Commentaria in Summam contra Gentiles, Liber I

Having excluded the false ways in which it was held that God understands many things, Saint Thomas sets forth the true way ¹. Concerning this he does two things: first, he sets forth the true way; second, he explains it, in the following chapter.

I. As to the first, the following conclusion is proposed: God understands many things because the divine essence, which is the intelligible species of the divine intellect, and the divine Word are the likeness of all things.

For the manifestation of this, however, we must proceed from the mode and condition of our intellect in understanding to investigate after the manner of the divine intellect.

As far as our intellect is concerned, it signifies three things. First is that the thing understood by us is in our intellect through its species, by which the intellect, made actual, understands the thing itself. Not that understanding is an action passing outward: rather it is an action remaining within the one understanding, and it bears a relation to the thing understood because the species by which the intellect understands is a likeness of the thing understood.

It must be noted that, just as knowledge signifies something absolute while connoting a relation to the knowable, so operation signifies a certain absolute, but it also imports a relation to the object, whether it be transient or immanent: for every operation is terminated at some object. But since every agent acts by means of some form, which is in some way a likeness of the object at which the operation is terminated, therefore the operation imports a relation to that thing as to its object, whose principle of operation is the likeness. On account of this, Saint Thomas assigns the reason why understanding is said to have a relation to the thing understood, namely because the form by which the intellect understands is its likeness. For the understanding by which a stone is understood is terminated at the stone, and is said to have a relation to it, because it is elicited from the likeness of the stone.

According to what he notes is that our intellect, from the form it has, necessarily in understanding forms within itself a certain conception, which is also called the understood intention: because it understands indifferently the thing present and absent, as imagination also does; and it understands the thing abstracted from material conditions without which it does not exist in the nature of things, in which respect it surpasses imagination; and this could not be unless it formed for itself the aforementioned intention. This conception, however, differs from the intelligible species: because it is as it were the terminus of intellection, whereas the species is its principle.

Third is that this conception, like the intelligible species, is also a likeness of the thing. For each thing produces effects of the same kind as itself. But the species, which is the principle of intellection and of the concept, is a likeness of the thing understood. From this it follows that the intellect, in forming an intention of this kind, understands the thing.

It must be noted, with respect to this last statement, that the intellect can be directed toward the intention of the thing understood in two ways: in one way, materially, insofar as it is a thing of such a nature, say a quality or an accident of the intellect; in another way, insofar as it is the likeness and intention of the thing. If we take the first way, the intellect is not thereby directed toward a thing outside itself when it understands its conception. But in the second way, it is directed toward both, according to that saying of Aristotle in On Memory and Recollection ²: The same movement is toward the image and toward that of which it is the image. And because the concept itself is not known as a thing when it is first produced, but only as the likeness of a thing—since it is formed by the intellect for this very purpose alone, that the thing understood may be seen in it—therefore Saint Thomas says without qualification that the intellect, by forming a conception of this kind, understands the thing of which it is the conception; and that it is as it were a terminus, but not simply a terminus, because understanding is not ultimately terminated at it, although it is the immediate and proximate terminus.

II. From these things considered in our intellect, he infers that the divine intellect understands by no other species than the divine essence; yet its essence is the likeness of all things, from which it follows that the conception of the divine intellect, insofar as it understands itself, is not only the likeness of God understood, but also of all those things of which the divine essence is the likeness; and on this account many things can be understood by God. Therefore St. Thomas wishes to conclude from this that many things are not understood by God because they have a distinct esse in him, and thus compose him: but because they have one esse in God, which is the divine essence and the divine word representing all things.

It should be noted, however, that when it is said that this conception and the divine word are the likeness of all things, the word word is not taken as it is the second Person in the divine. For no mention of the Trinity has yet been made; and Saint Thomas is disputing here with the philosophers, against whom such an explanation would carry no weight. Hence by word is understood in this passage that to which the act of understanding is immediately terminated: whether it be something really distinct from the thing understood, or the thing understood as it is understood. For the divine essence, as understood, is the likeness of all things: and God, in understanding it, understands it as the likeness of all things; and thereby understands many things.

