Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

Since local motion is ordered to the acquiring of a place, therefore, having explained the place of the angels, what follows must be said in methodical order concerning its acquisition or loss, and thereupon concerning the local change which terminates in it; and not only its existence, but also its cause, nature, and various species are to be set forth in the present Section.

Note 1. Concerning the determination of the present Question there is a threefold opinion among Authors: The first was that of Durandus on the first dist. 37. second part of it qu. 1. num. 26. asserting that an angel is simultaneously wherever it can operate, whether simultaneously or successively; hence he holds both that an angel is simultaneously in all the bodies of the Universe, and that if more or greater things were made, it would at once exist in them without any mutation of itself, because it can always operate successively in all things, although it cannot move all things at once; because, he says, it suffices to have power at once to operate in whatever place disjunctively, and in all places successively, so as to be present to all at once, in the manner in which it can be. Thence in the second question he infers that an angel cannot properly be moved locally, so as to be transferred from place to place, because it is not in a place circumscriptively nor definitively; but is at once in every place in which it can be. Hence he thinks an angel is not properly moved locally, such that its substance abandons one place and begins to be in another: but only because it appears successively in different places through the various effects which it produces in them.

The second opinion is that of St. Thomas, first part, qu. 53. art. 3., and likewise of Cajetan there on the same article one, where he says: it must be diligently observed that local motion does not properly speaking belong to spiritual substances; but just as it is said abusively and equivocally that spiritual substances are in a place, so too are they said to be moved locally. Hence to be moved is not for them to be the subject of motion, just as neither is to be located to be the subject of ubi: but virtually to touch, in the genus of efficient cause, diverse places.

* Thus Cajetan on the celebrated passage of the Angelic Doctor. Yet the Angelic Doctor himself opens his mind more clearly, and excludes continuous motion from angels in 1. dist. 17. quaest. 1. art. 1., where thus ad 3.:

The local motion of an angel is not posited to be continuous, therefore it is not necessary that a part of that motion be motion, and therefore it is neither moved in A nor moved in B, although A and B are parts of it, but the succession of these, which is to be in A and to be in B: its motion is so called, plainly as if its motion were considered either according to intellect or according to affection, because the very succession of affections is called its motion, as in the body toward the end. An angel is said to be in a place inasmuch as it is applied to a place by operation, and because it is not at once in divers places it is said to be moved: whence just as the conceptions of intellect fittingly follow upon one another without continuity, so also do its operations. Hence its local motion is not continuous, but its very operations following consecutively upon divers places, according to which it is said to be in them, are said to be its local motion.

Thus St. Thomas. *

Third and finally, the opinion of the Doctor Subtilis on the second book dist. 2. qu. 9. and following, where just as he establishes the angel truly and properly in a place through its substance, so also he affirms that it is truly and properly moved.

Note 2. With our Herrera disp. 7. qu. 1., real space in each single place stands differently toward bodies than toward spirits; for with respect to bodies it stands in the manner of a container, since the body truly contains, and in the manner of filled space: seeing that with body it is so filled that it cannot admit another; thus while water is in a vessel, the vessel is said to be the place of the water, inasmuch as it contains the water, and it is called space inasmuch as it is filled with water: it can also be called the ubi of the water itself, inasmuch as it grounds or terminates the relation of presence, because the water is here in such a way that it is not elsewhere. But with respect to spirits, that real space can indeed have the character of place, and also of ubi, with respect to a spiritual substance located in it, provided that substance of an angel or rational soul is really there in such a way that it is not elsewhere: yet it cannot have the character of filled space, seeing that real space is not filled through the presence of a spiritual substance; indeed even if all angels were present in some real space, that space could receive any body no less than if no spirits were present.

Note 3. From the Doctor, lib. 2. on the Metaphysics num. 93., something is moved, and moves, in three ways: 1. per accidens; 2. according to some part; 3. according to itself whole. That is said to be moved per accidens which is moved by the motion of another with which it has a natural connection, whether this connection is made in the manner of a substantial or accidental form — thus the soul is moved by the motion of the body, and any accident by the motion of its subject: or after the manner of an integral part, thus the parts are moved by the motion of the whole: or as what is contained in a container naturally, thus liquid is moved by the motion of the vessel, and a sailor is carried about by the motion of the ship: or what is joined to something by some natural necessity, as a heavy thing to that on which it rests.

In the second way something is said to be moved, or moving, on account of motion produced by, or received in, some part of it: thus Peter is said to be healed, on account of his eye being healed, and to have thrown a stone, because he threw the stone with his hand.

In the third way something is said to be moved, and moving, according to itself whole: thus an animal is moved according to all its parts, and water cools, and fire heats according to all its parts.

These things having been set forth in advance, three things must be determined in the present Question: First, whether an angel is truly moved locally, not only metaphorically, but also really and properly. Second, whether it is moved by a motion both per se and per accidens. Third, whether it can not only be moved by another, but also move itself.

First conclusion. — The angel is truly moved locally; and that by motion properly so called. This is common, as to the first part, among theologians against Durandus.

Proof 1. By the authority of Sacred Scripture, which attributes local motion to angels not only when existing in a body but also outside a body; thus Isaiah 13. says of the prince of demons: How have you fallen from heaven, Lucifer? By which words is recalled the fall of the prince of the demons and all their followers, not only according to the affection of a depraved will, but also according to the distance of place, and their casting down from Heaven unto the lower parts of the earth. Which indeed Christ the Lord confirms, Luke 10., saying: I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven: hence in Apocalypse 2. is narrated the great battle fought by the Prince of the army of the Lord, namely Michael, against the rebellious angels, and how they were so cast down from Heaven that no longer was their place found in Heaven.

The same is confirmed by all those texts praised by us in the first Conclusion of the preceding section, by which it is not only openly signified that angels truly occupy a place, but also that they are carried from place to place by local motion.

It is confirmed. From the fact that the same must be asserted of angels as of the separated soul; but the rational soul, once severed from the body, is truly moved locally: therefore also the angels. The major stands both from that passage of Matthew 22. where Christ the Lord teaches that the lot of souls existing in Heaven will be like that of the angels, they will be, he says, as the angels of God: and from the fact that separated souls are altogether spiritual substances, having no actual commerce with a body, just like the angels; and therefore if, notwithstanding their spirituality and indivisibility, they can occupy a place and be moved locally, the same judgment will have to be passed on the angels. The minor is proved, both from the article of faith by which we believe that the most blessed soul of Christ descended to the lower regions during the three days of death: for the Lateran Council under Innocent III., cap. Firmiter, expounding that article of faith, He descended into hell, rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, says, But he descended in soul, rose again in flesh, ascended in both: therefore the soul of Christ the Lord truly descended to the lower regions by local motion, abandoning its body and entering the lower parts of the earth. And because the souls of the just, immediately released from their bodies, are said to be carried by holy angels to the place of rest. Thus Luke 16.: the soul of Lazarus is said to have been carried into the bosom of Abraham: therefore it is certain that they are moved from place to place.

Durandus replies that for the truth of the foregoing texts it is not necessary that angels change place substantially, but that it is enough that, through some effect, they begin to appear and signify themselves present where they did not previously appear; just as Matthew 3. says of the Holy Spirit that it descended like a dove upon Christ: and John 5. of the Son that he descended from heaven. Whence just as that descent of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit, signifies no local mutation in them, but only that the Holy Spirit through the dove, and the Son through the assumed humanity, newly produced some effect which he did not before produce: so in like manner there is no need for angels to change place according to their substance, but it suffices that they exercise certain works somewhere, that they may be said to be moved to that place.

On the contrary. The words of Sacred Scripture must be taken literally as often as they involve no repugnance in themselves, or anything implied and unseemly: but such are those texts affirming local motion in angels. For nothing absurd follows from this, as will appear in the solution of the arguments to be objected, whereas a great absurdity would follow if the Son, or the Holy Spirit, were said to change place substantially; for this appears impossible from Sacred Scripture itself, which expressly declares God present everywhere, and therefore incapable of changing place substantially, which cannot be said of the angels.

Add that the above passages were interpreted in this manner by the holy Fathers: especially St. Augustine, lib. 1. Retractationum cap. 24., where he sets out the difference between the descent of an angel and the descent of the Son of God, because the Son of God did not descend, nor come, where he previously was not, but appeared in human flesh according to which he previously was not: but the angel truly abandoned Heaven according to substance, and began to be where it previously was not.

Likewise St. Ambrose, in the book De Spiritu sancto cap. 10., comparing the Holy Spirit with an angel, says: That Spirit, since it is everywhere, cannot depart from a place, nor acquire a place: but the angel, since it is defined by place, can acquire and abandon a place.

Which Diadochus admirably explains, cited in Damascenus, in the Eclogae, title 47.

It belongs, he says, to the divine Word alone, who took on man (to be everywhere), which was seen truly on this earth and not in appearance only, and yet did not leave Heaven, but ever comprehends all things, always on account of the uncircumscribed immensity of the divine nature — which the angels cannot do: For at whatever time they are sent into the world, it is impossible for them to be in the same place, and above Heaven.

This very point all the other holy Fathers confirm: thus St. Chrysostom, homily three on the Epistle to the Hebrews, treating those words, sent to minister, says of the angels: they are sent into many places for us, and they minister to our salvation... They hasten about us, this is their ministry, to be sent by us to all quarters: which he confirms with various testimonies of Scripture, and finally, explaining the difference between the missions of the divine Son and of the angels, says: The Son was not sent as an angel is sent, for he did not pass from place to place, but took flesh; the angels however change places, and leaving those in which they are, come to others in which they were not.

St. Gregory Nazianzen concurs, oration 34., where among the properties of angels he lists, that they pass through all places, are present everywhere and everywhere untiringly: partly on account of the readiness of their ministry, partly on account of the lightness of their nature. Here the phrase, "are present everywhere," must be noted, together with its explanation, whereby he sufficiently declares that they are not everywhere at once, but able to aid us everywhere, and to do this untiringly through readiness of will and swiftness of nature.

As Tertullian also speaks in the Apologeticus cap. 22., saying: Every spirit is winged, that is, angels and demons; therefore in a moment they are everywhere, the whole world is one place to them; what is done anywhere they know as easily as they report it; the swiftness is believed divine, because the substance is unknown. Where by the word "winged" he alludes to the opinion of Dionysius in the last chapter of De Caelesti Hierarchia, who says the angels are depicted with wings, that their swiftness may be signified: and on account of that same swiftness Tertullian said the angels are everywhere in a moment; certainly by most swift passage: in which way also St. Jerome is to be understood, Epistola 50., where treating that text of Apocalypse 14., They follow the Lamb wherever he goes, he says: If the Lamb is everywhere: then the Martyrs, who are with the Lamb, must be believed to be everywhere; whence he adds: since the demons wander through the whole globe, and by their excessive swiftness are present everywhere, much more the Martyrs, etc. All which things signify true and real motion: and therefore the angels are not only truly moved, but also by a real and proper motion.

The Doctor Subtilis proves this truth equally by reason, qu. 9. num. 8.: Every recipient of forms of a certain genus, which is not determined of itself to some one of them, nor unlimited to having all of them, can be moved from one of those forms to another, as is evident of surface, which, being receptive of several colors, and determined to none of them, can now receive this one, now another: but an angel is receptive of several ubi, in which it can truly exist definitively, as was proven above; and it is no more determined to one place than to another, nor can it be present to all at once, but sometimes in one, sometimes in another, because it is neither infinite nor immense: therefore it can be changed from one ubi and place to another.

Next, the angel has a definite place, to which by its nature it is not necessarily present: therefore it also has mutability from place to place. The consequence is evident, because local immutability can arise only from necessary presence in all places at once, or from necessary adherence to one place. * But the angel neither exists in all places, nor is bound to any place, as is manifest and will be proved at once. * The antecedent indeed stands as to the first part, namely that the angel has a determinate place, since it is truly in a place, as was proved above. It is also evident as to the second part: for real place is something corporeal; but the angel adheres naturally by necessity to no body, since it is neither its substantial form, nor is it constrained to it by its nature; and therefore its motion cannot be hindered by it, as the motion of the rational soul can be hindered while it is detained in the body.

Finally, since angels excel in intellect and will, they can know and desire a place: but in them that desire would be vain, if they could not transfer themselves to that place: therefore etc. * The Doctor confirms it from the fact that if it be repugnant for the angel to be moved continuously, chiefly because they are spiritual substances: yet this does not stand in the way. For indeed the rational soul, once severed from the body, is a spiritual substance operating independently of the body: but it is truly moved locally, as is evident from the example of the soul of Christ, who during the three days of death descended to the lower regions; therefore the angels also can be moved locally. *

The second part also remains proven from what has been said: for not only does Scripture and the context of the holy Fathers affirm motion in the angels, but they also signify it to be true and real; which is moreover proved: The angel truly and properly exists in a corporeal place, although not commensuratively, but only definitively: therefore it can truly and properly be moved locally. The consequence is clear, since finite and limited things are moved in the manner in which it belongs to them to be in a place. Next, whoever truly and properly changes place, abandoning one and acquiring another, is also truly and properly moved locally; for local motion comes about through the true abandonment of one terminus a quo and acquisition of the terminus ad quem: but the angel, when it descends e.g. from Heaven to the earth, truly abandons heaven and reaches the earth, since, as was said above from the holy Fathers, they cannot by the forces of nature be at once in Heaven and on the earth: therefore, etc. Finally, whatsoever passes of itself from place to place through the application of its substance to divers places is said to be moved of itself, and substantially, and not merely metaphorically and equivocally: but the angel, when it appears somewhere, truly applies its substance there, and removes it from the place in which it previously was: therefore it is moved substantially and properly.

You will say 1. From Aristotle, 3. Physicorum, text 6., motion is the act of a being in potency according as it is in potency: therefore it is the acquisition of some perfection which the movable thing cannot have except through motion: but neither ubi nor place can be a perfection of the angel: therefore it cannot be moved to them. The minor is proved; every perfection is more excellent than the perfectible: but neither ubi nor place are more excellent than the angel: therefore neither are they its perfections.

The Doctor answers, num. 9., denying the minor together with the proof of that major: For, he says, the angel has intellection, which is a perfection of the intellectual power: yet intellection is simply more ignoble, or more imperfect, than the angelic nature. And so it can be conceded concerning ubi, or bodily presence with the angel, that it is some perfection of the angel, as any act is said to be a perfection: but far more ignoble than that nature in which it inheres. Add that not every motion must terminate in a perfection of the mobile thing; for many perfections are acquired through neutral and violent motion.

* It accedes that even if motion must terminate in some perfection, it is not necessary that that perfection redound to the good of the mobile thing itself; but it suffices that there be some utility and perfection for another. Thus the angels are moved for the perfection and salvation of men. *

You will insist from the Philosopher, 1. Physicorum: the indivisible cannot be moved: but the angel is indivisible: therefore it cannot be moved.

I answer. The Philosopher speaks of the quantitative indivisible, such as the point, which is not moved by motion properly so called, whereby namely it acquires place, and circumscriptive ubi; but he does not speak of the substantial indivisible, such as is the angel.

* Indeed, the Doctor adds, the mathematical indivisible existing per se of quantity, namely the point, can be moved locally and continuously. For a sphere moved over a plane describes a line on that plane, as was said in the Physics; yet the sphere itself, if it be perfect, touches the plane only at a point. Therefore the indivisible, even the mathematical one, can be moved locally and continuously, and accordingly this is much more to be attributed to the angel. *

You will urge. Motion is a divisible accident: but an indivisible substance, such as the angel, cannot be the subject of a divisible accident: therefore the angel cannot be the subject of motion, nor properly moved locally.

I distinguish the minor. The indivisible cannot be the subject of a divisible permanent accident, that is, one having all its parts at once, such as whiteness and blackness — I concede: successive, which has being in becoming, such as motion — I deny. Or otherwise I distinguish the minor: it cannot be the subject of divisible motion through the reception of that divisibility and extension — I concede; through commensuration and a certain proportion to it — I deny: for thus the rational soul, though indivisible according to substance, is in a divisible body which it informs, and the angel in a divisible place, to which it is present.

* You will say 2. Continuous succession in motion arises either from the resistance of the mobile to the mover, or from the divisibility of the space traversed, or from the medium retarding the action of the mover. But from none of these heads can there be succession in the motion of the angel. Not indeed from the first head, since the mobile is the same as the mover, namely the angel which moves itself. Nor even from the second or third head, because the medium and the space through which angelic motion occurs does not resist the angel either as mover or as mobile, since the angel could move itself through the medium by penetrating it without any motion of the mobile. Therefore in angelic motion there can be no succession.

