De docta ignorantia

That we may here recount at least summarily what can make our ignorance learned, let us discuss somewhat the trine modes of being already named, beginning from possibility. Concerning which many things indeed have been said by the ancients, whose common sentence was that from nothing nothing comes to be, and therefore they affirmed a certain absolute possibility of being all things, and that eternal, in which they believed all things to be enfolded possibly. Which matter, or possibility, they conceived by reasoning in a contrary way as concerning absolute necessity, as by abstraction of the form of corporeity from body, understanding body not corporally. And so they attained matter only ignorantly. For how is body understood without form in body?

They said this whole thing to precede nature, so that it was never true to say: God is, but it would also be true to say Absolute possibility is. They did not, however, affirm it coeternal with God, since it is from him, which is neither something nor nothing, neither one nor many, neither this nor that, neither what nor quale, but possibility to all things, and nothing of all things in act. Which the Platonists, since it lacks all form, called lack; and since it lacks, it desires; and through this is aptitude, which obeys necessity, which commands it, that is, draws it to be in act, as commanded wax draws the artificer wishing to make something from it. Unformedness, however, proceeds from lack and aptitude, connecting itself, that absolute possibility be as it were trine uncomposed, since lack, aptitude and unformedness cannot be its parts, otherwise something would precede absolute possibility, which is impossible. Whence they are modes without which absolute possibility would not be such. For lack is contingently in possibility. For from this that it does not have the form which it can have, it is said to lack; from which lack. Unformedness, however, is as it were the form of possibility, which, as the Platonists wished, is as it were the matter of forms. For the soul of the world is connected to matter according to it; which they called the vegetable stalk, so that, when the soul of the world is mingled with possibility, that unformed vegetability is led into vegetative soul in act through motion descending from the soul of the world and through motion of possibility or vegetability. From which they affirmed unformedness itself as it were the matter of forms, which is formed through the sensitive, rational and intellectual, that it be in act.

Whence Hermes said it to be the nurse of bodies and that unformedness the nurse of souls; and one of ours said chaos naturally preceded the world, and was the possibility of things, in which was that unformed spirit, in which all souls are possibly.

Whence the ancient Stoics said all forms to be in possibility in act, but to lurk, and to appear through removal of the covering, just as if a spoon from wood comes to be through ablation of parts only.

The Peripatetics, however, said forms to be in matter only possibly, and to be educed through the efficient. Whence this is truer, namely that forms are not only from possibility, but from the efficient. For he who takes parts from wood, that from wood a statue come to be, adds of form. And this indeed is manifest; for that from stone an ark cannot be made through the artificer is defect of matter, and that another than the artificer cannot effect it from wood is defect in the efficient. Matter therefore and efficient are required. And hence forms are in a certain way possibly in matter, which are led to act according to the conveniency of the efficient. So in absolute possibility they said the universality of things possibly, and absolute possibility itself is interminate and infinite on account of lack of form and aptitude to all, as the possibility of figuring wax into the figure of a lion or hare, or any other whatever, is interminate. And this infinity is contrary to the infinity of God, since this is on account of lack, God's on account of abundance, since all things are in him in act. So the infinity of matter is privative. God's negative. This is the position of those who spoke concerning absolute possibility. We, however, through learned ignorance find that absolute possibility cannot be. For since among possibles nothing can be less than absolute possibility, which is closest about non-being, according to the position of the authors too: hence one would come to the minimum and to the maximum in receivers of more and less, which is impossible. Hence absolute possibility in God is God, outside him it is not possible, for never is anything givable to be able which be in absolute potency, since all things, besides the first, are necessarily contracted. For if diverse things are found in the world so disposed that from one more things can be than from another, one does not come to the maximum and minimum simply and absolutely; but since these are found, it is clear that absolute possibility is not givable. Every possibility, therefore, is contracted; through act, however, it is contracted. Hence pure possibility is not found, wholly indeterminate through any act whatever, nor can the aptitude of possibility be infinite and absolute, lacking all contraction. For God, since he is infinite act, is only cause of act; but possibility of being is contingently. If therefore possibility is absolute, to whom does it befall? Possibility, however, befalls through this, that being from the first cannot be wholly and simply and absolutely act. Hence act is contracted through possibility, that it be absolutely only in potency, and potency is absolutely only contracted through act.

Differences and gradations, however, fall, that one be more in act, another more in potency, without coming to the maximum and minimum simply, since maximal and minimal act coincides with maximal and minimal potency, and they are the maximum said absolutely, as was shown in the first book.

Further, unless the possibility of things were contracted, the reason of things could not be had, but all things would be by chance, as Epicurus falsely wished. For that this world proceeded rationally from possibility was necessarily from this, that possibility had aptitude only to being this world.

Contracted, therefore, and not absolute was the aptitude of possibility; so of earth and sun and the rest, which, unless by a certain contracted possibility they had lurked in matter, there would have been no greater reason why they proceeded to act rather than not. Whence, although God be infinite, and according to this could have created an infinite world, yet since possibility was necessarily contracted, and aptitude was not wholly absolute nor infinite, hence according to possibility of being the world could not be actually infinite or greater or otherwise.

The contraction of possibility, however, is from act, and act is from the maximal act itself. Hence, since the contraction of possibility is from God and the contraction of act from contingency, hence the world is necessarily contracted, from contingency finite. Whence from knowledge of possibility we see how contracted maximality comes about from necessarily contracted possibility: which contraction indeed is not from contingency, because through act, and so the universe has a rational and necessary cause of contraction, that the world, which is only contracted being, be not contingently from God, who is absolute maximality.

And this indeed is to be considered more singularly. Whence, since absolute possibility is God, if we consider the world as it is in it, then it is as in God and is eternity itself; if we consider it as it is in contracted possibility, then possibility precedes the world only in nature, and that contracted possibility is not eternity, nor coeternal with God, but falling from it, as contracted from absolute, which are distant by infinity. In this way those things which are said concerning potency or possibility or matter must be limited according to the rules of learned ignorance. How, however, possibility proceeds by degrees, we leave to be touched in the book On Conjectures.