Creature, power and operation

Use in the book

V.13.7 describes four creaturely constituents: essence, being, power and action. Ficino attributes to Pythagoreans the qualified language of four elements even in spirits, then explains the distinctions rather than treating the number as self-evident. These are different explanatory terms within a creature, not four bodily ingredients or four independently existing substances. The staged questions lead to a specific conclusion about the limits of created agency.

The sequence of questions is worth following in full because no one distinction does all the work. First, essence differs from being: an essence receives the act of existence, and that reception bounds it. If no receiver other than act existed, act would be unrestricted, which belongs to God alone. Second, essence differs from operation: the essence must already be before operating, and operation cannot be an independently subsisting infinite act. Third, operation differs from being. Outward action makes the difference visible, but inward action needs a further explanation.

The inward case is the more demanding one. A human remains a being of one determinate species while understanding objects from many species. The being by which the person exists is therefore not the cognitive operation that assumes the objects' intelligible determinations. Truth and good stretch at least as broadly as being, so understanding and enjoyment can in their objects range indefinitely. This range does not make the creature's own existence infinite or transform it into each object physically. It shows that operation and the species-limited act of existence cannot simply be the same term.

Fourth, operation differs from power and essence as act differs from potency. Fifth, power differs from being because one is capacity and the other actuality. Sixth, power differs from essence because powers are distinguished through their own acts: being actualizes essence, operation actualizes operative power. The argument supplies the ordered relationships operation-in-power and power-and-being-in-essence. The four terms are not four independently detachable substances, and they are not a physiological diagram of four bodily elements.

Ficino then infers that a creature operates immediately through a quality or accident rather than naked substance. The proximate product consequently has inhering being and requires a prior recipient. This explains the otherwise surprising conclusion that no creature creates anything. It is strict creatio from nothing that is denied, not ordinary making, generating, thinking or willing. The argument's scope also guards V.14.2: when soul vivifies “by its being,” the phrase is immediately explained through natural power, not as a cancellation of the created essence/power distinction just established.

The stable spelling voluptas at V.13.11 is a small but consequential lexical point. V.13.10 names cognition and will as inward operations; V.13.11 then names understanding and pleasure and assigns truth and good as their objects. This companion explains the transition actually printed rather than making a silent emendation to align the two lists.

Places to read

1. V.13.7, V.13.8, V.13.9Four creaturely terms and their distinct relations to actuality.
2. V.13.10, V.13.11, V.13.12Outward and inward operations, their objects and their distinctions from being and power.
3. V.13.13Nested inherence and limited agency exclude creaturely creation.

Translation in this edition

V.13.11 really reads voluptas, “pleasure,” after V.13.10’s voluntas, “will.” The apparatus explicitly preserves that change rather than correcting it away. M1482’s per infinita is followed against G1559’s per infinitas, where species appears to be understood.

accidens

accidens. Printed forms: accidens; accidens quoddam compositum; accidentibus; accidentis.

An accident or dependent feature distinct from substance. Operative power is a quality/accident; bodily harmony is likewise a composite accident and is challenged as an account of rational soul. References: V.13.13, V.15.10. See Creature, power and operation.

An accidental determination inhering in a subject rather than constituting its essential account. A proper subject of an accident must actually exist, and extraneous accidents restrict form in matter; the word does not mean a chance mishap in these passages. References: VIII.4.2, VIII.13.1. See Bodily points and the seat of understanding.

actus

actus. Printed forms: actu; actui; actum; actus.

Actuality or realized act, distinguished from the potency it actualizes. Being actualizes essence while operation actualizes power; God alone is unrestricted pure act. References: V.7.1, V.11.1, V.11.2, V.13.7, V.13.9, V.13.12. See Creature, power and operation.

agere / efficere

agere / efficere. Printed forms: agendi; agens; agente; agentis; agit; efficit; efficitur.

To act or bring about an effect, and the acting agent. The book distinguishes natural production, creation and inward activity rather than making every agent a creator from nothing. References: V.4.1, V.4.6, V.5.2, V.5.3, V.6.1, V.10.2, V.13.5, V.13.13. See Creature, power and operation.

calefactio

calefactio. Printed forms: calefactio.

