De causa Dei: Book II, Chapter 18 Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei contra Pelagium (1344). English translation: Wroot Press, CC BY-NC 4.0; machine-learning use permitted with attribution (https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/rights/). Source: Henry Savile's edition, London 1618, 529A–538A; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain). Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/2/18/ Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed. [529A–529B] CHAPTER XVIII. Against certain people who say that the act of Free Choice is nothing. Now that these matters have been disposed of with God's help, it remains to examine, with the same help, the proper act of free choice. But there are some, of whom Isaiah was not silent,[n1] who feel their way like the blind along a wall and grope as though without eyes. They stumble at noonday as in darkness, and in murky places they sleep like the dead, so insensible and lifeless that they perceive their own acts not at all. They assert that the act of free choice is nothing. I shall therefore linger a little, so that He who enlightens the eyes of the blind may deign to pour true light upon them and upon me. [529B–529C] It is clearer than light to everyone that if the act of free choice is nothing, then neither is the act of any other power or form something. For free choice is a most perfect created power, or form. Hence its proper act will be no more imperfect than the proper act of any other whatever. It is therefore no less clearly seen that this blind position must consequently posit that all action and passion, all acting and undergoing, all motion and change, all moving and being moved, changing and being changed, are universally nothing. How greatly this opposes almost all the sciences, those who know them will readily perceive. It labors to extinguish all the sciences that do not abstract from action and motion, and these are all the sciences, Arithmetic and Geometry scarcely excepted. For the Geometry of Euclid in the eleventh book, and Jordanus in his book On Triangles, use motion in their definitions and theorems. And Boethius, in the last chapter of the second book of his Arithmetic, treats all the musical consonances, which can nowhere come to be without motion. [529C–529D] Since, then, it unjustly attempts to destroy all the sciences, it will justly be destroyed by all. It will be destroyed first by the quadrivial sciences,[n2] namely Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, and Music, which consider sound and voice. For if sound and voice are both something, as these sciences teach, then sounding and calling are something, to sound and to call are something. Indeed percussion, or striking, from which sound is generated, is something, and voice is likewise something; for nothing is generated from nothing. He will perhaps reply, consistently, by denying that sound or voice is something. But the aforesaid sciences convict that reply of being uninformed and ignorant, for they teach with one voice that sound and voice are a true thing, as the sense of hearing also teaches by sure experience. For sound is the proper object of that sense, but nothing is the object of any sense. For how can nothing move the medium and the sense? How can nothing generate in the medium and in the sense its likeness, or species? How could sheer nothing impress a species that remains so firmly and so long in memory? How could sheer nothing cause so many wonderful properties and so many differences in hearing and in memory? Again, if sound and voice are nothing, how are they caused, generated, and formed, according to the aforesaid sciences and according to natural science? Moreover, if sound is nothing, how does an excessive sound weaken and corrupt the sense of hearing? Is it not also the case, according to Avicenna, On Animals 7, last [chapter], that thunder harms fish, and, according to the same, On Animals 8, 2, that pregnant sheep and goats miscarry when they hear thunder? Further, if sound is nothing, how do musical consonance and dissonance delight or sadden the hearing, and the whole man who hears, and even animals lacking reason? How would the musical modes have so vehement a power, so manifold a potency, and so wondrous an action? For who has not heard and read what great miracles the ancients[n3] accomplished through Music? [529D–529E] Do not Tullius[n4] in the book of his Counsels, and Boethius in the Prologue of the first book of his Music, recount how Pythagoras was observing the courses of the stars by night, as was his custom? He understood that a youth of Taormina, drunk and raging, stirred up by the sound of the Phrygian mode, wished to burn down the closed house of a harlot, and would not desist from the crime despite the many warnings of his friends. Pythagoras ordered the mode to be changed, and, with a spondee sounding in accompaniment, most peacefully tempered the frenzied man's mind to a settled state. Tullius and Boethius also report in the same place that when certain wine-flushed youths, incited by the playing of pipes, were breaking down the doors of a chaste woman, Pythagoras admonished the piper to change the mode and play a spondee. When he had done so, the slowness of the modes and the gravity of the player calmed their raging wantonness. Augustine also recalls this in Against Julian 5, 9. [529E–530A] And Boethius adds in the same place: "But to gather briefly similar examples, Terpander and Arion of Methymna rescued Lesbians and Ionians from the gravest diseases by the aid of song. And Ismenias of Thebes is said to have wiped away all the troubles of very many Boeotians, whom the torments of sciatic pain were vexing, by means of modes." Likewise Empedocles, when a man raging with a sword attacked his host because that host had condemned the man's father by an accusation, is said to have bent the mode of singing and so to have tempered the youth's wrath. Aristotle testifies to similar things in Politics 8, last chapter and throughout, and in the Problems, section 19. Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and all the ancient philosophers likewise attest them. Indeed they agreed in thinking that musical harmonies and numbers take possession alike of human souls and bodies. Wherefore Plato too judges that we must above all take care lest anything be altered in well-ordered Music. He denies that there is any ruin of morals in the Republic so great as the gradual perversion of chaste and modest music. For he says that at once the minds of the hearers undergo the same change and little by little fall away, retaining no trace of what is honorable and right, and that either through the more wanton modes something shameless, or through the harsher ones something fierce and savage, steals into their minds. [530A–530B] But why need we wander among foreign examples? Our sacred writings tell how David's harp tempered the malice of the evil spirit in Saul, and how also, when the harper played, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha in the spirit of prophecy. Hence also the Philosopher, Politics 8, last chapter, treating generally of Music, and specially of moral harmonies and sacred melodies and their uses, says that one of them is rapture. Do not sacramental words too, and perhaps others, have wondrous efficacy and power? [530B–530D] On account of these and similar things he will perhaps reply otherwise, saying that sound is generated by the one striking, which is something, but not by the percussion, which is nothing.[n5] Either, then, the iron striking bronze makes sound per se, or not per se. If per se, it would always so make it. For per se presupposes "of every," with respect to the universality of supposita and of time, as the 2nd and 26th of the first showed more fully.