Ordinatio

To the principal reasons [nn.212-218]. – To the first [n.212] I say that Averroes in comment 49 on Physics 8, whose text begins “Whether each of the moving things,” is only speaking expressly of man, and on this point he is contradicting Avicenna (On the Nature of Animals, XV ch.1 59rb-va), as he himself says in the same place. He imputes to Avicenna, then, that he posited that man could be generated equivocally, – and in that case the conclusion of Averroes [n.212] is true, because nothing univocally generable can be generated equivocally unless it is so imperfect that an equivocal or a univocal cause is sufficient for its generation; and therefore imperfect beings can be generated univocally and equivocally but not perfect ones. However, the reasons of Averroes [nn.213-214] seem to prove the conclusion not only about man but about any species of natural generable things; and if he intends this, his conclusion is false and his reasons not conclusive.

That his conclusion [n.212] is false is plain from Augustine On the Trinity III ch.8 n.13. And the reason of Augustine in the same place is that a generated thing propagates other things through putrefaction; but the propagators are univocal with the things generated by them; therefore things propagated and generated by putrefaction are univocal.

But if Averroes deny the assumption of bees and animals, he cannot deny it of plants, because plants equivocally generated, that is, not generated from seed, do afterwards produce seed univocally, from which are generated other plants of the same species.

Augustine also contradicts him in Letter to Deogratias q.1 n.4,¹ and so does Ambrose On the Incarnation at the end, ch.9 nn.101-102.

But Averroes also contradicts himself in other places about this conclusion. For about the equivocal generation of accidents he himself makes it plain in On the Heavens 2 com.42, where he concedes that in accidents there is not always generation from something univocal; and he sets down an example about heat and fire: for he posits that heat is generated equivocally from the motion and the concourse of rays, and also univocally from heat. – In substances too it is plain that fire is generated univocally and equivocally. That it is generated equivocally is plain from On the Heavens com.56: “The proceeding of fire from a stone is not in the chapter on transfer but in the chapter on alteration,” that is, it is not generated by transference but by alteration; it is also generated by local motion, Metaphysics 12 com.19, and Meteorology 1 summa II ch.1, about the generation of ignition by striking.² – Again the same is plain about animals, that many are generated equivocally, Metaphysics 12 com.19: “For wasps seem to come to be from the bodies of dead horses, and bees from the bodies of dead cows, etc.”

But that all the aforesaid things generated equivocally are of the same species with things generated univocally is proved because they have the same operations, and about the same objects; by the same things they are preserved and by the same things corrupted. They have the same motions, either as to going upwards or going downwards, or as to progressive motion, and the same organs of progressive motion; but from the unity of motion Aristotle concludes, in On the Heavens 1.2.269a2-7, to the unity of nature, and the Commentator in com.8 at the same place says: “one motion comes only from a unity of nature.” These – the latter and the former – also have limbs of the same species, and “the limbs of a lion do not differ from those of a deer save because soul differs from soul,” Averroes On the Soul 1 com.53. And generally all the middle terms that can prove unity of species, whether these terms are taken from acts or from operations, prove the intended proposition about the univocity of things generated in this way and in that.

Averroes’ conclusion is also contradicted by the Philosopher Metaphysics 7.9.1034a9-14, 30-b7, where he means that, just as some same things come to be by nature and by chance, namely when the principle is in a matter similar to what would be the principle of the motion of making if the same thing were to come to be by art, so he means that some natural things come to be by nature and chance, and some do not; and in the same place Averroes’ meaning – and the text beings “Therefore just as in syllogisms” [Metaphysics 7 com.31] – is that those things can be generated without seed (and consequently, according to him, equivocally) in whose matter can be introduced by the virtue of the heavens some virtue similar to the virtue of seed in propagated things.

Therefore the opposite of the conclusion of Averroes is plain, if he be understood generally and universally.

His arguments too are not conclusive. – To the first [n.213] I reply: matter according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 5.2.1013a24-25 is that “from which, although present within, a thing comes to be;” ‘although present within’ is added to differentiate the opposite case, when a thing comes to be from what is transmuted and corrupted but is not within the thing come to be. – But if he take the phrase ‘a form of the same nature belongs to matter of the same nature’, speaking properly of matter as it is a part of the thing existing within it, I concede the point; but if he take matter for the opposite, for that from which when corrupted the composite is generated, I deny it: for fire of the same species is generated either from corrupted wood or from corrupted air. And in things propagated and putrefied the matter is of the same nature in the first way but not in the second way.

To the second [n.214] I say that something is not said to happen rarely or for the most part because it is in itself a frequent or rare event; for a falling stone breaks someone’s head more frequently than the moon is eclipsed. But this difference should be understood by comparison of something to its cause: and the effect is said to be something happening for the most part which has a cause ordered to its effect which produces the effect for the most part; that is said to come about rarely which does not have a cause ordered to its coming about, but arises only from some cause which is ordered to another effect but which has been prevented from the effect it is ordered to, and it comes about rarely from such preventing. – The rare or for the most part are also taken as they distinguish between contradictory opposites, not as they distinguish between disparate things.³

So when he [Averroes, Physics 8 com.46] argues that if this generable thing is generated equivocally, or not from seed, ‘then either from necessity’, and I concede that it is not, ‘or for the most part or rare’, and I concede that it is for the most part, in comparison with a cause that is determinate, and also as it is a disjunction between contradictories,⁴ although it more rarely happen that this generable thing be generated not from seed than that it be generated from seed, namely as two disparate things are compared with each other.

