Question Two. Whether the Intellective Part Properly Taken or Something of it is the Total Cause Generating Actual Knowledge, or the Idea of Generating it

401. Second about generated knowledge I ask what its generating cause is, or the reason for generating it. And I ask whether the intellective part properly taken, or something of it, is the total cause generating actual knowledge, or the reason for generating it.

Argument that it is not:

Because in On the Soul 2.5.416b33-35, 417a6-9 the Philosopher proves that sense is passive, not active, by the fact that, if it were active, it would always be acting, just as if the combustible were combustive the combustible would always be burning. So do I argue in the issue at hand: if the intellective part were active with respect to intellection, it would always be understanding, even without an object - which is false.

402. There is confirmation because, from On the Soul [3.2.425b25-28], “sensible and sense are the same act,” for example, sounding and hearing are the same act. Therefore, by similarity, the active motion of the object and the passive motion of the intellect (which is intellection) are the same act; therefore, intellection is from the object.

403. Again, On the Soul 3.5.430a14-15, the possible intellect is “that by which there is a becoming everything” just as the agent intellect is “that by which there is a making everything.” Therefore, the possible intellect at least will not be the active cause with respect to cognition, just as also the agent intellect is not passively disposed with respect to act.

404. Again, third: actions are distinguished through distinction of active principles [cf. On the Soul 2.4.415a17-20]. If therefore the intellect, which is without distinction, is the active principle of all intellection, then all intellections would be of the same species; and if all intellections then also all the subsequent habits, and so all the sciences.

405. To the opposite is Avicenna Metaphysics 9.4: immateriality is the idea of being intellective just as it is of being intelligible; therefore the intellect or the intellective part is, of its immateriality, by itself alone active with respect to intellection, just as it is receptive.

406. Again, if the object, or something of it, were the formal idea of acting, then the intellections of objects diverse in species would be diverse in species, which is false. The proof of the consequence is that effects which are from causes diverse in species are different in species. The proof of the falsity of the consequent is that then there would be a proper science of every most specific species, and so there could not be one science of several most specific species. This is also proved, namely the falsity of the consequent, from the Philosopher Ethics 1.7.1098a3-4, where he maintains that ‘to understand’ is the proper operation of man according as he is man; but of one species there is one operation according to species.

I. Six Opinions of Others are Expounded and Rejected

A. About the First Opinion

1. Exposition of the Opinion

407. In this question there is an opinion [Peter Olivi, Sent. II q.58] which attributes to the soul all activity in respect of intellection, and it is imputed to Augustine, who says in Literal Commentary On Genesis 12.16 n.32-33, “Because the image of the body is in the spirit, which is more outstanding than the body, therefore is the image of the body more outstanding in the spirit than the body itself is in its own substance;” and there follows [ch.29], “Nor should one think that the body does something in the spirit, as if the spirit be subject, like matter, to the action of the body. For the thing that acts is in every way more outstanding than the thing about which it acts, and in no way is the body more outstanding than the spirit; rather the spirit is more outstanding than the body. So although the image begins to be in the spirit, yet it is not the body that makes that same image in the spirit, but the spirit makes it in itself with marvelous quickness;” and there follows, “for the image, as soon as it is seen by the eyes, is formed in the spirit of the seer without alteration.”

408. Again, On the Trinity 10.5 n.7, “The soul turns over and seizes images of bodies made in itself and by itself; for it gives them, in forming them, something of its own substance; and it keeps in itself something free, whereby it may judge of such species; and this is the mind, that is, rational intelligence, which is preserved so that it may judge; for the parts of the soul that are informed with likenesses of the body we feel we have in common even with the beasts.” Therefore, the soul itself forms in itself images of things known, as this cited authority says even more expressly.

409. Argument on behalf of this opinion is made with reasons as follows: An effect does not exceed its cause in perfection; “every living thing is better than a nonliving thing,” according to Augustine City of God [9.6, 11.16, 7.3 n.1]; therefore a living operation can only come from a living or live principle of action. These operations of thinking are living operations; therefore, they are from the soul itself as from the reason for acting.

410. Again the more perfect a form is the more actual and consequently the more active it is, because to be active belongs to something insofar as it is in act; but the intellective soul is, among all forms, the most actual; therefore it is most active; therefore it has the power by itself alone for its own operation, since more imperfect forms have power for this, as is plain of the forms of the elements and of certain mixed bodies.48

411. Again, third, the Philosopher in Ethics 1 [1.1.1094a3-6] and Metaphysics 9[9.8.1050a21-b1] and Physics 3 [3.3.202a22-24], distinguishes between acting and making, and he maintains that action properly speaking abides in the agent, as he illustrates about speculation there [Metaphysics 9]. Intellection, therefore, is properly an operation that abides in the agent; but it abides in the intellective part, therefore it will come from that part as from its agent.

412. Fourth, and it is the same, because action properly speaking, and as it is distinguished from making, denominates the agent; but ‘to understand’ denominates man as to his intellective part, therefore etc. [sc. therefore man’s intellective part or intellect is the agent of the action of understanding].

2. Rejection of the Opinion

413. Against this opinion:

That it is not the opinion of Augustine appears from the last chapter of On the Trinity 9.12 n.18 (or chapter 30 of the smaller version): “It must be clearly held that everything we know co-generates in us knowledge of itself; for knowledge is born of both, namely of the knower and the known etc.”a

Again, ibid. 11.2 n.3, “Vision is generated from the seeable and the seer etc.”

Again, ibid. 15.10 n.9 (as was said before [n.393]), “The knowledge formed by the thing that we know is a word.” Therefore, he intends to attribute some causality to the object.

a.a [Interpolated text]. [Augustine cont.] “Therefore, when the mind knows itself it is the sole parent of its own knowledge, for it is both known and knower. And it was knowable to itself even before it knew itself, but knowledge of itself was not in it when it did not know itself.”

414. There is an argument by reason in favor of this, becausea when two causes prior to the thing itself, namely the efficient cause and the matter, are perfect in themselves and proximate and not impeded, the effect follows or can follow. Therefore if the soul is the active total cause of generated knowledge, and if it is the disposed matter, or receptive subject, with respect to the same knowledge, and if it is always actually present to itself, then, since it is a natural cause, there will always be in it every actual intellection of which it is itself the cause - of which, moreover, it is by itself the cause; or at least there will be an intellection that it most strongly has the power for.b

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] there are only four kinds of per se causes, as appears in Physics 2.3.194b23-5a3 and Metaphysics 5.2 1013a24-b4. So, when they exist perfect in themselves and are not impeded and are sufficiently close by, the effect comes from them if they are natural causes, or it will be possible for it to come from them if any of the causes is a freely acting cause. And because a form in some way has being through being produced, and the end follows the production in being of the thing (or if it precedes, this is insofar as it moves the efficient cause to act), therefore the major follows [sc. about the soul as active total cause, n.414].

b.b [Text canceled by Scotus] For the imperfection of a second cause in itself cannot be posited if the hypothesis is retained [sc. that the soul is active total cause], nor can non-proximity be posited, nor can impediment, because nothing would seem to be an impediment. And to take flight to a cause ‘sine qua non’ and to say that it is required for this, that knowledge be generated, this is to say that all per se causes are not sufficient causes, but that something else is required on which the thing to be caused essentially depends. So there will not only be four kinds of causes but more, or something will essentially depend on something that is not the cause of it. [Text interpolated in this canceled text] Again, all causes besides the said four are accidental to the thing; therefore, the thing does not simply depend on them, either in being or in becoming. The antecedent is expressly stated by the Commentator Physics 2 com.30-31; again, he proves that of anything whatever there are only four causes, or some of the four, in Physics 2 com. 67-70 through a sufficiency of demonstration.

415. By this are disproved the diverse ways that those, who posit this opinion [n.407], have of maintaining it. For if there be posited an object necessary in idea of sine qua non cause, or in idea of term or of stimulant [e.g. Olivi, ibid. q.58, 72] - if there not be given it some per se causality (since the soul is always perfect in itself and proximate to what it acts on) and if any new impediment not be removed - how will be preserved the fact that it [the object] is necessarily required save by positing five kinds of causes?

416. Specifically, too, the point about ‘stimulating’ does not seem valid. For I ask what it is ‘to stimulate’? If it is to cause something in the intellective power, then the object causes something before the intellective power of itself acts. Therefore, the intellective power is not the total active first cause in respect of anything caused in it, but the object is as well. If ‘to stimulate’ not be to cause something in the intellective power, then the intellective power is not differently disposed in itself after the stimulation than it was before, and so it is not more stimulated now than it was before.

417. This argument [n.414] would, however, work in like manner, as it seems, against action of the will. Hence response can be given that when forms have an essential order as they are received, either in the same nature or in the same power (and this whether by the same agent or by another), and given also that neither be the reason for receiving the other - never can the second be induced by the agent in the receptive subject of it unless the first has been induced already. An example about volition and delight: when positing that these are diverse really, never is the second received unless the first is received already; since however the second has a natural active cause [sc. the object] present to it before there is volition, in these sorts of ordered things is the major premise [n.414 init.] denied. The like holds of the intelligible species in relation to intellection, when positing the intelligible species not to be cause or receptive subject of intellection; the like holds of light in the medium [nn.471-473], if it does not act on or receive the species of color.

418. Note: it is said in another way [Olivi, ibid. qq.72, 58, 57, 23] that whenever the receiving of some form in its potential subject pre-requires of necessity the receiving of another form in its receptive subject, the major,a that ‘a perfect agent proximate to its passive subject and not impeded is able to act’ [n.414], is false, understanding this of proximate power - and this whether the recipient of the prior form is the same power as the recipient of the later form (example: volition and delight in the will), or is the same nature (example: intellection and volition in the soul, when positing the will to be totally active with respect to willing), or both forms are received in the same supposit, not in a single nature or power (example: about phantasm and intellection, if an intelligible species be denied and the total action be given to the intellect), or the prior and later form are received in different supposits (example: light from the sun in air and in water).

a.a Above the word ‘major’ the sign a was placed by Scotus. See n.421.

419. There is not here preserved the proposition [n.418] that the prior form is active with respect to the later one, or is the reason for receiving it, as with light in the medium in respect of the species of color. For if this [example of light] be instanced in such cases [sc. the four listed in n.418], the instance is of no value, because the proximate active or passive principle would in such cases be lacking. In the four instances already set down [n.418] neither condition [sc. lack of active and of passive principle] is met, for neither is volition the active cause of delight but the object is, nor is it the receptive subject, but the will is. So in the other instances [n.418], The Vatican Editors helpfully explain the same point about the remaining three cases in n.418 as follows: “Intellection is not the active cause of volition but the will is, nor is it the receptive subject but the soul is. The phantasm is not the active cause of intellection but the intellect is, nor is it the receptive subject but the supposit is. Light in the air is not the active cause of light in water but the sun is, nor is it the receptive subject but water is.” Hence, to complete the criticism, the claim in n.418, that the major ‘a perfect agent proximate to its passive subject and not impeded is able to act’ is sometimes false, is itself false. And the four examples given to illustrate it fail, because they are misdescribed; when they are correctly described the relevant major is seen to remain true. ⁴⁶ according to those opinions.