The Doctor denies the major. For succession in angelic motion arises precisely from the divisibility of the space traversed; for, says the Doctor num. 41., between heaven and earth there are many intermediate places which the angel must traverse while passing from heaven to earth; nor can he by his motive power make those intermediate places exist all at once: therefore he must traverse them successively. *

You will say 3. St. Augustine, book 8. De Genesi ad litteram c. 20., teaches that every body is moved through time and place: but that a spiritual creature is not moved through place, but only through time; and that God is in no way moved: therefore St. Augustine holds that an angel cannot be moved locally.

I answer. St. Augustine there treats of circumscriptive motion, which belongs only to bodies: but not of definitive motion, which takes place without local circumscription, as Hugh of St. Victor explains in chapter 16; and therefore his opinion does not support the view of Durandus.

You will say finally. St. Bernard, Sermon 5. on the Canticles, openly teaches that the angels need bodies for motion, because, he says, To run about, nor to pass from place to place, is possible only to what is corporeal, which the angels are seen to do, as an authority proves, as indubitable as it is well known. Therefore in truth the angels are not of themselves capable of motion.

I deny the consequence. For St. Bernard does not speak of the angels considered in themselves, but only with respect to the ministries they carry out among us: for when at the beginning of the chapter he had said: Four kinds of spirits are known to you: of beasts, of ours, the angelic, and that which is like these. For not to all, to whom a body, or the likeness of a body, is necessary, whether on account of themselves, or on account of another, or on account of both, is it given — except only to him to whom every creature, both corporeal and spiritual, rightly confesses and says: You are my God, for you have no need of my goods. Then, speaking of the holy angels, he says: Now that the supercelestial Spirits have need of bodies for their work, that voice and divine saying above all makes us certain: Are they not all, he says, ministering Spirits, sent to minister for them who shall receive the inheritance of salvation? How then do they fulfill their ministry without a body, especially since they are occupied with a body? Whence he immediately adds: Finally, to run about, nor to pass from place to place, is possible only to what is corporeal, which the angels frequently do, as an authority proves, as indubitable as it is well known: Hence it is that they were seen by the Fathers, and entered to them, and ate, and washed their feet, etc. From these words it is plainly clear that he is speaking of the angels with respect to the ministries they exercise toward men, and not insofar as they are considered according to their own nature. For, says Alexander of Hales, question 33., member 3., where he explains the aforementioned authority in like manner:

As far as their nature is concerned, it befits the angels to be moved from place to place without a body, or without the assumption of a body, which indeed is evident from the example of separated souls: for separated souls, he says, can be moved without assuming a body: since they would assume either another's body or their own; another's body does not seem to befit them: concerning their own we see that they do not assume it, since they lie in their tombs; wherefore much more can angelic spirits be moved without the assumption of a body, since they are of themselves, and by their nature, separated; nor do they seem in any way to depend upon a body, or to have any relation to it.

Second conclusion. — The angel is not moved per accidens, and with the motion of the bodies in which he exists: but per se. This is the Doctor's teaching in the fourth book, dist. 10. qu. 6., where he says:

If an angel should make himself present to a stone voluntarily, when I move the stone, the angel is not moved on that account, because he is neither movable per se by my power, nor per accidens in this case, because he is neither the form, nor a part, of anything movable per se by me. If, then, an angel were present to a stone moved by me at the term of the motion, this would not be by my act, but by his own action, whereby he makes himself present there.

But that he is not moved per accidens is proved: whatever is moved per accidens must have a natural union and conjunction with the body in which it exists: but the angel does not have such union and conjunction with the body in which he is: therefore, etc. The major is clear from the third Notable; for in order that something be said to be moved per accidens, it is necessary that it be moved by the motion of another, every other effective causality being set aside, whether on its own part, or on the part of the other moving cause directly ordered to it. But the minor is evident per se, since, in whatever body the angel exists, in that body he is neither after the manner of a substantial form, as the soul in the body, nor accidental, as whiteness on a wall, nor of the contained in the containing, as liquid in a vessel and a sailor in a ship; nor of a heavy body at rest, as a stone in the earth; nor can any other natural conjunction be devised which should intervene between the angel himself and the corporeal place in which he is: therefore he does not seem to have with it any natural conjunction, and consequently he cannot be moved by its motion, except insofar as he himself moves himself together with the moved body, or is efficaciously moved by a higher cause, namely by God.

Next, if the angel were moved by the motion of a body, he could at once rest and be moved, and indeed be agitated by two contrary motions, namely upward and downward: but this appears absurd: therefore also that from which it follows. The inference of the major is clear: for if the angel had two stones as his adequate place, and one of them were moved while the other remained unmoved, or if one were cast upward and the other downward, it would be necessary that the angel rest with the unmoved stone and be moved with the projected stone, and likewise that he be held with one stone upward and with the other downward; which things certainly being repugnant, that also from which they follow is absurd.

Finally, if the angel could be moved per accidens, it would follow that he could be moved against his will by a man; for on the hypothesis that one angel had been destined by God to be stationed near the sacred Relics of some saint placed upon an altar, and some man should steal them away with a thieving and sacrilegious hand: if the angel ought to be moved by the motion of the body in which he exists, it would be necessary that he be moved, against his will, to the carrying away of those sacred Relics by a man; but the consequent appears not only absurd, but even contrary to experience, whereby it is established that nothing of prevailing power can be moved by the weak power of one weaker, while it resists in mind: therefore, since the angel is far superior to and stronger than man, it must not be said that he is moved against his will by a man, and consequently he cannot be moved per accidens.

The second part is also proved by the Doctor, in the second book, d. 2. q. 9. and 10.; for although he does not expound the question in its proper terms, nevertheless in his whole discussion he manifestly supposes it, admitting in the angel a receptive potency of motion, and teaching that he acts upon himself when he moves himself. Add that, as we said just now, he openly teaches that the angel is not moved per accidens: therefore it is necessary that he hold him to be moved per se.

The truth of this assertion is proved: that is said to be moved per se which is truly of itself the subject of motion: but the angel is truly the subject of his own motion: therefore he is moved per se. The major is clear; for a thing moved is so called from motion: therefore that which receives motion in itself and immediately is said to be moved per se. But the minor is proved, both because the angel ought to be said to be moved locally in the same manner as he is in place: but, as was proved above, he is in place fundamentally by his substance, in which nothing is more intrinsic to him, and formally by the respect of presence to the place received in the angel himself: therefore he is also moved locally by the motion residing in himself. The minor is clear from what has been said. The major, however, is admitted by all the Philosophers; since local motion is the tending of a mobile from one place to another, it is necessary that its motion correspond to that location, at least as regards the respect of presence: Then because the subject of the term of motion in facto esse and in fieri is the same: but the subject of the term in local motion in facto esse is the very substance of the angel present to this place which he acquired by motion: therefore the same is also the subject of that term in fieri, and consequently of local motion: since local motion is nothing else than the very term in fieri, that is, to be acquired: Then finally because the angel's motion is the very successive acquisition of ubi, that is, of the existence of the angel present in one and then another part of space: but an existence and presence of this kind is truly in the angel: therefore motion is likewise in him.

You will say. If the angel's motion were a real thing received in him, it would follow that the angel is really changed as many times as he is moved; but the consequent seems absurd: for he would be liable to infinite real changes, which seems unbecoming to the most excellent created nature, and one very close to God, who is altogether immutable: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the major. That he would be liable to changes through real absolute forms, which would change him physically and entitatively, I deny: through respective forms, or through relations, which produce no physical and entitative change, but only an extrinsic denomination, I deny: for the angel's motion, beyond his substance, signifies no absolute entity, but only the action by which the angel formally and immediately acquires successively the existence of his own substance, that is, the respect of presence of that substance to this or that space through which he passes, and toward a determinate place he tends: but that respect imports no real and entitative change; otherwise a man would be really changed a thousand times in every little moment of time, since he takes on innumerable relations and correlations anew.

Third conclusion. — The angel can move himself locally. So the Doctor in the second book, d. 2. q. 10., and it is common among the Theologians.

And it is proved 1. From sacred Scripture, which speaks of the motion of the angels in the same manner as of the motion of men, or of other animals that move themselves: for it uses the same words signifying motion proceeding from an intrinsic principle of the thing moving itself. Thus the demon Job 1. said: I have gone round about the earth, and walked through it, and of him St. Peter, first Epistle chapter 5. says: He goeth about seeking whom he may devour: whence Luke 8., Matthew 4., and John 13. attribute to demons the words of coming, approaching, entering, and going out; thus Christ commanded the unclean spirit to go out from the man: thus the demons besought Christ that he would permit them to enter into the swine: from which it is clear that the demons, as having the power of moving themselves, only asked that they be permitted to enter the swine, that is, that they not be forbidden.

The same is plainly established from those words of Christ, Matthew 12.:

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none: Then he saith: I will return into my house from whence I came out, and coming he findeth it, etc. Then he goeth, and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and entering in they dwell there:

in which, as Suarez cleverly observes, book 4. cap. 23., there are six or seven words that signify local motion, and motion from an intrinsic principle, namely the words of entering, going out, walking, seeking, returning, coming, going, and taking. For these things cannot be said of a thing which cannot move itself, but can only be moved by another.

From these words also, says Suarez, is taken the best reason, which Gregory touched upon: because all the motions and journeys of the demons are ordered to an evil end, namely the ruin of men, according to that saying I have gone round about the earth, and walked through it: therefore it cannot be said that those motions are specially made by God alone at the will of the demon himself; for it would be impious so to think of God: therefore it is necessary to confess that they are made by the demons themselves moving themselves.

The consequence is proved. Because if the angel does not move himself; much less will one angel be able to move another: therefore he could be moved by God alone, and in order that such motion not be violent or necessary for the angel, God would then have to move the angel only when he himself wishes to be moved, and consequently to lead the demons only when they themselves wish to tempt us; which is repugnant to the aforesaid texts of Scripture.

The Doctor proves the conclusion in the place cited for this reason: whenever something has a potency for acquiring something through motion, it is a perfection in it that it have also an active potency, by which it can acquire that thing: but the angel has a passive potency for local motion, as we said just now, since the angel is the subject of his own motion: therefore the active is not to be denied to him: since, as Aristotle says, nature must be honored as far as appearances permit.

The consequence is clear, because the angel is not of lesser condition than corporeal things and inferior creatures; indeed he is far nobler than they: yet in those things, together with the receptive potency of some perfection, there is found at the same time an active power, as is clear in living things, in which there is also a passive and an active potency for growth, and for the operations of the senses, and for moving themselves: it is clear also in inanimate things, for from the fact that heavy things have a passive potency to be in the center, they have also an active potency by which they can acquire it: therefore much more, if there be in the angel a passive potency, he also possesses an active one; and why should he not move himself, if he has an active power for moving?

It is confirmed. Because to move oneself is a degree of life which the angels enjoy: therefore they move themselves. Moreover, the angels are most perfect living things, and are not naturally everywhere, and therefore are capable of local change: therefore they can effect it in themselves. The consequence is proved, because, given the imperfection of their own limitation, to the perfection of life belongs the intrinsic faculty of moving oneself; the argument for this is, because lower living things, if they participate in knowledge not only intellectual but even sensitive, have the perfect power of moving themselves locally: who then will doubt that the angels can much more perfectly move themselves, especially since there is in this no difficulty, or apparent repugnance?

You will object. Nothing can be the same according to the same in potency and in act at once: but the mover qua mover is in potency to motion, and what is moved as such is in act of motion, that is, has motion in act: therefore nothing, the same indivisible thing, can be at once moving and moved, that is, can at once move and be moved, and consequently the angel cannot move himself. It is confirmed, because certain differentiae contracting and dividing being as such are incompossible in the same subject, as is clear from the differentiae by which being is contracted to substance and accident: therefore by parity of reasoning, the differentiae of act and potency, by which being as such is contracted, cannot be found in the same subject.

The Doctor denies the major. But he distinguishes it: nothing can be in potency, insofar as potency signifies the privation of act, and in act at once, I concede the major: nothing can be in virtual potency for producing, or receiving, an act, and at the same time in formal act, that is, at once have the formal act, I deny the major. Likewise I distinguish the minor: but what is moved is in potency to that to which it is moved, insofar as potency signifies such privation for that instant, or time, at which it is moved, and what moves is in act; that is, has the act opposed to that privation, I deny the minor: it is in potency, insofar as potency does not signify such privation, and in act at once, I concede the minor, and deny the consequence.

To the confirmation the Doctor says, that wholly opposite things dividing being, which are truly opposed, cannot be found really in the same subject: and consequently, that to be in act and in potency, insofar as they are differentiae of being so opposed, cannot be found in the same; but I deny that such things are found in the same. Therefore, when being as such is divided into being in act and being in potency, being in potency is not there taken for a being productive or receptive of something, and being in act for a being having such an act; otherwise prime matter could not at once have with form a receptive potency of it, and because otherwise it would be badly so divided, and without foundation, and against the truth: but being in potency is there taken for a possible being not actually existing, and being in act for a being actually existing; and it is evident that every being is either in act or in potency in this way, and that no being is at once in act and in potency in this way.

You will say 2. In that which moves itself, the part moving itself must be distinguished from the part moved per se: but in the angel no moving part and moved part can be assigned: therefore he does not move himself. The major is proved both by the authority of Aristotle, in the book Physics; and also by reason, because if one part moved another, it would follow that the whole would at once be at rest on account of the rest of one part, and not at rest on account of the motion of the other.

I answer. The major is true of corporeal substance moving itself with organic motion; for in it these things concur to motion, namely cognition, which first moves that part of the body which is first impelled, because the motive power concurring to such motion is organic, and consequently is not only really distinct from the soul, which is the first mover, but also perhaps the organic power itself resides in some part of the body, and must first move some other part. But from this it does not follow that whatever else is moved by itself with another, non-organic motion must have two really distinct parts, as is clear in heavy and light things, in which every part moves and is moved, because every part has an intrinsic active and passive principle of its motion. Whence it is no wonder if in the angels, whose substance is indivisible, one part moving and another moved is not so required for their motion. Add that in them also, at least metaphorically, a moving and a moved part can be assigned; for their substance is moved by the will.

You will object 3. The natural power of the angel ought to be ordered to some natural end according to the natural order of the Universe: but the motive power with respect to place, with respect to the angel himself, can serve no natural end: therefore it is not in him. The minor is proved: the angel is never moved on account of his own need, nor even on account of the natural need of other things, since the whole of inferior things are sufficiently aided by the motions of the heavenly bodies; indeed even man, as regards his body and all his animal powers, is sufficiently aided in his operations by the celestial motions; but as regards his mind, he is immediately subject to God himself, who alone can immediately touch intellect and will: therefore such natural motive power with respect to place is superfluous with respect to the angel himself.

I deny the minor. For that active power is not in the angel in vain, both because he himself needs it in order that the species of singular things may be able to be received from things remote from him through his approach to them: and also in order that he may be able to exercise certain operations pertaining to the governance of the Universe, which he could not otherwise exercise: and finally, because that motion above all expresses angelic liberty, by which he can transfer himself from place to place.

You will object finally. Opposite relations cannot belong to the same real extreme: but the relations of mover and moved are opposite: therefore they cannot both belong to the same angel.

I answer with the Doctor, in 2. dist. 25., that relations are of three kinds: For some are such that they are repugnant to one another, not because they cannot be in the same foundation, but because some of them include an essential dependence; such as the relations of cause and caused: and because the same cannot depend essentially upon itself, therefore these relations cannot belong to the same. Others are relations which include an essential order of origin, such as the relations of the producer to the product, and this implies that the same be producer and product. But other relations are (such as those of mover and moved) which include neither an essential dependence nor origin, and therefore can be founded in the same nature and in the same supposit, and they argue only an accidental dependence. Nor does it follow from this that that relation is of the same to himself, although the same will and the same angel be mover and moved: for if the angel be considered as causing motion in himself, he founds the relation of mover; but if the angel be considered precisely insofar as he receives motion in himself, then he founds the relation of moved; and thus it is only required that that form by reason of which the angel is moved, namely passive motion, be really distinct from the angel himself moving and moved. Such is the Doctor's teaching.

From these gather first, that the locomotive power of the angel is not really distinct from his substance: for that distinction would be altogether superfluous, since the same thing is not to be inferred concerning the locomotive power of the angel as of man; indeed, since the locomotive power of man is organic, and depends upon an external and corporeal faculty, there is no doubt that it is really distinct from the rational soul: but it is otherwise with the angels, who, being destitute of body and of corporeal faculty, there appears no reason why their locomotive power should be really distinguished, both from the angel's substance and from his will; therefore it seems to me more probable that it is altogether one and the same with the will; since faculties are not to be multiplied without necessity; but no necessity appears for admitting a locomotive faculty distinct from the angelic will; since the angelic will has its entity, and its own substance subordinated to it with respect to place and motion; and consequently it alone can suffice for effecting the motion, and for moving and placing its own substance somewhere.