[n6] Therefore iron and bronze, touching in the air without any percussion or any motion whatever, would always make sound. But if the iron causes sound per accidens, that accident, necessarily required for causing sound, cannot be called anything other than to strike, or percussion. Therefore percussion is at least a concause with the iron, and gathers together the sound itself. It is therefore something and not nothing. It will perhaps be said that the iron causes sound per accidens, that is, accidentally, though not through any such accident really distinct from itself. Why, then, does it cause sound now, namely when it strikes, and not before, since all things stand really in the same way now as before? Suppose it is said: because now it strikes, and not before. Then, if this reply is fitting, since by "why" a cause is asked and by "because" one answers concerning a cause, the iron's striking now is a cause, and the efficient cause of this sound. Therefore the iron's striking is something. For if it were not something, it would neither cause nor effect anything; hence the iron's percussion is not nothing. Again, if the cause is answered there by "because," then the iron's striking is some cause of the sound. Either, then, that cause is the iron itself alone, or something else. If the iron itself alone, then the iron's striking is still something as well. For the iron itself was before with every real cause with which it now is, and the bronze and the air were similarly disposed, so that sound would have been caused before by it, or by them.[n7] And it is also false that now it is that cause and before it was not. But if that cause is something really other than that iron, and nothing other than to strike, or percussion itself, can be posited, then to strike, or percussion, is a real cause efficient of the sound itself. It is therefore something and not nothing. [530D–530E] Again, if this reasoning were not valid, no way of reason would be valid for showing a diversity of agents or forms. For from a diversity of effects or operations no such diversity could be concluded. From the same iron acting through entirely the same form, now, namely when it is at rest, one effect is produced, and now, namely when it strikes, an entirely different one. Yet this way is everywhere in Philosophy reckoned the only valid one to that end. Again, whoever denies that to strike, or percussion, is something denies that it can be felt. Hence he must consequently deny all the chastisement of little children by blows, such as grammar masters are accustomed to administer. Would that it might come about that the child be struck so often and so hard by the ferule of Priscian and the rod of Donatus, until by sure experience he learns that to strike, or percussion, can be felt, and so confesses that to strike and percussion are something. [530E–531A] Again, Logic in particular refutes him in this manner. There is a categorical proposition in the intellect having an actual copula, which is the actual composition of the intellect. For that copula, namely what corresponds in the intellect to this word "is" in speech, can be called nothing other than an act of the intellect, or its actual composition, by which it couples and composes the extremes of the proposition with each other. Hence the Philosopher, On Interpretation 1, 3: "'Is,'" he says, "co-signifies a certain composition, which cannot be thought without the things composed." And Averroes, on that saying of the Philosopher in Metaphysics 5, 14, "Further, 'to be' and 'is' signify that something is true," says this: "He intended to distinguish between this name 'being,' which signifies the coupling in the intellect, and that which signifies the essence that is outside the intellect." And if that composition, or coupling, were nothing, it would be of no help toward composing, knowing, reasoning, or doing anything else whatever. Indeed then there would be no difference between such a proposition and its extremes, for they would differ through nothing. And then too the actual negation in the intellect would be nothing. Therefore a negative and an affirmative about the same terms would in no way differ in the intellect, since any difference would be through nothing. Hence contradictories would be true together. Indeed, what is still more impossible, the same proposition, numerically, would plainly contradict itself. [531A–531C] Again, the other "trivial" sciences[n8] (Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy) assert that motion is. Arithmetic and Geometry perhaps do so accidentally, but Astronomy essentially, for motion belongs to its integrity. Natural philosophy also treats of motion most of all essentially. It very often asserts of motion not merely in general that it is something, but, in particular, shows that it is some definite thing. For it shows that it is the act of a being in potency, that it is a diminished act, that it is the perfection of mover and moved, and the like, as is plain at length in Physics 3, and elsewhere in many places. Again, motion is the efficient cause of heat, as natural science often testifies, and as anyone experiences even without it. Motion therefore is something. For every efficient cause of any real effect is something truly real. It will perhaps be replied that motion is not properly an efficient cause of heat, but only improperly, namely because by it hot parts are gathered together, and these, gathered, heat more strongly than when scattered. But without doubt in that way motion would be no more a cause of heat than of cold, or of any other quality whatever. For just as it gathers hot parts, so it gathers cold, moist, and dry ones, white and black, sweet and bitter, and any others whatever. Again, if that were so, bodies that are more cold than hot, and have more cold parts than hot, when moved quickly and rubbed hard against one another, ought to be chilled the more, because the cold parts are the more united. Yet in fact they are the more heated, as stones, metals, and cold woods show. For stones struck together generate bright fire, and metals moved quickly melt, as the Philosopher says in Metaphys. 1, 2:[n9] "We see therefore that motion can disperse air and set it afire, so that even projectiles are often seen melted." Hard, cold wood too, vigorously rubbed against another, procures a fire, as those know who go to the woods without fire. [531C–531D] This reply also errs in another respect, because it posits that motion heats by this, that it gathers. For it seems rather to disperse, as experience teaches well enough. And the Philosopher says in Met. 1, 2: "We see therefore that motion can disperse air and set it afire." And below in the same: "The air nearby, borne along by force, becomes especially hot, and this happens reasonably, and above all the motion of a solid disperses it. For this cause, then, heat reaches this place." Again, since motion disperses the parts of the moved thing, and consequently in a way separates and exhales its hot parts, then if it had no proper heating power, the longer a mixed body were moved, the more it would be chilled. For the more the hot parts would depart, and the cold parts would remain the purer. Again, if no alteration is something, how are so many accidents and substances generated through it, and so many likewise corrupted? How, too, does medicine through it give life and kill? How does it make a man healthy and sick? How, too, does Alchemy work so many wonders through the same? [531D] But these and the like I leave to others, and pass to what pertains more to the point, and about which fuller certitude is granted us, namely the operations of the senses and of the human soul. Now whatever is truly sensed is something, and