Peter John Olivi, Questions on Book II of the Sentences

QUESTION 72

Can bodies act on the spirit and on its apprehensive

and appetitive powers?

 

(Translation by Robert Pasnau, as an appendix to my 1994 doctoral dissertation at Cornell University. Slight changes made in 2013.)

 

[Initial Objections]

     1. – [1] It is first proven that they can. First, everything that is active, insofar as it is active, is superior to what is passive, insofar as it is so. And if that passive thing is assimilable to the form of the active thing, then it can be assimilated by that active thing. But the apprehensive powers of spirits are assimilable to their corporeal objects, for every apprehension involves the assimilation of cognizer to cognized. It is clear, however, that everything that is assimilable, insofar as it is so, is passive, and that a corporeal form, insofar as it is a form, implies something active. Therefore the powers of spirits, insofar as they are assimilable through cognition to corporeal forms, can be affected [pati] by them.

     2. – Second, nothing co-operates with an action unless in the manner of an agent or something affected [patientis]. But corporeal objects co-operate with the cognitive actions concerning them that are brought about in a spirit. They do not co-operate in the manner of something affected, however, since actions of this sort are not received in corporeal objects. Therefore they co-operate with cognitive actions in the manner of an agent. But this is impossible, unless they bring about [agant] something [2] in the subject of these sorts of actions – i.e., in the soul's powers. Therefore etc.

     3. – But it is proven that corporeal objects co-operate with visual actions concerning themselves – not only [i] because they cannot be brought about without the presence of such objects, but also [ii] because the aforesaid acts draw a species from the objects and are made essentially different in accord with the different species and genera of objects, and also [iii] because the efficacy of one simple species cannot draw out many effects that are total and immediate contraries of one other or that differ in genus and species. It is clear, however, that one cognitive power belongs to one simple species and nevertheless contains in itself cognitive acts that are the contraries of one other, many in genus, and different in species.


     4. – Third, to be disturbed and afflicted are not actions of the afflicted and disturbed subject, because an action (as far as it is an action) is not injurious to the agent (as far as it is an agent), since every active force (as far as it is acting) is essentially inclined to its action as to an effect similar and appropriate to it and naturally suitable for it – as in the case of one's own offspring emerging from within one. But the spirit is afflicted and disturbed by the apprehensions of many corporeal objects. Therefore such an affliction is not an action made by the spirit itself, but rather by corporeal objects.

     5. – Fourth, every act of the apprehensive powers is brought about sensorily or experientially as a kind of alteration coming from without to within – i.e., from the object to the interior of the apprehensive power itself. But it is irrational to say that such an inward and ever present experience is false and fallacious. Therefore an alteration of this sort is truly brought about by an external object as by its external agent.

     6. – Fifth, a great object is more easily seen or heard than a lesser one – e.g., loud thunder is more easily heard than [3] a moderate voice, and a mountain or ox is more easily seen than a particle of dust. The opposite would be so, however, if powers were not affected by objects, but rather extended their action toward objects. For a greater or equal motive force moves a lesser object that is moveable more easily than it does a greater one, and something equally moveable is more easily moved by the greater force of a greater agent than by the lesser force of a lesser agent.

     7. – Sixth, to the extent that the extended and dimensional differs from the simple and spiritual, the latter also differs from the former. Therefore for whatever reason spirit can bring about in a body species and influences [impressiones] that are extended in accord with the extension of the body's parts, for that same reason a body could produce in a spirit simple species and influences conforming to the spirit's simplicity. But the spirit produces these in the body when it propels and moves it and its parts. For that propulsion and movement happens as regards one of its parts in one of the body's parts, and as regards another in another.

     8. – Seventh, earth and water are inferior by far to fire, buds, plants, or animals. But this notwithstanding, the former act and can act on even the latter; therefore although body is inferior to and less noble than spirit, it does not on account of this follow that it cannot act on spirit.

     9. – Eighth, Augustine says in Contra Iulianum [V,14] that original sin passes from body to soul not by migrating but by affecting. Therefore in this case body affects soul – that is, generates in it an affection similar to its own. Further, in the epistle to Nebridius [class.I, ep.9, n.3] Augustine says that

 

     I believe that every movement of the spirit [animus] brings about something in the body and that it goes all the way out to our senses (that is, all the way out to the sensible awareness of our senses) when the spirit's movements are very great – for instance when we are angry or sad or joyful. Therefore those traces of its movement that the spirit imprints on the body can remain and [4] produce something like a habit, and they, when they become excited, secretly bring forth in us thoughts and dreams.

 

And later [n.4] he says:

 

     And doctors affirm that bile increases as a result of persistent anger. We become angry again, however, and easily, at the burning of bile, even when hardly any cause exist. Thus that which the spirit made in the body, by its own movement, works to provoke it further.

     10. – Ninth, we see that on a certain movement made in the brain sleep and wakefulness follow. Further, the choleric anger more quickly and the sanguine are more easily happy. Therefore a varying complexion and disposition of the body causes something in the soul.

     11. – Tenth, that which can [act] on a complete substance can also [act] on its power, since it is a greater thing to be able [to act] on a substance than on its power. But the essence of the sensory soul is brought about by the power of a body – that is, by a seminal power or by the power of the celestial bodies. Therefore [such powers] can vary the sensory soul's powers, at least accidentally. But what can be brought about by a body in the sensory powers of animals can also be brought about in our own sensory powers, since we correspond with them as regards accidental variations. Therefore, etc.

     12. – Eleventh, it is worthier to be able to subject one's own matter to the action of a lesser agent and to be able to extract oneself from that situation than to be able [to do this] only with another. Hence, according to Gregory, the blessed can through their spiritual capacity restore their glorious bodies to us as touchable, as Christ showed to his disciples after the resurrection, when he said "handle," etc. [Luke 24,39]. Therefore it is one of the greater capacities associated with spirits that they can subject themselves on command to the action of bodies.

     13. – Twelfth, a body can generate a simple and indivisible species in a body; therefore much more can it do this in a spirit. The first premise is proven, because just as light illuminating just the surface of a wall generates on it a superficial light that has no dimension of depth, so too when a sphere touches another sphere at only one point, by that touch the first can [5] affect or illuminate the second at that point only – for the same reason that it can touch it at just that point. Moreover, to be touched is a kind of affection [passio] introduced by the one touching, on which account every physical agent (i.e., everything acting through contact), when it acts, is affected [patitur]. Moreover, when an entire body is illuminated or heated, then there is heat in each of its points, both inside and outside. But that which exists at a point is necessarily point-like and indivisible. Therefore etc.

     14. – Thirteenth, anything is more able to act like that which is suitable to it per se than to act like that which is suitable to it per accidens. But simplicity and intellectuality agree with every form per se, while extension is suitable to a form per accidens. Therefore every form is more able to generate a simple and intellectual species than an extended and sensible one. The minor is proven in two ways: first, because everything that of itself and absolutely is not a quantity and is unextended is of itself and absolutely simple and intellectual. But everything that does not belong per se to the category of quantity is of this sort, since extension and divisibility are suitable per se and of themselves only to quantity. Therefore etc. Second, it is proven because the quiddity of every form is the per se object of intellect alone. For it belongs to intellect alone to grasp the definitions of things or what this or that is.

     15. – Fourteen, everything having parts infinitely divisible and diminishable – e.g., a continuum and, by  extension [et iuxta], the proportion and adequation of that continuumThis `et iuxta...' clause is all a mess. I need to look into the terminology. – is a quantity and continuous. And if something is an action that draws this sort of quantity and divisibility from its object, then it must draw the essence of its parts from that object. But the vision of a body is divisible and diminishable just as is the body itself: for if one part of that body were subtracted then the vision of that part would be subtracted and the vision of the others would remain. This is because the vision of one part differs from the vision of another only insofar as one part of the thing seen differs from another. Also, the vision of one part concerns only the location of that part. Thus the parts of the vision are distinguished in terms of the different locations of the parts of the thing seen; and they are connected just as are those parts of the thing seen. Therefore the vision of a body is a quantity and continuous, just as is the body, [6] and it seems that it draws its quantity from that body and consequently also draws the essence of its quantity's parts.

 

[REPLY]

[I. Preliminary Discussion]

     16. – To clarify this question it is important to note three things in advance.

[A. Four ways of acting and being affected]

     The first concerns the different ways of acting and being affected [patiendi]. For there are four, as far as the present is concerned. The first comes from the affected thing's being by itself absolutely subject or able to be subject to the agent's active force and its action, and conversely the force of the agent's being by itself potently and efficaciously turned or able to be turned toward the innermost parts of the affected thing's passive power. As a result of the force of such a turning an action is impressed [influitur] and imposed on the affected thing by the agent. And in this way the sun's light acts on the air currently lying under it, and fire acts on wood and things that are ignited by it, and a mover acts on a stone which, by its impact, it throws some distance.

     17. – The second way is when something affected is so raised up by a high and lofty form that it is not absolutely subjected to such an agent. Nevertheless it can, through the force of its own form, which is predominant within itself, be voluntarily subjected to such an agent. And in this way a glorified body can be subject to touch and a thorough handling through the spiritual force of the blessed's glorified soul – a force which the blessed have over their glorified bodies. And in this way Christ after his resurrection displayed his body, so that it could be handled by his disciples. By this handling they were able to take and draw his flesh and hand from one place to another, here and there – something which they could not do unless Christ, through his power, were to subject his flesh to their touch.[1]

     18. – The third way is when the affected thing is not subjected to the agent's active force directly and immediately, but only obliquely and mediately, nor is it subjected of itself alone taken absolutely, [7] but only because it is connected to another affected thing firmly and strongly. And in this way some motion and resistance occurs in heavy and light things, contrary to their proper and absolute nature, on account of the impossibility of a vacuum – for example, when water standing in a vessel punctured and open at the bottom neither exits nor descends through that hole, because the air cannot slip through any opening into the area that the air would leave if it were to descend and exit; or when a flat and polished stone standing on another which is flat and polished is violently pulled upward by a hand so that no part of it is tilted. For in this way it is impossible for it to be separated from the other stone on which it rests, since then a vacuum would be made in the inside middle of the connection to the stone. This is because external air can slip into the middle only successively, as it must first slip into the first part of the space, or the intermediary connection to the stone, before it gets to the middle. In pulling the stone upward completely evenly in all respects the middle of the stone's edge is quickly pulled up just as is its circumference; and if one part of that edge is pulled before another then it is pulled at a tilt, since the part first pulled is then higher than the part not pulled. Therefore in these and similar cases a connection of bodies naturally avoiding and preventing a vacuum retains and pulls bodies with it contrary to their absolute nature. Also, fire naturally tending upward, when it is filled with the heavy nature of iron or charcoal, tends downward with these [elements]. For the fire is moved by their weight, on account of its inseparable connection to them.

