Question Three Whether the More Principal Cause of Generated Knowledge is the Object Present in Itself or in the Species, or the Very Intellective Part of the Intellect

554.a I ask about the comparison of these two partial causes which cause generated knowledge, whether the more principal cause of generated knowledge is the object present in itself or in the species, or the intellective part itself of the intellect.

And proof that it is the object:

Because that is the more principal mover that moves unmoved, as appears in all essentially ordered causes; and the object moves unmoved, as is held by the Philosopher, On the Soul 3.10.433b11-12, but the intellect does not move unless moved; therefore etc.

a.a [Note added by Scotus. The Vatican Editors add that it comes between the two questions, and that the ‘difficult question’, deferred from Ord. I d.1 n.232 and cf. supra nn.512, 548 and infra n.

563, is here finally to be asked by Scotus and settled.] Here it can properly be asked whether the agent intellect is a principle with respect to intellection. And, in that case, let there be treatment of how it is disposed toward memory, according to what Augustine says of it [sc. that it is disposed as having the idea of parent, nn.583-587] - as to why it is posited.

There remain, however, two other difficulties, to be spoken of here or elsewhere [sc. in the Ordinatio], namely about the conservation of the species outside the act, against Avicenna [On the Soul p.5 ch.6, Scotus, Rep. IA d.3 nn.129-130], which difficulty can well be touched on in one of the arguments in the preceding question about the species [n.403, 400; Scotus, Lectura I d.3 n.309, “the intellective memory pertains to the possible intellect, because it belongs to it to conserve and retain, and not to the agent intellect”] - and the other difficulty, about memory, properly speaking, of the past; the question can be per se touched on here [nn.383-384, 391], in Ord. 4 etc. [4 d.45 q.3 nn.3-20; 3 d.14 q.3 n.7].

555. Again, an agent assimilates the effect to itself, therefore that is the more principal agent which assimilates more; the act is assimilated more to the object than to the intellect; therefore etc.

556. Again, unity of science is assigned in view of the unity of the object virtually containing it, and such virtual containing with respect to a habit is not attributed to the intellect; ‘to contain virtually’ belongs to the active cause; therefore will the object be a cause of the habit more principal than the intellect, and if cause of the habit then also of the act.

557. To the opposite:

The more actual, formal, and perfect something is, the more active it is; therefore, the soul, which is a form more actual than the many other concurring causes, will be more active, and so, when it concurs with them in acting, it will be the more principal agent.

558. Again, to what is a being in a certain respect there does not belong an act simply; but when an act has this sort of being in a certain respect through something that is a being simply, then it belongs more principally to that being simply, if it is in any way active with respect to the same thing; but the object now naturally understood by us has only being in a certain respect in our intellect, on account of the being simply of that very intellective part, for the object is in it as a known in a knower; therefore, in the case of the action for which these two concur, the object having such being will not be the principal cause, but the intellective part will be, because of which the object has such being.

I. Solution of the Question

559. I respond. It seems that the intellective part has a more principal causality with respect to the intellections that are now naturally fitting for us.

First because when one of two ordered causes is indeterminate to many effects and is quasi unlimited, and the other is, according to the utmost of its power, determined to a certain effect, the one that is more unlimited and more universal seems to be more perfect and more principal - example about the sun and particular generating causes. The intellect also has a quasi unlimited and indeterminate virtue with respect to all intellections, but the objects naturally known by us have a power determinate in respect of the determinate intellections that focus on them, and this according to the utmost of their power, just as does anything relative to the intellection of itself; therefore etc.

560. Second, because the cause by which, when it is acting, another cause acts along with it (and not conversely), is more principal than the other; but when our intellect is acting for an intellection, the object in itself or in the species acts along with it; for it is in our power to understand, because we understand when we will, On the Soul 2.5.417b24. This is not principally because of the species (which is a natural form) but because of the intellect, which we can use when we want,a and the action of the species, which is of a nature to be always uniform on the part of the species, principally follows the action of the intellect.

a.a [Note by Scotus] Whence is it proved that it is more in the power of the will to use the intellect than the intelligible species? Each is of itself a natural agent. And why is not each free by participation? Response: nothing is by participation primarily free save what is in the same essence along with the will. On the contrary: organic powers and organs (and external ones too) are free by participation Similarly, there is not in our power any act of the vegetative soul. This middle term, then, is obscure, because it is doubtful what things in us are subject to the will and what are not.

