Ordinatio

To the authority of the Philosopher On the Soul 3 [n.457], that “to understand is to undergo,” which is adduced for the fifth opinion,¹ I say that the Philosopher spoke about the powers of the soul in common, insofar as they are that by which we are formally in second act, namely about the senses insofar as they are that by which we formally sense and the intellect insofar as it is that by which we formally understand. But we formally understand by the intellect insofar as it receives intellection because, if it cause it actively, yet I am not said to understand by the intellect insofar as it causes but insofar as it has intellection as its form. For to have a quality is to be of that quality, and so the fact the intellect has intellection, or receives it (which is the same thing), is to be oneself understanding. We understand, therefore, by the intellect insofar as it receives intellection; therefore, the Philosopher, speaking thus of the intellect, necessarily had to say it was passive, and that ‘to understand’ is ‘to undergo something’, that is, that intellection, insofar as it is that by which we formally understand, is a certain form received in the intellect. But we do not understand by it insofar as it is something caused by the intellect, if it is caused by it, for if God were to cause it and were to imprint it on our intellect, we would by it no less understand.

Just as I have spoken about intelligence actually [n.537], so do I speak about knowing habitually – that the intellect is that by which we know habitually insofar as it receives a habit, not insofar as it causes it, if it causes it.

I say, therefore, that all the authorities [of Aristotle] that speak for the passivity of the possible intellect can be expounded about it insofar as by it we know habitually, or insofar as by it we cognize actually, and in this way I concede that it is passive. And if it be active, yet not according to this idea; but it is an accident of it that it is active according to this idea. Now the authorities [n.457] affirm of the intellect what is true – not speaking of the intellect under the idea of something active, but asserting that it has the idea of something receptive, although they do not say that it is not active. Now a place from an authority does not hold negatively [sc. it must not be taken as denying what it does not say].

And from these same points [nn.537-539] is response made to the authority about essential and accidental potency [n.457]. For the intellect is not in essential potency because there is lacking to it some idea of causality insofar as concerns its own part, but the intellect is in essential potency when there is not present to it another partial cause that needs to be present for the purpose that action follow; and when that partial cause is proximate to it, it is in accidental or proximate potency to acting.

But the authority by which it is said that the possible intellect is nothing of the things that are before it understands [n.457] requires a different exposition – which authority, however, others so far treat of as to say that the possible intellect is in pure potency in the genus of intelligibles, as matter in the genus of beings. This is not the intention of the Philosopher, because a potency for an accident is never founded save on a substance; now an intellection or an intelligible species is not a substantial form but an accident; therefore what is immediately receptive of it is something in substantial act, or at least that is which is mediately receptive of it (and then what immediately receives it will be some accidental act, in the way a surface is related to whiteness). Therefore, the possible intellect, according as it is that in which intelligible form or intellection is received, or is that according to which the species is received in the soul, will not be a pure potential but will be something in first act, although the respect itself of potency is not anything in act. For when I speak of a potency receptive of whiteness, I am not speaking of a potency that states a respect to whiteness; for that respect is not anything in act, because neither is the whiteness that it is for anything in act either, and a respect does not exist without a term. But that in which the power is or is said to be is something in act, as a surface is receptive of whiteness. So it is here. Although in advance of intellection the power, which is a respect to intellection, is not, before act, anything in act, as neither is the intellection to which it is, yet that in which the power is or is said to be, which is what is receptive of intellection, is something in act, and it is the possible intellect.

It is not, then, with the Philosopher that the possible intellect is nothing in act the way they take it [n.541 init.], but one must expound the authority in this way: we naturally understand first the things that first occur from phantasms, as was said in the second question of this distinction [nn.73, 187]. Nothing, therefore, can we understand in proximate potency before the intellection of something imaginable; therefore we cannot understand the intellect before the understanding of another intelligible; therefore neither can the intellect be understood by us before the understanding of another intelligible; therefore the intellect is not intelligible before the intellection of some other thing. Just as the first antecedent is true [“we naturally understand first…from phantasms”], so also is the consequence [sc. the series of consequents up to the final one of “the intellect is not intelligible before…of another intelligible”]. For that reason, therefore, the remark ‘it is not anything of the things that are before it understands’ [n.541, 457] namely ‘of the intelligibles’, must be understood not because before it understand it is nothing in act, but because it is not anything that could in proximate potency be understood by us before having the understanding of another [intelligible], on account of our natural intellection, which begins now from phantasms [n.187].

When argument is next made [n.458] about likeness, that it is the reason both for making and for acting, I say that in someone who makes well the form is the idea of the making, by which the maker assimilates the thing made to itself; but in action nothing is produced save the action itself, for action is the ultimate term and does not have another term. And, therefore, there is no need that in an agent the idea of acting be in how the producer is assimilated to some second product or the agent to the object about which it acts, because it does not assimilate it to itself.

And if you say at least that is the idea of acting in which the agent assimilates the product to itself, namely the action itself – I do indeed concede that the species, which is the likeness of an object and by which the intellect is assimilated to produced knowledge, is some idea of generating; but it is not the whole idea, nor even the principal idea, as will be clear in the following question [n.562]. But, when two causes come together, in the nearer one a formal likeness suffices and in the remoter one a virtual or equivocal likeness; and thus the intellect, as a sort of superior cause, is assimilated virtually to intellection; the species, as a sort of nearer cause, is assimilated to it univocally, as it were, and formally.

When argument is later made about the indetermination of the intellect to diverse acts and objects [n.459], I reply that some indetermination is material, because of defect of act, and some is indetermination of the agent, because of unlimitedness of active virtue, as the sun is undetermined as to generating many things. Something indeterminate in the first way does not act unless it be determined by some act, because otherwise it is not in sufficient act but in potency. Something indeterminate in the second way is determined by no form other than itself, but it is determined by itself to producing whatever effect it is of itself indeterminate to, and this when the passive recipient is present – just as the sun, when a passive subject is present, generates anything generable by the fact it is of a nature to be generated. The indetermination of the intellect is not the indetermination of passive potentiality in its order of causality, but is the indetermination of an as it were unlimited actuality; and therefore is it not determined by a form that is a determinate idea of acting for it, but only by the presence of the object, about which determinate object intellection is of a nature to be determined. Or it could be said in another way that, just as a superior cause is determined to acting (as the sun to generating a man when a man concurs as agent, and an ox when an ox concurs), but not by some form received in itself, so the intellect, which is a superior and unlimited cause, is determined to this object when a particular determinate cause concurs, as to acting about this object when this species concurs. Now an inferior cause does not² effectively determine a superior indeterminate cause, nor formally, as an idea of acting, but it determines it like this, that is, the indeterminate active superior power produces something determinate when such a determinate inferior power concurs.

There is an opinion that the intellect is the principle of intellection as to substance, but that the object is the principle as to modification or specification of act. On the contrary: nothing is the principle for nothing; intellection, when modification or specification is bracketed, is nothing; therefore etc. The major is understood of a nothing that includes a contradiction. The minor is proved because the intellect is first by nature precisely something possible to be; but an intellection without the fact that in the same now of nature it is of some object, is a contradiction, otherwise intellection would be a merely absolute form.³