420. Nor should it be said that the major [n.418] is true unless two effects are necessarily producible in an ordered way by the same agent; because this is also not true if there is necessarily an order between forms that can be introduced by different agents, as is plain in the instances set down [n.418].

421. Universally, then, any form that, in order to be received in its passive subject, requires another form to be first received in any subject and by any agent, never is the active principle of the second form in accidental potency for acting on the receptive subject of the second form, unless the prior form has already been induced. Therefore the later [second] form depends, as to its coming to be, essentially on something different from the per se causes of it in its own coming to be, which per se causes are agent and matter.a This conclusion [sc. the previous sentence] can be conceded, because ‘first essentially’ does not belong only to the cause (the fact is plain in the treatise [by Scotus himself], On the First Principle ch. 1 nn.2-4), yet itb is not with probability denied unless the priority of the other form be shown - either as it is active with respect to the second form, or as it is the reason for the receiving, or as it is the effect of a cause nearer to a common cause, or to a cause that necessarily causes first.

a.a [Note by Scotus] It can be said that the later form does not, in the instant in which it is causable, depend on others. It is not causable save naturally after the other cause that is pre-required for it.

b.b Above ‘it’ the sign a was put by Scotus. See n.418.

B. About the Second Opinion

1. Exposition of the opinion

422. There is another opinion that is to the opposite extreme entirely. As is gathered from diverse places in him who thinks this way [Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodlibet 8 q.2, 1 q.7, 14 q.5, 6 q.7], it says that the intellective soul, as it is intellective, has nothing of activity in respect of intellection.

For it does not have the possible intellect’s sort of acting (whether informed with an intelligible species, which they deny [nn.346-347], or bare), because, according to them, the same thing cannot act on itself. They prove this because, since the agent in act is of the sort the patient is in potency (from Physics 3.2.202a8-12, On Generation 1.5.321b35-2a8), it then follows that the same thing would be in potency and act, which seems, first, to be opposite to the first principle of metaphysics known through the idea of act and potency; then also the same thing would be efficient cause and matter, which seems against the Philosopher (Physics 2.7.198a22-27), that matter and efficient cause do not coincide; then again the same thing would be referred to itself by a real relation, which seems impossible (Metaphysics 5.15.1021a26-b3), because of the opposition of such relations; then, finally, anything at all would be posited as acting on itself and moving itself (as that the air would illuminate itself in the presence of the sun and not the sun, and that wood would heat itself in the presence of fire and not the fire). For there would be no source whence anything might be proved that would be thus causative of anything new at all existing in it, notwithstanding the fact that nothing would be naturally causative of anything new in existence.

From these proofs they say that agent and patient are distinct in subject. And there is added, for confirmation, that whatever difficulties may arise in any matter, not on their account must these metaphysical principles be denied, for then all investigation of truth through such principles would be taken away. For a reason for denying them in one matter is a reason for denying them in another.

423. On the same ground they say that the agent intellect cannot effectively cause anything in the possible intellect, because it is not distinguished in subject from it but, by as it were perfecting it formally with its own light, it causes this sort of illumining - just as [Godfrey, ibid. 6 q.15] “when some luminous body is produced (in which are these two perfections, namely transparency and light itself), it is said that this sort of light makes a transparent body luminous, not by changing it from a potency preceding the act toward such act, but the whole together is, according to idea of efficient cause, made by an extrinsic agent” producing such body in such existence. But for this reason is light said to make the body luminous, that it is formally a perfecter of that body. So is it in the issue at hand. The agent intellect, in idea of efficient cause, does nothing to the possible intellect, but “he who created the soul by way of efficient cause, has himself caused this illumination in it, creating or producing these powers at the same time in the same substance.”

424. Similarly they posit that the agent intellect has no operation with respect to intellection save insofar as it has action about the intelligible object, namely insofar as it acts for this, so that it possess the idea of mover and of object in the act. Therefore, as to intellection, the agent intellect will, for these two reasons, have no activity immediately.

425. What then will effectively cause intellection?

They reply that the same real object effects intellection and volition, and this insofar as it shines forth in the phantasm - the agent intellect having been illumined, not effectively but by concurring formally, as it were, in regard to the intelligible.

426. And as to how it may be possible for a phantasm to move the possible intellect, although however the imaginative power and the possible intellect are in the same substance of the soul (and the phantasm is not distinguished in subject from the possible intellect) - they say [Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodlibet 6 q.7] that the soul can be considered in two ways, either in essence or in powers. In the first way, it is whole in each part and is not a principle of any second operation. In the second way, some power determines for itself some part of the body, as an organic power, some power does not, as the intellective power, because “it under the idea of such a power” is not “in this part of the body nor in that, for it is in no part,” because it is “per se neither in the whole nor in any part, just as neither are the operations that are exercised through it. Just as, therefore, a power that would be in a different part of the body than is the phantasm could be changed by what is in imagination, so a power that is determinate to a part in which there is a phantasm but that is outside it (in this way, that it is no more there than in a foot) will be able to be changed by what is in imagination. So is it in the issue at hand [n.425], because the powers [of intellect and will] are not tied to and immersed in matter as the other powers are.”

2. Rejection of the Opinion

427. Against this opinion.

According to it, the agent intellect causes nothing that may be formally in a phantasm, but all that happens is that, through some spiritual contact of this sort of light with the phantasm, there is removal of an obstacle, and when this removal has been carried out by virtue of the agent intellect, the informing of the possible intellect takes place [cf. supra n.361, Godfrey, ibid. 5 q.10].

428. From this it follows that nothing in the intellective part (and this as the intellective part embraces the agent and possible intellects) will have in any way the idea of something active, whether as agent or as idea of acting, with respect to any intellection at all or with respect to the object of intellection, and thus only a phantasm is disposed to intellection as effective of it. Or if there is another effectivity there, by which an irradiating or illumining of phantasms may take place, that effectivity will be precisely form God himself, who has created such light in the possible intellect. Other than God, therefore, nothing is actively disposed in regard to any intellection at all save only a phantasm.

429. This seems unacceptable, because it very much cheapens the nature of the soul. For a phantasm does not seem able to cause any perfection in the intellect that surpasses the nobility of a phantasm, because an effect does not exceed its cause but falls short of it, especially an equivocal effect. Therefore, as this opinion’s position goes, nothing is caused in the intellect precisely by a phantasm, for every intellection is either more perfect than a phantasm or in man there will be no intellection.a

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus; replaced by the passage from n.428, last sentence, to the end of n.429. See also the canceled text to n.443, which is effectively the same as n.429 here] Either then God will operate immediately for any intellection, or only the phantasm will be the cause of all actions of the intellective part, both intellections and volitions.

430. Again, second, from this position it follows that an angel (in whom such distinction in subject cannot be posited), could have no new intellection, however much an angel have many objects habitually present to him. Indeed, an angel can have no intellection effectively save from God, because if the opposite is posited the intellect will be moved by itself, or agent and patient will not be distinct in subject.b

b.b [Note by Scotus] Along with the second argument against Godfrey [n.430], it seems to be against him how an animal has a phantasm without exterior sensation. For what moves the organ there to act? Nothing seems distinct there in subject, unless he posit a sense memory in an organ different from a phantasma or imagination, and that it moves imagination to imagining.

431. He seems himself to concede this, because he posits that the claim ‘an angel can have a new intellection’ is merely a matter of belief.

432. But this is not a way out. For no matter of belief is repugnant to a conclusion following from true principles. And from this principle, ‘agent and patient are necessarily distinct in subject’, it necessarily follows that an angel cannot have, from himself, any intellection actively. Therefore, if the opposite of this conclusion is a matter of belief, the principle from which the conclusion follows will be false. This is plainer about ‘willing’, for it is clear that an angel did not have his first ‘willing of bad’ from God; so the agent there was not distinct in subject from the thing acted on.

433. Third, it follows that one should not posit any habit in the intellect because, according to this opinion, it is required, and suffices, for ordered understanding that phantasms occur in an ordered way and that, as occurring, they move the intellect in an ordered way. But that they occur in an ordered way cannot come about through a habit in the intellect, because nothing in the thing acted on gives ordered moving to the mover. Or at any rate they can occur in an ordered way through a habit in imagination without any habit in the intellect; therefore etc.

434. There is a confirmation, because, according to them, for this reason is a habit in the will denied, because the will moves easily in conformity with the intellect. Therefore by similarity, since the intellect is moved, according to them, by phantasms in the way the phantasms occur, a habit in imagination will suffice for them to move in an ordered way. These three [nn.428-433] I consider [to be objections against these thinkers].

435. But other arguments are also made against them. First as follows:a if a phantasm causes every intellection effectively, and if a natural cause does nothing save according to the nature by which it is in act, a phantasm will never cause any action in the intellect save one that is conform to the phantasm; and so it will never cause a false composition repugnant to the ideas of the extreme terms which the phantasms are of in the imaginative power. Or if in some way it is possible, as they reply [Godfrey, Quodlibet 10 q.12, 5 q.12], that through one known opposite can its opposite be known, this is only because through one true composition can the intellect know that the opposite is false. But will the phantasm never cause as true a false intellection, or conversely? And if you say it is because a phantasm represents objects falsely that it causes a false intellection in the intellect - the follows that the same phantasm can never cause an opposite assent, and so the intellect will not be able to apprehend the same complex as now true, now false.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus; replaced by the passage from n.432, opening sentence, to “First as follows” here in n.435]. This response does not seem to be that of a Christian but of a purely pagan philosopher, since an angel knows many new things and is blessed in this operation of his. Thirds

436. Again, second, intellection according to the Philosopher is an immanent act [Metaphysics 9.8.1050a14-b1].

437. They reply [Godfrey, Quodlibet 9 q.19] that ‘to understand’, in the grammatical way of signifying, signifies action, and ‘to be understood’ signifies passion; yet in reality ‘to understand’ is a passion and ‘what is understood’ is the agent. But what may ‘to understand’ have of the idea of action? They say [ibid.] that ‘to understand’ does not signify anything as it has being, in itself and absolutely, in the subject, but as it tends to something else as to an object, or as to a term; “and because it is a mark of action to proceed from the agent and to tend to the thing acted on, therefore such perfections” -which are in reality passions, that is, passions abiding by way of action in that which is denominated from them - “are said to be immanent actions.”

438. To the contrary. The philosopher, when distinguishing action from making, Ethics 1.1.1094a3-6, 6.4.1140a1-6, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a21-b1, assigns diverse principles and properties to action and making, which would not be necessary if his meaning were that what he assigns to be an action were a passion; for then it would not be necessary to assign it its own active principle. For it would not be necessary for prudence to be active, in the way art is a habit of making, if action were nothing but a certain form received in something else (as in that which is called an agent).

439. Again, third, a habit is not posited precisely for undergoing something, and above all in the case of a passive thing that is supremely disposed to form. For what is in itself supremely disposed to receive has no need to be rendered prompt to receive. But the intellect is supremely disposed for any intellection whatever, because it has nothing contrary. Therefore, it would not be necessary to posit any habit in the intellect if it were precisely passive with respect to intellection. Proof of the first proposition [sc. supra n.439, “a habit is not posited precisely for undergoing something”], because a habit is ‘what we use when we want’, and a habit “perfects the haver and renders his work good etc.,” Ethics 2.4.1105b25-26, 1106a15-17.

