Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

The question concerns both the intellect’s concept, which is called the expressed species and the word, and the expressed species of the imagination or imaginative faculty, which is called an image or phantasm: how the definition of a formal sign applies to them, namely, that it is formal cognition and that it represents something by itself and immediately.

To understand, at least roughly, what a concept, word, expressed species, or term of intellection is (all of these are the same), and why it is posited, we must note, from what we will discuss at greater length in On the Soul¹ qq. 6, 7, and 10, that this term of cognition, posited within a cognitive power, is posited for one of two reasons: either because of a necessity on the part of the object, or because of the fecundity of the power.

It is posited because of fecundity, since “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”; thus a word is called a concept insofar as it is expressed and formed by a power to manifest what is known. For the intellect naturally seeks manifestation and breaks forth into it; such an expressive manifestation is called an interior saying or utterance, and the word itself is an expressed and uttered species or likeness.

It is posited because of the necessity of the object so that the object may be united to the power as a known term and be present to it. As St. Thomas teaches in Summa contra Gentiles I, ch. 53, there are also two reasons why this term or object must be posited within a cognitive power. One is that the object is absent and cognition cannot terminate in it unless it is made present as a term; therefore some likeness or species must be formed in which it is made present and represented. Just as an impressed species had to be posited so that the object would be present and united to the power as a principle contributing to the formation of cognition, so another likeness or species must be posited if the thing is absent, so that it is present as the term toward which cognition tends. Or, second, a concept must be posited within the power so that the thing known or the object may be made proportionate and conformed to the power itself. Just as an object cannot terminate external vision unless it is suffused with visible light, neither can an object be attained by the intellect unless it has been stripped of its sensible conditions and affected and formed by spiritual light, which is immateriality or abstraction. But immaterial light is not found outside the intellective power. Therefore the object must be illuminated and formed by that spirituality within the power itself so that it may be attained. This thing, formed in the being of an object, is the word or concept. It is not cognition itself, as we said above from St. Thomas and will say below in art. 4, because it belongs to the side of the object or known term. Its office is not to make the knower formal, as cognition is a tending toward an object, but to make the object present in the manner of a known term. It does not precede cognition as an impressed species does, because it is formed through cognition; nor is it given as a principle of cognition, but as its term. It does not follow that such a word or species must be known as that which, as an external image is known so that the thing represented in it may be attained; for since it represents within the intellect and as a form informing it, it does not represent objectively as something known first, but formally and as the account by which something is known, as we will discuss at greater length in On the Soul² q. 11. See further St. Thomas at the cited place, Summa contra Gentiles IV, ch. 11, Opuscula 13³ and 14⁴, and many other places where he treats of the word of the mind.

If you ask by what act this expression or concept is made, we say briefly (for this matter belongs to On the Soul) that in the intellect it is made through an act that is substantially cognition, but has something more: it is fecund cognition, that is, manifesting, speaking, or expressing. For the intellect does not know only for itself; it also makes an impulse toward manifestation, and that breaking forth to manifest is a kind of expression, conception, and birth of the intellect.

In the sensory powers, however, St. Thomas seems to allow two ways of making these expressed species, which in those powers are called images. First, the powers themselves actively form or produce them, as he says in Summa theologiae I, q. 12, art. 9, ad 2, that “the imagination forms the species of a golden mountain from previously conceived species of mountain and gold.” Second, they receive species formed by other causes or powers. See St. Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles IV, ch. 11, and Opusculum 14⁵, where he says that a form or representation is expressed by sense and terminates in the imagination; thus that from which this likeness emanates is one thing, and that in which it terminates another. Although this may be probable, it seems more probable, as we will say in On the Soul q. 7, art. 3, that an expressed species is always a living image and is produced by a vital action of the power it serves, so that the power may know through it. Impressed species, however, are those impressed from one power upon another, moving another power toward cognition and the formation of an image. Because they are carried by spirits or blood, when blood and spirits descend to the sense organs, they move the imagination from there, just as if the senses moved it. This happens in dreams; sometimes a demon or angel also brings about the imagination’s being informed in this way, as St. Thomas teaches in Summa theologiae I, q. 111, art. 3, and On Evil, q. 16, art. 11⁶, and elsewhere.

FIRST CONCLUSION. A concept or expressed species of the intellect is, most properly, a formal sign.

THIS CONCLUSION IS DRAWN FROM ST. THOMAS, who often teaches that the word is a sign and likeness of a thing, as in Quodlibet 4, art. 17⁷, On Truth, q. 4, art. 1, ad 7⁸, and Summa contra Gentiles IV, ch. 11. It is not an instrumental sign, because it is not an object known first which, from a prior cognition of itself, leads to the thing represented; rather, it is the term of intellection by which the thing is made known and present to the intellect as an intrinsic term, as St. Thomas teaches in those same places and Opuscula 13 and 14⁹. Therefore it is a formal sign.

