Ordinatio

[To the arguments for the first opinion, that of Henry of Ghent] When it is argued [n.341] in the first opinion that to receive a species belongs to sense precisely because it is an organic power, I say that it is false because that is not the precise cause. But the precise cause for any power of having a species representing its object, as it is its, is this, because it is cognitive, and nature has given this to it so that it can have an object naturally present to it before it knows. But on an organic power has nature so made bestowal that an object is present not in the power itself but in an organ, that is in a part of the body that the organic power perfects. And this presence suffices, because the whole, composed of the mixed¹ part of the body and of the power, is the organ; and to this whole is the object sufficiently present when the species is in that part of the body. Since therefore nothing of perfection is taken away from the intellect insofar as it is a cognitive power by the fact it is not organic, rather perfection is more added to it, the result is that an object can be present to it before an act, just as to the other cognitive powers. But the presence will not be through anything impressed on the organ, for it does not have an organ. Therefore, it will be through something impressed on the very power. Such an impressed representing thing, when it precedes the act of understanding in the intellective power, I call an intelligible species.

Briefly, then: the sense has an organ present in the part of the body that is called the organ of that sense. But the intellect has both that prior presence actually and the act itself, by reason of the same receptive thing.

And so, that such a species only exists precisely because of the organ is to take what is false. For nature causes such part of such body to be so mixed² that it might be perfectible by such power of the soul and might agree with the operation of it, because “matter is for the sake of form” and conversely, Averroes Physics 2 com.26, and in On the Soul 1 com.53, “for the [bodily] members of a lion only differ from those of a deer because soul differs from soul.” Form then is not for the sake of matter but conversely. And therefore is such part made receptive of such species, so that through such species the object may be present to such composite, which is the whole organ. Hence the first cause of the presence of the object in the species is not such disposition of the body, but there is a prior cause, so that the apprehensive power may have an object actually knowable present to it, whether in itself or in something that is part of the organ in such operation.

As to the other argument [n.342] from the Philosopher, that the intellect is the place of species, the exposition can be that the intellect is called the place of species because it is the preserver of them (the way it is said that it belongs to a place to preserve the thing placed in it), and other powers are not ‘places’ because they do not thus preserve them. The intelligible species, to be sure, does not seem to be destroyed as the sensible species does, because a sensible species is in this way in an organ that is corrupted formally by a contrary, or by a disposition in the susceptive organ that does not fit such form – as is plain according to the Philosopher in On Memory 2.433a23-24, 453b4-7, that old men and young men and boys are bad at reminiscence because of a too great abundance of humors, and also because of damage and indisposition of the organ. The intelligible species is not in the intellect in these two ways so as to be per se destroyed by anything contrary to it, or by indisposition in what is susceptive of it. Many other congruences could be assigned as regard this word ‘place’, which it is not necessary now to delay over.

As to what is added from the Philosopher [n.343], that “we contemplate the ‘what it is’ in phantasms etc.,” I say on behalf of all these sort of authorities that such is the connection between these powers of imagination and intellect for this present state, that we understand nothing in a universal save that whose singular we have a phantasm of. Nor is there another conversion to phantasms save that he who understands a universal is imagining a singular instance of it. Nor does the intellect see the ‘what it is’ in phantasms as if in an idea of ‘seeing’, but he who understands the ‘what it is’ shining forth in the intelligible species, as it shines forth in the intelligible species, sees it in its singular instance, seen in the phantasm through the imaginative power.

As to what is adduced from Augustine [n.345], ‘who does not posit in the memory a sensible species but knowledge’, I reply: when he posits knowledge he at once posits something that includes an intelligible species, though he does not use this word. For since in On the Trinity 15.10 n.19 he had premised that “from the very knowledge that we hold in the memory a word is born,” he adds that “the thinking formed by the thing that we know is a word.” And since, ibid. 11 n.20, he had premised, “the seeing of thinking is very like the seeing of knowledge,” he adds, “when what is in knowledge is this in a word, then is it a true word.” And in the same place, 12 n.22, at the end, “a word most like the thing known from which it is generated arises, and from the seeing of science the seeing of thinking,” he adds, “Nor does it matter when he who speaks what he knows learnt it.” Likewise ibid. 22 n.42, “When I turn the glance of my thinking to my memory, as if I am saying to myself that I know etc.” Again, On the Trinity 15.27 n.50, when he is speaking of the light in which truths are seen, “It itself,” he says, “shows you that a true word is in you when it is born from your knowledge, that is, when we say what we know.” Thus his words.