440. Again, fourth, how would the intellect engage in discursive reasoning, by syllogizing and arguing, if a phantasm cause every intellection? For it does not seem intelligible how phantasms are, by their occurrence, cause of all discourse.

441. Again, fifth, how will logical intentions, or relations of reason, be caused? For, if a phantasm causes every intellection, any intention caused by it will be real, because that is called a real intention which is immediately caused by the thing, or by a species representing the thing in itself. Therefore, no intellection will cause logical intentions or relations of reason, because the intellect will be able, by no act of itself, to compare one object with another, which comparing is what causes a relation of reason, or a second intention, in an object.

442. There is a confirmation, because when the intellect compares a to b according to the sort of relation that there is, from the nature of the thing, between them, it does not cause a relation of reason, as it does for example when it compares them as different or as contrary, or as whole and part, or the like. Therefore, by the comparing alone is a relation of reason caused, which, neither in its being nor in its being known, is consequent to the extremes from the nature of the extremes. Therefore, the extremes are not the cause of the act of comparing.

443. Again, sixth, how does the intellect reflect on its own act,a and how will this be in the capacity of the reflecting power? For if the phantasm causing some intellection naturally has to cause a reflection on that intellection, for the same reason it naturally has to cause a reflection on the reflection, and so on ad infinitum, as Augustine says On the Trinity 15.12 n.21 [cf. n.227]. But if it does not have to cause a reflection but only an absolute act, and if afterwards another phantasm occurs, no reason seems capable of being assigned as to how there could be any reflection on any act.b

a.a [Note added by Scotus] The act is the object of a second act, so it moves the intellect toward it and it is in it, therefore etc. #8 [the argument in n.443 was the eighth in the primitive text].

b.b [Text canceled by Scotus] Again, how does it not cheapen the soul, because every natural action (which is a natural perfection of so perfect a being) is thus effectively caused by a phantasm? For a phantasm seems able to cause no perfection in the intellect that exceeds the nobility of the intellect, because an equivocal effect cannot exceed an equivocal cause but falls short of it. Therefore, nothing precisely caused by a phantasm, as by a total active cause (as that position about intellection posits), can be more perfect than a phantasm, but is more imperfect than it; and so no perfection will be a greater perfection in man than the very phantasm, which is absurd. [This text seems canceled here only because it has been transposed, more or less, to n.429].

444. Of these last six reasons, the first [n.435] is not compelling against them [Godfrey et al.], because it asks about a difficulty common to every opinion. For whether a phantasm is posited to be an active cause of intellection or the intelligible is species or the intellect, one can always ask of them equally (since each of them is a principle of acting naturally, not freely) how opposites in the intellect can be caused, as for example now a true opinion or knowledge about something, and now a false opinion or error about the same.

445. The second reason [nn.436, 438] is not compelling, for prudence is posited to be an active principle because of another act, which is ‘action’, to which its own act is extended as rule is to thing ruled - just as the proper act of an art is extended to a different act, which is ‘making’, although however neither of the habits is a properly active principle in respect of its act.

446. Hereby [n.445] to the third reason [n.439], that a habit inclines the subject acted on the way a prior form inclines to a fitting posterior one, as is said elsewhere about habit [Scotus, Ord. I d.17 p.1 qq.1-3]. For although a passive subject, through removal of the opposite, is of itself supremely disposed, yet not by addition of something fitting. The remark from Ethics 2 [n.439], that [a habit] renders the work good etc., must be understood to mean that it does so not by effecting but by inclining [Scotus, ibid.].

447. The fourth [n.440] coincides with the one considered third [nn.433-434], namely how a habit disposes for phantasms to occur in discursive reasoning in an ordered way, unless the habit is placed in the imaginative power, not in the intellect - which perhaps he would concede.

448. The sixth [n.443] only asks how it is in our power which intellection we have through another, and what the act is known by on which we reflect. The first, to be sure, is because of the will, and the second indeed through the footprint left behind from the act; or otherwise it is through a phantasm, which first displays the object but which, second, is caused by the object. Yet it is not necessary that it in act cause intellection of intellection, except when the will gives command. So it is possible, after the footprint has been left, for a reflex act to be had by being elicited through it, with the will commanding [this intellection]; and it is possible for it not to be had, with the will commanding another intellection.

449. The fifth [nn.441-442] seems it needs pondering if ‘no comparison is a relation of reason that the extremes are of a nature to cause in the intellect’. For if this proposition is true, then although intellections of the simple things that are compared may be caused by the extremes, yet not the comparison that is in the comparing act by which a relation of reason is caused in the extreme term. It could be said that some relation follows the extremes in the thing, and that, when the extremes are known, it follows in knowledge - as in the case of contrariety and the like. And this relation is real. The other relation does not follow the extremes in the thing, and not necessarily in the intellect either. Yet the extremes themselves can cause the act of comparison by eliciting it, when the will gives command. And when the act of comparing has been caused according to the sort of respect that does not follow the extremes in the thing, a relation of reason is caused.

C. About the Third and Fourth Opinion

1. Exposition of the Opinions

450. [Third opinion] The third opinion [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 5.25] posits that the intelligible [object], as present simply to the intellect (not through an intelligible species [n.340], but through a phantasm as it is illumined by the agent intellect), is thus simply present to the possible intellect as in memory. And, as it moves to an act of understanding, it is there as in the intelligence, whose knowledge has its term in the object itself. And as concerns these two the intellect is passive, namely both as it is memory having an object simply present to it, and as it is intelligence moved by the object thus present to the first act of understanding. But the intellect, when brought to be in first act, can by natural insight dig down and run through any ‘what it is’, by conjoining and dividing the appropriate differences with the thing divided, and by thus investigating, as regard simple understanding, the ‘what it is’ and, as regard complex understanding, the ‘because of what’ as regard a knowable conclusion. And in this discursive reasoning the intellect, insofar as it thus reasons, is active; insofar, however, as it conceives, it is passive.

451. [Fourth opinion] This same doctor as to this position (about passiveness with respect to the first simple and confused knowledge, and about activity with respect to investigated distinct knowledge) seems to retract it and to correct it in another place where, asking about the active principle of vital actions (namely actions of sensation and intellection), posits that that principle is something in the animate thing itself and not an object outside it. And in the way he posits in the senses that the species impressed on the organ inclines only, and, by inclining, excites the power and, as it were, calls it forth to its operation, so does [he posit that] the phantasm in the imaginative power inclines the intellect so that the inclined intellect is in ultimate disposition to elicit intellection as its own proper operation - And on behalf of this position he there introduces a reason for these actions, that they are to be vital actions and that no action transcends the perfection of the agent. And he introduces another reason about the action that remains in the agent, and these are actions proper and denominate the agent properly, the way ‘to shine’, but not ‘to illumine’, is related to the ‘shining’ thing. With this agrees the reason of Augustine [On Music 6.5 n.9], that the soul forms in itself images of things known.

These three reasons were introduced before, for the first opinion [nn.409, 412, 408].

2. Rejection of the Opinions

452. Neither of these opinions, neither the one retracted nor the one retracting it, seems to be true. Not the retracted one [n.450], because the intellect, when brought to be in act according to the first confused knowledge, is active with respect to second intellection either by virtue of itself, or by virtue of the first confused knowledge itself. If by virtue of itself, it does not seem reasonable that some cause could be active with respect to a more perfect cause in some species and could in no way be active with respect to a more imperfect cause of the same idea; now the confused and distinct intellection of white seem to be intellections of the same idea, because intellections of the same object; therefore it seems unacceptable that the intellect could of itself be causative with respect to the second intellection, which is the more perfect, and not with respect to the first. And if you say that in respect of the second act it is active by virtue of the first act, on the contrary: an imperfect act cannot be the formal idea of causing a more perfect act, because then, if an effect could surpass in perfection its total cause, there would be no way in which it could be proved that God is the most perfect being; but distinct knowledge is nobler than confused knowledge; therefore the confused knowledge is not the formal reason for eliciting or causing the distinct knowledge.

453. The retracting opinion too [n.451] does not seem to be true, because I ask what is understood by ‘inclination’? Either that there is some form in the intellect by which it is inclined, or that nothing is in the intellect. If nothing, the intellect is not more inclined now than it was before. If some form, either an act of understanding - and then the opposite of their opinion, because the object will cause the act - or something prior to the act of understanding, as a species, which they deny [n.340].

454. Response: it is not a habit nor an act nor a species but some fourth thing. -On the contrary. Although this would seem at once to be unacceptable, yet it is argued as follows: Let that fourth thing be a; either without it there is in the intellect the total active virtue with respect to intellection, or there is not. If there is, then without it the intellect is capable of this intellection, and so of any required determination (because a ‘this’ as ‘this’ is most determinate), and so it will be necessary because of nothing. If there is not, then a gives active virtue, whether total or partial, to the intellect itself, and so such action will not be from the intellect, or from within, as from a total active principle.

455. Again, in ordered causes an inferior does not include a superior but conversely;a and with respect to intellection the intellective part is a cause superior to the species of any object, as will be plain in the following question [nn.559-562]; therefore the object does not incline the intellect.

a.a [Note added by Scotus] But this is false; rather each inclines each. An example: a habit inclines a power [cf. n.446].

D. About the Fifth and Sixth Opinion

1. Exposition of the Opinions

456. [Fifth opinion] The fifth opinion [Giles of Rome, Quodlibet 1 q.3, 3 qq.13-14, 5 q.9; On Angelic Knowledge qq.1, 4-5; Thomas of Sutton, Quaestiones Ordinariae qq.2-3] posits that the species of the object in the intellect, or the object itself present in itself, is what generates, or is the formal idea of generating, actual knowledge in the intellect, and the intellect itself is only disposed as material there, informed by the species or possessing the object that supplies the place of the species.

457. The argument for this is as follows: Averroes On the Soul 3 com.5, the intellect is disposed to universal forms as first matter is to individual forms; and elsewhere [in com.5] the soul is lowest in the genus of intelligibles, as matter is in the genus of beings; and On the Soul 2.5.417a2-28, and Physics 8.4.255a30-255b31, the intellect before habit is in essential potency as matter is before form; and On the Soul 3.4.429a24, the soul is nothing of the things that are before understanding. From all these it is concluded that the power of the intellect with respect to the intelligible is purely potential; but what is purely potential cannot be the active principle of any act unless informed by some form; and then the form will be the formal principle.

458. Argument is also made that the very form that is the principle of acting is the likeness, because just as making is formally through the form by which the maker is assimilated to the thing made, so action seems to be through the form by which the agent is assimilated to the object - so similitude will be the formal reason for acting.

459. For this is also added that an indeterminate agent cannot perform a determinate action, or an action about a determinate object, unless it be determined; the intellect of itself is indeterminate as to every intelligible and every intellection; therefore, in order for it to understand, some determination is required; that determination is only through some species; therefore the intelligible species is the determinative principle.

