I. Reply to the question
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN RATIONAL AND NON-RATIONAL POWERS
consequent is false, because, as Aristotle says in XII.4 [XII.10, 1075a20], "freemen are not allowed to act at random," etc.
5 Against the other part of the division, that is, non-rational powers, first:
The sun can issue in opposite effects here below, for it melts ice and hardens clay.
Nonetheless, the sun's power is non-rational.
6 Also, later, in chapter 7 [Metaphysics IX.8, 1050b8], the Philosopher claims that "every power is a power for contradiction," and he makes it clear that this is true even of active powers.
7 Also, according to Aristotle [Metaphysics IX.2, 1046b7–15], a rational power is not said to be a power for opposites per se, but a power for one opposite, a positive feature (habitus), per se, and for the other, a privation, per accidens. But a nonrational power can be a power for opposites in exactly this way: for example, cold is a per accidens cause of heat and throwing a ball against the wall is a [per accidens] cause of its rebounding. Therefore, the distinction Aristotle draws is not appropriate.
8 In favor of the affirmative view are the Philosopher's words in the text [Metaphysics
IX.2, 1046a36–b3].
I. Reply to the question A. Article 1: The distinction as Aristotle drew it 9 In reply to this question, granting that the distinction is appropriate, we must investigate, first, how it ought to be understood and, second, what its cause is.
1. HOW THE DISTINCTION OUGHT TO BE UNDERSTOOD
10 Regarding the first topic, it is important to know that an active power, whether it is a power for an action or for a terminus that is produced, is a power for X in the following way: so long as its nature remains intact, it cannot be an active power for anything other than X, and it has the power for X in its own right. For example, so long as coldness remains coldness, it cannot be an active power for heat or a power that elicits heating, given that it is not an active [power for heat] in its own right.
For whatever the circumstances might be with respect to coldness, although something else might contribute something to the being of heat, coldness would never contribute to it.
11 So an active power is called a power for opposite products (whether contrary or contradictory) which, while remaining one nature, has a first terminus under which both opposites equally fall. But an active power is a power for opposite actions which, while remaining one, is sufficient to elicit such actions. And if the action of a power that is properly active is called an act in the sense I explained in the reply to the third
QUESTIONS ON ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS IX, Q.
argument in question 4,2 then every power that is a power for opposite actions is a power for opposite acts, but not vice versa.
But you must understand this: a power is for opposite actions—that is, for an action and its negation—in the way that will become evident in the discussion of the second topic [nn. 24–5, 31–4]. And what I am calling an active power here is not a relation that is counted according to the number of correlatives, but rather the absolute nature that is the proper foundation of the multiple relations that are to opposite effects.
2. THE CAUSE OF THE DISTINCTION
Concerning the second topic, Aristotle [Metaphysics IX.2, 1046b10–15] evidently claims that the cause of the distinction is this: a natural form is only a principle for assimilating to one opposite in terms of natural similarity, as the form is what it is and not the opposite.
By contrast, a form in the intellect, for example, knowledge, is a principle for assimilating opposites in terms of intentional similarity, as the form itself is virtually a likeness (similitudo) of opposite objects of cognition. For there is one and the same science of contraries, as there is of privative opposites, since one of two contraries includes the privation of the other. Now an agent is active with respect to that which it can assimilate to itself in accordance with the form by which it acts; and it is on that ground, apparently, that Aristotle accounts for the difference under discussion.
But there are quite a few arguments against this explanation of the distinction:
First, a natural form can be a principle for assimilating virtual opposites, as is evident in the case of the sun.
Second, this explanation evidently means that only intellect or knowledge is a rational power, which is false, as I shall explain below [n. 41].
He also seems to make this claim more explicitly in chapter 4 [Metaphysics IX.5,
1048a10–11], where he concludes that a rational power is for opposites. It will do nothing unless it is determined to one or the other, and what determines it, he says, is
"appetite or prohairesis." So he apparently excludes prohairesis from counting as a rational power in the sense of a power for opposites.
This becomes even more explicit through what follows [Metaphysics IX.5, 1048a11–16], where he evidently says that a rational power, once it is determined in this way, acts necessarily, just as a non-rational power acts necessarily by its very nature. Therefore, it seems that the aggregate of the intellect (which he says is a power
2 See qq. 3–4, nn. 48–9. Scotus has in mind here the sense of 'act' as the actuality (first act, or form) brought about in a patient by the active power.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN RATIONAL AND NON-RATIONAL POWERS
for opposites) and the appetite that determines it (which he says acts necessarily) is unqualifiedly not a rational power.
