name is more common than the ‘is’ and the ‘what’ of the thing, because being signified by the name belongs to more things than ‘is’ does. But where the two go together, they are the same - just as whiteness is not every color, yet the color that whiteness is is the same as whiteness. The example, however, is not altogether similar, because color is taken from some partial perfection. Not so here, but the whole ‘what’ is related to the name as to its sign, because the whole is related to the thing as quiddity to supposit. But I know the first relation about the same ‘what’ before the second. The question ‘what is?’ can be asked about a chimaera, which is not real, or is not an ‘is’, but a fiction. Color and whiteness are similar in that color is said of more things than whiteness is (just as ‘is’ is said of more things than exist, as of chimaeras). But if whiteness is said of the color that whiteness is, ‘whiteness’ and ‘color’ are the same. Of course, whiteness is only part of a white thing, or only a partial perfection or reality of the thing. But the ‘what’ in ‘what is’ is about the whole of that of which the name or word ‘what’ is said, because ‘what’ signifies the quiddity, the ‘whatness’, of whatever it is said of. But to know that the name or word ‘what’ relates to anything whatever, including fictional things (like chimaeras) and partial perfections (like whiteness), precedes knowing that it relates to the whatness of things that are supposits and not qualities (as whiteness) or fictions (as chimaeras). ²

Nor in this alone is there an order to these knowings (knowing of the same simple concept one relation before the other), but also in this, that the simple concept is in some way different in several things, namely definitions, because the first [supra: the ‘what’ that is said by the name] is confused, the second [supra: the ‘what’ that is of the thing] distinct. For the first either does not explain the parts of the concept, or if it does, not distinctly under compossibility or non-compossibility; the second does explain the compossiblity, and in this that the idea is true, and that from this ‘what’ it expresses the ‘what it is’ of a possible thing. ‘What’ said of a chimaera is said of an incompossible, because chimaeras are imaginary beings combining incompatible features, and have no real ‘what’ or quiddity. But this fact is not known in knowing merely the name or word ‘what’; it is known when the ‘what’ is referred to supposits that are really possible and have a real quiddity to describe and define. Dinosaurs, for instance, unlike chimaeras, are possible things, and have a real quiddity, even though they do not exist now. ³

17. Second [sc. second to n.16], note that the subject of the first science is at the same time already known. What is said by the name is both ‘if it is’ and ‘what it is’, because no science asks about its first subject ‘if it is’ or ‘what it is’ [Metaphysics 7.1.1028a36-b2]. A science, strictly speaking, proves properties of its subject through the definition of the subject. The science of geometry proves the properties of a triangle through the definition of triangle, and therefore, qua science, it assumes that there are triangles and what they are. So with any science. Knowing that there is such a subject and what it is (say triangle) is prior to science and belongs rather to intellection. ⁴ Therefore either this is not a question at all, or only in a prior science; there is no science prior to the first science; therefore about its first subject in no way is there a question ‘if it is’ or ‘what it is’. Therefore its concept is simply simple, therefore being is [simply simple]. Therefore (to anticipate), ‘being’ as it is the subject proper of the science of metaphysics is not analogical; for if it were it would not be simply simple. That, nevertheless, being is said in many ways is a truth proved in metaphysics, and proved of something that, in its first apprehension, is simply simple, that is, univocal. ⁵

The fact that a being can per se be put into doubt as to the compossibility of the parts of the concept Any concept can be questioned as to ‘if’ it is and ‘what’ it is, including God, because, as Scotus immediately says, the simply simple concept of being, whose ‘if’ and ‘what’ are beyond question, does not distinguish God (or anything) from anything else. So the concept of God too raises, for us, the questions if God is and what God is. God cannot, therefore, be the first subject of metaphysics, since the first subject of metaphysics is beyond all ‘ifs’ and ‘whats’. ⁶ is for this reason too, that ‘being’ is not God, because no idea simply simple is had of God that distinguishes him from other things. Therefore, about any such thing there is a question ‘if it is’ and a demonstration that the idea of it is not in itself false; therefore according to no concept possible for a wayfarer is God the first subject of metaphysics.

Again, whatever is proved of being is contained virtually in the idea of being, because just as a convertible simple property is included first in the subject, so too is a disjunct property; therefore in the subject is first included that some side of a disjunct property belongs to some being. In the idea of being is included, as convertible with it, the simple properties of good, true, one etc., and the disjunctive properties of actual or potential, first or derivative, finite or infinite, uncaused and caused, etc. ⁷ Therefore being first includes virtually this proposition ‘some being is first’, and therefore both the ‘if it is’ and the ‘what it is’ about this idea. The first being is included first in being; therefore also is included whatever is proved of the first being through the idea of this totality, or through the idea of being. Therefore metaphysics is theology finally and principally, because just as it is more principally about substance than about accident, Metaphysics 7.1.1028a18-19, so (by a further analogy) is it more principally about God; because always what is first in the order of perfection is included in the idea of the first subject - particularly the part of a disjunctive property that is simply more perfect. The disjunctive properties of being, as actual and potential, infinite and finite, caused and uncaused, are divided into the more and less perfect, and while being can be without the less perfect disjunct, it cannot be without the more perfect. So if only God existed and no creatures, there would still be uncaused being but no caused being. ⁸

18. On the contrary: no knowledge simply more perfect is included virtually in less perfect knowledge, but conversely; therefore, no knowledge about God that is naturally knowable to the wayfarer is more perfect than the concept of being, therefore than the speculation in which there is happiness [cf. n.5]. If this reasoning is probative, then also is that which the arguments for the first side [nn.1-4] suppose about a nonsimple concept. It is denied according to Henry; rather, a proper and simple concept of God, through movement from effect [to cause is asserted]. But then being is not common but analogous, and so the first science of being will be about the first being to which everything is attributed.

19. The meaning, then, of the question [n.1] is this, whether the intellect of the wayfarer could naturally have any simple concept, in which simple concept God is conceived.

II. Opinion of Others to Each Question

20. To this a certain doctor [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.24]] speaks as follows: when speaking of the knowledge of something, a distinction can be drawn on the part of the object, that it can be known through itself or through an accident, in particular or universally.

God is not known really through an accident, because whatever is known about him is he himself; however, when knowing some attribute of his we know as it were per accidens what he is. Hence Damascene [Orthodox Faith I ch.4] says of the attributes, “They do not state the nature of God but what concerns the nature.”

He is also known universally, namely in a general attribute; not indeed universally according to the predication that is made about him (in which nothing is universal, because the quiddity is of itself singular), but universally as to what is only analogically common to him and creatures; yet it is conceived as if single by us, because of the nearness of the concepts, though they are diverse concepts [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.21 q.2]

In particular is he not known from creatures but a creature is a foreign likeness of him in this way, that a creature is only conformed to God according to certain attributes that are not that nature in particular. Therefore, since nothing leads to the knowledge of another save under the idea of what is similar, it follows etc.

21. Again, he is known universally in three ways: most generally, more generally, generally.

‘Most generally’ has three degrees. For by knowing any being as it is very indistinctly this being, the being is conceived as part of the concept; and this is the first degree. And by removing the ‘this’ and conceiving ‘being’, there is the second degree; for now something as a concept, not as a part, is conceived that is common analogously to God and creatures. But if a distinction is made in the concept of being pertaining to God, namely by conceiving being that is indeterminate negatively (that is, not determinable by a concept of being that belongs to God analogically, which is being indeterminate privatively), there is now the third degree. In the first way [sc. negatively] the indeterminate is abstracted as form from all matter, as subsisting in itself and able to be participated; the indeterminate in the second way [sc. privatively] is a universal abstracted from particulars, which is in them something actually participated.

After these three degrees of conceiving ‘most generally’, God is conceived ‘more generally’ by conceiving any attribute, not simply as before, but with supreme eminence.

And God is conceived ‘generally’ by conceiving any attribute to be the same as his first attribute, namely ‘being’, because of its simplicity.

And God is not known through his proper species, because nothing is more simple than he, but by way of estimation, through some foreign species taken from creatures, and this in the three aforesaid ways.a

a.a [Interpolated text] just as the estimative power in brutes, by digging down below sensed intentions, knows non-sensed intentions, as of the harmful or beneficial, so does the intellect, which digs down, through sharpness of intelligence, below the species of creature (which species only represents the creature), to knowing the things that are and are said of God.

22. As to the second question [n.6], a distinction must, according to this opinion, be drawn between the way of conceiving naturally and the way of conceiving rationally.

In the first way God is the first object intelligible to us from creatures, because natural cognition proceeds from the indeterminate to the determinate. The indeterminate negatively is more indeterminate than the indeterminate privatively, and so is conceived before it; and the indeterminate privatively is prior in our knowledge to the determinate, because “‘being’ and ‘thing’ are impressed by first impression on our intellect,” according to Avicenna Metaphysics I ch.6. Therefore, the indeterminate negatively is altogether first the object for our intellect, according to the mode of conceiving naturally.

Rationally, however, it is known later, after the creature is known according to the three degrees (most generally, then more generally, and last generally), because first is conceived this good, then universal good abstracted by second abstraction, namely what is indeterminate privatively, then good abstracted by first abstraction, which of course is the indeterminate negatively because, in the way of ratiocinative deduction, that from which abstraction is made must be known before what is abstracted is known.

23. An exposition of the first member, namely naturally [n.22], as to how in this way something is known first: because God as he is the first thing known is not distinguished from other things, both because of his simplicity and because he is the first being only as concerns the two first degrees of most generally conceiving [n.21] - neither of which pertains to any idea determining the attribute to God. But how God can be known and not distinguished from other things by our knowing intellect is explained by an example: it is like the way the eye sees light first, but does not, because of the subtlety of it, discern it, as it does discern color through light. Light is the actuality of the transparent; color is the limit of the transparent in a determinate surface. Light is thus not so much what we see as what we see through, but we see it in a sense first, because if there were not first transparency nothing would be seen. ⁹

III. Scotus’ own Response to the First Question

24. I respond differently to the first question [n.1], and on certain points, namely on five [nn.25, 26, 56, 58, 61], I will speak against the aforesaid position. The reasons for my position will show the opposite of this position.a

a.a [Note by Scotus]: Would this procedure really be good: to move this first question [n.1] first; second, because its solution depends on the third [n.108] (for everything in which is found the idea of primary object of vision is visible), to ask at once the third question, namely whether God is the first object of our intellect? And the arguments that are here addressed to the second question are proper enough to it [nn.22-23]. - Hence, as to the second question [n.6], the first thing is to distinguish a triple primacy [nn.69-99], and first about the primacy of adequation: and three opinions there: the first of Thomas Aquinas, an extreme one, ‘that not’ [nn.110-112]; the second of Henry of Ghent, an extreme one, ‘thus’ [n.125], and two reasons for it are touched on for the third question [n.108ff.]; third about the true, there at ‘Having seen these things’ [q.3 III].
     Having got these out of the way, in order to see about the first object in commonness [n.129], it would be necessary to ask whether any real concept is univocally common to all per se intelligibles [n.131]. The extreme opinion is that there is not, save only in things that are of one predicamental genus [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.21 q.2]. In favor of this view are certain things [nn.152-157] that are introduced before the ‘Having seen these things’; against it are the reasons that are against Henry in the solution of the first question [nn.27-44]; and the way they are made clear in the third question, their conclusions are about substance and accident [nn.139-146]. The solution, that it is not by ultimate differences and properties (because of the four reasons in the third question [nn.132-135]), but by all the quidditative concepts [nn.137-146, 150-151]. - With this question solved, either there is no first object of the intellect, or it is first in two ways, because a single primacy, namely of virtuality or commonality to all things, is not found in anything; therefore a double primacy [nn.129, 137] comes together in being. - The distinction about the first object from the nature of the power and for this state of life [nn.185-188]; and there a response is excluded by defect of light [n.188]; hence the solution of this first question [nn.1, 25-26, 56-62], hence about the omitted double primacy [nn.71-98].
     In another way, because the per se object is manifest from the acts of the power; but the first object is deduced from many per se objects. Because the first object is adequate, and so extends itself first virtually to all per se objects, therefore let the extreme opinions be dealt with here: the first of Thomas Aquinas, ‘That it is not’ (it is put below in the third question [nn.110-112]); the second of Henry of Ghent, ‘That it is’ [n.125], in its proper concept (here, in this first question [nn.21, 26]), and against this let force be brought, because of the six reasons to the opposite [nn.27-44]. Let the third opinion be in the middle [of the extremes = Scotus’ own opinion], about a possible proper concept, but not now save in a common concept univocal to God and creatures; and then the whole third question, both as to the univocity of being and as to the idea of the true, etc., lies in what has been set down [sc. at the end of the first paragraph of this note].

A. A Quidditative Concept of God Can be Obtained

25. I say first, therefore, that not only can a concept be naturally had of God, in which God is conceived as it were per accidens, namely in some attribute, but also can some concept be had in which God is conceived per se and quidditatively. My proof: by conceiving ‘wise [sc. God]’ a property is conceived, according to him [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.24 q.3], or a quasi property, that perfects nature in second act; therefore by conceiving ‘wise’ I must pre-understand some ‘what’ in which I understand this quasi property to inhere; and so, in advance of the concepts of all the properties or quasi properties, I must look for a quidditative concept to which these properties are understood to be attributed; and this other concept will be a quidditative concept of God, because there can be a stand in nothing else.

B. About a Concept Univocal to God and Creatures

26. Secondly [n.24] I say that not only in a concept analogous to a concept of creatures is God conceived (namely in a concept that is altogether other than that which is said of creatures), but in some concept univocal to him and creatures. And so that there be no dispute about the name of univocity, I mean by a univocal concept a concept that is so one that the unity of it suffices for contradiction, for affirming and denying it of the same thing; suffices too for a syllogistic middle term, so that the extreme terms [sc. major and minor], when united in a middle term thus one, may be deduced, without the fallacy of equivocation, to be united between themselves.

27. [Reasons for univocity]. And univocity thus understood I prove in five ways. The Vatican editors remark that Scotus actually wrote ‘three ways’, but five is necessary because of parts of the text Scotus added later without being able to revise the internal references accordingly. ¹⁰ First as follows: every intellect, certain of one concept and doubtful of diverse ones, has a concept about which it is certain different from the concepts about which it is doubtful; the subject here [‘every intellect.’] includes the predicate [‘has a concept...’]. But the intellect of a wayfarer can be certain that God is a being while in doubt about whether he is finite or infinite, created or uncreated; therefore, the concept of being said of God is different from the former and latter concepts [sc. ‘finite’ ‘infinite’ ‘created’ ‘uncreated’], and so, of itself, it is neither of them and is included in each of them; therefore it is univocal.

28. The proof of the major is that no same concept is certain and doubtful; therefore either it is a different concept, which is the point at issue, or no concept - and then there will not be certitude about any of the concepts.

29. The proof of the minor is that every philosopher was certain that what he posited as first principle was a being, as that one of them was certain about fire that it was a being and another certain about water that it was a being;a but he was not certain that it were a created or an uncreated being, first or not first. For he was not certain that it was first, because then he would have been certain about what is false and the false is not knowable; nor certain that it was not the first being, for then the philosophers would not have posited the opposite [sc. that it was the first being]. There is a confirmation too, for someone seeing the philosophers disagreeing could have been certain that whatever one of them posited as first principle was a being and yet, because of the contrariety of their opinions, could have doubted whether the first principle was this being [sc. fire] or that being [sc. water]. And if a demonstration were given to such doubting person proving or destroying any lower concept (as that fire will not be the first being but will be a being posterior to the first being), the first concept certain to him, the concept he had about being, would not be destroyed but preserved in the particular concept that was proved about fire [sc. that fire is not the first being]; and hereby is proved the point at issue, the point supposed in the ultimate consequence of the reasoning [n.27, end], which was that the certain concept, which of itself is neither of the doubtful ones, is preserved in each of them.

a.a [Interpolated text] and univocally conceived being.

30. And if you do not care about the authority taken from the diversity of philosophizers’ opinions, but you say [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.21 q.2] that everyone has in his intellect two concepts close to each other which, because of the closeness of analogy, seem to be a single concept - against this seems to be that then, by this evasion, the whole way of proving the univocal unity of any concept would be destroyed; for if you say that ‘man’ has one concept as referred to Socrates and Plato, it will be denied you, and it will be said that they are two but seem one because of their close similarity.

31. Besides, the two concepts are simply simple; therefore, not intelligible save distinctly and totally. Therefore, if they are not seen to be two now, not afterwards either.

32. Again, they are conceived either as altogether disparate, and it is a wonder how they seem to be one; or conceived as comparable according to analogy or to likeness or to distinctness, and then they are conceived as distinct at once or in advance. Therefore, they are not seen as one.

33. Again, in positing two concepts you posit two known formal objects. How are they two known formal objects and not objects known as distinct?

34. Further, if the intellect were to understand singulars in their proper idea, then, although the concepts of two things of the same species would be very similar (it is, however, not doubtful that they are much more similar than the two in the issue at hand [finite, infinite, created, uncreated, n.29], because these two differ in species), still the intellect would distinguish well between such concepts of singulars. This response [n.30] is also rejected in d.8 q.3 [d.8 p.1 q.3 n.7], as is one other response [d.8 nn.5-6] that denies the major [nn.27-28].

35. Secondly I argue principally as follows:a no real concept is caused naturally in the intellect of the wayfarer save by things that naturally move our intellect; but these things are phantasms (or an object shining forth in a phantasm) and the agent intellect; therefore no simple concept is naturally brought about now in our intellect unless it can be brought about by virtue of these. But a concept that would not be univocal to an object shining forth in a phantasm (but one altogether different, prior, to which the object would have an analogy) cannot be brought about by virtue of the agent intellect and the phantasm; therefore the sort of different, analogous concept that is posited will never exist naturally in the intellect of a wayfarer; and so a concept of God will not be able to be had naturally, which is false.

a.a [Note by Scotus] This second argument can be confirmed, against Henry, through what is found in d.8 p.1 q.3 n.4; but there is a response there.

Proof of the assumption [sc. “But a concept that would not be univocal to an object shining forth in a phantasm...”]: any object, whether shining forth in the phantasm or in the intelligible species, along with the cooperation of the agent or possible intellect, produces according to the ultimate of its power, as an effect adequate to it, its own proper concept,a and a concept of everything essentially or virtually included in it. But the other concept, which is posited to be an analogous concept, is not essentially or virtually included in this one; nor even is it this one; therefore, this one will not be brought about by any such moving object [sc. by an object that brings about the analogous concept].

a.a [Interpolated text (in place of “its own proper concept, and a concept of everything.. .any such moving object.”)] .its own proper and quidditative concept. For this is the offspring adequate to it in its being as knowable in itself, just as an offspring like it in nature would be adequate in natural being. So, in the understanding of anything that our intellect can operate on, that understanding will be more imperfect than its own [self-understanding], and consequently not per se attributable to it; because the more perfect is not attributed to the less perfect; therefore, in no way is it possible to have any knowledge naturally of God [cf. nn.48-49].

And there is confirmation of the reasoning (that ‘any object, whether.’ [previous paragraph]). Besides its proper concept, adequate to it and included in it in either of the two aforesaid ways [sc. ‘essentially or virtually’ - previous paragraph], nothing else can be known from this object save by discursive reasoning; but discursive reasoning presupposes knowledge of the simple thing to which the discourse leads. Let the reason, therefore, be formed as follows: that no object brings about in this intellect a proper simple concept of another object unless it contain that object essentially or virtually; but a created object does not contain an uncreated object essentially or virtually (and this under the idea under which it is attributed to an uncreated object as something essentially posterior is attributed to something essentially prior; because it is against the idea of the essentially posterior to include its prior virtually); and it is plain that a created object does not essentially contain an uncreated object according to anything altogether proper, and not common, to an uncreated object; therefore it does not bring about a concept that is simple and proper to an uncreated being.

36. There is argument, third, as follows: the concept proper to a subject is an idea sufficient for proving of that subject all the things that can be conceived as necessarily being present in it; but we have no concept of God by which we could sufficiently know all the things conceived by us that are necessarily in him - it is plain about the Trinity and other necessary points of faith; therefore etc.

The proof of the major is that we know any immediate truth to the extent we know the terms; so the major is plain about anything conceivable that is immediately present in the concept of the subject. But if it is present in it mediately, the same argument will be made about a middle term related to the subject; and wherever a stand is made, the proposed thesis about immediates is obtained; and further, through them will the mediates be known.

38. Again, fourth, an argument can be made as follows: either a pure perfection [lit.: a perfection simply] has an idea common to God and creatures, and the thesis is obtained. Or it does not but has only an idea proper to creatures; and then the idea of it will not belong formally to God, which is unacceptable. Or it has an idea that is altogether proper to God, and then it follows that, because God is pure perfection, nothing is to be attributed to him; for this is to say nothing else save that, because its idea as it belongs to God states ‘pure perfection’, therefore is it posited in God; and so will perish Anselm’s doctrine in the Monologion ch.15, where he maintains that ‘passing over relations, in the case of all other things, whatever is simply better it than not it is to be attributed to God, just as whatever is not such is to be removed from God’. According to Anselm, then, first something is known to be such [sc. ‘better it than not it’] and second it is attributed to God; therefore, it is not such precisely as it is in God. This is also confirmed in that then no pure perfection would exist in creatures. The consequence is plain, because of no such perfection does even a concept belong to creatures, save an analogical concept that, from the hypothesis, is of itself such - for an analogical concept is imperfect, and in nothing is its idea better than not it, because otherwise it would be posited, according to that analogical idea, in God.

39. This fourth reason is also confirmed as follows:a every metaphysical inquiry about God proceeds in this way: by considering the formal idea of something and taking away from that formal idea the imperfection that it has in creatures; and by keeping hold of the formal idea and attributing to it an altogether supreme perfection, and attributing it thus to God. An example about the formal idea of wisdom, or intellect or will; for this is considered in itself and by itself, and from the fact that this idea does not include formally any imperfection or limitation, the imperfections that are concomitant with it in creatures are removed from it and, with the same idea of wisdom and of will retained, these are attributed most perfectly to God.b Therefore, all inquiry about God supposes the intellect to have the same univocal concept it has taken from creatures.

a.a In place of the text from the beginning of n.36 up to here, which were clearly added later, are the words, canceled by Scotus, ‘Thirdly it is argued as follows’

b.b [Note by Scotus] For this there are certain middle terms [taken from Augustine, Anselm, Dionysius] in distinction 8 question 3, ‘against the first opinion’ [d.8 p.1 q.3 nn.8-9].

