C. To the Third and Fourth Initial Arguments

98. To the third argument, about definition [n.10], response has been made by the response to the doubts moved against the third conclusion [nn.68-69].

99. One word remains there, however, because of the proof that that which falls there in a definition is necessarily required for its being, as a correlative is for the being of a correlative [n.11].

100. I say that this is for the reason that it is a relative; nor is there any other reason why it necessarily requires another term. For it is not because it is an accident; rather, if it were a relation and not an accident (as is relation in divine reality) a term would still be required. But the defined thing of which we are speaking is an absolute; therefore it does not require something added as a term of the respect, but as an extrinsic cause - and any such extrinsic cause is not necessarily required save the first cause.

101. To the fourth argument [n.13] I say that ‘white’ can be understood in two ways:

In one way as it imports such a form under such a mode of signifying, and this it signifies per se. Hence, according to the Philosopher in the Categories [n.13], ‘white’ signifies the quality alone - which is true, but under a different mode of signifying than ‘whiteness’.

In another way as we commonly conceive (through ‘white’ and these sort of concrete terms) the whole composed of subject and form.

102. If in the first way the argument has more evidence, for about the second way it is plain that if there is whiteness, there is no necessity that there is a white [thing]. But about the first way I say that, by virtue of the word, there is then no necessity to concede that if there is whiteness, there is white, because although the form is naturally apt to inhere in a subject, there is no necessity that it be under such a mode of being, namely under actual inherence in a subject; but ‘white’ signifies the form under such idea of actually inhering.

103. Or if you object that a noun, both adjectival and substantive, abstracts from time, therefore ‘white’ does not signify actual inherence of a form in a subject, because then it would co-signify present time - I reply: then the concession would be that as there is whiteness, so also is there white; and it would not follow that therefore something as a subject is white, because this is not posited in the antecedent either (not by the thing signified nor by the mode of signifying). This concession would be more easily made about quantity; for just as concession is here made that there is quantity, so too that there is a quantum, yet no concession is here made that some matter or substance is perfected by quantity.