19 Third, the proof that the intellect has to do with contraries is evidently not valid, though the intellect does have to do with privative opposites. For a contrary, even if it does include the privation of the other contrary, does not do so strictly. Rather, it is a positive nature, and thus there is a proper cognition of its own entity, not a cognition strictly through the other opposite. Indeed, it is cognized only per accidens when it is cognized through the other opposite.
B. Article 2: The distinction in itself
1. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NATURE AND WILL
20 As for the second article, we must investigate, first, the difference in itself, and second, what Aristotle meant.
21 On the first topic, it is important to know that the fundamental distinction within active powers is on the basis of the different ways in which they elicit their activity— the fact that they act with respect to this or that [object] does distinguish powers in a way, or at least show that they are distinct, but it does not distinguish them as immediately [as does the distinction in how they elicit their activity]. For the relation of a power to the object with respect to which it operates is mediated by the activity that the power elicits in this way or that.
22 Now there can be only two different ways in which a power elicits its proper activity: either (1) it is of itself determined to acting, such that, as far as it depends on the power itself, it cannot not act when it is not impeded by something extrinsic, or (2) it is not determined of itself, but can do this act or an opposite act, and can also act or not act.
The general term for the first sort of power is 'nature'; the second is called 'will.'
23 Hence, the fundamental division of active principles is into nature and will. In keeping with this, Aristotle in Physics II [197a32–b13] identifies two per accidens moving causes: chance, which pertains to nature, and fortune, which pertains to purpose or will.
24 Now if one were to ask what causes this distinction—why, that is, nature is only of one (that is, of itself it is determinately a power for whatever effect or effects it is a power for) whereas will is of opposites (that is, of itself it is indeterminately a power for this action or its opposite, or for action or non-action)—the right answer is that there is no cause. For just as an immediate effect is related to its immediate cause per se and primarily and without any intermediate cause—since otherwise there would be an infinite regress—so too an active cause is evidently related in the most immediate way possible to its own action insofar as it elicits that action. Nor are we to assign any cause of why it elicits in this way other than simply that it is that kind of cause, which is the very thing whose cause this question is asking about.
QUESTIONS ON ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS IX, Q.
Therefore, just as what is hot heats because it is hot, and the proposition "what is hot heats" is not mediate, but instead is a primary proposition that is per se in the fourth mode,3 so too is the proposition "what is hot heats determinately of itself." And the same goes for "the will wills" and "the will does not of itself will determinately by a necessary determination."4
To this one might object, first: the proposition "a will wills" is contingent. If the will is not of itself determined to willing, how is any contingent proposition [to the effect that it wills] immediate?
And second: Why is this indeterminacy posited in the will if it can't be proved on the basis of the nature of the will?
Reply to the first objection [n. 26]: a contingent truth does not follow from necessary truths, obviously. So take some contingent truth. If it is immediate, my point is made.
If not, set forth the intermediate. At least one premise that supports it will be contingent; otherwise, a contingent truth would be inferred from [only] necessary truths. Now if that contingent premise is itself mediate, one premise that supports it will be contingent, and thus there will be an infinite regress unless it terminates in some immediate contingent truth.
Confirmation: in Posterior Analytics I [89a21–2] Aristotle holds that there can be belief propter quid, that is, on the basis of immediate propositions, and belief quia, on the basis of mediate propositions. Thus in the present case, take "the will wills a." If there is no cause between the extremes, my point is made. If there is a cause, say, "the will wills b," one must go further. But one must come to a stop somewhere. Where?
Why does the will will that? [At the point at which one comes to a stop] there will be no cause other than that the will is the will. And yet if that last proposition were necessary, it would not be the only antecedent for a contingent proposition.
In reply to the second objection [n. 27]: it is proved a posteriori. For someone who wills experiences that he is able not to will, or to will-against, as I have explained in discussing the freedom of the will at greater length elsewhere.5
Second, what I said above [n. 24] raises a question: how is such a cause reduced to act if it is indeterminate of itself to acting and not acting? I answer: there is an indeterminacy of insufficiency, which comes from potentiality and a lack of actuality; this is the way in which matter that does not have a form is indeterminate with respect to carrying out the action of that form. There is another indeterminacy of superabundant sufficiency, which comes from unlimitedness of actuality, whether unqualifiedly or in a certain respect.