     19. – This way of acting and being affected, however – as far as what it isQuoad quid??? I doubt I've got this right. – is likened to the drawing out of forms from matter that is made by a prior influence naturally impressed on the same matter by some agent. For that influence, as it is a kind of action or affection, is not related to a subsequent drawing out of form from matter in the way that the agent's impressing force [influxiva vis] was related to the impression [influxum] of that influence. For that [impressing force] was directly turned toward [8] the subject receiving its impression, and that impression directly spreads and flows from the agent's force. But the drawing out of form from matter does not flow in this way from that influence, nor does the influence direct itself to the subject of the drawing out, so as to impress such a drawing out on it. Rather, that influence is a kind of direction and propulsion or inclination of the same subject or matter to the final terminus of that drawing out. Correspondingly, an arrow propelled by an archer is formally and virtually inclined by that propulsion to the place toward which the local motion following [subsequens] it finally runs, as to its terminus.

     20. – It is important to known, however, that just as in the case of things connected to each other there is sometimes a difference of superiority, in virtue of which one is superior to another, so too is there a difference in the case of movements or affections caused by such a connection. For a movement made in something superior causes a movement in something inferior as if by descending. But something inferior causes a movement in something superior as if by ascending. And so the movement of the superior is not subjected to the movement of the inferior, when caused by it, in the way that the movement of the inferior is subjected to the superior, when caused by it.

     21. – It is also important to know that the mobility of matter for drawing movement out from it=itself?? comes closer to the character of an active [force] than does the mere receptibility of matter for receiving the impression of something influencing it. Also, that mobility for form and movement that is natural to moveable[2] matter comes closer to the character of an active [force] than does the mobility for violent movement and for an artificial form. And so something moveable is said to co-operate more in its own movement, which is natural to it, than in violent movement that is natural to it, since the moveable's natural relation to such movement helps more than a little in its occurring. So too, the moveable co-operates more in any movement, even a violent one, than in receiving an impression flowing from an external agent. For it is better [plus est] that it have in itself such a nature, from which such an action could be [received] in it and drawn out from it, than for [that action] to be able to be merely received in it, not drawn out from it. And hence forms drawn out from matter are preserved in it without the aid of an extrinsic [force] drawing them out. But forms not drawn out from matter and merely [9] received in it are not preserved in it unless through the continually present act of the impressing force. On this account Avicenna says that that which draws out forms from matter is not absolutely the cause of their existence and essence, but only of their being made – that is, only of those [forms] being drawn out from matter.[3] But the impressing force is the cause of the existence and essence of the forms which it impresses. For this reason I said in the question about seminal reasons[4] that because the creator gave to matter such mobility with respect to forms – in order that through the mere impulse of an extrinsic mover these forms can be drawn out from matter – for that reason, I say, he co-created (so to speak) forms of this sort in matter. For as a result of this they exist in matter potently and (so to speak) causally.

     22. – The fourth way is when an agent acts within itself, by directing its active force to an extrinsic object and in so doing also exposing and applying its passive power toward that object, as if it were going to grasp that object within itself. And it is in this way that the immediate principle of an apprehensive or volitional action acts within the soul's power, although this isn't so according to those who claim that the action of cognizing and intellectively apprehending is brought about immediately by the object, so that the cognitive power produces that act neither through itself nor through a habit nor through a species created earlier by the object. Rather, [they say], the cognitive power only receives the act from an object, from which [the act] is impressed on the power – just as the light of the air is impressed on it by the sun's light.

     23. – The impossibility of this position will be revealed more plainly below; for now it suffices to say that however much the cognitive power is informed through a habit and a species differing from the cognitive action, it cannot advance to a cognitive action unless before this it actually tends [intendat] toward the object, so that the attention [aspectus] of its intention [intentionis] should be actually turned and directed toward the object. And so, given that a species preceding the cognitive action is impressed by the object, still beyond this the power must actually tend toward and intellectually attend to [10] the object; for it is impossible that it produce in itself a cognitive act without this.

 

[B. An object of cognition is not properly an efficient cause]

     24. – The second thing that should be noted in advance is that the object, to the extent that it only terminates the cognitive power's attention and its actual cognition, does not absolutely and properly have the character of an efficient cause. For the formal termination of the aforesaid attention is not some essence that is different in reality from the attention itself; and in any case it is not impressed or drawn out by the object, inasmuch as it is only the terminus of that attention and cognitive act. But nevertheless the object can, broadly, be numbered among efficient causes. It can be, first, because the object, insofar as it is such a terminus or terminating thing, doesn't have the nature of an affected thing or a possible or potential being; rather it more has the nature of an act and an actual being. Also, it can be because the active force of a cognitive power necessarily needs such a terminus and its termination so as to produce a cognitive act – as if the aforesaid terminus were to impress something on the cognitive force itself and on its act. Such an effecting, however, is in fact nothing other than the active force's being unable to carry out its act without such a terminus and termination, and its being able to do so with it. Hence the intrinsic and formal termination of the active force is truly the coefficient cause of the force's action, since that force, taken by itself [absolute], is only a sufficient active [force] when it is sufficiently terminated by or in an object.

     25. – But there are three reasons, in addition to the reason noted earlier, which prove that an object does not in this connection strictly have the nature of an efficient cause. First, because God is not the natural and necessary agent of any created effect, nor would it be prudent to affirm this of God; rather, with respect to every created effect God is purely a free and voluntary agent. It is clear, however, [11] that when an intellect of the blessed that is altogether completely and ultimately disposed and informed for producing in itself the act of the vision of God has [its] attention actually turned and fixed and fixedly terminated on God as its object, then the act of vision must naturally and necessarily follow and be brought about – just as when the sun's light is turned toward air that is sufficiently disposed to be illuminated, the action and effect of illumination naturally and necessarily follows. For although God could still prevent the effect, by commanding that it not follow a cause so sufficient, nevertheless if God does not command this then such an effect naturally and necessarily follows such a cause.

     26. – The second reason is that the person of Christ – insofar as he is the suppositum (or substantive terminus) both of the human nature that is substantive in him and of his formal union and coherence by which [that nature] coheres to him as to his own person while he exists in it as in his own person – the very person of Christ, I say, produces nothing in his human nature as a result of this [being such a terminus]. For if as a result of this the person of Christ were to bring something about in his nature, then he would effect something in it which would not be effected by the person of the Father and the Holy Ghost, because neither of these is the personal and substantive terminus of Christ's humanity. Let it not be said, however, that the person of the Son of God should make something that is not made in altogether the same way and altogether equally by the person of the Father and the Holy Ghost.

     27. – The third reason is that no affected thing can receive an action or affection from a created force influencing it, unless the actual attention of the aforesaid force is turned and directed beforehand to the thing affected and is terminated in it. And nevertheless no one will say that the thing affected on this basis alone should strictly be called the efficient of the action or affection that it receives from such a power. And nevertheless according to the various ways in which it terminates the influencing force's attention, [12] so the impression is brought about in it in various ways. Hence the different ways of being terminated co-operate in different ways of acting and being affected.

 

[C. Not all matter can be acted on by outside agents]

     28. – It is thirdly important to note in advance that just as some actions and affections require in advance certain forms and formal dispositions in the thing that is able to receive them (inasmuch as without these forms those actions or affections cannot be brought about or received in it), so too matter is sometimes unable – as the result either of its essence or of its forms – to stand under the action of other agents. This comes from its essence. For spiritual matter is not receptive of corporeal and extended forms, nor is corporeal matter receptive of spiritual forms. It also comes from forms. For the matter of a volitional power, as it is under the form of such a power, is not receptive of the cognitive power's acts and habits, nor vice versa, since volitional habits and acts can be received in the volitional power's matter only if that matter is informed by its spiritual form, through which it is volitional.

     29. – This is also the case with respect to the habits and acts of cognitive powers. For just as the soul can be received in its body's matter only if it has already been put together and organized in the appropriate way, so too the act of seeing cannot be received in a bodily eye without the visual power and the appropriate attention of it toward its object. And the same goes for hearing, with respect to the hearing power, and so too for the others. For just as there is an order of priority and posteriority between matter and form, so too is there between forms. Hence those forms that are naturally last cohere more immediately with middle forms than with remote ones or with first or remote matter, insofar as it is remote. For forms cohere with matter only insofar as they are predisposed by first and intermediate forms. And this is the reason why intermediate forms are said to be material and in a sense the matter of the last forms. Also, on this account last forms are said to be received in intermediate ones [13] as if in their subjects, although strictly they are received only in matter, as it is informed by intermediate forms. Nevertheless if to be received and to receive signify nothing other than the ordered conjunction and coherence of forms through which the earlier coheres to the last as earlier, while the last coheres to the prior as later and as naturally needing the prior, in advance, then in this way the prior is strictly said to receive the last, while the last is strictly said to be received by the prior.

 

[II. Various Views on the Question]

[A. Aristotle’s view]

     30. – So now that we have noted these things in advance, we should say in reply to the question that there are three or even four views with respect to it. First is that of Aristotle and his followers, who say that bodies and corporeal objects act on a spirit formally conjoined to a body not only through the mode of connection [colligantiae] nor only through the mode of an objective terminus, but also through a simple, influencing impression. And they claim that this happens in two ways. First, they claim that bodies make an impression through their own force alone, and in this way (according to them) light impresses its species on the visual power and heat or cold on touch and sound on the auditory power and so on for the other senses, with respect to their proper objects. In the second way (according to them) bodies make an impression through the illumination of the agent intellect's intellectual light. For they say that just as color not illuminated by light cannot impress its species on sight and so cannot be seen by it, while when it is illuminated by light it makes an impression on sight and through the species thus impressed is seen by it, so too corporeal forms or imaginative forms (which they call phantasms) illuminated by the agent intellect's light impress their likenesses on the possible intellect, and through this the possible intellect intellectively cognizes corporeal things. For just as in the eye of a cat or an owl there is a certain corporeal light in addition to the visual power through which the colors of things are illuminated in the dark [14] so that they can impress their species on the animals' eyes and be seen by their visual power, so too (according to them) two powers necessarily exist in the rational soul for the act of understanding. One of these powers is like the light in the eye at night, and they call this the agent intellect. The other is like the visual power of the eye, and they call this the possible intellect, since it is first in potentiality to receive the species of objects, and then once informed by them it produces in itself an act of intellective cognition. (Although in this matter they seem to say things contrary to each other, as will be said below.)

