Chapter 085 - The Mode and Order of Understanding

Our intellect knows material things by abstracting from phantasms; but there are three degrees in the cognitive faculty. There is, first, the act of the corporeal organ, i.e. sense, which knows particulars; secondly, the power which is neither the act of a bodily organ nor conjoined with corporeal matter, and such is the intellect of the angels, the object of which is form as it exists without matter; and thirdly, there is the human intellect, which stands midway between the other two, which is the form of a body, although not the act of a bodily organ. Hence its proper object is to know form in matter, as it possesses an individual corporeal existence, but not as it exists in such and such (particular) matter, which latter is the object of sense. We must, therefore, admit that our intellect knows material things by abstracting from phantasms; and that by means of material things so considered it becomes in some manner able to understand immaterial things. Thus intelligible species is that by which the soul knows; for similitude is the form according to which the intellect understands, and because the intellect is reflected upon itself it knows, by means of this same reflection, both its own understanding and the species by which it understands. For the species are understood by the intellect in the second place; that which it apprehends first is the object of which the intelligible species is the similitude. And since with regard to us sensitive knowledge is prior to that which is intellectual, so also with regard to us the knowledge of particulars is prior to that of universals. But as regards sense and intellect the more general knowledge precedes the less general; hence he who knows anything indistinctly is in potentia to knowing the principle of distinction; as he who knows genus is in potentia to knowing species. Thus a child might at first call all men fathers and afterwards learn to specify one.

And the intellect understands plurality by the mode of one at a time, not by many at once. God by His Essence knows all things at once, but we understand at once only those things which fall under one species, not others; for as it is impossible for the same body to be coloured at once with different colours, so it is impossible for the intellect actually to understand diverse things at the same time.

The process of our intellect as it passes from the potential to the actual resembles generation, which is not perfect from the beginning. Thus because, in its first conception, the intellect does not perfectly seize the knowledge of things and their nature, it is constrained to affirm and deny, which is to reason; while the Divine and the angelic intellects - perfect from the first because their nature is that of incorruptible things - know at once all we can arrive at by the process of reasoning. With regard to the nature of things the intellect cannot err, except accidentally, when reasoning about things which are only related to the object. This is evident from the example of sense, which does not err regarding its proper object except accidentally, in the case of things which are the object of more than one sense, or through indisposition of the organ. This cannot happen with the intellect because it is not an organic faculty and is always related in the same manner to its proper object; therefore the intellect does not fail or err concerning the simple knowledge of its object.

And with regard to the object, we all understand the same thing; but as regards the understanding mind, one person understands better than another; for the souls of the best-disposed bodies understand best. Thus we have seen that, as the philosopher says, soft flesh is well adapted to mind; also that with regard to the inferior faculties some may happen to be wanting which are required by the intellect for its operation.

With regard to the indivisible, it may exist after three modes: first, there is that which is actually undivided although it might be divided; and this continuous indivisible is understood by us before its division into parts, as confused knowledge precedes that which is distinct; secondly, there is the indivisible according to species, such as man, lion, etc., which is also understood before its parts. But there is another indivisible, that, viz. which neither is nor can be divided - as a point, and unity - which is only known afterwards by privation of the divisible. Thus we define a point as that which has no parts; and this because such indivisible has in it somewhat opposed to corporeal things, the nature of which is the direct and primary object of the intellect.