3 Thomas Aquinas, Anal. post. I lect. 10 n. 7.
4 Cf. Ordinatio I d. 8 p. 2 q. un. n. 299; Quodl. q. 16 nn. [13–14].
5 Lectura I d. 39 qq. 1–5 n. 54; Reportatio IV d. 49 q. 9 nn. 24–40; Quodl. q. 16 nn. [1–18].
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32 Something that is indeterminate in the first way is not reduced to act unless it is first determined to a form by something else; something that is indeterminate in the second way can determine itself. For if it could do this if it had a limited act, how much more could it do so if it had an unlimited act, since then it would lack nothing that was unqualifiedly a principle of acting? Otherwise, God, who is supremely undetermined—with the indeterminacy of unlimitedness—to any action, could not do anything, which is false.
33 Here is an example of this. Fire causes heat, and there is no question of something extrinsic by which it is determined to acting. If it were then given the perfection of cold, without losing any of the perfection of heat, why could it not be determined by itself to heating just as before? Granted, this example is not a perfect analogy, as I will explain in replying to the preliminary argument [n. 43].
34 Now the indeterminacy that is ascribed to the will is not the indeterminacy of matter or of imperfection insofar as the will itself is active; rather, it is the indeterminacy of exceptional perfection and of a power that is not bound to a determinate act.
2. WHAT ARISTOTLE MEANT
35 But how do the things I have just said comport with Aristotle's view? He does not distinguish between nature and will but between non-rational and rational powers, and he understands only the intellect as a rational power, as the second argument given above [nn. 16–18] evidently shows.
36 Response: intellect and will can be understood as related either to the proper acts that they elicit or to the acts of other, inferior powers over which they exercise some causality: the intellect by presenting and directing, the will by inclining and commanding. The first relationship is obviously the more essential one. And the intellect, so considered, counts as nature. For it is of itself determined to understanding, and it is not in the intellect's power to understand and not to understand [simples] or, with regard to propositions, where it can have contrary acts—assent and dissent—those contrary acts are not in the intellect's power. Accordingly, even if (as Aristotle evidently says) there is a single cognition of opposite objects, the intellect is still not indeterminate of itself with respect to that cognition. Indeed, it necessarily elicits that intellection, just as it would necessarily elicit another intellection that would be of only one of those opposites. The will elicits its proper act in exactly the opposite way, as I explained earlier [nn. 22–34]. Hence, speaking of the two powers in this way, we affirm only two productions in the Godhead,6 and we say that intellect is the same principle as nature. But Aristotle was evidently not speaking in terms of this first relationship.
6 Lectura I d. 2 pars 2 qq. 1–4 nn. 202–5; Ordinatio I d. 2 pars 2 qq. 1–4 nn. 300–3.
QUESTIONS ON ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS IX, Q.
The second relationship seems quasi-accidental, for two reasons. First, these powers are evidently related to acts of other powers only through their own acts, which are prior to the acts of the other powers. Second, the intellect in particular, understood in terms of this second relationship, does not have the character of an active power, properly speaking, as we discussed in Book VII, question 2, chapter 6.7
Aristotle was evidently speaking in terms of this second relationship when he claimed that some sort of knowledge of opposites is required first. But that knowledge is of itself insufficient for causing any external effect, for, as he argues in chapter 4
[Metaphysics IX.5, 1048a8–10], if it were sufficient, it would bring about opposite effects. This evidently does not follow unless the causality of the intellect, even when it knows opposites, is such that the intellect is determined to bring about as external effects the things it knows. And thus not only is it not rational with respect to its own act, it is also not completely rational with respect to the external act that it directs.
Indeed, strictly speaking, it is also non-rational with respect to the external act; it is rational only in a certain respect, insofar as it is a prerequisite for the act of a rational power.
What follows [this prerequisite act on the part of the intellect] is the will as determining: not that the power of the will is of itself determined to one—and that consequently the aggregate of the intellect, which is of opposites, and the will is
[determinately] of one [of the pair of opposites], as was claimed above [n. 18]—but that the will, which is indeterminate with respect to its own act, elicits that act and through that act determines the intellect's causality with respect to bringing about its external effect.