40. But if you say [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.32 q.4] the formal idea of the things that belong to God is different - from this follows something unacceptable, that from no idea proper to them as they are in creatures can they be proved of God, because the idea of the former is altogether different from the idea of the latter. Indeed, from the idea of wisdom that we grasp from creatures, it will no more be proved that God is formally wise than that God is formally a stone. For a concept different from the concept of a created stone can be formed, to which concept of stone, as it is an idea in God, this stone has an [analogous] attribution; and so ‘God is a stone’ would be asserted formally according to this analogous concept [of stone], just as ‘God is wise’ would be asserted formally according to the analogous concept [of wise].

41. An argument for this is also, fifth, made as follows: a more perfect creature can move [the intellect] to a more perfect concept of God. Therefore, since some vision of God, for example the lowest, does not differ from any given abstractive intellection of him as much as the highest creature differs from the lowest, it seems to follow that, if the lowest can move [the intellect] to some abstractive intellection, that the highest creature, or any creature below it, will be able to move [the intellect] to an intuitive intellection, which is impossible.

42. But if you say [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.24 q.6] that there are as many degrees in abstractive intellection of God as there are created species, though the intellects at the extremes are not as distant from each other as are the species at the extremes, which is very possible, because any degree in intellections is less distant from the degree next to it than the created species moving [the intellect] to that one is distant from the species moving it to another one - on the contrary: the difference of abstractive intellections is not merely numerical, because they are caused by causes of different species and through the proper ideas of those species, not insofar as they include something common as the way about univocity says. Therefore it follows that between the lowest abstractive intellection and the lowest intuitive intellection there are more intermediates than between the lowest species of being and the highest, or there are as many. But if the consequent is unacceptable, then, through the consequent, the antecedent too. Therefore, the species of abstractive intellection are fewer than those of beings. Therefore, by beginning from the lowest from this side and that, a species of being is left that is higher than the one that causes the highest abstractive knowledge. Therefore, that higher one will cause intuitive knowledge of God.

43. Again, why are so many species of intellections of the same object posited, if the object moves [the intellect] to a proper concept?

44. Again, as to the principal conclusion [the univocity of being, n.26], it seems to be that every multitude is reduced to unity [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.21 q.2 ad 2]. Therefore the same holds of concepts.a

a.a [Note added by Scotus] Note, about the second point [n.26], there are ten arguments: first about certain and doubtful concept [n.27], second about the impossibility as wayfarer of understanding God [n.35], third that we do not know all the things that necessarily inhere in God [n.36], fourth that some pure perfection is common [n.38], fifth about the order of intellection alongside the order of creatures moving [the intellect] to them [n.41], sixth can be next to it, that there would be infinite abstractive intellections if the species are infinite. These reasons are specific [to the question]. Common reasons are: coming to a stand at unity [n.44], number and otherness [Ord. I d.8 p.1 q.3 n.12], comparison [ibid.], and ‘truest etc.’ in Metaphysics 2.993b24-27.
     As to the first argument, in Ord. I d.8 nn.5-8, are the three responses of Henry; the two first are attacked there, and the second here [n.30; for the third see n.46]. - To the second argument, Henry infra in Ord. I d.8 nn.4-5 and the rejection of him there; and here below the argument is dealt with so as to be a common difficulty against both sides, but by way of giving an exposition of the opinion about the analogy of concepts for those very concepts [n.54]. - To the third it is said [by Henry] that some proper concept can be had of a subject, a confused non-definitive concept, by which nothing, even what is most immediately inherent in a subject, is evident about it (an example: one does not know through a confused concept of man that he is capable of laughter); and every concept of ours, though a proper concept, is yet not perfect as a concept definitive of a creature is. There is a confirmation because in Ord. II d.3 p.2 q.2 [nn.7, 11] the article concedes that an angel has in natural things a proper concept of God, and yet in the prologue [Ord. prol. nn.152] theology is set down as naturally known to God alone. - To the fourth, that is said to be a pure perfection [by Henry, Summa a.32 q.4, a.42 q.1 ad 1] which is of a nature to possess concepts that have an analogy of the imperfect to the perfect, so that the idea of ‘pure perfection’ is not attributed to something that is simply one even in concept. But the deduction of the saints and the masters seems to confirm that [cf. Ord. I. d.8 nn.8-9]. - To the confirmation there [n.40], that ‘God is a stone’, response is given in I d.8 n.9. - The fifth [nn.42-43] is solved here, where the argument is [n.41]. But to the point against the response [n.42], I reply: one must state it by holding to the specific difference of intellections. One must concede that there are as many species of abstractive conceptions of God as there are species of objects moving [the intellect]. The same is against you, Henry, because the words proper to creatures are as many in species as there are creatures (it could be argued there that, if the species of words for creatures are fewer than the things named, then some creature can cause an intellection more perfect than any word for a creature, and so cause the vision of God). In the way the response is made here [above, first paragraph of this note], it is made to the abstractive intellections of God through creatures, because on both sides there are as many intellections as there are objects moving [the intellect]. - The sixth argument [first paragraph of this note] is likewise against you, Henry, because it is necessary to concede an infinity of words, each of which is lower than the vision of God, if the hypothesis is retained about infinite, necessity, eternity, as they are precisely modes [n.55], because thus are they simply simple concepts.
     Therefore, you should care about the first reason and the fourth alone, both because they are not equally difficult for both sides, and because they do not go too far in proof beyond the proposed conclusion [n.26]. For they do not prove that no concept proper to God can be had, but that some concept cannot be. And the first negation [sc. no concept proper to God can be had] seems false.
     But really, will many quidditative concepts come through the different creatures moving the intellect, and are they of different species or the same, and will several concepts or one always be intended at the same time when several creatures are moving the intellect? - Again, you deny intelligible species [n.251].

45. But of what sort the univocity of being is, how many and what things it extends to, will be spoken of rather in the question about the first object of the intellect [nn.130-151].

46. [Objections against the aforesaid reasons] - Against these reasons is objection made. Against the first reason about the total disjunct [n.27], and the response is set down in d.8 p.1 q.3 n.68, and is more weakly refuted than others are [supra, second paragraph of added note to n.44].

47. As to the second (as it is briefly stated [n.35]), the major is denied, because, on account of their connection, the effect can produce some concept of the cause, though not as perfect as the cause can about itself. For it is conceded that the conclusion produces knowledge of the principle in a demonstration of the ‘that’ [sc. as opposed to a demonstration of the ‘why’]; but that is not the most perfect knowledge of a principle; rather that knowledge is by which the conclusion is known through terms perfectly known. For why (unlike in the case of concepts) will an effect simply apprehended cause some simple habitual knowledge of the cause?

48. To the proof of the major [n.35, third paragraph], I say that although an equivocal effect has no power over the existing equivocal cause, nor over anything of the same idea as the cause [sc. to produce a concept of them], yet it does have power over some knowledge of it, which knowledge is more imperfect not only than the very cause in itself, but also than the cause in the very equivocal effect of the cause, namely than a perfect concept of it. But let the major be taken in this way: “no object has power for a concept of anything unless it contain that concept virtually or essentially.” This seems manifest from the idea of cause and equivocal effect [infra n.429], and although action be attributed to the intellect, according to some (I care not), the object, in whatever way it is required, has no power for a concept more perfect than a concept adequate to itself; such is the proper quidditative concept; therefore etc. The proof of the minor [“such is the proper quidditative concept”] is that, in the case of equivocal effects of the same cause, that effect is most perfect which is most like the cause; such is the intellectual offspring, or the perfect word, of this object. The proof of the major [“the object.. .has no power for a concept more perfect.”] because then [sc. if the major were false] the perfection of intelligence would exceed the whole power of the memory.

49. It seems one must absolutely concede that, by the action of a created object, no concept of God could come to be in us that is more perfect than the perfect concept proper to that object, nor consequently [could there come to be in us] a concept to which this concept, proper to the moving object, may be attributed [sc. analogically]; indeed further, the concept of God is more imperfect than this word, because an equivocal effect is less like the cause. It is necessary, therefore, to depart from the opinion of Henry if he posit that the concept of a stone is attributed [sc. by analogy] to the concept that the stone causes of God. It is possible to preserve the attribution precisely of the object conceived to the object, but not the attribution of the concept to the concept. And this is possible enough, for it is about a more perfect concept that a more imperfect concept is obtained rather than about a more imperfect concept. And how is it reasonable that, in the same intellect, a proper concept of God is simply more imperfect than a concept of stone or white? And how will natural beatitude exist in the knowledge of God (from Ethics 10.7.1177a12-17)?

50. But there seems to be the same difficulty against the univocity of being [sc. as against analogy, n.49], because every concept of God will be less perfect than the perfect proper concept of white, since every such concept is contained in whiteness as a common concept is contained in a special one, and the common concept is simply less perfect, because it is a potential and partial one with respect to the special concept. How then, according to univocity, will beatitude exist in natural knowledge of God?

51. Response. Any concept simply simple [n.71], namely of univocity, is more imperfect positively than the word [sc. the intelligible word, or the concept] of white, that is, it does not posit as much perfection; however it is more perfect permissively, because it abstracts from limitation and so is conceivable under [the idea of] infinity; and then the concept, simple indeed but not simply simple, namely ‘infinite being’, will be more perfect than the [intelligible] word of white, and it will be proper to God, but not the prior one that is common and abstracted from whiteness. Hence the way of univocity holds that every concept proper to God is more perfect than the word of any created thing, but the other way not so.

52. But there is a twofold objection against this response: first by arguing that the difficulty remains against the way of univocity, because from two concepts, each of which is more imperfect than the word [concept] of white, there does not seem to come to be a concept more perfect than that word. But the concept of being, as is conceded [n.51], is more imperfect than the concept of white or of line. And the concept of the infinite likewise; the proof is that the infinite is conceived by us through something finite, the finite conceived through a line, or some such object, moving us to a concept of the property [of finitude]. Therefore, the concept of the infinite is more imperfect than the concept of line. There is a confirmation of the argument, that a concept that includes affirmation and negation is not more perfect because of the negation, or at least is not more perfect than by conceiving the affirmation of the negation; here [in the way of univocity] infinite being is not a concept of something positive besides being; therefore infinity does not make the concept perfect, or at any rate there will not be a more perfect concept of infinite being than of finite being.

53. A second objection in favor of Henry is made in a similar way: that although a simply simple concept is more imperfect than the word or concept of a creature, as the argument says, [n.51], yet many such concepts can be put together, and one will determine the other, and the whole concept will be more perfect. And there is no greater difficulty here [in the way of analogy] than there [the way of univocity] save on two points: first that here any concept [‘infinite’, ‘being’], whether determining or determinable, is posited as proper to God, and there one is common [‘being’ as univocal] and the other proper [‘infinite’ as proper to God]; second: that here some concept proper to God is conceded to be more imperfect than the word of a creature [n.52], there that none is [n.51, end]. Now the first of these points is not unacceptable, because the property does indeed determine the subject (as in ‘man’ and ‘capable of laughter’), and yet both terms [‘man’ ‘capable of laughter’ - and similarly ‘being’, ‘infinite’] are equally common [sc. in what they are predicated of]. The second point one should altogether concede, because of this second argument here [n.53] - when speaking of the concept, that is, of the act of conceiving, but not of the object conceived.

54. As concerns these objections [nn.52-53], it seems that a response sufficiently fitting is that each opinion [sc. the opinions of analogy and of univocity] posits a simply simple concept more perfect than the word of that which moves to a part [of that simply simple concept; n.51 end, n.53 beginning]. But the objection made in the arguing [sc. for Henry, nn.52-53] seems to be against both opinions, because however many things are put together, each of the concepts is impressed [on the intellect] by a creature moving [the intellect]. Therefore, each is more imperfect than the word of the creature. How will an aggregation of more imperfect concepts make a concept that is intensively more perfect? The confirmation too [n.52] objects well against the point about the infinite. Not for this reason, then, must the opinion [of the univocity of being] be rejected, because the difficulty is common to both, and equally so, if the analogy of concepts be expounded about concepts.

55. Perhaps the objections [nn.52-53] do well prove that an act [of the intellect] about God is not the most perfect intensively; and this is not required for natural beatitude to exist there, but [it is enough] that there be union with the most perfect object (Parts of Animals 1.5.644b31-33). And perhaps some creature is more intensely loved than God, and yet it does not, when loved, beatify as God does (about this in Ord. IV d.49 p.1 qq.1-2 [nn.1-4 19-32], ‘how we are beatified in the object’). This point about the infinite being [sc. ‘an act about God is not the most perfect intensively’] would be true if ‘infinite’ were precisely the mode under which the object were conceived, and not a part of the concept, or were the mode such that the concept in itself is conceived - the way the distinction was drawn [Ord. I d.2 n.183] in the question of the unity of God, about singularity as conceived and as the mode precisely under which something is conceived; the way too that a certain degree of intensity is precisely the mode under which this whiteness is seen. But we do not understand ‘infinite being’ thus, but as including two concepts, albeit one of them [‘infinite’] determine the other [‘being’]. And perhaps the privative concept of the infinite [sc. the infinite conceived as the privation or negation of finitude, from Henry of Ghent n.35] does not posit anything, although it does give a positive understanding, such that, if we do have a positive concept of the necessary, God, the simply necessary being, is more perfectly understood in it positively. But perhaps we conceive neither the necessary nor the eternal except as negation of imperfection: for example, of the potency to be differently disposed or of ability to be in flux, of beginning or end - the eternal states an infinite of a sort, for an infinity in duration is not at all more perfect than one in quantity of perfection, just as an infinite magnitude would be more perfect than an infinite time.

C. God Cannot be Known under his Proper Idea

56. I say third [n.24] that God is not known naturally in particular and properly by the wayfarer, that is, under the idea of this essence as this and in itself. But the reason set down for this in the preceding opinion [n.20] is not probative. For when the argument is made that a thing is only known through a likeness, it either understands by ‘likeness’ the likeness of univocity or that of imitation. If in the first way then nothing is known of God according to that opinion, because in nothing does God have a likeness of univocity in that way [n.20]. If in the second way, and creatures not only imitate the essence under the idea of general attribute but also imitate this essence as this essence, or as it is existent bare in itself, according to him [Henry], for thus is it rather an idea or exemplar than taken under the idea of a general attribute - then the creature could, because of this likeness, be a principle for knowing the divine essence in itself and in particular.

57. There is, then, another reason for this conclusion, namely that God as this essence in himself is not known naturally by us, because under the idea of such a knowable he is a voluntary object, not a natural one, save only in respect of his own intellect. And so by no created intellect can he be naturally known under the idea of this essence as it is this, nor does any essence naturally knowable by us sufficiently display this essence as it is this, not by likeness of univocity nor by likeness of imitation. For univocity only exists in general ideas; imitation too is deficient, because imperfect, for a creature imperfectly imitates God.

Now whether there be another reason for this impossibility, namely because of the idea of first object, as others posit [Thomas Aquinas, ST Ia q.88 a.3] - about this in the question about the first object [nn.110-119, 185-187].

D. About the Concept of Infinite Being

58. Fourth [n.24] I say that we can reach many concepts proper to God that do not belong to creatures, of which sort are the concepts of all perfections simply in their sum totality. And the most perfect concept (in which we most perfectly, in a certain quasi description, know God) is by conceiving all perfections simply and in their sum. However, a concept possible for us that is more perfect, and at the same time more simple, is the concept of ‘infinite being’. For this is more simple than the concept ‘good being’, or any similar concept, because ‘infinite’ is not a quasi-attribute, or property, of being, or of what it is said of, but it states a mode intrinsic to that entity, such that when I say ‘infinite being’ I do not have a concept composed, as it were, per accidens of subject and property, but a concept that is of the subject per se in a certain degree of perfection, namely of infinity -just as an intense whiteness does not state a concept per accidents, as ‘visible whiteness’; rather intensity states a degree intrinsic in itself to whiteness. And so the simplicity of this concept ‘infinite being’ is plain.

59. The proof of the perfection of this concept is, first, that, among all the concepts conceivable to us, this concept includes virtually more things - for just as being includes virtually in itself the true and the good, so infinite being includes the infinite true and the infinite good and every perfection simply under the idea of the infinite; second, that by a demonstration-that, the existence of an infinite being is what is ultimately proved, as appears from the first question of the second distinction [Ord. I d.2 nn.74, 111-136, 147]. And those things are more perfect that are known from creatures last of all by a demonstration-that, for to prove them from creatures is difficult, on account of their distance from creatures.

60. If you say of supreme good or supreme being that this states a mode intrinsic to being, and includes virtually the other concepts - I say that if ‘supreme’ is understood comparatively [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.41 q.2], in this way it states a respect to something outside it; but ‘the infinite’ states a concept in respect of itself. But if you understand the supreme absolutely, that is, that the perfection of it could not, from the nature of the thing, be exceeded, this is conceived more expressly in the idea of infinite being, for ‘supreme good’ does not in itself indicate whether the thing is infinite or finite. - From this the rejection becomes clear of what was said [n.20] in the preceding opinion, that it is most perfect to know the attributes by reducing them, on account of the divine simplicity, to the divine existence - for knowledge of the divine existence under the idea of the infinite is more perfect than knowledge of it under the idea of simplicity, because simplicity is shared in common with creatures, and infinity (in the way it belongs to God) is not.

E. God is Known through the Species of Creatures

61. Fifth [n.24] I say that the things known about God are known through species of creatures, because either the more and the less universal are known through the same species of the less universal, or each has its own intelligible species proper to it; at any rate, what can impress a species of the less universal on the intellect can also cause in it a species of anything more universal; and thus can creatures, which impress their proper species on the intellect, also impress species of the transcendentals that belong in common to them and to God. And then the intellect can, by its own proper virtue, use many species together to form a joint concept of that of which these are the species, as for example by the species of ‘good’ and the species of ‘supreme’ and the species of ‘act’ to conceive a ‘supreme and most actual good’. This is plain through an argument a minori: for the imaginative power [sc. which is lesser than the intellectual power] can use the species of diverse sensible things to imagine something composed of those diverse things, as is plain when imagining a golden mountain.a

a.a [Interpolated note] I say that our intellect knows God to be a being infinite, supremely good and the like, in this way: For the concept of being is included in the concept of creature; therefore our intellect, in conceiving this being, as white or stone, can, by ascending and abstracting from it, know the conceptual content of being, and stop at it; likewise it can abstract supremeness from this supremeness and that, and can thus know what supreme is, and can conjoin the conceptual content of supremeness with that of being or of good and can thus know supreme being and supreme good, and so on as to infinite being - in the same way does the imaginative power imagine a golden mountain, where only the extreme terms exist in reality and not the conjunction itself of them. In this way, then, by abstracting common conceptual contents from creatures and conjoining them, we can know God in universal terms, and even the concept asserted of God that most belongs to him as he is known by us.

62. From this is evident a refutation of what is said in the preceding opinion [n.21, interpolated text] about [cognitive] ‘digging down’; for never through digging is what is not under the dig found by the dig. But never does there exist under the concept of a creature a concept or species representing something proper to God that is of an altogether different idea from what belongs to a creature - as was proved by the second argument in the second article [n.35]. Therefore, by digging down no such concept is found there. -And as to what is added about a similarity with the estimative power [n.21, interpolated text], I say that it seems one falsehood is being used to confirm another falsehood. For, if a sheep remain in the same nature and with the same natural affection for the lamb and yet it were changed, by a miracle, to be like a wolf in all sensible accidents, as color, shape, and sound and the rest, the lamb would flee a sheep thus altered as it would flee a wolf. And yet in the sheep thus altered there would be no conceptual idea of the harmful but of the agreeable. Therefore, the estimative power of the lamb would not dig down to discover under the sensible species the conceptual content of the agreeable, but would be precisely moved by its sense appetite in the way the sensible accidents would move it. If you say that the conceptual idea in it of the agreeable does not reduplicate itself, because there are no accidents present of the sort to be agreeable to such an idea, and the idea of the agreeable is not reduplicated without agreeable accidents - this is nothing, because if a lamb were to flee a wolf because of the perception of something harmful conceived by its estimative power, and if the perception is not reduplicated along with the sensible accidents (because it is not reduplicated with them in this supposed case), then either there is here a digging down of the lamb to an idea of the harmful that is null [because not reduplicated], or if the lamb does not flee here because of digging down to it, then not in the other case either.

IV. To the Arguments of the First Question

63. [To the initial arguments] To the arguments for this question [nn.1-4]. As to the first [n.1], I say that the comparison must be understood with respect to the first activation of the intellect by the object; for the phantasm there has, along with the agent intellect, the office of being the activating first object. But it must not be understood as to every act that follows on the first activation; for the intellect can abstract any object that is included in the activating first object, and can consider what is abstracted without considering that from which it abstracts. And, when considering what it has abstracted, it in this way considers what is common to the sensible and to the non-sensible, because what is non-sensible is, just like what is sensible, considered in the universal. And the intellect can consider this abstraction and that other abstraction in respect of what is proper to that other one, namely to the non-sensible. But the senses do not abstract, and therefore in any act, both first and second, they require some proper object to move them, and the phantasm is not related to the intellect in this way.

64. To the second [n.2] I say that the Commentator [n.2, interpolated text] expounds the Philosopher’s simile of the difficult and not of the impossible. And his reason is that then it would be otiose for nature to make those abstract substances intelligible and impossible to understand by any intellect. But this reason of his is not valid: first because the goal of those substances, insofar as they are intelligible, is not that they be understood by our intellect (and so, if this did not belong to them, they would not for this reason be intelligible in vain); second because the inference ‘they are not intelligible by our intellect, therefore not by any intellect’ does not hold, for they could be understood by themselves. And so there is a fallacy of the consequent here. Hence, although the authority of the Philosopher could be expounded in many ways, I say that the eye of an owl has only intuitive and natural knowledge, and that, as to these two conditions, the Philosopher’s authority can be expounded as being about impossibility, because just as it is impossible for the eye to consider that object [=the sun] intuitively, so it is impossible for our intellect to know God naturally as well as intuitively.

65. To the third [n.3] I say that the potential infinite is unknown, because each thing is knowable insofar as it is actual. However, the infinite is not so unknown that it is repugnant for it to be understood by an infinite intellect; but the infinite cannot be known by any intellect knowing it according to the manner of its own infinity. For the manner of its own infinity is by taking one thing after another, and an intellect that would in this way know one thing after another would always know the finite and never the infinite. However, an infinite intellect can know the whole simultaneously, not part after part. -Also, when argument is drawn from Metaphysics 2.2.994b22-23 about infinites and the infinite, I say that the case is not alike, because knowledge of objects numerically infinite would prove the infinity of the knowing power (as was plain in the first question of the second distinction, article 2, relating to infinity [Ord. I d.2 n.127]), namely because an increase in number on the part of the object would prove an increase in size of virtue in the intellect. But the understanding of some infinite does not prove infinity, because it is not necessary for the act to have the sort of real mode that the object has; for an act under the idea of the finite can relate to an object under the idea of the infinite, unless the act were comprehensive of it; and I concede that we do not have such an act about an infinite object, nor can we have it.