to sense is truly sensed, as anyone experiences. The Philosopher too, On the Soul 2, 134, shows that by the same external sense we sense the external object, and sense that we sense it; and Averroes likewise in the Commentary. And according to others the sensing of the external sense is sensed by the common sense, so that according to all, the sensing of an external sense is sensed by a material sense. It is therefore something and not nothing. Again, imagining, thinking, desiring, being angry, rejoicing, grieving, and many similar things are sensed by a material sense. They are therefore something and not nothing. These also in many ways, and truly really, alter bodies and cause many real effects, and nothing, nothing alters or causes. [531D–532A] And what I have assumed we all experience in many ways. The Philosopher says in On the Cause of the Motion of Animals, which is the twelfth of the Histories of Animals, in the new translation, in the next to last and last chapters, that from sensation, imagination, meditation, and intellection there arise many alterations and passions in the body with respect to heat and cold, as in blushings, and pallors, and fears. He adds that almost all things delightful and saddening go with heat and cold, as in the passions of boldness and fear and of sexual matters. Some of these occupy a part of the body, others the whole body universally. Indeed, and what seems the more among the marvels of nature, these have a power of acting like that of the things of which they are. Hence in that next-to-last chapter he says thus: "Imaginations, and senses, and meditations alter. For senses are immediately certain alterations. But imagination and intellection have the power of the things. For in some way the species understood of hot or cold, delightful or saddening, is such as each of the things themselves is, on account of which they tremble and fear merely by understanding. And all these are passions and alterations, and when alterations occur, some become greater, some lesser. That a slight change made at the beginning makes many and great differences thereafter is not unclear: as when a rudder is shifted by a little, the shifting of the prow is great. [532A–532B] "Furthermore, with respect to heat or cold, or some other such passion, when alteration occurs about the heart, and in this, according to magnitude, in the sensible part, it makes a great difference in the body, in blushings, and pallors, and tremblings, and fears, and their contraries. The principle of motion, as has been said, is what in matters of action is to be pursued and to be fled. But of necessity heat and cold follow upon their meditation and imagination, for the saddening is to be fled, the delightful to be pursued; but this accident is hidden in small things. And saddening and delightful things are almost all accompanied by some cold or heat, and this is plain from the passions. For boldness, and fears, and movements toward sexual things, and other bodily saddening and delightful things, are some with heat and cold in a part, others throughout the whole body. And memories and species, as though using these as images, are sometimes less, sometimes more, the causes of the same." [532B–532C] And in the last chapter, positing a threefold distinction of the motions of animals (voluntary, namely, and involuntary and non-voluntary), he says of the involuntary: "Certain of the parts are moved also by some involuntary movements. I call involuntary, for instance, that of the heart and that of the genitals. For often, when something appears, they are moved though the intellect does not command." The same, On the Soul 1, 14: "All the passions of the soul," he says, "seem to be with the body: gentleness, for instance, fear, pity, confidence, and further joy, and loving and hating. For at the same time the body undergoes something with these." On this Averroes says there in the commentary that all accidents of the concupiscible soul occur with alteration and change in the body. The Philosopher moreover, Ethics 7, 3, says thus: "Anger and desire for sexual things, and certain such things, manifestly change the body, and in some even produce madness." [532C–532D] Avicenna also shows this at length, On the Soul 4, 4, where among other things he says thus: "We say in sum that from the soul there is wont to occur in corporeal matter a change of complexion that is acquired without bodily action and passion, so that heat occurs not from the hot, nor coldness from the cold. For when the soul imagines some imagination and is strengthened in it, at once corporeal matter receives a form having operation toward that quality." And below in the same: "Consider the disposition of the sick man when he believes he is recovering, or of the healthy man when he believes he is falling ill. For it often happens from this that, when the form is strengthened in his soul, his very matter is affected by it, and health or sickness results from this. And this action is more efficacious than what the physician does with his instruments and means. On this account a man can walk on a beam that lies in the middle of the road, but if it were placed as a bridge over deep water, he will not dare to walk on it, because the form of falling is imagined, vehemently impressed, in his soul. His nature and the power of his limbs obey this form, and they do not obey its contrary, namely to rise upright and walk." Therefore, when the being of forms has been impressed in the soul, and it has become established to the soul that they have being, it often happens that matter is affected by them, and so that they may have being. [532D] The same, On Animals 8, last [chapter], dealing with the habits of animals, writes thus: "It is also among the marvels that a hen, when she defeats a rooster, raises herself as though she were a rooster, and beats with her wings in her lust as though she were a rooster, and lifts her tail like a rooster, and sometimes a spur grows on her leg, as on a rooster. And in this can be perceived the obedience of nature to the thoughts of the soul, when because of its thought a spur was growing on the leg." Again Algazel, in his Physics 5, 5, says thus: "When a horrible form comes into the soul, the complexion of the body is turned, and the moisture of sweat comes forth from it. But when a form of victory comes into the soul, the complexion of the body grows warm and the face reddens. And when a desired form comes into the soul, there arises in the passage of the semen a vaporous heat moving wind, so that the veins of the instrument of coitus are filled and desire is directed toward it. But this heat, and moisture, and coldness that arise in the body from these imaginations are not from any other heat, or any other coldness or moisture, but from imagination alone. Therefore imagination alone is the cause of these changes in the ⟨complexion?⟩ of the body."