     31. – But the reason why they do not want corporeal forms to be able to impress their species on intellect, unless they are illuminated beforehand by the agent intellect, is that the species of things, inasmuch as they are received in the possible intellect, are (according to them) universal and abstracted from all particular and extended conditions. Hence nor do they, in themselves, represent anything particular or extended or located. Therefore because the forms of bodies are material, extended, and particular, species that are immaterial, simple and universal must be abstracted from them by something immaterial, abstract and universal. And so beyond the possible intellect, which is receptive of these species, one must postulate an agent intellect – i.e., something abstracting these species from extended and particular forms. But in the sensory powers they claim that species are produced by objects only if these species are extended, particular and locally existing in the sensory organs. Hence nor do they claim that first and per se they inform soul's sensory powers, but rather that they inform the whole compound of the power and its organ. And so corporeal objects suffice to generate these species without any intellectual light through which the species would be abstracted from them.

 

[B. A second view]

     32. – The second view[5] differs from the first in claiming that bodies can by [15] themselves impress simple and spiritual species on both sense and intellect, but in such a way that the intellectual simplicity of the subject in which they are produced contributes to [confert ad] their simplicity. For any subject receives according to how it is naturally suited to receive, and not otherwise. And they claim[6] that all of the intellect's species are particular, although some of them do not represent the particular conditions of objects, but only their quiddity abstracted from these conditions and so to that extent taken universally.

 

[C. A third view]

     33. – The third[7] differs from the first two in claiming that not only intellect but also the senses, by illuminating, act on objects and abstract from them species through which they sense those objects. Aristotle does not, to be sure, say this, although he says that the eye sometimes acts on external things, in the way of other luminous bodies, as if he were saying that the eye has in itself a corporeal light through which it can illuminate, as do other luminous bodies. It is one thing, however, to say that the eye's corporeal light illuminates something, and another to say that its spiritual visual power, which is soul's formal power, illuminates its sensible objects and in that way abstracts spiritual or dimensional species from them.

 

[D. Augustine’s view]

     34. – The fourth view is that of blessed Augustine, who says that nothing can be produced in a spirit by a body through a direct impression, but only through the mode of connection and through the mode of an objective terminussee similar phrasing above. For in Book VI of De musica he says clearly that a body does not produce something in a spirit or soul through a direct impression. There, after he has asked whether to hear is the same as for a body to produce something in soul, he adds:

 

     It is always absurd to subject the soul, somehow the matter, to the body, the artisan. But it would be so subjected to a body if the body were to bring about in it some quantities. Therefore it is not the case that, when we hear, quantities are produced in the soul from the things that we have cognition of in sounds [ch.5, n.8].

 

Again, a little later:

 

     Therefore, whatever corporeal things are thrown onto this body or hurled from outside, [16] they bring about something not in the soul but in the body itself [n.9].

 

Again, a little later:

 

     The soul seems to me, when it senses in the body, not to be affected in some way by that [body], but to act more attentively in its affections [n.10].

 

Again, a little later:

 

     When those things are applied, some of which (as I say) affect the body by contrariness, and the soul extends its more attentive actions, adapted for all places and instruments, then this is called to see or hear or smell or taste or to sense by touching. [...] I believe that the soul, when it senses, produces [exhibere] these operations for the bodily affections, and does not receive those same affections [n.10].

 

Again, a little later:

 

     When it is affected in some way by its same operations, it is affected not by a body, but by itself [n.12].

 

Again, in Super Genesim ad litteram Book XII, ch.16, he says:

 

     Because every spirit is, without a doubt, superior to every body, it follows that a spiritual nature is superior to the corporeal heaven itself, not by spatial position, but by dignity of nature – even that [spiritual nature] where we experience the images of corporeal things. Thus it is that the image of a body in a spirit is superior to the body itself in its substance. Nor should it be reasonably believed that a body brings about something in a spirit, as if a spirit were subjected to a producing body in place of matter. Therefore although we first see some body which we have not previously seen, and hence its image, by means of which we remember it when absent, begins to be in our spirit, nevertheless it is not the body in the spirit, but the very spirit in itself which produces, with a marvelous quickness unspeakably remote from the body's slowness, that image of the body [nn.32,33].

Again, a little later he repeats this same view two more times. Also, in chapter 30, he says:

 

     When a body causes visions to be discerned, of the sort belonging to dreams or something similar, the body does not produce them nor does it have the force to form something spiritual, but the soul itself through the spirit either produces [agit] the likenesses of bodies or intuits objects. If [17] it produces them, then they are only fantasies. If however it intuits objects, then they are manifestations – i.e., brought about by good or bad spirits [ch.20] –

as he had said a little before [ch.19]. Again, in De trinitate, Book X, ch.5, he says that "because the soul cannot bring within" those bodies, "as if into the region of an incorporeal nature," it pulls off the images of those things and "seizes things made in its very self from its very self."

     35. – Note however that Augustine held that the soul cannot be subjected to a body's action not only on account of its intellectual form, by which it incomparably surpasses every body, but also on account of its spiritual matter, since he wants it to be superior to every corporeal form. Hence in Book XIII of the Confessions, near the beginning [ch.2], he says: "The unformed spiritual is superior to there being a formed body, while the unformed corporeal is superior to there being nothing at all."

 

[III. Four Theses Supporting Augustine's View]

     36. – Therefore in sustaining this view of Augustine, which great doctors have also followed, four things must be proven and declared in turn. First is that a body in and of itself could not [impress] something directly on a spirit. Second is that nor could it do this through an illumination brought about by some apprehensive power of the soul, and further that nor could it do this on the basis of the affected subject's simplicity and intellectuality. Third is how something could be brought about in the soul by a body via a natural connection. Fourth is how an object, insofar as it is the terminus of the attentions and acts of the soul's power, co-operates in their production and how, on this basis, acts draw a species from objects and are made to differ in genus and species [18] in accord with the different genera and species of objects.

 

[A. Body by itself cannot directly make an impression on spirit]

     37. – So the first (namely, that a body could not of itself impress its species on a spirit) is proven in this way. [1] Because of the superiority with which intellect transcends the imaginative power, and the imaginative power the senses, the imaginative power cannot fix its attention on intellect, as Dionysius says in De divinis nominibus, ch.1 [§1]. But a spirit, at least an angelic and rational one, is more transcendent than any corporeal and extended power. Therefore much less can this latter power fix its attention on a spirit, and especially on the intellective part. But it cannot make an impression on it unless it fixes its attention on it. Therefore it cannot make an impression on it.

     38. – [2] Also, other things being equal, a higher attention is required for impressing than for receiving an impression. But a particular sense cannot, even through a prior reception, elevate and fix its attention on intellect nor even on the imagination. For when it receives something from them, this is not brought about by its elevation and fixation on them. Therefore much less can a corporeal form or power elevate and fix its attention on those things, so that it produces something in them through an impression.

     39. – [3] Also, when a corporeal form (for example, light or heat) directs its virtual attention to a corporeal location and place in which there is some spirit, it is either [i] by the same attention that it attends to and makes an impression on the spirit or [ii] by another – and then, either [iia] another of the same genus and species or [iib] another of a different one. If this occurs [i] in the same way, then it attends to and makes an impression on the spirit just as locally and dimensionally and just as intimately as it would on a corporeal location. Thus it would not impress a simple and spiritual species on a spirit, not even, evidently, one that is numerically different. For it cannot through the same attention impress on the same place two or more species, at least not whole and complete ones. But if it occurs [iia] through another attention of the same species, then still the same absurdity follows, and beyond this another [19] – namely, that with respect to the same place and through the same line and under the same angles more than one attention and act will take place. If, however, it occurs [iib] through another attention of a different genus (i.e., by a simple and spiritual attention), then a still greater absurdity follows – namely, that a corporeal and extended form and force would, toward the same location and through the same lines and angles, have one attention that is simple and spiritual and another that is extended and corporeal.

     40. – [4] Also, a species impressed on a spirit by a body will be either [i] impressed as regards its whole self and as regards all of itself by each one of the parts of the corporeal form impressing it [on a spirit], or [ii] impressed by them all taken at once; or [iii] it will be impressed by one part as regards some of it, and by another as regards some more, and so on in each case. But this is not possible in any of these three ways, as I will prove. Therefore etc.

     41. – [i] It is readily clear that the first way is impossible, because then the whole species would exist as a whole through each one of the parts [of the form impressing it on a spirit], so that the whole, as a whole, would be made many, through many whole causes, and in virtue of the same species of making.

     42. – [ii] The second way is also proven to be impossible. First, because we prove by experience that when one part of an impressing, extended form is removed then one part of the impression itself is taken away, even given that it is made in the same part or in the same point of air. For that ray or impression is taken away that flowed in a straight line from the part removed to that point of air; but the other impressions coming from other parts remain just as before. This would be impossible, however, if one and the same impression, with respect to all of it, came from all the parts taken at once. For then if one part of the impressing form were subtracted the whole impression would fail or the whole would remain; but if the whole were to remain then nothing would have flowed from the part removed.

     43. – Second, because the unity or union of the parts of the form and the extended power is the same as their spatial continuity. Therefore through this unity or continuity they do not rise up to produce something that is one with the unity of spiritual simplicity, but only with the unity of a spatial concurrence and nexus.

     44. – Third, because each part of the impressing form with its own place [20] distinct from or extrinsic to the others has an immediate impression. And, in connection with this, it also has its own attention, through one direct line, toward the thing affected, and another one through another line, and so on in each case. Hence each part impresses its own rays through its own lines drawn forth from it alone as from their base. These [rays], if they run together with others to the same point of the affected subject, proceed and radiate outward through various lines and rays, so that what was on the right side of the first triangle or first pyramid running together to that point is afterwards on the left side of the second pyramid begun at that point. From this it is clear that each part's own impression or ray is distinct in this way through its partial essence from the rays of the other parts – just as one part of the impressing thing is distinct through its partial essence from the thing's other parts.

