Ordinatio

To the first principal argument [n.1] I say that ‘to enjoy’ is taken in an extended sense for a love of the honorable that is distinct from love of the useful or of the pleasant; or ‘things honorable’ [sc. invisible goods] are there spoken of in the plural, not because of a plurality of essences, but because of a plurality of enjoyable perfections in God.

To the second [n.2] I say that some finite relation is necessarily to a term or object simply infinite, because what is for an end is, insofar as it is such, finite, even when taken as altogether proximate to the end, namely along with everything that suffices for immediately attaining the ultimate end; and yet the relation of the end, to which it immediately is, is based only on the infinite. And this frequently happens in relations of proportions or of proportionalities, but not of likenesses, because in the former the first extremes are most dissimilar. Thus in the matter at hand I say that between power and object there is a relation not of likeness but of proportion, and therefore a finite capacity can well be finite in nature, just as its nature is finite, and yet be to a term or object simply infinite, as to a correlative.¹

In the same way to the other argument [n.3] I say that nothing is greater in idea of object than the object proportioned to the soul; yet there is something greater, that is, something attainable in a greater or better way than can be attained by the soul, but this ‘greater’ is not in the object but in the act. I explain this by an example: if some white object be posited with ten grades of visibility, and if a sight be posited that grasps that white thing and another whiteness according to one grade, and if another more perfect sight be posited that grasps them according to ten grades, the second sight will perfectly grasp that white thing as to all grades of its visibility, because it will see that object with as much whiteness as is visible on the part of the object; and yet if there were a third sight, more perfect than the second and more acute, it will see that white thing more perfectly. Hence there will not there be an excess on the part of the visible thing and of the object in itself or of the grades of the object, because it is the same simply and in uniform disposition, but the excess will be on the part of the seers and the acts of seeing.

To the fourth [n.4] I say that not just any form satisfies the appetite of matter totally in extent, because there are as many appetites of matter to forms as there are forms that can be received in matter; therefore no one form can satisfy all its appetites, but one form satisfies most perfectly, namely the most perfect form; but that form does not satisfy all the appetites of matter unless in that one form were included all the others. To the matter in hand, then, I say that one object can include all objects in some way, and therefore only that object quietens the power to the extent the power can be quietened.² But things are not altogether alike as to internal and external rest, because anything that is receptive is at rest internally when some finite thing has been received; but externally or terminatively it need not be that it rest in something finite, because it can be ordered to something more perfect than it can receive formally in itself; because a finite thing can only receive a finite form yet it does very well have an infinite object. – When it is proved that any form brings matter to rest, because otherwise it would be violently at rest under any form whatever [n.4], I say that violent rest never happens except when the thing at rest be determinately inclined to the opposite, as in the example of a heavy object with respect to descent downwards and its being at rest on a beam [n.4]; but prime matter is inclined thus determinately to no form, and therefore it is at rest under any form at all; it is not violently at rest but naturally, because of its indeterminate inclination to any form.

To the fifth [n.5] I say that the intellect assents to any truth because of the evidence of the truth itself – the evidence which it is of a nature to produce of itself in the intellect – and therefore it is not in the power of the intellect to assent to a truth more or less firmly but only according to the proportion of the very truth that moves it; but it is in the power of the will to assent more intensely to the good, or not to assent, although less perfectly than when the good is seen, and therefore the consequence does not hold of the true with respect to the intellect as it does of the good with respect to the will.³