III. Concerning this conception of the intellect, or the intention understood, or the word (for all these say the same thing), which is the foundation of this position, two things must be considered. First, what necessity there is for positing such a conception. — Second, how it stands related to the act of understanding. ³

As to the first point, St. Thomas seems to touch upon a twofold necessity. The first is that the object be present to the intellect: for the intellect indifferently understands a thing present and absent in real esse.

The second is that it have an esse abstracted from material conditions, which does not belong to a material thing according to the esse it has in nature: for the intellect understands material things by abstraction from matter.

But concerning these causes no small doubt arises ⁴. For either they are to be taken separately, so that each by itself is a sufficient cause of this necessity; or jointly, so that both concur together. If in the first way, it follows first that, just as the intellect forms the word by understanding, so also does the imagination form an image by imagining: because in this respect the intellect agrees with the imagination, as this Saint Thomas says, namely that indifferently it understands a thing present and absent. Yet this is not found in the doctrine of Saint Thomas, since he attributes this as something proper to the intellect. — It follows secondly, with respect to the second cause, that one angel, understanding another through an intelligible species, would not form a concept of him: because he has esse immateriale and abstract in himself.

If in the second way, namely because the object must be present to the intellect and abstracted from material conditions, it will not be universally true that the intellect forms a word in every act of understanding. First, because the intelligible species is itself the object, just as such an intention understood is; for it is its likeness just as that is. And it is present to the intellect and abstracted from matter; and thus it will suffice for understanding. — Second, because this will be true only in material things, which need abstraction from matter, but not in immaterial things.

IV. To make this difficulty evident, it must be considered that, since every operation implies an order to an object, and since it belongs to the notion of the object, as object, that it terminate the operation, it is necessary that an operation in act have its object in some way in act as its terminus; just as heating in act requires a heat in act toward which it may be terminated. — But it does not suffice for the object to be in act unless it is also duly present to the agent: for however much a thing be actually colored, it cannot be seen unless it is present and suitably near to one who sees, in the mode in which it is in act. Yet not every power requires the presence of its object in the same way. For some require the presence and nearness of their object according to natural being, whether local or temporal, as do the exterior senses: for the sense of sight is not borne except toward what is colored both according to the being of nature and locally near to the sight (though with a certain distance), because the exterior senses are not borne toward an absent thing. Others, however, do not require presence according to natural being, but require presence according to a certain spiritual mode, which is presence in objective esse: because such a power is borne indifferently toward a thing really present and really absent, and toward a thing existing according to natural being and toward a thing not existing; as happens in imagination: for in order that we imagine Julius II the Pope to be on his throne at Rome, it is not necessary that he be at Rome on his throne; nor is it necessary that he himself, seated, be present to us by place while we exist at Ferrara, but it suffices that he appear in some way to the imagination spiritually, and according to imagined esse. And since this kind of esse does not belong to a thing outside the power, it is necessary that the object have such an esse within the power. — Besides this presence of the object, it is also necessary in cognitive powers that the object be joined to the power in the manner of a form of the power, so that from power and object there comes to be one thing: for even if a colored thing were present to the sight, yet if through its species it were not united to it, there would be no vision of it.

Similarly, then, on the part of the intellect it is required that the thing understood be in act in some way, insofar as it terminates the act of the intellect; and that it be present to the intellect, not indeed according to temporal or local proximity, for the intellect apprehends indifferently a thing present and absent, just as imagination does (for whether the thing exists or not, the intellect can apprehend the quiddity of the thing), but according to objective esse, existing within the intellect itself; and that it be united to the intellect in the manner of a form, either through itself or through a likeness of itself. — By reason of the first, therefore, there is required a conception formed by the intellect, when it apprehends material things and quiddities. For a material quiddity does not terminate the act of the intellect except with a certain abstraction from material and individuating conditions, in which way it cannot exist in act outside the intellect. Therefore, in order that it be in act—which is required if it is to be an object in act and to terminate the operation of the intellect—it is necessary that it be constituted by the intellect in such abstract and immaterial esse. This happens when the intellect forms a conception, which we call the word and the understood intention. — By reason of the second, however—that is, from the fact, I say, that the object, placed in act, must be duly present to the power, either in natural esse or in intentional and objective esse terminating the intellection in the manner of an intrinsic term—it is necessary that it form such a conception of all things that the intellect understands. For since the existence of a thing contributes nothing to the intellection of its quiddity and nature, and thus intellection does not require real presence, because the intellect is directed indifferently toward the thing whether it exists or not, it is necessary, in order that the object be sufficiently present to the intellect, that it be intrinsically present to it objectively, and thus terminate the act of the intellect. For however much a thing may be in itself actually intelligible, and united to the intellect through its species, if it is not actually present to the intellect in objective and cognitive-terminating esse—which happens through the conception of the intellect—it will not be understood: because according to the natural esse it has outside the intellect, it is not sufficiently present to the intellect so as to be an object in act and the term of the intellectual operation.