[n10] [532D–533A] Who, indeed, does not know how much dreams, and imaginations in dreams, alter those who dream? Who is there who does not have sure experience of this? Avicenna also shows it well enough in On the Soul 4, 2, where among other things he says thus: "It is a marvel[n11] that, just as it sometimes happens from a movement of nature toward expelling semen, so sometimes some imagination of a desired form will occur for some cause, and nature is moved to bring the semen together, and sometimes it emits semen, and this sometimes happens in dreams, sometimes in waking." All the physicians likewise attest these things and many like them. For they say that one who imagines leprosy strongly, or some other infirmities, sometimes falls into them from imagination alone, especially if he is also disposed to infirmities of that kind. [533A–533B] Firm imagination, moreover, manifestly alters sometimes not only the body of the one imagining but even the body of another. I pass over fascination and similar superstitious matters, of which Avicenna, Algazel, Pliny, Virgil, and others are not silent, as is somewhat recited in the proof of the 37th part of the first Corollary of the first. I bring forward one experiment from the sacred writings, doubtful or suspect to no theologian. For which of the theologians is unaware how Laban's single-colored ewes, in conceiving, gazing upon variegated rods, marked the young they conceived with various colors, as is common knowledge to all from Genesis 30? Nor can anyone pretend that this happened only from the colors set before them, and nothing from the imagination of the ewes. The colors set before them did not do this immediately by themselves, but mediately, through sensation and the species of colors received in the imaginative and other interior powers. Yet those received species alone, without actual and strong imagination of them, would by no means have sufficed. For then any ewe or female having various species of various things seen before and retained, though imagining nothing of them when she conceived, would make her offspring variegated, the contrary of which sure experience teaches. [533B–533C] Hence also Augustine, On the Trinity 11, 2: "Of other animals," he says, "since the bulk of the fetus is not easily turned about, the desires of the mothers reveal in very many cases what they have looked upon with great delight. For the more tender, and, so to speak, the more formable the first beginnings of the seeds are, the more effectively and receptively they follow the intention of the maternal soul, and the phantasy that was formed in it through the body which it eagerly looked upon." There are examples that could be recounted at length, but one from the most trustworthy books suffices. It is what Jacob did so that ewes and goats should bear young of various colors: he set before them variegated rods in the water-troughs, which they gazed at while drinking at the time when they conceived. Again to the same effect, Against Julian 5, 19, he says thus: "The qualities of bodily things pass into incorporeal things when we in a way draw in the forms of bodies that we see and store them away in memory, and carry them with us wherever we go. But as they pass from body to spirit, so in the same manner they pass from spirit to body. Now the colors of the rods that Jacob variegated, by affecting the senses, passed into the souls of the mother sheep, and from there in turn, passing over by the same affection, appeared in the bodies of the offspring." Soranus, a most distinguished author of medicine, writes that something of this kind can happen also in human offspring, and confirms it with an example from history. For he tells that the tyrant Dionysius, because he was himself ugly and did not wish to have such children, used to set before his wife in intercourse a beautiful image or picture. In desiring its beauty she would in a way seize it, and by affecting it transmit it to the offspring she was conceiving. Many things like these, too, many other physicians attest. [533C–533D] Who, moreover, being a scholar or a medical man, does not know how much and in how many ways vehement study and intense meditation alter one's body? They heat it, they consume it, they suspend the offices of the senses, and they more often take away sleep. Sometimes they procure sleep, or syncope, or ecstasy; they bring in manifold delight, and do many similar things. Hence Ecclesiasticus 31: "The wakefulness of honor will waste away the flesh, and its wakefulness will take away sleep." Again Averroes, in his commentary on Aristotle's book On Sleep and Waking, says thus: "Those who think much, their sensible powers enter within the body, so that a great sleep befalls them. For when these interior powers are moved with a strong motion, the exterior powers are drawn together so much that syncope perhaps occurs." And Avicenna, On the Soul 4, 2, says that weariness sometimes arises from cares, sometimes from fear. For from fear sleep sometimes occurs, and even death. Sometimes cares produce sleep, though not in that way, but because they heat the brain, and the humors are attenuated toward it, and when the brain is filled, drowsiness occurs because of the humor. Hence also the Psalmist: "My soul has slumbered for weariness," Psalm 118 [119]. [533D–533E] Furthermore, Avicenna too, On Animals 7, last [chapter], reports of a certain man who in Avicenna's time was in the land of Vassacia, that he could paralyze his body whenever he wished, and whose son, he says, he also saw doing many marvels. The blessed Augustine, too, in City of God 14, 24, reports that a certain priest named Restitutus, in the parish of the Church of Calama, when it pleased him, and when asked by those who desired to know the marvel, so removed himself from his senses and lay so like a dead man that he not only did not feel at all those who pinched and pricked him, but was sometimes even burned by fire applied to him, without any sense of pain, except afterward from the wound, not through resisting but through not feeling. That he did not move his body was proved by the fact that, as in a dead man, no breath was found. [533E–534A] Again, every actual apprehension of a fitting object causes delight, and a greater and more fitting one a greater delight, as anyone experiences and all the Philosophers attest. Hence the Philosopher, Metaphysics 12, 39, says thus: "Wakefulness, sensation, understanding are most delightful, and species[n12] and memories on account of these." On this Averroes says thus: "The sign that apprehension[n13] is the cause of pleasure is that wakefulness and sense and intellect are pleasurable in us. But hope and recollection, although they are pleasurable, are nevertheless about things not existing in act. They are pleasurable because the one hoping imagines that those things are apprehended in act, and likewise the one recalling." And he indicates that pleasurable apprehension is only of what is in act, not in potency. And below in the same: "It is manifest that to understand through the intellect that is in us is very pleasurable, and nobler than all the things existing in us." And still further down in the same: "Pleasure follows apprehension as the shadow follows the body." The same opinion is held in Ethics 10 by the Philosopher, and, quite plainly, by all who expound him. [534A–534B] The words of Auehanoch,[n14] recited in Avicenna's On the Soul 4, 4, attest the same most clearly. "Joy," he says, "is delight. But all delight is the apprehension of a perfect acquisition proper to the apprehending power, as to sense something sweet, and to smell a good odor, for the sense; to procure vengeance, for the irascible power; and to procure hope, for the cogitative and estimative power. But all perception is a natural thing, and all perception of a thing that is natural to a power is delight." The most holy Prophet, having experienced these delights, said to the Lord: "In the way of your commandments I have delighted, as in all riches," Psalm 118 [119]; and below in the same: "How sweet are your words to my throat, above honey to my mouth." But this so delicate sweetness has no savor for us wretched animal creatures, enticement-loving men sated with husks. Indeed it is rightly not even shown to such to taste; "for the sated soul will trample the honeycomb," Proverbs 27 [27:7]. It is hidden, reserved for spiritual men. Hence also that holy David, full of the Spirit of God, says: "How great is the multitude of your sweetness, Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you! You have wrought it for those who hope in you," Psalm 30 [31]. Indeed there is nothing better than the fear of God, and nothing sweeter than to look to the commandments of the Lord: Ecclesiasticus 33.