     45. – Fourth, because an impressed species directly and immediately draws its whole essence from that which properly and immediately makes an impression on it, so that what makes that impression is the foundational [radicalis] and original basis of the impressed species. Therefore if all the parts of what makes the impression, taken at once, directly and immediately impress that whole species, then each, taken with the others, will be the direct and immediate basis of the whole species, and nothing will be in the species which would not basically, directly, and immediately flow and be derived from each part, taken with the others. This is impossible and perhaps in reality the same as to say that the whole would wholly flow from each [part].

     46. – Fifth, because the impressed species represents what makes the impression through that which the species draws from it. But a cognitive species of the parts of a body does not represent as a whole, in virtue of some [part] of itself, each part of the body seen or the sound heard. Rather, if one part of the thing seen were subtracted then one part of the vision and the visual species would be subtracted. Also, just as one part is seen or heard as it is partially distinct from the others and is located in another place, and as it is less than its whole, so a species must represent that part through some [part] of itself, as it is visually and spatially distinct from others, and [21] so on in each individual case. But it is impossible that the individual cases of these be brought about by that [species] through itself entirely or through its whole representative force, taken as a whole. Moreover, in the way that it would flow from all as they are taken only indistinctly, in this way it could represent none as distinct from another.

     47. – [iii] The third way, however, (namely, that it occurs by one part as regards some of it and by another as regards some more) is proven to be impossible. First, because then the species existing in the spirit would have parts, as if made continuous in this way with the parts of the extended form by which they are immediately impressed – just as the parts of an extended species impressed on a body are made continuous with them. From this it follows that the former would be spatial and extended just like the latter – or at least just like those [species] that flow from many parts in each point of air. And if each part of what makes the impression were to make an impression on the spirit perpendicularly, through a perpendicular attention, then the species impressed on it under the same dimensioned attention will be made continuous with its original base.

     48. – Second, because the parts of a species impressed on a spirit in this way cannot have extended continuity or any spatial union with each other, nor by impressing can the extended form impressing those [species] give to them the continuity of a spiritual, non-extended, non-spatial union. Therefore no part of the species will be united with another or made continuous by any union. From this it follows that infinitely many simple and indivisible [parts of the species] exist there, actually distinct. Indeed it also follows that nor are they simple, nor extended, nor indivisible, nor composed of things that are always divisible, in the way that a continuum is.

     49. – [5] Further, in support of the principal thesis:[8] Every impression is related by analogy to that which makes its impression in such a way that its impressed essence is incomparably inferior to the essence making the impression. On this account no substantial form can impress a substantial form, nor can any form that is habitually or fixedly and originally founded in its subject impress another [form] similarly and equally founded in the subject, although through its impressions it could draw out from the subject substantial and habitual forms [22] that are equal to it. This is true to such an extent, however, that even the divine essence cannot impress another essence distinct from itself, without that being infinitely inferior to the divine essence's state of being (entitate). Therefore every species impressed by a body or corporeal form is infinitely inferior to the state of being and to the lofty status of the corporeal form by which it is impressed. Therefore every species impressed on a spirit by a body would be infinitely more common and defective in essence than is the corporeal form itself. One has to assert the opposite of this, because the species of a spirit is living, cognitive and affective, or at least simple and spiritual, and is the informative act of a matter and subject that incomparably transcend every body.

     50. – [6] Also, matter or any sort of passive power that is, by its essence, appropriate only to a form infinitely transcending every body and every corporeal form, is altogether unsubjected and unsubjectable to any action or corporeal force. And this is the case not only because of its loftier form, but also because of its essence. But every passive material power that is simple and spiritual is of this sort. Therefore etc.

     51. – [7] Also, simplicity and spirituality, by their nature, incomparably exceed corporeal extension and quantity. Therefore the essential simplicity and spirituality of the passive power of spirits incomparably exceeds every extension and quantity of anything corporeal. Therefore it is impossible for it to be subject or subjectable to any extended force or its action.

     52. – [8] Also, an impression immediately drawing its whole essence from that which makes the impression is, with respect to the attention by which it quite immediately and closely attends to what makes the impression, no less lofty or vigorous than it is with respect to that in virtue of which it is not so immediately and closely related to that [which makes the impression]. But nothing impressed immediately by a body draws spiritual simplicity and vitality with respect to that attention by which it is joined most immediately to the body that made the impression, or by which it attends most immediately to it as to its origin [radicem] [23] and as to that which originally made the impression. Therefore much less does it have spiritual and vital simplicity with respect to that attention by which, as if receding from what made the impression, it has its terminus and is received in its subject.

     53. – [9] Also, the simplicity, vitality, and spirituality or incorporeality of a species impressed on a spirit is so essential to that species that it does not seem to imply different essences – as if simplicity, incorporeality and vitality were kinds of essences added on top of that species' essence. Therefore, through the same thing through which the essence of the species is impressed, its simplicity, incorporeality and vitality are impressed. It is absurd, however, to say that life is a kind of immediate impression of what is non-living, simplicity an impression of what is extended, incorporeality of what is corporeal, cognitive of what is non-cognitive, and so on for the others.

     54. – [10] Also, on whatever basis sound or heat impresses its species on a spirit, on that same basis local motion and its impulse[9] impose their species on a spirit. Also, on whatever basis they make an impression on the spirit's cognitive powers, on that same basis they make an impression on its substance, as it is moveable to various locations, and even to a greater degree, to the extent that the spirit's ability to move to various locations is inferior to the moveability of its powers with respect to cognitive and affective acts. Therefore a separate spirit existing in a vessel [vase] or in some corporeal location could through the impulse of some body be violently pushed and expelled from that location to another. This, among the learned, is utterly absurd.

     55. – [11] Also, when the subject of some impression is of itself able to be moved toward some terminus toward which the impression inclines [it], then that terminus is naturally suited to be drawn out of the subject through such an impression – unless the impression is too weak in its species. But cognitive and volitional powers are able to be moved toward some habits, toward which cognitive and affective acts and impressions incline and (considered in themselves) push. Therefore those [acts and impressions] could have brought forth these sorts of habits from the powers that are the subject. Therefore if [24] impressions of this sort are impressed by a body, it follows that that body could through its impressions bring forth, both in a spirit and from a spirit, habits of cognition, volition, opinion, and belief – both true and false ones. It also follows that through contrary impressions they would corrupt earlier habits and draw out contrary habits. No one of sane mind will grant this.

     56. – [12] Also, a species through which a cognition is formally brought about represents an object so that, insofar as it represents it in this way, it stands more as that which expresses than as that which is expressed. But, to the contrary, every impressed likeness, insofar as it is such, is a kind of expression flowing from that which impresses it, through which it does not entirely express itself as it is, but rather quite defectively – in the way, that is, in which something principal is represented in its analogue. Hence seeing a ray of the sun impressed on the ground or air is very different from seeing the sun by fixing one's sight on the sun itself. Therefore the cognitive species through which the object is expressed and cognized is not impressed by the object, insofar as it is the object.

     57. – [13] Also, the impression brought about by a body on a spirit is either [i] a cognitive action or [ii] the effective principle of such an action, or [iii] an action that excites the power to a cognitive act. But [i] the first option, namely that it itself is a cognitive action, cannot be put forward. First, because seeing means actively to see, rather than passively to be seen. Second, because we expressly sense that our acts of seeing or cognizing go forth or are produced by our innermost parts, and this in the innermost way. Third, because in order to bring about and receive in us such an action from an object the virtual attention of our active force and our actual intention actually tending toward the object would not need to be directed. Instead, it would suffice for its merely passive power, insofar as it is passive and material, to assist the object making an impression on it. The contrary of this we continually experience in ourselves. Fourth, because nothing in its ultimate and actual nature has the nature of a cognitive and vital act in the way that [25] a cognitive act does. Therefore its effective principle ought to be the thing most outstanding within the genus of cognitive and vital principles. Fifth, because the immediate impression and the passive power within which it is impressed are intimately, potently and predominantly attained by that which immediately makes the impression. It is plain, however, that cognitive and appetitive acts occur in the innermost part of the cognitive and appetitive power's inner faculties [viscerum]. Therefore, if they are an impression made by a corporeal force, then that corporeal force potently and predominantly attains the heart of the soul's or spirit's powers. This is utterly absurd. Sixth, because then a body acting on and impressing cognitive acts, rather than its being cognized by the subject of those acts, through them, would instead itself cognize through those subjects or through the termini that are the subjects of their very acts. Seventh, because according to this the action of a higher power – for example, an intellective one – would have an impression made on it by the act of a lower power, since external objects enter higher powers and their acts only through the intermediate acts of lower powers. It is absurd, however, to say that the act of touching or sensing impresses on intellect an act of intellective cognition, or that the act of intellective cognition imposes on the will an act of willing.

     58. – [ii] The second option as well – namely that an impression sent from a body into a spirit is the effective principle of an act of cognizing – cannot stand, not only because of all the reasons set out earlier, but also because the spiritual, internal and immediate principle of an act of cognizing must, with respect to the foundational [radicalem] and principal existence of cognitive and vital things, be higher and more vital, foundational, and intimate to the spirit than is the act of cognizing itself. For just as that act exceeds its internal principle with respect to the ultimate nature of actual knowledge [notitiae], so the principle exceeds its act with respect to the foundational nature of being and with respect to the causal power of being a principle. Therefore it is no less impossible for the internal and immediate principle of the act of cognizing to be impressed by a body or by some bodily power than for the act itself of cognizing to be impressed immediately by a corporeal power.

     59. – [26] [iii] The third option as well – namely, that an impression sent from a body into a spirit is[10] an action that excites the cognitive power to a cognitive act or to its turning itself to the object and tending toward it – cannot be maintained. First, because either the soul notices that excitation or exciting action or it does not. If it does not, then it does not seem that through it the soul would be excited or would awake to the act of cognizing or to turning itself to act. If it does, then the power was already turned and attentive to sensing that excitation. Also, according to this, that excitation would be a kind of object of the cognitive power, nor would it excite the power unless as a result of being cognized by it. Second, because the cognitive power cannot move and turn itself to its objects nor to its cognitive acts, because it belongs to the will's power alone to move itself and other powers. But if the action impressed by the body were to turn the powers and move them toward their objects, then it would not only have an excessively great command over the powers of spirits, but also it would further follow that corporeal objects would act on the powers before the powers were turned toward them. The contrary of this is broadly held. Third, because an exciting impression of this sort could be no other than a kind of likeness of that which makes the impression. But the likenesses of things existing in the cognitive powers are either cognitive acts, the sources of such acts, or memory species, which take the place of an object. These co-operate with the act of cognition only when the cognitive power is actually turned to them and attends and tends toward them.