460. [Sixth opinion] The sixth opinion, which returns to the same as to the conclusion of this question, is that actual knowledge itself, generated whether in the senses or in the intellect, is the species; and then, just as the formal idea of generating an actual species that is called actual knowledge is the idea of the object or the species of the object in memory, so it follows, as concerns the issue at hand, that the formal idea of generating actual knowledge is the object itself or some species in virtue of the object; and this such that when the object is in itself present, a species is generated from it, which is intellection; but when it is not present in itself but through a species in memory, then by this species or by virtue of this species another species is generated, which will be intellection.

461. In favor of this opinion, insofar as it says that the intelligible species is actual knowledge, is adduced Augustine On the Trinity 11.2 n.3, where he maintains that “the informing which is called vision is generated by the body alone that sees;” but what is generated by the body alone is the species; therefore, the species is vision, according to Augustine.

462. This is proved, second, through the Philosopher On the Soul 3.2.425b25-28, who maintains that sounding and hearing are the same, because the act of the active and the passive thing is the same, Physics 3.3.202a13-21; but sounding in act causes a species of sound in the ear; therefore this caused species is the same as hearing, and so the sensible species and the sounding are the same.

2. Rejection of the Opinions

463. The conclusion of these last two opinions is disproved by certain arguments made against the second opinion [nn.422, 427-443]. For an equivocal effect cannot exceed an equivocal cause in perfection, but necessarily falls short of it; intellection would be an equivocal effect of the intelligible species if it were caused by it alone; and so it would be simply more imperfect than the intelligible species, which is not true [n.429].

464. This reason [n.463], which was the first against the second opinion [n.429], is less evident against these opinions [the fifth and sixth], because the intelligible species is nobler than the phantasm. The second and third reason against the second opinion [nn.430-434] are not against these opinions [the fifth and sixth]. Six other reasons, which I did not consider against the second opinion [nn.435-443], can be made here. For first,a a habit does not seem necessary, as was argued there [n.439]. Likewise, second, how would discursive reasoning happen [n.440]? Third, how reflection [n.443]? Fourth, how would relations of reason or logical intentions be caused [nn.441-442]? Fifth, how would a false proposition arise that would be assented to as true if the intelligible species alone, generated by the phantasm, were the formal reason for all intellection [n.435]? Sixth, how will an action be immanent [nn.436, 438]?

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus, in place of “This reason.. .For first”] Likewise ..

465. Three middle terms against these opinions [fifth and sixth] are added, which are also not much to be considered. The first is this:a the species would then be rather the intellective potency than the intellect, and so it would, when separated, have the same act, just as heat, when separated, would make things hot.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus, in place of “Sixth [n.464].is this”] Likewise.

466. Likewise then, ‘to understand’ does not seem to be the proper perfection of the intellect, because nothing seems to be essentially ordered to that operation to which, or to the principle of which, it is disposed in a potentiality for contradiction, as to an accident per accidens - just as ‘to heat something’ does not seem the proper perfection of wood from the fact that wood is disposed to heat something as to an accident per accidens [sc. when it happens to be on fire]. But the intellect would, according to the opinion [sc. the fifth and sixth], be so disposed to the intelligible species that would be the principle of intellection; therefore etc.

467. Likewise, third: both in the senses and in the intellect (positing the same thing doing the representing), greater attention makes for a more perfect act. For the same thing with the same intelligible species or phantasm understands more perfectly that to the understanding of which it gives more effort, and understands it less perfectly when giving less effort. So too in the case of the senses, when the same object is present and in the same light, a thing is more perfectly seen because of greater attention in the seeing. This is plain too from the fact that sometimes sight is, because of greater attention, the more damaged; indeed, ceteris paribus, a more concentrated eye could be greatly affected by the seeing of something which another eye would be less affected by, as is plain from experience. It is plain also from Augustine On the Trinity 11.2 n.4, that in someone attentive the species long after the seeing remain which do not remain in the eye of someone not attentive in that sense.

468. It can be said [to the argument, n.465] that the intellective power is that by which we understand, and we understand by it insofar as it has intellection formally. The species is not of a nature to have it, nor is it the reason for having it. As to what is added, that ‘[the species] would, when separated, have the same act’ [n.465], if the ‘have’ is understood as to the subject, it is plain the argument is not valid; if it is understood as to the effect, my reply is that [the species] does not have the passive object on which to act, especially if it is not of a nature to be the principle of acting on something else, because not the principle of making, but only of an action immanent in the same subject as itself.

469. To the second [n.466] it can be said that the major ‘nothing seems to be essentially ordered etc.’ is false in the case of things that cannot attain, of themselves, the end to which they are ordered, but only by the action of something extrinsic, which gives some accident to them by which they may act and attain their end - and so it is of the intellect.

470. To the third [n.467]: that attention belongs the will by which, through vehement application of oneself to some object, a lower cognitive power is affected by the object more vehemently; and therefore it knows more perfectly, though it does not act for that act.

3. Rejection of the Sixth Opinion Specifically

471. But against the second of these opinions [n.460] (which is sixth overall The six are at nn. 407, 422, 450, 451, 456, 460. ⁴⁷) there is argument specifically that it is false, both in the case of the senses and in that of the intellect. In the case of the senses because, if the species which is vison is a species of the same idea as the one in the medium, then the one in the medium will formally be vision; therefore the medium, in possessing it formally, will be seeing formally. But if, besides the species in sight that is posited to be vision, there is a species of a different idea from it and another species of the same idea as the species in vision, the conclusion is gained. For although that which is vision is called a species, yet there is something else prior to it in the eye, and of a different idea; and it is the species, as it is commonly called, and so the species properly speaking will differ from vision.

472. If you say [Giles of Rome, On the Knowledge of Angels q.1] that the species in the medium differs from the species in the eye because of diversity of receivers - this is nothing because, just as whiteness is of the same idea in a horse and in a stone (and therefore each is white according to the same idea of whiteness), so if that which is called the species is of the same idea in the eye and in the medium, then if it of itself is vision formally, vision formally will be in each; and whatever vision formally is in, that is formally seeing.

473. The principal thing proposed [sc. n.471, that the sixth opinion, that species and vision are the same, is false] is also plain, because in a blind eye that yet remains as physically constituted See footnote to n.122 above. ⁴⁸ as it was before a species is caused; likewise in the eye of someone sleeping, otherwise he would not be woken up by the presence of some surpassing visible thing (nor otherwise too would he be woken up by a surpassing sound if it were not first present in the ear), yet in these cases there is no vision. So too in a well-disposed eye there is received some species of the same idea as that which is in the medium, from the fact that the organ itself is of a similar disposition as the medium, on account of the transparency of each (from On the Soul 2.6.418b26-419a1); and it will not be vision formallya but prior to vision.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] because if in any way it is, it will be different.

474. And that this is false in the case of the intellect [sc. as it has just been shown to be false in the case of the senses, n.473] is plain by putting together some of the things said by those who think thus. For they posit that there is no species different from the divine essence in blessed vision, and that beatitude consists essentially in the vision alone; add this statement, that vision is the species formally, and it follows that our beatitude will be the divine essence formally.b Therefore if this conclusion is unacceptable, let them either deny the premise that vision is the species, or posit that the divine essence has a species other than itself or that beatitude is essentially in something other than in the act of vision.

b.b [Interpolated text] Proof: beatitude formally is vision according to them, and vision formally is the species according to them; therefore, the species is the divine essence formally.

475. A response [sc. on the part of those who hold the sixth opinion]: where there is an intelligible species different from the object, it is intellection; but where there is not a species different from the object, there intellection is not the object; in beatitude, therefore, they would deny that the species is different from the object and the act, but that it is different from the object [sc. by itself, without the act] is not denied

476. On the contrary: no object’s intelligible species is different from it save only intellection, according to them [n.460]; therefore, any object whose intellection is different from it has an intelligible species; therefore a species in the vision of God must be admitted, as in the intellection of any other object.

477. A note about the relation of a science to an object.

Note that insofar as the object moves the intellect, or more properly insofar as it is causative of intellection, there is a relation of intellection to it pertaining to the second mode of relatives [cf. nn.287-288], as of son to father or generated heat to generating heat; the relation too of the intellect as movable to the object as mover pertains to the second mode, as does the relation of the heatable to what is heater of it.

478. But besides these relations of the second mode, there is another relation of intellection to the object, as the relation of that which is termed to that which terms it. For intellection is not only from the object as from efficient cause, total or partial, but it is to it as to what terms it, or as that which it is about.

479. The difference between these relations is plain [nn.477-478], because each is without the other. The first is without the second in the case of generated heat; the second without the first in the intellection of a stone, if it came to be in me immediately from God. The first is not an identical relation, because the same absolute could come to be from a different cause; the second seems to be an identical relation, because no act that is of a nature to arise about an object could be the same and not have its term in the same object. The second is not related to a cause as cause because, when all causes have been posited, there is required in such an act something besides this as the term of it. The fact is plain also by way of division: the term is not a form nor an efficient cause, as is plain; it is not an end, because the object, as it is what first the act is about, is not the loved thing for which the act is elicited; nor is it matter, for it is ‘about’ the object without being ‘in’ and ‘from’ it [cf. Scotus, Ord. Prol. n.188]. The second relation can be posited to be of the third mode of relatives [n.296], not because it is the relation of the thing measured, but because it is like it, for it is not mutual. For universally an act requires that which it is about, not conversely; nor does only the relation of a thing measured belong to the third mode, but every similar relation, namely one that is not mutual; of this sort is the relation of the thing termed (in the way said) to the term of it. However, there also comes in here, between the same absolutes, the relation of measured to measurer; but it can be posited as different from this relation of thing termed.

480. Against the third [“the second is not related to a cause as cause...”] and fourth points [“an act requires that which it is about, not conversely.”]: how is a relation that is not relative to a cause identical with anything unless it depend essentially on a noncause, and so the four causes would not suffice for the being of a thing? Again, it [the object an act is about] is able not to be when the act exists; how then is the relation an identical one?

481. These two questions [n.480] seem to prove that the intellect is an absolute form like whiteness. For it is plain that intellection is causable immediately by God; therefore, it does not depend essentially on it [the object] alone. Also when an object causes, it does not depend by way of identity, because the same intellection could be caused from elsewhere (frequently too it is from a non-being).

482. And if you say it is a being in a species [sc. and not an absolute thing], the argument will be about the species, that is an absolute form (or there is a regress to infinity), and it is not the object that is the term, but that is of which it is the species. How then is the Philosopher to be understood in Physics 8.6.246a28-b27, and how the other things said about habits [sc. that they are not absolutes but relations, Categories 7.6a36-b6, 7b.23-33]? How then is the relation an identical one, since it is able not to be when the act exists, or how is it real, since there is no term [cf. Ord. I d.17 n.7]?

483. Again the difference between these relations is posited [nn.477-479] to be that the intellect is, when understanding, sometimes termed to something by which it is not moved, as the divine intellect in relation to a creature or to intrinsic relations or to attributesa, since however only the essence moves to intellection, otherwise what would be the first object of it [the divine intellect]?

a.a [Note added by Scotus] false, save [when terminating] secondarily.

484. On the contrary: then the intellection of God would have a real relation to a creature or to another object; again, second, why is ‘one’ mover rather than ‘one’ term required for unity of act?