[n15] Again, if to understand, to think, to compose, to divide, to reason, and other such things are not something and do not do anything, and yet they produce science and other intellectual habits, it plainly follows that none of those is something. Therefore, to use the words [534C–534E] … of the Philosopher, On the Soul 3, 14, I shall use [n16]: "It befalls the intellect of one who speaks thus that it is like a tablet on which nothing is actually written." He may have conceded this of his own intellect, but other philosophers, theologians and common people will not concede it of theirs. Since I regard this as manifest to those who understand, I offer on this occasion only one very brief proof. There is indeed an article condemned and excommunicated by the Lord Stephen, Bishop of Paris [n17], in these words: "That intellective knowledge does not differ from the substance of the intellective being: for there there is no diversity of the understood from the understanding, nor diversity among the things understood." Again: if for a man to understand is not something, neither is it something for a man to be understanding. Therefore neither is it something for a man to be shod or armed, and so the category of having will perish. And if for a man to understand is not something, neither is it something for a man to sit or stand, and so the category of position or posture likewise perishes at once. Again, the Philosopher in Metaphysics 5, 13, divides being into being according to accident and being in itself; and in 14 he says: "Those things are said to be in themselves which signify the figures of predication; for in as many ways as 'to be' is said, in so many ways will it signify." Since, then, among the predicates some signify what a thing is, some what sort, some doing, some undergoing, and so on, 'to be' signifies the same for each of them. "For it makes no difference whether one says 'the man is recovering' or 'the man recovers'; or 'the man is walking' or 'standing'; or 'for a man to walk or stand.' And likewise in the other cases." The same author in Metaphysics 7, 3: "Someone is in doubt whether walking, healing and sitting, each of them, is a being or a non-being, and likewise in the other cases; for none of them is by nature fit to exist in itself, nor can it be separated from substance." Here the text of Averroes reads thus: "Someone will ask whether walking, health and sitting signify being or non-being." And the new translation [n18] resolves it, saying: "It is plain, therefore, that it is on account of it, namely substance, that each of these things is." Here the translation of Averroes reads thus: "It is manifest, therefore, that this is the cause of the essence of each of these, and these are on account of that." On this Averroes says, that is: "It is manifest that substances are the causes of the essence of accidents, and accidents are not except on account of substances; and this is necessary, since it has been declared that this name 'being' is said of the ten categories, and more worthily of substances; and it has been declared that when many things share in the same name, and some more worthily than others, that which is more worthy of that name is the cause of the rest." Again: if for a man to understand, or to be understanding, is not something, neither is it something for a man to be. For being is not something, so that neither does being exist, though every creature exists through it. Indeed being is not, and is non-being and nothing; and with what great absurdity that is said, hardly anyone fails to know. Again: if for a man to understand, to be understanding, or to be, is not something, then by the same reasoning neither God's understanding, nor His being understanding, nor His being, nor the divine intellection, is something. This is contrary to the Philosopher in Metaphysics 12, 51, where in inquiring what and how [535A–535E] God understands, he shows that He does not principally understand anything other than Himself, so that He would be perfected by it. His proof leads to this impossibility, that He would not be that which is His understanding, and consequently would not be the best substance. Thus he says: "If it does not understand, what then will be august and venerable? But it is in the same state as one asleep. Or if it does understand, but the principal thing of this lies in another, then it is not that which is its understanding but a potency, and it will not be the best substance; for it is through understanding that it is honorable." And here by "understanding" he means the act of understanding, or active intellection, or understanding itself, as he himself expresses immediately afterwards, saying "through understanding it is honorable." And where the new text has "It is not that which is its understanding," the older text, which the Commentator Averroes expounds, reads: "this understanding is not also his substance" [n19]. Hence also Augustine, On Truth 8 [n20]: "For according to what it does, it seems more properly called 'agency' and 'striking'; and according to what it undergoes, 'action' and 'passion.' For agency and striking are named from the agent and the striker, as providence from the provider and containment from the container; these, namely the agent and striker, the provider and container, are active; but action and passion are derived from what is acted upon and what undergoes, which are passive." The Philosopher, in the place cited before, continuing what he began, argues consequently as follows: "If it is not understanding but a rational potency, the continuation of understanding would be laborious for it." And he adds next, plainly, that something else will be worthier than the intellect, namely the thing understood: "For understanding, and the intellective [power], will be present as most unworthy to the one who understands; therefore this is to be avoided. For not seeing certain things is worthier than seeing; nor [is it so] if understanding is the best. Therefore it understands itself, if it is the most powerful thing, and it is understanding, the understanding of understanding." Here the text of Averroes reads: "and it understands understanding," on which he says: "and it understands understanding, that is, it understands its own action, which is understanding; for its substance is its action." Again: if for God to understand is not something, neither is it something for God to live, or for God to be living; indeed God's life is not something, for life is the action or act of the living being. For the Philosopher says in Metaphysics 9, 16: "Those things of which there is no other work besides the action: in them the action exists, as sight in the seeing one, contemplation in the contemplating one, and life in the soul; therefore also happiness, for life is a certain sort of thing." The same author in Metaphysics 12, 39: "The act of the intellect is life." Here the translation of Averroes reads: "The action of the intellect is life." And here also the Philosopher proves that God is life, saying: "And life certainly exists there; for the act of the intellect is life, and that [God] is the act itself, and the act in itself is His life, best and everlasting. And we say that God is a living being, everlasting and best; therefore life and continuous and eternal duration belong to God, for this is God." On this Averroes says: "The action of the intellect is life, that is, life is also said of it (for this name, namely life, is said of comprehension). And since the action of the intellect is comprehension, therefore the action of the intellect is life; and since the intellect is living, and since its action is