This is why Aristotle says, "I call this desire or prohairesis," that is, choice; he does not call it "will," that is, a power. And so if Aristotle does call the intellect a rational power, the distinction between rational and non-rational powers must be understood in the way explained above [nn. 38–9]: the intellect is not a rational power either with respect to its own act or insofar as through its own act it cooperates with the act of an inferior power (taking "its own act" strictly), but rather in both respects it counts as nature. It does, however, count as a rational power insofar as its own acts are prerequisites for acts of the will.
If, by contrast, we understand 'rational' as meaning "with reason," then the will is properly rational. And the will is a power for opposites, not only with respect to its own act but also with respect to the acts of inferior powers. It is not a power for opposites in the way that nature is, like the intellect, which cannot determine itself to one or the other of a pair of opposites; rather, it can freely determine itself. And this is why it is a power: it can do something, for it can determine itself. The intellect, by contrast, is not a power with respect to external things; for if it has to do with 7 Or rather, see Book VI q. 2 nn. 27–8, 32.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN RATIONAL AND NON-RATIONAL POWERS
opposites, it cannot determine itself, and unless it is determined, it cannot do anything externally.
C. Reply to the objections against Aristotle's approach 42 On the basis of these remarks I can reply to the arguments given above against Aristotle's approach.
43 To the first argument, the one about the sun [n. 15], I reply that if a natural form is unlimited and is a principle of opposites in materials disposed to receive such opposites, it is determined to produce the opposites just as a form that is a principle of one thing is determined to produce that one thing. For it does not have the power to bring about either this or that form when a patient that is receptive to both forms is present, just as it would not have such power if it could bring about only one form.
The will, by contrast, is not a principle that is of itself determined to its action, whichever of the two opposites within its power it actually does; rather, it has the power to determine itself to either of them. And this shows clearly how the analogy given above, about heat and cold contained unitively in one and the same thing
[n. 33], fails. And indeed, not to belabor the point, there simply is no suitable analogy that could be offered, since will is distinguished from the class of active principles that are not will on the basis of their opposite ways of acting.
44 And for this reason it seems perfectly ridiculous to apply universal propositions about active principles to the will on the grounds that there is no counterexample to those propositions in anything other than the will. For the will is unique in being unlike other active powers, and so one should not deny that the will is F just because other active powers are not F. There is, after all, no contradiction involved in asserting that a created active principle is capable of the perfection that I have attributed to the will, namely, that not only is it not determined to one effect or act, because it has many effects and acts in its power, but it is also not determined to any of the effects and acts for which it has sufficient power. For who would deny that an active principle is more perfect the less dependent, determined, and limited it is with respect to its act or effect? And if you grant this to be true of a power that is unlimited with respect to many, contrary effects, though naturally determined to any given one of them, how much greater perfection should you acknowledge in a principle that, in addition to this first kind of unlimitedness, has a second? For this contingency is nobler than necessity, as I discussed in Book V in the question raised there about the chapter "On the necessary,"8 arguing that it is a matter of perfection in God that he causes nothing necessarily. Therefore, given that this perfection that we attribute to the will is not impossible for a created active principle, and that the will is supreme among such principles, reason demands that we attribute such
8 Book V q. 3 nn. 26–9.
QUESTIONS ON ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS IX, Q.
perfection to the will. And this explanation is better than the one given earlier about heat and cold united in a single thing [n. 33].
On this basis the argument that Aristotle seems to give in the text [n. 2] can be given a more expansive treatment, as follows. If the intellect through one and the same cognition has in some way to do with opposites, as presenting them, it follows that a more indeterminate active power can have to do with opposites in a more excellent way: namely, that such a power, while remaining a single power, can determine itself to either of the opposites presented to it. Otherwise, the first power for opposites would evidently have been given in vain, since without the second power it could not do either of them. Thus, this is an argument from the lesser, not an argument from the proper cause, since knowledge is not the proper cause of this distinction.
Reply to the second argument [nn. 16–18]: Aristotle excludes the will from counting as a rational power only if you are talking about what is incompletely a rational power, namely, what has knowledge of opposites. Now he says that this incomplete rational power does not cause an external effect unless it is determined by something else.
I ask: what is the source of this determination through choice? It has to be from a power that chooses, and thus a power distinct from reason. For reason is not what determines, since reason has to do with opposites with respect to which it cannot determine itself, let alone determine something other than itself; or, if it did determine itself, it would bring about opposites at the same time, as Aristotle argues about action [Metaphysics IX.5, 1048a21–4]. And the intellect does not necessarily determine that other thing to that opposite, since if it did, the intellect would not be even in remote potentiality to opposites. So the other thing contingently determines itself, and once it has become determinate through its own act, it consequently determines the intellect.
