Chapter 015 - Of Ideas

It is necessary to admit that there are ideas, in the Divine Mind, that is to say, intelligible forms of things outside of the created objects themselves. An idea is a form apart from the thing, and it is the exemplar or principle by which the thing is known. For these two reasons ideas must be, for because things are not made by chance, the form must be the end of their production. As regards some natural beings, this form pre-exists, as when man generates man, and fire begets fire; as regards others, it pre-exists according to intellectual being in those that act by intelligence. Thus the model of a house pre-exists in the architect's mind, and is the idea of the house, for he aims at assimilating the house to the form in his mind. Since, therefore, the world is not the result of chance, but is created by God by the agency of intellect, there must be forms in the Divine Mind as the model of things created, and in this consists the idea.

Ideas in the Divine Mind are various. God has the idea of the order of the whole universe, which requires that He should have the idea of the parts as well as of the whole. This must not be esteemed to be inconsistent with the Simplicity of the Divine Nature, inasmuch as we have seen above there are not different species in His Mind, but one glance of His Divine Essence includes all things. God knows all things in every way they are knowable, not only in Himself as ideas, but also in reference to other creatures as exemplars, for every creature has its own species which participates after some manner in the likeness to the Divine Essence. Therefore, as God knows His own Essence as the great Exemplar of creatures, He knows His Essence also as the true and adequate Idea of creatures, and of all. Hence God apprehends various ideas appertaining to the variety of existences, and which are separate ideas in themselves. The idea as Exemplar or Model represents all that is done by God in time. The idea as Principle of Knowledge represents everything which can be or is known, according to both its speculative and practical conception.