66. As to Gregory [n.4], I say that he must not be taken to mean that contemplation stops at some creature under God (because this would be to enjoy things that should be used, which would be extreme perversity, according to Augustine 83 Questions q.30). But the concept of that essence [of God] under the idea of being is more imperfect than the concept of that essence as it is this essence; and because it is more imperfect therefore is it inferior in intelligibility. But contemplation, by general law, stops at such a common concept, and therefore it stops at some concept that is of lesser intelligibility than God is in himself as he is this essence. And therefore it must be understood with reference to something that is under God, that is, to something under the idea of intelligibility whose intelligibility is inferior to the intelligibility of God in himself, as this singular essence.

67. [To the other arguments]. To the arguments for the first opinion [of Henry, n.20]. When it is argued that God cannot be understood in any concept common univocally to him and creatures, because he is a certain singularity, the consequence is not valid. For Socrates is singular insofar as he is Socrates, and yet many predicates can be abstracted from Socrates. And so the singularity of a thing does not make it impossible for some common concept to be abstracted from that which is singular. And although whatever is there in the thing is, in existing, singular of itself, such that nothing contracts anything else to singularity, yet that same thing can be conceived as a this in reality, or indistinctly in some way, and thus as singular or common.

68. What Henry says about knowledge per accidens in favor of that opinion [n.20] does not need to be refuted, because [God] is known quasi per accidens, but not precisely, in an attribute, as was proved [n.25].

V. Scotus’ own Response to the Second Question

69. To the second question [n.6] I say that there is, in the issue at hand, a triple ordering of intelligibles: one is the order of origin (or order in accord with generation); another is the order of perfection; third is the order of adequacy or precise causality.

70. Of the two first primacies there is discussion in Metaphysics 9.8.1050a4-5, “Things prior in generation are posterior in substance.” Of the third primacy there is discussion in Posterior Analytics I.4.73b32-33, in the definition of ‘universal’, that first there does it state precision or adequacy.

A. About the Order of Origin of Intelligibles

71. Speaking first, then, of the order of origin, one must look first at actual cognition, second at habitual cognition.

[About actual cognition]. As to the first I premise two things, the first of which is that a concept simply simple is a concept that is not resoluble into more concepts, as the concept of being or of ultimate difference. Now I call a simple concept, but not a simply simple concept, whatever can be conceived by the intellect in an act of simple intelligence, though it could be resolved into further concepts that are separately conceivable.

72. I premise, second, that it is one thing to understand something confused and another to understand confusedly. For the confused is the same as the indistinct, and just as there are two possible distinguishings relative to the issue at hand (namely of the essential whole into its essential parts and of the universal whole into its subjective parts), so there are two non-distinguishings, namely of the two aforesaid wholes relative to their parts. A thing confused, then, is understood when something is understood that is not distinct in either of the aforesaid ways. But something is said to be understood confusedly when it is conceived as it is expressed by the name, distinctly when it is conceived as it is expressed by the definition.

73. Taking these points as understood to begin with, I set down first the order of origin, in actual knowledge, of things understood confusedly. And thereon I say that the first thing actually known confusedly is the most specific species, a singular instance of which moves the senses more effectively and more strongly first,a and this on the supposition that the instance is present to the senses in the proportion due. Hence if you posit some case in which the senses do not sense first the specific nature (as that it is not at once apparent whether a color is reddish or green), and consequently a case in which the intellect would not, by that sensation, immediately apprehend the specific nature, I always posit an undue proportion of the singular to the senses - either because of an imperfection in the sense power, which this visibility exceeds (the visibility of a nature of this sort as it is a nature), or because of a defect in the medium (of light or something of the sort), or because the thing is too far distant.

a.a [Interpolated text, from Lectura I d.3 n.70] whether it is audible or visible or tangible. For the species of whatever individual moves the senses more strongly is known first with confused knowledge.

74. Hereby is plain an answer to the following objection: ‘two eyes are at the same distance from something red, one of which immediately perceives the redness, the other confusedly; therefore the specific nature is not at once sensed when there is the right proportion - Response: the right proportion for one eye is not the right proportion for the other eye, because of a lack of proportion in the eye acted on.

75. On the contrary: if [the object] generates a species of red up to point a, and beyond point a generates a species of color or a color confusedly representing red, then, if the eyes are beyond a, neither eye will see the red distinctly. - Response: whatever holds of the medium (whether the proper species is in it everywhere or a confused species beyond a certain distance), at least in a less well disposed eye, other things being equal, the species will be more confused, at any rate beyond a determinate distance.a

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] in place of ‘whatever holds.. .determinate distance’: whatever singular could not be understood under its proper idea (about which elsewhere [Ord. II d.3 p.1 aa.5-6, n.17, p.2 q.1 n.15, q.2 n.9]), for the present I am speaking about those things that, according to the common opinion, it is certain can be understood [n.348].

76. I prove the proposed conclusion as follows [n.73]: a natural cause, when it is not impeded, acts for its effect according to the utmost of its power; therefore it acts first for the most perfect act that it can first produce. All the things that come together for this first act of the intellect are natural causes merely, because they precede all act of the will -and they are not impeded, as is plain. Therefore they produce first the most perfect concept they are capable of; but that concept is only the species of the most specific produced thing. But if some other concept, namely the concept of something more common, were the most perfect that they were capable of, then, since a concept of what is more common is more imperfect than the concept of the most specific species (as a part is more imperfect than the whole), it would follow that they would not be capable of a concept of the species, and so they would never cause that concept.

77. Second as follows, because (Avicenna, Metaphysics 1 ch.3) metaphysics is last in the order of teaching. Therefore, the principles of all other sciences, and their terms, can be conceived before the principles of metaphysics. But this would not be the case if it were necessary for the more common concepts to be conceived first before the concepts of the most specific species; for then being and the like would have to be conceived first, and so it would follow rather that metaphysics was first in the order of teaching; therefore etc.

78. Third, because if it were necessary to conceive the more universal concepts first before the concept of such and such species, then, since the senses are posited to be in act about the singular that moves the senses, and the intellect is free of this, a long time would have to be posited before the species of this sort of first sensed singular was conceived; for it would first be necessary to understand, in order, all the common predicates said of the ‘what’ of the species.a

a.a [Interpolated text, from Lectura I d.3 n.74] From this is evident the reason why the intellect understands one concept before another, although the species of several of them are present to it. For this does not come from the will (since then the intellect would not possess its [own] act of understanding), but the reason is of this sort, that the singular of one moves the senses more strongly than the singular of another. - This about confused knowledge.

79. As to the first of these three reasons [n.76], note that the order in the case of generations that proceed through the imperfect as intermediary is here the response -otherwise a definitive concept would be caused by the object first of all (for the object is capable of that), or there will never be a cause of it.

Why is a definitive concept not caused first? What perfection does any cause of that concept acquire through discursive reasoning, through division, etc.? - Response: a definitive concept is a concept explicative of several partial concepts, so each of these must be understood first - first in nature at least, and for us first in time, because a single concept is made known to us through its parts.

80. I speak, secondly [n.69], about the actual knowledge of things distinctly conceived - and I say that this is the converse of the general concept, because the first thing thus conceived is the most common, and those closer to it are prior and those further away are posterior.

I prove this as follows: because from the second premise [n.72] nothing is distinctly conceived except when everything is conceived that is present in its essential idea; being is included in all lower quidditative concepts; therefore no lower concept is distinctly conceived unless being is conceived. Now being can only be distinctly conceived because it has a simply simple concept. It can therefore be distinctly conceived without the others, and the others not distinctly conceived without it having been distinctly conceived. Therefore being is the first concept that is conceivable distinctly. From this follows that what is closer to being is prior, because knowing distinctly is obtained through the definition, and the definition is acquired by way of division, starting from being and proceeding to the concept of the defined thing. Now, in the case of division, the prior concepts occur first, as genus and difference, wherein a more common concept is distinctly conceived.

81. Second I prove that metaphysics (according to Avicenna as cited before [n.77]) is first in the order of knowing distinctly, because it has to certify the principles of the other sciences; therefore its knowables are the first distinctly knowable things. Nor does Avicenna contradict himself in the fact that he makes it last in the order of teaching and first in knowing distinctly. For (as was plain from the question about propositions known self-evidently through themselves [Ord.1 d.2 n.19]) the principles of the other sciences are known self-evidently on the basis of a confused concept of the terms; but when metaphysics is known, there is afterwards the possibility of investigating the quiddity of the terms distinctly. And in this way are the terms of the special sciences not conceived, and their principles not understood, prior to metaphysics. Thus, too, can many things be clear to metaphysico-geometry that were not known to geometry previously from its confused concept. An example: a geometer qua geometer uses for his self-evident principles only those that are evident at once from the sort of confused concept of the terms that comes from sensibles, as that ‘a line is a length’ etc., without caring what genus line belongs to, as whether it is substance or quantity. But now, after geometry and the other special sciences are known, metaphysics about the common concepts follows, and from these common concepts a return can be made, by way of division, to an investigating of the quiddities of the terms in the (already known) special sciences. And then, from the quiddities thus known, the principles of the special sciences are known more distinctly than before. Also known are many principles that were not known before from the confusedly known terms. And in this way is it plain how metaphysics is first and how it is not first.

82. But, when comparing the order of conceiving confusedly with the order of conceiving distinctly, I say that the whole order of conceiving confusedly is prior, and therefore what is first in that order [n.73] is simply first, and the proof of this is the aforesaid authority of Avicenna [n.77] about the order that metaphysics has to the other sciences.

83. Against this is the objection made that in Physics 1.1.184a21-22 it is said “confused things” (that is, the more universal things) “are known first”, which is plain because “children first call all men ‘father’, and later discern them individually.” Therefore, the child knows its father first under the idea of man before under the idea of this man.

84. This same fact does Avicenna prove about something seen in the distance, because someone is known first under the idea of body before that of animal, and under the idea of animal before under the idea of man, and under the idea of man before under the idea of this man.

85. This is seen too from the fact that, in the case of arguing, the way of composition is prior to the way of resolution. Therefore, so is it in the case of simple conceptions.

86. To the first [n.83] of these points [nn.83-85] I say that, as the confused is twofold, namely the ‘universal whole’ and the ‘essential whole’, so each is first in its own order. But that is simply first which is first in the order of knowing confusedly, because the natural process is from imperfect to perfect through a middle. Now knowing confusedly is a sort of middle between not knowing and knowing distinctly; and therefore knowing confusedly comes before knowing anything distinctly. - And as to what is said about the child [n.83], I concede that the species is understood first before the singular (I did say that the species is the first intelligible [nn.73-78]); but the argument does not hold of genus and species, for whiteness is conceived actually before color is in the order of confused knowledge, because color under the idea of color is not known save under the idea of a greater abstraction than the abstraction of whiteness from this whiteness; and this greater abstraction is more difficult, because from things less alike.

87. To the next point [n.84], from Avicenna, I say that when an object is not nearby in the required way it does not move [the senses] to knowing it under its most perfect idea but under an imperfect one. And then the intellection, which follows the sensing of such an object, needs to be of the sort of universal that, under the idea of the singular, the senses were of. But when the object is in the right proportion for being able to move the senses under its own proper and perfect idea, then the intellect, following such senses, has knowledge of such an object under its specific idea confusedly first before under the idea of its genus confusedly - not that the more imperfect real idea, from which the genus is taken, is the reason for moving [the senses] when the object is at a greater distance, and the more perfect idea, from which the difference is taken, is the reason for moving [the senses] when it is at a lesser distance (rather the reason for acting from a greater distance is a more effective active idea), but the specific form is the reason for its imperfectly assimilating [the senses to itself] at a great distance and for perfectly assimilating [them] at a proportionate distance. It does not follow then that the color generates no species of itself, but that it does not do so then, but only this whiteness does or this blackness - not the ‘this’ but the nature.

88. How will it be, then, with the intelligible species of the more universal and the less universal [n.61]?

It can be said that both are generated by the same phantasm.

89. Or in another way: the more universal, as it is virtually contained in a lower universal [n.365 infra], is generative of the intelligible species, because it is thus per se intelligible, not of the sensible species, because it is thus not sensible - for the senses are of the existent as it is existent.

90. Against this [n.89]: for you [sc. Scotus] the senses are not of the singular but of the nature in the singular [n.87]. Again, even if one posits a proper sensible species and a proper phantasm of whiteness and another proper to color, yet one cannot posit one proper to quality or to being, because these, in their indifference [to this or that particular], surpass the genus of sensible things, and cannot as such shine forth in a phantasm - and yet are the proper intelligible species of them caused [in the intellect]. Not caused therefore by diverse phantasms, nor by themselves as they are distinct, existing virtually there [sc. in the singular], because under these ideas they are not there in a way that represents them, nor in a way that does not represent them, as is plain [sc. because then they would not cause any idea of the more and less universal]. Therefore, the other way [sc. both are generated by the same phantasm, n.88].

91. To the third [n.85] I say that on both sides, in the case of simples [= concepts] as in that of complexes [= propositions], there is a process from what includes to what is included -. But in the case of sensibles what includes is lower, in the case of complexes what includes is the principle in respect of the conclusion.

92. [About habitual and virtual knowledge] As to habitual or virtual knowledge [n.71] I first explain what I understand by the terms.

I call knowledge ‘habitual’ when the object is present to the intellect in the idea of an intelligible in act in such a way that the intellect can immediately have an elicited act about it. I call knowledge ‘virtual’ when something is understood in a thing as a part of the thing understood first, but not as the thing understood first - as for example when ‘man’ is understood, ‘animal’ is understood in ‘man’ as part of the thing understood, but not as the thing understood first, the totality, which is the term of the act of intellection. This is properly enough called ‘the thing virtually understood’ because it is close enough to the thing actually understood; for it could not be more actually understood unless it were understood in an intellection proper to it, which would be an intellection of it as it is the first and total term.

93. As to this habitual and virtual knowledge I say that the things known first by way of generation are more common.

The proof is that just as diverse forms, which perfect the same perfectible in a certain order, are of a nature to perfect it more mediately or more immediately, so, if the same form contain virtually in itself the perfection of the ordered forms, it will perfect the perfectible in, as it were, a like order of nature - just as if the form of body, of substance, and of the rest were different forms, and if the form of substance were to inform the thing first and then the form of body etc., An implicit reference to the famous Tree of Porphyry, where the branches, after substance, are: material substance or body, then living body, animal, man, and finally these and those individual men. ¹¹ so, if one form virtually include all of them, it will, as it were, perfect matter first under the idea of substance before it does so under the idea of body, and always in this way of generation the more imperfect will be prior because process is made from potency to act. Therefore, just as several concepts, more common and less common, habitual or virtual, are of a nature to perfect the intellect by way of generation, so the more imperfect concept is always prior - so if one concept virtually include all of these concepts, it will perfect under the idea of the more common and universal concept first before under the idea of a particular concept. - This as to the idea of origin or generation.

94. On the contrary: why is it not similar in the case of actual knowledge? - Reply: here [in the case of habitual knowledge, n.93] such concepts have, in their moving [of the intellect], a natural ordering, but in duration they are simultaneous; not so there [in the case of actual knowledge], but the concepts move successively and the more potent concept moves [the intellect] more strongly and prevents the others from then moving it there; not so here. When one is actually knowing an insect, like an entomologist actually studying an insect, one is knowing it under the idea of this kind of living sensitive body, for this is the more potent concept, the concept that is driving one’s actual knowing. So one is not actually knowing it under the idea of sensitive body (for then it would not be distinct from a bird) or of living body (for then it would not be distinct from a plant) or of material body (for then it would not be distinct from a stone), though of course one is not denying, whether actually or habitually, any of these realities. But when one knows an insect virtually, then included simultaneously in the concept of insect thus virtually known (though according to a certain order) are the concepts of sensitive, living, material, substance. ¹²

B. About the Order of Perfection (and of Adequacy) in Intelligibles

95. Now about the order of perfection [n.69]. And I make the distinction that a thing more perfectly intelligible for us can be understood in two ways, either simply or according to proportion. An example: the eye of an eagle is simply more perfect with respect to the sun than is my vision with respect to a candle, and yet my vision is more perfect proportionally, that is, it has more of the idea of vision in proportion to the visibility of the candle than the vision of an eagle may have in respect of the visibility of the sun.

96. This distinction is obtained from the Philosopher, Parts of Animals I.5.644b31-33, where he maintains that, although we have least knowledge of immaterial things (‘least’ is to be understood as to proportion), yet this knowledge is more desirable than the considerable knowledge that can be had of material things, which is considerable in relation to those knowables.

97. Speaking, therefore, of the order of the knowledge that is more perfect simply, I say that the most perfect thing knowable by us, even naturally, is God (hence the Philosopher places happiness herein, Ethics 10.7.1177a12-17), and, after him, the most specific species that is more perfect in the universe, and then the species next to it, and so as far as the ultimate species; and after all the most specific species comes the proximate genus abstracted from the most perfect species, and so on by always making resolution [sc, to the next proximate genus]. And the reason for all these is that the attainment of a more actual and more perfect object is a simply more perfect intellection, because this intellection has an essential perfection on the part of the intellect equal to any other intellection, or not less, and a perfection much greater on the part of the object, both of which, namely the perfection of the power and the perfection of the object, are cause of the most perfect intellection.

98. If we speak of perfection or of a knowledge more perfect in proportion to the knowable thing, I say that sensibles from more perfect senses, and sensibles that move them more effectively, are, according to proportion, knowable more perfectly, in that our intellect reaches them more according to the degree of their knowability; and the sensibles that are more remote from them are less knowable, according to proportion to their knowability.

99. The third primacy, namely of adequacy [n.69], will be spoken of in the next question [nn.108-201], or elsewhere [in the Ordinatio].

VI. To the Arguments for the Second Question

100. [To the initial arguments] To the arguments of this question [nn.6-8]. As to the first [n.6], I say that the consequence ‘it is the first being, therefore it is the first known’ is not valid, although it does follow that it is the first knowable as far as concerns it in itself. And in this way must the truth be understood that the Philosopher speaks of in Metaphysics 2 [n.6], that [this truth] stands for the evidence of the thing in itself, or for its intelligibility on the part of itself. And it is not necessary that, as a thing is disposed to being, so is it disposed to being known, save as to its being known by the intellect that has regard to all intelligibles according to the proper degree of their knowability. Our intellect is not of this sort but knows sensibles most of all.

101. To the second [n.7] I say that the consequence is not valid, save in the case of precise causes. The point is plain in an example: if an eclipse is knowable by a double cause through two powers, namely by the senses and by the intellect possessing the demonstration, it is never most perfectly known unless the principle of demonstration is known. But it does not follow that therefore it is never known save when the principle of demonstration is known, for an eclipse has another cause by which it can be known, because the first cause is not [by itself] the precise cause. However, it cannot be known by the other cause as perfectly as by this cause, because this cause, namely the demonstration whereby it is known by the intellect, is a more perfect cause of the knowledge of it than the other cause by which it can be known, namely by the senses. An eclipse of the moon is the interposition of the earth between the moon and the sun blocking the sun’s light on the moon [cf. n.236], and an eclipse of the sun is the interposition of the moon between the sun and the earth blocking the sun’s light on the earth. These definitions are the principle of demonstration, as in: ‘there is an eclipse of the moon; an eclipse of the moon is the interposition of the earth between the moon and the sun blocking the sun’s light on the moon; therefore, there is an interposition of the earth between the moon and the sun blocking the sun’s light on the moon’. An eclipse seen without knowledge of the cause is knowledge of the eclipse but not perfect knowledge (primitive peoples, for instance, saw eclipses but are said to have thought the reason was some god or a dragon or the like). The intellect’s knowledge of the cause is thus necessary for the most perfect knowledge of an eclipse. Of course, until we perceive an eclipse with our eyes, we do not know that the cause is in place. So the two powers, intellect and senses, are necessary to know an actual eclipse (they together are the precise cause of knowing the eclipse). But the intellect provides a more perfect knowledge than the senses do, for the senses know only the fact, while the intellect knows the reason for the fact. ¹³

102. So it is in the issue at hand. Any creature has, besides the cause of the knowledge of it, which is the divine essence, another cause of that knowledge, namely its own essence, which is of a nature to generate knowledge of it. But never is a thing through its own motion [on the intellect] as perfectly known as it is through the divine essence. Therefore, when arguing from effect to cause, this does not follow: ‘if most perfectly then most perfectly, therefore if simply then simply’. For the ‘most perfectly’ that is taken can be the precise cause, which is the ‘most perfectly’ in genus; but the ‘simply’ that is taken is not the precise cause of the effect in genus.

103. To the third [n.8] I say that the major is true when speaking of the primacy of perfection but not of the primacy of adequacy. An example: vision of something is never under the idea of color so precisely that it is not under the idea of this color or that color, as of white or black, save in the case of what is seen from a remote distance, or imperfectly. Now vision of something under the idea of color is precisely not the most perfect vision but the most imperfect [sc. because while color is discerned, the precise particular color is not]. That therefore the most perfect operation of a power is about its first object is true - not of the object first in adequacy but first in perfection, namely because it is the most perfect of the things contained under the first adequate object. And therefore does the Philosopher say, Ethics 10.7.1178a5-6, that perfect delight is in an operation about the best of the objects that fall under the power, that is, about the best object contained under the object adequate to the power. This reason, therefore, proves that God is the first object, that is, the most perfect object (which I concede), but not the most adequate object - about which in the next question [nn.108-121].

104. [To the other arguments] As to what the opinion, then, [n.22] says in the first member in response to the first question (about the indeterminate negatively and privatively), if the understanding is about the primacy of origin, I contradicted it in the first member of the second question [nn.73-78].

105. And when it is argued that ‘the indeterminate negatively is more indeterminate than the indeterminate privatively’ [nn.80-81] I deny it, when speaking of indeterminacy relative to the issue at hand (namely the issue of what sort it is in first understanding), because the ‘indeterminate negatively’ is the singular, and such is not more indeterminate than the indeterminate privatively. Now negative indetermination, namely repugnance to being determined, although it is in some way greater than privative indetermination, is however not the sort of indeterminate that first occurs to the intellect, because it is the sort that is not a confused but a most distinct knowable, as was said before [n.80].