But that in the first way it happen for the most part there is proof: for in this way per se the sun is a cause ordered to generating not from seed, just as a propagating cause is ordered to generating it from seed. If he infer that if in the second way something happens rarely then it happens ‘by chance’, the consequence does not follow, – and so he argues further about causality insofar as those things are said to be by chance that happen only from an impeded cause of another thing; and therefore, as he says, chance things are monstrous and not perfect in any species [n.214].⁵

When the argument is made, third, about motion and its term [n.215], I reply that this proposition ‘of motions different in species the terms are different in species’ is not an immediate one, but it depends on these other two: the first is ‘in motions differing in species, the transient forms, or forms according to which there is transience, are different in species’; the second is, ‘a transient form, or a form according to which there is transience, is of the same nature as the terminating form’. When one of these two is false, the assumed proposition is false. So it is in the matter at hand, because the form induced by production is not of the same idea as the form which is quasi-transient or according to which there is quasi-transience.⁶

But the difficulty of Averroes’ arguments still seems to remain. For although the same nature could be communicated equivocally and univocally, yet not by something of the same species, but it is only univocally communicated by an individual of one species and equivocally by a superior cause; but divine nature is not communicated by any superior cause, but only by something in the same nature; therefore it seems that the nature would not have a communication save of one idea.

I reply that created nature cannot be communicated save by a communication of one idea from a supposit of that nature; the reason is that the effect does not exceed the cause. But the effect communicated by such a supposit is nature; therefore the principle of communicating must be nature, because nothing more perfect than nature exists in such a communicating supposit, nor anything equally perfect as nature. But nature is a principle communicative of one idea; therefore to a supposit acting by virtue of nature there belongs a communication only of one idea.

The opposite exists in matter at hand [sc. the divine nature], because a supposit of this nature can have principles of a different idea in producing, each of which is equally perfect as the nature, and therefore each can be a principle of communicating nature; and so here there can be a twofold communication by the supposits that are of this nature.⁷

If objection be made that the twofold principle of operating in us, namely intellect and will, is equally perfect as the nature, because it is the same as the form, according to one opinion about the powers of the soul, – I reply:⁸ although in us there is a twofold operative principle, will and intellect, and both are perfect principles of operating and can have perfect operations adequate to themselves in idea of perfection of operation, yet they do not have operations adequate to themselves in being, that is, although by our intellect we can have an intellection as perfect as any can belong to our nature, yet this intellection will not be as perfect a being as nature, because an intellection adequate to the intellect, as to a power or object in idea of operation, is not adequate to the object or intellect in being. The intellect, therefore, and the will, namely in the creature, although they are principles of producing operations adequate to themselves in idea of operation, yet not so in being, and consequently much more not really adequate to the nature of which they are intellect and will. Thus can one argue about any productive principles in creatures, the distinction between which principles stands in the same supposit of any nature.

But in divine reality the operative principle is not only equal to the nature in idea of operative principle but also in being; the operation too is equal to the operative principle, and that in being, and consequently it is equal to the nature. Likewise the productive principle is equal to the nature in being.⁹

To the arguments which prove that there are not just two productive principles in God [nn.216-218]. – When first it is argued about nature and intellect that they are two distinct productive principles, from the Philosopher Physics 2.5.196b17-22, I reply that the Philosopher spoke little about the will as it is distinguished from the intellect, but he commonly conjoined intellect with will in idea of active principle; and therefore in the Physics 2 passage, where he distinguishes these active principles, namely nature and intellect, the intellect should not be understood there as it is distinguished from the will but as it goes along with the will, by constituting the same principle in respect of things artificial.

This will be plain from the response to the instance of the Philosopher from Metaphysics 9 [n.217], to which instance I say that the intellect is compared to its own nature and its own proper operation, of which it is in some way the elicitive and productive principle; and it is compared also to the operations of the other powers, with respect to which it is the directive and regulative power. If it is taken in the first way, I say that it is merely nature, both in eliciting and in producing; for whatever act of understanding it produces with the object present in memory, it produces merely naturally, and whatever operation it operates, it operates merely naturally.

Now the will as productive with respect to its proper operation has an opposite mode of producing, and this is sufficiently clear from the Philosopher Metaphysics 9.5.1048a8-11, where he treats of how a rational or irrational power is reduced to act; and he argues that a rational power, which of itself is for opposites, cannot of itself proceed to act; for then it would proceed to opposites at the same time, because it is of opposites at the same time; and from this he concludes that one must posit, in addition to that rational power, another rational power, a determinative one, by which the former is determined and can, when determined, proceed to act.

And from this it follows that the intellect, if it is of opposites, that it is so of opposites, namely by way of nature, that as far as concerns itself it is necessarily of opposites; nor can it determine itself to one of them, but requires something else as determinant which can freely proceed to act on one or other of the opposites; but this is appetite, according to him, or choice.

An example. The sun has the virtue of producing opposites, namely liquefaction and constriction. If there were two things nearby, one of which was liquefiable and the other coagulable, the sun would, by necessity of nature, have to elicit those two acts in them, and if some same thing were nearby that was of a nature to receive opposites at the same time, the sun would, by the necessity of nature, at the same time produce the opposites, or neither of them.

The power of the sun, therefore, is merely natural, although it is of opposites, because it is of them merely by itself such that it cannot determine itself to one of them alone. Such a power is intellect, as it is precisely intellect, with respect to understood opposites; and there is not there any determination to one of them and not to the other, save to the extent the will concurs.

Now the Philosopher commonly speaks of intellect according as it constitutes with the will one principle with respect to artifacts, and not as it is naturally elicitive of its own operation; and therefore as to the fact he sometimes distinguishes intellect against nature and sometimes art and sometimes intention, it is the same intellect in all cases.

When, finally, the statement is made about the will, that it is the principle in respect of creatures [n.218], I say that the will of God is first naturally the productive principle of some product adequate to it before it is the productive principle of something non-adequate; what is adequate to the infinite is infinite, and so the creature is a secondary willed , and produced by the will of God secondarily.