Gather secondly, that any angel whatever can be moved extrinsically by God, in such a way that he himself concurs only passively in such motion: both because that does not repugn on the part of the angel himself, since he is not everywhere, and can be moved, nor does he resist the mover; and even if he did resist, his resistance, since it is finite, could be overcome by an agent of greater power. Nor does it repugn on the part of local motion absolutely and in common, because the angel's motion is not vital, and consequently does not require that it be necessarily made by an intrinsic principle of the mobile itself. Nor finally does it repugn on the part of the agent, because neither a superior angel, nor at least God, lacks the power for such an effect, nor is there involved in it any imperfection unbecoming to God: therefore God can move the angel per se. A superior angel could also move an inferior, even one resisting, on account of the greater power in him, just as a stronger animal moves a weaker one, even against its will. Thus the Magi, who have more powerful demons, overturn the machinations of others, namely by one superior demon coercing an inferior one: thus also the demons undoubtedly seize damned souls against their will and carry them off to hell. But how this is done, it is not so easy to determine; nevertheless it appears likely that the stronger angel unites himself, and in a certain manner binds himself, to the inferior one, upon which being posited, the rest or motion of the latter follows, according as the binding angel rests or moves himself: for just as a superior angel can determine and bind himself to a certain place, so it does not appear why he cannot likewise bind himself to another spirit, so as to carry him and hold him wherever and as long as he pleases. But if the spirit binding the other is not, or remains, present to the one bound, that binding is more easily explained by saying that it is made only by God, and morally by the spirit, as certain Saints are reported to have detained demons by their command: in which way also the angel Raphael is said to have bound the demon Asmodeus in the desert.

Note 1. Local motion is customarily distinguished as fourfold, namely Continuous, Discrete, Successive, and Instantaneous. That motion is called continuous in which the mobile leaves the term from which by parts and acquires the term to which. Discrete, on the contrary, is that motion in which the mobile leaves the whole of the term from which all at once, and immediately acquires the whole of the term to which all at once; yet so that it seems, as it were, to rest in its last being in the term from which before it immediately exists in the term to which through the first of its being in it. Successive is entirely the same as continuous, except perhaps they differ from each other in this, that continuous motion is called that whereby the mobile reaches its adequate place intended and proposed by the mover at the inception of the motion: while successive is that whereby the mobile sometimes does not reach the adequate place proposed, but subsists midway; whence it happens that every continuous motion is also successive, but not every successive motion should for this reason be called continuous. Finally, that motion is called instantaneous whereby the mobile leaves the term from which and acquires the term to which in the same moment; so that this rejection of one term and acquisition of the other coexists with only a single instant of our time. Hence it appears that continuous motion is directly opposed to discrete, and successive to instantaneous. We ask, therefore, whether angels are moved by this twofold, or rather fourfold, local motion.

Note 2. The divisibility of motion is to be drawn chiefly from three heads. First indeed on the part of the mobile, namely when it is extended and divisible, and has extended parts, such that one cannot be moved except after another, as is the motion of an animal. Second, on the part of the extended space having various parts, one of which cannot be traversed except after another, for example the air midway between heaven and earth. Third, on the part of temporal duration; for since time is the measure of motion according to prior and posterior, and therefore according to succession, what is measured must be divisible when the measure is divisible. Hence motion is to be called divisible as often as the mobile has distinct parts, or the space is so extended and disposed that one part ought not to be traversed before another is traversed; or while the motion lasts through some succession of time: but it is not necessary that these three concur together to constitute motion truly divisible, but it suffices that either one intervene in the motion itself. It is certain, however, that angelic motion cannot be said to be divisible on the part of the angel himself, since his substance is wholly indivisible: whether he obtains divisibility from the space that is traversed, or from the time during which it lasts, must be resolved here.

Note 3. Motion can be considered in two ways: first in general, and insofar as it embraces every passage from a term from which to a term to which; whether that passage supposes something mediating between the two terms or not. Second in particular, as it truly signifies not only every such passage, but also the medium between the two terms, which the mobile must pass through in order to pass from the term from which to the term to which. The former is called mutation rather than motion, and it embraces all those instantaneous mutations of generation and corruption, illumination and darkness, etc., which philosophers are accustomed to call motion, though using the word motion loosely and less properly. The latter, however, signifies only that tending of the mobile from the term from which to the term to which through the space mediating between both. There will be discussion here of both. For three things must be determined here: First, whether an angel can be moved per se with local motion that is continuous: Second, whether he can be moved with discrete motion: Third, whether he can pass in an instant from one place to another by true motion, or only by true mutation.

First conclusion. — An angel can be moved per se from place to place with continuous and successive motion. So the Doctor in Book II, dist. 2, q. 9, n. 8, where, after saying that an angel can move himself because he is not immense and unlimited as regards every where: therefore he can be changed from one where to another, he adds: and that continuously is evident: because between two wheres there are infinite intermediate wheres, which is proved from the continuous motion of a body through all those wheres: but through all those the angel can pass, such that he is in none of them except indivisibly, and consequently he cannot pass through all of them unless he be moved continuously.

By which words the Doctor affirms not only that an angel can be moved, but even that he can be moved continuously without any interruption for some time, say for a quarter of an hour, or an hour, or a day: which he certainly proves, because between two places, from one of which to the other an angel can be moved, so that he must necessarily leave the prior place before acquiring the later, there are either infinitely many places acquirable successively, on the hypothesis that infinite parts are given in the continuum, whether in act or in potency, as is commonly conceded; or at least very many intermediate places successively and continuously acquirable, otherwise a body could not be moved successively and continuously from one place to another: therefore the angel, moving himself from one place to another, can move himself successively and continuously through those intermediate places.

The Doctor confirms this argument from the fact that if an angel could not move himself continuously just as bodies do, especially since his substance is spiritual and indivisible: but this objection does not stand; for the rational soul is likewise a wholly indivisible substance, yet separated from the body it can be locally moved, and that with continuous motion. Whence he says: the most blessed soul of Christ is locally moved, because it descended into hell, as the article of faith says. It is also evident from Scripture that angels were sometimes sent with an assumed body, and if then they were moved with the body, it seems that there was then some passive motion on their part, or formally in the passive motion of the body itself, because they were not formally something of the body. Similarly, it is credible that they were often sent without a body, as was the one sent to Joseph doubting about the conception of blessed Mary.

Proof. An angel can successively leave some place and acquire another in the same manner without any interruption: therefore he can be moved from place to place continuously. The consequence is clear. The antecedent is proved: when an angel is in a lesser place than the one that is adequate to him, he can little by little and successively leave a part of it, so that he remains in a lesser one, and acquire a greater within the breadth of the adequate place: therefore he can also leave successively and by parts the whole place in which he is, transferring himself in the same manner to another total place. This consequence is clear, for no reason appears why the angel could not leave and acquire a total place in this manner just as a partial one. The antecedent is proved: the angel freely applies himself to a greater or lesser place within the breadth of the place adequate to him: therefore also, after he is in some lesser adequate place, he can either leave a part of it, not all at once but by parts, or extend himself to a greater place; for it cannot otherwise be understood how it is free for the angel, once he is in a place, either to contract himself to a lesser place or to extend himself to a greater within the breadth of his adequate place. Then, if it were repugnant for an angel to be moved with continuous and successive motion, especially because his substance is indivisible: yet the rational soul, although indivisible, can successively leave some part of that matter which it informs, namely when some part of the body successively corrupts and wastes away: similarly it can extend itself to informing a new part of the substance which is regenerated through continuous nutrition: therefore by equal reason the angel will be able, notwithstanding his indivisibility, either to leave a part of that adequate place in which he is, or to extend himself to other parts of the same place to be acquired successively.

It is confirmed. It is no more repugnant to the indivisibility of an angel to acquire an extended place successively than to be in an extended and indivisible place: but the latter is possible: therefore also the former.

Finally, an angel can pass from one place to another by passing through all the intermediate places, leaving none untraversed and resting in none of them: therefore he can be moved with continuous and successive motion. The consequence is clear, because he cannot be moved through all those intermediate wheres with no intervening rest except with continuous and successive motion. But the antecedent is proved, because a body can pass through all those media: therefore also an angel. The consequence is clear, because in this the minor shows less repugnance. Likewise, for the continuity and succession of motion the divisibility of space suffices: therefore it is not repugnant for the angel, even though he be indivisible, to be moved continuously. The consequence is obvious, especially since an angel can exist in a divisible place. But the antecedent is clear from the second Note.

You will say 1. The angel is indivisible according to substance: therefore he cannot be moved with continuous motion. The inference is proved, for continuous motion requires that the thing moved be partly in the term from which and partly in the term to which: because what is moved is not being moved when it is in the term from which, for then it rests, nor when it is in the term to which, because it has already been changed: therefore what is moved continuously must be partly in the term from which and partly in the term to which: but the angel is impartible: therefore he cannot be locally moved continuously.

It is confirmed. Because an indivisible place ought to correspond to an indivisible mobile: therefore if the angel passes continuously through some space, it will be necessary that by his transit he number the infinite indivisibles that are in the space, touching one after another, which nevertheless is impossible; since a multitude that can be passed through by counting has a terminus, and consequently is not infinite.

The Doctor answers in the place cited above, n. 36: When it is said that an angel cannot be moved, because he is indivisible, although it could easily be answered that the angel occupies a divisible place, and therefore is related to place as if he were divisible; or that he occupies a punctual place, and thus existing non-punctually he cannot be moved continuously so as always to have punctual being; nevertheless, because no reason seems to appear why an indivisible should be denied motion, even if it were an indivisible of quantity existing per se: therefore it can be conceded that an angel having a punctual where can be moved continuously, as ever existing in a point. From there he proves that an indivisible can be locally moved, even continuously, as is evident from the motion of a sphere and a cube over a perfectly plane surface: since, he says, the divisibility and succession of motion arises from the divisibility of the mobile or of the space, either of which suffices for the divisibility and succession of motion.

You will say 2. Continuous succession in motion arises from the resistance of the mobile to the mover, or of the medium through which the motion occurs to the mobile that is moved through it, or of the medium to the mover that moves through it: but succession in the motion of an angel can arise from none of these heads: therefore his motion cannot be successively continuous. The minor is proved, because not from the first head, inasmuch as the mobile here would be the angel, and the same angel is the mover when he moves himself: but the angel does not resist himself. Nor from the second or third head, because the medium through which angelic motion occurs does not resist the angel either as mover or as mobile, since the angel could move himself through the medium by penetrating it without any motion of the medium. It is confirmed. Because a body would not be moved successively through a vacuum, since such a medium does not resist it: but a plenum resists an angel no more than a vacuum would resist a body: therefore the angel cannot be moved successively through any medium, whether corporeal or empty.

— The Doctor denies the minor in the place cited, n. 10, where he distinguishes two successions in motion, one which belongs to it by reason of space, the other which is attributed to it from the resistance of the medium, which cannot easily be traversed, say on account of its thickness, whereby it does not easily yield to the mobile. The first is essential; the second accidental. The essential one belongs to motion by reason of space, whose parts, since they are not together, also cannot be traversed and gone through together; wherefore it is necessary that any mobile whatsoever pass through them successively, running through one after another: thus the angel descending from Heaven to earth must necessarily traverse the air, the medium, successively. But the accidental succession, which arises either from the resistance of the medium, or from a greater or lesser impediment on the part of the mobile itself in overcoming it, cannot have place in an angel; since neither can the medium resist him, nor can there be in it any impediment by reason of which he would acquire the term more quickly or more slowly. From there the Doctor concludes in n. 13 that successive motion can occur in a vacuum, speaking of essential succession, since that motion would correspond to the parts of the filled place; it would not, however, be accidentally successive, since it would have neither greater nor lesser velocity. For altogether, says the Doctor, the mobile in a vacuum would have no superadded velocity or slowness, such as it would have in a plenum; evidently by reason of the space yielding more easily or more difficultly to the mobile.

You will say 3. If the angel were moved continuously, it would follow that the inferior angel would be moved with equal velocity to the superior angel, even though each would exert all his locomotive power: but the consequent seems absurd: therefore also that from which it follows. The minor is plain, for the greater power an agent has, other things equal, the more excellent an effect it ought to produce: since, therefore, the superior angel excels in a more excellent nature, and therefore a more vigorous locomotive faculty, than the inferior, it is evident that if each exerts all his locomotive power of moving, the superior ought to run through the space with quicker and more prompt motion and obtain the term to which. Therefore the inference of the major is proved: if the superior angel moves himself with continuous and successive motion, he must spend some span of time in perfecting that motion; but however brief that span of time might be, in an equal span the inferior angel could descend from Heaven to earth with the same velocity. Since indeed he undergoes no resistance on the part of the space by which he could be somewhat retarded in his motion: therefore, etc.

— I answer 1. by denying the major: since, as was said just now, the succession of the angel's motion is to be sought not only from the resistant space, but also from that space inasmuch as it is divisible, and has parts not posited together but extended, one of which ought to be traversed after another.

I answer 2. The minor can be denied; for although one angel exceeds another in locomotive power, it still need not be inferred that he must be moved more quickly than the other; for the motive power of the superior angel could exceed the power of the inferior in many other respects, say that he could move a greater body, or agitate one equal to a greater with greater velocity, nay, could hold the inferior angel himself in place against his will and resisting, and impede him from being moved: just as, e.g., it does not follow that, although some luminous body exceeds another in illuminative power, it can illuminate more quickly or faster; nay, this seems impossible, since each illuminates in an instant. It suffices, therefore, for that diversity that the more excellent luminous body diffuse a greater light, and to a greater distance.

Second conclusion. — An angel cannot be naturally moved with discrete motion. This is the Doctor's teaching in Book II, dist. 2, q. 11, against St. Thomas and several of his followers.

Proof. To be moved with discrete motion is to leave the whole of the term from which through one's ultimate being, and immediately afterward to acquire the term to which without any succession: but the angel cannot do this by the powers of nature: therefore he cannot be moved with discrete motion. The major is admitted by the adversaries. But the minor is proved: two immediate indivisible instants cannot be given, otherwise it would follow that something composed of indivisibles is given: but in discrete motion it would be necessary that two immediate instants exist; for there would have to be given an ultimate instant in which the angel is in the term from which, and a first instant in which he becomes present to the term to which: but the ultimate instant in which the angel is in the term from which, and the first instant in which he exists in the term to which, must necessarily be two distinct instants: therefore it must be confessed that in that discrete motion two immediate instants must necessarily be admitted. The minor is clear, for those instants are intrinsically conformed to the opposite terms, namely the term from which and to which: therefore equally they ought to be opposite and distinct.

The Thomists reply that although in our time two instants cannot succeed each other immediately, yet they well can in discrete and angelic time, whereby discrete motion and the free operations of the angel are measured; for, they say, that time is nothing else than a number of indivisible durations, or instants.

— On the contrary. To each of those instants of discrete time corresponds something of our time; for whatever duration each of them has is determined also with respect and order to our time, since God knows determinately and distinctly how great would be the duration of that discrete motion: but in our time only divisible parts are found, or indivisible instants continuing the divisible parts of time; but whatever instant of angelic motion can be compared either with a past or with a future part of our time: therefore it is necessary that to each of those two instants of discrete time there correspond in our time either a single instant, or that to the first instant of discrete time there correspond the prior part of our time together with the terminating instant thereof, and that to the second there correspond the subsequent part of time together with its initiating instant; for the same instant in our time terminates the prior part and initiates the posterior; or at least it follows that to one there corresponds only an instant of our time, and to the other a part of the same time: but both are absurd. The first, indeed, for it would follow that those two instants of our time are immediate to each other; for if some time intervened between them, it could not be verified that the second instant of discrete motion is the first non-being of the angel in the term from which, since in that intermediate time it would previously have been truer to say: The angel is not in the term from which. Add that it would follow that the angel does not immediately pass from one term to the other, as the adversaries wish: for it would be necessary that in that intermediate time, before he reached the term to which, he be in some middle place between the two terms, and consequently, leaving the term from which through his ultimate non-being, he would not acquire the term to which through the first of his being in it. Nor can the second be said, otherwise it would follow that there is not given either a first being of the angel in the term to which, or an ultimate being of the same in the term from which, because neither a first nor a last part of time is given.

They reply 2. It does not seem unfitting that the inception or cessation of something indivisible occur in time, when it is not in it per se, and as by its proper measure, but only per accidens, and according to a certain coexistence: for the nature of the duration of anything is not to be judged by order to whatever other duration with which it coexists, but by order to that which has the character of measure with respect to it: and thus the existence of the angel in the term from which would be said to cease indivisibly and through his ultimate being, and in the term to which to begin through the first of his being, because what so ceases and begins by order to its proper measure, that is, to discrete time, although it begins or ceases by coexisting with a divisible part of our time, no less begins or ceases indivisibly. Just as the substantial being of the angel no less begins or ceases indivisibly than his existence in a place, and yet it is not repugnant that its first or ultimate being coexist with our time; otherwise one angel could not be created immediately after another with respect to our time; because if the creation of the first angel coexists with an instant of our time, it will be necessary that the creation of the second coexist with time, seeing that in our time two immediate instants are not given.