Heating as an activity passing from an agent toward another subject. It differs from the agent's being, which does not flow outward in the same way. References: V.13.10. See Creature, power and operation.

cognitio / voluntas

cognitio / voluntas. Printed forms: cognitio; voluntas.

Cognition and will, inward operations named against outward heating. Their immanence does not identify them with essence or being; their range of objects exceeds the creature's own species. References: V.13.10, V.13.11. See Creature, power and operation.

creatura

creatura. Printed forms: creatura; creaturae; creaturam.

A creature, any being other than God in the theological terminology Ficino adopts. Created essence, being, power and operation are distinct; none possesses unrestricted act through itself. References: V.13.7, V.13.11, V.13.13. See Creature, power and operation.

obiectum

obiectum. Printed forms: mentis obiectum; obiecta; obiecta mentis; obiecto; obiectum; sensus obiecto.

Object, what an operation is directed toward and from which it takes its species. Truth and good allow inward operations to range beyond the single species in which the creature itself exists. References: V.13.11, V.13.12. See Creature, power and operation.

The object toward which mind or sense is directed. Ficino tests whether intellectual objects move mind, or whether intellect independently fashions incorporeal structures. References: VI.2.9. See Intellectual objects and the owl’s eye.

An object of a sensory power, distinguished from that power’s operation. The inward comparing power judges both the external senses’ objects and their activities. References: VII.2.1. See Comparison and common sense.

operatio / operari

operatio / operari. Printed forms: operabatur; operantem; operari; operatio; Operatio; operatione; operationem; operatur; operetur.

Operatio is an operation or activity, the actual exercise of a power; operari means to operate or act. Changing operation does not necessarily change essence; V.1323456789101112131415161718 distinguishes operation both from being and from the power exercised. References: V.2.1, V.5.8, V.10.2, V.12.14, V.13.8, V.13.9, V.13.10, V.13.12, V.13.13. See Creature, power and operation.

operatio quae effluit / quae manet

operatio quae effluit / quae manet. Printed forms: effluit extra operantem; manet intus; Quae effluit; Quae manet.

Immanent operation remains within its agent; effluent operation passes outward beyond it. Knowing and willing exemplify immanent activity; heating exemplifies effluent activity. Both are distinguished from the creature's own being. References: V.13.10, V.13.11. See Creature, power and operation.

quatuor elementa

quatuor elementa. Printed forms: essentia, esse, virtute et actione; quatuor elementa.

The qualified fourfold constituents of a creature: essence, being, power and action. The Pythagorean label is analogical and includes spirits; it does not assert literal elemental matter in soul. References: V.13.7. See Creature, power and operation.

spiritus

spiritus. Printed forms: spiritibus.

Spirit or incorporeal created being, distinct here from both body and the uncreated God. V.13.7 reports that the Pythagoreans posit four elements in spirits in a certain manner: essence, being, power and action. The qualification concerns these distinct created constituents, not four material elements or the fine physiological spirit mediating soul and body. References: V.13.7. See Creature, power and operation.

virtus

virtus. Printed forms: vi; vim; vires; viribus; virtus; virtute; virtutem; virtutes; virtuti; virtutibus; virtutis; Virtutum; virtutum; vis.

Effective power, the capacity whose act is operation. Creaturely power inheres in essence and is limited by that subject, unlike divine infinite creative power. References: V.1.4, V.4.1, V.4.2, V.4.6, V.4.10, V.13.7, V.13.9, V.13.12, V.13.13. See Creature, power and operation.

Excellence or effective power; the chapter on virtue specifies intellectual and moral perfection. Virtue is an indivisible quality of soul, while the closing book uses the same noun for enlarged powers of knowing, willing and living. References: VIII.3.1, VIII.3.6, VIII.3.8, VIII.16.4. See Virtue as an indivisible quality.

voluptas

voluptas. Printed forms: voluptas.

Pleasure or enjoyment, paired with understanding in V.13.11. The printed change from voluntas in the preceding unit is retained; pleasure's object is the good itself. References: V.13.11. See Creature, power and operation.