II. To the Initial Arguments

503. To the first argument [n.445] I say that a separate quantity does not have a positive mode of substance but only a negative one, namely this: ‘not actually being in a subject’. But this negative mode does not suffice for it to be more a subject than it was before; on the contrary, what it was able to be the immediate subject of before, that it can be the subject precisely of now as well. However, the argument that ‘quantity can be the subject of some change’ can be conceded, but not that quantity can be subject of change to substance, because required in that case is that the subject be the principle of a composite substance, as matter.

504. As to the second [n.446] I concede that a new miracle is not required for the action of a natural agent, as long as the agent has a passive object; but when it does not have a passive object, it cannot act unless a passive object is by a miracle given to it. But just as it cannot be given by nature, so the passive object required for generation is not here, nor can it be or be made to be from anything by a natural agent so as to be here. And so, in order for a natural agent to be able to act with this action, a passive object proportioned to it must return through a divine miracle. Nor yet do I say that when, according to the fourth conclusion [nn.495-498], it does return in fact, a natural agent generates something there, but that God alone first causes there a composite substance. But if a further generation of something ought to follow from that substance, then a natural agent can act there for substantial form, because it now has a passive object suited to it.

505. To the third argument [n.447] the answer is plain from the same fact, because a natural agent necessarily acts as much as it can act; but it cannot act there for anything able to be received in quantity, and therefore not for a substantial form; and therefore divine action is necessarily required.

506. And if you ask whether a natural agent acts so that the substance (returning by divine action) be a quantum with the quality that it induces in quantity, one could say that it does, because it acts naturally after God in bringing the substance back, and in that later moment it has a passive object receptive of the formal term for which it has the power, and consequently that passive object can be affected by the formal term.

507. Or the opposite could be said, namely that a natural agent does not so act [n.506], because a created agent can only in-form a substance with some accident if that substance had something repugnant before which is taken away by this sort of natural agent.

508. But this is not necessary, because if the contrary or the privation does not here precede in order of duration, the action of a natural agent is not for this reason taken away, because a natural agent can well have an effect coeval with itself; and have it in itself, as from the proper attribute that follows the subject, or have it in another, as that if sun and air were simultaneously created, the air would be simultaneously illumined by the sun, and yet no opposite of this light would have preceded in the air.

509. As to the fourth [n.448] Augustine says, significantly, “their own motions,” that is, motions in their proper power, and such is only what has a suitable subject; and a quantity for receiving substantial form is not of this sort; and therefore a new substance cannot be produced after mere quantity save immediately by divine action.