THE FOUNDATION OF THE CONCLUSION is drawn from this: an intelligible concept directly represents to a power something other than itself, for example, a human being or a stone, because it is their natural likeness. By informing the intellect it makes it actually knowing, through a cognition that terminates in the thing known and not through a prior cognition of the concept itself. Therefore it is a formal representation that makes the intellect intelligent, not by way of an act but by way of a term or terminated representation.

SECOND CONCLUSION. An image or expressed sensible species in the interior powers is also a formal sign with respect to those powers.

This conclusion presents no difficulty if these images are formed by the powers themselves, as concepts are in the intellect. BUT THE DIFFICULTY IS how they can be maintained to be formal representations, at least terminatively, if it is true that these expressions can also be formed by an extrinsic principle, as when they are formed by an angel or demon through movement of the spirits, or even through the descent of blood in sleepers to the sense organs.

NEVERTHELESS, IT IS SAID that even if this is granted (though its opposite is more truly the case, as we said), those images or likenesses are still formal signs, because they do not lead the power or represent an object to it from a prior cognition of themselves; rather, they lead immediately to the objects themselves that they represent, because these sensitive powers cannot reflect upon themselves or upon the expressed species they possess. Therefore, without those powers knowing the images, the things represented are made present to the powers immediately. Hence this representation occurs formally, not instrumentally, and not through some prior cognition of the image or likeness itself. For an image to be a formal sign, it suffices that it terminate an act of cognition, whether it is formed by that power itself or formed by another cause and united to that power so that the act terminates in it. For example, if God alone were to unite a concept to the intellect and the act were to terminate in it, it would truly and properly be called formal representation terminatively, even if it did not emanate from that intellect.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE ANSWERED.

First it is argued that a concept represents to a power as an instrumental sign; therefore it is not a formal sign.

The antecedent is proved first from St. Thomas, Quodlibet 5, art. 9, ad 1¹⁰, where he says that “the intellect understands something in two ways: in one way formally, and thus it understands by the intelligible species by which it is made actual; in another way as by an instrument used to understand something else, and in this way the intellect understands by means of the word, because it forms a word in order to understand a thing.” Therefore, according to St. Thomas, the intellect understands by the word not as by a form but as by an instrument, and thus it is not a formal sign but an instrumental one.

It is proved next by reason: a concept represents as something known; therefore it represents as an instrumental sign, for what is known leads to cognition of something else. The antecedent is proved because St. Thomas says in On Truth, q. 4, art. 2, ad 3¹¹, that “the conception of the intellect is not only that which is understood, but also that by which the thing is understood, so that what is understood can be called both the thing itself and the conception of the intellect.” Therefore according to St. Thomas the word is known as that which, and thus represents as something known. —Likewise, understanding is related to the word as being is to a being in act, as St. Thomas says in Summa theologiae I, q. 34, art. 1, ad 2. Therefore the word represents only as formed by cognition and as known, and hence as an instrumental sign, which represents as something known.

THE REPLY is to deny the antecedent. To the first proof from St. Thomas’s authority, it is replied that St. Thomas calls the word an instrument by which the intellect knows something, not as a known medium that is an instrument and an external medium, but as an internal medium in which the intellect understands within itself; this is what it is to be a formal sign. An impressed species, however, is called that by which the intellect formally understands because it belongs to the side of the principle of intellection; what belongs to the side of a principle is called a form. Yet St. Thomas did not say that an impressed species formally signifies or represents, but that it is that by which the intellect formally understands. To be a formal sign and to be the principle by which something is understood are different.

To the second proof from reason, it is replied that the concept is not said to represent as something known beforehand by way of an extrinsic object, as though the word “known” were an extrinsic denomination, but as something known intrinsically, that is, as a term of cognition within the power. But because it is not a term in which cognition ultimately rests, but a term by means of which it proceeds to know an object outside, it has the character of a formal sign: it is something known intrinsically, that is, an intrinsic account by which something is known. An instrumental sign is known as that which extrinsically, as a thing known from whose cognition one arrives at what is signified. A concept, however, is known as that which, not as an extrinsic thing known, but as that in which the thing known is contained within the intellect. Thus the concept and the thing conceived are reached by one cognition per se; cognition of the concept does not lead onward to cognition of the thing conceived. Because it is that in which the thing or object is made proportionate and immaterial through the mode of a term, the concept itself is said to be known as that which—not as a thing known separately, but as that which constitutes the object in the character of a known term. Although an instrumental sign can be attained in one cognition together with what it signifies, even then one proceeds from the known sign to what it signifies; the sign itself does not formally constitute the thing as known.