     60. – But perhaps you will object that someone sleeping is awakened from sleep by a strong impression or sound, and that therefore that impression or sound removed the unconsciousness [consopitionem] of the power and the aversion of its attention, made the sensory power alert, and turned its attention to itself. In reply to this one should say that the attentions of the sensory powers are not so totally unconscious nor retracted inward by sleep as to be unable, when some object is vehemently pressing upon and offering itself to the senses, [27] necessarily to notice it, sense it, and, through the object's terminative force, to form in itself a passive sense in such a way that, through its vehemence, the power's entire unconsciousness would be expelled and the power would be called back to an alert state and attention. But notice – so that you do not believe that any greater difficultyThere's a hoc here I can't fit in -- unless it's an ablative. is inherent in this position than in its contrary – that an affection brought about in a sense by an impression or sound could hardly be sensed (and, through that sensing, noticed) unless the power's attention was naturally turned to the affection beforehand. Also, an affection cannot be impressed on the soul's powers unless the power has been made open [patula], through a prior attention, to its acting and its impression.

 

[B. Nor through agent intellect]

     61. – After these, then, the second principal thesis must be proven: namely, that a body cannot make an impression on a spirit through the illumination of agent intellect or of another cognitive power. [1] For that illumination exists formally either in the intellective power alone or in its corporeal forms, in the way in which light from the sun that is impressed on the air exists formally in the air rather than in the sun. If, however, it exists only in the illuminating power, then corporeal powers are not by this rendered more actual and potent for impressing on the power intellectual or cognitive species higher than the corporeal forms themselves – just as nor is color that is not formally illuminated by a light rendered more actual by this for impressing its species on the eye or in the air. But if this illumination exists formally in illuminated forms and in their matter, then it will be extended, just as the forms themselves, or it would have been whole in each of their parts, as the soul is in each part of a body. This should not be proposed. Further, in whatever way it were to exist there, it would have to be proportionate to the receptiveness of its subject, and consequently be just as inferior there to the forms existing in the intellective power as its matter would be inferior to the matter or material receptiveness of the intellective power.

     62. – [2] Also, species impressed by [28] forms illuminated in this way are more immediately impressed either by the illuminated forms or by an illumination adjoined to them. But if by the forms themselves, then they would not transcend the nature of the forms being impressed, but would rather be analogously deficient from the being [entitate] of the forms. But if they were to flow from the illumination itself, then these species would be representative of the illumination rather than of those forms.

     63. – [3] Also, just as light and color differ, so the species or likeness of light differs from the species of color. Therefore illuminated light itself impresses one species, and another form subjected to this illumination impresses another, and the things impressed differ only as far as do the things impressing them.

     64. – [4] Also, species will be generated from forms illuminated in this way either [a] as from the matter out of which they will be made, or else [b] only as from an efficient cause. If [a] as from matter, then since all matter out of which something is generated remains in the thing generated and is part of the matter and constitutive of the thing generated, and since the thing generated is drawn out from it through a kind of transmutation and movement and nothing else, in such a way that such matter would have to lose its prior form and acquire another new one, and the thing generated would have to be composed out of that matter and this new form, therefore the forms from which the species would be produced would have to be a material and integral part of the species generated, and the same would hold for the other conditions just mentioned. All of these results are far too absurd. But if [b] species were produced solely from these [illuminated forms] as from an efficient cause, then at least the species generated by them would not be higher or more intellectual or more universal than would be the illuminated forms themselves, insofar as they are illuminated and insofar as they are capable of producing and impressing species of this sort. But corporeal forms illuminated in this way did not lose their extension or corporeality, nor their prior specific nature, nor their corporeal matter in which they earlier existed. Therefore etc.

     65. – [5] Also, every action of a cognitive power which is not a cognition is incomparably inferior to every action which [29] is itself a cognition. But the illumination preceding an act of cognition is not itself a cognition. Therefore it is incomparably inferior to that. From this it follows that the intellect carrying out this illumination, insofar as it is such, is inferior to the possible intellect, insofar as it is actually cognizing. It follows as well that a cognitive action and its immediate cause are far higher than every such illumination.

     66. – Note also that these five arguments just set out prove equally well, and in a similar fashion, that the species associated with imagination,[11] as illuminated by agent intellect, do not impress on intellect species that are intellectual, intellective, and particular. And these arguments prove much more that they do not impress universals – although it was abundantly proven beyond this elsewhere [q.34] that it is impossible for there to be any universal species, and that, assuming that there were, their subject would have to be no less universal than them. The Catholic faith, however, and its sane and correct understanding, abhors real universality in anything created. But it will be demonstrated below how one need not, on account of the act of intellectively cognizing universals or particulars, posit an intellect illuminating forms that are corporeal or associated with imagination.

     67. – It is easy to prove, however, that, on account of the subject's simplicity and spirituality, a body cannot impress on a spirit a simple, intellectual, living, spiritual, and cognitive species. For it is clear that a subject, inasmuch as it is a subject or inasmuch as it is receiving, is not an agent, and especially, inasmuch as it is receiving, is not the agent of that which it receives.

     68. – Also, it is clear that an agent, inasmuch as it is an agent, receives nothing formal or active from what it affects, inasmuch as it is such. Therefore a body, inasmuch as it is pressing [fluens] a species on a spirit, receives or acquires no active force of simplicity and spirituality from the spirit, inasmuch as the latter is only an affected thing that [30] receives a species impressed by a body.

     69. – Also, the simplicity and spirituality of a species is brought about by some agent. Therefore either the species or the body needs these things, and whichever needs them, it needs [to acquire] them either by impressing them or by drawing them from some matter. But given either of these, it is impossible that they should be produced by the simplicity of their subject, inasmuch as it is the subject.

     70. – Also, the simplicity and intellectuality of a species either does or does not add something distinct in reality [realiter] from the species' essence. If it does not, then that which impresses the essence of the species impresses its simplicity and intellectuality, by the very thing by which it impresses the essence. And, vice versa, that which impresses its simplicity eo ipso impresses its essence. If it does add something, then many absurdities follow, since the simplicity will be a kind of simple essence and will be a kind of likeness of what impresses it. Also, the very essence of the species, if it does not have extended or spatial parts, is of itself simple without something else added to it. If, however, it does have such parts, then it will not be able to take on spiritual simplicity. Also, because the spiritual is general and is the general character for all spiritual things, just as the corporeal is for all corporeal things (and the same holds for the simple with respect to all simple things and for the composite with respect to all composite things), it is clear that it is thus absurd to say that spirituality and simplicity are accidental or essences added onto spiritual and simple things themselves – just as it is absurd to say that corporeality is accidental or added onto bodies themselves or that composition is added onto the whole composite itself. Also, because essentially living forms are formally and essentially a kind of life, it is absurd to say that the nature of living or life is accidental to them or that it is another essence added onto them.

 

[C. By natural connection]

     71. – So after this the third principal thesis must be set forth: how, that is, via natural connection something can be brought about by a body in [31] a soul. Strictly, there are four ways in which this is brought about: first, with respect to manner of existence; second, with respect to a habit or with respect to a manner of being habituated [modum se habendi]; third, with respect to the actual attention of the powers toward the objects; fourth, with respect to local change or movement.

     72. – In addition to this, however, there is a fifth way in the case of souls taken [eductarum] or able to be taken out of corporeal matter. For because corporeal matter is moveable by some corporeal force so as to take a soul's form out of it, for that reason the taking of the soul itself is able to be caused by the motive force just mentioned, which belongs to its matter. But this should not be proposed in the case of something having in itself matter and spiritual subsistence and which cannot be corrupted or generated by any created cause. This fifth way is not applicable to this question, however, because here we are inquiring into actions and affections received and produced in a soul as in a subject. But the soul's generation and corruption is not in the soul as in a subject, but only as in a terminus, although it is in its corporeal matter as in a subject.

     73. – So [a natural connection] occurs first with respect to manner of existence. For instance, when the human body's proper harmony is corrupted then the union of soul with body is dissolved, and as a result of this the soul has a separated manner of existence. [A natural connection] also occurs when in a body better or worse disposed the soul exists in a better or worse way (or in a stronger or weaker way). It also occurs when the soul has a more limited manner of existence in an infant body, while in a virile and perfect body it has a more expansive manner of existence.

     74. – In the second way [a natural connection] comes about with respect to a habit – as when the original and habitual corruption of concupiscence is caused by the body's original and corrupt disposition. For the habitual corruption just mentioned is not an action or act of concupiscence, since it exists only when we actually apprehend a concupiscible object. [32] Nor need some corrupt act necessarily and naturally be drawn from the soul's power when there is no distorted, corrupt habit. For otherwise the corruptness of that act would be turned back to the founder of that very soul's nature, and it could be said that the nature of its essence was essentially corrupt and essentially determined and necessitated to produce a corrupt act. Also, the corrupt habit under discussion is not made by the soul, since it does not cause in itself an unnatural habit unless through some action that is intermediate and different from the habit made by it, nor does it cause in itself a corrupt habit unless through a corrupt action. This [action], if it is not free or freely made, proceeds from another corrupt habit, as was said a little earlier. Further, in this way a habitual affection [affectio] of our taste to this or that flavor or food is brought about, caused by a varying complexion or disposition of the body. And hence this is often changed or varied with the body's varying disposition, so that according to one disposition something tastes good, while according to another it tastes bad. For sometimes we are so disposed and affected that sweet things taste bad to us and bitter or sour things taste good. Also, on account of varying dispositions of the brain and hearing, certain kinds of singing that sound good to some habitually sound bad to others, on account of a contrary disposition. And the same is the case for smells, and for things that can be seen and touched.

     75. – [A natural connection] is brought about in the third way with respect to a power's actual attentions, and this in two ways (as is explained at more length in a question on how the use of free choice is impeded[12]). In one way it is brought about with respect to a particular and determinate attention to this or that object – as when someone with his hand directs[13] his or my eye to this book. For with that, the visual power is turned to the book, and with that an attention to the book is given to it. A general and indeterminate attention, however, is given to the alert when they are awakened from sleep,[14] an attention that is taken from them by sleep.

