2. To the Arguments brought against the First Opinion

52. To the arguments against this position.

To the first [n.33], which proves that a contradiction follows from the position, I reply: in the duration or persistence of being which precisely is successive there is renewal (and one part of it goes away and another part succeeds, and in general one part succeeds to another), but there is not any renewal in the existence of that of which there is persistence; just as, if the same flesh were posited, not possessed of part after part in the same permanent quantity, there would be an otherness there of parts in the extension itself formally (which is a quantity), without any extension or diversity of parts in that to which such extension happens.

53. And when proof is given [n.34] that ‘there is no distinction in the measure (from the Philosopher Physics 4. 11.219a10-29) unless there was distinction in the measured’ - I say that the consequence is good that ‘if the parts of time are other, then the parts of motion are other’, as inference from effect to cause; but it is not necessary that in anything whatever the parts of duration are other, because there may be some ‘distinction of parts’ that are prior; the reason for this is that the distinction that is second to one thing can be first in another thing.

54. There is an example of this: fire heats and dries, because of distinct ordered accidents in fire, such that the distinction of actions there is second, presupposing another prior distinction, namely the distinction of active accidents [sc. of hot and dry in fire]; but it does not follow from this that, wherever there is a distinction of actions, this distinction is second - because if these distinct accidents of fire were virtually contained in the sun, then the first distinction there would be of actions, which distinction was second with respect to fire. So must one say in the issue at hand.

55. To the other argument [n.36] I say that the ‘now’ can fail, because of itself it has only instantaneous being - although its subject remains the same, and no agent corrupts it. And as to the fact that ‘the now of time fails when its own proper subject fails’ [n.36], it is accidental to a ‘now’ that its proximate subject fails - because if the subject were to remain the same (as in the case of something at rest), then one could say that the same subject, acting through what is another ‘now’ succeeding to the prior ‘now’, does, by producing another ‘now’ incompossible with the prior ‘now’, destroy the prior ‘now’, not first of itself but by way of consequence.

56. And if you ask what the prior ‘now’ fails in, whether in itself or in another (as Aristotle argues in Physics 4.10.218a8-21) - I say that ‘to fail’ (as also ‘to cease’) can be understood in two ways: in one way by positing a present and denying a future, and in another way by positing a past and denying a present. The first way must be understood in the case of indivisibles and things that have the ultimate of their being; for they do not have a first stage in their not-being, and they then cease to be when they are - and in this way the ‘now’ ceases to be in itself, because then it is and after this it will not be; and if you ask for the first stage in its not-being, there is none, as neither in the case of anything that has the ultimate of its being.Tr. The point here seems to be something as follows. The ‘now’ of time comes and goes with the process of change in temporal things, as these come to be and cease to be. Angels do not undergo change but simply are or are not without any process (they have, or do not have, the fullness of their being all at once). The ‘now’ of angels comes and goes, then, not because angels are subjects of change, but simply because of itself, because it is an indivisible that immediately is and immediately is not. ¹⁸