To the third proof it is replied that understanding, insofar as it is a saying or expression, has the word itself as its completion, as a term. Thus St. Thomas says in On the Power of God, q. 8, art. 1¹², that “understanding is completed through the word.” But the word itself is actualized and completed in another order by understanding, insofar as the act of understanding is the ultimate actuality in the intelligible order, just as being is the ultimate perfection in its order, as St. Thomas says in Summa theologiae I, q. 14, art. 4. The fact that the word is made known by this actualization does not suffice for it to be an instrumental sign, because it is not known as an object and extrinsic thing, but as an intrinsic term of intellection itself. For representing within a power by informing it and making it knowing is what it means to be a formal sign.

Second it is argued: The word is not formal representation; therefore it is not a formal sign.

The consequence is clear from the definition of a formal sign. The antecedent is proved first: formal representation is that which makes a power formally knowing. A power is made formally knowing through the act of cognition, which is the immediate form of the knower, especially since knowing consists in an action, being a vital operation. But the word is not the very operation or action of knowing; it is something formed by cognition and its effect. Therefore it is not the form that constitutes the knower, but something that proceeds from and is produced by the knower; therefore it is not the power’s formal representation. Hence the word is not constituted through actively understanding, but through being passively understood; therefore it does not formally constitute the one understanding, but formally constitutes the thing understood.

Second, the same antecedent is proved: In divine things the Word does not formally make one intelligent, because the Father does not understand by begotten wisdom, as St. Thomas teaches from Augustine in Sentences I, dist. 32, q. 2, art. 1¹³. Therefore, by its kind, the word does not make one formally intelligent.

This is confirmed: if the word were formal representation, the intellect could not be formally knowing, at least perfectly, without the word. But the intellect knows formally without forming a word, as is plausibly admitted in the blessed; and it is manifestly so in the intellection by which the Word and the Holy Spirit understand. Therefore.

THE REPLY to the principal argument distinguishes the antecedent: the word is not formal representation by way of an operation, I concede; by way of a term, I deny. Thus it makes the intellect formally intelligent terminatively, not operatively. When it is said that a formal sign is formal representation, this means terminated formal representation, not the operation of representation itself without a term, because it belongs to the character of a sign to represent, while an operation as operation does not represent. What represents must be expressed and like what is represented, which belongs to the character of an image. Being like and expressed properly belongs to a term that proceeds and is assimilated to its principle, not to an operation, which is more assimilative than similar. What is said about understanding consisting in action or operation is true of the formal act of understanding itself. But when a formal sign is called formal representation, this does not mean formal representation insofar as it is an operation, but formal representation insofar as it is a representation and expression. This belongs only to terminated formal representation, or to the term of representation, not to an operation as operation. When it is said that the word is an effect of cognition, this means it is an effect of cognition as operation and as a way or tendency, not of cognition as terminated. For the word is the form of cognition as terminated, because it is its very term; but the word is the effect of cognition as an expressive operation and saying. Thus it presupposes an act of understanding that is not terminated and complete, but is operating and speaking. Hence there remains room for it to be formal representation terminatively, not operatively. For this reason the word is constituted through being understood and not through actively understanding, because it does not belong to it, insofar as it is a formal sign, to be formal representation operatively and actively, but terminatively and according to its intrinsic being understood, by which the thing itself is made intrinsically understood and represented. Representation, not operation, belongs to the account of a sign; and it is to be formal representational cognition, not operative cognition.

To the second proof it is replied that the case of the Divine Word is different, because the Word in divine things presupposes essential intellection as wholly terminated and complete, since God is pure act in the intelligible order; the Word does not proceed so that intellection may be completed essentially, but so that it may be spoken and expressed notionally. Thus it does not make God formally intelligent even terminatively, essentially, and in perfect intelligible being; nor does it make the object understood in act, because the divine essence itself is in ultimate act as understanding and understood, since it is pure act in the intelligible order. It does not have this through the procession of the Word, but presupposes it. In us, however, because the object is not in ultimate act as understood per se, it must be formed within the intellect in the character of an object that terminates cognition. This happens through the expression of the word in representational being, and through it the intellect is made formally intelligent terminatively.

To the confirmation it is replied that no cognition can be given without a word, either formed by the one understanding or united to it. It is not always required, however, that the word proceed and be formed by the one understanding. Thus in the blessed the divine essence is united in the character of an expressed species; this is discussed at greater length in Summa theologiae I, q. 1, art. 2, and something will be touched on in On the Soul q. 10.