     76. – [33] The fourth way is with respect to local movement. For when someone moves my body from one location to another, as a result my soul is moved with its body from location to location. For it cannot be said that the soul is then moved like that per accidens, as a song is seen per accidens when the person singing, inasmuch as he has color, is seen. For the vision in no way reaches the song itself, but only its subject. But when the soul changes location along with the body, then that change truly is in the soul, and is brought about in the soul by the body's local motion through solely the natural connection of the soul with the body. And this happens likewise when with the extension and expansion or rarefaction of corporeal matter its form – e.g., heat, light, smell, taste, etc. – is expanded or extended.

     77. – Some, however, add another way – namely, when the action of one power follows the action of another: for example, when an act of seeing is followed by an act of judging in the common sense, and by an act of cognizing or observing [advertendi] in intellect, or when the enjoyment of a lower appetite is followed by enjoyment in a higher. But, according to others, the action of one power is never immediately caused by another, since then it would not be an action but only an affection [passio] or motion on that part of that power in which it was brought about by another power and by its action. It's in this connection that the turning of sight and intellect to their objects is brought about by the will and its willing. For sight's turning is not its action, but only an affection or passive motion. Therefore it ought rather to be said that the act of a higher power follows the act of a lower as its object, so that the higher act is caused by the lower as by an object terminating a higher act and the first attention of a higher power. But still the natural connection of the powers is the cause of why the lower power's act is the terminal and connatural object [34] of the higher.

     78. – It could also be said beyond this that a certain attractive affection caused by the lower power's act precedes the higher power's action. But when the lower is moved by the higher, then a certain forceful [impulsiva] affection and influence made by the higher power's act naturally goes before the lower's action. And indeed this second [act] must be posited in the lower power, since it does not have the higher's act for an object. But in the higher power that need not always be supposed in this way, since it could have been brought about in the other way proposed earlier. Or, on behalf of the earlier way, it can be said that just as the sharpness of a sword is the result of the back and forth movement given to its matter, so – since the matter of the soul's powers is all the same – the action of one is like a kind of motion on the part of its matter and common to each power, through which another power is, as it were, joined to its act. For these sorts of reciprocal motions on the part of powers are possible in actions and objects connected to one other. And in view of this perhaps the first [explanation] speaks the truth.

     79. – Further, it should be known that the thing affected itself co-operates with the agent through a connection, not only in the manner of something receptive, nor only in the manner of something moveable, but also through its formal inclination and union to that to which it is connected. This inclination is equivalent to an impulse or impression made in what is moveable by what produces the movement. For on this account the movement in that other part is brought about only on the impulse and movement of the thing connected to it, without any other impulse and impression being given to it.

     80. – It should further be known that the connection of a spirit to a body on account of which the movement or disposition of one overflows to another consists principally in the formal union [a] of the spirit to the body as to its matter and [b] of the body to the spirit as to its form. Only the creator can give this union to a rational spirit. But secondarily this connection consists in many powers of the soul running together in the same spiritual matter of the soul itself. In both cases, however, the identity [35] of matter is the cause of why some effect in the soul should follow an influence directly made in the body, as if the first influence made in the body were some kind of motion on the part of soul itself. For it is a motion of the soul to the extent that it is a motion of its corporeal matter.

     81. – But if you were to object, just as it was objected earlier against an impression, that either the whole motion of the soul is caused by each part of the corporeal motion or by none, or else one of its parts is caused by one and another by another, it should be said that that manner of arguing properly has its place in the case of impressions, since they flow directly from the essence of the form making the impression. And so it must be the case that what immediately flows from one part of what makes the impression would not flow immediately from another. But in the case of things that are taken out of the subject's capacity for movement through a first impulse, it need not be the case that from one part of the impulse one part of the taking out is made, and from another another. Instead, sometimes when many impulses are impressed on a ship by many men then the result is that one single movement on the part of the whole ship occurs, so that each man co-operates in the whole movement of the ship. In this way no man is the whole cause of that motion, but rather everyone is, taken together. For the movement following a single impetus does not follow that one, nor any other – save insofar as the one that it follows is intense and great to a certain degree.

 

[D. How the object co-operates]

     82. – Now concerning the fourth principal thesis – namely, how an object, insofar as it terminates the attentions and acts of powers, co-operates in their specific production – it is important to know that the object, insofar as it is such a terminus, has the nature of a terminus that is fixive, penetrative [illapsivi], presentative, signative or configurative, and representative or cognitive. For a cognitive act and attention is fixed on an object and intentionally has it absorbed [imbibitum] within itself. On this account a cognitive act is called an apprehension of and apprehensive extension [tentio] toward the object. Through this extension and absorption the act is intimately conformed and configured to the object. Also, the object itself presents or exhibits itself as present to [36] the cognitive attention, and through an act configured to it there occurs a kind of representation of it. For just as the actual illumination of a spherical or square vessel is made spherical or square by the mere fact that light generates it in conformity to the shape of what receives and contains it, so, since a cognitive force generates a cognitive act with a certain informative absorption of the act to the object, and with a certain ensigned and visceral extension toward the object, thus because it is produced in this way it is made the very likeness and ensigned expression of the object.

     83. – And it is as a result of this that the simple essence of a cognitive act has in itself two lofty characteristics [rationes]. The first of these is, so to speak, fundamental to the second, while the second is, so to speak, the differential determination of the first. For because the cognitive action comes from the cognitive principle's spiritual light, it belongs to the action to be a kind of light and, so to speak, a kind of ray analogously similar to the principle from which it flows. But from the fact that it is of such an object, or that it is fixed on and has such an object as a terminus, it belongs to the action to be its expressive vision or cognition, and its most similar image. And this characteristic is related to the first just as the articulation of a word is related to its general characteristic, by which it is a sound.

     84. – But if the object were to impress this second characteristic, and if the cognitive force (whatever that may be) were to impress the first, then there would necessarily be two distinct essences, belonging to distinct genera and species. There would also be two actions, produced by two principles belonging to distinct genera. Also, when the cognitive force sees itself, then this dual impressing and action would come from it: for the first would come from it insofar as it is seeing, and the second would come from it insofar as it is seen. Supposing, therefore, that these two characteristics are not two really distinct essences, but only one, then both are brought about by a cognitive force as if by an agent, and again both are brought about by an object as if by what terminates [the act]. For the first characteristic of this act under discussion is no more able than the second to be brought about without an object. But the cause that serves as object can, properly speaking, be put in the genus of final cause. Or, if you wish to call it by its [even] more proper name, it would be called a terminative cause. For just as a material cause [37] truly has the character of a cause with respect to what is taken out of it or received in it, although it is not properly its efficient cause, so a terminative cause truly has the character of a cause, although it is not properly the efficient cause of the action terminated in it.

     85. – It should further be known that because the cognitive act of an individual object is terminated at it, insofar as it is this individual and not another, so it is of the essence of such an act that it be the proper likeness of this individual insofar as it is of this one, and that it is not the likeness of other individuals of the same species, insofar as they individually differ from it. Therefore this act represents the individual character and proper quality [proprietatem] of its object not because it exists in corporeal matter or because it flows from a corporeal form limited to here and now, as the Aristotelians say, but rather because it is terminated at the individual object, insofar as it is individual, and this in the way just discussed. But the memory species left by such an act has this [determination to an individual] as a result of the act itself by which it has been caused and which it expresses, inasmuch as that act is or was terminated in such an object. For I ask the above [Aristotelians] whether a species impressed on the eye by this or that body or stone could be preserved in the eye by the divine power, when that stone is destroyed or absent. And certainly they will say yes, if they are Catholic and faithful to God. And when this is granted, I ask whether that species will represent only that stone and its individual proper qualities, wherever the eye is led. If they say yes, then that species still has in itself some character and appropriation through which it represents that individual and not another. And no other reason for this can be given but that its representation is essentially related to that stone as to its proper object, present or absent, although that by which it is related [to it] as present [38] greatly differs from that by which it is related [to it] as absent – as the following questions will take up.

     86. – It should be known beyond this that because the dual causes mentioned earlier concur in a cognitive act, for that reason we sense via experience two natures in that act, as if these natures were opposed. For to the extent that the act goes out from an internal cognitive principle, we sense that it is our action, and is a kind of acting of ours going out from us and, as it were, extending to the object and tending [intendens] toward it. But to the extent that it is brought about by an object as by something terminating, it seems to us to be as if a kind of affection, poured [illapsa] into us by an object and with that object, as if the object itself were impressed and poured into the innermost part of our power. And it is on the basis of this second experience that almost everyone was moved who said that cognitive and even affective acts are impressed and imposed by their immediate objects – not paying attention to the first experience with its fundamental characteristics (touched on earlier and to be touched on more fully in the following questions), nor paying attention to how each experience can be preserved and verified through the concurrence of the dual causes and the causality already mentioned.

     87. – On this basis the falsity is clear of one particular argument that Aristotle gives in II De anima [417a7 ff.], where he says that [i] when an agent that is sufficiently actual to act and an affected thing that is sufficiently disposed for being affected are present to one other, action always and necessarily follows (for instance, when something that produces combustion and something combustible are present to one other, combustion always takes place); but [ii] if a cognitive action is not [brought about] by an object nor by something impressed by that object, but is [brought about] by the cognizer alone, then the agent and the recipient of the act of cognizing are always present to one other, since that action is brought about and received in the cognizer itself; therefore [iii] every cognition of any object will always exist in actuality in the one cognizing.

     88. – The [i] major and [ii] minor of this argument are false or ambiguous, and so their ambiguity should be distinguished. For if under the term ‘agent’ its attention to the object is not included, [39] nor is its being terminated by the object or in the object,Something seems wrong with the text here: `et terminati ab obiecto seu in obiecto'. then the major and minor are false. For although a cognition does not come from an object as from its agent taken strictly, it does nevertheless come from it as the terminative cause of the active attention and its act. And so to that extent a cognition comes from the object as from its agent taken broadly, and so the object's presence is needed there, and in addition the attention's fixation on it. And, in addition to this, with respect to free acts, the premises are false, as has been shown sufficiently in the question on free choice [q.58]. Nor is this like the case of what produces combustion and what is combustible: for one, because no object other than the combustible is needed there; also, because the attention of what produces combustion toward the combustible is neither varied nor lacking when they are present to one another, in the way that when a power and object are present to one another the cognitive power is able not to have its attention fixed on the object; also, because what produces combustion is not free, nor is combustion a free action, in the way that the action of a free will is free.