From all these is it plain that what Augustine attributes to memory as to the idea of knowledge as generating it, explains itself always of the object present in memory. And it is not the case that the object is present in memory, as memory is intellective, through knowledge as knowledge is a habit distinct from the species. Therefore, it must be that he understand this presence to be through the intelligible species, and under the idea under which it is also distinguished from the habit of knowledge properly taken.

And in this way [n.394] too must be taken the word of the Philosopher On the Soul 3.8.431b21-23, who, since he had premised that the soul is “in some way everything,” adds that “through the senses it is sensibles, through knowledge it is knowables” [n.371]. Knowledge, of course, is taken, both in the Philosopher and in Augustine in the aforesaid places [nn.371, 345, 393], for the very habitual presence of the object in intellective memory, which habitual presence is virtually knowledge about such object, because in the object thus present is contained virtually the whole knowledge of such object.

This species [n.393] is the knowledge that reduces [the intellect] from essential potency to accidental potency [n.374] (according to Aristotle Physics 8.4.255a32-5b5 and On the Soul 2.5.417a21-b2), but not that which is properly called knowledge [n.394], which namely is the facility left over from acts because, before that facility for the first act of considering, it is required that the intellect have already been reduced from essential potency to accidental potency, otherwise it would not then operate. Nor is the species in which the quiddity shines forth unfittingly called knowledge/science [n.392]; not only virtually, because it contains the whole [nn.392, 395], but formally can it be called a cognitive habit, because a quality abiding in the intellect, disposing it for act [cf. Scotus, Ord. Prol. n.145].

And from this, namely from the first condition [sc. virtually containing knowledge] is argument obtained for the intelligible species, because it does not seem how any total science could be called ‘one’ by reason of its first object, save insofar as the science is contained virtually in the first intelligible object. For a total science is not called one by the object insofar as the object containing that science shines forth in a phantasm, because that would not be the oneness of an intellectual habit but of some imagination.

[To the arguments for the other opinion, that of Godfrey of Fontaines]. As for what is argued afterwards for the second opinion, that ‘a potency that is for some act is first actuated according to that act’ [n.347], I say that any apprehensive power at all, as apprehensive, is in potency to apprehending first with firstness of perfection, though not with firstness in the way of generation [nn.69, 71, 95]. And sometimes it is first with the firstness of generation, namely when the object in itself is present to such potency as actually knowable by it. For then there is no need, before the act, for anything else to come to be in it in which it may be present; but the first thing that comes to be from it is the act. But when the object is not of a nature to be in itself present under the idea of what is actually knowable by such potency, then any apprehensive potency is in potency toward apprehension and toward that in which the knowable will be present, and first, in order of origin, to having the presence than to having an act. So is it in the issue at hand. Sensibles are not of a nature to be in themselves present to the intellect under the idea of being actual intelligibles, but only in the intelligible species can they be thus present – and this as to abstractive understanding, which the discussion in the issue at hand is about. And therefore is the apprehensive power with respect to such things in potency to a double act, and from the agent first close to it, in order of origin, will it receive the prior act before the later.

Nor yet do I mean these acts to be so ordered that the prior is receptive idea with respect to the posterior, in the way, namely, that a surface is the idea of receiving whiteness. For then the intellect could, with respect to no intelligible, receive the second act (which is the act of understanding), unless it first had the first act (as the species of the same object); but I mean that the intellect of itself is the immediate idea of receiving both acts. However these acts have an order between them when the object is not of a nature to be present in itself, because then must naturally be first the act in which the object is present as intelligible, before the act is which is elicited about the intelligible object present,³ – and this is only preserved in the intelligible species.

Also the highest perfection possible of the cognitive power is not posited unless it is posited that it can conserve the intelligible species beyond the act, and thus have its object present to it, conserved without an act, for this is allowed to the sensitive power. And perfection in the intellective cognitive power is that it not depend on something else in its cognition, but that it can have an object present without dependence on another power.