— On the contrary. It is repugnant that the acquisition of the term to which coexist with time having parts, and occur all at once and indivisibly; for either that acquisition in fieri coexists secundum se whole with the whole time, and according to its various parts with distinct parts of time, such that only one of its parts corresponds to one part of time and another to another: or the whole coexists at once with the whole time, and the whole with each single part: but neither can be said. Not the first, otherwise it would follow that that acquisition did not occur all at once, but successively and by parts, which the adversaries deny in discrete motion. Nor even the second; even if in each part of that time there is the whole acquisition, it follows that it occurs infinitely many times, because in any time there are infinitely many aliquot parts. Add that two halves of time cannot exist together; but upon the advent of the second the first recedes, and the same must be said of the other parts: therefore that acquisition of the term cannot coexist at once with any whole time.

The conclusion is proved secondly. Local motion is essentially an intermediate passage between two terms: but if the angel simultaneously abandons the term from which, and simultaneously also acquires the whole term to which, some passage cannot mediate between those two terms: therefore neither in that way can local motion occur from one to the other. The major stands: for every motion, especially local, is a way, or tending, from one term to another.

The Thomists reply. The very cessation of one term and acquisition of the other has the character of way and tending; for the succession, they say, and the relation of one term to the other has the character of some medium.

— On the contrary. The rejection of one term and the acquisition of the other are not outside the terms themselves: therefore neither can have the character of a medium, or passage. The antecedent is clear; for either that rejection and acquisition are both at once in the term to which, or one occurs in the term from which and the other in the term to which; because since that rejection and acquisition of the term is an operation of the angel, or presupposes an operation, it must be found in one or other extremity at once, or the rejection in one and the acquisition in the other. The consequence also is evident; for a passage is something mediating between terms; but the medium is distinguished equally from both extremes, since it does not hold to one side any more than to the other.

The Thomists reply 2, that existence in the term from which can be taken in two ways, namely either secundum se and absolutely, or as bearing the order of a certain potentiality to existence in the term to which immediately succeeding it. If it is taken in the first way, it is true that the angel, while he is in the term from which, is not moved: but if it is taken in the second way, it is false; because according to this account he is the terminus of discrete succession, in which discrete motion consists; and this suffices for existence so taken to be called inchoative succession and motion. Similarly, existence in the term to which can be taken in two ways, namely absolutely, or as bearing the order of actualizing and terminating the potentiality which existence in the term from which imports: taken in the first way it is not called motion; yet taken in the second way it is called motion terminatively. But the reason why each of these existences, as bearing order to the other, can be called discrete motion, is taken from the proper nature of this motion; for discrete motion is nothing else than a number of diverse operations, by reason of which the angel is successively in diverse places: whence as number is composed of units, considered indeed not absolutely, but one in relation to another; so also discrete motion is composed of diverse operations, not taken absolutely, but as one bears order to another.

— On the contrary. Whether the existence of the angel in the term from which is taken absolutely and secundum se, or respectively and by order to the term to which, it is always true that the angel really is in the term from which, and not in the term to which, nor in the middle: therefore equally it is true that he is really not moved; for real motion is a tending from the term from which to the term to which, such that the one is abandoned and the other acquired: but as long as the angel really is in the term from which, he does not abandon it unless he cast off some part of it, and consequently he cannot be said to be moved. Then, that relation and ordainability of the angel to the term to which can by no means be called motion formally: therefore neither by reason of that can the angel be said formally to be moved. The antecedent is proved: that cannot be called motion formally which can subsist with rest: yet the angel, even resting in the term from which for an hour, not only in the last instant of that hour but in every moment of it, can have that relation and ordainability to the term to which; for he has that ordainability from the moment when he voluntarily determined and ordered himself to that place to be acquired: but in the first instant of that hour in which he exists in the term from which he can determine and ordain the acquisition of the term to which; and therefore be ordained to it; and consequently that ordainability can subsist with the rest of the angel, and forthwith cannot be called true motion. Finally, all Thomists confess that every motion, whether discrete or continuous, can occur in a true and real instant; but that discrete motion would have to occur in an instant, since between the rejection of the term from which and the acquisition of the term to which no true time is supposed, nor an intervening instant: therefore their reply is invalid and a pure evasion.

It is proved thirdly. It belongs to the character of local motion that it be one: but the motion in which the angel is so disposed that through his ultimate being he simultaneously abandons the whole term from which, and immediately through his first being acquires the whole term to which all at once, is not one, but an aggregate of many instantaneous mutations: therefore, etc.

The minor is proved. Motion interrupted by rest is not one: but this motion would be interrupted by some rest: therefore it would not be one.

The minor is proved. An angel cannot be in one term by a single instant alone without being in another for a time, since time necessarily follows upon an instant, given that, as we said, two instants of time cannot be immediately successive to one another: therefore an angel moving himself must of necessity remain for some time in the term from which, or to which, and then presently come to rest in one or the other.

Finally, the Conclusion is proved by the Doctor's argument whereby he solves the principal foundation of the adversaries, namely: that he who is at rest throughout some whole time cannot be otherwise disposed in the last instant of that time, but must also necessarily be at rest in it. This foundation, I say, the Doctor attacks thus: if that were true, it would follow that the bread which was under the Eucharistic species in a state of rest throughout the whole time of the pronouncing of the words of consecration would be under them in the last instant of the pronouncing of the words, which is false, inasmuch as in that instant transubstantiation takes place, and the Body of Christ is under those species, while bread no longer exists in the nature of things. Next it would follow that the air, which was in a state of rest under darkness throughout the whole time before the instant in which it is illuminated, would also be under darkness in that instant, and thus either darkness and illumination would be simultaneous, which implies a contradiction, or certainly illumination would not take place in an instant. Nor does it matter that the Sun is applied by local motion to the darkened air which it illuminates, and that illumination takes place in the instant terminating that local motion: both because, if the Sun were created in an instant, and the air preexisted under darkness up to that instant, certainly illumination would still take place in that instant. Add that although illumination does not in fact take place except in the instant terminating the motion, from this it does not follow that it does not take place in that instant: therefore either darkness is not in that instant, or darkness and illumination exist simultaneously. —

• Caïetan tries to refute this argument of the Doctor. First, to the example of Eucharistic transubstantiation he answers in two ways: in one way, that it is miraculous, and from divine power: in the other, that there is no opposed state of rest there. But, says our Macedo, whether that rest be proper or not, certainly an instantaneous change succeeds to it, just as an instantaneous change of an angel succeeds to a preceding state of rest, whatever it may be. To the second, concerning illumination, he answers that when it is made anew it is not per se first the terminus of local motion, but per se second according to the course of nature. Which solution does not contain the point: for what is per se first or second? It is enough that illumination take place after the rest of the darkness of the air, and that it take place in an instant, so as to convict the change of an angel, which takes place in the instant of its preceding local rest.

He attacks the Doctor secondly: * If the foundation of St. Thomas were true, it would follow that an angel would never be moved locally, neither in continuous nor in discrete time: but the consequence the Adversaries do not admit: therefore they ought not admit that from which it follows. The sequel of the major is proved: on the hypothesis, e.g., that an angel has been at rest for an hour of our time in one place, according to the adversaries he should also necessarily have been at rest in the last terminating instant of that hour in the same place. This supposed, I ask, when the adversaries say that he can move himself in an instant of discrete time to another place, does that instant of discrete time coexist with an instant of our time, or with some part of it? If with a part: then that angelic motion takes place in our continuous time, and has no instant in which it could begin. If in an instant: then either that instant will be immediate to the terminating instant of the rest, and thus two instants would follow immediately upon one another, which is here also supposed by the adversaries to be false, because otherwise our time would be composed of indivisibles, and consequently would not be continuous but discrete. If mediated: then between that mediated instant and the terminating instant of the rest there intervenes a time in which the angel is still at rest; but if he is at rest in that time, he must be at rest in the terminating instant of that time according to the adversaries: but that terminating instant is that same mediated instant in which he is said to be moved: therefore he could not be moved in that instant, because otherwise he would be moved and at rest in the same instant.

The adversaries object: To be moved with discrete motion is to abandon by one ultimate act of being some whole place, and immediately after to acquire another whole place simultaneously, and not part by part: but an angel can do this: therefore he can also be moved with discrete motion. The major stands, for by this indeed discrete motion differs from continuous, that in continuous motion the mobile abandons the term from which part by part, and acquires the term to which part by part: in discrete motion, on the contrary. The minor is proved: An angel is indivisible, and consequently is not commensurated with the place in which he exists; therefore he can by one ultimate act of being abandon some whole place, and immediately after acquire another whole place simultaneously. The consequence is proved: first, because by this very fact that an angel is not commensurated with a place, he need not be in it according to its exigency, and consequently need not be moved continuously in that place, even though it be continuous. Secondly, because from the extension alone of the mobile it comes about that it cannot acquire the whole term to which simultaneously: but an angel, by this very fact that he is indivisible, lacks extension. Thirdly, because the rational soul, by the very fact that it is indivisible, actualizes in a moment the whole divisible body, and in an instant abandons the whole simultaneously: why then could not an angel abandon some whole place simultaneously and at once, and immediately after acquire another similarly whole simultaneously? So Gonetius.

— I deny the minor. And to its proof I distinguish the consequent: That an angel can thus abandon some whole place, and immediately after acquire another whole simultaneously by an abandonment and acquisition which is true local motion, I deny: that which is only a change, I concede: for, as will appear in the following Conclusion, an angel can in an instant, at least by divine power, pass from the term from which to the term to which, not by true local motion, but by simple change. But our discourse here concerns true local motion.

To the first proof of that consequent I say, that it is not necessary that an angel be commensurated with a place in order to be said to be moved continuously in it, but that it suffices that he can present himself to one part of that place, then to another, and again to another.

To the second proof, I deny that therefore the mobile cannot acquire the whole term to which simultaneously because it is extended; for, as we observed in the second Notable, the divisibility of motion must be drawn not only from the extension of the mobile, but also from the side of time, or space.

To the third proof, I deny the parity. For the soul informs the whole body not by motion, but by a kind of instantaneous infall, and therefore that example of the instantaneous informing, or abandonment, of the body is beside the point, since here the discourse concerns not every change whatever, but the change of local motion.

They object 2. Therefore a body cannot be moved with discrete motion, but with continuous alone, because since it is extended, and consequently has parts corresponding to the parts of the place, it cannot abandon some whole place simultaneously; but it is necessary that its last part depart first from the last part of the place in which it is, and enter into another place before the first part: but an angel lacks extension: therefore he can be moved with discrete motion.

— I deny the major. For not by this reason alone can a body not be moved with discrete motion, but also because it must traverse the divisible space mediating between the term from which and the term to which: since, as we said just now, the divisibility of motion must be sought from a threefold source, namely from the side of the extended mobile, of the intervening medium, and of the divisible terms from which and to which. Hence although angelic motion may not have the primary reason of divisibility and succession, it suffices that it can be called divisible by reason of the divisibility of space and terms.

From these the Doctor gathers, that recourse need not be had to another time for measuring the local motion of an angel, whether that by which he moves himself locally continuously and successively, or that by which he moves himself instantaneously and not successively; but that an angel can altogether move himself successively according to our time no less than a body, and can also move himself instantaneously according to an instant of our time.

He proves the first part; because nothing can be saved by discrete time that cannot be saved by continuous time: for by discrete time nothing else can be saved than that an angel can be moved from place to place either indivisibly and without succession, or divisibly and with succession: but he can do both of these in our time, comprehending under time the instants themselves, which I suppose to be included in it: therefore, etc.

The major is proved as to the first part, because if he is moved indivisibly without succession, that motion can take place in an instant, as is evident.

He proves the same major as to the second part concerning divisible motion; because if he is moved divisibly and successively, either those parts of the motion are all divisible and not continuous, but discrete succeeding one another, and then they can all be successive and discrete according to the instants of our time, and those which are divisible can be according to divisible parts of our time; or all are divisible, but discrete, and then also they can be according to diverse parts of our time discrete from one another, namely so that one be taken for a quadrant, and then cessation be made, and another for another quadrant after cessation: therefore although the very existence of an angel be measured by aevum, nevertheless where he and his motion ought not necessarily to be so measured by it, they can be measured by our time, just as what is corporeal and its motion can be.

He proves the second part; because if he is moved through several wheres continuously without any intermission, as a body is moved, since upon the arrival of the later where the earlier ceases, certainly he will be moved in time just as well as a body; and if he is moved to one place without succession, so that he is not present to one part before another, he will certainly be moved in an instant of our time to that place.

Third conclusion. — An angel cannot in an instant be moved from one place to another with motion properly so called: nevertheless he can in an instant pass from one place to another by a simple change of place. This is common to the Subtle and Angelic Doctor and their followers, for the Doctor says in the cited place number 6.

I say that change can be understood in two ways, and a twofold change can be spoken of, one including the whole reality of motion, another including precisely the reality of the terminus of motion. An example of this is that this thing is changed from a where, up to B where. "Where" can be understood in two ways: either that it has simultaneously all the intermediate wheres, as it would have if it were precisely moved successively, or that by that change it would precisely have the last where, as it would have if that change were the last terminus of motion. In the first way, objecting against the second opinion, I do not see how an angel can be changed or moved in an instant by natural power, because it does not seem that by his natural power he can have several equal wheres. In the second way, it does not seem inconvenient that he could be changed in an instant, because that the terminus of motion is not induced at once is from the imperfection of the power of the mover itself, which imperfection is not to be attributed to an angel unless some necessity appears, because nature is to be dignified as much as appearance permits.

• But St. Thomas, 1st part q. 53. a. 3.; and on 1. dist. 57. q. 4. a. 1., expressly proves that the motion of an angel must take place in time, either continuous or discrete.

It remains that the motion of an angel be in time: in continuous time indeed if his motion be continuous: but in non-continuous, if his motion be non-continuous. For in either way it happens that the motion of an angel exists, as was said. For the continuity of time is from the continuation of motion, as is said in 4. Physics. But this time, whether > it be continuous time or not, is not the same time that measures the motion of the heaven, and by which all corporal things are measured, which have mutability from the motion of the heaven, for the motion of an angel does not depend on the motion of the heaven.

But that an angel cannot be moved in an instant with motion properly so called is proved: if he were so moved, it would be necessary that in an instant he have several adequate wheres: but this cannot come to pass by the powers of nature: therefore neither to be moved in an instant. The sequel of the major is proved: if an angel were moved successively for an hour from this hall, which would be his adequate place, to the adjoining hall, in every instant of that hour he would have a place adequate to himself. For in the prior instant he would be as in an adequate place in part of this hall and in part of the other hall; but in the posterior instant he would be in another part of this, and in another also of the other hall, and thus little by little and successively he would change his adequate place, leaving part after part of the prior adequate place, and acquiring part after part of the posterior adequate place, until finally he arrived at occupying the whole second hall, occupying no longer any part of this hall: therefore, etc. — Further, that which by its essence is successive cannot be in an instant: but motion by its intrinsic and essential reason is successive: therefore it implies being in an instant: the consequence is evident together with the minor proved above. But the major is proved, because everything successive has part after part succeeding one another and incompossible with one another, and therefore cannot be in an instant, because then they would be simultaneous. Finally, where there is intrinsically a prior and posterior, there is intrinsic succession: but in the motion of an angel there is intrinsically a prior and posterior: therefore also intrinsic succession. The minor is proved: motion is the tending of a mobile from the term from which to the term to which through the space mediating between both: but in this tending there is a prior and posterior, since in abandoning the term from which the mobile must first be in the medium than in the term to which: therefore, etc.

The second part is also evident, namely that an angel can change his adequate place in an instant: first, because from this it does not follow that he be simultaneously and at once in two adequate places, since that sudden change would take place by the angel's first not being in the term from which, and first being in the term to which, which, as is evident, does not import being in two places, but only being in one and not being in the other. Further, if anything hindered this instantaneous change, especially because the term to which, which is at a distance from the term from which, has divisible parts: yet this does not stand in the way, since in an instant the rational soul informs the whole body, and light is spread through the whole air by sudden diffusion. Finally, if an angel were created outside the world, doubtless he could in an instant occupy the whole adequate place in the world: therefore the same can come to pass while he already occupies a place.

You will say 1. Against the first part; the motion by which an angel is moved from place to place through intervening spaces can altogether and beyond all proportion exceed the motion by which a body traverses that space; but this excess could not be unless the angel were moved in an instant: therefore, etc.