106. Also, what [Henry] argues in the second member [n.22], that God is the last thing known by rational knowledge, because the first known is that from which the abstraction is made - this is not true save by positing that abstraction is a sort of discursive reasoning from one known thing to another, such that that from which the abstraction is made is something known and the other [sc. what is abstracted from it] is something known through it. And if Henry does so understand abstraction, such knowledge by abstraction is not the first knowledge of the abstracted thing. For if God is thus known through a creature, it is necessary first to have some concept of God to which the discourse proceeds, because discursive reasoning presupposes some concept of the term to which it goes. Either then the proposition that Henry takes is false, or, if it is true, it proves that God is known first before he is known through reason, which perhaps he would concede [Henry, Summa a.21 q.2].

107. Now as to what he adds, that God as he the first thing naturally known is not distinct from other things, because he is not conceived in anything where he is discriminate from the creature [n.23] - in this he seems to contradict himself. For he first said that the first thing known naturally by the intellect is the negatively indeterminate [n.22], and he says that in this concept he is distinct from the creature, because this does not belong to the creature [n.21].

Question Three Whether God is the Natural First Object that is Adequate Relative to the Intellect of the Wayfarer

108. Next after what was touched on in third article of the second question [nn.70, 99], about the first object of the intellect, that is, the adequate and precise object, the question is asked whether God is the natural first object that is adequate relative to the intellect of the wayfarer.

Argument that he is:

Because, from the preceding question [nn.97, 103], God is first, that is, most perfect among all intelligibles; and the first in any genus is cause of the other things in that genus being such, Metaphysics 2.1.993b24-26, as is plain: the first hot thing is cause of heat in all other things; therefore God is the reason for knowing all other things; therefore he is the first object of the intellect.

109. Further, as each thing is disposed to being, so is it disposed to knowledge [n.6, Metaphysics 2.1.993b30-31]; but nothing is a being by participation save from unparticipating being; The Latin word here ‘imparticipato’ is from a deponent verb ‘imparticipor’; so it means ‘un-participating’ and not, as might first appear, ‘un-participated’. ¹⁴ therefore neither is anything known unless un-participating being is first known. There is proof of this is from Augustine, On the Trinity 8 ch.3 n.4, “We would not, when telling the truth, judge one thing to be better than another unless knowledge of the good were impressed on us.” And it seems he is speaking there about the negatively indeterminate good, about which he has said in the same chapter, “look at the good itself, if you can, and you will surely see God;” and this does not seem to be true save of the negatively indeterminate good, namely the good that is not determinable; of which sort is the first good.a

a.a [Interpolated text] On the contrary: the object that is first in primacy of adequacy receives the predication of everything contained under it; but God does not receive this sort of predication; therefore etc.

I. Opinion of Others

A. First Opinion

110. In this question there is an opinion which says that the first object of our intellect is the quiddity of a material thing, because a power is proportioned to its object [Thomas Aquinas, ST Ia q.84 a.7].

111. Now there is a triple cognitive power: one is altogether separate from matter both in being and in operating, as the separate intellect; another is conjoined to matter both in being and in operating, as an organic power which in its being perfects matter and only operates through the medium of an organ, from which it is not separate in operating as neither in being; another is conjoined to matter in being only but it does not use a material organ in operating, as our intellect.

112. To these powers there correspond proportionate absolute objects. For to the altogether separate power, namely the first power, a quiddity altogether separate from matter ought to correspond; to the second an altogether material singular; so to the third corresponds the quiddity of a material thing that, although it be in matter, is yet not knowable as it exists in singular matter.

113. On the contrary: this cannot be sustained by a theologian, for the intellect, while existing as the same power in its nature, will per se know the quiddity of an immaterial substance, as is plain according to the faith about a blessed soul. But a power cannot, while remaining the same, have an act about anything that is not contained under its first object.

114. But if you say [Aquinas, ST Ia q.12 a.5] that it will be raised by the light of glory to the fact of knowing the immaterial substances - on the contrary: the first object of a habit is contained under the first object of the power, or at any does not go beyond it, because if the habit has regard to some object that is not contained under the first object of the power but goes beyond it, then the habit would not be the habit of that power, but would make it to be not that power but another one. There is a confirmation of this argument, that since a power, in the first moment of nature in which it is the power, has such and such object as first, then by nothing posterior in nature that presupposes the idea of the power can any other object become the first object of it. But every habit naturally presupposes the power.

115. Also, if this opinion [n.1] were posited by the Philosopher [On the Soul III.7.431a16-17, 8.432a7-9, Scotus, Ord. Prol. n.33], namely if he posited that our intellect, because of its infirmity among other intellects (namely the divine and the angelic), and because of its conjunction with the imaginative power in its knowing, has an immediate ordering to the phantasm [Aquinas, ST. Ia 1.89 a.1] just as phantasms have an immediate ordering to the common sense, and that therefore, just like imagination, it is not moved by anything save by what is an object of the common sense (although it know the same object in a different way) - then he would thus be saying that our intellect, not only because of some state it is in but by the nature of the power, could not understand anything save what can be abstracted from a phantasm [Aquinas, ST. Ia 1.88 a.1].

116. Against this there is a threefold argument. First that in an intellect knowing an effect there is a natural desire to knowing the cause, and that in an intellect knowing the cause universally there is a natural desire to knowing it in particular and distinctly; but a natural desire is not a desire for something that, by the nature of the desirer, is impossible for the desirer, because then the desire would be vain; therefore it is not impossible for the intellect, on the part of the intellect, to know an immaterial substance in the particular from the fact it knows the material substance that is the effect of it [cf. Aquinas, ibid. q.88 a.2], and so the immaterial substance does not go beyond the first object of the intellect.

117. Besides, no power can know any object under an idea more common than is the idea of its first object. This is plain first by reason, because then the idea of the first object would not be adequate. It is also plain from an example, for sight does not know anything through an idea more common than is the idea of color or light, which is its first object; but the intellect does know a thing under an idea more common than is the idea of something imaginable [cf. n.115], because it knows a thing under the idea of being in general, otherwise metaphysics would not be a science for our intellect; therefore etc.

118. Besides, third [n.116] (and it returns as it were to the same as the second [n.117]): whatever is per se known by a cognitive power is either its first object or is contained under its first object; being as being is more common than what is sensible; it is per se understood by us, otherwise metaphysics would not be a science more transcendent than physics; therefore nothing can be the first object of our intellect which is more particular than being, because then being in itself would in no way be understood by us.

119. Therefore, it seems that what is supposed in the stated opinion [n.110] about the first object (and this when speaking of the power from the power’s nature) is false. And this is apparent because, if the first question [n.1] be solved by way of this opinion, saying that the sensible quiddity is the first object of the intellect, not God or being [nn.125, 137; Aquinas, ibid. q.88 a.3], the solution is resting on a false foundation.

120. The congruity too that is adduced for the opinion [nn.110, 112] is no congruity. For power and object should not be assimilated together in their way of being, for they are related as mover and movable and these are related as dissimilar, because related as act and power. They are, however, proportionate, because this proportion requires dissimilarity in the things proportioned, as is commonly the case with a proportion - as is apparent in matter and form, part and whole, cause and caused, and other proportions. So, from such a mode of being of the power cannot be concluded a similar mode of being in the object.

121. An objection against this [n.120; Aquinas ST Ia q.85 a.2] is that, although a making agent can be dissimilar from its object (which is a passive object there), yet an operating agent should, in its knowing operation, be assimilated to the object it operates about, because the object is not passive there but is rather an agent and an assimilating agent. For everyone was agreed on this point, that knowledge comes to be through assimilation, nor did Aristotle contradict them about this [On the Soul 1.2.404b7-5b17, 3.8.431b29-2a1]. Therefore, required here is not only proportion but also likeness.

122. Response. It is one thing to speak of the mode of being of the power in itself, and another thing to speak of it insofar as it is under second act, or in proximate disposition to second act, which is different from the nature of the power. But now [sc. in this life] it is the case that the knowing power is assimilated to the known object. This is true through its act of knowing, which is a certain likeness of the object, or through the species, which disposes it proximately for knowing. But to conclude from this that the very intellect in itself naturally has a mode of being similar to the mode of being of the object, or conversely, is to commit the fallacy of the accident and of figure of speech - in just the way this inference does not hold: ‘the copper coin is assimilated to Caesar because it is assimilated to him through the image impressed on the coin, therefore the copper coin in itself has a like mode of being to the mode of being of Caesar’. Or more to the issue at hand, ‘an eye seeing through the species of the object is assimilated to the object, therefore sight has a mode of being similar to the mode of being of the object’. And so further, just as ‘certain visible things have matter (which is the cause of corruption and is in potency to contradictory opposites as mixed things are), certain lack such matter, as the heavenly bodies, therefore a certain sort of vision will exist in such matter, another without such matter, or a certain sort of organ is such, and another not such’. Until modern times material bodies were typically explained (at least by those who, unlike the ancient atomists, followed the elaborations of Aristotle) in terms of elements that were not parcels of matter or energy (like protons, electrons, quarks etc.), but the realized sense qualities of the hot, the cold, the wet, and the dry. All material bodies were various mixtures of these realized sense qualities, as water was a mixture of the wet and cold, fire a mixture of the hot and dry etc. All other bodies, including living bodies, were various mixtures of these first mixtures. But since such mixed bodies, however good their mixing may be, are composed ultimately of contraries (hot/cold, wet/dry), and since contraries act against each other, these bodies have a natural tendency to dissolve into their elements, or they are corruptible. The heavenly bodies, by contrast, are not corruptible, because they are not composed of contraries but of a distinct and single element without a contrary (sometimes called ‘ether’), which was a fifth element beyond the previous four, or in Latin a ‘quint-essence’. ¹⁵ Or still more to the issue at hand, ‘an idea in the divine mind, which is a likeness of the object, is immaterial, therefore the stone too of which it is the idea, is immaterial’. Because of this congruity, then, it does not seem congruous to narrow down the intellect, from the nature of its power, to the sensible object, so that it not go beyond the senses save only in mode of knowing.

123. In agreement here are Aristotle [n.115] and the article [nn.186-187] that the quiddity of a sensible thing is now [sc. in this present life] the adequate object, understanding ‘sensible’- properly, or that it is included essentially or virtually in the sensible thing;-16 in another way, understanding quiddity as specific quiddity (whether remote or included virtually, they both reduce to the same thing). It is not now, therefore, because it is the object of the highest sense, the intellect’s adequate object, because the intellect understands everything included essentially in the sensible thing, right up to being (under which difference in no way do the senses know it), and also up to what is included virtually, as relations (which the senses do not know). Nor is it necessary here to make the distinction that only the sensible thing is the object doing the moving; the terminating entity, because included in the sensible thing in some way or other, is not only the term but also a mover, at least it moves the intelligence through the proper species in the memory, whether generated by itself or something else.

124. In disagreement: the object that is adequate, from the nature of the power, to the intellect [nn.186-187] is nothing under being. This, the article [nn.186-187], is against Aristotle. And the first reason here well opposes Thomas [n.113]. But does natural reason really show this? If so, it is much more in contradiction with Aristotle [n.115]; if not I reply to the ‘Against this there is a threefold argument’ [n.116].

To the first [n.116]: every antecedent about [there being a] natural desire for a is more obscure than is a plurality [of natural desires; Metaphysics 10.3.1054a28-29, “multitude is prior in idea to what is indivisible, on account of the senses”], unless it be proved a posteriori. And if there is a proof it is in us (from promptness toward the act of desire), it is not valid unless it be shown that true apprehension precedes the act, that the act immediately follows a true apprehension. To the second [n.117]: being, as it is a certain single intelligible, is contained under the sensible quiddity above expounded.-17 The other argument [n.118], about metaphysics, proves that being as ‘this intelligible’ is understood by us; but if it were the first object, this would be according to its whole indifference to everything in which it is preserved, not as a single intelligible thing in itself - and anything you like of that indifference could be understood [cf. Ord. Prol. n.33]. Therefore, it is not the adequate object now [for this present life].

There still remains the major of the second argument and the major of the third [nn.117, 118, first lines, that only the first object, or what falls under it, is known]. They seem evident at this sort of sign0. For these two occurrences of the symbol - inserted by Scotus, see n.124, second paragraph ¹⁶, At the same symbol above in n.123. See previous footnote. ¹⁷, The Vatican editors report that a like symbol, corresponding to this one, is not found in Scotus’ manuscripts. ¹⁸ For being, insofar as it is being, is more common than any other concept of first intention (a second intention is not the first object), and it is understood thus without any contraction at all being understood along with it, or a relation to sensibles or any relation.

B. Second Opinion

125. There is another opinion [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.24, q.8], which posits that God is the first object of the intellect, and the fundamental reasons for it are those that were adduced for the first part of the question [nn.108-109], arguing to the main point. And for the same reasons it posits that God is the first object of the will, because God is the reason for willing everything else - the way the opinion adduced the authority from Augustine On The Trinity VIII ch.6 n9, “Why then do we love another whom we believe to be just, and not the form itself where we see what a just mind is, so that we too can be just? Or is it that, unless we loved this form, we would in no way love him we believe to be just, whom we love because of this form? But while we are not just, we do not love it enough to have strength to be just.”

126. Against this opinion I argue as follows: the natural first object of any power has a natural order to that power; God does not have a natural order to our intellect under the idea of moving it, save perhaps under the idea of some general attribute, as that opinion supposes; therefore God is only the first object under the idea of that attribute, and so that general attribute will be the first object - or, according to the opinion that I held before [n.19] (that God is only understood under the idea of being [nn.56-60]), he will not have a natural order save under such universal concept. But a particular that is only understood in something common is not the first object of the intellect, but rather that common thing is. Therefore etc.

127. Further, it is certain that God does not have a primacy of adequacy because of being common, so as to be asserted of any object per se intelligible to us. Therefore, if he has some primacy of adequacy this will be because of virtuality, namely that he contains virtually in himself everything per se intelligible. But not for this reason will he be the object adequate to our intellect, because other beings move our intellect by their own virtue, so that the divine essence is not moving our intellect to knowing him and all other knowables. And as was said before in the question about the subject of theology [Ord. Prol. nn.152, 200-201], the essence of God is for this reason the first object of the divine intellect that it alone moves the divine intellect to knowing itself and all the things knowable by that intellect.

128. Through the same reasons [nn.126-127] is it proved that substance could not, on the ground that all accidents are attributed to it, be posited to be the first object of our intellect, for accidents have their own power to move the intellect. Therefore, substance does not move to knowledge of itself and of all other things.

II. To the Question

129. To the question then [n.108] I say in brief that no object of our intellect natural to it can be posited on the basis of the above sort of virtual adequacy, for the reason touched on against the primacy of a virtual object in God or in substance [nn.127-128]. Either then no first object will be posited, or one must look for a first object that is adequate because of the commonness in it. But if being is posited as equivocal between created and uncreated being, substance and accident, then, since all these are per se knowable to us, no object seems it can be posited to be the first object of our intellect either because of its virtuality or because of its commonness. But by positing the position I set down in the first question of this distinction, about the univocity of being [nn.26-55], the fact that there is some first object of our intellect can in some way be preserved.

130. To understand this I first make clear of what sort the univocity of being is and to what things it extends [nn.131-136, cf. n.45], and second from this I make clear the issue at hand [sc. about being and the first object of the intellect, nn.137-151].

A. Of What Sort the Univocity of Being is and to What Things it Extends.

131. As to the first point I say that being is not a univocal assertion in the ‘what’ of all per se intelligibles, because not of ultimate differences, nor of the proper passions of being. (A difference is called ultimate because it does not have a difference - because it is not resolved into a quidditative and qualitative concept, a determinable and determinate concept; but there is only a qualitative concept of it, just as an ultimate genus has only a quidditative concept.)

132. The first claim, namely about ultimate differences, I prove in two ways. First as follows: if differences include being univocally said of them, and these differences are not altogether the same, then they are diverse entities in some respect the same. Such are differences properly, from Metaphysics 5.9.1018a12-13, 10.3.1054b25-27. Therefore, ultimate differences will be differences properly; therefore they differ in other differences. But if these other differences include being quidditatively, the same follows about them as about the former, and so there would be a regress to infinity in differences; or a stand will be made at some differences that do not include being quidditatively, which is the conclusion intended, because they alone will be ultimates [see also n.136 below].

133. Second as follows: just as a composite being is composed of act and potency in the thing, so a composite concept per se one is composed of a potential and actual concept, or composed of determinable and determining concept. Just as therefore the resolution of composite being stops ultimately at simply simples, namely at ultimate act and ultimate potency, which are diverse primarily, such that nothing of one includes anything of the other (otherwise this one would not be act primarily, and that one would not be potency primarily, for what includes something of potentiality is not act primarily) - so in the case of concepts must it be that every concept that is not simply simple [n.71], and yet is per se one, is resolved into a determinable and determining concept, such that resolution stops at simply simple concepts. That is, it stops at a concept that is determinable only, such that it include nothing determining it, and at a concept that is determining only, which does not include any determinable concept. The concept that is determinable only is the concept of being, and the concept that is determining only is the concept of ultimate difference. Therefore, these will be diverse primarily, such that one never includes the other.

134. The second claim, namely about the properties of being [n.131], I prove in two ways. First as follows: a property per se in the second mode A predication is per se in the second mode when the subject falls into the definition of the predicate, as ‘man is capable of laughter’, since laughter is expulsion of sound on the apprehension of the ridiculous, and only a man, a rational animal, has both a mind to apprehend the ridiculous (which is a sort of incongruity apprehended in things) and a physical mouth to expel sound on that apprehension. Angels, by contrast, can apprehend the ridiculous but do not have mouths to produce sound; their laughter is virtual. Brute animals have mouths to produce sound but no apprehension of the ridiculous (at least qua ridiculous). A predication is per se in the first mode, by contrast, when the predicate falls into the definition of the subject, as precisely in ‘man is a rational animal’. ¹⁹ is predicated of the subject (Posterior Analytics 1.4.73a37-b5); therefore, the subject is put in the definition of the predicate as something added (from ibid. and Metaphysics 7.5.1031a2-14). Being therefore falls into the idea of its property as something added. For being does have its own properties, as is plain from the Philosopher in Metaphysics 4.2.1004b10-17, where he maintains that, just as a line qua line has properties, and number qua number, so there are certain properties of being qua being. But being falls into the idea of them as something added; therefore it is not in their quidditative idea as per se in the first mode. This is also confirmed by the Philosopher in Posterior Analytics 1.4.73a34-b5, ‘On the status of principles’, where he maintains that per se predications are not convertible; because if a predicate is said per se of a subject, the converse is not said per se but per accidens. Therefore if this predication ‘being is one’ is per se in the second mode, the predication ‘one is being’ is not per se in the first mode but per accidens as it were, as this proposition ‘what is capable of laughter is man’.

135. Second as follows: being seems to be sufficiently divided (as regard division into the things that include it quidditatively) into uncreated being and into the ten categories and the essential parts of the ten categories. At least it does not seem to have more things quidditatively dividing it, however it may be with these divisions. Therefore if ‘one’ and ‘true’ include being quidditatively, being will be contained under some one of them. But being is not one of the ten categories, as is plain; nor is it of itself uncreated being, because it belongs to created beings. So it would be a species in some genus, or an essential principle of some genus. But this is false, because every essential part in any genus, and all the species of any genus, include some limitation, and so any transcendental would be of itself finite, and consequently would be repugnant to infinite being, and could not be said of infinite being formally - which is false, because all transcendentals state perfections simply and belong to God supremely.

136. Thirdly it can be argued (and herein is confirmed the first argument [n.132] for this conclusion [n.131]), that if ‘one’ includes being quidditatively, it does not include precisely being, because then that being would be its own property. Therefore it includes being and something else. Let that something else be a; either then a includes being or it does not. If it does, ‘one’ would include being twice, and there would be an infinite regress. Or, wherever a stop will be made, let that last thing, which belongs to the idea of ‘one’ and does not include being, be called a: the ‘one’, by reason of the included ‘being’, is not a property [of being], because the same thing is not a property of itself, and consequently that other included thing, which is a, is primarily the property, and is such that it does not include being quidditatively. And so, whatever is primarily a property of being does, thereby, not include being quidditatively. The term ‘one’ states a property of being (it states being as undivided). So if ‘being’ belonged to the quiddity of ‘one’, and if therefore the predication ‘one is being’ were per se in the first mode with ‘being’ falling into the definition of ‘one’, then the ‘being’ which falls into the definition of ‘one’ would be the definition of a property of being, and being would be a property of itself. So if, to avoid this, ‘one’ is said to include being and something else in its definition, as in ‘one is undivided being’, then the something else, namely ‘undivided’, either includes being in its definition or it does not. If it does, then ‘undivided’ is defined as ‘undivided being’ and wherever ‘undivided’ appears one can replace it with the definition ‘undivided being’. Consequently, to say ‘one is undivided being’ is to say ‘one is undivided being being’, and then to say ‘one is undivided being being being’, and so on ad infinitum. So if, alternatively, one makes a stop at ‘undivided’ and does not define ‘undivided’ as ‘undivided being’, and if therefore in the definition of one as ‘undivided being’ the ‘being’ is excluded from the definition of ‘undivided’ but is still included in the definition of ‘one’, then this ‘one’ is, after all, not the relevant property of being but rather the ‘undivided’ is, and this ‘undivided’ cannot now, ex hypothesi, include ‘being’ in its definition. ²⁰

B. About the First Object of the Intellect

137. As to the second article [n.130] I say that it follows from these four reasons [nn.132-135 - with n.136 as a fifth complementing the first] that, since nothing can be more common than being and since being cannot be a common univocal term asserted in the ‘what’ of all per se intelligibles (because not so asserted of ultimate differences, nor of the properties of them) - it follows that nothing is a first object of our intellect on account of its commonness in the ‘what’ as to every per se intelligible. And yet this notwithstanding, I do say that the first object of our intellect is being, for in being there comes together a double primacy, namely of commonness and virtuality; because every per se intelligible either essentially includes the idea of being, or is contained virtually or essentially in something that essentially includes the idea of being. For all genera and species and individuals, and all the essential parts of genera, and uncreated being, include being quidditatively; but all ultimate differences are included in some of these essentially, and all the properties of being are included virtually in being and in what falls under being. Therefore, the things for which being is not a univocal term asserted in their ‘what’ are included in those for which being is thus univocal. And thus is it plain that being has a primacy of commonness in respect of the first intelligibles, that is, in respect of the quidditative concepts of genera and species and individuals, and of the essential parts of all of them, and of uncreated being. And being has a primacy of virtuality in respect of all intelligibles included in the first intelligibles, that is, in respect of the qualitative concepts of ultimate differences and of proper properties.