So Aristotle indicates that a rational power is of itself a power for opposites in the sense that it determines itself to one or the other, and he affirms that once it has determinately elicited its act, it is determined with respect to the act of an external power that of itself was a power for opposites in the sense that, necessarily, it could not determine itself. And thus in the course of showing in chapter 4 how an incomplete rational power proceeds to act, he evidently indicates quite clearly that there is another rational power that is complete in terms of the distinction he draws here, and that those two powers, with their acts, cooperate in producing the external effect. Properly speaking, the executive power, which is rational by participation, has no power for the opposite; rather, the full character of a power for opposites is formally in the will.
As for what Aristotle goes on to say [Metaphysics IX.5, 1048a11–15]—that a rational power that has been thus determined is necessarily a power for one thing, and that "what it chiefly desires is what it will do"—one could say that this is not true with absolute necessity. For just as the antecedent, "It wills this," is not necessary (if it is
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN RATIONAL AND NON-RATIONAL POWERS
true at all), so too the consequent is not necessary. If the antecedent is true necessarily, the consequent, "It does this external act," is also necessary. But if what follows necessarily is "One wills this external thing, therefore, if not impeded, one does it,"
Aristotle would merely be claiming that no effect is brought about except by a cause that has been determined to that effect before producing it (understanding 'before' as indicating natural priority), with the sole exception of the will, which follows the apprehension of opposites and, according to Aristotle, determines which external effect will follow.
49 One could explain his remarks at the end of chapter 4 [Metaphysics IX.5, 1048a21–4]—"Hence, it is not the case that if one wills opposites, one necessarily does them," etc.9—along the same lines. For why doesn't this follow in the case of the will? And yet he argues earlier, in the beginning of the chapter on rational powers
[Metaphysics IX.5, 1048a8–10], that doing opposites at the same time is a good basis for the distinction [between rational and non-rational powers], because a power will act as it has the power to act, though in fact no power can act in this way.10
50 But as I have explained [nn. 36, 41, 46–7], an incomplete rational power is of itself a natural power with respect to opposites. For that reason, as far as the power itself is concerned, it is not only a power at the same time for opposites but even a power for opposites at the same time.11 And so if of itself it did those things, it would do them at the same time, in the same way that the sun is a power for opposites at the same time in diverse recipients and would bring about those opposites at the same time if those recipients were brought close to it; and if it were a power for both opposites equally and one and the same patient equally receptive of both were brought near to it, either it would do nothing or it would bring about both opposites in it at the same time. So it is in the present case.
51 One might object that the intellect is not a power for both opposites equally, and so it would act according to whichever has more influence over it. I reply that in the case of the one cognition of a positive feature and its privation, the intellect is indeed not 9 The gist of the argument as we have it in both the Latin Aristotle and the exposition of Antonius
Andreas is that someone who wills two opposites will not do them, because there is no power to do two opposite things simultaneously. There is nothing about necessity in either version of the text, and the editors wonder whether Scotus is citing a corrupt text; but the notion of necessity plays no role in what follows, so the point seems to be moot.
10 The argument here is opaque even by Scotus's standards, and if there were better MS support for doing so, I would delete the last clause. The argument in Aristotle to which Scotus refers here goes as follows (I quote Ross's translation): "For the nonrational potencies are all productive of one effect each, but the rational produce contrary effects, so that if they produced their effects necessarily they would produce contrary effects at the same time; but this is impossible." (Note that necessity does play a role in this argument; that Scotus has jumbled this passage together with the one he quotes in the first sentence of the paragraph is a better explanation for the intrusion of necessity in that sentence than a speculative appeal to a corrupted text.) 11 Cf. Lectura II d. 25 q. un. nn. 36–7; Ordinatio I d. 2 pars 2 qq. 1–4 nn. 346–51; Reportatio II d. 25 q. un. ad 4 n. [23]; Additiones magnae II d. 25 q. un. nn. [10, 25].
QUESTIONS ON ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS IX, Q.
related to both equally: it cognizes the positive feature per se and the privation per accidens. But it can also have a cognition of one opposite and a distinct knowledge of the other, and thereby it can be the cause of opposites.