What I say about the cognition of a quiddity, I say also about complex cognition. For although the truth of the intellect requires that things be in reality as the intellect understands them, nevertheless the real existence of a thing outside the intellect does not make the object sufficiently present to the intellect.

V. From these six I draw conclusions. The first is: Our intellect cannot understand anything naturally except by forming a concept. It is evident: because it understands nothing through the essence of the intelligible existing in itself, but all things through the intelligible species abstracted from things. Hence it is said in III de Anima ⁵ that it understands itself just as it understands other things. And consequently nothing is sufficiently present to it as the object terminating the act. Therefore it is necessary that a thing be made present to itself by means of the concept.

The second is: For a special reason, in the intellection of material things it is necessary that our intellect form a concept: namely because the object, insofar as it terminates the act of the intellect, is not in act unless it is made so by the intellect; since it is not abstracted from matter outside the intellect, yet it terminates according as it is abstracted from matter.

The third is: The Angel, in knowing itself, forms a word: after considering the causes of this kind of necessity in our intellect. For although it is not necessary that it be made actually intelligible through abstraction from matter, since it is immaterial, and although it is present to its own intellect as the principle of its intellection, it is nevertheless necessary that it become present in objective esse terminating the intellection, of which the angel's own essence is the principle; since what is one and the same cannot be principle and terminus of an operation according to the same esse. This is shown because in Book IV of this work, chapter XI, it is said that the intention understood in angels is not their substance—and Saint Thomas speaks here of the angel understanding itself—from which it appears that it forms a conception within itself in understanding. It is also confirmed because, in De Potentia, q. 9, a. 5, and De Veritate, q. 4, a. 2, Saint Thomas holds that the intellect, even while understanding itself, forms a concept of itself.

The fourth is: The Angel, in knowing things other than himself through an intelligible species, forms a word. For either it is necessary that they become present to him objectively and terminatively: since they are not in him except through the species, which is the principle of understanding, not its term and object. Or else it is necessary that they come to be in act in objective esse, as material things do. For although the angel does not abstract species from material things, since those species are congenital to him, nevertheless from those very species he forms concepts, in which the very quiddities of material things are abstracted from matter so as to terminate his intellection.

The fifth is: Concerning the blessed, both positions can be maintained: namely, both that they form a word in which they behold the divine essence, and that they do not form one. The first can be maintained because, since the word or concept is the intrinsic terminus of intellection, just as the blessed produce the intellection by which they see God, so it is necessary that they produce the terminus of that intellection: for there is no thing without its terminus, just as a finite line is not without a point. — It is confirmed because, in Prima, q. xxvii, a. 1, Saint Thomas says that within every intelligent being, from the very fact that it understands, there proceeds something which is a conception of the thing understood. And in De Pot., q. ix, a. 5, it is said that conception belongs absolutely to the nature of understanding. From which it is concluded that there is such a word and concept in the divine. — Nor does it stand in the way that, according to his mind, the divine essence cannot be represented by any created similitude ⁶. For it would be said that this is true of the similitude which is an intelligible species, and of the similitude which is an expressed species, or conception, produced from a created species: but not of the similitude expressed by an uncreated and infinite form, such as the divine essence is, as is the case with the word which, from the divine essence actualizing the intellect of the blessed in the manner of an intelligible species, is expressed and produced; for the intelligible species and the word expressed from it have the character of one perfect and total representative of the thing understood for the intellect. — Nor does it stand in the way that the beatific vision is said to be an immediate vision of the divine essence: but the medium is what removes the immediation of cognition, as is said in IV Sent., d. xlix, q. ii, a. 1, ad 15. For it is said that a medium extrinsic to the knower, and wholly alien to the act of cognition, removes the immediation of cognition, and of this Saint Thomas's statement is understood: but not a medium intrinsic to the knower, and intrinsic to the cognition as completing it; for such a medium is reckoned as one with the act itself, as the terminus of a line is with the line. Such a medium is the conception and word of the intellect.