— I deny the minor. For in order that angelic motion exceed in swiftness the motion of any body whatsoever, it is not necessary that it be moved in an instant; but it suffices that it can take place in a smaller and smaller divisible duration than the motion of any body whatsoever can be: and since time is divisible to infinity, the consequence is that an angel will always be able to be moved with greater and greater velocity than any bodies whatsoever.

You will say 2. An angel, since he is altogether spiritual, is far more subtle and swift than corporeal light: but corporeal light in an instant pervades every space of the air: therefore much more easily will an angel be able to pervade it.

— I distinguish the minor. That corporeal light pervades the whole air in an instant by true motion, I deny: that by simple diffusion, and by a change which is the terminus of motion, I concede. But an angel passing from one place to another, since he is truly moved, not in an instant but successively, can pervade the air.

You will say 3. The local motion of an angel is nothing other than the acquisition of a place: but, as we proved in the second part of this Conclusion, an angel can acquire a place in an instant: therefore he will also be able to be moved locally in an instant.

— I deny the major. For, as we said, that simple acquisition of place is only a change, not truly local motion, which in order to be properly so called must be a passage from the term from which to the term to which; for if an angel were produced outside the world, he could acquire a place in the world, yet for all that he would not be said to be thus moved locally.

• Moreover, that sacred Scripture may declare the swiftness of angelic motion, when it attributes bodies to those spirits in which they appeared, it also feigns wings for them. Thus Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaias saw them flying toward them. Wherefore Moses willed the Cherubim over the ark to be represented with expanded wings, not only to signify the loftiness of their nature, and the sublimity of the place which they inhabit, as St. Chrysostom thought in the homily De incomprehensibili natura, but especially, as St. Jerome adds on chapter 6 of Isaias, to designate their swiftness. Wings, he says, they are said to have, on account of their speed and their swift course into all things: or because they always dwell in higher things. Namely just as wings are attributed to winds to denote their swiftness, whence God too is said in Psalm 17. and 103. to fly and walk upon the wings of the winds. By the poets likewise winged beings are feigned, as appears from Ovid, Silius, Juvenal; also Calais and Zethus, sons of Boreas, winged according to Apollodorus. Wherefore I do not doubt that the angels being described as winged pertains chiefly to indicating swiftness: and because neither have the evil angels lost it, these too are said to be winged. Whence the Talmudists on Anoth cap. 36: Three things demons have in common with angels; that they are winged, that they foreknow future things, and that from one extremity of the world to the other they transfer themselves most swiftly.

Note 1. Just as the Philosophers distinguish two kinds of parts in continuous quantity, namely commensurate or proportional parts and non-commensurate or aliquot parts: so likewise the medium, or intervening space, between the term from which and the term to which in local motion can be distinguished as twofold, namely communicating with both extremes and not communicating with them; for example, if an angel existing in the first palm of a body three palms long wishes to pass to the third palm, the non-communicating medium will be the second palm, because it has its own extension distinct from the other two palms and participates in nothing of the extremes; yet it could be a communicating medium if something were taken from the first palm and something from the second, or something from the second and something from the third: but these communicating media are infinite in potency, since after some indeterminate part of the first palm another palm can be measured out that participates partly in the first and partly in the second; and since the points and proportional parts are seen to be infinite in potency, even the communicating media can be said to be infinite in potency.

Note 2. That angels can change place in several ways, positively, privatively, and mixedly: positively, by acquiring a new presence while not losing the prior one, as when an angel existing in a point, or in a smaller adequate space, extends himself to a larger space while retaining the former: privatively, when conversely he contracts himself to a smaller space, or to an indivisible, acquiring nothing new: mixedly, when he abandons the prior space either wholly or in part, and acquires another wholly or partially different; then indeed he acquires his presence in part and loses it in part — namely he acquires a new one and loses the old, and this either totally, when he enters into a place entirely different, or in a certain respect (secundum quid), when the place is not entirely different but the same in a certain respect. Furthermore, when a new and totally different place is acquired, either it is remote and distant from the prior one, or it is not distant but immediately continuous or contiguous, yet larger than the angel could occupy all at once. Both cases are inquired into here: whether he can pass from one to the other immediately, and without truly being in the medium between the two terms, from which and to which, through any instant.

Note 3. Here the question is raised not only about motion that is outside the sphere of angelic activity, but also about that which is within the sphere of his activity; suppose, for instance, that the sphere of an angel's activity and his adequate place is a single hall: it is asked whether he can move himself from one part of it to the other extreme without being moved through the medium that lies between those two parts. Likewise, on the hypothesis that there are two other adjacent halls outside the angel's adequate place and the sphere of his natural activity: whether he can transfer himself into the third without passing through the intervening middle one.

First conclusion. — An angel cannot pass from one adequate place to another distant place without passing through the medium, if that medium is communicating; but he will be able to pass thus with instantaneous motion if the medium does not communicate with the intermediate parts. This is the Doctor's teaching in 2 dist. 2. q. 12., where, having set forth this question, he answers at number 3: It seems probable that he cannot, because the order fixed by a superior agent seems necessary for every inferior agent, when it has its action precisely about such ordered things.

The first part is proved by the same reasoning of the Doctor, which is explained at the same time: the order fixed by a superior agent must necessarily be observed by any inferior whatsoever, nor can an inferior cause invert the order prescribed to it by the superior cause: but there is an order fixed by God that no creature can pass from place to a distant place without such a medium having been traversed. The major is evident; since every creature depends on the Creator not only in respect of entity and operation, but also in respect of the mode of its operation and activity, it must act according to the prescribed order. The Doctor proves the minor, first indeed by experience, whereby it is established that since, he says, the order of natural forms succeeding one another in natural generation is determined by him who instituted nature, the same is necessary with respect to any natural agent whatever. Hence no inferior cause can produce the sensitive soul in an organic body unless the vegetative has preceded it, nor can the rational soul exercise its operations in the same body unless the vegetative and sensitive operations have preceded; nor does the soul informing a body pass on to inform one distant part of the body without first informing the intermediate parts by which the distant part is continuous with the part previously informed. Nor, says the Doctor following Aristotle, 8 Metaphysics, can a natural agent make vinegar from wine immediately, because between wine and vinegar there naturally lies a certain other substantial form: therefore, etc.

The Doctor proves the second part.

*But if we speak of indivisible motion, he says, I say that in such motion he can pass through from extreme to immediate extreme without passing through a medium that is something of each extreme; nay, this is necessary, because if he passed through such a medium, he would pass continuously, and not instantaneously.

Hence, when further objection is raised against him below, that if the angel cannot pass from place to place without passing through a non-communicating medium, neither can he pass through a communicating medium, he answers that this inference is false;

Because, he says, in passing through from one where immediately to another where in an instant, he has all these wheres in a certain order of nature, among which there is a potential order ex natura rei; but he need not have them in an order of duration; whereas if he passed from what is distant to what is distant without order of any kind, then he would have them neither in the order of nature nor of duration, things among which there is a natural order, about which nevertheless he operates, presupposing their order as necessary.

Moreover the truth of this Conclusion is evident; for while the angel passes instantaneously from place to a contiguous or continuous place, if he were in an intermediate place participating in both places, either he would not be moved in an instant to the neighboring place, which is against the hypothesis, or he would be simultaneously in two adequate places, which naturally implies a contradiction. Proof: for when he is moved from this hall in an instant to another neighboring one, he must be in that neighboring hall: therefore either he is simultaneously in the intermediate participating place, made up of the middle part of the prior place and the middle part of the posterior place, or he is not. If he is not: therefore he has not passed through all the intermediate communicating places; if he is: therefore he is simultaneously in the whole neighboring hall and in the middle part of this hall, and so he is in two adequate places, or at least in a place larger than his adequate place, because the neighboring hall, as is supposed, and the middle part of this hall is a place larger than the neighboring hall alone: therefore he would be in a place larger than his adequate one.

— But the disparity that the Doctor adduces, why an angel can pass from place to place without passing through a communicating medium, yet cannot so pass without passing through a non-communicating medium, consists in this, says Pontius on this passage: that when he passes from place to an immediate place in an instant, there is no part of the communicating medium to which he was not present, whether by priority of time or by priority of nature, before he was present to the whole immediate place, although he was not present to some parts of the medium earlier in time. This is clearly evident, supposing the angel to occupy this hall as his adequate place, and thence to pass in an instant to a wholly contiguous or continuous hall: in this case, the communicating media are the parts interposed between the two halls; for example, if this hall is four palms long and the second the same, one communicating medium is the three posterior palms of this hall together with the first of the neighboring hall, another communicating medium is the two posterior palms of this hall together with the two anterior ones of the neighboring hall, and so on for the rest. Now when the angel passes from this hall to the neighboring one, during the time he was in this hall he occupied all the palms and parts of this hall, and this earlier in time than he instantaneously occupied the neighboring hall; and when in an instant he placed himself in the neighboring hall, he simultaneously occupied all its palms and parts: whence it is evident that in this case there would be no part of the medium between the two places to which the angel was not at some time present; and indeed he was present to the parts of this hall earlier in time; but to the anterior and nearer parts of the neighboring hall he was present before the posterior ones, or before the whole place, yet not in time, since he occupied all of them in an instant, but only in nature, namely because unless he were present to those parts he could not be present to other, posterior parts; yet he could well be present to those anterior parts without being present to the posterior ones. Hence this consequence holds: he is present to the posterior parts: therefore he is or was present to the anterior ones too; but this one does not hold: he is or was present to the anterior parts: therefore he is or was present to the posterior ones. And consequently, since that is said to be prior in nature from which the sequence of subsisting is not converted: the presence of the angel to the anterior parts of the neighboring hall is prior in nature than to the posterior parts, and thus the angel himself is prior in nature present to the anterior parts than to the posterior ones, which cannot be doubted. But so it is that the order necessarily to be observed from the nature of created things in mutation is not that every thing must first, in time, be in the medium before being in the extreme place toward which the motion is directed; but rather in time or in nature. Whence it follows manifestly that even if the angel moved himself instantaneously from place to place, not passing through the whole medium first in time, he would still observe the order of nature, because he would be in every part of the medium first in time or in nature. But if he moved himself from place to a distant place without traversing a non-communicating medium, as from this hall to a third hall leaving out the second, he would invert that order, because he would have been in the intermediate second hall neither prior in nature nor prior in time than in the third. Such is Pontius's account.

Here however take note, that by instantaneous motion the Doctor does not understand a passing from place to place that is truly motion properly so called, since, as was proved above, motion properly so called cannot occur in an instant; but he merely calls that passing instantaneous which is a simple change of place, namely abandoning the term from which and acquiring the term to which, which we proved in the preceding Question can occur in an instant.

You will object against the first part: The angel is in a place by his substance with subordination to the command of his will: but he can will to be in a distant place without willing to be in the medium: therefore it is not necessary, in order that he pass from one place to another, that he be moved through a medium.

— The Doctor distinguishes the minor, number 4, speaking of angels in that state in which they are now constituted: that a bad angel can will inordinately to be in a distant place without willing to pass through the medium, from which volition no effect would follow, since it plainly exceeds his natural power, nor could he obtain it except by God acting extraordinarily — he concedes; that a good angel could will in an orderly way to be in a distant place without willing to pass through the medium as if by his own power he could attain it — he denies; for in that case in which a good angel wished to pass from place to place without traversing the medium, God, granting his wishes and acting extraordinarily, would so move him from place to place without moving him through the medium; but this would come about by supernatural power, of which we are not here speaking.

Otherwise I distinguish the minor. That the angel can will to be in a remote place with a volition by which it suffices that he be in such a place, or through which he can naturally obtain the remote and distant place — I deny; with an ineffectual volition that does not obtain what is desired — that he pass, I concede: and so just as we are moved from place to place through the command of the will, and yet cannot always obtain the place desired according to our will, but only when we truly apply ourselves to reaching the place: so although the angels move themselves locally with dependence on the command of their will, they still cannot obtain the place desired unless they apply themselves in the due manner to attaining it: but this due application cannot occur except with an ordering toward running through the medium before the place to be reached.

You will say 2. The adorable Body of Christ the Lord passes from heaven to the altar without the medium having been traversed: therefore the angel too can pass thus.

— The Doctor distinguishes the antecedent: That the Body of Christ becomes thus present on the altar by an extraordinary and supernatural power, which need not conform itself to the natures of things nor be measured according to their power — he concedes: Because, he says, it is above that order, foreshadowing it and not having it as prefixed. That it becomes present by natural power — he denies. Here, however, the speech is about the natural power of the angel, which, since it is limited and determined in every way, cannot alter the order established and fixed by God for things, and therefore cannot reach from the term from which to the distant term to which without transit through a medium.

You will say 3. The motion of an angel is like our thought, and also like the motions of the bodies of the Blessed: but our thought can pass from heaven to earth without a medium: for our intellect thinking of heaven can straightaway direct its thought to earth without thinking at all of the intervening air. Similarly the bodies of the Blessed (says the Author of the book De Cognitione verae vitae, cap. 25., cited by S. Augustine in Tome 9.) can be transferred from East to West as quickly as our thought can, which certainly can do this in an instant and without transit through a medium: therefore much more can the angels be moved thus.

— I deny the major. For there is a great difference between the motion of thought and local motion: both because thought does not require a real and substantial presence of the thinker to the object, but only a metaphorical and intentional one, whereas local presence to space does; and also because the intermediate space is not a medium of cognition, and hence the intellect need not think of that medium when it casts its thought from one extreme in order to think of the other; but it is otherwise with local motion, which must necessarily come about through the intermediate space between the two distant terms. As to what the praised Author says about the bodies of the Blessed, I can reply that it should be understood thus: namely that those blessed bodies are transferred as quickly as our thoughts because of their most swift motive force and their marvelous gift of agility.

Second conclusion. — By instantaneous mutation an angel can be transferred from one adequate place into another adequate place that is continuous and congruent with the prior one; and likewise can abandon part of his adequate place and restrict his presence to the smallest part of that same place. This Conclusion has two parts, of which

The first is proved. No lesser power is to be conceded to the angel than to the rational soul and to a luminous body: but the rational soul is simultaneously infused into the whole organic body in the instant of animation, and likewise into every part regenerated through nutrition. Similarly light from the Sun or from fire is diffused in an instant through the contiguous and continuous air: therefore similarly the angel by instantaneous mutation will be able to pass from one place to another contiguous one. Further, if the angel could not accomplish this, especially because succession is necessarily required in the abandonment of the term from which and the acquisition of the term to which — but this is false. Proof: because no succession is required on the part of the medium, since none is supposed to exist; nor on the part of the term to which, or of the presence that is acquired, because what can be simultaneously possessed can also be simultaneously acquired if nothing else stands in the way, and there is no contrary standing in the way of and impeding this acquisition, as heat, for example, is produced successively on account of opposing cold; nor on the part of the term from which, since the angel abandons it by the very first moment of his not being in it, as was said in the preceding Question: therefore nothing makes succession necessary, and consequently that mutation can occur instantaneously.

You will say. The term that the angel acquires is extended, and therefore has parts nearer, others middle, others more remote: but the nearer parts are acquirable before the middle ones, and these before the more remote ones: therefore the angel cannot abandon one adequate place and acquire another except with some succession.

— I distinguish the minor. If this acquisition comes about through true motion, I concede; if it comes about through a diffusion of himself through the adequate space, and likewise through a replication of himself and a multiple positioning in diverse parts or points of space, I deny: for just as the light of the Sun, for example, is diffused without transit through the production of diverse parts of light in the diverse parts of the whole hemisphere, without temporal succession but with the order of nature alone, because the Sun illuminates by nature the parts near it before the more remote ones, granted that naturally it cannot act at a distance per se primo: so the angel can in the same instant and at the same time diffuse himself through the adequate space by a replication of himself and a multiple positioning in diverse parts or points of space, with the order of nature alone, because he cannot naturally occupy the remote parts except through the intervening ones, since he cannot be moved to a distance without occupying the medium. Thus also the rational soul is simultaneously present to all the parts disposed sufficiently at once, not earlier in time to the nearer than to the remote parts, and simultaneously leaves off and ceases to inform the parts cut off at once; by which example it is evident that the angel can fill the space adequate to himself all at once. For if no succession is necessary in the soul in order to occupy simultaneously any whole space — nay, such succession is not even naturally possible, since the soul can neither at the outset inform a single indivisible, nor in growth does the ultimate disposition come about through indivisibles — then succession does not seem more necessary to the angel, strictly speaking, in order to fill that space which is adequate to his power.

The second part is evident from what was said in the preceding Article, in which it was proved that the angel can lose, by a simultaneous mutation, the real presence he had to all the parts of his space or adequate place, retaining presence only in a smaller part of that space; yet he cannot accomplish this by true local motion, which cannot occur in an instant, but only by a sudden mutation, of which it has often been spoken.