485. To the first of these two [n.484]: why cannot a relation of the third mode be only one of reason, just as is also that of the second, by which the divine essence is said to move the understanding of it, and conversely - and thus there would be no difference in Aristotle’s modes [of relations] as regard real being and being of reason, but as regard mutual and non-mutual? And if mutual, as regard quantity and quality, the substantial or accidental, in first act or second, such that any mode could be sometimes real, sometimes of reason? No reply seems to be given to the second question in n.484. ⁴⁹

II. Scotus’ own Opinion

486. To the question [n.401] I reply that actual intellection is something in us not perpetual but possessing being after non-being, as we experience. For this it is necessary to posit some active cause, and a cause somehow in us, otherwise it would not be in our power to understand when we want, which is against the Philosopher, On the Soul 2.5.417b24.

487. And it appears here that the soul and an object present must come together, and that in an intelligible species, as was said in the preceding question [n.370], because it is in another way not present as actually intelligible, speaking of the sensible and material object.

488. I say then that the object of this intellection is not the total active cause, either in itself or in its species, as appears from the first reason against the second opiniona[n.429], and also because then the image in the mind as it is the mind could not be preserved, because nothing of the mind itself would have the idea of parent.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] Here first reason has replaced an original reasons; and second opinion has replaced fifth and sixth opinion. The fifth and sixth opinions have the same conclusion as the second [n.460].

489. Nor is the total cause of intellection the intellective soul, or anything of it formally - on account of the reason given about the four causesa against the first opinion [n.414], which reason explains the reason of the Philosopher in On the Soul [n.486], that was touched on when arguing for the main point in the first partb [n.401].

For this are added other probabilities as well.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] Here reason given about the four causes replaces an original reasons given.

b.b [Noted added by Scotus] Response: the senses are first, not presupposing anything prior to their being perfected [n.401].

490. First,a because then the act would not be a likeness of the object; second, because then the act would not be distinguished essentially on account of the distinction of the object, because an essential distinction does not come from what is not a cause.

a.a Text canceled by Scotus: Here First replaces an original and also.

491. Third, because neither would the intellection of a more perfect intelligible be simply more perfect (on the supposition of equal effort on the part of the intellect on this side and that), which is not true; because when a total cause operating more efficaciously is posited, a more perfect action follows; and also, if the soul were total cause, whenever it were to act on its own part more perfectly and with greater effort, it would produce a more perfect intellection, and so an intellection of God would not be more perfect than an intellection of a fly, which is against the Philosopher in Ethics 10.8.1178b7-32, who locates happiness in contemplation of the most perfect object.

492. It seems also, fourth, that then there would be an infinite activity in the intellect, insofar as the intellect is active with respect to all intellections. Because for one intellection is required some perfection in the cause of the intellection, and for another intellection of another idea is required as much perfection, or greater, because containing virtually two perfections of its proper causes, in this case and that. Therefore, what has this and that intellection will be more perfect than what has that one alone, and so what as total cause [of all intellections] has infinite such intellections is infinite in perfection.a

a.a [Note added by Scotus] The like can be argued about partial causality with respect to infinites; look in the Parisian Collations [collation 2].

493. Likewise, fifth, it would not be apparent how any total science might be contained virtually in the object if the intellective soul alone would have causality with respect to the act and the habit.a Of these five probabilities [nn.490-493], the third and fourth [nn.491-492] can be considered.

a.a [Note added by Scotus] For the activity of the intellect, at least its partial activity, note the first three arguments. Otherwise, how an image is in the mind [n.488]; the intellect is cheaper than the other cause [n.488, 429]; attention would not help [nn.467, 470]; how there is reflection, how relations of reason, how discursive reasoning [n.464]. That [the intellect] is not the total active cause [of intellection]; the argument from On the Soul 2 [nn.489, 401], and also there the remark of On the Soul 2 [n.402], ‘sounding and hearing are the same act’; the more perfect belongs to the more perfect [n.491]; infinity [n.492].
     Among these six: three of them prove that not the object only is cause [nn.486, 488], another three prove that not the soul alone is cause [nn.489, 491-492]. Two are considered especially: namely for the first part, that an equivocal cause is nobler than the effect; for the other side, about the four causes. Put on the scales, the first seems weaker than the second; also the two that are collateral to the first, which are taken from Augustine about the image and about attention (which attention he speaks about On the Trinity 11 ch.2 n.5, and elsewhere he joins the parent with the offspring), these collaterals, I say, seem weaker than those collateral to the second, namely about the difference of perfection of acts [ n.491], and about the infinity of activity in the intellective power [n.492]; therefore the second is a more certain conclusion.

494. From these points [nn.486-493] the question is solved as follows: so if neither the soul by itself nor the object by itself is the total cause of actual intellection (and they alone seem required for intellection), it follows that these two are one integral cause with respect to generated knowledge. And this is the opinion of Augustine, On the Trinity, 9.12 n.18, as cited when arguing against the first opinion, “It must be clearly held” [n.413].

495. But as to how this is to be understood, I draw a distinction about when several causes come together for the same effect.

496. For some causes come together on an equality, as when two people are pulling one and the same body. Some are not on an equality but possess an essential order, and this in two ways. Either thus, that a superior move an inferior such that the inferior does not act save because moved by the superior, and sometimes such inferior cause has from the superior the virtue or form by which it moves, sometimes it does not but has the form from something else, and from the superior cause only actual motion to produce the effect. On the other hand, sometimes the superior does not move the inferior, nor give it the power by which it moves, but the superior has of itself a more perfect power of acting and the inferior a more imperfect power of acting.

An example of the first member of this division: from the motive power that is in the hand and in a stick and a ball. An example of the second: if the mother is posited to have active virtue in the generation of offspring, she and the active power of the father come together as two partial causes, ordered causes indeed, because one is more perfect than the other; but the inferior does not receive its causality from the more perfect cause, nor is the total causality eminently in the more perfect cause, but the more imperfect cause adds something insofar as the effect can be more perfect from a more perfect and more imperfect cause than from a more perfect cause alone.

497. To the point at issue. An intelligible object (present in itself or in an intelligible species) and the intellective part do not come together for intellection as causes on an equality, for then one would have an imperfect sort of causality and the other would be the supplement for it. And if one were perfect, it could have in itself singly the total causality of both, just as, if the motive power of one were perfect, it would supply the virtue of the other; and then the species would be as it were a certain degree of intellective-ness, supplying the degree of intellective-ness lacking to the intellect; and then, if the intellect were to become to such a degree more perfect, it could have an act of understanding without a species and without an object, which is false.

498. Therefore, these two come together as having an essential order. Not however in the first way [n.496], because neither does the intellect give to the object or the species the idea of their own causality (for the object is not of a nature, in itself or in its species, to cause intellection through something that it receives from the intellect but from its own nature), nor does the intellect receive its causality from the object or from the species of the object, as was proved in the first argument against the seconda opinion [nn.429, 488]. They are, therefore, causes essentially ordered, and in the last way [n.496], namely because one is simply more perfect than the other, such that each is perfect in its own causality not depending on the other.

a.a ‘against the fifth and sixth opinion’ in the original text before the later revision [nn.463-467].

499. If argument is made against this [n.498], that in such essentially ordered causes neither of them is the perfection of the other, therefore the intelligible species will not be the form of the intellect itself.

Similarly, to the same point, if the species is the perfection of the intellect and the whole is the reason for acting, then a single operation (namely intellection) will not have a single formal idea of acting; and, likewise, from a being per accidens (of which sort is this whole of intellect possessing a species) there will be one per se operation, which is unacceptable, for what is not a being per se one is not the formal idea of acting.

Response:

500. To the first [of these, n.499]: it is accidental to a species (insofar as it is a partial cause with respect to the act of understanding concurring with the intellect as the other partial cause) that it perfect the intellect; because although it does perfect it, yet it does not give it any activity pertaining to the causality of the intellect.

An example: the motive power in the hand can use a knife, insofar as the knife is sharp, for dividing up some body. If this sharpness were in the hand as in a subject, the hand could use it for the same operation and yet it would be an accident in the hand (insofar as there is motive power in the hand) that there was sharpness in it, and conversely, because sharpness would give no perfection to the hand pertaining to the hand’s motive power. The point is plain, because the [hand’s] motive power is equally perfect without such sharpness and, when the sharpness is in something else joined to the hand (as a knife), the hand uses the sharpness in the same way as it would if it were in the hand.

So is it in the matter at issue. If the species could exist within the intellect without inhering in it after the manner of a form - if it existed within it in that way or could be sufficiently conjoined with the intellect - these two partial causes, intellect and species, conjoined with each other, would be capable of the same operation that they are now capable of when the species informs the intellect. This is also apparent when positinga some intelligible object without a species. For the object is a partial cause and does not inform the intellect, which is the other partial cause; but these two causes, when proximate to each other without the informing of one by the other, cause, by their proximity alone, one common effect.

a.a [Note added by Scotus] ‘positing’; note that it is not necessary that the object, or what supplies the place of the object, will necessarily be a principle of action immanent in that in which the object, or what supplies it, is present.

501. If this second case is posited, not without cause is it perhaps impossible for an accidenta that is the principle of something immanent and not transitive to be sufficiently joined to a passive subject, unless it be in it subjectively - which is why it is called an accident.b Surely the divine essence in the intellect of the blessed is a principle of intuition, which is not immanent in the essence, nor in anything of which it is a form? Likewise, charity in the fatherland is a principle of its own intuition, and yet it is not in the intellect intuiting it. Therefore is intellection an immanent action, taking ‘action’ for ‘operation’.

a.a Above ‘accident’ Scotus placed the symbol a

b.b Above ‘accident’ Scotus placed the symbol a

502. On the contrary: there is not thus one action immanent and another transient. I reply, then, and say that there is a division of the term into the things signified. In one way is act in the genus of action immanent in the other cause, namely in the intellect, and with respect to it is it immanent, but not so with respect to the one that is left, namely the object.

503. From the same argument [n.500] is plain the answer to the second objection [n.499], that in any single order of cause it is necessary to posit one per se cause with respect to one effect, and one idea of per se causing (thus the intellect in its order of causality is one, and has one formal idea of causing; and the species or object in its order of causing is one special cause, and has one idea of causing). But it is not necessary that a total cause, as it embraces all the partial causes, have one idea of causing save in unity of order. Because if with a unity of order there come together a unity per accidens, this is accidental; but a unity of order is per se. An example: the sun in its order of causing has one idea of causing with respect to offspring, and a father in his order of causing is one cause of one idea; but the total cause that embraces sun and father does not have any single formal idea of causing (just as it is not one cause) save by unity of order. And if it happen that causes thus ordered have, besides unity of order, a unity per accidens (insofar namely as one is accident to the other), this does not belong to them per se insofar as they are ordered causes.

