4. Weighing of the Aforesaid Conclusions

132. From these thirteen conclusions it is plain how this assertion [‘this is my body’] is true because, according to the conclusions, the whole understanding of it, both of the proposition and of the terms, is taken for the final moment of the utterance; and for that moment it points to the same thing that then exists under the accidents. Now it is true that this is the body of Christ and that the proposition does not, on account of ‘this’, get converted into ‘my body is my body’. But the proposition ‘this is my body’ can be a converting proposition, though the other is not, because it denotes a singular of a more universal kind, namely this being that is predicated, but the other denotes that it is specifically said of itself. But a proposition which denotes that some primary predicate is said of ‘this being’ can be effective, just as can the proposition that would denote of a stone that it is first ‘this being’.

133. All these conclusions I can concede, apart from the fifth (and the others insofar as they follow from it), for the verb, when uttered, co-signifies then just as it signifies then; and unless some determination is added whereby the co-signified time would be referred to a different present moment, it does not seem from the force of the utterance that it would join the terms for any moment save for the final moment of uttering the present tense verb.

134. Nor is the proof that is put there [n.116] compelling; for although the understanding of the whole utterance is only brought about by the utterance in the final moment, as was expounded in the first conclusion [nn.104-106], yet a conception of the union of the terms only comes to be for that moment, as is plain from the second conclusion.

135. This is also plain in the case of propositions about the past and future, where a verb can unite a proposition for any past or future moment, however distant from the speaker. And yet the understanding there of the whole assertion is not got save in the moment of the completed utterance, just as neither is the understanding of a proposition about the present so got, nor universally the understanding of any proposition.

136. Through this too can be destroyed what follows on the fifth conclusion, about the demonstrative force of the pronoun ‘this’, for if it must be understood for the time or moment for which there is a combining of terms, and if the combining of terms is not understood for the final moment of the whole utterance but for the moment of the utterance of the verb ‘is’, then it follows that the demonstrative force is understood for the same thing.

137. There is also another difficulty against the aforesaid, specifically about demonstrative force [n.121]; for a demonstrative pronoun, when uttered, signifies what it is demonstrative of; therefore it signifies what can then be pointed to. But there is nothing then able to be pointed to there for the senses save the accidents, nor pointed to for the intellect, as it seems, save what is under the accidents.

One can therefore say a little differently that one does not get from the force of the speaking that the concept of a proposition about the past, or the union of the terms, is understood precisely for the final moment of the whole assertion; but if it is understood to be for a moment it should be understood for the moment of the complete utterance of the verb. The parts too signify when uttered, and if the nature of their signification is such as only to be extended to something that is present when the parts signify, then it is necessary that what they signify is present when the parts are uttered.

138. However it is very possible for someone to determine himself to express some propositional concept for a moment, and possible for the concepts of all the parts of that concept to be taken for that same final moment of utterance; for it is in this way that disputants determine themselves to state their meaning in their responses and to do so for the same moment; otherwise the respondent could never be refuted however much he might accept contradictories. And if indeed he wished to express his concept to another by an assertion about the present, he will not cause a concept in that other for the final moment of utterance by virtue of his words; but it is possible that he express to him for some reason what for that moment he is uttering. And then for such reason, not by virtue of his words, he will conceive the union of the terms for that moment. But if he himself, when speaking, were to intend to cause something by his proposition, then just as he could also intend to express a concept for the final moment, so he could intend to cause the effect for that moment. If too, on the uttering of the assertion, which intends some concept and all its parts to be taken for some moment, someone else, seeing the intention, wanted to cause something, he could cause it for the final moment for which he intends to signify all those things

139. And in this way, although what was said before in the fifth conclusion and the following ones about the final moment of utterance [nn.116, 118-121, 127, 132] is not manifest by virtue of the words, yet it is manifest that they can be understood as far as concerns the intention of him who expresses them, both in himself and as he is a minister of God who, seeing the minister’s intention, can assist with the assertion so as to act in the same way as the assertion itself signifies according to the intention of the speaker of it.

140. Whether this way is held to, that by virtue of the words the whole assertion must be referred to the final moment of the words or the utterance [n.139], or this other, that it is not by virtue of the words but by the determination of the utterer (and this not only in himself but in his ordering to the principal agent who assists the action [nn.138-139]), and if there is preserved in the one way or the other the fact that the proposition is true according to the eighth conclusion and the others that follow it, with which I do not disagree - yet there remains the difficulty common to both ways as to how the proposition [‘this is my body’] is true. For according to both ways, although the proposition is true for the final moment, yet not naturally before the conversion is complete; because the thing naturally ought to be before the assertion is true, “for by the fact the thing is or is not, the assertion is true or false,” Categories 5.4b9-10. The truth, then, does not naturally precede the conversion but follows it; and, as a result, the proposition, as it is true, is not such as to do the converting.