One might also object, "How, then, will Aristotle's inference [that rational powers deal with opposites, though] not in the same way, be any good?" [I reply:] this is not how things are in the case of the will. For if it is a power for opposites virtually, it is at one and the same time a power for both of them, though not a power for both of them at one and the same time. For it is not a power for both in the mode of a natural power; rather, it can determine itself to one in preference to the other and therefore act accordingly. And perhaps this gives us a way to interpret chapter 4 so that it speaks very much in favor of the will [as a rational power], though there is evidently some material there that speaks against the will.
But then one might ask why Aristotle so frequently calls the intellect a rational power and does not do so for the will, even though (if my previous exposition is correct) he does imply that the will is a rational power. One could reply that an act of the intellect is typically prior to an act of the will, and it is better known to us. Aristotle quite often spoke in terms of what is more evident, and that is why we find him saying so little about the will, even though there are certain implications of what he did say which he would have drawn explicitly if he had discussed those issues.
The third argument offered against Aristotle [n. 19] has a true conclusion, namely, that in the case of simple apprehension there is distinct cognition of two contraries, each being cognized through its proper species. Nonetheless, if one contrary is naturally prior to the other, discursive cognition can be a source of knowledge about the other [posterior] contrary. And this is a way to interpret Aristotle's dictum in De anima I [411a4–5] that "the straight is the judge both of itself and of the curved." For judgment does not pertain to simple apprehension but to a comparison of propositions. For with respect to knowledge secundum quid, one thing can be apprehended by simple apprehension through the species of something else, in terms of the privation that that species includes, not of course within its essence or essential character, but as a concomitant.
In the first way, then, there is a single cognition of contraries: cognition of one formally and of the other virtually, as in the case of cognition of a principle and a conclusion. And if some volition—say, perhaps, choice—requires a prior judgment about what is to be chosen, one of the contraries can be cognized through the other as far as that cognition is concerned, even though one might sometimes choose contrary to that judgment.
In the second way there is a single cognition of contraries: cognition of one secundum quid and of the other unqualifiedly. And this cognition is all that the will needs in order to will either of the contraries, insofar as each is presented in that cognition.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN RATIONAL AND NON-RATIONAL POWERS
And the will can will contraries in this way; therefore, it can also do so unqualifiedly.
For the contraries are not incompatible absolutely, except perhaps by reason of such privation; they are evidently not incompatible as willable, since both are evidently willable as positive beings.
57 You might say that a rational power is a power for opposites unless it has been determined to one, and then it isn't. On the contrary: from this it follows that there is no distinction between rational and non-rational powers on the basis of their being or not being a power for opposites. The consequent is false according to Metaphysics
IX; therefore, so is the antecedent.
58 Proof of the inference: non-rational powers, both active and passive, as naturally prior to a determining act, can produce opposites, as is evident from Aristotle, De interpretatione II [c. 13, 23a4–5], and Boethius, Commentary on De interpretatione
VI, second edition [c. 13], where he offers the example of water, which can both chill and heat.
59 Also, if [a rational power] could not produce opposites when it is actually determinate—that is, in and for this instant—no effect in actual being would be actually contingent. The consequent is false; therefore, so is the antecedent. The falsity of the consequent is evident from the Philosopher in De interpretatione I [c. 9,
19a23–4], where he holds that one must qualify the proposition "Everything that is, when it is, necessarily is," because something exists contingently. Proof of the inference: an effect is said to be contingent in potentiality only in virtue of the fact that its cause has the power for the opposite; therefore, an effect is not contingent in actuality unless its cause, in actually causing, could cause the opposite in the very
'now' in which it causes that effect. But on your view it cannot now cause the opposite, because at that point it has been determined. Therefore, etc.
60 You might say that an effect is called contingent because it can fail to come about. On the contrary: it wasn't a being before [it was brought about]; therefore, it wasn't an actually contingent effect before [it was brought about]. For we are speaking now of contingency as a mode of a being in actuality, when it is in actuality, and in the very
'now' in which it is in actuality.
61 Also, the opposite of what belongs to something per se and primarily does not belong to that thing either per se or per accidens as long as the thing remains itself.
Otherwise, propter quid demonstration, which derives a passion from its subject, would not proceed from necessary truths. Now being a power for opposites belongs to a rational power in its own right and primarily, as a proper passion of a rational power qua rational; for this is precisely how a rational power is distinguished from a non-rational power, according to Metaphysics IX. Therefore, etc.
62 Also, God can not predestine someone who is predestinate, in and for the very 'now' in which he predestined that person, notwithstanding the determination of his will