Universa Philosophia

This opinion (please God) will be the express opinion of Aristotle, St. Thomas, and Seneca: Aristotle, 4 Metaph. text. 5. But neither did Aristotle treat of being of reason in that sense, nor did he impress any trace of it. For he said precisely that the Sophist, the Dialectician, and the Philosopher treat of the same objects. From which text some inferred that the logician treats of every being of reason, because he cannot treat of every real being: who inferred as badly as these: for Aristotle meant that the same object is to be treated by the metaphysician and the dialectician. Aristotle therefore meant that the philosopher treats of every being demonstratively through the intrinsic principles of things; but the dialectician through extrinsic principles of second intentions, which are intentions of reason, as St. Thomas explains lect. 5. Which is the same as the philosopher treating of every being according to itself, but the logician of the same being not according to itself, but as it is subject to extrinsic denominations, by which second intentions are constituted.

St. Thomas they cite at the same lect. 5, explaining the Philosopher in these words: And a being of reason of this kind is properly the subject of logic: but intelligible intentions of this kind are equated with natural beings. He repeats almost the same below. To which opusc. 42 c. 4 is in harmony in these words: But a being of reason is properly said of those intentions which reason discovers in things: as is the intention of genus and species, which are not found in the nature of things, but follow the actions of the intellect and reason; and a being of this kind is the subject of logic. Those words are weighed, they are not in the nature of things: but extrinsic denominations are in the nature of things: likewise those, but they follow upon the operations of the intellect: which expressly favors this opinion: for nothing follows the operation of the intellect except something distinct from it. I answer in one word with Fr. Toletus: St. Thomas spoke of the acts of the intellect themselves, as they extrinsically denominate objects in the sense of § 43. But that he said those intentions are not in the nature of things, that is, outside the intellect: but where did he deny that they are in the intellect? But that he said that that second intention follows from the operations of the intellect, that is, it follows in the genus of formal cause, as I said in § 48. For Fr. Toletus, who did not distinguish those denominations from the acts, said that they arise and result from the acts: therefore it is not a legitimate consequence, St. Thomas said that second intentions arise from the acts of the intellect: therefore he thought they are distinguished from the acts: for countless people say the antecedent while denying the consequent.

But that it may be clear how unwillingly St. Thomas is cited for opinions of this kind, and how his doctrine is obscured by interpreters, I wish to bring forward his testimonies for the opposite opinion: and to show how true is what those authors said about other Thomists: in whose condemnation they themselves also seem to be: The fifth (they say) is finally the opinion of certain Thomists, who, drawing the mind of their author and of Cajetan in the aforesaid opuscule more to their own imagination than following it, say, etc. The first testimony of St. Thomas is in 1 dist. 2 q. 1 art. 4 § And from this it is clear: where when he had said that animal is a genus, from the fact that the intellect understands animal, he says, and of this kind of intention, although the proximate foundation is not in the thing, but in the intellect, etc. But a chimerical being of reason, or what these feign to result from the conception of genus, does not have its immediate foundation in the intellect: because it is not intrinsically in it: but the generic conception itself has its immediate foundation in the intellect. But when he said that to be a genus belongs to animal from the fact that it is understood, St. Thomas speaks in the formal sense: as appears from opusc. 49 near the end: for when he had treated of the second intention of genus, he says: and similarly it abstracts the species from individuals insofar as it understands the nature of the species, and immediately before: thus therefore the intellect without falsity abstracts genus from species insofar as it understands the nature of the genus. And so the formal character of genus is the conception of the same genus: otherwise these words of St. Thomas would be false: for the phrase insofar as reduplicates the formal character, as white insofar as white separates sight, reduplicates the formal character of whiteness.

The second testimony is from the beginning of the Ethics, where St. Thomas is so openly of our opinion that it needs only eyes: for he distinguishes a fourfold order of things: the first, which the intellect considers and does not make, which is the order of natural things: the second, which reason by considering makes in its own act, when it orders its concepts to one another: the third, which reason by considering makes in the operations of the will: the fourth, which reason by considering makes in external things. The first order he says belongs to the consideration of natural philosophy: the second to the consideration of rational philosophy, that is, of logic: whose (he says) it is to consider the order of the parts of speech to one another: the third looks to the consideration of moral philosophy: but the fourth looks to the mechanical arts. Where consider how alien from St. Thomas are these Thomists, who refuse that the directability of intellections belongs to logic, while St. Thomas asserts that the ordering of the operations of the intellect belongs to the consideration of rational philosophy.

But when the similarity of natural and rational philosophy, and likewise of mechanical art, has been established, he concludes: Thus therefore it is proper to moral philosophy to consider human operations according as they are ordered to one another and to the end. What is just as? unless as natural philosophy considers the order of natural things: as rational philosophy considers intellectual operations so that they may be composed in right order to the end: as the mechanical arts consider the external works which they contrive: so moral philosophy contemplates human operations so that they may be composed according to the prescription of reason. St. Thomas therefore lays it down as the first principle that intellectual operations are considered by logic as they are to be directed, and thence concludes by an evident similarity that the consideration and composition of human acts belong to moral philosophy. Or will someone say that the proper matter of moral philosophy is a being of reason resulting from human acts, and not the human acts themselves?

Come now from the beginning of the first book of the Posterior Analytics, and let St. Thomas himself say openly that the direction of the acts of the intellect (or the acts themselves as directable) is the object of logic, in these words. Reason can direct not only the acts of the lower parts, but is also directive of its own acts. For this is proper to the intellective part, that it reflects upon itself. For the intellect understands itself, and similarly reason can reason about its own act. Therefore just as from the fact that reason reasons about a human act, the art of making or of craftsmanship was discovered, through which man can exercise this act easily and in order: for the same reason a certain art is necessary which is directive of the very act of reason, through which namely man may proceed in the very act of reason in an ordered, easy, and error-free way. And this is the art of logic, that is, rational science. Which is not only rational from the fact that it is according to reason, which is common to all arts: but also from the fact that it is about the very act of reason as about its proper matter. And therefore it seems to be the art of arts, because it directs us in the act of reason, from which all arts proceed.

SUBSECTION III. Arguments for the opinion of Soto and the other Thomists.