Introduction

There is a crying need for a better acquaintance with the authentic writings of John Duns Scotus, especially among readers whose mother tongue is English. It is our whole purpose in this little book to satisfy that need to the limited extent of presenting in simple form the text and translation of the De Primo Principio, the greatest of the shorter works of Duns Scotus. We have chosen the De Primo Principio for several reasons. First, it is certain that it is an authentic work of Duns Scotus. It has always been ascribed to him, and no doubt as to its authenticity can be sustained. In this connection it must be carefully distinguished from the De Rerum Principio, a work which was formerly attributed to Duns Scotus but which has been proved to be the work of Cardinal Vitalis de Furno.1 A recent article of Dr. Carl Balić, O.F.M., 2 contains evidence that a redactor other than Scotus himself may have given us the De Primo Principio in its present form. However, after presenting all his arguments showing the presence of another hand in the final redaction of this work, Dr. Balić himself insists that the De Primo Principio must be considered as a true work of Duns Scotus. The work is substantially complete and is not essentially weakened by the omissions and interpolations which occur in the third and fourth chapters.3 It is not our purpose to examine here the arguments concerning the possible date of composition of this work. However, after weighing the evidence of the various opinions we would judge that it is probably a late work of Scotus.* A second reason why we have chosen the De Primo Principio is because it contains some of the best thoughts and efforts of Duns Scotus.

When reference is made to one work as the master- piece of Duns Scotus, either the De Primo Principio or the Oxoniense is indicated. The latter can be said to be more im- portant, because of its great length and the range that it covers. The De Primo Principio, on the other hand, is more systematic and is free from the relatively unimportant questions that are found in any Commentary on the Sentences. Besides, the greater part of the De Primo Principio is paralleled by some of the very best portions of the Oxoniense. The third and most important reason why we have chosen the De Primo Principio is because it presents at length a proof for the existence of God, which, in our opinion, has never been equaled. Unfortunately, this proof has been neglected, especially its presentation in the De Primo Principio. Accordingly, our text and translation should be of help to others in further studies of Scotus' proof. We have divided our work into two parts: first, a revised text Edition of the De Primo Principio, containing references and those variants which are important for an understanding of the text, and secondly, an English translation of our revised text.

In preparing the Latin text we have had direct access to seven manuscripts which contain the complete text of the De Primo Principio. We have followed Mueller" in the manner in which he has indicated these and all the other manuscripts to which reference will be made. Accordingly, we have referred to these manuscripts in the footnotes to the text as Ma, O2, Mu, V1, T, A, and R. Apart from the direct information received from these seven manuscripts, we have used the findings of Mueller with reference to three other complete manuscripts (listed as W, C, and P) and five fragments of the De Primo Principio (listed as B, 01, 03, 04, and V2) We have also compared our reading of the first seven manuscripts mentioned with the reading of Mueller. In addition to the manuscripts, we have consulted the Wadding text and the text edited by Garcia," and have studied the findings of Ciganotto.8 Despite that fact that there are three different texts of the De Primo Principio in modern print we have deemed it advisable to bring out another text. The text in the Garcia Edition, as well as the text in the Vivès Edition of Wadding, can be had only in large volumes containing the spurious De Rerum Principio. It may be wondered why we were not satisfied to use the recent critical Edition of Mueller. Such was our original inten- tion; however, on reading Dr. Mueller's text we noted so many points which we would have put differently that we decided to bring out our own text. We wish to acknowledge the great benefits we have derived from the use of Mueller's critical text, especially with regard to the manuscripts that were not directly available to us. We wish to emphasize here that we consider Dr. Mueller's text to be far superior to any that preceded it. Throughout our work we have mentioned only those points on which we disagree with Dr. Mueller's findings, but these are few in comparison with the many times that we have been impressed by the excellence of his work. We accept almost in full his critical evaluation of the manuscripts to which we refer the reader. However, a few important qualifications must be noted.

We believe that Dr. Mueller has given too great a preference to the Madrid manuscript ( listed as Ma) The arguments which he advances could be met by similar arguments in favor of several other of the manuscripts. When these differences are important for a better understanding of the text, we have indicated them in the footnotes. It is not our purpose here to give any further critical evaluation of the manuscripts. Suffice it to say that from our readings of the manuscripts we feel that Dr. Mueller has also given too great weight to the fragments he has used, namely, O1, 03, 04, V2, and especially B, which last is very brief. On the other hand, we feel that in his evaluation Dr. Mueller has not given sufficient importance to the manuscripts Mu, V1, and T, which he places in a secondary family. We agree with Dr. Mueller that A and R are of lesser value because they are the latest of the manuscripts used and seem to have only a remote connection with the original text. In very many instances we have punctuated the text in a manner quite different from that of Dr. Mueller. For the most part the punctuation is largely a matter of taste, but there are times when the whole thought is thereby changed. We have hoped by means of very careful punctuation to make the reading of the text as clear and easy as possible. We have disagreed in practically every instance with the references of Mueller to the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Finally, we have found several printing errors in the work of Mueller. By the enumeration of the above differences it is our intention to aid the reader in arriving at the true text and thought of Duns Scotus. The serious student will certainly refer to the work of Dr. Mueller because of the completeness of his critical apparatus in the enumeration of virtually all the variants of all the manuscripts.

It would be contrary to our purpose to enumerate all the variants here because of the corresponding length of the parallel English translation. Even in the footnotes we have used it was our primary purpose to be of assistance to English-speaking readers. In our translation we have tried to adhere closely to the text; as a result our English text is an almost literal translation, which may at times be somewhat obscure. We have preferred to keep very close to the text so that the reader may have a safe basis upon which to make his own interpretations. When the phrases can be turned into a more elegant form without any danger of modifying the original meaning, we have attempted thus to give a smoother English reading. We have omitted the Additiones to the De Primo Principio because so little is known as to their authenticity, and because a reading of these Additiones convinced us that they were not essential to our text. We have given only the references to the other works of Scotus which are directly pertinent to the present text as such. Numer- ous other references which would help in the development of our understanding of the content will be included in a Com- mentary on this text which we hope to bring out in the not too distant future.

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The De Primo Principio

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