life, that which is intellect, because it understands that other to be one, which has life at the summit of nobility [n21], and therefore life and knowledge are said properly of God." And further on: "This is how it is to be understood when we say that He is living and has life, not because they signify the same in every way, as synonymous names do, nor as substantial names signify, nor as the primary and the derived [name] signify, since the derived name signifies what the primary signifies and more. For 'life' signifies something not in a subject, while 'living' signifies something in a subject, namely a form in matter and a state in a subject. These, then, are all the dispositions of the significations of names in those things that are form in matter; but in those things that are form not in matter, the disposition and the disposed are reduced to one in being and two in consideration [n22]. For when this essence is taken as it is posited, and is disposed by some disposition, then the disposition and the disposed will be one in predication and two in intention; for the predicate differs from the subject, but not as the predicate differs in categorical substantial propositions. For the disposition is not the same as the disposed, as in abstract things; but when the disposition and the disposed are considered in those things that are not in matter, then they are reduced to one intention in every way, and there will be no way in which the predicate is distinguished from the subject and the disposed outside the intellect, that is, in the being of the thing. Multiplicity in God is therefore nothing but a difference in the intellect, not in being." Anselm too sets out this opinion at length in the Monologion, 16 and 17. Thus in 16 he says: "Since, then, the supreme nature is not properly spoken of in the sense that it has justice, but exists as justice, when it is called just it is properly understood as existing justice, not as having justice. Therefore, as it is called existing justice, what is said is not what sort it is but what it is; and it follows that when it is called just, what is said is not what sort it is but what it is. Next, since of that supreme essence to say that it is just and to say that it is existing justice come to the same thing, and when it is called existing justice it is nothing other than justice, there is no difference in it whether it is said to be just or to be justice. And what is seen to hold in the example of justice, the intellect is constrained by reason to perceive of everything that is likewise said of the supreme nature itself. Whatever of these things, then, [536A–536E] is said of it, shows not what sort or how great it is, but rather what it is. And it is plain that whatever good the supreme nature is, it is that supremely. It is therefore the supreme essence, supreme life, supreme reason, supreme salvation, supreme justice, which is nothing other than supreme being, supremely living, and so on likewise." It is therefore supremely knowing and supreme knowledge, supremely understanding and supreme intellection, supremely acting and supreme action, and likewise in all similar cases. In quite harmonious agreement Augustine says, Confessions 1, 6, in this way: "Lord, for you to be and to live are not one thing and another, because supremely to be and supremely to live are what you are, the selfsame." The same view is found in the same author, On the Trinity 7, 1, and through the long discussion that follows, and in On the Trinity 15, 5, 13 and 14; and very often, in many books and chapters, it is found that being, living, knowing and understanding are the same in God, indeed that God is one, most simple, and the same. And this is what the faithful Church of God professes on Trinity Sunday, when in a certain antiphon she says to God: "We profess that to be, to live and to understand are for You always the same"; and in the lesson she says: "To whom, namely to God, it is proper, to whom it is everlasting, to whom to be, to live and to understand are the same; and these three are one God." And to conclude much in few words: all philosophers and Catholic doctors hold this view on account of Aristotle's argument in Metaphysics 12, touched on above. For all admit that God is the best substance, and consequently the most simple, lacking nothing else. Therefore there is in Him no real multitude of this sort, but all such things which are attributed to Him in manifold ways are really the same one thing itself. Who, moreover, will presume to reject the utterance of God, by which He once spoke that God, etc., is something [n23], and by which He also made all things? "For He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created," as the ninth of the first book treated more fully. If there is anyone of this sort, let him read Anselm's Monologion, and Augustine's books On the Trinity, and those of other doctors; and unless he is willing to deny them, he will be compelled to renounce this error. Again: moral habits are generated from acts, as is plain from Ethics 2 and 3; and nothing neither makes nor generates; therefore an act is something, or a virtuous habit is nothing. Again: an act is better than the habit, and than the potency or form from which it proceeds, and is its proper perfection, as the twenty-second and twenty-sixth of the first showed more fully. Again: Augustine, On Free Choice 2, 31, and Retractations 1, 9, dividing all goods into three, least, middle and great, says that the good use of free choice is found among the great goods; and since all goods, great, middle and least, are from God, it follows that the good use of free will is also from God. What Christian, moreover, will dare to deny that the incarnation of Christ, His nativity and life, His baptism, preaching, the working of His miracles, and His every action, is something? What Christian, furthermore, and not rather what profane person, would presume to deny that the passion of Christ, His prayer, and every merit of His is something? For if it was nothing, it availed nothing; how then was it the abundant price of our redemption? For, as the Psalmist testifies, "with Him is plentiful redemption"; and how was that redemption plentiful, if that redemption was nothing? According to this view too, or rather this senseless madness, baptism, the consecration of the Eucharist, and universally every sacramental operation instituted in the Church of Christ is nothing, and therefore of no efficacy or value at all. Proper forms also have operations really proper to them, as all of philosophy testifies; and Averroes says on Metaphysics 9, 7, against certain persons: "If all beings do not have proper actions, they will not have proper essences; for actions are not diversified except through diverse essences. And this opinion is quite foreign to the nature of man, and those who accept such things do not have a brain naturally fit for the good." Again: every act, according to the substance of the act, is naturally good, and from God, as the twenty-sixth of the first teaches; therefore every act has natural goodness, therefore also natural entity, therefore is something. Again: every good positive merit is something, and every good positive merit is an act of the will, because it is either an act or a habit, and it is not a habit, since then a sleeping infant, a madman, or a dead person who has the habit of charity would merit continually. This is also plain enough from the authority of Augustine to Sixtus the priest, which Lombard cites, Sentences 2, dist. 27 [n24]: "Every good merit of ours," he says, "nothing makes in us but grace." And Lombard says there that just as from the power of faith [n25] and man's free choice there is generated in the mind a motion that is indeed good and deserving of