Ordinatio

Reply to the principal arguments of this question [nn.108-109]. To the first [n.108] I say that not always is the most perfect thing cause with respect to imperfect things, when comparing imperfect things to any third thing (just as a perfect white thing is not cause of visibility for all visibles). Or if it be the cause, yet not the precise and adequate cause; and if it is the most moving cause, yet not the precise and adequate cause. But the first object of the intellect that we are speaking of in this question has to be the first thing adequate to the power.

To the second reason [n.109] I say that, if it be rightly argued, the inference should be that ‘no participating¹ being can be known unless it be a being from unparticipating being’, and the inference should not be that ‘it cannot be known save by reason of known unparticipating being’; for then there are four terms [in the syllogism], because there is put in the conclusion that it is known through unparticipating being, which term was not in the second proposition.² And the real reason for this defect indicated in the form of the argumentation was stated before in replying to the first argument of the second question of this distinction [n.100]; because although knowability do proportionally follow being, yet it does not follow it in being known save in comparison with ‘the intellect that knows each thing according to the degree of its knowability’ [n.100]. So I say here that, although participating being of necessity prove unparticipating knowability (and thus does it have participating knowability because of the unparticipating knowable), yet it is not known through the unparticipating knowable as known but as cause giving it being. And this was touched on in a certain argument about enjoyment in the fourth question of the first distinction [Ord. I d.1 n.148].

As to the remark [n.109] from Augustine On the Trinity 8 ch.3 n.4, I say that he is speaking about the knowledge of good in general that is impressed in us, that is, which is easily impressed in the intellect by singulars, because universal intentions [concepts] arise in anyone rather easily. I prove this from the same Augustine in the same book, On the Trinity 8 ch.4 n.7, where he says, “We have knowledge of human nature implanted in us as a matter of rule, according to which knowledge we know that whatever we see of this sort is man or the form of man.” And just as according to this knowledge of man (which he says is “implanted as a matter of rule,” that is, easily abstracted from sensible objects) we judge about anything at all whether it is a man or not, so also could we by the same fact judge eminence in humanity, if it were present in what is in front of us,³ which fact is clear from the impressed knowledge of whiteness whereby we judge not only that this thing in front of us is white but that this one is whiter than another. So I say here: this good thing that Augustine is speaking about in ibid. ch. 4 (knowledge of which is naturally impressed in the intellect) is good in common, and thereby do we judge, about the things in front us, that this one is better.

And that he is speaking [n.109] about the good that is ‘indeterminate privatively’, and not about the good ‘indeterminate negatively’ (in which latter good God is understood), is seen from this, because there, after he has enumerated the many particular goods, he says, “As to this good and that good, take away the ‘this’ and take away the ‘that’ and see the good itself, if you can” – that is: “take away the things that contract the idea of good to creatures and see the idea of good in common,” and in this “you have seen God,” as if in a first common concept wherein he can be naturally seen by us, and not in a particular one as he is “this essence.”

In like manner must be understood what Augustine prefaces in ibid. ch.2 n.3 at ‘God is truth’ there: “Do not ask what truth is; phantasms will immediately put themselves in the way.” I understand this as follows: when a universal concept is abstracted from a singular, the more universal it is the more difficulty the intellect has in resting for long in such a concept because, as was said before [n.187], whenever “we understand a universal, we have a phantasm of a singular instance of it;” and that universal we can understand more easily and for a longer time which is more similar to the singular shining forth in the phantasm. Also the most universal concepts are more remote from the singular, and so it is very difficult to rest in the concept of the most universal ones. Therefore, when conceiving God in the most universal concept, “do not ask what this is,” do not descend to some particular concept in which that more universal concept is preserved, which more particular concept is closer to the phantasm. For, by descending to the sort of concept that shines forth more in the phantasms that confront us, “at once the serenity of truth, in which God was being understood, is lost to us” [ibid. ch.2], because at once is a contracted truth understood that does not belong to God – to whom belonged the non-contracted truth conceived in common.