138. But as to my supposing [n.137] that there is a commonness to being said in the ‘what’ as to all the aforesaid quidditative predicates [n.137] - the proof of it as to all of them is the two arguments set down in the first question of this distinction [nn.27, 35], to prove being’s commonness to created and to uncreated being. To make the point clear I go through them in some fashion:

The first as follows: for, as to any of the aforesaid quidditative concepts [n.137], it is possible for the intellect to be certain that it is being while in doubt as to the differences that contract being to such a concept;a and so the concept of being as it belongs to that concept is other than the concepts under being which the intellect is doubtful of, and other in the way it is included in each of the concepts under it, for the differences that contract them presuppose a same common concept of being that they are contracting. In other words, the intellect is certain that all the stated concepts of being are beings but in doubt as to how or what differentiates or contracts them. So the intellect has a concept of being common to, and undifferentiated from, all the kinds and categories of being whose differences it is doubtful of. So the concept of being it has is, as far as it goes, the same for them all, that is, univocal. ²¹

a.a [Interpolated text] whether it be such a being or not, it is another concept of quidditative being and of the differences that the intellect is doubtful about.

139. The second reason I treat of as follows: just as the argument was also made [n.35] that God is knowable to us naturally only if being is univocal to what is created and what is uncreated, so can the argument be made about substance and accident. For if substance does not immediately move our intellect to an intellection of itself but only the sensible accident does, it follows that we will be able to have no quidditative concept of substance unless some such concept can be abstracted from the concept of an accident; but no such quidditative concept is abstractable from the concept of an accident save the concept of being.

140. And as to the supposition made about substance [n.139], that it does not move our intellect immediately to an act about itself, the proof of this is that whatever by its presence affects the intellect,a the absence of it can naturally be known by the intellect when it is not being affected - as is plain from On the Soul 2.2.425b21, that sight has perception of darkness, namely when light is not present and when therefore the sight is then not being affected. Therefore, if the intellect is naturally moved by substance immediately to an act about that substance, the consequence would be that when substance was not present it could be naturally known not to be present, and so it could naturally be known that the substance of bread is not in the consecrated host on the altar, which is manifestly false.

a.a [Interpolated text] “.. .in its absence it cannot be thus affected:” such is true of the senses, which are not moved in the absence of the object; but what is added ‘it can be known in its absence’ is true indeed of the intellect, which reflects on its own act when the act is present, and on the absence of the act when it is not present; but then the example about sight needs explicating. The first major [“whatever by its presence affects the intellect, its absence can naturally be known by the intellect when it is not being affected”] suffices for the point at issue; the second [ “.in its absence it cannot be thus affected” supra here] is more manifestly probative. It is indeed true, but not proved by the example [of sight].

141. Response [to the above]: the proof [n.140] disproves intuitive knowledge of substance, because of that knowledge is the major true [sc. “the intellect perceives absence when it is not being affected”]; but it does not disprove abstractive knowledge, which does not fail because of a real absence of the object; neither then is its absence perceived.

142. Again, what is assumed about the senses [n.140] is dubious; since the senses do not retain the species of the object in the absence of the object and do not receive the species of darkness, how will they know darkness?

143. Against the first [n.141]: abstractive cognition necessarily presupposes that, at some point, the real presence was obtained of the thing that abstractive cognition, or the species, remains over from - the species being the principle of abstractive cognition. He who has only seen the eucharist never had the real presence of the object that is the cause, intermediately, of the abstractive intellection. Someone else who did see some other bread did have [that real presence]. Therefore, the first will not have abstractive cognition of bread, the second will - which is flatly against experience, because each can have a like act in himself of understanding that he is experiencing bread.

If it be said, in shameless denial, ‘suppose the first one afterwards saw another bread, then he will afterwards be capable of the abstractive knowledge of bread that he was not capable of before’ - he experiences the opposite in himself, for he is disposed now in like way as before. Again, he who can know an absent object abstractively can know it intuitively when it is present in existence; and if you know the substance of something known abstractively, then you know it intuitively when it is present; and then the absence etc. [n.140: “when substance was not present it could be naturally known not to be present, and so it could naturally be known that the substance of bread is not in the consecrated host on the altar, which is manifestly false”].

144. To the objection about the senses [n. 142]. Darkness is known by argument -not by the sight but by the power that argues thus, ‘the eye is looking, and it is not blind, and it is not seeing; so there is darkness’. The fact is plain: if one of the three premises is passed over the conclusion does not follow. None of the three propositions is known to sight as knowing that proposition, or the union [‘is’] or separation [‘is not’] of the extreme terms, because neither is the third one known (which there would more seem to be knowledge of). Because sight does not know its own act when it is present; This act of seeing is known to be sure, but by the interior common sense, not by the exterior sense of the eyes, which see the visible object but not themselves. ²² therefore it does not know the privation when the act is not present.

There is an explanation for Aristotle’s remark that there is sight of darkness [n.140]; because darkness is privation of sight’s object; therefore darkness is cause of sight’s not being affected, and thus is darkness perceived, not by sight but by another power, which takes privation of act in the sight for presence [sc. of privation].

145. No quidditative concept, then, of substance is possessed naturally that is caused by substance immediately, but only one that is first caused by or abstracted from accident; and it is a concept only of being.

146. By the same fact is also proved the proposed thesis [n.139] about the essential parts of substance. For if matter does not move the intellect to an act about matter, and if the substantial form does not either, I ask what simple concept of matter or form will be had in the intellect. If you say that it is some relative concept (as of a part), or a concept per accidens (as of some property or matter or form), I ask what the quidditative concept is to which this per accidens or relative concept is attributed. But no quidditative concept can be had save one that is impressed by or abstracted from what moves the intellect, namely by or from an accident; and it will be a concept of being. And so nothing will be known of the essential parts of substance unless being is something common univocal to them and to accidents.

147. These arguments [nn.27-44, 138-139] do not include the univocity of being that is said in the ‘what’ as to ultimate differences and properties [nn.132-136].

This is shown about the first argument [nn.27, 138], because: Either the intellect is, as to some such [ultimate difference or property], certain that it is a being (doubting whether it is this one or that one), yet not certain that it is a being by quiddity instead of by a sort of predication per accidens. Or in another way, and better, any such concept is simply simple [n.71], and so cannot be conceived in some respect and be unknown in another respect, as is plain from the Philosopher, Metaphysics 10.10.1051b25-28, about concepts simply simple; for it is not possible to be deceived about them as it is about the quiddity of complex ones. But this is not to be understood as if a simple understanding may be formally deceived in intellection of a quiddity, because there is no true or false in simple intellection. But as to a composite quiddity it is possible for a simple understanding to be deceived virtually. For if the idea is in itself false, then it includes a false proposition virtually. But what is simply simple does not include virtually, proximately, or formally a false proposition, and so there is no deception about it; for either it is attained totally, or it is not attained, and then it is altogether unknown. Error or deception is possible in two ways in general. Either terms are combined in a statement in a way they are not combined in fact, as when the cat is said to be in the garden although it is in the house. Or a single but complex term combines in itself what is not or cannot be combined in fact, as a round square or the thirty third day of June. The first kind are actually false or deceptive because they actually state what is not the case. The second kind are virtually false or deceptive because, while they actually state nothing (they are terms, not combinations of terms), they imply a false statement, as that some square is round or that a certain day is the thirty third of June. However, if there are concepts that are simply simple, and do not combine several elements and are not placed with other terms in a statement, then these can in no way be false or deceptive; for they neither state anything nor combine anything. Such concepts are either known fully or not known at all. ²³ About no simply simple concept then can there be certitude as to something of it and doubt as to something else of it.

148. Through this are things plain as to the second argument set down above [n.35], because such a simply simple concept is altogether unknown unless the whole of it in itself be conceived.

149. In a third way can response be made [sc. to objections] as to the first argument [sc. in addition to the two, the ‘Either.. .Or’, in n. 147, about the argument in n.27]. For the concept about which there is certitude is different from those about which there is doubt. And if that certain same concept is preserved with either of two doubtful ones, it is truly univocal in the way it is taken with either of the two of them. But it is not necessary that it be present in the ‘what’ in both of them. But either it is so, or it is univocal to them as a determinable to what determine it [as ‘being’ is determinable by the ‘in itself’ or ‘in another’ that determine it to substance or accident] or as a denominable to what denominate it [sc. as ‘being’ is denominable by the ‘undivided’ or ‘divided’ that denominate it as ‘one’ or ‘many’; cf. n.133].

150. Hence in brief: being is univocal in everything. But it is univocal in non-simply simple concepts when said of them in the ‘what’. In simply simple concepts it is univocal but as determinable or denominable, and not as said of them in the ‘what’, because this includes a contradiction [nn.132-136].

151. From these points [nn.129-150] is apparent how a double primacy comes together in being, namely the primacy of commonness in the ‘what’ as to all non-simply simple concepts, and the primacy of virtuality (in itself or in what is under it) as to all simply simple concepts. And that this double concurrent primacy suffice for being to be the first object of the intellect (though being have neither of the primacies precisely as to all per se intelligibles) - I make this clear through an example: because if sight were per se cognitive of all properties and differences of color in general and of all species and individuals, and yet color were not included quidditatively in the differences and properties of colors, sight would still have the same first object that it now has, because, by running through them all, nothing else would be adequate to it. So the first object would not then be included in all its per se objects, but every per se object would either include it essentially or would be included in something essentially or virtually including it. And thus would a double primacy come together in it, namely primacy of commonness on its own part and primacy of virtuality in itself or in what falls under it. And this double primacy would suffice for the idea of the first object of this power.a

a.a [Cancelled note by Scotus] If good be posited to be the first object of the will, how is truth per se wantable, since truth does not have good for first or for virtual predicable with respect to itself, or even with respect to what has a subordinate concept that contains it essentially or virtually?

C. Arguments against the Univocity of Being and their Solution

152. Argument is made against this univocity of being [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.28 q.3, a26 q.2, a.21 q.2 ad 2]:

From the Philosopher Metaphysics 3.10.998b22-24, that according to him in that place being is not a genus, because then, according to him, difference would not be a per se being; but if being were a common assertion in the ‘what’ of several things different in species, it would seem to be a genus. A genus is asserted of a species through the difference proper to each species, as the genus ‘animal’ is said of the species ‘man’ through the difference ‘rational’. Accordingly, the difference cannot already be included in the genus, because then the genus would be the genus only of things with that difference. For if ‘animal’ included ‘rational’, then ‘animal’ could only be the genus of man and of no other animal. If ‘being’, therefore, is a genus, and differences are outside the genus, then differences cannot be being, which would mean they could hardly differentiate anything. To avoid this result and to allow differences also to be being, the solution seems to be to deny that being is a genus. But if being is a common term predicated in the ‘what’ of the things that fall under it (as ‘animal’ is a common term predicated in the ‘what’ of the several species of animal), then being does seem to be a genus. Therefore, being cannot be such a common or univocal term. ²⁴

153. The same Aristotle also, in Metaphysics 4.2.1003a23-35, b11-14, maintains that being is said of beings as healthy is said of things healthy, and that metaphysics is one science, not because everything it is about is said according to one thing, but because it is said in relation to one thing, namely not univocally but analogically. Therefore, the subject of metaphysics is not univocal but analogical.

154. The same Aristotle also, Metaphysics 7.1.. .18-20, 4.1030a23-27, b2-3, says that accidents are only beings because they are of being, as logicians say that ‘not-being is’ and ‘the not-knowable is knowable’, and as a vase is said to be ‘healthy’. In all these examples there is no univocity to the term said of many things.

155. And Porphyry, Book of Predicables 3, “If one call all things beings, one will,” he says, “be naming them equivocally.”

156. Again, Physics 1.2.185a20-21 [Henry, Summa a.21 q.2 ad 3], against Parmenides and Melissus, “The beginning is that being is said in many ways.” And he [Aristotle] argues that if all things are one being, then they are either this one being or that one being, which would not follow if being were univocal, just as this does not follow: every man is one man, therefore he is this one man or that one man. If ‘being’ were univocal to all beings, as ‘man’ is univocal to all men, then the statement that being is one would no more be to say that being is this one being or that one being than the statement that man is one would be to say that man is either this one man or that one man. Rather, it would be to say that being is one species as man is one species. ²⁵

157. Again by reason [Henry, Summa a.28 q.3, a.26 q.2]: if being were univocal as to the ten categories, then it would divide into them through differences. So let a and b be two such differences: therefore either these two include being, and then in the concept of any most general genus there would be trifling repetition; or these are not beings, and then non-being would belong to the understanding of being. A genus is divided into species through the addition of a difference, as animal, say, is divided through the differences ‘winged’ and ‘footed’ into winged animals (birds etc.) and footed animal (horses etc.). So if being is a genus divided into the categories of substance and accidents by differences in the same way, and if these differences include being (as the differences ‘in-itself being’ and ‘in-another being’), then substance will have to be defined, say, as ‘in-itself being being’, and accidents as ‘in-another being being’, and so on, which is trifling repetition. Alternatively, if the differences are not beings, then substance and accidents will be defined by differences that are not beings, or by things that do not exist. ²⁶

158. To the first argument [n.152]. It is not necessary that the arguments of Metaphysics 3 assert what they conclude, because the Philosopher is intending there to argue to opposite sides of the questions he is disputing (as he himself says by way of preface in the introduction, 3.1.995a24-b4), yet two opposite conclusions cannot be reached unless one or other argument is sophistical (hence the Commentator on the Metaphysics [Averroes, Metaphysics 3 com.3] says of the first argument there for the first question disputed that it is a fallacy of the consequent: ‘if contraries belong to the same science, then non-contraries do not belong to the same science’ The argument is of the form, ‘if contrary, then same science; but not contrary; therefore not the same science’, which is to infer a denial of the consequent from a denial of the antecedent. The inference is fallacious, as is clear in this example of Rover the dog: if Rover is a cat, Rover is an animal; Rover is not a cat; therefore Rover is not an animal. ²⁷). Also, this argument specifically [n.152] should not be held to be conclusive. For he argues there, “wherefore if ‘one’ or ‘being’ is a genus, no difference will be either ‘one’ or ‘being’,” and my question is: Either he intends to infer that the difference ‘one’ or ‘being’ will not be per se in the first mode, and in this way the conclusion is not unacceptable as far as ‘one’ is concerned. Or he intends to infer the negative absolutely, and then the consequence is not valid; for it is not the case that, if ‘rational’ is a difference with respect to ‘animal’, therefore ‘rational is not animal’ but that ‘it is not per se animal in the first mode’.

[Although the above about the argument be true], yet if one holds that this argument [n.152] is valid, it proves rather the opposite than the conclusion intended. For not because of equivocation does it remove from being the idea of genus (on the contrary, if being were equivocal as to the ten genera, there would be ten genera, because the same concept, by whatever name it be signified, has the idea of genus the same); rather does it remove the idea of genus from being because of being’s excessive commonness, The Vatican editors helpfully refer to Topics 4.6.127a28-30: “If then we assign being as a genus, it will plainly be the genus of everything by the fact it is predicated of them; for of nothing is a genus predicated save of its species.” ²⁸ namely because it is predicated of difference in the first mode per se, and from this could it be concluded that being is not a genus.

159. And to see how this is be true [sc. “it removes the idea of genus from being because of being’s excessive commonness”] - although however it was said before [nn.131-133] that being is not predicated of ultimate differences in the first mode per se -I draw a distinction in the case of differences, that some difference can be taken from the ultimate essential part, which is a different thing and a different nature from that from which the concept of genus is taken; it is as if a plurality of forms is posited and genus is said to be taken from the prior essential part and the specific difference from the ultimate form. Then, just as being is said in the ‘what’ of the essential part from which such specific difference is taken, so is it said in the ‘what’ of such difference in the abstract, such that, just as ‘the intellective soul is a being’ is said in the ‘what’ (taking the same concept of being as is said of man or of whiteness), so is ‘rationality is a being’ said in the ‘what’, if ‘rationality’ is such a difference.

But no such difference is ultimate, because contained in such a difference are many realities in some way distinct (with the sort of distinction or non-identity that in the first question of the second distinction I said existed between essence and personal property [Ord. I d.2 nn.388-410] - or a greater distinction, as will be explained elsewhere [Ord. II d.1 q.4 n.25, a.6 n.5, IV d.11 p.1 a.2 q.1 n.54]). And then such a nature can be conceived in a certain respect, that is, in respect of some reality and perfection, and in a certain respect not known - and therefore a concept of such a nature is not simply simple [n.147]. But the ultimate reality or real perfection of such a nature (from which reality the ultimate difference is taken) is simply simple; this reality does not include being quidditatively but has a concept simply simple. Hence if such a reality be a, this statement ‘a is a being’ is not said in the ‘what’, but is per accidens, and this whether a state that reality or state the difference in the abstract that is taken from such reality.

160. Therefore did I say before [nn.133, 150] that no difference simply ultimate includes being quidditatively, because it is simply simple. But some difference, taken from an essential part (which part is the nature in the real thing, different from the nature from which genus is taken) - that difference is not simply simple and it does include being in its ‘what’. And from this fact, that such a difference is being in its ‘what’, it follows that being, because of the excessive commonness of being, is not a genus. For no genus is said in the ‘what’ of any difference under it, neither of the difference that is taken from the form, nor of the difference that is taken from the ultimate reality of the form (as will be plain in Ord. d.8 p.1 q.3 nn.16, 14); for always that from which the concept of genus is taken is in itself potential with respect to the reality from which the concept of the difference is taken - or with respect to the form if the difference is taken from the form.

161. And if you argue against this [Averroes, Metaphysics IV com.3] that, if ‘rational’ includes being quidditatively, and if any like difference does (namely any difference that is taken from an essential part, not from its ultimate reality), then, by adding such difference to the genus, there will be trifling repetition because ‘being’ will be said twice If the difference ‘rational’ includes being in its whatness then ‘rational’ is equivalent to ‘rational-being’, and the genus ‘animal’ (which also includes being in its whatness on this view) is equivalent to ‘animal-being’, and then to say ‘man is a rational animal’ will be equivalent to the trifling repetition, ‘man is a rational-being animalbeing’. Also and incidentally (as in the earlier footnote to n.136), if ‘rational’ means ‘rational-being’, then to say ‘man is a rational animal’ amounts to saying ‘man is a rational-being animal’ and then, by repeated substitution of ‘rational-being’ for ‘rational’, to saying ‘man is a rational-being-being animal’, and so on ad infinitum. ²⁹ - I reply that when two things inferior to a third are so related that one denominates the other [e.g. ‘white animal’], the term common to them in particular [‘being’] denominates itself. Just as ‘whiteness’, which is inferior to being, denominates ‘animal’, which is inferior to being, and therefore, just as this statement ‘the animal is white’ is denominative [‘white’ denominated from ‘whiteness’], so ‘being’, which is superior to ‘white’, can denominate ‘animal’ [sc. as in ‘the animal is beingal’ ‘Beingal’ is a made-up adjective from ‘being’ and the suffix ‘-al’, mimicking Scotus’ own made up adjective ‘ent-ale’ from ‘ens’. ³⁰], or denominate being taken particularly for animal [sc. as in ‘the animal-being is beingal’]. For example, if the denominative were ‘beingal’, this proposition would be true ‘some being is beingal’. And just as I concede an accidental denomination there without trifling repetition - nor yet does the altogether same thing, conceived in the same way, denominate itself [‘being is beingal’ is not trifling repetition nor is ‘being’ altogether the same, or conceived in the same way, as ‘beingal’] - so here with ‘rational animal’. For in ‘animal’ being is included quidditatively [sc. ‘animal-being’] and in ‘rational’ being is included denominatively [sc. ‘rational-beingal’]; and just as rationality is being so rational is denominated by being. There would be trifling repetition here in ‘rationality animal’ [= ‘rational-being animal-being’], not here in ‘rational animal’ [= ‘rational-beingal animalbeing’]; just as there would be here in ‘whiteness animal’ [= ‘white-being animal-being’], not here in ‘white animal’ [‘white-beingal animal-being’].

162. To the next argument [n.153], which is said about Metaphysics 4, I say that the Philosopher in Metaphysics 10.2.1054a9-11 concedes that there is an essential order between species of the same genus, because he maintains there that in a genus there is one first that is the measure of the others. Now things measured have an essential order to the measure, and yet, notwithstanding such attribution, everyone would concede that the concept of a genus is one, otherwise the genus would not be predicated in the ‘what’ of several things differing in species. For if the genus did not have one concept, different from the concepts of the species, no concept would be said in the ‘what’ of many things, but each concept would only be said of itself, and then nothing would be predicated as genus of species, but as the same of the same.

163. Similarly, the Philosopher in Physics 7.4.249a22-23 says that ‘equivocations are latent in a genus’, because of which there cannot be comparison according to genus. However, there is no equivocation as far as the logician is concerned, who posits diverse concepts, but there is equivocation as far as the philosopher is concerned, because there is no unity of nature there. Thus all the authorities, therefore, that there might be in the Metaphysics and Physics which would be on this subject, could be given an exposition because of the real diversity of the things that there is an attribution in with which, however, there stands a unity of concept abstractable form them - as was plain in the example [n.162]. I concede then that the whole of what accident is has an essential attribution to substance, and yet from this accident and from that a common concept can be abstracted [n.145].

164. To the points made from Metaphysics 7 [n.154] I reply that the text of the final paragraph on that material solves all the authorities from the Philosopher (the text which begins there ‘But clearly that...’, 4.1030b4-12). For the Philosopher says there that “what is first and simply definition and the ‘what it was to be’ belongs to substances; and not only to them but to other things it belongs simply, yet not first.” And he proves it there, that the idea that signifies the ‘what’ of the name is the definition [n.16], if that of which the idea is per se said is per se one. “But ‘one’ is said as being also is said,” and understand ‘per se being’; and “per se being indeed signifies ‘this’, and ‘this something’, and quantity another, quality another,” which is true of per se being, because in Metaphysics 5.7.1017a22-27 he divided ‘being per se’ into the ten categories; so each of them is per se one, and so the idea of them is a definition. And he concludes this there, “For which reason there will be an idea and definition of man, and differently of white and of substance” - because of substance per se and first, of white simply and per se but not first, of white man in a certain respect and per accidens. Hence in that chapter he treats principally of such ‘being per accidens’, of which sort is ‘white man’, because there is of it no definition. ‘Being’, therefore, and ‘what’ or ‘has a definition’, and any of these, is said simply of accident or of attributes, as also of substance, but not equally first. And notwithstanding the ordering, there can well be univocity.

