Universa Philosophia

That this may be clear, note that our whole disputation is formally in the intellect: because to dispute, affirm, deny, define, divide, and reason are acts of the intellective power. Angels, because they can manifest their thoughts without external signs, do not need voice, writing, or other motion: because Michael by his sole will can show to Gabriel what he has in his mind. Indeed one angel clearly sees the intellection of another: but we, while the mind is imprisoned in the body, cannot open what we think about things, except through external signs, through which we speak. That is, we unfold our minds. These signs are multiple: for with fires lit a soldier speaks that the enemy is approaching, but commonly we use writing and words, with men born: since therefore we cannot dispute and converse with one another immediately through acts of the intellect, we use external signs, with which we discourse and speak. These signs have two functions, both to signify a thing, as this word man signifies man, and to be set in propositions, and through them something is affirmed or denied, in which they are substituted for concepts. And so vocal disputation is a substitute for mental disputation: because the latter is shown through the former, and the vocal is substituted for the mental, which would not be necessary, if we saw acts of the intellect after the manner of intelligences. Whence Aristotle would have said better, that we use words because we cannot bring mental terms into the middle of the disputation, and that hence arises the necessity of words, not indeed because we cannot drag things along with us.