Note 1. We must distinguish a fourfold kind of measure. 1. There is the measure of perfection, according to that saying of Aristotle, Metaphysics 1, chapter 3: In every genus there is one thing which is the measure of the others under the same genus. 2. There is the measure of causation; thus in Metaphysics 9 the knowable is called the measure of knowledge because it causes knowledge. 3. There is the measure of knowledge or of making known; thus a cubit makes known the quantity of a cloth, and in this way a measure is nothing other than a quantity more known which makes known another: insofar as being measured involves a threefold respect, one to the intellect, another to the thing measured, and another to the measure. 4. There is the measure of duration; thus Time is called the measure of motion, aevum the measure of the angels, eternity the measure of God.

Note 2. This is the difference between eternity, aevum, and time: that Eternity (as we said when treating of the eternity of God) is the possession of life interminable, whole at once, and perfect, which namely expresses a threefold negation, of ending, of beginning, and of succession and dependence. Time, however, as we said in the Physics, is the measure of motion according to before and after. Aevum, however, is a measure and duration permanent, incorruptible from within, yet defectible through a superior external power. In this aevum is distinguished in two ways both from eternity and from time; first it differs from Eternity, because eternity is always actually present and in no way in potency: time, however, according to the present instant is in act, but according to the future is in potency, without any permanence at all of past and future. Aevum, however, is a certain indivisible measure, and is not wholly present, but partly actually present, partly in potency: for just as the being of an angel is indivisible and immaterial, and is now actually present, yet is somehow in potency, because it is in potency so as to be preserved in the future by the maintenance of God, which if it ceased entirely the angel would be annihilated: for the same reason it must be said of aevum that it is indivisible and actually present, yet somehow in potency with respect to the future. Moreover it differs from time, because it is not so potential as time is, for it does not have preceding parts and following parts. Second, aevum differs from eternity and time on the side of its measure, because Eternity is the measure of a thing neither failing nor able to fail: Time, however, is the measure of a thing actually failing and able to fail: Aevum, however, is an intermediate measure, namely the measure of a substance not failing and immutable, yet able somehow to fail and to be changed according to its operations. It is declared by an example; for just as a solar ray produced from the Sun in a diaphanous medium, while the latter remains the same, is one and the same ray produced in an indivisible instant, is in act; yet it is somehow in potency, because when the Sun withdraws, it immediately ceases to be: so it must be said of the angel and of its measure. The other example is an image in a mirror, which is produced from a visible corporeal object in an instant, and is produced indivisibly, yet when the object withdraws that image ceases to be. Time itself, however, is compared to a river whose parts flow forth from the same source, so that one part succeeds another, and accordingly the parts of time are the measure of a thing with renewal and aging of the same: aevum, however, is the measure of a thing without renewal and aging as to its substance.

Note 3. From the Doctor, Book II, dist. 2, question 2, n. 10: That to measure is to certify an unknown quantity by a more known quantity:

certification, however, can sometimes be made by a quantity existing in a thing or in imagination, just as an experienced craftsman, by some quantity which he has in his imagination, measures any quantity that presents itself to him. Sometimes, however, it can be made by some quantity existing in a thing, and this in three ways: either one exceeding: and then the intellect is certified about the lesser quantity by its approach to the greater quantity, or its withdrawal from it; and in this way a measure is placed in the quiddities of things, and the measure is more perfect than the very thing measured, which is said to be naturally more known than the thing measured itself: just as whiteness is placed as the first measure in the genus of colors, and God is said to be the first measure of all things that are in whatever genus. In another way a thing is measured by an exceeded quantity, because the known quantity is the lesser, and a part of the greater quantity, which is more unknown, and then that lesser quantity, by its repetition, measures the whole greater quantum, and in this way a lesser motion can be the measure of a greater motion ex natura rei. In the third way an unknown quantity is measured by another quantity known, distinct, and equal to it, and this is done by application, or superposition. And because that which is a measure ex natura rei ought to be naturally more known than the thing measured itself; therefore in this way, namely the third, one of equals is not the measure of the others, unless that equality has been known ex natura rei; in this way time, if it is another quantity than motion, and more known than it, can be the measure of motion ex natura rei. To some intellect, however, that can be a measure which ex natura rei is not a measure, for instance if the quantity of a cubit is known to someone, and the quantity of the cloth unknown; then the quantity of the cubit can be the measure of the quantity of the cloth, although ex natura rei neither quantity has greater certitude than the other.

These things having been set forth in preamble, three things especially are to be resolved here: First, that the angels have no other measure of their duration than aevum. Second, that this measure is not successive. Third, that it is really indistinct from the substance of the angel.

First conclusion. — The existence of the angels is measured by aevum. This is common among the Theologians.

Proof, first. The existence of an angel is measurable by some measure: but it is not measured by eternity, for this is the proper measure of God, nor by time, because corruptible things are measured by that, although the very existence of the angel, on account of the intensive perfection, power, and magnitude of its duration, could coexist with the whole of time, no variety having been made in its duration: as in the example of a stake fixed in a river, around which water flowed continually, the stake itself remaining stable: therefore the very existence of the angel is measured by aevum alone, since there is between it and that existence of the angel the proportion which is required between measure and measured. Then, if there were no time, an angel could know its own duration: therefore it has some other measure distinct from time, by which it can know it: that, however, cannot be eternity, since it is of a higher order; therefore it is aevum, because nothing else can be assigned which would have the character of a measure of angelic existence. Finally, aevum, according to the Doctor, is the measure of a created being permanent, and uniformly disposed while it subsists, or which has a uniform mode of existing: or, according to St. Thomas, it is the measure of a being immutable according to its substance; but mutable and variable according to its operations: but the substance of the angels is immutable in itself, and is uniformly disposed while it subsists: therefore the angel is truly measured by aevum. The things that could be objected against this Conclusion will be more easily resolved in the following Conclusion.

Second conclusion. — Aevum is not a successive duration. This is the position of the Doctor in Book 2, dist. 2, question 1, where, although he said the opinion of St. Bonaventure about the succession of angelic duration was probable, and had solved all the arguments that had been proposed by others against the opinion of the Seraphic Doctor; nevertheless he himself attacks that same opinion in this way, n. 18:

That angelic duration, which according to St. Bonaventure is said to be a quantity having its divisibility not permanent but successive, so that to one of its nows of rapidly flowing time another succeeds; that duration, I say, or quantity, either is identified with the existence of the angel, or it is not identified with it.

The first cannot be said, because it is impossible for there to be succession in duration without succession in existence; but in the existence of the angel there is no succession, any more than in the essence with which the existence is identified: therefore, etc. The second likewise cannot be affirmed, because just as the absolute existence of the angel itself can be put in being by various productions, or by the same production continued, so the absolute duration which it has from the first production can be put in being by a second production, or by the same continued: therefore when the angel is preserved for a second instant, it is not necessary that there be given to it a new duration distinct from that which it had in the first instant, and consequently its duration will not be a successive quantity consisting of various parts. If you said that the same absolute duration can be put again in being, but for different nows: On the contrary, if it can be put in different nows; therefore it can be preserved in them: whence I argue thus: either it can be preserved in them by another duration distinct, and thus there will be a process to infinity, because the same question is asked about the other duration: or it can be preserved in them without another duration, and thus just as the same existence is in different nows, the same duration also will be in them, which is the intended point.

The Doctor imputes, second, to that same opinion, inasmuch as it would assert that duration to be something successive, because, he says, a new respect does not seem to be posited without a new foundation, or term, and without some newness on the side of the extremes: therefore if the existence of the angel is the same, and God is disposed in the same way in the second instant as in the first, a new respect does not seem to be admissible.

The conclusion is proved further by the authority of the holy Fathers, first indeed by St. Augustine, book 83 questions, question 72, where he says, that this alone stands between aevum and time, that aevum is stable, but time mutable. Likewise St. Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, chapter 10, says, It is the property of aevum to measure the whole at once, according to the whole: not therefore according to part and part, and successively. And in chapter 5 he says aevum is a quiet life, whole at once. Likewise Gregory, in the Moralia, says of the joy of the Blessed, Nothing has passed away, nothing has arrived, and nothing will be future: therefore it is whole at once.

It is proved again by the fundamental reason: otherwise aevum would be successive, because it would plainly consist of many nows, or instants succeeding one another: but that does not seem to be true: therefore, etc. The major is that of St. Bonaventure. The minor is proved: that first now, or instant of aevum, either is the same as the existence of the angel, or other: if the same, therefore just as the existence of the angel remains always the same, according to St. Bonaventure, so also the same now remains permanent. But if you say it is other; On the contrary: just as the very existence, according to St. Bonaventure, can be put in being infinitely many times, so also that now, other than the essence and existence of the angel, can frequently be put in being, and thus the same now of aevum can be preserved, just as the same existence: therefore a plurality of those nows is not necessary: but one suffices. But if you say, that if it is frequently put in being, it will be put in different nows: I answer, that either a process to infinity will have to be granted, or it must be said that the same now can be preserved without a new now. It is proved, because that first now either can be preserved without another, or not. If the first, I have my point; if the second, I ask about that other now whether it can be preserved without another; and thus either one must arrive at some now which can be preserved without another, or a process to infinity will be granted. Moreover, even if this last were granted, still it will not be necessary that there be succession in the now itself; for just as the essence of the angel is posited as the same and unvarying, even if it is posited in one now and another, so the same now can remain unvarying in itself, even if it is posited in being in one now and another.

It is confirmed. because the conservation of the angel is taken either actively or passively. If the first, it is whole at once, having no succession, for it is a divine action, to which permanence considered in itself is not repugnant, any more than to its term, namely the angel. Hence God will be able by such an action to conserve the angel, especially since such a mode of conservation is more connatural, and consequently more due, to things themselves indivisible. Furthermore, because the conserving action of an incorruptible thing is incorruptible by its nature, since it has no intrinsic principle of its ending: therefore, etc. If the second, it is the very angelic being itself, unvarying: therefore it has no succession, and consequently the opposite opinion does not rightly assert that aevum, on the side of the conservation of the angel, includes succession.

You will object 1. The Doctor objects several authorities of the holy Fathers, which seem to support the opinion of the Seraphic Doctor: first of all St. Augustine 11. Confessionum, c. 4. If the now of time always stood, and did not flow, it would not be time, but eternity: therefore if the now of aevum did not flow, it also ought to be reckoned eternity: but the consequent is absurd: therefore also that from which it follows. Likewise book 4, on Genesis, chapter 14, expounding those words, My Father works even until now; he adds: even until now signifies the consummation of the work, for otherwise it could be understood if it were said, now he works, where it would not be necessary that we take the consummation of the work, but he compels it to be understood otherwise when he says, even until now, from that time at which he wrought all things. By which St. Augustine signifies that there is some continuation in the actions of God ad extra, by which he conserves the creatures produced by himself, and in consequence a continuation in the duration of creatures: but continuation implies succession: therefore the duration of any creature whatever, and therefore of the angels conserved, is successive. Boethius subscribes, book 1, De Trinitate, chapter 9: Although, he says, according to the Philosophers it can be said of celestial bodies and spirits that they are always, yet there is a great difference in being always, for in God alone the present is, not running; but the now flowing makes sempiternity, that is, aevum: therefore aevum is a flowing duration. St. Damascene also favors it, book 1, De Fide, chapter 25: Aeon, he says, is said to be that which is always extended together with the eternal things, as it were a space: but the angels endure through aeons; therefore their duration is extended as it were a space, and consequently includes parts succeeding one another. St. Anselm also agrees, in the Proslogion, c. 24: In this way also you transcend all things, even eternal ones, he says, speaking to God, because your eternity and theirs is wholly present to you, since that eternity does not yet have of its eternity what is to come, just as it no longer has what is past: therefore he holds that the duration of the angels does not exist as to that part which has passed, nor as to that which is future, and accordingly he thinks the duration of the angels includes parts succeeding one another. Finally St. Jerome, in the Epistle to Marcella, says: God alone is such that he does not know having been, or going to be: therefore a creature in its being has past and future, and consequently succession.

The Doctor answers, n. 21. that by all these authorities it is only persuaded that no creature is independent from the first Cause, but always dependent; not, however, by a continuous dependence now one, now another, but by the same, on account of which any creature whatever can have being with one part of time, and not with another, and thus can as it were fall under time, that is, coexist with one part of time, and not with another; for which reason it is said to have been, but not to be going to be, and thus not to have eternal being.

I answer 2. for the sake of greater elucidation, to each of those authorities singly; and indeed to the first of St. Augustine, I say that he intends only that if temporal duration of itself subsisted always necessarily, and could in no way fail even from without, it would truly be eternity, which, as is apparent, is altogether impossible: but he does not will that if that duration subsisted without any flux, and with the ordinary conservation of God, it ought to be eternity; for from that it would not follow that it could not in any way fail, as eternity itself is altogether indefectible. Hence I distinguish the consequent: if aevum did not flow, that is, if it were altogether indefectible, it would be eternity, I concede; for we do not will it to be non-flowing in that way: if it did not flow, insofar as it would not have succeeding parts, it would be eternity, I deny the consequence. To the second saying from St. Augustine, I deny the subsumed inference drawn from it: for by the very fact that the same action by which the thing was produced is always continued, the thing itself conserved is also continued without any succession in itself, or in its duration. To the authority of Boethius I answer that he wills that the sempiternity of God be always present so necessarily that it be altogether indefectible, even with respect to whatever; but the sempiternity which an angel would have if it had been created from eternity would not have existed always present necessarily, since it could have failed, God willing: whence that saying is to be distinguished in the same way as the prior one of St. Augustine. To St. Damascene I say that the consequence drawn from his authority in the last place is to be denied: for extension through a space can be said not of that which has parts succeeding one another, but of that whereby the very existence itself, the same always, is conserved indivisible. To St. Anselm I say that he wills only that since the angels have not existed always necessarily, nor will exist, since they can fail, God willing: therefore on account of that possible defection they can truly be said not to have what is future, nor what is past: just as God has it necessarily, because in the highest degree necessarily, he always was, is, and will be. Hence the consequence is to be denied: for the whole of that duration of the angel for past and future time exists now, although it has not existed necessarily for the past, nor, speaking absolutely, will it so exist for the future. Finally, to St. Jerome I deny the consequence drawn from his authority: for the angel, even if it has a permanent duration, can know past and future, since it knows that it has not existed necessarily, nor will exist, inasmuch as it can be annihilated, God so ordaining.

You will object 2. Another authority of St. Augustine, from book 8, De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 19, where he says: As the air with respect to the Sun is not made lucid, but becomes lucid, otherwise, the Sun absent, the air would remain lucid: so the creature stands with respect to God. From which the Doctor Subtilis argues thus for the opinion of St. Bonaventure, on the cited question 1, n. 4:

The creature is continually produced by God conserving, and is conserved by God producing, and it does not only depend on God inasmuch as the productive action of it goes forth from God for the first instant in which it has being, but also inasmuch as for any instant whatever in which it is conserved in being, that divine action by which it is conserved continually goes forth from God; but it is not that very same action by which it was being produced by God for the first instant, which goes forth from God for the other instants in which it is conserved: but another action altogether distinct, succeeding the prior: therefore the duration of the angel is not whole at once, but successive.

The consequence is evident, because that conserving action is of the essence of the duration of the angel, either as the formal reason, or an intrinsic part; or as a condition sine qua non: therefore if that conservation is successive, the very duration of the angel will also be successive, or at least will depend on something successive. The Doctor proves the minor: the conserving action is a true positive action: but it is not the same by which God produced the angel in the first instant: therefore it is another, succeeding that prior one. The major is evident, because, the Doctor says, to conserve is not only not to destroy, but is some positive action of God, otherwise he would be said to conserve the light who does not close the window, which is openly false, for the light could be conserved in the hall even with it absent. Furthermore, if conservation were not a positive action, it would follow that annihilation, opposed to it, would be a positive action, because there is no negation of a negation: but it is false that annihilation is a positive action, because to annihilate is not to act; therefore to conserve is to act. Finally, no creature is independent in its being, because it is not pure act: therefore it depends continually on a cause, not only by reason of its primary production, whereby it received being from that cause, as if it did not continually receive that being from it, because it would follow that to conserve would be nothing other than to have acted previously, and now not to destroy: therefore it is necessary that the conserving action be positive. The minor is therefore proved, namely that that positively conserving action, distinct from the first productive action; because by that productive action whereby the thing received being in the first instant, it cannot be said to be formally and ultimately conserved in that being for the other following instants, without any superadded thing; for that first productive action could be without the thing being conserved for another following instant; since in that following instant it could be annihilated: therefore, that it may exist for another following instant, there must be another action of its conservation distinct from the prior.