165. As to Porphyry [n.155], he himself alleges someone else, saying “he speaks equivocally.” Who ‘speaks’? Aristotle, of course, about whom Porphyry is speaking. A place where Aristotle said this is not found in the Logic. In the Metaphysics he says it, as has already been alleged and expounded [n.164]. If someone want to treat of Porphyry’s authority, how his argument from the authority of Aristotle is of value for his purpose, it could be given an exposition, but I do not wish to dwell on it.

166. To what is argued about Physics 1 [n.156], I reply: for destroying the opinion of Parmenides and Melissus [sc. the opinion that everything is one] “the beginning” is to accept that being is said ‘in many ways’, not ‘equivocally’, but ‘in many ways’, that is, ‘about many things’. One must inquire which of these things they mean. Just as, if they were to say ‘everything is one animal’, it would be against them to distinguish ‘animal’ and to ask which animal they mean, either all animals or “one man or one horse” [Physics 1.2.185a24]. Again, when you say the argument of the Philosopher would not be valid against them if being were univocal, I reply that the consequence [‘either this one man or that one man’, n.156], when descent is made under a predicate standing for [its instances] only confusedly, does not hold formally, but there is [a fallacy of] figure of speech and a fallacy of the consequent. In other words, the argument of the Philosopher against Parmenides and Melissus fails regardless of any question of the univocity of being, because it fails by taking the predicate ‘one’ determinately when the argument takes it confusedly (which is to take in one figure of speech what is meant in another figure). If however there is no fallacy of figure of speech but ‘one’ is meant determinately not confusedly (as Parmenides and Melissus did seem to mean it), then the Philosopher’s argument does not fail. In either event, the matter of the univocity of being is irrelevant. ³¹ Yet if they did mean, as the Philosopher imputes to them, that ‘all things are one’ not speaking of ‘one’ confusedly but of some determinate one thing, then on the antecedent so understood [‘if all things are one being’] the consequent that everything is this one or that one does indeed follow. No reply is given by Scotus to the objection of Henry in n.157, but the reason is probably that it was effectively answered in the discussion of the first objection [nn.152-161], that there will be no trifling repetition when the thesis about how being is said of things is properly explained. ³²

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].

IV. Doubt about the First Object of the Intellect for this Present State

185. But there remains a doubt why, if being according to its most common idea is the first object of the intellect, anything contained under being cannot naturally move the intellect, as was argued in the first argument for the first question [n.25]; and in that case it seems that God, and all immaterial substances, could be naturally known by us, which has been denied [nn.56-57]. Indeed, this has been denied about all substances and all essential parts of substances, because it has been said [n.137] that they are not conceived in any quidditative concept save in the concept of being.

186. I reply. That is assigned to be the first object of a power which is adequate to the power by reason of the power, but not that which is adequate to the power in any state, just as the first object of sight is not posited to be what is adequate to sight existing in a medium that is illuminated by a candle precisely, but what is of a nature to be adequate to sight of itself, as far as concerns the nature of sight. But now, as was proved before [nn.113-119] (against the first opinion about the first, that is, adequate object of the intellect, which opinion posits the quiddity of a material thing to be the first object), nothing can, in idea of first object, be made adequate to our intellect by the nature of the power save the most common object; however what is adequate to the intellect in idea of what moves it for this present state is the quiddity of a material thing, and therefore the intellect for this present state will not understand other things that are not contained under this first mover of it.

187. But what is the idea of this state? I reply: a ‘state’ seems to be nothing but a ‘stable permanence’ secured by laws of wisdom. Now it has been secured by those laws that our intellect for this present state understands only the things whose species shine forth in a phantasm - and this either because of penalty for original sin, or because of the natural concord of the powers of the soul in operating, according as we see a superior power operate on the same thing that an inferior power operates on, if each is going to have perfect operation. And so in fact it is in our case, that, as to whatever universal we understand, we have a phantasm actually of a singular instance of it. However, this concordance, which is in fact for this present state, does not belong to the nature of the intellect from the fact it is an intellect; nor even from the fact it is in a body, because then it would have a like concordance in a glorious body, which is false. Wherever this present state comes from, then, whether from the pure will of God, or from punitive justice (which cause Augustine points to On the Trinity 15 n.50, “What is the cause,” he says, “why you cannot see the light with a fixed gaze unless, to be sure, it is infirmity? And who made it for you save, to be sure, iniquity?”) - whether, I say, this is the total cause, or there is some other one, at any rate there is, from the fact the intellect is a power and a nature, no first object of it save something common to all intelligibles, even though the first object, adequate to it in moving it, be for this present state the quiddity of a sensible thing.

188. And if you say, granted that being in common would be the adequate common object for this present state, yet separate substances would not move the intellect save in a greater light than is the natural light of the agent intellect - this reason seems no reason. First, because if such light is required, there is no reason on the part of the intellect, from the fact it is such a power, why it could not now have such light; for it is of itself receptive of such light, otherwise it could, while remaining the same, never receive it. Second, because when a pair of agents run together for some effect, the more that one of them can supply the place of the other, the more is a lesser perfection required in the other - and sometimes no perfection at all if it supply the whole place of the other; but the object and light run together for acting on the possible intellect; therefore, the more the object is more perfect and more able to supply the place of light, the more does a lesser light suffice, or at any rate a greater light is not required. But the first intelligible is light maximally and able maximally to supply the place of intellectual light; therefore if, as far as concerns its own part, it be conceived under the first object adequate to our intellect for this present state, there would not be any defect on the part of the light without its being able to move our intellect.

V. To the Initial Arguments

189. Reply to the main arguments of this question [nn.108-109]. As to the first [n.108] I say that not always is the most perfect thing cause with respect to imperfect things, when comparing imperfect things to any third thing (just as a perfect white thing is not cause of visibility for all visibles). Or if it is the cause, yet not the precise and adequate cause; and if it is the most moving cause, yet not the precise and adequate cause. But the first object of the intellect that we are speaking of in this question has to be the first thing adequate to the power.

190. To the second argument [n.109] I say that, if it be rightly argued, the inference should be ‘no participated being can be known unless it is from un-participating being’, and the inference should not be that ‘it cannot be known save by reason of a known un-participating being’; for then there are four terms [in the syllogism], because what is put in the conclusion is that ‘it is known through un-participating being’, which term was not in the second proposition. The syllogism being criticized is (to put it schematically): each thing is disposed to knowledge as it is disposed to being; a being by participation is from un-participating being; therefore a being by participation is known from un-participating being’s being known. The error is the addition of ‘being known’ to ‘un-participating being’ in the conclusion, which was not in the second premise and so gives four terms to the syllogism whereas a syllogism is only valid with three. Remove that addition (which addition is what produces the fourth term) and a revised conclusion follows: therefore a being by participation is known from un-participating being. But this conclusion no longer supports the thesis, namely that God is the first object of the intellect’s knowing. ³⁶ And the real reason for this defect indicated in the form of the argumentation was stated before in replying to the first argument of the second question of this distinction [n.100]; because although knowability does proportionally follow being, yet it does not follow it in being known save in relation to ‘the intellect that knows each thing according to the degree of its knowability’ [n.100]. So I say here that, although participating being necessarily concludes to un-participating knowability (and thus does it have participating knowability because of the unparticipating knowable), yet it is not known through the un-participating knowable as this latter is known, but as it is the cause that gives being to the former. And this was touched on in a certain argument about enjoyment in the fourth question of the first distinction [Ord. I d.1 n.148].

191. As to the remark [n.109] from Augustine On the Trinity 8 ch.3 n.4, I say that he is speaking about the knowledge of good in general that is impressed in us, that is, which is easily impressed in the intellect by singulars, because universal intentions [concepts] arise in anyone rather easily.

I prove this from the same Augustine in the same book, On the Trinity 8 ch.4 n.7, where he says, “We have knowledge of human nature implanted in us as a matter of rule, according to which knowledge we know that whatever we see of this sort is man or the form of man.” And just as according to this knowledge of man (which he says is “implanted as a matter of rule,” that is, easily abstracted from sensible objects) we judge about anything at all whether it is a man or not, so also could we by the same fact judge eminence in humanity, if it were present in what is in front of us,a which fact is clear from the impressed knowledge of whiteness whereby we judge not only that this thing in front of us is white but that this one is whiter than another. So I say here: this good thing that Augustine is speaking about in ibid. ch. 4 (knowledge of which is naturally impressed in the intellect) is good in common, and thereby do we judge, about the things in front us, that this one is better.

a.a [Interpolated text] just as about the things in front of us we judge that this is better than something else.

192. And that he is speaking [n.109] about the good that is ‘indeterminate privatively’, and not about the good ‘indeterminate negatively’ (in which latter good God is understood), is seen from this, that there, after he has enumerated the many particular goods, he says, “As to this good and that good, take away the ‘this’ and take away the ‘that’ and see the good itself, if you can” - that is: “take away the things that contract the idea of good to creatures and see the idea of good in common,” and in this “you have seen God,” as if in a first common concept wherein he can be naturally seen by us, and not in a particular one as he is “this essence.”

193. In like manner must be understood what Augustine prefaces in ibid. ch.2 n.3 at ‘God is truth’ there: “Do not ask what truth is; phantasms will immediately put themselves in the way.” I understand this as follows: when a universal concept is abstracted from a singular, the more universal it is the more difficulty the intellect has in resting in such a concept because, as was said before [n.187], “whatever universal we understand, we have a phantasm of a singular instance of it;” and that universal which is more similar to the singular shining forth in the phantasm we can understand more easily and for a longer time. Also the most universal concepts are more remote from the singular, and so it is very difficult to rest in the concept of the most universal ones. Therefore, when conceiving God in the most universal concept, “do not ask what it is,” do not descend to a particular concept in which that more universal concept is preserved, which more particular concept is closer to the phantasm. For, by descending to the sort of concept that shines forth more in the phantasms that confront us, “at once the serenity of truth, in which God was being understood, is lost to us” [ibid. ch.2], because at once is a contracted truth understood that does not belong to God - to whom belonged the noncontracted truth conceived in common.

194. To the contrary: ibid. ch.3 n.5, “If you could have per se gazed at the good, you would have gazed at God; and if you have inhered therein with love, you will be perpetually blessed.” Blessedness is not in universal good and the privatively indeterminate.

Again, ibid. ch.6 n.9, “Whence could men be just save by inhering in the form they look upon, so that thence they may be formed?” To be formed by the form of justice is not to be formed by an understood universal.

195. From the same chapter I too reply to ibid. ch.3 n.5, about the good and will [n.194 first paragraph]: “Since other things are only loved because they are good, let it be a shameful thing not to love, when clinging to them, the good itself whereby they are good.”

The argument [n.194] does well prove that the supreme good itself is more to be loved than the goods that participate in it, yet it does not prove that it is the first thing loved with the primacy of adequacy; because too, even if it be the reason of the goodness in other things, and so the reason of their lovability, yet it as loved is not the reason of the others as loved, for something can be deeply loved when it is not loved, as is plain when using what should be enjoyed or enjoying what should be used [Augustine, 83 Questions q.30].

196. And this meaning of Augustine’s is gathered from On the Trinity 9 ch.6 n.11, where in treating of the love of someone who is believed to be just, if afterwards he be found not to be just, “at once,” he says, “the love whereby I was being drawn to him, repelled and as it were thrust back, remains in the form it was when such I had loved him;” that is, if I loved justice, and loved him because I believed that in him was justice, if I find him unjust, my will springs back from him, but the love of justice itself, as of its object, still stands. This remark is not about any un-participating justice, but about the common idea of justice, which is loved for its own sake, and anything it is in is loved because of it.

197. On the contrary: the will is not of universals, both because it tends to the thing in itself, and because the love both of friendship and of concupiscence is love of something in its real existence, present or possible.

198. I reply [to n.197]. To the practical first principles in the intellect there corresponds some volition that is the principle of moral goodness, just as those principles are principles of practical truth in the intellect. It is plain too that any idea of the good and appetible can be understood in universal terms, and if it be thus shown to the will, why cannot the will have an act about its displayed proper object? Third, the appetitive singular, as singular only, does not have proper to itself a cognitive [power] for the universal.

199. To the metaphor of the motion of the soul to the thing [n.197 “the will tends to the thing in itself”], this is meant causally, because the will gives command for being joined to the desired thing in itself (but not formally save because the will is the active power of its own act). But it does not give command about the thing under a greater idea of existing than is apprehended by the intellect. On the contrary, desire and abstractive intellection are of the thing under the idea of it as existing just as much as under the idea of it as object (thus vision and enjoyment are of what is present); but desire moves effectively to the thing because it is a command; not so abstractive intellection.

200. To the second point [n.197, “the love both of friendship and of concupiscence is of something in its real existence”] I say that man shown in the universal is loved with love of friendship, and on that account is ‘this man’ loved; for thus is justice in the universal loved with love of concupiscence, and therefore is ‘this justice’ loved with love of concupiscence for ‘this man’.

201. So also [to n.194 second paragraph] is the exposition plain of the authority of Augustine On The Trinity VIII ch.6 n.9, “Why then do we love another whom we believe to be just and not the form itself where we see what a just mind is etc.” [n.125]. In that authority the form “where we see what a just mind is” must be understood to be justice itself in general; just as the form of man in general is that by which we see what is required to be a man, and by which form we judge that which is in front of us to be or not to be a man, according to him [n.191] in the same place [ibid. 8 ch.4 n.7]. Unless then we were to love the form in general we would not love him whom we believe to be just, whom by this form we love; just as, if you do not love the form of man in general, never will you love him, when he is front of you, because of the loved form of man. And, as long as we are not just, we love justice in general less than we should, because we love with a certain simple volition or a being pleased; and this is not sufficient to be just, but it is necessary to love justice with efficacious volition, namely a volition whereby he who wills would choose to observe justice in itself as the rule of his life. The justice here, then, is privatively indeterminate, and in accord with it do we judge of a just mind, and because of it do we love the mind we believe to be just.

Question Four. Whether any Certain and Sincere Truth could Naturally be Known by the Intellect of the Wayfarer without a Special Illumining of Uncreated Light

202. Finally, as concerns this matter of knowability, I ask whether any certain and sincere truth can naturally be known by the intellect of the wayfarer without a special illumining of uncreated light.

I argue that it cannot:

Augustine On the Trinity 9 ch.6 n.9, “Let us gaze on the inviolable truth from which we may define what sort of mind of man is due to eternal reasons.” And ibid. n.10, “When we approve or disapprove something rightly or not rightly, we are convicted into approving or disapproving by other rules abiding above us.” And ibid. n.11, “We grasp by simple intelligence an art ineffably beautiful above the acuity of the mind.” And in the same place, ch.7 n.12, “In that truth do we perceive the form by which all temporal things are made, and from it do we obtain true knowledge conceived as a word in us” [cf. Henry of Ghent, Summa a.1 q.2].

203. Again On the Trinity 12 ch.2 n.3, “It belongs to a sublimer reason to judge of these bodies according to eternal reasons.”

204. Again, ibid. ch.14 n.23, “Not only of sensible things located in their places are there abiding unchangeable reasons etc.” And that he means there eternal reasons truly in God is proved by this, that in the same place he says, “it belongs to few to reach them;” but if he meant first principles, to reach those does not belong to few but to many, because they are known and common to all.

205. Again ibid. 14 ch.15 n.21, when speaking of the unjust man who “rightly praises and blames many things in human morals,” he says, “By what rules does he judge etc.?” And at the end he says, “Where are those rules written, save in the book of light?” That book of light is the divine intellect. Therefore he maintains that in that light the unjust sees what is to be justly done, and that the light is seen in some impressed book or something impressed by the book, as he says ibid., “hence every just law is transmitted to the heart of man not by departing its origin but as it were by impression, as the image from a ring both passes into the wax and does not leave the wax.” The Vatican Editors note that ‘ .. .leave the wax’ is in the text of Scotus but ‘leave the ring’ in Augustine’s original. ³⁷ Therefore we see in the light by which justice is impressed on the heart of man. But that light is the uncreated light.

206. Again Augustine Confessions 12 ch.15 n.35, “If we both see the true, neither do you see it in me nor I in you, but both of us in that which is above the mind, the unchangeable truth.” And there are many other authorities from Augustine, in many places, for proving this conclusion [several collected by Henry of Ghent, Summa a.1 q.2].

207. To the opposite:

Romans 1.20, “The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are seen through the things that have been made, once they are understood.” These eternal reasons [nn.202-204] are the invisible things of God; therefore, they are known from creatures; so before they are seen, a knowledge of creatures is possessed that is certain.

I. Opinion of Henry

208. In this question there is an opinion of the following sort [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.1 q.2], that general intentions [concepts] have a natural ordering among themselves. Let us speak about the two intentions that relate to the issue at hand, namely the intention of being and of true.

The first intention is that of being, as is proved by what is said in the fourth proposition of On Causes, “The first of created things is ‘to be’,” and in the commentary on the first proposition, “‘To be’ is of greater inherence [sc. than truth];” and the reason is that being is absolute, truth states relation to an exemplar. From this follows that being can be known under the idea of being, even though not under the idea of truth.a

This conclusion is proved also on the part of the intellect: because being can be conceived in a simple intellection and then is that which is true conceived; but the idea of truth can only be conceived by an intellection that combines and divides [sc. terms in a proposition]; simple intellection precedes composition and division.

a.a [Interpolated text] and consequently that which is true can be known before truth itself is known [cf. Scotus, Lectura I d.3 n.153]

209. And if a question be asked about the knowledge of being, or of that which is true, it is said [sc. by Henry] that the intellect can, of its pure natural powers, thus understand the true, of which the proof is that it is unacceptable for “nature to be without is proper operation,” according to Damascene Orthodox Faith III ch.15 n.234. And this is more unacceptable in a more perfect nature, according to the Philosopher, On the Heavens 2.8.290a29-35, about the stars [Henry, Summa a.24 q.1, Scotus Ord. Prol. n.76].a Therefore, since the proper operation of the intellect is to understand the true, it seems unacceptable that nature would not have granted the intellect the things that are sufficient for this operation.

a.a [Interpolated text] because it would be very unacceptable for the stars to have power for progression and not have instruments for progression.

210. But if we speak about knowledge of truth, the response is made that, just as there is a double exemplar, created and uncreated (according to Plato in the Timaeus 2829, namely the made and non-made, created and non-created, exemplar; the created exemplar is the universal species created by the thing, the uncreated exemplar is the idea in the divine mind), so there is a double conformity to an exemplar and a double truth.

One is conformity to the created exemplar, and in this way did Aristotle [Metaphysics 1.1.981a5-7, Posterior Analytics 2.18.100a3-8; also Henry, ibid., a.1 q.1 ad 4] posit that the truths of things are known through their conformity to the intelligible species. And so does Augustine seems to posit in On the Trinity 8.4 n.7, where he maintains that we get the knowledge, general and special, of things collected from sensibles, according to which knowledge we judge about each thing that confronts us that it is this sort or that sort.

211. But that through such acquired exemplar in us an altogether certain and infallible knowledge of truth is obtained about a thing - this seems altogether impossible. And it is proved by a threefold reason, according to them [Henry, ibid., a.1 q.2]. The first is taken form the side of the thing of which an exemplar is abstracted; the second from the side of the subject in which it is; the third from the side of the exemplar in itself.

The first reason is of this sort: the object from which the exemplar is abstracted is changeable; therefore, it cannot be the cause of anything unchangeable; but the certain knowledge that anyone has about anything under the idea of truth is held in him through an unchangeable reason; therefore it is not held through such an exemplar. This reason is said to be Augustine’s in 83 Questions q.9, where he says that “truth is not to be expected from sensibles,” because “sensibles ceaselessly change.”

212. The second reason is of this sort: the soul is of itself changeable and subject to error; therefore by nothing changeable can it be set right or ruled over so as not to err; but such an exemplar in the soul is more changeable than is the soul itself; therefore the exemplar does not perfectly rule over the soul so that it not err.a This reason is said to be Augustine’s in On True Religion ch.30 n.56, “The law of all arts etc.”

a.a [Interpolated text] so a special higher influence is required [cf. Scotus Lectura I d.3 n.158; infra n.216]

213. The third reason: no one has a certain and infallible knowledge of truth unless he have whereby he could discriminate the true from the likely true; because if he cannot discriminate the true from the false or from the likely true he can be in doubt whether he is being deceived; but through the aforesaid created exemplar he cannot discriminate the true from the likely true; therefore etc. Proof of the minor: such a species can represent itself as itself or, in another way, as the object, as is the case in dreams. If it represent itself as the object, there is falsity; if it represent itself as itself, there is truth. Therefore, through such species, nothing is obtained that sufficiently distinguishes between when it represents itself as itself or when as the object, and so nothing is obtained either that sufficiently distinguishes the true from the false.

214. From these the conclusion is drawn that, if it do happen that man have knowledge of certain science and infallible truth, this does not happen to him by looking at an exemplar taken from the thing through the senses, however much this is purified and made universal; but what is required is that he look back at the uncreated exemplar. And then the mode of positing it is as follows: not as something known does God have the idea of exemplar by which, when being looked at, genuine truth is known, for he is known in a general attribute; but God is the reason for knowing as he is bare exemplar and proper reason of created essence.

215. As to how he can be the reason for knowing and not be something known, an example is posited, that it is just as a ray of the sun sometimes arrives in an oblique line, as it were, from its source and sometimes in a direct line; because although the reason for seeing what is seen in a ray that arrives in the first way is the sun, yet not as seen in itself; but for knowing what is seen in the ray in the second way the sun is the reason because it is also known. When therefore this uncreated light illumines the intellect in, as it were, a direct line, then it is, as seen, the idea of seeing other things in itself. But the uncreated light illumines our intellect for this state of life in, as it were, an oblique line, and therefore is it for our intellect an unseen reason for seeing.

216. And a way is posited how [the uncreated light] may possess a threefold idea in respect of the act of seeing, the idea namely of the light that stimulates, of the species that affects, of the character or exemplar that configures. And from this the conclusion is further drawn that a special influence is required, because just as that essence is not seen naturally by us in itself, so is that essence as it is exemplar with respect to a creature not naturally seen (according to Augustine On Seeing God [Epistle 147 to Paulina ch.6 n.18]), for that it is seen is in God’s power: “if he wants, it is seen; if he does not, it is not seen.”