 

[Solution to the Objections]

     89. – From the things that have been stated the resolution to the objections is clear. In reply to the first it should be said that although everything passive is inferior to everything active, based on the character (ex ratione) of its first genus, nevertheless this is not so based on the character of its species. For this reason, although spiritual matter is inferior to every form and to everything active with respect to the general character of matter or of what can be affected,[15] still it is not inferior as regards its specific character, by which it is spiritual and simple. Moreover: matter, as it is informed and elevated by an exceedingly powerful form, is higher than many forms. Also, a cognitive power cannot be made like a corporeal form through any corporeal likeness impressed by that form, but only through its own acts, or else through species caused by acts of that sort or given by God.

     90. – [40] In reply to the second it should be said that the first [premise] is false, unless ‘agent’ is taken broadly for what co-operates in the manner of something terminating [the action]. In this way it is taken strictly for agents whose presence is needed for the production of a cognitive act no less than is the presence of the act's own efficient cause.

     91. – But to that which is added about the specific diversity of acts following the specific diversity of objects, the reply is clear on the basis of what has been said. For just as [actions] are caused by an object as by their terminus terminating them, so they draw from it a species that conforms to the object, and in this way they draw different species from different objects. But since the formal and intrinsic character of that act, by which it is formally terminated in such an object, effectively comes from the cognitive agent itself, as an impression – in the same way that, as a terminus, it exists in that object and comes from that object – so too that very thing that the act draws from the object as a terminus it draws effectively and as an impression from the cognitive agent itself.

     92. – But when it is said that the impressions of different species cannot be produced by the impressing of one species alone, it should be said that this is not true when different objective termini, in different terminative ways, co-operate in that impressing. Nor, beyond this, is it true unconditionally when that impressing can make an impression on different subjects that have different ways of being affected and of receiving its impressions. For this reason the impetus by which an angel pushes itself to a location differs in species from that by which it pushes a body. And it is perhaps for this reason that the rainbow's colors belong to different species. For when a ray of the sun is split up and received in different ways in the various parts of a cloud (or its moist precipitation), this is the cause of why the ray belongs to different species in different subjects, either in reality or apparently (i.e., either their its own right or relative to our observation). For sometimes the real diversity of species or colors is not in the light seen by us, but only relative to our sight. For in reality this variety occurs in our act of seeing. This is clear when the same light of a lamp at times looks to us as if it were dark or obscure smoke, while sometimes it looks as if it were green, sometimes red, sometimes yellow or gold, and sometimes just a bright flame.

     93. – [41] Also, in reply to what is alleged concerning the contrariety of acts, it should be said that cognitions that are brought to bear on contrary objects are not always contrary even though they are specifically different. Rather, the apprehension of one contrary includes in itself, in a sense (quasi), the apprehension of the other. But when cognitions are brought to bear on contrary objects or on the same object in contrary ways, then they are contraries – for example, when the same thing in the same respect and for the same time is believed to be white and black, or is believed to exist and not to exist. In this way, however, one of the contrary acts is false and erroneous, and solely by reason of its falsity is contrary to the true act. Its falsity, however, sometimes rises from a deformed emotion [affectus] distorting or misleadingly twisting intellect and its judgment, and sometimes from the defect of an intellect unable to discern the object's truth. It is not, however, impossible or absurd for a power that is free or freely moveable by a free power to be able to be moved to the same object in different and contrary ways, or else sometimes, as a result of either its natural defect or the defect of things concurring and co-operating in its act, to act defectively and so to bring about a defective act opposed to a complete [perfecto] act.

     94. – To the third it should be said that an action brought about within an agent can afflict that agent as a result of four kinds of causes. First, because it is brought about by the agent itself in a way that is defective, as well as unnatural and inappropriate for the agent. This happens whether the defective way of acting comes from a defect of the agent or from something else often concurring in the production of its act. For an active power often, for its part, needs the right disposition [habitu] and attention and, if it is organic, needs the proper condition [dispositione] of the organ. It also needs many other aids, a defect or disturbance to which makes an act defective, disturbed and, consequently, disturbing of that in which it is received.

     95. – The second kind of cause occurs as the result of the disproportionality of the object terminating and, in the way mentioned earlier, pouring (as it were) [42] into that agent or cognizer. For as a result of this a certain disproportionality in that act follows, through which [the act] is sometimes so disproportionate to the agent itself that it perturbs and dissipates its calm and proportional state [statum]. (Here I call a state a certain accidental mode of existing and of attending and of being disposed, which sometimes is complete and at rest and sometimes incomplete and disquieted.)

     96. – The third kind of cause occurs as the result of an action hurting through its excess or disturbance the material and corruptible organ belonging to the agent's own power. From this there results in the power an improper manner of existing and of being disposed in that organ and consequently an improper manner of further acting.

     97. – The fourth kind of cause is the repugnance of the object to some natural or unnatural affection [affectionem] of the agent, on which account that affection cannot harmoniously and peacefully adhere to the object; rather, it flees and recoils from it in horror and, since it cannot at will repel it from itself, it is through a strong discontent saddened or in pain. As regards this way, however, I dealt with it more fully in the question on the punitive torture of damned spirits by the fire of hell. For without this fourth way the three first ways perhaps do not suffice to cause sadness or pain, as was shown in more detail there. If nevertheless they do suffice without this fourth one, that is fine with me, since it is not contrary to the view that we sustain here. In the aforesaid ways, however, an action does not afflict the agent insofar as it is an action, but insofar as it is an affection [passio] or is introducing an affection, or insofar as it is defective and badly ordered or disproportional, or insofar as it exhibits, represents, and terminatively impresses and imbeds a displeasing object in a natural or unnatural affection [affectioni]. But although an agent, insofar as it is an agent, is inclined to its own action as to something suitable to it, it is nonetheless not inclined insofar as [43] it defectively or disproportionately acts and brings about a disproportionate action.

     98. – The reply to the fourth is clear from what was said earlier. For the sense of that experience does not come from the fact that the object, as an impression, brings about the cognitive act, but from the fact that it is terminated in it in the manner of something terminating and, as it were, pouring out.

     99. – In reply to the fifth it should be said that a greater object is more easily heard, seen, or sensed because it has a greater force terminating the cognitive attention and act, and because, insofar as it is more active and thriving in its own right, so it more vehemently and actively offers itself to that attention and act. Also, since our senses have a slight attention with respect to a slight object, and with respect to a greater and equally near object they have a more extensive one, the act of sensing elicited from such a more extensive attention is thus virtually greater, more extensive and consequently more evident to the one sensing. And for that reason [this act] sometimes fills, as it were, the entire capacity of the sensory power, and sometimes it nearly exceeds it. Also, it is not always true that a greater object is more easily seen than is a lesser one, but only when the greater, in all its circumstances, is situated [se habet] more proportionally and actively than is the lesser object relative to such a cognitive power and its attention and act. Otherwise our intellect would more easily see God or angels than these lower things, and our eyes could more easily see a glorified body, or the highest heaven, or the entire earth, than a single fire or piece of fruit that is near it.

     100. – In addition, the proof of the minor added on there is wrong in two ways. First, because the object is not related as the moveable to the active force of cognizing or to its act, and thus groundlessly and falsely is the greater object taken there for the greater moveable, and the lesser for the lesser. Hence it ought rather to be said that just as one casting an arrow at a slight mark [44] and terminus does not so easily hit it as one casting it at a great and lofty mark and terminus, so too one casting one's visual and auditory attention to a great and highly visible object more easily and unchangeably sees or hears it than something less grand and visible. It is wrong secondly, because it is not unconditionally and absolutely always true that a greater or equal power always moves more easily any lesser moveable object, since we grasp and take in hand with more difficulty an imperceptible and untouchable atom than a single piece of fruit. Therefore this claim should be understood [to be true] when the motive power is greater or more potent with respect to moving more easily the lesser moveable object. In this way the greatness of the motive power would always imply a greater dominance over the moveable object and its movement.

     101. – The reply to the sixth is clear from claims made earlier. For it is one thing for the active power's attention to be inclined to what is under it and under its capability, in a way that is not repugnant to its nature. It is another for it to be elevated above its capability, in a way that is repugnant to its nature. But when a spirit pushes a body, then the spirit is inclined to what is inferior to it, and is inclined by an attention that is simple, spiritual, and consequently also conformed to the nature of that spirit. If, however, a body were to make an impression on a spirit, then it would be elevated above its powers, and this would happen through a visual attention that is repugnant to its corporeal nature. Also, as was said earlier, it is not contrary to the nature of an impression for it to be analogously deficient compared to what makes its impression; but it is contrary to its nature for it to transcend what makes its impression.

     102. – In reply to the seventh it should be said that every body agrees with every other body in extension and spatial position of parts, insofar as it is of itself divisible, and also in extensional and spatial attention. For all things act under such an attention and otherwise cannot act. They also agree in the specific quiddity of matter and so, as far as the matter is concerned, [45] they are interchangeable with one other. Hence Augustine, in Super Genesim ad litteram Book VII [ch.12], says that it is of course not incredible that every body can be changed into every other body, but it is absurd to say that every body can be changed into a soul. And so it is not correct that if the body of a lowlier form can act on the body of a loftier form, then it could likewise act on a spirit. Moreover, to argue like this – ‘one sort of superiority does not remove the possibility of being affected by something inferior; therefore no superiority removes this possibility’ – is to argue through a fallacy of the consequent.[16]

     103. – In reply to the eighth it should be said that original sin is passed on by affecting – not through an impression, certainly, but in the manner of a natural connection, as was shown earlier [Ά74].

     104. – Through this the reply to the ninth is clear.

     105. – In reply to the tenth it should be said that the thing generating the sensory soul of non-rational animals can [act] on its power in the same way that it can [act] on its substance – namely, by drawing both from matter. But it does not follow from this that just as it can draw both from corporeal matter, so it could directly make an impression on both after they have been drawn out. The reason for this is that it draw them both out by making an impression only on corporeal matter, which it does through a corporeal impression and attention. But it could not directly make an impression on a power of soul that has already been drawn out – except through a spiritual impression and attention. This would not be immediately directed and inclined toward corporeal matter, but first and foremost [prius et potius] toward the soul's simple power and substance. And on this basis the reason is clear why generating a cognitive act in the soul of non-rational animals would be greater and higher than drawing that soul from corporeal matter – unless perhaps the view is true of those who say that the souls of non-rational animals can be made by God alone.