reward, namely believing itself, so from charity and free choice another motion arises that is exceedingly good, namely loving; and the same is to be understood of the other virtues; and these good motions or affections are merits, and gifts of God. Therefore a good motion, or act, is something; for all the authors suppose that every good positive merit is something, and they show that sin is nothing, as the twenty-sixth of the first cited more fully. And if every such merit is a gift of God, as Lombard says and the preceding passages make clear, and is also made in us by God, since it is He who works in us both to will and to accomplish, as the Apostle says in Philippians 2, then every such merit [537A] is the work of God and His effect, and therefore also something. Hence Augustine too, City of God 12, 8 and 9, proves that a good will has an efficient cause, namely God, and that an evil will has no efficient cause but a deficient one, because it is not an effect but a defect. This is understood of the deformity of the evil will, not of the substance of the act, as the twenty-sixth of the first teaches. So too an article condemned and excommunicated by Stephen, Bishop of Paris, says in these words: "That all voluntary motions are reduced to the first mover is an error unless it is understood of the first mover simply uncaused, and is understood of the motion according to substance, not according to deformity." The act of the will, therefore, according to its substance has God as efficient cause, and is something; according to its deformity, which has no essence but only a privation of essence, not at all. Hence also in chapter 8 Augustine says: "Let no one seek an efficient cause of the evil will; for it is not efficient but deficient, because that is not an affection but a defection." [537B–537E] I know that the nature of God cannot fail in any part, and that things made from nothing can fail. The more such things are, and the more they do good (for then they do something), the more they have efficient causes. Insofar as they fail, and on that account do ill (for what do they do then but vain things?), they have deficient causes. Anselm says, in On the Virginal Conception, ch. 5: "From these things, then, it is easily recognized that injustice has no essence. Usage calls the affection and act of the will 'injustice', though these, considered in themselves, are something; but that essence, though it is called evil, is nothing." The same Anselm says in On the Fall of the Devil, ch. 8: "I think it cannot be denied that the will and the conversion of the will are something. For even if they are not substances, it still cannot be proved that they are not essences, since there are many essences besides that which is properly called substance." And in ch. 20: "Nor can I deny that any action whatever is truly something." And in ch. 26: "Sadness and grief are something." And in ch. 28, the last: "To will is good according to its essence; but since it was done unjustly, it is evil; and it is from God, from whom is everything that is something." Furthermore, what believer will presume to assert that faith, that is, the act of faith, namely to believe, is nothing? For what is faith, as Augustine says in the first part on John, sermon 40, but "to believe what you do not see"? Hence the faithful Author of faith also says: "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent" (John 6). And further on, to the same hearers: "No one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father." But to come to Christ, what is it but to believe in Christ? And this is given by the Father. To believe, therefore, is not nothing but something, because it is a precious gift of God. So too Augustine, in the first part on John, sermon 27, expounding the preceding word of Christ, adds at once: "So even believing is given to us. For believing is not nothing; and if it is something great, rejoice that you have believed, but do not exalt yourself: for what do you have that you have not received?" And how, moreover, is the faith of one who speaks thus to be reckoned not barren but rather dead, since it bears or produces nothing of good work? Indeed it could not, since every offspring is something and a product. Further, one who says this must also say, in consequence, that to esteem and to love, esteem, love and friendship are nothing. But who will join in friendship with such a man? The destructive error of this man our sure experience, moral science, all polity, all civility and all urbanity overthrow and refute. Who, too, will dare to grant that the esteem or love of God and neighbour is nothing, when canonical Scripture and the canonized Doctors proclaim and extol them with so many and such great praises? Who, again, is so insensible and so unlearned as not to experience, in others or in himself, the many and various effects of love? For who is unaware of that experiment, so well known even among the most unlettered laymen, how the variety of loves is detected by the variation of the pulses, as Democritus also taught Hippocrates? Hence Boethius writes thus in the prologue of his Music, book 1: "As the effects of the body (that is, of the bodily man) stand, so too the pulse of the heart is stirred by its motions."[n26] This Democritus is said to have handed on to the physician Hippocrates, when he visited him in order to treat him. Other physicians as well acknowledge the truth of this experience. Who, further, does not know that the complexion of men and women is changed in many ways by love and anger, joy and sorrow, shame, boldness and fear, as frequent experience, the natural philosophers and the physicians bear witness? Who, again, would not know that it is by love that an animal is moved in progressive motion, wherever it moves? For, as the sixth of this second book cited, "My foot,[n27] my love; by it I am borne wherever I am borne"; and in 3 Kings 19 it is said of Elijah that he rose up and went away, wherever his will carried him. The Philosopher also, in On the Soul 3, in the chapter on the mover, and in On Animals 12 of the new translation, ch. 8, in the chapter on the cause of the motion of animals,[n28] shows that the will, that is, actual willing, moves man, and that appetite, that is, actual appetition, moves the other animals in progressive motion. But all willing and appetition is a kind of loving and love. Again, if no act is something, then since beatitude is an act, it is not something; indeed it is nothing. But that beatitude is an act is clear from the Philosopher, Ethics 1, 3 and 10, where he demonstrates in many chapters that happiness is an operation, and the act of the happy man; and in Metaphysics 9, 16 he says that happiness is an operation in the soul, because it is a kind of life, [538A] as was cited above. Truth itself also bears concordant witness to this, saying: "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ" (John 17). Hence Augustine too, On Free Choice 2, 33: "The blessed life is the disposition of a mind clinging to an unchangeable good." For all the Philosophers (for example Aristotle, Averroes, Avicenna, Algazel and the rest, excepting the Epicureans, who are not to be called Philosophers but rather "philovolists",[n29] that is, lovers of pleasure) and all the Theologians, without exception, agree in this one point: that happiness and final beatitude is the vision of God or actual enjoyment, or both of these alike, as their books attest most copiously and most clearly. Nor, I hope, is anyone so foolish or so mad as to deny that eternal life, happiness and beatitude are something. The act of the will, therefore, is something, and not nothing. For this conclusion, far more and subtler arguments could be adduced. But since no subtle man denies it or doubts it, and only a few crude and coarse ones do, let these few crude, coarse and palpable arguments suffice for them. NOTES 1. Isaiah 59:10 (Vulgate): "We have groped like the blind along the wall, and as if we had no eyes we have felt our way; we have stumbled at noonday as in darkness, in dark places like dead men." Savile gives no margin here. 2. Savile's labels are the reverse of the usual division. Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric are normally the trivium, and Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music the quadrivium. Here Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, and Music are called quadriuiales, and at 531A Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy are called triuiales. I translate as printed ("quadrivial", "trivial"), without correcting. 3. The print reads vereres, evidently a misprint for veteres, "the ancients". 4. Tullius is Cicero. Boethius, De institutione musica 1.1, cites his lost De consiliis suis. 5. The print reads quae est aliquid ("which is something"). The objector's whole position is that percussion is nothing, and the refutation that follows ("is therefore something and not nothing") presupposes it. I translate the evident sense, nihil, and do not emend the Latin. 6. "The 2nd and 26th of the first": the "parts" are those of the first Corollary of I.1. Compare 533A, "the 37th part of the first Corollary of the first". I keep the cross-reference as Bradwardine wrote it. 7. The sentence is elliptical. The sense is that if the cause were the iron alone, then, since iron, bronze, and air were disposed no differently before, sound would have been caused before. That is false, since the sound does not occur before the striking. So the striking itself must be something. I translate the verb causabatur as "would have been caused" to show the reductio. 8. "Trivial" is again as printed; see note 2. 9. Savile's "Metaphys." here and "Met." below both cite what, from the content, is Aristotle, Meteorologica I.3 (341a), on the heating of air by motion and the melting of projectiles. "Metaphys." is probably a mistake for "Meteor." I keep the printed abbreviations. I take lata (neuter plural of latus) as "things borne along", that is, projectiles; compare "air borne along by force" in the next quotation. 10. The word after "in" (permutationes in ⟨…⟩ corporis) is a compendium in the print that I could not resolve from the page image (the keyed text has a gap). "Complexion" is a conjecture from the context ("the complexion of the body is turned", just above). The sense is not affected. 11. Savile's margin also prints a variant, ‖ In, for ex in "ex motu naturae". The keyed Latin does not mark it, which is why the margin entry carries the stray sign ⟨◊⟩. The main reading ex construes and is kept. 12. The print has Species vero et memoriae with a variant ‖ spes in the margin. Species construes, so I translate it. The variant "hope" is almost certainly right, since Averroes' comment immediately below speaks of "hope and recollection" (spes … et rememoratio). The marker is keyed as 534E·1, but the variant stands at the head of p. 534 (534A). I kept the marker as keyed. 13. The print reads comprehendo est causa voluntatis. The sense requires "apprehension" (comprehensio) and "pleasure" (voluptatis), since the next clause says that wakefulness, sense, and intellect are voluptuosa. I translate the evident sense and do not emend the Latin. 14. Auehanoch (variant Auehennoch): I have not identified the authority. The form is perhaps a corrupted transliteration of an Arabic name. I leave it as printed. 15. Savile's "Ecclesiast. 33" is kept. The words are Sir 23:37 in the Vulgate numbering (23:27 in English numbering), so "33" appears to be an error. 16. Savile's references to Aristotle give the book and a second number, here 14. Elsewhere in this stretch they run Metaphysics 5, 13 and 14; 7, 3; 9, 16; 12, 39 and 51. The second number appears to be the number of the comment in the Latin Aristotle-with-Averroes text, not Aristotle's chapter. Under the conventions (§5.4) Savile's numbers are kept. The passages are De anima III 4 (429b29–430a2, the tablet); Metaph. Δ 7 (1017a), Z 1 (1028a), Θ 8 (1050a), Λ 7 (1072b), Λ 9 (1074b). 17. Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, condemned 219 propositions in 1277. Bradwardine cites the condemnation again at 537A, by the same name. Savile's print has "Stephanum Parisiensem Episcopum" in both places. 18. Translatio noua is the "new translation" of the Metaphysics (the revised Greek-based version), set against the translation embedded in Averroes's commentary. The same contrast between "new text" and "older text" recurs at 535A. 19. The Latin of Averroes's older text is hoc intelligere non est et substantia eius. It is rendered literally and I have not emended it. In the context it denies that this understanding is identical with the substance of the one who understands. That denial is the impossible consequence Aristotle is drawing. 20. The passage on agentia/percutientia and actio/passio appears to be Anselm's De veritate 8, not Augustine's. Savile's print reads "Augustinus de Verit. 8." The English follows the print. Agentia, percutientia, prouidentia and continentia are abstract nouns of agency, rendered "agency," "striking," "providence" and "containment." 21. Illud igitur quod intellectus est, quia intelligit aliud illud esse vnum, quod habet vitam in fine nobilitatis is obscure, probably from the translation of Averroes. The English keeps the Latin construction and does not smooth it. The sense is that the intellect, in understanding, grasps the one thing that has life at the summit of nobility, namely God. 22. Dispositio and dispositum are rendered "disposition" and "the disposed." Averroes means a predicate or attribute and the thing that has it. In intentione means "in concept," as a mental content. The point of the passage is that in immaterial things the attribute and what has it are one in being and are distinguished only by the intellect's way of conceiving. 23. qua semel loquutus est Deum etc. esse aliquid is awkward as printed: Deum … esse aliquid depends on loquutus est. The allusion is evidently to Psalm 61:12 [62:11], "God has spoken once." The English follows the Latin literally, including the "etc." 24. The text is Augustine's Letter 194 to the priest Sixtus (formerly Ep. 105), cited by Peter Lombard, Sentences II, dist. 27. The words Omne bonum meritum nostrum non in nobis facit nisi gratia are Lombard's abridged form of Augustine's sentence. 25. Savile's marginal variant for the main reading fidei vertute [print: fidei virtute] is fide, virtute. The main reading is construable ("from the power of faith") and is the one translated. 26. Vt sese corporis, id est, hominis corporalis habet effectus: the syntax is strained, and effectus may stand for affectus ("as the body is affected"). I translate the printed words and have not checked the quotation against Boethius. 27. The print reads Pes meus ("my foot"). The sentence is Augustine's Confessions 13.9, "Pondus meum amor meus; eo feror quocumque feror" ("My weight is my love; by it I am borne wherever I am borne"). Pes is evidently a corruption of pondus, but I translate what is printed. "The sixth of this second" is read as chapter 6 of this second book. 28. The print has in de causa motus Animalium, with in apparently dangling; I read it as "in the [chapter] de causa motus animalium". The references to De anima 3 and De animalibus 12 are Savile's, and I leave them as given. 29. Philouoli is the print's coinage, evidently from voluptas by way of philosophi (compare the Greek philo-). He glosses it himself as "lovers of pleasure". The wordplay on philosophi cannot be kept in English except by coining a parallel word.