If you said that indeed from that action alone the thing produced by it does not have that it exist for another posterior instant, but it is further required that there be that posterior instant, which being posited, and without any new action, or anything superadded in any way, that thing coexists with that posterior instant; the Doctor urges against this: if the angel, produced in the first instant, had of itself, and without anything superadded, the power to coexist with the following time, there being posited only the existence of the future time, it would follow that its duration would not differ from eternity; for eternity cannot coexist with future time unless future time exists; but where it will no longer exist, neither will eternity coexist with it. Add that notwithstanding the production of the angel for the first instant, it could not have coexistence with the future instant, even with the future time itself existing; because it could not be conserved for that instant: therefore from the action whereby it receives being for the first instant it does not have being for the future instant, even with such a future instant existing.

Therefore the Doctor answers, n. 20. by denying the minor, and conceding the consequence of each proof, from which it does not follow that conservation is an action distinct from the first production as to the positive element of each; although the first production, inasmuch as it signifies a respect to the non-being immediately preceding the production of the thing, is distinct from the conserving action, inasmuch as the latter does not signify such a respect, but rather a respect to the being immediately preceding: for the productive action presupposes the non-being of the thing which is produced, but the conserving action supposes that the thing which is conserved previously had being through the first production of itself.

But that this objection with its proofs may be more easily solved, I answer: on the hypothesis that duration were a mode distinct from the very thing enduring, it indeed follows that that mode through which the thing would coexist with the first instant could not suffice for it to exist in the second instant; nor could it consequently make the angel existent for the second instant, unless it itself existed for the second instant: therefore that the thing might exist for the second instant, there would have to be another mode distinct, through which it would thus exist. On the supposition, however, that the duration of the angel, and the action whereby it is produced, superadds nothing above the entity and existence of the angel itself, beyond the volition of God, whereby he wills to produce it for so long a time, or for such, the argument concludes nothing; because it is false that that action of God, whereby it is produced for the first instant, can in fact be conserved without the angel being conserved, namely in the composite sense, and on the hypothesis that the conserving action of the angel would always subsist. Hence although there could be granted some productive action which of itself, and without anything else superadded, would not suffice for the conservation of the thing, for instance if God willed to produce an angel with the intention that through a single instant alone that angel should subsist: nevertheless, since the action whereby he in fact creates the angel is that volition whereby he wills to produce it for eternity a parte post, and since that volition cannot be without the angel necessarily existing thus for eternity, hence the aforesaid argument introduces no difficulty.

You will object 3. If the duration of the angel, whereby it ought to exist, e.g., for a year, is not something successive, but indivisible, simple, and immutable: it follows, that after half a year God could not bring it about that that angel should not subsist for the other following half of the year; just as he cannot bring it about that it has not existed for the preceding half of the same year. But the consequent is absurd; for it is false that God, for any time whatever, cannot destroy a creature produced by himself: therefore, etc.

The Doctor proves the sequel of the major, n. 6. in that which has the whole of being at once, to have been, to be, and to be going to be are the same: but that which was, it is impossible that it not have been: therefore if in the aeviternal to have been and to be going to be are the same, it is also impossible that it not be future. But this is proper to God alone, whose eternity to have been, to be, and to be going to be it embraces necessarily and indivisibly. Then, God cannot from eternity will contradictories, as contradictories: but he can will to create the angel, and annihilate it, and consequently he could will it to be, and not will it to be: therefore the being of the angel, and its non-being, do not seem to be contradictories: but truly they would be contradictories, unless diverse nows, or diverse instants of duration, were assigned, in one of which he would will to create the angel and that it exist, and in the other he would will to annihilate it, or would not will to create it and that it be: but those diverse nows ought not to be instants of time, because God could will to create and annihilate an angel even if no time were given: therefore they ought to be diverse instants of aevum, or of the duration of the angel, succeeding one another, and consequently the duration of the angel will be successive.

I answer 1. I distinguish the minor: it is absurd that God could not annihilate the angel for any instant whatever in the divided sense, and on the hypothesis that he has not decreed to conserve it for that instant, I concede: in the composite sense, and on the hypothesis that he has decreed to conserve it for that instant, I deny.

I answer 2. By distinguishing the sequel of the major: if the duration of the angel is something indivisible holding on the side of the angel itself, it must necessarily make the angel enduring for the whole year, I concede: if that indivisible does not hold on the side of the angel itself, but of God, I deny. But it is false that that duration is something indivisible holding on the side of the angel precisely, for it is the very volition of God whereby he wills it to exist for a year, or for eternity, which volition is one and indivisible; hence it is in no way inconvenient that if God wills to produce the angel and conserve it for a year, or eternity, the angel also ought to be conserved for so long a time in the composite sense, and that God cannot not give to it future being, just as he cannot not have given to it past being. To the first proof of the sequel I distinguish the minor: it is repugnant to created duration that it have being, having been, and going to be at once, inasmuch as the duration is of a created thing, holding on the side of the creature itself, I concede the minor: holding on the side of God conserving the creature through his indivisible and simple volition, I deny. To the second proof I deny the minor; for by the same reason that it would not be contradictory that God willed to create and annihilate the angel if its duration were successive, so neither would it be contradictory if its duration be something permanent and indivisible: for to save that contradiction nothing helps that that duration be divisible rather than indivisible. But how those two opposite volitions with respect to conserving and annihilating the angel could not be contradictories is gathered from this, that God can will the angel to be in such a way that, if such or such a time were existing, by the force of that volition the angel could not endure except for so long, or so long a finite time; and thence he would have a volition whereby he would will to conserve it further, by reason of which volition it would come about that, although further time would be admitted, nevertheless the angel would not exist in it. Hence I distinguish the subsumed: that those two opposite volitions would be contradictories, unless diverse nows, whether of aevum or of time, actually existing, were assigned, I deny: if those diverse nows were assigned as possible, in one of which creation could be, and in the other the negation of creation, I concede. Therefore those diverse nows ought not to be nows of time, or of aevum, which exist in act; but they can be diverse possible nows of time.

You will object 4. The angel is going to endure for eternity: therefore it will have duration to infinity, and accordingly if its duration is not successive, but whole at once, the consequence is that its duration is actually infinite; and consequently, that something created is actually infinite: but it is absurd that something created be actually infinite: therefore, etc.

The Angelic Doctor denies the consequence, num. 23. For in order that something be infinite by reason of the coexistence it could have with infinite time, it would have to coexist with all the parts of that infinite time: for just as that time would not be infinite unless it included infinite parts, so what coexists with it would not be infinite unless it equally coexisted with all its parts; but since the parts of infinite time can nowhere be simultaneously in act, neither could the coexistence with those parts be simultaneously in act. And therefore, although the duration of the angels is indivisible in itself, nevertheless since it is divisible with respect to coexistence with infinite time, if such were granted, it does not follow that they must be actually infinite in itself and permanently, although it could have a successive coexistence with the parts of infinite time, if such were granted.

Finally he objects: An angel could have been created not a sinner, and afterwards could have sinned, even if there had been no time: therefore in its duration there can be a prior moment, namely that in which it would not be a sinner, and a later one, in which it would exist as a sinner; and so its duration is successive. It is confirmed: an angel could be created, and afterwards annihilated, and another angel created after it: but in that case it would not be true that those two angels existed simultaneously for the same now: therefore they would have to exist for different nows: but another angel could coexist with those two angels, namely with the annihilated one and the one newly produced; therefore in the duration of the third angel there would be a prior and a later: prior indeed, by reason of which it would be said to have coexisted with the annihilated angel: and later, by which it would coexist with the newly produced angel.

The Doctor denies the consequence, both of the argument and of the confirmation, num. 24. For although one angel follows upon another, and from not sinning becomes sinning, it does not follow from this that there is a succession in its duration, but there would only be a succession between its duration and its annihilation, and likewise between its innocence and its injustice: so that although its duration coexists with an innocence and an injustice succeeding one another, it does not follow from this that there is any succession in its duration; for the indivisible duration with which it previously coexisted with innocence can coexist with its injustice. In the same way a third angel could coexist with an angel previously produced and with an angel subsequently produced without any succession in its intrinsic duration; just as eternity itself, which is indivisible and without any formal succession, coexists, according to all, with yesterday and today.

* Corollary. — From these things it becomes clear that even if the Subtle Doctor solved all the arguments of Henry and of St. Thomas against the opinion of St. Bonaventure, and demonstrated that they do not prove nor are correctly deduced, nevertheless Cajetan falsely charges him, when he says that he held with St. Bonaventure that the angel is measured by successive duration, or that the duration of the angels includes formal succession; nor does Rada rightly hold, controv. 1. art. 1., Delogad. in that treatise De Angelis, cap. 9., nor others who think that the Doctor proposed that opinion as probable and confirmed it with his arguments. For whoever has read the arguments of the Doctor for the indivisible aevum of the angels and of spiritual things, and indeed of ingenerable material substances, will easily persuade himself that he could not have proposed that opinion of a successive aevum as probable. For how would those things cohere with what he has in 2. dist. 2. quaest. 2. num. 3., where he clearly proves that the aevum of an angel is really indistinct from its existence, which we shall also demonstrate in the following Conclusion? But there the Doctor teaches, in what follows, that the duration of the existence of an angel is indivisible. How then could the probability of the other opinion, which posits formal succession in angelic duration, stand with this doctrine?

Third conclusion. — Angelic duration is not really distinct from the angel.

Thus the Subtle Doctor, in the second book, dist. 2. quaest. 2. n. 3., where he proves this conclusion as follows: By this very fact that a thing is produced and preserved, or that it terminates the productive and conserving action, it endures either in an instant or in time: therefore nothing else is required in order that it endure: both because if duration were something distinct from the thing enduring and from its productive and conserving action, it would be something absolute or relative: but neither can be said: therefore it is not something distinct from them. The minor is clear: for it is not relative, because a real relation must have a real term: but a thing can endure without there being something real to which it would have a relation, for instance if God were to produce a single angel: nor is it absolute, because it would be posterior to the thing enduring, and consequently the thing enduring could be produced without it; which is absurd, because then it would endure and not endure: it would endure indeed, because it would be produced: but it would not endure, because it would not have the duration, which would be another absolute thing posterior and not produced.

Proof 2. Whenever things are really distinguished, and one of them is prior in nature to the other, one of them can also exist without the other: therefore if aeviternal duration is really distinguished from the substance of the angel, since the substance itself is posterior, it follows that the angel can be and remain without its aeviternal duration, and thus it will endure without its duration, which is contradictory. Moreover, if aevum is really distinct from the being of the angel, either the angel endures by itself, or by another distinct from itself. If by itself, then by equal reason existence itself could endure formally by itself, because that other will not be more perfect than its actual existence itself, since it is as it were a passion of it: but if it endures in being by another absolute thing distinct from itself, there will be a process to infinity in measured things and measures. Further, plurality is not to be posited without necessity, from the first book of the Physics: but there is no necessity that aevum, taken as the duration of the aeviternal, be something other than the aeviternal: therefore it is not other. Finally, if aevum is really and essentially distinguished from the angel, or from the aeviternal whose duration it is, it follows that it is some accident of it: but it seems impossible that the substance itself endure per accidens; for the accident rather seems to endure through the substance than the converse: therefore, etc.

You will say 1. Time is really distinguished from the motion which it measures: therefore by equal reason something really distinct from the essence of the angel must necessarily be admitted, which would be its measure.

The Doctor denies the consequence, because, he says, num. 8. of the same question,

although time differs from motion, and consequently the instant from mutation, the same does not seem to be said of the duration of the angel: for, he says, if time differs from motion, this is because the parts of the same proportion are not necessarily equal in number and quantity to the parts of the same proportion of time; but no quantity is the same as another quantity unless the parts of the same proportion and quantity in it are equal to the parts of the same proportion and quantity in the other, and this equ> al both in number and in magnitude: but speaking of the quantity which is in motion, which it has on the part of the magnitude, or of the form according to which there is motion, some parts of motion, for instance ten parts completing the whole motion, can be with ten parts of time: but they are not the same as those, because with the same parts of time there can be more parts of motion equal to the prior parts of motion, or as many unequal ones, because a double power moves the same mobile, and consequently twice as fast; there will be no part in the slower motion which is not in the faster motion, speaking of the parts which it has in magnitude, or of the parts which it has according to the form by which it is: because the mover moving the mobile with a faster motion does not make it pass through some parts of magnitude simultaneously, but precisely one after another: therefore there are as many parts in the faster motion, and of such a kind, speaking of that quantity, as there are in the slower motion; but the same time cannot have the same parts with this motion and with that motion: therefore those parts of time will not be the same, neither with the parts of this motion nor of that, because they do not stand in the same proportion to the whole, nor are they equal to those parts of the whole.

Thus the Doctor. But the same reason does not hold of aeviternal duration and the angel, since both the substance of the angel and its duration are altogether indivisible: and therefore one cannot exceed the other.

You will say 2. Permanent quantity is an accident distinct from the subject: therefore successive quantity too, because both are of the same genus, or predicament: and consequently both must be distinct from the subject, especially if the subject is a substance: but what measures the existence of the angel is successive quantity: therefore the measure of the angel is really distinguished from it.

The Doctor answers, num. 11. that there is nothing in the actual existence of the angel which is properly a quantity, nor anything indivisible of the genus of quantity; because existence seems to be able to be known without any other addition. Hence the supposition of the subsumption is denied, namely that there is in the angel something which measures its existence: and even if such a thing were granted, certainly it would not be a quantity, whereby it would not be something really distinct from it.

You will say 3. If a thing could endure of itself without any other addition, it could also be in a place of itself without a new where superadded, against our opinion.

I answer. by denying the parity; because a thing does not necessarily have being in a place from the fact that it is produced; for it could have it independently; but it endures by this very fact that it is produced and preserved. Hence in order to be in a place, something must concur besides conservation: but in order to endure, nothing other than conservation must accrue.

You will insist. An angel is as indifferent to being in this or that time as to being in this or that place: therefore just as besides that indifference a distinct where is posited, which is determined to this place rather than to another, so in order that it be in this time rather than in another, something added must be posited: but that is nothing other than duration: therefore, etc.

I answer. by denying the subsumption; because duration is not that from which a thing has being in this or that time, but that by which it can exist for such or such a time, comprehending under the name of time either its divisible part or the indivisible instant.

Corollary I. — From these things the Doctor gathers, num. 11., that there is not in the angel any form intrinsic to it, really distinct from its existence, by which it would be measured. He proves this; because entities are not to be multiplied without necessity: but there is no necessity of positing such a measure in the angel: therefore, etc. The minor is proved; because if there were a necessity of positing a distinct measure, there would be a necessity of positing a distinct duration: but this is not necessary, as is clear from the proof of the first conclusion. It is confirmed; because those very arguments by which it was proved that no distinct duration is given in it prove that no distinct measure is given in it. It is confirmed secondly; because if a measure were posited in the angel, neither an exceeding nor an exceeded measure would be posited in it, since it cannot be understood for what reason it would be exceeding or exceeded; therefore an equal measure ought to be posited: but neither can this be said, because nothing posited in the angel can be better known for the purpose of measuring, neither ex natura rei nor per accidens, than the very existence of the angel: therefore nothing is posited in it which could be the measure of that existence: and although some total quantity, distinct and known, could be its measure with respect to certain of its parts, nevertheless not even thus can the reason of a measure be posited in the angel, because it has no parts which could be measured by it. The Doctor adds to this that not only is it not necessary to posit something absolute as a measure, but not even any relation, because it is not necessary here to posit any other relation than that by which it is related to the efficient or conserving cause, and that is not something other than its foundation.

Corollary II. — He gathers secondly, in the third question, that some external measure is to be admitted in the duration of the angels, and that it is either outside the genus or in the genus. The former is God himself by reason of his infinite duration, in accordance with which created things can be said to coexist with him more or less. The latter is the existence of the first angel, whose aeviternal duration can be called the measure of the others: for this measure of the first angel with respect to all aeviternal things is the simplest, and more uniform, regular, and simpliciter better known in the genus of aeviternal things; accordingly it is the measure of all the existences of the other angels: just as the motion of the first mobile, because it is the simplest of all, best known, and more uniform and longer-lasting, is posited as the measure of all motions, and time of all temporal things. Therefore just as the existence of any angel is measured by its particular aevum, as its extrinsic measure, and in that way is distinguished from another, so that there are as many aeva as there are aeviternal things: so, generally speaking, there is one aevum of all aeviternal things, namely the existence of the first angel, distinct from the existence of any aeviternal thing, and therefore it is called an extrinsic measure also in the reason of duration.