To the contrary: ibid. ch.3 n.5, “If you could have per se gazed at the good, you would have gazed at God; and if you have inhered with love, you will be perpetually blessed.” Blessedness is not in the universal good or the indeterminate privatively. Again, ibid. ch.6 n.9, “Whence could men be just save by inhering in the form they look upon, so that thence they may be formed?” To be formed by the form of justice is not to be formed by an understood universal.

From the same chapter too I reply to ibid. ch.3 n.5, about the good and will [n.194 first paragraph]: “Since other things are only loved because they are good, let it be a shameful thing not to love, when clinging to them, the good itself whereby they are good.” The argument [n.194] does well prove that the supreme good itself is more to be loved than the goods that participate in it, yet it does not prove that it is the first thing loved with the primacy of adequacy; because too, even if it be the reason of the goodness in other things and so the reason of their lovability, yet as loved it is not the reason of the others as loved, for something can be deeply loved when it is not loved, as is plain when using what should be enjoyed or enjoying what should be used [Augustine, 83 Questions q.30].

And this meaning of Augustine’s is gathered from On the Trinity 9 ch.6 n.11, where in treating of the love of someone because he is believed to be just, if afterwards he be found not to be just, “at once,” he says, “that love, whereby I was being drawn to him, repelled and as it were thrust back, remains in the form it was when I had loved him such;” that is, if I loved justice, and loved him because I believed that in him was justice, if I find him unjust, my will springs back from him, but the love of justice itself, as of its object, still stands. This remark is not about any unparticipating justice, but about the common idea of justice, which is loved for its own sake, and anything it is in is loved because of it.

On the contrary: the will is not of universals, both because it tends to the thing as in itself, and because the love both of friendship and of concupiscence is love of something in its real existence, present or possible.

I reply [to n.197]. To the practical first principles in the intellect there corresponds some volition that is the principle of moral goodness, just as those principles are principles of practical truth in the intellect. It is plain too that any idea of the good and appetible can be understood in the universal, and if it be thus shown to the will, why cannot the will have an act about its displayed proper object? Third, the appetitive singular, as singular only, does not have proper to itself a cognitive [power] for the universal.

To the metaphor of the motion of the soul to the thing [n.197 “the will tends to the thing in itself”], this is meant causally, because it gives command to be joined to the desired thing in itself (but not formally save because the will is the active power of its own act), but not about the thing under a greater idea of existing than is apprehended by the intellect. Rather, desire and abstractive intellection are of the thing under the idea of it equally existing as object (thus vision and enjoyment are of what is present); but desire moves effectively to the thing because it is a command; not so abstractive intellection.

To the second point [n.197, “the love both of friendship and of concupiscence is of something in its real existence”] I say that man shown in the universal is loved with love of friendship, and on that account is ‘this man’ loved; for thus too is justice in the universal loved with love of concupiscence, and therefore ‘this justice’ for ‘this man’.

So also [to n.194 second paragraph] is the exposition plain of the authority of Augustine On The Trinity VIII ch.6 n.9, “Why then do we love another whom we believe to be just and not the form itself where we see what a just mind is etc.” [n.125]. In that authority the form “where we see what a just mind is” must be understood to be justice itself in general; just as the form of man in general is that by which we see what is required to be a man, and by which form we judge that which is in front of us to be or not to be a man, according to him [n.191] in the same place [ibid. 8 ch.4 n.7]. Unless then we were to love this form in general we would not love him whom we believe to be just, whom by this form we love; just as, if you do not love the form of man in general, never will you love him, when you come across him, because of the loved form of man. And, as long as we are not just, we love justice in general less than we should, because we love with a certain simple volition or being pleased; and this is not sufficient to be just, but it is necessary to love justice with efficacious volition, namely whereby he who wills would choose to observe justice in itself as the rule of his life. The justice here, then, is indeterminate privatively, and in accord with it do we judge of a just mind, and because of it loved do we love the mind we believe to be just.