561. However, some object that much exceeds the faculty of the intellective part, for example the beatific object as clearly seen, could be posited to have total causality with respect to the vision, or a more principal causality than the intellective part, and this on account of the excellence of such object and of the deficiency on the intellective part, but about this in the fourth book [Ord. Supplement d.49 a.2 q.3 n.9].

562. But as to the objects that we now naturally know, the first part of the response seems to be true [nn.559-560]. For it seems that, as to the intelligibles naturally understood by us, the species of them in the intellect is, as it were, the instrument of the intellect - not something moved by the intellect so as to act (as if namely the species receive something from the intellect), but what the intellect uses for its action; as that, when the intellect acts, the species acts as less principal agent along with it for the same thing, as for a joint effect.

II. To the Initial Arguments

563. To the first argument [n.554] I say that there is a double act of the intellect with respect to objects that are not in themselves present, of which sort are those that we now naturally understand. The first act is the species, by which the object is present as an object actually intelligible; the second act is the actual intellection itself. And for both acts the intellect acts not moved by that which is the partial cause concurring along with it for that action, although one act of the intellect is preceded by the motion of it to the other act. Now for the first act the agent intellect acts along with the phantasm, and there the agent intellect is a more principal cause than the phantasm, and both are integrated into one total cause with respect to the intelligible species. For the second act the intellective part acts (whether the agent intellect or the possible intellect I do not care now [cf. nn.512, 548, and added note to n.554]), and the intelligible species acts, as two partial causes. Also does the intellective part act there not moved by the species, but moving first, that is, acting as it were so that the species acts along with it.

564. When you say, therefore, that the object moves not moved [n.554], I say that in both actions the object is a secondary mover, although it is not moved, that is, it receives in itself something from the principal or prior mover. When you say the intellect does not move unless moved [ibid.], I say that it does not move with a second motion unless moved with a prior motion; but this is to compare two motions of the intellect and not to compare two partial causes concurring in a single motion. If you compare the partial causes in both motions, I say that in both cases the intellect moves not moved by the partial cause concurrent in the same motion.

565. To the second [n.555] I say that an effect is more assimilated formally to an inferior proximate cause than to a remote cause and to a more perfect principle, as appears of a son with respect to the father and the sun. Hence this argument is for the opposite, because it proves that the act of intellection is from the object as from the proximate cause, because it is more assimilated to it formally; thus too is the intelligible species more assimilated formally to the phantasm than to the agent intellect, and yet it is less principally from the phantasm than from the agent intellect.

566. On the contrary: since an agent intends to assimilate the patient to itself, how does the principal agent not assimilate it more?

I reply: a more principal agent is commonly an equivocal agent, and it has in itself the perfection of the effect more eminently than a univocal cause does; and therefore it does not assimilate it more to itself formally (because this would be a mark of imperfection in a cause, to be thus assimilated to the effect), but it does assimilate it, that is, it does give to the effect, more than the particular agent gives to it, the form by which the effect is assimilated to it equivocally; and this active assimilation comes from the perfection of the cause, although it is not a greater assimilation formally.

567. Likewise, a more perfect cause assimilates the effect more to what it is assimilable to than an inferior cause does; for it more causes an effect of the sort that is causable. Now the effect is assimilable formally to the proximate cause, so the more remote cause assimilates the effect to the proximate cause effectively more than the proximate cause assimilates it to itself. For the fact that a son is formally similar to the father is more from the remote cause (which assimilates effectively the son to the father) than from the proximate cause, because what more gives the form by which the effect is assimilated gives effectively the assimilation more.

568. To the third [n.556] I say that the unity of a science is assigned in view of the object, because that is what the sciences are distinguished in view of, not in view of the intellect, for the intellect is single with respect of all the sciences. And, by distinguishing the sciences in this way, that is one science which is of one prime subject, insofar as the first object has to contain the science virtually; but this is only as partial cause, for the intellect is, in addition to it, another partial cause containing the science. To reduce a science, therefore, to its first object is nothing else than to reduce it to what, in the other partial cause (which has an essential order in its genus), is first there simply, and to assign from that the unity of the effect insofar as the effect is from it. And it is not necessary there to reduce it, because it is the same in respect of any habit whatever; and consistent with this is that it is much more perfectly contained in the other partial cause.