It is proved from the fact that, as we said above from Aristotle, in every genus of things there is some first thing which is the cause and measure of the rest: therefore in the durations of spiritual things one must have recourse to the first duration, more perfect and uniform, in order to measure the durations of the others; but that duration is in that first angel, whose nature is simpler, more perfect, and more uniform and regular in its duration; and consequently its existence is the measure, at least extrinsic, of other incorruptible things, since each aeviternal thing has its own proper intrinsic measure, as was said. Hence just as the measure, whether of wheat or of wine and other such things, in some commonwealth is wont to be sealed with the public seal, so that it may be made known to all that it is faithful and certain, in order that the other measures be weighed against it: so, since art imitates nature, it must be said that the substance of the first and supreme angel, proportion being preserved, is the uniform and perfect measure of all other spirits, which measure indeed is really the same as the existence of that supreme angel in which it inheres, but is really distinguished from the existences of the others which it measures, just as that supreme angel is really distinguished from all the other angels.

You will say 1. If the aevum of the first angel is the measure of all aeviternal things: therefore, the first angel in which it is being destroyed, such an aevum would also be destroyed, and consequently all the other aeviternal things measured by it would be changed: but this is inconvenient: therefore, etc.

I answer. that this being granted, they would not be measured by the aevum of the first angel, nor consequently would they be changed according to their absolute entity, because the relation of the measure to the measured is not real but of reason, which imports no mutation; for the first angel is related to the other aeviternal things as an exceeding measure, but not as a measure from which the measured depends.

You will say 2. The measure must be better known than the thing measured: but the aevum of the first angel is not better known to the other angels, for rather the proper aevum is better known to each angel than the aevum of the first angel: therefore, etc.

I answer. that it suffices that the measure be better known in itself, even if it is not better known to the one who uses it; for as regards us, the motions of these lower things are better known than the motion of the first mobile, which is the measure of all, because in itself it is better known; so it is with the aeviternal duration of the first angel.

You will say 3. All the angels were created simultaneously, and the duration of all is equally uniform: therefore there is no greater reason why the aevum of the first angel should be the measure of aeviternal things, than why the aeva of these should be the measure of the first angel.

I answer. that the aevum of the first angel is simpler, more uniform, and more invariable, and thus it is the measure with respect to aeviternal things: just as although the other heavens are uniform in their motions, nevertheless they are not called the measure of the first mobile, but rather are measured by it, because it is higher.

These things notwithstanding, I would not hesitate to assert that in truth no angel can be called the measure of another's duration by reason of greater simplicity; for it does not appear how one angel, as regards essence, could be called simpler than another angel, since all are indivisible as regards integral and physical parts, and none of them is without metaphysical composition, nor composition of essence and existence, nor composition of nature and personality. Unless perhaps simpler were said because it could perceive more things simultaneously through fewer acts; and in this sense, although a more perfect angel could be called simpler, nevertheless from such simplicity it does not follow that it could measure the existence of another as regards its duration, of which measurement we are speaking.

You will ask. By what measure are the angelic operations measured?

The Doctor answers in question four. That the immanent operations of an angel, namely its intellection and volition, are measured by aevum, just as its substance is, he proves thus: because things that exist in the same manner as long as they exist have a measure of the same kind, even though one of them exists longer than another; but the angel and its operation have the same mode of existing while they exist, without any difference, except that the angel is to last longer than any operation of its own: therefore the angel and its operation have a measure of the same kind; but the angel has aevum for its measure: therefore also its operation. The major is proved, because by the very fact that they have a similar mode of existing, whatever can measure the one can also measure the other; and if it could not, it would certainly follow from this very thing that they did not have a similar mode of existing. It is confirmed, because from this it follows that all the angels, although some are more perfect than others, nevertheless have a measure of the same kind, namely because they all have a uniform mode of existing. It is confirmed secondly, because the fact that one thing exists longer than another does not prevent both from being measured by aevum; otherwise, keeping the proportion, it would follow that because sound does not last as long as the motion of the heavens, it ought not to be measured by time, as the motion of the heavens is measured, but by some other measure of a different kind, which is absurd.

You will reply. that there is a disparity; for the existence of the angels will be everlasting, whereas their knowledge and other immanent operations can cease.

On the contrary. because it is per accidens with respect to the duration of a measure that one thing lasts longer than another; for if an angel were to last only for an hour, it would still be measured by aevum; for perpetuity, or destruction or annihilation do not formally vary the measure: therefore likewise its knowledge and other immanent operations, together with their nature, while they remain, having their whole being at once and uniformly permanent, suffice for them to have the same measure which the very existence of the angel has. This argument is confirmed, because for no other reason are successive things measured by time than because they have a permanent mode of lasting; for, as was said above, a measure must be proportioned to what is measured, and the diversity of measure is considered according to the diverse mode of lasting of what is measured: but such interior and immanent operations of the angels are not successive, but unfailing and permanent, like the very existence of the angels: therefore they must be measured by the same measure.

The Doctor proves it secondly. The beatific vision is measured by aevum; therefore also the immanent operation of an angel. He proves the consequence, because the beatific vision proceeds from the intellect as from a partial cause: therefore the intellect has a production terminated to it; but that production must be measured by such a measure as the vision itself is measured; for the vision cannot be in aevum, and its continuous production, on which it necessarily and per se depends, of another measure: therefore that production is in aevum, that is, measured by aevum; but if that production is measured by aevum, then every other operation of the angel produced and conserved indivisibly must likewise be measured by aevum.

The Thomists reply. that those operations are indeed not measured by the eternity which is the measure of God, but by participated eternity, which they say is inferior to divine eternity and differs from it as the more perfect from the less perfect; for divine eternity is the measure of divine being, while participated eternity is the measure of the being of the divine and supernatural order, such as habitual grace, the virtues infused by God, and the beatific vision.

On the contrary. whatever is properly measured by eternity is unfailing by its nature, as God is: therefore what is measured by participated eternity is unfailing by participation; but no being is so unfailing, because every created being, absolutely speaking, is fallible: therefore nothing is measured by participated eternity.

If you were to say that glory is in this way unfailing, I would reply with stronger reason that since the angel is a living substance, and consequently under this consideration nobler in its very entity than the glory which is an accident, it too ought to be so measured; for whether it is a natural or supernatural being matters little to the present difficulty. Yet no one admits this.

You will say 1. By this the duration and measure of God are distinguished from the duration and measure of the angel, in that the duration of God is independent and unfailing by its nature, whereas the duration of the angel is fallible and dependent by its nature, so that it could in no way be, and after it is, could cease; but the angelic operation has some fallibility by its nature which the angel does not have, because the angel, once produced, naturally tends never to cease, which is not required of its operation, which can naturally cease: therefore the operation of the angel has a measure specifically distinct from the measure of the angel. The consequence is evident; for there is no stronger reason why the fallibility of the angel and the infallibility of God should require distinct measures than the fallibility of such an angelic operation and the infallibility of the angelic substance itself, at least intrinsically and of itself; nor does there seem to be a stronger reason why that diverse mode of existing which God and the angel have — inasmuch as the angel exists fallibly and God infallibly — should require a diverse measure, than that diverse mode of existing which the angel and its operation have, inasmuch as the latter is naturally fallible and the former not so; therefore they do not have the same mode of existing, nor consequently the same measure.

I answer. that even if the substance of the angels and its operation had a different duration and measure, they could nevertheless agree with each other in the character of aevum as such, namely insofar as aevum is distinguished from eternity and from time; for aevum thus taken is nothing else than the duration of a thing fallible of itself or through another, and having its whole being at once without any succession of parts; and the angelic substance and its operation have such a duration, and therefore would agree in the character of aevum, although they would differ from each other in the specific character of this or that aevum.

You will say 2. If the substance and operation of the angels were measured by aevum, it would follow that all permanent beings would likewise be measured by aevum; but this seems absurd: therefore, etc. The major stands; for there is nothing permanent whose existence does not remain the same while it lasts, and this without succession properly so called, which is the acquisition or loss of part after part. The minor is proved first, because according to the Philosopher, book 4 of the Physics, text 118, rest is measured by time; therefore those things around which motion is naturally apt to be, when they are no longer in motion, are measured by time, just as if they were in motion. Secondly, because the generations and corruptions of all generable and corruptible things are measured in an instant of time; but of that whose first being is measured by a now of time, the habitual being is measured by time: therefore the habitual being of all these things after generation is measured by time.

The Doctor grants the major in the same question, number 9. Namely, that it be measured by aevum: Whatever actual existence is invariable, that is to say, to which it is repugnant that according to it there be variation, whether flux or acquisition of part after part; for neither the perpetuity of some things, nor their corruption, or annihilation, formally varies the measure, provided the existence is of the same kind while it lasts.

But to answer the minor, he notes that several things can be considered regarding permanence. First, there can be considered the flux of a divisible permanent form, which is acquired successively, which flux is the very successive acquisition of the form, or the succession of the parts of the form. Secondly, there can be considered the very form for which that flux is apt, or which is acquired successively in act, as for example the form of heat or cold produced successively. Thirdly, the form remaining, around which motion can be, although de facto it is not, as heat, for example, after it has been produced. Fourthly, the permanent form around which flux is not apt to be, or which is not apt to be produced successively, as substantial forms producible in an instant, for example the form of the soul, which form nevertheless has another consequent form around which flux is apt to be, for example the form of heat or of some other quality consequent upon that permanent substantial form. Fifthly and finally, that which is so permanent that neither can flux be given with respect to it, nor with respect to some form antecedent or consequent to it, as are the heavenly bodies.

From these, this last, namely the fifth, is in no way measured by time, neither per se nor per accidens, as by its proper intrinsic measure. But the first is measured by time. The fourth, of itself, is not apt to be measured by time by reason of the consequent form around which motion and rest can be. The third and the fourth are in reality the same form, which nevertheless has one character insofar as motion is toward it, and another character insofar as it is under rest without motion. And this manner of speaking the Doctor again distinguishes into two. The first is that it is always measured by time, even when it rests and remains according to all its parts, because it is a form variable of itself, or acquirable and destructible successively; and if this is held, then the major ought not to be understood of all permanent things, but of those which must be produced and conserved indivisibly, nor does the first objection press even if everything proposed in it is granted. The second manner of speaking is that that form, as long as it is under rest, is measured by aevum, because then it has all its parts existing indivisibly. He says, however, that this second manner of speaking is less probable than the first, because a form produced in time for the last instant of that time seems to have that instant for its measure, and not a now of aevum; but according to this second manner of speaking this would be false. Whence he concludes that although the rest of forms of this kind is measured by time, yet the forms themselves are not necessarily so measured; or if, according to the prior manner of speaking, it is said that they are measured by time, nevertheless it must be said that all generable and corruptible substances, indivisibly or successively, are of themselves measured by aevum, although per accidens, by reason of the consequent motion, they may be said to be measured by time. So the Doctor.

You will say 1. Between the thing whose substance and action are measured by time, as fire for example, and the thing whose substance and action are measured by eternity, as God, there is given a middle thing whose substance is measured by aevum and whose action by time; but such a thing is the angel rather than any other thing: therefore the operation of the angel is not measured by aevum. The major is that of Proclus, who is the author of the book De causis among the works of Aristotle.

The Doctor denies the major in n. 13. and rejects the authority of Proclus; because, he says, the doctrine concerning causes was handed down according to the erroneous doctrine of Avicenna, as if that author understood the intelligences to be certain gods, and their operations to be measured by a now of time — not indeed the intrinsic operation, for this would posit neither potentiality nor succession, but the extrinsic one around a body to be in a moment of time; and therefore that authority is not to be had as an authority, because it was handed down through an erroneous root.

You will say 2. Nothing is produced so as to cease immediately: therefore whatever is produced ought to last for some time; and consequently the angelic operation ought to last for some time; but if it were measured by aevum, it ought not to last for any instant; for whatever is measured by aevum and is not eternal must exist for some instant only, whereas the angelic operation is not eternal: therefore if it is measured by aevum, it must exist for some instant.

The Doctor denies the minor. For although nature does not intend the production of a thing so that it cease, and therefore according to the intention of nature the thing produced ought to last for some time, nevertheless it can cease from elsewhere, as is evident in all instantaneous mutations, which, the Doctor says, have being only fleetingly, and immediately are not, that is, immediately cease to be.

You will say 3. Such is the measure of the angelic operation as of the beatific vision; but the beatific vision is not measured by aevum: therefore neither ought the angelic operations to be measured by aevum. The major stands from the second proof deduced above. The minor is proved: both from that passage of John 17, This is eternal life, that they may know thee; and from S. Augustine, book 83 Questions, question 25, where he calls our beatitude participated eternity.

I deny the minor. and to its proof I say, first, that the context of Scripture is taken not for eternity formally taken, but for sempiternal aevum, just as the soul is said to be eternal because it is to endure forever; for, as we observed in the Article on eternity, the name of eternity is used in Scripture in various ways, but especially in five. To S. Augustine I say that he is not speaking of the beatific Vision, but of our soul, which he teaches to be eternal by participation of eternity, seeing that it is to be conserved forever by God, who is eternal.

* You will say 4. The operations of the angel, namely intellection and volition, can be intensified and remitted; but intensification and remission in the doctrine of Scotus take place by the addition of degree to degree, which addition entails succession and hence temporal duration. Therefore the Doctor admits successive duration and the measure of time in the angelic operations.

I answer first. that the argument does not proceed concerning the beatific operations of the angels, which are altogether invariable and incapable of remission or intensification; and forthwith the doctrine of the Doctor concerning those operations is altogether unshaken.

But as regards the other operations which they elicited while they were wayfarers, it does not appear how those could have admitted more and less, seeing that in that state the angels had uniform knowledge and volition arising from the species infused into them, which represented the object equally and without any variation; and hence in that state the angels had a certain and invariable knowledge, to which corresponded operations of the will likewise uniform. Therefore concerning these operations also the argument does not press. But as regards the other operations which the angels acquire for themselves by discourse, I answer that even if perhaps some remission and intensification intervenes in them, it still does not follow from this that these take place with time and successive duration; for those degrees are altogether indivisible, and those which are added do not properly compose with the preceding ones, but with one new degree coming upon the scene there is also made a new cognition, which, since it is indivisible, is not measured by successive time, and henceforth must be measured by the same duration by which the other angelic operations are measured.

You will ask. By what measure and duration are the transient operations of the angels measured?

I answer. These operations, such as local motion, the carrying about and agitation of bodies etc., I say are to be measured by our time. For by this reason they share a certain condition common to bodies, namely local motion, and ubi, inasmuch as the angels participate in it: therefore they ought also to participate in the measure of corporeal things, which is continuous time. It is confirmed; for inasmuch as they are moved locally, they participate in ubi, which is a condition and passion belonging to body, somehow of the same kind in them and in body: therefore they can also be measured by the measure of the first moved body. Indeed I add that although the foregoing concerning the immanent operations, according to the doctrine of the Doctor, appear more certain, nevertheless I would not hesitate to assert that the duration of the angel himself, as well as of his operations, and indeed of whatsoever permanent thing, can truly also be measured by our time; so that by their coexistence with our time it can be distinctly known how long they have lasted, namely either by a year, or by a day, or by an hour; and accordingly the duration of those things can be called temporal just as much as anything else whatsoever.

And this can indeed be confirmed by reason; for angelic duration must have some measure, whence it can easily be conjectured that the angel has lasted or will last so long; but this cannot be distinctly known through the very existence of the angel; for even if someone were to know intuitively the nature of the angel and its real existence, still from that he could not know with certainty how long it has lasted or will last; and therefore it must have another measure from which is known what sort and how great its duration is, and to measure it at least as regards the past. Now time can easily serve for this; since, on the hypothesis that (as was proved above) the angels were created together with the Universe, anyone will easily be able to judge that they have already lasted through so many thousands and hundreds of years, namely from the creation of the world until now; and if time were perpetual, from it anyone could know of the angels that they themselves and others have lasted so many and no more years, days, and hours: therefore if we consider the coexistence of the angels with time, it will be permissible to assert that it can be called an external measure of angelic duration, as of any other permanent things whatsoever.

Yet thence I would not subscribe to the Thomists, who assert that the immanent operations of the angels are measured by discrete time; for this assertion seems improbable: both because, as we proved above in question 1, conclusion 2, that discrete time is altogether fictitious and gratuitously invented; and because any instant of discrete time necessarily coexists with some part of our time, or with an instant: if with an instant, then our time is likewise discrete, and has instants succeeding each other immediately; and henceforth it is not a continuous quantity, as the Philosophers hold; if it corresponds to some part of time, then it follows that the angel cannot form an intellection in an indivisible instant of our time, because it could not form it except in an instant of its discrete time, which instant would necessarily correspond not to an instant but to a divisible part of our time; but this consequent is far from the truth; for if man can form an intellection in an instant of our time, much more the angel; finally, moreover, because the Thomists admit that our intellections and volitions are not measured by discrete time: therefore by parity of reason the same must be said of the angelic ones. The consequence is evident, for our intellections are whole at once, just as the angelic ones: therefore they have a proportionate measure; and hence if those are not measured by discrete time, these likewise cannot be said to be so measured by such a time.