217. Finally it is added that perfect knowledge of the truth is when two exemplar species come together in the mind: one inherent in it, namely the created one, the other flowing into it, namely the uncreated one; and thus do we attain the word of perfect truth.a

a.a [Interpolated text, in place of ‘and thus do we attain...’] shining in the mind. And after a single idea has from these two species been put together for understanding the thing whose idea it is, the mind conceives it [Henry, Summa a.1 q.3].

II. Attack on Henry’s Opinion and Solution of the Question

218. Against this opinion I show first [nn.219-228] that these reasons [nn.211-213] are not fundamental reasons for any true opinion, and that they are not in accord with Augustine’s intention, but favor the opinion of the Academic [sceptics]; second [nn.229-245] I show how the opinion of the Academics [n.227], which seems proved by these reasons, is false, and third [nn.246-257] I reply to the reasons insofar as they are not as probative; fourth [nn.258-260] I argue against the conclusion of this opinion [nn.214-217]; fifth [nn.261-279] I solve the question [n.202]; sixth [n.280] I show how the reasons, insofar as they are Augustine’s, prove the intention of Augustine, not the one for which they are here adduced.a

a.a [Note by Scotus] I argue against this opinion [nn.214-217] in itself, second against the fundamental reasons [n.211-213] that are adduced, or conversely [sc. against the reasons first and then the opinion]. The first includes the fourth article [n. 218] (which is a question directed at the man), and the second [n.218] (which is directed at the thing); the second article includes the first (here) and the third and sixth; the fifth [n.218] article, therefore, is the solution of the question.

A. Against the Fundamental Reasons Adduced

219. First. These reasons [nn.211-213] seem to prove the impossibility of natural certain knowledge.

The first because if the object is ceaselessly changing, neither is it possible for any certitude to be had of it under the idea of the changeless, indeed nor could certitude be had of it in any light whatever, because there is no certitude when the object is known in a way other than it is. Therefore, neither is there certitude in knowing the changeable as unchangeable. It is plain too that the antecedent of this reason, namely that sensibles are ceaselessly moving, is false; for this is the option that is imputed to Heraclitus in Metaphysics 4.5.1010a7-11.

220. Likewise if, because of the changeableness of the exemplar, what is in our soul could not be certitude [n.212], then since whatever is put subjectively in the soul is changeable, the very act of understanding as well, it follows that by nothing in the soul is the soul put right so as not to err.a

a.a [Interpolated text] It follows too that the very act of understanding, since it is more changeable than the soul itself in which it is, will never be true, nor contain truth [cf. Scotus, Lectura I d.3 n169].

221. Similarly, according to this opinion, the inhering created species combines with the inflowing species [n.217]. But when something is combined that is repugnant to certitude, certitude cannot be obtained. For just as from a necessary proposition and a contingent proposition only a contingent proposition follows, so from something certain and something uncertain combining together for some knowledge no certain knowledge follows.

222. The same is plain also about the third reason [n.213], because if the very species abstracted from the thing combines with all knowing, and if no judgement can be made as to when the species represents itself as itself and when it represents itself as the object, then, whatever else combines with it, no certitude can be obtained by which the true may be discriminated from the likely true. These reasons, therefore, seem to conclude to the complete lack of certitude and opinion of the Academic [sceptics].

223. And I give proof that this conclusion [n.222] is not Augustine’s intention:

Augustine Soliloquies 1.8 n.15, “Everyone admits without any doubt the proofs of the learned sciences to be most true.” And Boethius On the Hebdomads, “A common conception of the mind is what each approves when he hears it.” And the Philosopher in Metaphysics 2.1.993b4-5, “First principles are known to everyone like a door to a house, because as a door to a house is open to view, though the interior of the house is not, so are the first principles known to everyone.”

224. From these three authorities [n.223] the argument goes as follows. What belongs to everything of some species follows the specific nature. Therefore, when each has infallible certitude of the first principles, and further when the form of a perfect syllogism is naturally evident to each (from the definition of a perfect syllogism in Prior Analytics 1.1.24b22-24), and the science of the conclusions depends only on the evidence of the principle and the evidence of the syllogistic inference for each - any conclusion, therefore, demonstrable from the self-evident principles, can be naturally known to everyone.

225. Second, it is clear that Augustine allows certainty of things known by sense experience; hence he says On the Trinity 15.12 n.21, “Far be it that we should doubt the things to be true that we have learnt through the senses of the body, for indeed through them we have learnt heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them.” If we do not doubt of the truth of them, and we are not deceived, as is plain, then we are certain of the things we know through the senses; for certitude is had when doubt and deception are excluded.

226. It is also plain, third, that Augustine allows certitude of our acts, ibid., “Whether one sleeps or awake, one lives, because both to sleep and to see in dreams belong to one who is alive.”

227. But if you say that ‘to live’ is not second act but first act, there follows ibid., “If someone say I know that I know I am alive, he cannot be deceived,” even when reflecting back however often on the first ‘I know’. And ibid., “If someone say ‘I want to be blessed’, how is it not impudent to reply, ‘perhaps you are deceived?’,” and by reflecting there the ‘I know I want’ “endlessly etc.” Ibid., “If anyone say, ‘I do not wish to err’, will it not surely be true that he does not want to err?” “And other things,” he says, “are found that are valid against the academics, who contend that nothing can be known by man.” There follows ibid., about the three books Against the Academics, “he who has understood those books will be moved not at all by their many arguments against the perception of truth.”

228. Again, ibid. ch.15 n.25, “Things that are so known they could never be lost also belong to the nature of the soul itself, of which sort is that we know we live.”a So the first point is plain [n.218].b

a.a [Note by Scotus] One must note that there are four cognitive awarenesses [cf. nn.224-227, 240245], wherein for us is necessary certitude, namely: of things knowable simply [nn.230-234], things knowable through experience [nn.235-237], our own acts [nn.238-239], and things known by us, through the senses, as they now are [nn.240-245]. The first is manifest [n.230]; the third is concluded to be known per se, otherwise there would be no judgment as to what was known per se [cf. n.238]; the second and fourth contain infinite propositions known per se [nn.235, 241], to which they join others from the several senses. Example: a triangle has three [angles equal to two right angles, cf. Ord. I d.2 n.27], the moon is being eclipsed, I am awake, that is white - the first and the third need the senses only as occasion, because, were all the senses to err, there exists certitude simply [cf. nn.234, 238-239]. The second and fourth hold through this principle, namely that what eventuates frequently from something not free has that something as its per se natural cause [cf. nn.235, 240]; from this does the proposed conclusion follow. In the second and the fourth a necessary proposition is sometimes added [as in nn.236, 242, 244]. So you may put off Augustine’s authorities [nn.225-228] to the second article [cf. n.229], which deals with the matter, or which is the solution [sc. about the above four infallible certitudes].

b.b [Interpolated text] as to how his [Henry’s] reasons are not probative, and [the conclusion] false and against Augustine.

B. Against the Opinion in Itself

229. As to the second article [n.218], in order for the error of the academics to have no place in any knowables, one needs to see how one should speak about the three aforesaid knowables [nn.224-228] - namely about principles known per se and conclusions, and second about things known through experience, and third about our own acts - whether it be possible for infallible certitude of them to be possessed.

230. [About the knowledge of principles and conclusions] - As to certitude about principles, then, I say as follows: the terms of principles known per se have such an identity that the one includes the other with evident necessity, and so the intellect, combining the terms from the fact it apprehends them, has in itself the necessary cause of the conformity of the act of combining with the terms themselves of which it is the combining, and has also the evident cause of such conformity; and so to it is necessarily plain the conformity whose evident cause it apprehends in the terms. Therefore, the intellect cannot have an apprehension of the terms, and a combining of them, without there being a conformity of that combining with the terms, just as a white thing and a white thing cannot be without a likeness being between them. Now this conformity of the combining with the terms is the truth of the combining; therefore, the combining of such terms cannot be without being true, and so the perception of the combining and the perception of the terms cannot be without perception of the conformity of the combining with the terms, and so without perception of the truth, because the first perceived things evidently include the perception of this truth.

231. This reason is confirmed through a likeness, from the Philosopher Metaphysics 4.3.1005b29-32, where he maintains that the opposite of a first principle cannot arrive in anyone’s intellect, namely the opposite of this principle ‘it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be’, “because then contrary opinions would exist in the mind together;” because it is, of course, true of contrary opinions, that is, of opinions formally repugnant, that an opinion opinining ‘it is’ of something and an opinion opining ‘it is not’ of the same thing are formally repugnant.

232. So I assert, in the issue at hand, some repugnance of understandings in the mind, though not formal repugnance. For if knowledge of whole and part stands in the intellect, and the combining together of them, then, since these include, as by necessary cause, the conformity of the combining with the terms, if the opinion stand in the intellect that this combining is false, cognitions will stand that are repugnant, not formally, but one cognition will stand with another and yet it will be the necessary cause of a cognition opposite to it, which is impossible. For just as it is impossible for white and black to stand together (because they are contraries formally), so is it impossible for white to stand together with what is precisely cause of black, thus necessarily cause, because unable, without contradiction, to be without it [sc. black].

233. When certitude about first principles is possessed [nn.230-232], it is plain how it will be possessed about conclusions inferred from them, on account of the evidence of the form of a perfect syllogism; for the certitude of the conclusion depends only on the certitude of the principles and on the evidence of the inference.

234. But will the intellect really not err in this knowledge of principles and conclusions, if all the senses are deceived about the terms?

I reply that, as far as concerns this knowledge, the intellect does not have the senses as cause but only as occasion. For the intellect can have of simples only knowledge received from the senses, but, once the knowledge is received, it can by its own virtue combine the simples together. And if by reason of such simples the combination of them is evidently true, the intellect will by its own virtue and by virtue of the terms assent to the combination - not by virtue of the senses from which it exteriorly gets the terms. An example: if the idea of ‘whole’ and the idea of ‘being greater’ is received from the senses, and if the intellect put together this proposition, ‘every whole is greater than its part’, the intellect will by its own virtue and by that of these terms assent indubitably to this combination, and will not just do so because it saw the terms conjoined in reality (the way it assents to this complex, ‘Socrates is white’, because it sees that these are united in reality). Indeed, I say that if all the senses from which such terms are received were false, or if (and this counts more for deception) some senses were false and some were true, the intellect would not be deceived about such principles, because it would always have in itself the terms that were cause of the truth; as suppose that on someone born blind were miraculously impressed in a dream the species of white and black, and suppose these species remained afterwards when he was awake, his intellect by abstracting would combine from them this proposition, ‘white is not black’, and about it his intellect would not be deceived although the terms were received from erring sense; for the formal idea of the terms, which has been reached, is the necessary cause of the truth of this negative proposition.

235. [About knowledge through experience] - About the second knowables, namely things known through experience [n.229], I say that although experience not be of all singulars but of many, nor always but often, yet someone with experience does infallibly know that so it is both always and in all things, and this through this proposition residing in the soul, ‘whatever comes about for the most part from a non-free cause is the natural effect of that cause’. This proposition is known to the intellect even had it taken its terms from erring sense, because a non-free cause cannot produce non-freely an effect for the most part, the opposite of which it is ordered to, or which it is not ordered to by its form. But a chance cause is ordered to producing the opposite of a chance effect or to not producing it; therefore nothing is a chance cause of an effect that is frequently produced by it, and so, if it is not free, it will be the natural cause.a And this effect comes about from the cause for the most part; this is taken from experience. For, after finding such a nature now with this sort of accident now with that, what is found is that, however great the diversity of accidents, always was such effect consequent to this nature. Therefore, the effect did not follow some accident of this nature, but from the nature itself in itself did such effect follow.

a.a [Interpolated text - in place of “therefore nothing.. .natural cause”] therefore it is a natural cause of an effect frequently produced by it, because it is not a chance cause.

236. But further to be noted is that sometimes experience is had of a conclusion, as that the moon is frequently eclipsed, and then, on the supposition of the conclusion that so things are, a cause of this conclusion is looked for by way of division. And sometimes from experiencing the conclusion one reaches principles known from the terms. And then, from such a principle known from the terms can the conclusion, known previously only by experience, be known more certainly, namely with the first kind of knowledge, because known as deduced from a principle known per se [nn.229-230] - the way this is per se known, that ‘a dark body interposed between a manifest body and the light is preventing the multiplication of the light to such manifest body’. And if it has been found by division that the earth is such a body interposed between the sun and the moon, this will be known most certainly by a demonstration ‘because of which’ (because through the cause), and not only by experience in the way this conclusion was known before the finding of the principle.

237. Now sometimes there is experience of a principle, so that it is not possible to find by way of division a further principle known from the terms, but a stand is made in something true for the most part, whose extreme terms are known by experience to be frequently united, for example that this plant of this sort of species is hot. And there is no prior middle term found whereby the property may be proved of the subject by a demonstration ‘because of which’, but a stand is made in this as in something that is on account of experiences a first known. Although then uncertainty and fallibility may be removed by this proposition, ‘an effect for the most part of a non-free cause is the natural effect of it’, yet this is the last degree of scientific knowledge. And perhaps in that case actual knowledge is not had of the union of the extreme terms, but aptitudinal knowledge. For if the property is some absolute thing other than the subject, it could be separated from the subject without contradiction, and the experienced person would not have knowledge that it is so, but that it is apt to be so.

238. [About our acts] - About the third knowables, namely our own acts [n.229], I say that there is certitude about many of them, as there is of things known first and per se, as is plain from Metaphysics 4.6.1011a3-9, where the Philosopher says of the arguments of those who say that all appearances are true, because those arguments ask “whether we are now awake or sleeping; and all such doubts have the same effect; for they make it an axiom that there is a reason for everything.” And he adds, “they are asking for a reason for things of which there is no reason, for there is no demonstration of a principle of demonstration.” So, for Aristotle there, ‘we are awake’ is known per se like a principle of demonstration; nor is it an objection that it is contingent because, as was said elsewhere [Ord. Prol. n.169], there is an order in contingent things, for some of them are first and immediate, else there would be a process to infinity in contingent things, or something contingent would follow from a necessary cause, both of which are impossible.

239. And just as there is certitude about being awake as about something known per se, so also about many other acts that are in our power (as that I understand or I am hearing), and about others that are perfect acts. For although there is no certitude that I am seeing a white thing located outside, or in such a subject or at such a distance, because an illusion can occur in the medium or in the organ and in many other ways, yet there is certitude that I am seeing, even if there is illusion in the organ. And this seems most of all to be an illusion, namely when, without an object being present, an act in the organ arises of the sort that is of a nature to arise in the presence of an object. And so if the power had its own action when such a condition is posited, that which would be called vision would truly be there, whether it be an action or a passion or both. But if an illusion were to happen, not in the organ proper, but in something close to it that the organ seems to be -as that if an illusion were not to occur in the bundle of the nerves, but that in the eye itself an impression were to arise of the sort of species that is of a nature to arise from a white thing - still the eye would be seeing, because such a species, or what is of a nature to be seen in it, would be seen. For it has distance enough as regard the organ of sight that is in the bundle of the nerves, as appears in Augustine On the Trinity 11.3 n.4, that the reliquies of things seen remaining in the eye are seen with the eyes closed; and in the Philosopher On Sense and Sensed Object 2.437a23-26, it appears that the fire [the ‘flash’] which is generated from a violent upward raising of the eye and reduplicated is seen until the eyelids are shut. These are true seeings, though not the most perfect ones, because there are here sufficient distances from the species to the principal organ of sight.

240. But how is certitude had of things that are subject to the acts of sense, as that something outside is the sort of white or hot that appears?

I reply:

Either the same things about such an object appear opposite to diverse senses, or they do not, but all the senses that know it have the same judgment about it.

241. If in the second way, then certitude of the truth is had of this sort of thing known through the senses and through this proposition from before [n.235], that ‘what is brought about for the most part by something, that something is the natural cause of it, provided it not be a free cause’. Therefore, when this something is present and from it this sort of change arises in the senses for the most part, it follows that the change, or the generated species, is the natural effect of such a cause; and so such thing outside will be white or hot, or some other such thing as is of a nature to be presented through the species that is for the most part generated by it.

242. But if diverse senses have diverse judgments about something seen outside, as that sight says a stick part of which is in water and part in the air is broken, that sight always says the sun is of less size than it is, and that everything seen from a distance is smaller than it is - in such things there is certitude about what is true, and about which sense is erring, through a proposition resting in the soul that is more certain than any judgment of the senses, and through the acts coming together of several senses; so that always some proposition sets the intellect right about the acts of the senses, about which is true and which is false; and in this proposition the intellect does not depend on the senses as on a cause, but as on an occasion.

243. An example. The intellect has this proposition resting in it, ‘no thing that is rather hard is broken by touching something soft that yields to it’. This is so per se known from the terms that, even if the terms were taken from the senses, the intellect cannot doubt of it; indeed, the opposite includes a contradiction. But that the stick is harder than water and that water yields to it, this each sense states, both sight and touch. It follows, therefore, that the stick is not broken as the senses judge it broken; and so which sense errs and which does not about the breaking of the stick, the intellect judges through something more certain than every act of the senses.

244. Similarly, on the other part [sc. the size of the sun, n.242], the fact that a quantity placed altogether against a quantity is equal to it, this is known to the intellect however much the knowledge of the terms be taken from an erring sense; but that the same quantity could be placed against something seen near at hand and far off, this both sight and touch say; therefore the quantity is equal whether seen near at hand or far off; therefore the sight when saying it is smaller is in error.

245. This conclusion [n.244] is proved from principles known per se, and from the acts of two senses that know that so things are for the most part. And so, whenever reason judges the senses to be erring, it judges this not through any knowledge precisely acquired from the senses as from the cause, but through some knowledge occasioned by the senses, in which it is not deceived even if all the senses are deceived [n.234], and by some other knowledge, acquired from a sense or senses, that is ‘for the most part’, and these are known to be true by the proposition often cited [nn.235, 237, 241, added note to n.228], namely that ‘what is brought about for the most part etc.’a

a.a [Interpolated note] - But note that if all the senses erred about all sensible objects common to all the senses [cf. Ord. Prol. n.33] (for example about figure, quantity, or about this figure or this quantity, or that one thing was two, or that this one thing, as a head, was two heads), then the intellect could not have any certitude about it from the senses, by the fact all the senses are erring -or because each sense is erring about its own proper object; and this happens in two ways, either about this color or that, or about a white or black thing. In the first way the sense is not in error about its first object, and so neither is the intellect; but if the sense is deceived about a secondary object, as sight [about a white or black thing], Sensibles are typically divided into proper sensibles, which belong to one sense only (color proper to the eyes, sound to the ears, etc.), common sensibles, which are common to more than one sense (as shape, size, number), and accidental sensibles, which are perceived immediately with the proper or common sensibles but are not as such sensible (as that this black thing is Cuddles the cat, or that white thing is Snowy the poodle). Senses cannot be deceived about proper sensibles but can be about common and accidental sensibles. The ‘secondary object’ mentioned here, about which deception is possible, is primarily, one assumes, a reference to the accidental sensibles, since the common sensibles have just been discussed earlier in this note. The point, then, seems to be that if someone is deceived as to all accidental sensibles, as to whether this black or white thing (or anything with any color between the extremes of white and black or, by extension, anything identified by any sensible proper to any of the five senses) is a cat or a dog or is this cat or some other cat, then the intellect will have no certainty. If it has certainty it will only be in some other person who is not so deceived. ³⁸and then either all sight is deceived about such secondary object, and then there can be no certain knowledge in the intellect, or some sight is deceived and some not, and then [the intellect] can have certitude in another individual, though not in this one.

C. Against the Fundamental Reasons insofar as they are Less Probative

246. As to the third article [n.218], a response must be made from the preceding [nn.230-245] to the three reasons [of Henry, nn.211-213].a

To the first argument [n.211], as to the point about the change of the object, the antecedent is false;b nor is it the opinion of Augustine but the error of Heraclitus and of his disciple Cratylus, who did not want to speak but to move his finger, as is said in Metaphysics 4.5.1010a7-15. And the consequence, given the antecedent were true, is not valid, because, according to Aristotle, certain knowledge could still be had of this fact, that all things would be continually moving. Also, it does not follow that, if the object is changeable, then what is produced by it is not representative of anything under the idea of the unchangeable [n.211]; for the changeability in the object is not the reason for generating [knowledge], but the nature of the object itself that is changeable. The thing generated by it, therefore, represents the nature per se. If, therefore, the nature, whereby it is nature, have some unchangeable relationship to something else, that something else through its exemplar, and the nature itself through its exemplar, are represented as unchangeably united; and thus, through two exemplars, generated by two changeable things - not insofar as they changeable but insofar as they are natures - knowledge of the unchangeability of their union can be had.

a.a [Note by Scotus] Note that knowledge of a principle cannot be changed from truth to falsity [n.250], nor the other way around, because it is simply incorruptible. The intelligible species, not the phantasm, can in this way be destroyed, but it cannot be changed from a true representation to a false one [n.251]. But the object, although corruptible, yet cannot be changed from a true entity to a false one [n.246]; and so it conforms knowledge to itself or causes knowledge of itself by its truth in existing, because a true entity, unchangeable into a false one, virtually contains true knowledge, that is, knowledge in conformity with a true entity.
     Note, according to Augustine that a necessary or unchangeable truth is “above the mind” [n.206], meaning ‘in idea of evident truth’, because it causes evident truth about itself in the mind [n.230]. But it is not, according to the evidence of it, subject to the mind so that it could appear true or false, in the way a probable truth is subject to the mind so that the mind, by seeking reasons here or there through which it may be proved or disproved [n.202], could make it appear true or false [n.250]. Thus must it be understood that the mind does not judge about the immutable truth [n.203], but of other things; because a declaration that ‘this is true’, which is an act of judging, is in the power of the mind with respect to what is probable, but not with respect to what is necessary; nor yet does it less perfectly assert of the necessary that it is ‘true’ - and this assertion in Aristotle can be said to be a judgment [sc. ‘the same thing cannot both be and not be’, n.231], but Augustine maintains [n.203] that judgment is in the power of the judger, not something that at once may be necessarily determined by something else.
     In this way is it plain how the mind judges of a necessary conclusion [n.233]. Since the conclusion is not of itself at once evident, therefore does it not of itself give determination to the mind itself as to the evidence for itself; also the mind can bring forward sophistical arguments against it, by which the mind may dissent from it - not so against what is a first known, Metaphysics 4.3.1005a29-6a18 (“comes into the mind etc.” [n.255]).

b.b [Interpolated text] for sensibles are not in continuous motion, rather they remain the same for some time [cf. Scotus, Lectura I d.3 n.182].