III. To the Arguments for the Opinions

A. To the Arguments for the First Opinion

504. To the arguments for the opinions, in order.

First to the authorities of Augustine [nn.407-408] I say that the image which is posited by him to exist in the spirit needs to be understood to exist in the soul or in something of the soul as in a subject, and not precisely in a body physically thus mixed See fn. to n.120. ⁵⁰ - otherwise the conclusion would not follow that the image is nobler than every body, which however he himself says in Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.16 nn.32-33. Now what is in the soul or in something of the soul as in a subject is not the species which is commonly called ‘species’; that, rather, is received in an organ’s part [sc. the receptive part of the bodily senses] that is a body physically thus mixed [n.471]. See fn. to n.120. ⁵¹ But what is received in the soul or a power of the soul is the act of knowing; therefore by image Augustine himself means such sort of act.

505. This gloss [n.504] is proved from his remark On the Trinity 11.2 n.3, where he maintains that the informing of the sense, which is done by the body alone, is called vision. And the informing is the species proper which is received in a part of the organ, namely in such physically mixed body; this is plain from what he says [ibid.] that “it is generated by the body alone that is seen” [n.461]. Just as therefore what is properly an image is called vision, so conversely can vision be called an image, and much more truly, for vision, in truth, is a certain quality, and the sort of quality that is a certain likeness of the object, and is perhaps more perfect than the preceding likeness which is usually called a species.

506. On this understanding, the response to his authority [nn.407-408] is easily made clear. For I concede that the body does not, as total cause, cause in the spirit the image that a sensation is, but the soul causes it in itself with marvelous speed - not however as total cause, but it together with the object. Hence he says there that “as soon as it is seen etc.”, indicating that the presence of the object in idea of being visible is required for the soul to cause vision in itself; and it is required only as in some way partial cause, as he himself expresses it in On the Trinity 11 ch.2 n.3 [n.413] that “vision is generated by the seer and the visible.”

507. This conclusion [n.506], thus understood, is proved by his first cited reason [n.407], because this conclusion, that “the agent is more outstanding than the effect,” is not an immediate one but depends on these three statements, ‘the agent is more outstanding than the effect’ and ‘the effect of the agent is the form and act of what undergoes it’ and ‘act is nobler than potency’. Where these propositions are true, there the proposition that Augustine takes is true [n.407]; but that the agent is more outstanding than the effect is only true of an equivocal and total cause. And some cause can be partially an agent for a more noble effect than itself, as an element in virtue of the heavenly bodies can act for the generation of a mixed body, which is nobler than the element acting as partial cause [cf. Scotus, Ord. I d.2 nn.333, 331].

508. From this [n.506] is clear the response to the second authority of Augustine On the Trinity 10.5 [n.408]. For the soul forms an image in itself, that is, sensation; and forms it from itself, that is, it itself is in natural potency to sensation and not in neutral potency, as a surface is in neutral and not natural potency to whiteness; and he points to this naturality, because he says ‘from itself’. And he is speaking there only of sensations, as is apparent, because he says there that “the parts of the soul that are informed by likenesses of bodies we have in common with the beasts.” This is true of those parts that are informed by images, that is, sensations, extending the name ‘image’ to sensation.

509. As to the first argument for the [first] opinion [n.409]: it concludes for me, because thinking, since it is a living operation, does not come from a non-living thing as from a total cause; but a non-living thing can be a partial cause of something living or of a living effect, just as the non-living sun is a partial cause, along with the father, for generating a living son; and much more is this possible in the issue at hand, because here the more principal cause is life, as will be clear in the following question [nn.559-562].

510. When argument is made next about perfect form [n.410], this argument concludes that it [the soul] has some activity with respect to its proper operation. But as to its seeming to prove total causality in it [the soul] with respect to its own operation - I reply that that form, by its own perfection, is ordered to having an operation about the whole of being, as is said in the third question of this distinction [nn.185-187]. But since it is not simply perfect, because it is not infinite, therefore does it not have the whole of being in itself. From its perfection, therefore, along with its imperfection, is concluded that it does have some activity, and yet not a sufficient activity, for it could not have total causality with respect to the whole of being unless it had the whole of being in itself. And therefore I say that more imperfect forms can well be total causes with respect to their own operations, because their operations are limited as to certain things, and having total activity with respect to these things does not prove any active perfection save a limited one. But in that perfect form, which is ordered to the whole of being, there cannot be posited such a causality with respect to knowledge of the whole of being (for then an unlimited active virtue would be posited in it). But a partial causality can be posited in it, and a partial causality in the object, so that it itself could thus cooperate with its own perfection about any object whatever, and also any object whatever could cooperate with it - a great object for a great perfection of it, and a little object for a little perfection of it.

511. The other two arguments, namely about action as distinguished from making, and that action denominates the agent [nn.411-412], I concede. For I posit that the act of understanding truly remains in the agent which is its partial cause - not just that it remains in the agent supposit (such that it not go outside the supposit), but that it does not go outside the intellective part into the sensitive part, nor outside the intellective part into the appetitive part, nor outside its active principle into another power, but that it remains in the intellective part, which is its partial cause. And it is not necessary that action properly speaking remain in its total cause, but it is enough that it remain in its own partial cause.

B. To the Arguments for the Second Opinion

512. To the arguments for the second opinion [n.422].

Although there it could be touched on whether the causality that is attributed to the intellective part belongs properly to the agent intellect or the possible intellect, yet I dismiss the difficulty to another place [Scotus, Quodlibet 15 nn.13-20, 24; cf. n.554 infra.].

513. When it is argued [n.422] that the possible [intellect] cannot have any causality, because nothing the same acts on itself, I reply that that proposition is only true of a univocal agent, and that the proof of it, that then the same thing would be in act and potency, only concludes when the agent is acting univocally, that is, when it is inducing in the passive subject a form of the same idea as that by which it acts. For if it were thus to act on itself, then it would at the same time have a form of the same idea as that to which it is being moved, and while it is being moved to it, it would lack it; so it would have it and not have it at the same time - at least this follows about two forms of the same species or about the same form. But in equivocal agents, that is, in those agents that do not act through forms of the same idea as that toward which they act, the proposition that nothing moves itself does not have necessity. Nor does the proof of it, that something would be in potency and act with respect to the same thing, conclude anything, for there the agent is not formally in act of the sort that the passive subject is formally in potency [cf. n.422]; but that the agent is virtually such in act and formally such in potency is not a contradiction.

514. This gloss [n.513] about univocal and equivocal agents is necessary because the Philosopher posited that what is moved is not only in the genus of quality but of quantity and ‘where’. And in quantity and ‘where’ no agent is univocal, because in the genus of quantity and ‘where’ there is no form that is the principle of inducing a similar form. Indeed, to speak generally, any motion that is not to an active form is not from a univocal agent, because, from the fact that a terminating form is not active, no form of the same idea is the principle of acting. There are with the Philosopher, therefore, many motions from an agent not univocal but equivocal; and there an agent is virtually such in act as the patient is formally in potency.

515. If you argue that therefore in all cases the same thing could be in virtual act and in potency to a formal act, and so anything can move itself [n.513] - I reply that in this inference a non-cause is put for the cause, for from the general idea of virtual act and of potency for formal act no repugnancy arises, because if there were a repugnancy from this idea, there would be a repugnancy in everything. Yet in something with virtual act there concurs something else on account of which it is sometimes repugnant for it to be virtually in potency or formally such in act. An example: being hot virtually in act and in potency formally do not of themselves include contradiction or repugnancy, and therefore in no subject do they include a repugnance that, because of this, they could not be together, or that one could not be there because the other is. However, the sun, which is hot virtually, cannot be hot formally, but this is not because of a primary repugnance between these things. For Saturn is cold virtually and yet cannot be hot formally, so the virtual act was not the reason in it for the repugnance, but something else was that is common to the sun and Saturn, namely that these are incorruptible bodies and heat is a corruptible quality. In medieval and ancient physics of the Aristotelian and some other traditions, the heavenly bodies are incorruptible and impassible because not made of contraries (hot/cold, wet/dry) or their mixtures (fire, water etc.). They suffer no change save change in place. They do, however, have effects in the sublunary world, as that the sun warms the earth because, although not actually hot, it is virtually hot, or has the power to heat other things. ⁵²

516. But if you object that such metaphysical principles [‘nothing acts on itself’, nn.422, 513] should not, because of the fact they are general, be denied on account of some special difficulties, I reply: no principles that have many false instances are metaphysical principles. But if one has the understanding that nothing is in virtual act and in potency to a formal act, and that this repugnance is taken from the idea of act and potency, there are many instances that are sufficiently plainly false, and from this it sufficiently follows that this is not a metaphysical principle. But that nothing is in formal act and in potency in respect of the same formal act is true, namely that nothing is thus in act and in potency at the same time.

517. And if you altogether contend that, even when speaking of virtual act and potency to formal act, it is a metaphysical principle - how were others so blind, and he [sc. Godfrey of Fontaines, n.422] alone seeing, that they could not conceive the idea of the common metaphysical terms and from them apprehend the truth of such a proposition as he posits to be a metaphysical principle, which is not only not posited by others to be a principle, but is in many cases false, and never necessary by reason of the terms?

518. When, second, it is argued [n.422] about material and efficient cause that they do not coincide - this is true of matter that is in pure potency but not of matter in a certain respect, of which sort is a subject in respect of an accident. For it is necessary that something that is the same is sometimes matter and efficient cause with respect to the same thing - which is apparent because otherwise a property would not be predicated of a subject per se in the second mode. Proof: because if it [a property] is predicated of it [a subject] per se in the second mode, it [the subject] is the material cause of that [the property] as matter is in the case of accidents, because it [the subject] is put in the definition of it [a property] as an addition. If too the predication is per se, then it is also necessary; but what is only a material cause with respect to something does not have necessity with respect to it; therefore, to save necessity, one must posit in the subject, besides a causality of matter, a causality of efficiency.

519. As to what is argued afterwards about opposite real relations [n.422], I say that some real opposites are incompossible in the same nature, some incompossible not in the same nature but in the same supposit, some neither in the same nature nor in the same supposit. Hence a repugnance of them in the same thing cannot be proved by reason of real relations generally. Examples of the aforesaid: cause and caused in the same nature or in the same supposit are repugnant because, if not, then the same thing would depend on itself. Producer and produced are not repugnant in the same nature if the nature can be communicated without division, of which sort is the divine nature; yet they are repugnant in the same supposit. Mover and moved are repugnant neither in the same nature nor in the same supposit, because there is not posited here an essential dependence of the sort they posit relations to be of cause and caused; nor is it posited there that the same thing exists before it exists, which the idea of producer and produced seems to posit; but there is only posited here that the same thing depends on itself as far as concerns an accidental act, as the moved depends on the mover as to the accidental act that it receives from it. The incompossibility, therefore, of some real relations must be reduced to some prior incompossibility, and where that prior incompossibility is not found, there the incompossibility of opposite real relations will not be proved.

520. This is also made clear further, because just as these relations of producer and product, which are repugnant in the same supposit, can be founded on the same unlimited nature, as in the divine essence, so these relations of mover and moved, which have a much lesser repugnance, can be founded on the same somehow unlimited nature. And whatever is in potency to some act formally, and yet along with this has the same actuality virtually (as when the same thing moves itself), it is in some way unlimited; for it is posited to be not only capable of that perfection but as causing it. So there those opposite relations are, because of some sort of unlimitedness, very well compatible.