It could also be maintained, by saying that just as the blessed sees the divine essence through no other species than the essence itself, so he sees through no other word than the divine Word: such that the divine essence stands as an intelligible species and as an understood intention, by which the blessed sees both God and all other things. — To what Saint Thomas says, however, it would be replied that he speaks of understanding as it naturally befits an intellectual nature, not of the understanding of our intellect through a supernatural and infinite form.

Capreolus, in the First Book, distinction 27, question 2 ⁷, holds that the beatific vision is terminated to a single word had of the beatific object essentially in act; but he has several words habitually concerning the attributes or creatures seen in God. Hence he sometimes forms more, sometimes fewer. — In the Fourth Book, however, distinction 49, question 5 ⁸, he says it is commonly held that the blessed have no other word than the divine word, on account of its intimate presence to the blessed intellect; and that either position is probable; but that St. Thomas seems to hold that they do so.

The sixth is this: As far as can be gathered from the causes assigned, God, in knowing Himself and other things, does indeed have a word and an understood intention, by which what is understood is represented to His intellect, yet not really distinct from the essence; the reason to be assigned below, Book Four ⁹, namely because in Him to understand and to be are the same.

VI. To the doubt ¹⁰ it is therefore said that those causes of the necessity of the concept for understanding can be taken distributively, so that each one suffices of itself: not indeed with respect to all intelligibles, but one with respect to some things, another with respect to others. They can also be taken jointly in certain cases: namely, with respect to material things. For the first cause, namely the absence of the object, causes the necessity of the concept with respect to all things that are not joined to the intellect in objective and terminative esse, even if they are intelligible in themselves. The second, however, namely the non-actuality of the object in intelligible and objective esse, is the cause of this kind of necessity with respect to material things: and consequently, with respect to these, both causes concur.

But when it is objected, first, that from the first cause the imagination follows in the same way in forming a concept: — it is said that sometimes the imagination is directed to a thing outside by means of a phantasm represented; but sometimes it is directed to its own idolum as to a real thing. When it imagines in the second way, it is not necessary that something be formed within it in which it may gaze upon the imagined thing itself, since that thing is intimate to it and has its imaginable esse in it: just as neither does the intellect, when it terminates upon the concept itself as such, form a concept of that very concept. But when something is imagined in the first way, then indeed it forms no concept or word, for concept and word properly belong interiorly to the intellect, or even to the cogitative power insofar as it participates reason: rather it forms a certain idolum, proportional to the word of the intellect, in which it gazes upon the imagined thing as outside, and through which the thing outside becomes actually present to the imagination in objective esse. — Nor would I say this on my own authority alone, but on the teaching of Saint Thomas, Prima, q. 85, a. 2, ad 3, and Quodlibet V, a. 9, ad 2 ¹¹.

To the second objection, namely that one angel, in understanding another through a species, would not form a concept, because it is immaterial: — it has already been said that this cause is not universal, but holds only with respect to material things. Yet the other cause also holds in the knowledge of immaterial things, as we have said.

To the third objection, that the intelligible species suffices for intellection: — it is said, following the doctrine of St. Thomas, especially De Pot., q. ix, a. 5, that, although the intelligible species is immaterial and in some way present to the intellect, nevertheless it is not in act by the mode of an object terminating the act, nor is the object through it actually present in objective act, but only in habit. First, because if the object were in act through it with respect to objective esse, then one possessing the species would always understand: for a thing is understood when it is actually in the intellect by the mode of an object and term of the operation. — Second, because the species is posited as the formal principle of intellection, by which the intellect is made actual. But an operation is not terminated first and immediately at its own formal and eliciting principle, but at something like it. Hence, besides the species, it is necessary also to posit a concept, as we have said.