247. Although it not generate insofar as it is changeable, yet, if it is changeable, how is its relation to something else unchangeable?

I reply: the relation is unchangeable in this way, that there cannot be an opposite relation between the extremes, neither can this relation not exist, given the extremes, but it is destroyed by the destruction of the extreme or the extremes.

248. On the contrary: how is a necessary proposition affirmed if the identity of the extremes can be destroyed?

I reply: when the thing does not exist, there is no real identity of it. But then, if it is in the intellect, there is identity as it is an understood object, and it is in a certain respect necessary, because in such existence the extremes cannot be without such identity. However, it is able not to be, just as the extreme is able to be non-understood. Therefore, a proposition is necessary in a certain respect in our intellect, because it cannot be changed to the false; but it is not simply necessary save in the divine intellect, just as neither do the extremes have an identity simply necessarily in any being save in understood being.

249. It is plain too that something representative that is changeable in itself can represent something under the idea of the unchangeable, because the essence of God will, under the idea of the unchangeable, be represented to the intellect through something altogether changeable, whether it be a species or an act; this is plain through a likeness, because through the finite can something under the idea of the infinite be represented.

250. To the second argument [of Henry, n.212] I say that in the soul a twofold changeability can be understood, one from affirmation to negation and conversely (as from ignorance to knowledge or from non-intellection to intellection), another from, as it were, contrary to contrary, as from rectitude to deception or conversely.

Now the soul is changeable as to all objects in the first way, and by nothing formally existing in it is such changeability taken away from it. But it is not changeable with the second changeableness save as to the complexes [propositions] that are not evident from the terms. But about those that are evident from the terms the soul cannot be changed with the second changeableness, because, once the terms themselves are understood, they are a necessary and evident cause of the conformity with the terms themselves of the composition that has been made [n.230]. Therefore, if the soul is changeable from rightness to error, absolutely, it does not follow that by nothing can it be set right other than itself; at least as regard the objects about which the intellect cannot err it can be set right by the terms once they have been apprehended.

251. To the third argument [of Henry, n.213] I say that if it had any appearance [of truth], it would conclude more against [Henry’s] opinion that denies intelligible species,a because a species that can represent something sensible as an object in dreams would be a phantasm, not an intelligible species. Therefore, if the intellect use only a phantasm by which the object is present to it and not any intelligible species, it does not seem it could discriminate the true from the likely true through anything in which the object shines out for it. But if one posits a species in the intellect, [Henry’s] reasoning is not valid, for the intellect cannot use the species [sc. as opposed to a phantasm] as object for itself, because it cannot use it when sleeping.

a.a [Note by Scotus] which is the opinion of him who posits this opinion here [nn.211-213].

252. If you object that, if the phantasm can represent itself as the object, then the intellect, through that error of the imaginative power, can err, or at any rate it can be so bound that it cannot operate, as is plain in dreams and the mad - it can be said [in reply] that, though the intellect be bound when there is such error in the imaginative power, yet it does not err, because it does not then have an act.

253. But how will the intellect know, or how then will it be certain, when the imaginative power is erring, but its not being in error is required for the intellect not to be in error?

I reply. This truth rests in the intellect, that a power does not err about an object proportioned to it unless it is indisposed. And it is known to the intellect that the power of imagination is not, when awake, indisposed with any such indisposition as makes a phantasm represent itself as an object; for it is per se known to the intellect that, when thinking, it is awake, such that the power of imagination is not, as it is in dreams, bound during wakefulness.

254. But an objection against the stated certitude about acts is still made in this way: ‘it seems to me that I am seeing or hearing, when however I am not seeing or hearing; so there is no certitude about this’.

255. I reply.

It is one thing to show against someone who denies a proposition that the proposition is true; it is another thing to show to someone who accepts it how it is true. An example from Metaphysics 4.3.1005a29-6a18: the Philosopher does not introduce, against someone who denies the first principle [sc. the principle of non-contradiction], the unacceptable result that contrary opinions would simultaneously exist in the soul [n.231] (the deniers would concede this themselves as presupposed); rather he brings in other unacceptable results, more manifest to them, though not in themselves. But to those who accept the first principle he shows how it is known, that it is such that its opposite could not come into the mind; which he proves by the fact that then contrary opinions could stand simultaneously. Such conclusion is more unacceptable in that case than the hypothesis [sc. that ‘its opposite could not come into the mind’].

256. So here. If you allow that no proposition is known per se, I refuse to dispute with you, because it is clear that you are impudent, and are not persuaded [sc. that what you allow is true], as is plain in your actions, as the Philosopher objects, Metaphysics 4.3.100535-6a18: for, when dreaming about getting something that is sort of close by and waking up afterwards, you do not pursue it as you would pursue it if, being awake, you were close to obtaining it. But if you allow that some proposition is known per se, and that about anything an indisposed power can err (as is plain in dreams), then, so that some proposition may be known to be known per se, there must be a possibility of knowing when the power is disposed and when not, and consequently it is possible for knowledge about our acts to be had that the power is thus disposed, because that is known per se which appears known per se to it.

257. I say then to the form of this caviling [n.254] that, just as it appears to a dreamer that he sees, so could the opposite appear to him of a principle of speculation that is known per se; and yet it does not follow that that principle is not per se known. And so it does not follow that it is not per se known to a hearer that he is hearing, for an indisposed power can err about anything, but not a disposed power. And when it is disposed and when it is not disposed is per se known - otherwise it could not be known that anything else was per se known, because it could not be known what will be per se known, whether what the intellect assents to when disposed in this way, or what it assents to when disposed in that way.

D. Against the Conclusion itself of the Opinion

258. About the fourth article [n.218], against the conclusion of the opinion, I argue as follows: I ask, what does he understand by certain and sincere truth [n.214]? Either infallible truth, namely truth without doubt and deception; and it was proved and made clear above, in the second and third articles [nn.229-257], that that can be had by pure natural powers. Or he understands by truth that which is a property of being, and then, since being can be naturally understood, so also can true be, as it is a property of being; and if the true then, by way of abstraction, truth too, because any form that can be understood as it is in its subject can be understood as it is in itself and in abstraction from the subject. Or he understands by truth, in another way, conformity to the exemplar; and if to the created exemplar, then the proposed conclusion is plain [sc. n.202, that truth can be known without the aid of uncreated light]. But if to the uncreated exemplar, conformity to that cannot be understood save in the exemplar as known, because a relation is not known if the extreme is not known. So what is posited, that the eternal exemplar is the reason for knowing and is not known [n.214], is false.

259. Further, second as follows: everything that simple understanding can understood confusedly it can know definitively, by inquiring into the definition of the known thing by way of division. This definitive knowledge seems to be most perfect knowledge belonging to simple understanding. Now from such most perfect knowledge of the terms can the intellect most perfectly understand a principle, and from a principle the conclusion; and in this does intellectual knowledge seem to be so completed that there does not seem to be necessary knowledge of truth beyond the aforesaid truths [above here, n.259].

260. Again, third: either the eternal light, which you say is necessary for having sincere truth [n.215], causes something naturally prior to the act or it does not. If it does, then either in the object or in the intellect. Not in the object, because the object, insofar as it has being in the intellect, does not have real being but only intentional being; therefore it is not capable of any real accident. If in the intellect, then the uncreated light does not move the intellect to knowing sincere truth save by means of its own effect; and then the common view [Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure] seems, as much as this position does, to posit knowledge in the uncreated light, because it posits it to be seen in the agent intellect which is an effect of the uncreated light and more perfect than that created accidental light would be. But if the uncreated light causes nothing prior to the act, then either the light alone causes the act, or the light along with the intellect and object does. If the light alone, then the agent intellect has no operation in the knowledge of sincere truth, which seems unacceptable. For this operation is the most noble in our intellect, so the agent intellect, which is the noblest intellect in the soul, should in some way come together in this action [cf. Ord. Prol. n.52].a And also is this unacceptable result, which is inferred there, proved in another way from the preceding opinion [n.260 init.], because, according to him who thinks thus [Henry, Summa a.3 q.4], an agent using an instrument cannot have an action surpassing the action of the instrument; therefore since the virtue of the agent intellect is not capable of knowledge of sincere truth, it follows that the eternal light, when using the agent intellect, will not be capable of the action of this knowledge of sincere truth, such that the agent intellect have the idea there of instrument [cf. Ord. Prol. n.51]. If you say that the uncreated light along with the intellect and the object cause this sincere truth, this is the common opinion, which posits that the eternal light causes, as remote cause, all certain truth. Either then this opinion will be unacceptable or will not disagree with the common opinion.

a.a [Interpolated text; cf. Lectura I d.3 n.188] And again, the act of understanding would not be said to belong more to one man than to another; and in this way the agent intellect would be superfluous, which is not something to say, since it belongs to the agent intellect to make all things, as it belongs to the possible intellect to become all things [On the Soul 3.5.430a14-15]. Likewise, according to the Philosopher, ibid. 430a10-14, the agent intellect corresponds [to the possible intellect] under the idea of being active, the possible intellect [corresponds to the agent intellect] under the idea of being passive; so, whatever the possible intellect receives, to that is the agent intellect in some way actively disposed.

E. Solution of the Question

261. To the question [n.218], therefore, I say that, because of the words of Augustine, one must concede that infallible truths are seen in eternal rules, where the ‘in’ is taken objectively, and this in four ways: either as in the proximate object, or as in what contains the proximate object, or as in that by virtue of which the proximate object moves [the intellect], or as in the remote object.

262. To understand the first [n.261] I say that all intelligibles have intelligible being in the act of the divine intellect, and in them do all truths about them shine forth, such that the intellect understanding them, and understanding by virtue of them the necessary truths about them, sees these necessary truths in them as in their objects. And they, insofar as they are secondary objects of the divine intellect, are truths because in conformity with their exemplar, namely the divine intellect; and they are light because manifest; and they are unchangeable there and necessary. But they are eternal in a certain respect, because eternity is a condition of what exists, and they do not have existence save in a certain respect. So we can first, then, be said to see in eternal light, that is, in a secondary object of the divine intellect, which is the truth and eternal light, in the way explained.

263. The second way [n.261] is likewise plain, because the divine intellect contains them as a book, just as the authority of Augustine says, On the Trinity 14.15, that “these rules are written in the book of eternal light” [n.205], that is, in the divine intellect insofar as it contains these truths. And though the book not be seen, yet the truths are seen that are written in that first book. And to that extent could our intellect be said to see truths in the eternal light, that is, in the book as in what contains the object.a And either of these two ways [n.262-263] seems to be of the meaning of Augustine in On the Trinity 12.14 n.23, that “the idea of a square body remains incorruptible and unchangeable etc.” But it does not remain such save as it is a secondary object of the divine intellect.

a.a [Cancelled text by Scotus] and this according to the second way [n.263], or in the truths that are the eternal light in a certain respect, just as, according to the first way, we see in their objects [n.262].

264. But against the first way [n.262] there is a doubt. For if we do not see these truths as they are in the divine intellect (because we do not see the divine intellect), how are we said to see in the uncreated light by the fact we see in a sort of eternal light in a certain respect, which light has being in the uncreated light as in the knowing intellect?

265. To this the third way [n.261] responds, which is as follows: they, as they are the secondary object of the divine intellect, only have being in a certain respect; and a true, real operation does not belong to anything that is, by virtue of itself, precisely a being in a certain respect; but if in some way it does belong to it, this has to be by virtue of something that has being simply. Therefore, it does not belong to these secondary objects precisely to move the intellect save by virtue of the being of the divine intellect, which is being simply and by which these [secondary objects] have being in a certain respect. So, therefore, we see in eternal light in a certain respect, as in a proximate object [n.262]; but in the uncreated eternal light we see in the third way, as in the proximate cause by whose virtue the proximate object moves [the intellect].

266. Following on from this, it can also be said that, as concerns the third way [n.265], we see in eternal light as in the cause of the object in itself; for the divine intellect produces them, by its own act, in intelligible being, and by its own act it gives being of this sort to this object and being of that sort to that object, and consequently it gives to them the relevant sort of idea of being an object, by which ideas they afterwards move the intellect to certain knowledge. And that it could properly be said that our intellect, because the light is the cause of the object, sees in the light, is apparent through a likeness; for we are properly said to understand in the light of the agent intellect, although however that light is only the active cause or what in its own act makes the object, or by virtue of which the object moves, or both.

267. This double causality, therefore, of the divine intellect (because it is the uncreated true light that produces secondary objects in intelligible being, and because it is that by virtue of which the secondary produced objects also actually move the intellect) can as it were make whole the third member [nn.261265], by which we are said truly to see in the eternal light.

268. And if it be objected against these two ways, which make whole the third one about the cause [n.267], that then it seems rather that we would be said to see in God as willing, or in God as he is will, than in God as he is light, because the divine will is the immediate principle of any act that is directed externally - I reply: the divine intellect, insofar as it is in some way prior to an act of the divine will, produces these objects in intelligible being and so seems, with respect to them, to be a merely natural cause; for God is a not free cause with respect to anything save that which, in some way prior to itself, presupposes the will according as it is an act of will. And just as the intellect, as prior to an act of will, produces objects in intelligible being, so it seems to cooperate with the intelligibles for their natural effect as a prior cause, so that, namely, the intelligibles may, as apprehended and combined, cause the apprehension’s conformity with them. A contradiction therefore seems to be involved in some intellect’s forming such a composition and the composition’s not being in conformity with the terms (though not composing the terms is possible); for although God voluntarily cooperates with the intellect in its composing or not composing terms, yet when the intellect has composed them, that the composition be in conformity with the terms, this seems necessarily to follow the idea of the terms that the terms have from God’s intellect, which causes the terms naturally in their intelligible being.

269. And herefrom appears how no special illumining is necessary for seeing things in eternal rules, because Augustine does not posit that truths are seen in them save those that are necessary by the force of the terms. And in such truths there is the greatest naturalness as regards the effect of both the remote and the proximate cause, namely of both the divine intellect as to the objects moving the intellect and of the objects as to the truth of the complex, the proposition, about them And also, although naturalness as regard perceiving the truth that ‘the opposite includes a contradiction’ is not as great, yet there is naturalness on the part of the proximate cause when the remote cause is assisting with it, because the terms when apprehended and composed are of a nature to cause the evidence of the conformity of the composition with the terms naturally. And if it be posited that God acts along with the terms with a general influence for this effect not, however, with natural necessity - still, whether there is a general influence or, what is more, a natural necessity influencing the terms toward this effect, it is plain that no special illumining is required.

270. The assumption about what Augustine means is plain from what he says in On the Trinity 4.35 n.20 (he is speaking about the philosophers), “Some of them were able to raise their mind’s gaze beyond all creatures and to attain, in however little a part, the light of unchangeable truth, and they mock the fact that many Christians, who live by faith alone, are not yet able to.” Therefore, he maintains that Christians do not see the things of faith in the eternal rules, while the philosophers do see many necessary things in them.

271. Also ibid. 9.6 n.9, “Not just any man’s sort of mind etc.” [cf. n.202], as if he were to say that contingent things are not seen there but necessary ones.

272. And ibid. 4.16 n.21 he argues against these philosophers: “Is it because they contend most truly that all things come to be by eternal ideas that they were able, for that reason, to espy in those very ideas how many kinds of animals, how many seeds of individuals, there are in the origin?” etc. “Surely it was not by unchangeable science that they searched all these things out, but through the history of places and times, and they believed what was experienced and written down by others?” Therefore, he means that it is not through eternal rules that they know the contingent facts that are known only through the senses or believed through histories; and yet a special illumining is more required in things believed than in necessities known; indeed in the latter most of all is a special illumining taken away, and a general illumining alone enough.

273. On the contrary: what then is Augustine saying in ibid. 12.14 n.23, that “it belongs to few to reach the intelligible ideas by the mind’s gaze” [cf. n.204], and in 83 Questions q.46 n.2, “only pure souls attain to them”?

274. I reply: this purity must not be understood as purity from vices, because in On the Trinity 14.15 n.21 he maintains that the unjust sees in eternal rules what is the just thing to be done; and in chapter 15 from ibid. 4 already cited [n.270] he maintains that philosophers see the truth in eternal rules without faith; and in the same question [83 Questions q.46 n.1] he maintains that no one can be wise without knowledge of the ideas (in the way they would perhaps concede that Plato was wise). Rather must this purity be understood to be by elevation of the intellect to a consideration of truths as they shine forth in themselves, not just as they shine forth in a phantasm.

275. One needs to consider here that the external sensible thing causes in the imaginative power a phantasm that is confused and one per accidens, namely a phantasm that represents a thing according to quantity, according to figure and color and other sensible accidents. And just as a phantasm represents only confusedly and per accidens, so do many perceive only a being per accidens. Now the first truths are precisely first by the proper idea of their terms, in that the terms are abstracted from everything conjoined to them per accidens. For this proposition, ‘the whole is greater than its part’, is not first a truth as ‘whole’ is in stone or wood, but as ‘whole’ is abstracted from everything to which it is per accidens conjoined. And an intellect, therefore, that never understands a totality save in a per accidens concept, that is, in a totality of stone or wood, never understands the genuine truth of the above principle, because it never understands the precise idea of the term by which the principle is true.

276. It therefore belongs to few to reach eternal ideas, because it belongs to few to have understandings per se, and it belongs to many to have such per accidens concepts. But these few are not said to be distinguished from the others on account of a special illumining, but either on account of better natural endowments (because they have an intellect that abstracts more and is more perceptive), or on account of a greater investigation whereby someone equally endowed reaches to a knowledge of the quiddities that another, who does not investigate, does not know. And in this way is understood Augustine’s comment, On the Trinity 9.6. n.11, about someone seeing from the top of a mountain, who sees the clouds below and the clear air above. For he who only ever understands per accidens concepts in the way a phantasm represents objects of the sort that are, as it were, per accidens beings - he is, as it were, in the valley, surrounded by clouds. But he who separates out quiddities, understanding them precisely in a per se concept, which quiddities, however, in the phantasm shine forth with many other accidents adjoined - he has the phantasm beneath him, like the clouds, and is himself on the mountain top, to the extent he knows the truth and sees the true up above, as a higher truth, in virtue of the uncreated intellect that is the eternal light.

277. In the last way [sc. the fourth, n.261] it can be conceded that pure truths are known in the eternal light as in a known remote object, because the uncreated light is the first principle of speculative things and the ultimate end of practical things; and therefore are from it the first principles taken, both the speculative and the practical. And for this reason is the knowledge of all things (both speculative and practical), taken through principles from the eternal light as known, more perfect and purer than the knowledge taken through principles in their proper genus. And in this way does knowledge of all things pertain to the theologian, as was said in the question about the subject of theology [Ord. Prol. n.206]; and it is more eminent than any other knowledge whatever. In this way is the pure truth said to be known, because through it is known what is truth only, not having anything of non-truth mixed in; for it is from the first being, from which as known the principles of knowing in this way are taken. But anything else whatever, from which the principles of knowing in general are taken, is defective truth. Only God knows in this way all things in their purity alone, because, as was said in the question about theology [Ord. Prol. nn.200-201], only he knows all things precisely through his essence; every other intellect, in virtue of him, can be moved by something else to know a truth [Ord. Prol. nn.202, 206]. For to know that a triangle has three angles [equal to two right angles] as this is a certain participation of God and possesses such sort of order in the universe, because it, as it were, expresses more perfectly the perfection of God - this is to know that a triangle has three angles etc. in a nobler way than to know it through the idea of a triangle [sc. a plane figure bound by three straight lines, Ord. I d.2 n.27]. And to know in this way that one should live temperately for attaining ultimate beatitude, which is by reaching God’s essence in itself, is to know this practical knowable more perfectly than to know it through some principle in the genus of morals, as for example through the principle that one should live honorably.

278. And in this way does Augustine speak of the uncreated light as known, On the Trinity 15.27 n.50 where, speaking to himself, he says, “Many truths have you seen, and truths that you discerned by this light which, as shining on you, you saw by. Raise up your eyes to the light itself, and fix them on it if you can; for thus will you see how distant the birth of God’s Word is from the procession of God’s Gift.” And a little later, “These and other things this light has shown to your interior eyes. What then is the cause why, with gaze fixed, you will not be able to see it, save surely your infirmity?” etc. [cf. n.187].

279. From what has been said [nn.262-278] the answer is plain to all the authorities of Augustine for the opposite side [nn.202-206]; and according to one or other of the stated ways of seeing ‘in’ [n.261] can the authorities of Augustine that occur on this matter be expounded.

F. Once More Against the Fundamental Reasons Adduced

280. About the sixth article [n.218] one must see how the three reasons given for the first opinion [nn.211-213] prove something true insofar as they are taken from Augustine, although they do not prove the false conclusion they are introduced for [nn.214-217].

Here one needs to know.. ,a, b

a.a After this Scotus stopped writing on this question.

b.b [Interpolated text] .. .that from sensibles, as from a per se cause and principle, genuine truth is not to be expected, because the knowledge of the senses is truly something per accidens, as was said [nn.234, 245] (although some acts of the senses be certain and true). But by virtue of the agent intellect, which is a participation in the uncreated light that shines on the phantasm, the quiddity of the thing is known, and from this is true genuineness obtained. And hereby is the first argument of Henry solved [n.211], and it does not, according to Augustine’s intention, prove anything further.
     To Henry’s second reason [n.212] I say that the soul can be changed from one disparate act to another, according to the diversity of the objects and the soul’s lack of limitation and immateriality, because it has relation to any being at all; and finally from act to non-act, because it is not always in act. But with respect to first principles, whose truth is known from the terms, and with respect to conclusions evidently deduced from the terms, it is not changeable from contrary to contrary, from true to false. For the rules, in the light of the agent intellect, set the intellect right, and the intelligible species of the terms, though in being the species be changeable, yet by representing in the light of the agent intellect it represents unchangeably. And through these two intelligible species are the terms of the first principle known; and so the union is true and certain evidently.
     To the third [n.213] one must say that its conclusion is against him [Henry], because it posits only an intelligible species or a phantasm, and it does not prove a conclusion about the intelligible species representing the quiddity. But one must say that, if the sense powers are not impeded, the species of the sensible truly represent the thing. But in sleep the powers of the exterior senses are bound; therefore, the imaginative power, in conserving the sensible species according to the diversity of the flow of humors in the head, apprehends them as the things of which they are the likenesses, because they have the force of things, according to the Philosopher Motion of Animals 7.701b18-22. The third reason does not prove more.