3. Third Conclusion

95. Third conclusion: no intellectual nature is ultimately and completely perfected save in possessing the supreme desirable thing, and possessing it perfectly according to the way it can possess it.

96. This is proved from the second conclusion [n.86], because an intellectual nature is of a nature to be ultimately and maximally perfected in that alone which is for it something to be willed for its own sake; therefore, it can only be ultimately perfected in that thing when possessed by it in the way it can be possessed by it.

97. The third conclusion is also proved by the fact that the nature remains ultimately imperfect when what is supremely to be wanted is not possessed.

98. The conclusion is proved, third, by a more universal middle term, that in things possessing any appetite (whether animal or natural) the ultimate perfection is not had unless that is had which is desired because of itself by such an appetite. Hence a heavy object has some imperfection when away from the center [of the earth], and so does a sense appetite when lacking the highest agreeable thing.

99. However, one must understand about this conclusion that there is in beings a first perfection, a second perfection, or as it were a second perfection. The first perfection is when nothing is lacking that belongs to the first being, namely the essential being, of the thing; the second perfection is when nothing is lacking that belongs to the thing’s second being. Also, this second perfection is a certain intrinsic perfection and is not conjoint with the extrinsic perfective thing. But there is thus a certain second perfection, because it makes perfect by the fact that it is conjoint with the extrinsic perfective thing. Nor is it surprising that something be perfected in what is extrinsic, because by attaining what is extrinsic (and especially if this be more perfect than itself), it has a further perfection than it could have in itself or for itself or from itself.

For in this way are more ignoble things perfected by nobler things - not by being these things really, nor by having them formally inherent, but by attaining them, and so by having them in the way possible for them to have them. Hence a thing whose appetite is in relation to something more ignoble than is its nature itself, is not perfected by something extrinsic save in a certain respect.

100. In the case of a nobler thing, too, although there be some perfection for a more ignoble appetite of it, yet this is not its supreme extrinsic perfection. But if some nature be perfected in something non-supreme nobler than itself, there must be some nature that is immediately perfected by the supreme perfective extrinsic thing; for there is no infinite regress in things perfect and perfectible. Therefore, at least the supreme perfectible thing is not perfected save in the supreme extrinsic perfective thing.

101. Now the whole of intellectual nature is supreme according to this idea, as is plain from the second conclusion.

102. Nor is it necessary, according to the order of natures, that there are extrinsic perfective things that perfect completively, but it is enough that second extrinsic perfections, joining with the extrinsic perfective, correspond the same with the degrees of first perfections. Now although the first perfection in substances is simply more perfect than any intrinsic second perfection yet it is not the ultimate perfection because, when it is obtained, there is still expected and desired a further perfection. The second perfection, even if it conjoin with the more perfect thing not formally in itself but as more immediate to it, is in a way a more desirable perfection than the first perfection, to the extent that it is more immediately conjoint with the extrinsic desirable thing, which is more desired than its proper intrinsic being.

103. This however is especially true of the will, for any other extrinsic appetite desires the extrinsic thing because of the nature of that of which it is the desire, and therefore it does not join with anything simply more desirable than is the being of the nature it belongs to. But the will loves something more desirable than itself, and more than the nature it belongs to, and therefore it conjoins with something more desirable, both in itself and for the will, than is the nature it belongs to.

104. This conclusion, therefore, at least as to the will, is not only true as to what is meant by ‘to be ultimately perfected’, but also as to what is meant by ‘to be perfected with the most desirable perfection, and even with the greatest perfection’ [nn.95-96] -speaking of the extrinsic perfective thing and, by participation, of the intrinsic perfective thing insofar as it conjoins with the extrinsic one. The way the perfect is distinguished is also how the good is distinguished; hence although any being is, in its own goodness, good with first goodness, yet not with second goodness. And on this does Boethius especially seem to touch in his book De Hebdomadibus, where he maintains that goodness is an accident, and that things are not good by the fact that they are.“Hence, I observe that it is one thing in them that they are good, another thing that they are. For let one and the same substance be posited to be good, white, heavy, round. Then the substance itself would be one thing, its roundness another, its color another, its goodness another; for if these were individually the same as the substance itself, heaviness would be the same as color, color the same as good, and good the same as heavy, which nature does not allow to happen.” ⁴²

105. Now these facts (second goodness) we thus significantly express: ‘things are going well for it’. Hence, according to the third conclusion, this is plain, that for no will do things ultimately and completely go well save when that is had which is to be wanted because of itself, and had perfectly, in the way in which it can be had.