But as to what is said at the end, namely that then this will be true only in material things: — it has already been granted that in material things alone those causes are conjoined. But in other things it is necessary to posit the concept from at least one of them.

VII. As to the second ¹², Scotus, in I Sent., d. xxvii ¹³, says two things ¹⁴: The first is that the word is not something produced by intellection, because intellection is not a productive action of any term. He proves this in two ways. First, because it is not impossible to understand an intellection by understanding that it is not of any term produced by it. — Second, because immanent operations, according to Aristotle, I Ethic. ¹⁵, and IX Metaph. ¹⁶, are ultimate acts.

The second reason is that the word is an actual intellection, which is called generated knowledge. And it is said that the word is produced by the productive act of the intellect, but not by the act of understanding.

VIII. Saint Thomas says two things opposed to what Scotus says. The first is that the word is produced by the very act of understanding: as is clear in this passage, where he says that the intellect, in understanding, forms within itself a certain understood intention. He says something similar in other places, where he treats of this matter ¹⁷.

The second is that the act of the intellect differs from the word itself, as is clear from the First Part, q. 34, a. 1; and De Potentia, q. 8, a. 1; and De Veritate, q. 4, a. 2.

And although some Thomists hold that the word is not really distinguished from the act of understanding, but only through connotates, yet the opinion of other Thomists pleases me more, who hold that it is the mind of Saint Thomas that it is really distinguished. This indeed appears because the word is posited by him for no other reason than that it may become an object present in objective esse to the intellect itself, and in its presence thus the thing understood is seen through the act of understanding. Hence, just as seeing is not what is seen, nor that in which something is seen, so neither will understanding, which is seeing, be the word itself. — Likewise, because the word would be posited in vain in our intellect as a produced term, if it were identical with the act of understanding, remaining in the intellect itself together with the act. And thus Saint Thomas would not need to be concerned whether the intellect produces a word or not.

But what is said—that motion is the same as the term of motion—is not similar. For motion is compared to its term as the imperfect to the perfect, and as the way to itself under a more perfect esse, because it is the act of the imperfect and of what exists in potency ¹⁸. Now, where the process is from potency to act, it is the same thing that first has imperfect esse and afterward perfect esse. But understanding is not the act of the imperfect, but of the perfect and of what exists in act. Nor is it compared to the word as the way to itself under a more perfect esse, or as the imperfect to the perfect, but as act to the object constituted in objective esse, or even in immaterial esse, terminating the operation. But the first object of an immanent operation is not the operation itself.

Nor is what St. Thomas says in Pot., q. VIII, a. 1, an objection to what has been said, since the word is not extrinsic to the act of understanding itself, because the latter cannot be completed without the word. For to say that he understands by means of a word is to say that the word is indeed something produced by the act of understanding and really distinct from it, yet it is intrinsic to that act and bound up with it, and is connoted of its essence as it were obliquely: just as the terminus of a finite line is intrinsic to the line and belongs to its essence, though obliquely, even though it is really distinct from the line. He gives us to understand this sense when he adds, because it cannot be completed without the word: as if to say: It is indeed other than the act of understanding, yet it is required for the completion of the act, because there would be no such act unless the word existed, just as there would be no finite line if its terminus did not exist.

IX. To the arguments of Scotus against this determination ¹⁹, it is said: to the first, namely, that although understanding, insofar as it belongs to this particular understander, can be understood without the production of a word—since not every understander produces a word, as is clear from the fact that in the divine persons understanding is attributed to the Son and the Holy Spirit—nevertheless, absolutely speaking, with respect to its entity, understanding cannot be understood without a word, since the word has the character of an intrinsic term of intellection. And thus also, through that entity which is the divine intellection, the divine Word is produced, though not in such a way that the Son or the Holy Spirit understands through it.

To the second it is said that through immanent action, as such, nothing is produced that lies outside the operating power; yet something can be produced that remains within that very power. And for this reason the action is called the ultimate act: namely, because from it nothing produced externally in a patient is awaited as its end, as happens in transitive operations. But what is produced by such an action is ordered to the action itself as to an end, since it is produced so that the operation may be terminated at its object. Saint Thomas sets forth this interpretation in the Prima, q. 54, a. 2, if it be carefully considered.