E. To the Fifth

310. To the fifth argument [n.183]: if the intelligible species were posited as the total principle of intellection, then it would appear that it could be the principle when separated - and let the same be said of charity in respect of love. But I have posited neither the one nor the other as the total principle, but as partial and less principal [Ord. I d.3 nn.559-560, d.17 nn.32, 40, 46, 67-70, 142, 157-158]. But a less principal principle can never act save with the principal one acting naturally first, and this when speaking of priority on the part of the agent itself - not as action or term received in the passive object, because thus the action of ordered agents on the passive object would by nature have the form as term simultaneously.

311. But does this argument work against others who hold the antecedent [n.310, ‘if the intelligible species were posited as the total principle of intellection’, from Thomas of Sutton, Ord. I d.3 nn.460-462]?

312. I say that the intelligible species, however much separated or conjoined, never understands. For nothing is said to understand save in this way, that it has such an intellection formally inhering in it; and so the proposition in On the Soul 3.4.429a13-15, that “to understand is to undergo,” is true to the letter, because ‘to understand’ is to have or to receive intellection. But the intelligible species is posited by no one as what properly receives intellection.

313. Hence the argument [sc. the fifth, n.183] that a separated species could understand would work more against him [Giles of Rome, cf. Ord. I d.3 nn.456-459], who posits that the species is the formal idea of receiving intellection than against those [n.311], who posit that it is the total active principle of intellection.

314. But I still deduce [from the argument, n.183] that at least the separated intelligible species could actively cause intellection - which seems unacceptable.

315. My reply: this does not follow unless the passive thing be proximate to what is receptive of intellection; but if it is so, one would as a result have to concede that it would cause intellection in the passive thing.

316. And to this extent there is one difficulty common to us and them, that however much causality we attribute to the species, whether partial active causality (as I said above, n.310) or only the idea of being the term or presenter of the object, the species would have this perfection in the same way if it were separate as if it were conjoined, as it seems.

317. Therefore if a separated species were not present to the intellect by inherence but by simple presence, it could suffice for causing intellection in the intellect in the same way as it does when it inheres. And this I concede, because I said above [n.312] that the intellect receives nothing of the perfection pertaining to itself from the species that informs it, but there is only need that the species, as another partial cause of the effect, come together with the intellect. But that a partial cause inheres in another cause is wholly accidental, because it could, without inhering, as equally perfectly cause the effect on account of other essential order, namely the order of subordination of active virtue to active virtue, to which the order of subject and accident is accidental.

318. And so I say briefly that charity in the fatherland will immediately cause intuitive intellection of itself in the intellect; and yet it is not present by inherence to the intellect but to the will - and yet this presence suffices for it to concur, as partial cause, with the other cause.

319. This argument [n.183], therefore, which is frequently made, works against no opinion save the opinion which posits that the species is the total active principle of intellection and that, along with this, it is the proper and proximate receptive subject of intellection, and that the same is able to move itself. But against those who posit in some way or other an activity of the species, it does not prove anything save that a separated species could act similarly to a conjoined species, provided however it had a proportionate passive thing present to it.

320. This holds in the same way of charity with respect to the act of love.