521. To their ‘Achilles’ [their key argument, n.422], that ‘anything would move itself’, I say, as was argued against the first opinion when excluding a cause ‘sine qua non’ [n.415], that nothing is a total and perfect and natural effective cause of anything without causing it when it is proximate to the whole receptive subject and not impeded. Now wood is always proximate to itself, and sufficiently so, and a persistent impediment cannot be posited when fire is not present; because, if this impediment be posited, let it be removed and it will not exist, if that impediment be posited, let it be removed; and so, by running through them one by one, one will get to wood that is present to itself and in no way impeded. Therefore, if it were the total active cause with respect to heat, and it is itself the total receptive cause, then it would always be hot, as a brute is always able to sense. Therefore, since an absence of total causality cannot be posited because of an impediment, nor because of non-proximity, nor because of receptive subject, the conclusion will be that there is not a total active causality in the wood, which is the point intended. So, therefore, not everything will move itself as total cause, because no cause, which does not always have its act, is a total natural cause of the act.

522. If you say, ‘at least I will say the wood is a partial cause, so that, when fire is present, it acts along with it for the heating of itself in idea of partial effective and active cause’ - this cavil is not of any value either, because two partial causes are not posited with respect to the same effect when one of them precisely has the total effect, univocally or equivocally, in its own power. Proof: for if one of them has the whole effect in its own power, it can produce the whole of it, or the same thing would be produced twice; but fire, which from the preceding argument [n.521] was proved to have activity with respect to heat in the wood, has in itself virtually the whole heat of the wood; therefore the wood here has no partial causality.

523. To the issue at hand then: because the soul is not always in act with respect to any intellection (although, however, it is receptive of any intellection whatever, and is itself proximate to itself and not always impeded), the conclusion is that it is not the total active cause but something else is; that something else is proved to be the object, because when it is present the effect follows, when it is not present the effect cannot be had. Some sort of primary causality then is proved to be in the object; and not total causality, because the object (on account of its imperfection) cannot have intellection (on account of its perfection) totally in its power, and so it is proved that, along with the object, is required some other partial active cause - and not any cause other than the intellective power because, when it concurs with the object, there is intellection. So therefore is it here proved that there are two partial active causes, and in many other cases that nothing the same moves itself, either totally or partially.

This argument too, which is held up as the Achilles [n.522], does not seem capable of effecting much; for this seems to be a certain defensive move, by diverting [attention] from the side of the opponent to the side of the respondent; for, because of their lack of arguments, they take on the sort of form that respondents take one, so that the [other] respondents may make an argument to prove something necessary, namely that wood does not heat itself.

524. An objection to the response [n.521] to the Achilles is that wood will not heat itself unless the other ‘sine quo non’ thing [sc. fire] is present, just as the will, for you [Scotus], does not make itself to will save when an object through cognition is present. Also, if you argue that one of the two [sc. wood and fire] will always heat something else, because it has the power of heating, the response is that it will heat itself before something else, and do this first only when the sine qua non cause is present. Or perhaps it will never heat something else, just as neither does the will make another will to will. Indeed, having conceded that some action of the genus of action is immanent, will it be said, or why will it not be said, that any is?

525. The Achilles is removed in another way: when diverse pieces of wood, similarly disposed, are present to fire, they are all made hot; when the same object is present to diverse wills, they do not all similarly make themselves to will (City of God 12.6); therefore the fire acts here, and not there the object, because then [the object] would act equally on every will.

526. An objection against this [n.525] is that if wills are not similarly affected when a sine qua non cause is present, this is because, for you [Scotus], they act freely. Pieces of wood when a sine qua non cause is present act naturally; therefore, prove that fire here is a cause other than a sine qua non cause. But [in reply], all that is said is that wood is a natural [cause], the will is not.

527. Argument in a third way [nn.521, 525] against the Achilles [sc. ‘anything would move itself’]. Whatever is acted on, it is acted on by something; when therefore it cannot be acted on by itself, it must be posited that it is acted on by something else. The will cannot be acted on by something else (not speaking about God), both because then volition would not be in its power and because then some other mover, disposed in the same way and with respect to the same passive subject, would have power indifferently for both opposites; for the will can will and not will the same thing presented to it in the same way. Therefore, it is necessary to attribute principally to the will the motion of itself toward [act of] willing, because it alone has the indifference in acting that is proportioned to itself in its idea as passive subject. But wood does not have in acting the indifference that is proportioned to itself in idea of passive subject; for it is receptive of disparate qualities, and also of contraries, one of which, when made intense, corrupts it. And it does not have that many univocal principles (as is plain, because also nothing univocally moves itself), nor does it have a single univocal principle, because how would [a single principle] be unlimited unless one says that anything at all has power for all the qualities it is susceptible of, even those corruptive of it? In the case of the will anything it all that it is capable of is an operation of it and some sort of perfection.

C. To the Things Said in the Third and Fourth Opinion

528. For the third and fourth opinion [nn.450-451] there are no arguments adduced to which it may be necessary to reply. He who wants to believe what is said about the first simple act and about the second of distinct knowing, or the statement of the second opinion [n.451, the second opinion of Henry] that the species ‘inclines’, let him believe it. For him who does not believe it, since it is not an article of faith, let this be shown by the arguments [nn.452-453].

529. However, these two opinions, namely the third and fourth, which seem opposed to each other, are in agreement and in conformity with each other, and that as follows: There is required for acting a formal idea of acting and an idea of an agent. The agent is the supposit, the idea of acting is the form elicitive of action. Therefore, the agent in the first action on the possible intellect is the phantasm, but the ‘what it is’, shining forth in the phantasm, is the idea of acting, and this insofar as the ‘what it is’ stands in the light of the agent intellect and is penetrated by the light and is embraced by the agent. And what is first by this idea of acting impressed on the possible intellect is the beginning of the scientific habit, which beginning is not the intelligible species nor the form that moves to act of understanding, because the object in itself is present insofar it shines forth in the phantasm, for the phantasm is present to the intellect because it is in a place in the body. So some other species is not required whereby the object may be thus present, nor is anything required holding the place of the object or representing it. Yet the first impression has the idea both of the ‘by which’ and the ‘what’ with respect to intellection. The ‘by which’ because by it the intellect is proximate and in accidental potency to an act of understanding, just as a body is by its weight in potency to a ‘where’; and ‘by which’ also in this regard, that it remains in the intellect when the intellect is prevented from actual intellection. The first impression is also the ‘what’ because it comes to it [the intellect] first (just as, according to Avicenna, On the Soul p.2 ch2, the first sensed thing is the species) - not as the terminating object, but as what leads to the object, not through comparison but by continuation. In this way, then, do the first and second opinion [of Henry, nn.450-451] agree as to this, that the first denies the species and the second admits an inclination preceding the act.

530. But as to this point, that the first opinion [n.450] posits the intellect to be passive with respect to the first act and active with respect to the second act, and that the second opinion [n.451] seems to posit that the soul itself elicits the act - these agree in this way that when on the possible intellect such an impression has first been made, the intellect itself meets with the impressed effect, because everything acted on strives, when meeting an agent, to preserve its being. Augustine also maintains this in On Music 6.5 n.11, where he speaks of the numbers that come to us, and of other numbers. These ‘numbers’ are characterized as progressive (pronouncing of words), sounding (sounds), occurring to us (hearing), memorable (memory) and judgeable (judgment of sensing). ⁵³ And, in this meeting, the intellect imbibes the confused intellection and transmits it within into itself and then receives it more intimately from itself than it could receive it from the object. Also, the intellect meets with the impression, thus intimate, a second time, and in that second meeting it immerses itself in it by penetrating it - and in this lies the intellect’s distinct and perfect knowledge.

531. However it may be with these opinions which this middle view strives to expound, there is argument against much of what is here said [nn.529-530].

As to what it first posits, that the ‘what it is’ shining forth in the phantasm is the formal idea of acting for the phantasm [n.529] - on the contrary: how is a thing the idea of acting for something which it is not formally in? Or if the ‘what it is’ is somehow posited to be in the phantasm, then since it is the being of it in a certain respect, for it is the being of what is represented, and is not there according to any being of existence, how will the ‘what it is’ be, according to this being, the formal idea of doing some real action? And thus, since the phantasm, by the fact that this being belongs to it, is not the principal cause of acting according to them [Henry etc., n.529], neither is the ‘what it is’, according as it exists in the phantasm, the principal idea of acting, which is against them.

532. Besides this, I ask what is it to say that the ‘what it is’ stands in the light of the agent intellect [n.529]. If it is nothing other than that the agent intellect is in the soul, and that in the imagination of the same soul there is a phantasm, then as long as the phantasm is in the imaginative power the penetrating and surrounding takes place, and so it will exist in a madman and a sleeper, which he whose opinion is being expounded denies. If it is something other than that the two are together, some new action takes place whose term will not be in the phantasm; therefore, it will be in the possible intellect. Therefore the ‘what it is’ does not act by any penetration (which penetration would precede the action of the ‘what it is’), but it only acts along with the agent intellect by causing some new impression in the agent intellect. This is what that other first opinion says [sc. of Scotus himself, nn.366, 381-382].

533. If you will say that the other opinion posits an impressed intelligible species [nn.339, 349, 370], this one does not but posits the beginning of a scientific habit - on the contrary: this opinion posits that the impression is the principle by which the intellect is in accidental potency [n.529], although however it was in essential potency first. If the intelligible object is, by this impression, not present more than it was before, it is not in accidental potency now more than it was before. If it is present in any way now that it was not present in before, the way it is now present is the intelligible species. This is even more apparent from the fact that [the intellect] is posited to meet with it first as with something displaying the object on account of natural continuation with it [n.529]. This could not be unless the object were to shine forth in it, and so unless it had the idea of a species.

534. Similarly, what is said of ‘precede’, ‘beginning of scientific habit’, is not true, because a habit properly speaking, as the Philosopher says in Ethics 2.1.1103b21-22, is generated by some elicited act; and just as the ultimate degree of a habit is generated from the ultimate act, so is the first degree generated from the first act, so that any degree of a habit is posterior to some act. Therefore, that which is simply first in the possible intellect is not something of the habit itself. This is confirmed by the opinion of the doctor who is being expounded, because he posits the beginning to be the whole essence of the habit.

535. As to what is said further about ‘meeting’ [n.530] - I reply: ‘meeting’ is not well assigned, nor is it to Augustine’s intention. For what is acted on when it ‘meets’ an agent strives to preserve itself and to act against the agent corrupting it; this agent acts for the preservation and perfection of the passive subject, so, for this reason (that it may preserve itself), it does not ‘meet’ it. Nor is that the intention of Augustine; for he maintains that the soul, when meeting an effect made in the air in the ear, more strongly acts on the air, and in this way causes the hearing that the sound alone did not cause. This ‘meeting’ then is a ‘co-acting’.

And then I respond in brief to the arguments of Augustine. When an impression of a sensible species is made on the organ, or of an intelligible species made on the intellect, the soul ‘meets’ with it through such power, that is, so that along with the impressed species it ‘co-act’ for some more perfect act than the species of itself alone could cause.

