3. How The Will Controls Thought
The Will and Intellect necessarily a being [as in the case of the heavenly bodies], it would necessarily depend upon the matter of the composite; it would be incorruptible, and the matter would necessarily be in this form actually, but not by reason of the matter itself, but because of the form.Active potencies, however, are in contradictory potency, as Aristotle explained, by being present or not [to the patient they act upon]. If this means that the patient is either present to the agent or not, then all active potencies whose action depends upon a patient or recipient can be in potency of contradiction, not of themselves, but from another source. If this refers to what impedes an agent, then every perishable natural agent can be impeded even by some other naturally active cause. But no natural active potency has of itself the ability to elicit contrary actions as regards the same thing, or to act or not act, in the way a rational potency has [liberty] of contrariety [i.e., acting this way or that] or of contradiction [i.e., acting or not acting]. Therefore, that proposition [that "every potency is at the same time capable of contradictory states"] does not militate against what Aristotle had in mind when he assigned the aforesaid distinction [between rational and irrational powers].
3. HOW THE WILL CONTROLS THOUGHT
(Opus oxoniense II, dist. 42, qq. 1-4; nn. IQ-II) I reply by first setting forth three propositions. The first is that for every single perfect and distinct intellection existing in the intellect, there can be many indistinct and imperfect intellections existing there. This is evident from the example of vision, the field of which extends as a conical pyramid at the lower base of which one point is seen distinctly, and yet within that same base many things are seen imperfectly and indistinctly; but of these several visions, only one is perfect, namely, that upon which the axis of the pyramid falls. If this is possible in one of the senses, all the more so is it possible in the intellect.
The second proposition is that by some intellection existing there, though not known [distinctly] qua object, the will can will and take pleasure or not take pleasure in the object of this intellection or in the intellection itself; otherwise the will could not join the parent [the mind] with its offspring [knowledge], which is against what Augustine says almost everywhere in Bk. IX of The Trinity.
The third proposition is that the will, by taking pleasure in the intellection, strengthens and intends it, whereas the intellection that is nilled or in which the will takes no pleasure is weakened and dis-