De Rervm Natvra Constantivm Scientia, Principiis Et Affectionibvs Commvnibvs, Dispvtatio

natural philosophy is not the faculty of understanding alone; for this [faculty] possesses no innate readiness in knowing natural things; furthermore, the operation which it claims as its own and adequate is not restricted to reasoning alone, just as natural philosophy [is].

II. But just as the readiness by which the mind is affected toward understanding arises either from the removal of impeding dispositions, or from the determination of the intelligence [so that] by one practiced act, it is thereafter more ready in exercising others; or finally from the perfection required for understanding having been attained; so natural philosophy is either the intelligence freed from impediments, or the same [intelligence] which is determined by reason to exercise acts of a certain kind with readiness, or finally the perfection produced anew and coming to the intelligence through the exercise of acts.

III. Although all these opinions are such that they cannot be certainly proven false, the most common and more probable opinion is that it is a perfection distinct in reality from the faculty of understanding, produced by the power of the acts of that same faculty. A not altogether light suspicion of this is brought by the fact that we often experience great difficulty in reasoning; for from this it seems rightly to be concluded that readiness is not innate to our intelligence by nature: from this, then, that the intelligence is changed when it attains readiness; finally, because by exercise, not only are those things which blunt the edge of understanding removed, but rather some perfection similar to an act is produced, which brings readiness in understanding, and which the intellect uses as an active principle of intellection, though a partial one.

IIII. But since the readiness of understanding consists in two things: partly in representing objects firmly, and partly in judging them and ordering them among themselves; it received the name of natural philosophy from the prior of the species, and from the posterior [of the study].

V. From the fact that natural philosophy is a certain and evident propensity, it is brought about that it is contained in the order of the sciences. And it is certain and evident,