536. And when it is added further about that double meeting, that it first meets with the effect as touching it, later with the imbibed effect [n.530], I ask what these metaphorical words mean. If they mean that by the second meeting something more perfect is caused than by the first, and that it perfects more intimately (as matter is said to be more intimately perfected by a more perfect form that more actuates it), then in the second meeting the effect is not taken up inwardly more than before; but the soul, coacting with the effect, causes something more perfect, and this is more intimately in the soul than the effect first caused.

D. To the Arguments of the Fifth Opinion

537. To the authority of the Philosopher On the Soul 3 [n.457], that “to understand is to undergo,” which is adduced for the fifth opinion,a I say that the Philosopher spoke about the powers of the soul in common, to the extent they are that by which we are formally in second act, namely about the senses insofar as they are that by which we formally sense and the intellect insofar as it is that by which we formally understand. But we formally understand by the intellect insofar as it receives intellection because, if it cause it actively, yet I am not said to understand by the intellect insofar as it causes but insofar as it has intellection as its form. For to have a quality is to be of that quality, and so the fact the intellect has intellection, or receives it (which is the same thing), is to be oneself understanding. We understand, therefore, by the intellect insofar as it receives intellection; therefore, the Philosopher, speaking thus of the intellect, necessarily had to say it was passive, and that ‘to understand’ is ‘to undergo something’, that is, that intellection, insofar as it is that by which we formally understand, is a certain form received in the intellect. But we do not understand by it insofar as it is something caused by the intellect, if it is caused by it, for if God were to cause it and were to imprint it on our intellect, we would by it no less understand.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] but not by determining it

538. Just as I have spoken about intelligence actually [n.537], so do I speak about knowing habitually - that the intellect is that by which we know habitually insofar as it receives a habit, not insofar as it causes it, if it causes it.

539. I say, therefore, that all the authorities [of Aristotle] that read for the passivity of the possible intellect can be expounded about it insofar as by it we know habitually, or insofar as by it we cognize actually, and in this way I concede that it is passive. And if it be active, yet not according to this idea; but it is an accident of it that it is active according to this idea. Now the authorities [n.457] affirm of the intellect what is true - not speaking of the intellect under the idea of something active, but asserting that it has the idea of something receptive, although they do not say that it is not active. Now a place from an authority does not hold in a negative way [sc. it must not be taken as denying what it does not say].

540. And from these points [nn.537-539] is response made to the authority about essential and accidental potency [n.457]. For the intellect is not in essential potency because there is lacking to it some idea of causality insofar as concerns its own part; rather the intellect is in essential potency when there is not present to it another partial cause that needs to be present for the purpose that action follow; and when that partial cause is proximate to it, it is in accidental or proximate potency to acting.

541. But the authority by which it is said that the possible intellect is nothing of the things that are before it understands [n.457] requires a different exposition - which authority, however, others so far treat of as to say that the possible intellect is in pure potency in the genus of intelligibles, as matter is in the genus of beings. This is not the intention of the Philosopher, because a potency for an accident is only ever based on a substance; now an intellection or an intelligible species is not a substantial form but an accident; therefore what is immediately receptive of it is something in substantial act, or at least that is which is mediately receptive of it (and then what immediately receives it will be some accidental act, in the way a surface is related to whiteness). Therefore, the possible intellect, according as it is that in which intelligible form or intellection is received, or is that according to which the species is received in the soul, will not be a pure potential but will be something in first act, although the respect itself of the potency is not anything in act. For when I speak of a potency receptive of whiteness, I am not speaking of a potency that states a respect to whiteness; for that respect is not anything in act, because the whiteness that it is for is not anything in act either, and a respect does not exist without a term. But that in which the power is or is said to be is something in act, as a surface is receptive of whiteness. So it is here. Although in advance of intellection the power, which is a respect to intellection, is not, before act, anything in act, as neither is the intellection to which it is, yet that in which the power is or is said to be, which is what is receptive of intellection, is something in act, and it is the possible intellect.

542. Therefore that the possible intellect is nothing in act is not held by the Philosopher the way they take it [n.541 init.], but one must expound the authority in this way: we naturally understand first the things that first come to us from phantasms, as was said in the second question of this distinction [nn.73, 187]. Nothing, therefore, can we understand in proximate potency before the intellection of something imaginable; therefore we cannot understand the intellect before having an understanding of another intelligible; therefore neither can the intellect be understood by us before having the understanding of another intelligible; therefore the intellect is not intelligible before the intellection of another intelligible. Just as the first antecedent is true [“we naturally understand first.. .from phantasms”], so also is the consequence [sc. the series of consequents up to the final one of “the intellect is not intelligible before.. .of another intelligible”]. For that reason, therefore, the remark ‘it is not anything of the things that are before it understands’ [n.541, 457] namely ‘of the intelligibles’, must be understood not in the sense that before it understand it is nothing in act, but that it is not anything that could be in proximate potency understood by us before having the understanding of another [intelligible], on account of our natural intellection, which begins now from phantasms [n.187].

543. When argument is next made [n.458] about likeness, that it is the reason both for making and for acting, I say that in a maker that makes well the form is the idea of the making, by which the maker assimilates the thing made to itself; but in action nothing is a product save the action itself, for action is the final term and does not have another term. And, therefore, there is no need that in an agent the idea of the acting be in the producer’s being assimilated to some second product, or in the agent’s being assimilated to the object about which it acts, because the agent does not assimilate the object to itself.

544. And if you say that that at least is the idea of acting wherein the agent assimilated the product to itself, namely the action itself - I do indeed admit that the species, which is the likeness of an object and by which the intellect is assimilated to the produced knowledge, is some idea of generating; but it is not the whole idea, nor even the principal idea, as will be clear in the following question [n.562]. But, when two causes come together, in the nearer one a formal likeness suffices and in the remoter one a virtual or equivocal likeness suffices; and thus the intellect, a sort of superior cause, is assimilated virtually to intellection; the species, a sort of nearer cause, is assimilated to it univocally, as it were, and formally.

545. When argument is later made about the indetermination of the intellect to diverse acts and objects [n.459], I reply that some indetermination is material, because of defect of act, and some is indetermination of the agent, because of unlimitedness of active virtue, as the sun is undetermined as to the many things it is generative of. Something indeterminate in the first way does not act unless it be determined by some act, because otherwise it is not in sufficient act but in potency. Something indeterminate in the second way is determined by no form different from itself, but it is determined by itself to producing whatever effect it is of itself indeterminate to, and this when the passive recipient is present - just as the sun, when a passive subject is present to it, generates anything that, from the fact it is of a nature to be generated, is generable. The indetermination of the intellect is not the indetermination of a passive potentiality in its own order of causality, but is the indetermination of an as it were unlimited actuality; and therefore is it not determined by a form that is a determinate idea of acting for it, but only by the presence of the object, about which determinate object intellection is of a nature to be determined. Or it could be said in another way that, just as a superior cause is determined to acting (as the sun to generating a man when a man concurs as agent, and an ox when an ox concurs), but not by some form received in itself, so the intellect, which is a superior and unlimited cause, is determined to this object when a particular determinate cause concurs, as to acting about this object when this species concurs. Now an inferior cause does nota effectively determine a superior indeterminate cause, nor does it do so formally as the idea of acting, but it determines it like this, that is, the indeterminate active superior power produces something determinate when such and such a determinate inferior power concurs.

a.a [Canceled text by Scotus, replaced by ‘Now an inferior cause does not’] For this determining cause [sc. the particular determinate cause just mentioned] does not

546. There is an opinion that the intellect is the principle of intellection as to substance, but that the object is the principle as to modifying or specifying the act. On the contrary: nothing is the principle for nothing; intellection, when modification or specification is bracketed, is nothing; therefore etc. The major is understood of a nothing that includes a contradiction. The proof of the minor is that the intellect is first by nature precisely something possible to be; but an intellection without the fact that it is, in the same now of nature, the intellection of some object, is a contradiction, otherwise intellection would be a purely absolute form. For a reply to the sixth opinion, nn.461-462 (no separate reply is given by Scotus), the Vatican Editors refer to nn.505-506, 535, and the note added to n.493. ⁵⁴

IV. To the Initial Arguments

547. To the main arguments. To the first [n.401] I say that the argument of the Philosopher On the Soul 2 does well prove that the senses are not the total cause with respect to sensation, which I concede. And thus was it argued against the first opinion [n.414], that the soul is not the active total cause for intellection, and this I concede. But it does not prove it without the soul being a partial cause, because it does not follow therefrom that the soul is always in act save when another partial cause goes along with it.

548. As to the second [n.403] (not treating the difficulty whether the activity belongs to the agent intellect or the possible intellect [cf. n.512, and the note added to n.554]), I say that the possible intellect (according to what the Philosopher says about it [n.537]) is that by which we are formally understanding, and in this way is it precisely “that by which there is a becoming everything,” because, as was said before [nn.537-539], we are formally understanding by it insofar as it receives, not insofar as it acts (although it does act, because this happens to it as it is that by which we understand).

549. As to the third [n.404], although the consequence is not necessary, because the sun can be the cause of many differences in species (on account of the distinct powers in it, which are sufficient in idea of effective cause for distinguishing effects), yet the consequence can be conceded for the issue in hand; for it concludes that the soul is not the total cause of all intellections, which has been conceded [n.547].

550. As to the first argument for the opposite [n.405], I concede that the soul, because it is immaterial, is receptive of any intellection (it is also active as to any intellection of an object other than itself as partial cause, and active as to intellection about itself as total cause,a according to Augustine On the Trinity 9.12 n.18 [n.413], but such intellection we do not have for this present state of life) - but from its immateriality does not follow that it is the total cause of any intellection of an object other than itself.

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus] because as generator and as generated

551. As to the second argument [n.406] I concede the conclusion, that cognitions of diverse species, namely those had by the proper virtue of them, are different in species. I prove this because, for individuals of the same species, there is not required a total cause diverse in species (or anything in the total cause diverse in species) from that which in the total cause belongs to another individual. That for individuals of the same species there is not necessarily required a cause of another species the proof is that the form is the principle of acting and is the formal term of action; therefore a perfect form of one idea is a ‘by which’ of the same idea with respect to a formal term of the same idea; therefore with respect to such term there is not required another ‘by which’. But now, for the intellection of white and black, there are required things diverse in species, namely a white thing and a black thing, or things including them. Therefore, these two differ more than individuals of one species; therefore, they differ in species.

552. When you argue further that then all habits of such things would differ in species [n.406], I concede it about habits that are had by the proper virtue of such objects, and this conclusion is proved like the preceding one, through the causes [n.551].

553. And when you say: how then would there be one science about several most specific species [n.406]? I reply that one most specific species can include many other species virtually (either the properties of them, or by way of cause, or according to another essential order), and then the habit that is formally of the first thing that includes the others is virtually of the other objects, though not formally and first. The habit, therefore, is one by unity of first object, virtually containing everything that is contained in that science - but it is not proper to everything contained virtually in that first object, but habits that would be proper to them would be distinct as they are distinct.a

a.a [Note added by Scotus] On this Metaphysics 6.1.1026a18-19, ‘Why there will be three theoretical philosophies: mathematics, physics, theology’, first question [Scotus, Metaphysics 6 q.1 nn.8-12].