     106. – But perhaps it will be objected that the action and habits of the cognitive power of non-rational animals exist only in its corporeal matter, [46] since the soul of non-rational animals has no matter other than corporeal – on this basis it seems that an impression could be made on them by a corporeal power. In reply to this, however, it should be said that a cognitive action and its habits cohere naturally to the substantial form of the soul and the cognitive power before they cohere to its matter. For they can be received in matter – especially corporeal [matter] – only through a preceding intermediate form of the soul and its power. Nor is matter – especially corporeal [matter] – receptive of them in any other way. And so a power impressing acts and habits of this sort must have its attention directly turned and elevated over the soul's substantial form and cognitive power – as over the first and immediate subject of its impression. And I take ‘subject’ here broadly for everything which lies under some form, even if it does not lie under it as matter entirely unformed on its own. On this basis it is clear, however, that it is not entirely a similar situation with respect to the acts and habits of the sensory soul in non-rational animals and in us. For just as our [sensory soul] is founded predominantly in spiritual matter, rather than corporeal matter, so too is this the case for its habits and acts, at least those that it can carry out and possess after its separation from the body.

     107. – In reply to the eleventh it should be said that when matter is of itself able to be subject to the action of such an agent, and when its actual subjection and reception does not diminish the form and the person belonging to that matter, nor is it incompatible for the matter to coexist with its form, then it is loftier for a person to be able to subject his matter to that action than for him not to be able. And so it is with the glorious bodies of the blessed. But when the contrary of all these conditions must be maintained, then it would be not only baser to be able to do this, but indeed altogether impossible. And so it is in this case.

     108. – In reply to the twelfth it should be said that the first premise is false, at least speaking of a species that is simple through spiritual simplicity, which is entirely different from spatial and point-like simplicity, and far higher than it. For a species that is simple in this way can be made to exist first and immediately only in a power or nature that is simple [47] and spiritual, and it can be impressed by an agent only through a simple and spiritual attention. But a point-like species – if one is to postulate this – is located and situated in a certain, spatial position beyond which it is not extended. And an impression is made upon it by a body through a point-like or linear attention. But a species that is simple through spiritual simplicity could not immediately inform a body or be impressed on it by a body or a spirit, as will be shown more fully in the following questions – although this may be clear enough from things already said.

     109. – Further, it can be said that no species or form can be point-like. First, for the reason that every continuum and every part of it is always divisible in infinitum, nor is it composed out of points or point-like [parts]. Second, because a point-like part of a form could exist only in a point-like part of corporeal matter. A heap of corporeal matter, however, is not composed out of point-like parts, nor out of indivisible atoms (even according to Aristotle[17]). And if it were composed out of them, then necessarily an infinite number of point-like parts would actually exist in it. Third, because, as has been proven elsewhere, a point does not imply anything beyond the parts of the line to which it belongs, but is only their intrinsic termination or finish. And so the point of an extended form is nothing other than its finish and a part of it. However, those who postulate that a point-like species is generated from one whole body and is representing the whole do not intend to say that it is only the finish of an extended species, but rather that it is a certain species of the whole body complete in itself.

     110. – Therefore in reply to the point-like contact of spheres it should be said that, strictly speaking, one understands by the name ‘contact’ only the coherence or mutual assistance of two bodies by which they cohere with or mutually assist one other externally. In this way the formal coherence of one does not formally inhere in the other. Therefore that coherence can be considered either [i] with respect to the subject [48] in which it exists; [ii] with respect to the extrinsic terminus toward which it exists; [iii] with respect to its whole coherence and existence; or [iv] with respect to some end or middle belonging to it. With respect to the first two modes of the above distinction the extended and total location or ‘where’ and the arrangement of its subject are the same. For through the same ‘where’ or through the same location through which a body exists in this place it coheres and can cohere with everything immediately surrounding that place. But in the second two modes these are the same: some point-like terminus or point-like union or point-like termination either of that location or of the parts of spheres located through it and cohering in that alone [which is] exactly similar to the point of another sphere. For just as many parts of a sphere surround on all sides the same point-like middle [medium] and are contained in it and through it, so all those [parts] are joined in the same [middle] to another similar point of another sphere. Nor is this [the case] here any more than when two long tables are superficially joined to one other, so that the middle of one [end] is joined to the middle of another [end] and the termini to the termini. For the juncture of point-like middles of this sort and of the termini is the same as the point-like middles and the point-like termini of each surface's locations.

     111. – But in reply to what is said – that to be touched is a kind of affection [passio] introduced by the one touching, and that just as a sphere can touch a sphere at a point, so it can illuminate it at a point – it should be said that to be touched, taken in the way just mentioned, does not imply any affection of the thing touched, but only that the extrinsic terminus of the thing touched coheres to the other body. Nevertheless it is true that in bodies that right after that contact impress their actions to themselves in return there is some affection adjoined to this above-mentioned touch. But that affection cannot be point-like, since it cannot in this way be one in each of the parts of the matter continuous with that point, as that point-like continuity of all those parts can be one. Therefore that [49] illumination brought about by the parts of the sphere concurring at the same point and brought about in the parts of the other sphere concurring at a similar point must be extended, just as are those parts of the body informed by it.

     112. – But perhaps against this an objection will be made concerning the superficial illumination of a wall, on the basis of which no part seems to be illuminated in its deep or dense [parts] but only on its surface. On this basis it seems likewise that the parts of a sphere could be illuminated in a point-like fashion by another sphere at just its point-like terminus. There are two replies to this objection. For some say that an illumination that seems to be on the surface of the wall is not in it as in a subject, but only in the air that adheres to it. But it goes against this reply that according to it the color of a wall is not made more active by such an illumination so as to generate the species of its color in the air, nor through such an illumination is it made visible or more visible. So there is another reply: that the wall's illumination reaches something of its density or depth – at least some minimum amount invisible to us – and likewise reaches the color of the wall. Otherwise no part of the color would be made bright and visible by the illumination, since every part of the color has some density or depth, just as does the part of the matter that it informs.

     113. – But in reply to that which is added – namely, that in every lit or hot point there is light and heat – it can be said in one way that it is false simpliciter, and in another way that secundum quid it is true – in the way, that is, in which a thing exists secundum quid in its terminus. Or this can be said inasmuch as the point-like terminus of light or heat or of a lit or hot [point] does not imply anything located outside it, but rather within it.

     114. – In reply to the thirteenth it should be said that the minor is false, whether quantity is an accident of corporeal forms or not. For some things are accidents, to whose genus their subject is so related that it is impossible for it [the subject] to exist, even miraculously, without another accident of that genus. [50] And this is obviously clear in the case of Position or Where. For no body can be made without any local position, although one could be made without this or that place. And the same holds true for all intrinsic and accidental unions and transpositions of the parts of homogeneous bodies – for example, of water, air, earth, or wax. For it is impossible that they should exist without one of these accidental unions, although they could exist without this or that one. Therefore a genus opposed to the genus of such accidents can in no way be suited per se to such subjects. And so it is in this case. Given that quantity is an accident, in respect of everything that it implies, still much more is it [so] if quantity according to some [aspect] of it is sometimes something essential to form or matter that is extended or numbered. But in both ways the major of the [first] subproof above is false. For given that bodies are not of themselves and absolutely quantities in such a way that quantity is their very essence, still nevertheless they are of themselves so quantified that by no means can their essences be made or exist except with some quantity. For the limitation by which they are limited to the genus of quantity or to quantity in general is completely essential to every body.

     115. – In reply to the second subproof it should be said that not everything intelligible is intellectual. Otherwise no quantitative extension would be intelligible or intellectively cognized by us. Also, since it is established that everything intellectual is incorporeal and belongs to a genus different from any body (even if the body were point-like), it is clear that it is impossible for any species or quiddity of bodies or bodily things to be something intellectual. And I speak of these as they remain in the genus of bodies. For God could convert any body into a spirit, but not in such a way that it would at the same time be in the genus or species of bodies. But elsewhere I have taken up in enough detail how quantity or the extension of bodies implies something accidental and [51] also something essential to the essences of forms and extended matter.[18]

     116. – In addition, the quiddity of sensible things is in a way cognized by the senses. For to see a light is the same as to see the being of light. But a quiddity is said to be cognized by intellect alone to the extent that by the name ‘quiddity’ we are accustomed to signify the essence of a thing, as it is taken unconditionally and as it is common to all its individuals, or as it is taken as a definition or definitive, intelligibly indicating what this or that is.

     117. – In reply to the fourteenth it should be said that the first premise is false in speaking of a corporeal quantity or continuum, although it is true in speaking generally both of corporeal quantity and of spiritual quantity or magnitude. Indeed in these cases one has to posit a certain ordered union of the corporeal parts; quantity of this sort, both intensive and extensive, is found both in acts and in habits of the soul. I refer to extension, however, as the expansion or spreading of a cognitive act over many parts of an object. For it is more expanded to the extent that it sees more parts at once.

     118. – But that which is added, that it takes this extension from the object, is true as from a terminative cause, but not as from an efficient cause, taken strictly. Hence also in the same way it draws its essence from the object as from a terminative cause – but not as from some impression or something drawing it out through a preceding impression.



    [1] Reading `tactui' for `tractui.'

    [2] Reading `mobili,' with two of three mss, against the edition's `mobilis.'

    [3] Metaph., tract. VI, cap. 2 (f.91vb sqq.); Sufficientia, lib. I, cap.10 (f. 19ra sqq.).

    [4] II Sent. q.31 (I, 508-70).

    [5] The opinion of Godfrey of Fontaines, according to Bettoni (1955), p. 33.

    [6] Reading `ponunt' along with the best manuscript, instead of the edition's `ponit.'

    [7] That of Matthew of Aquasparta, according to Bettoni, ibid.

    [8] I.e., the thesis that a body cannot of itself impress its species on a spirit (Ά37).

    [9] impulsus/impulus

    [10] Omitting non.

    [11] Species imaginariae, more commonly known as phantasms.

    [12] II Sent. q.59 (II, 546ff).

    [13] Reading `gerat' for `girat.'

    [14] somno / sommo.

    [15] Reading `passibilis' for `possibilis.'

    [16] The fallacy is to reason from the particular to the universal. See Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations 28, 181a22-30.

    [17] See Physics VI.1, 231a24 ff.

    [18] See, e.g., Summa II.58 (ed. Jansen II:440 ff.).