Ordinatio

On this question there are many ways of speaking. [First opinion] – In one way, every intelligible species naturally preceding the act of understanding is denied, because of the reasons set down for the first side of the question [nn.333-338]. The way of setting it down is this: once the impression is got of the sensible species on the organ of sense and the whole process up to the imaginative power, the agent intellect abstracts from the object in the phantasm and moves the possible intellect to a simple apprehension of the essence, but in such a way that neither does the possible intellect receive an impressed species from the phantasm, nor is the object present to the intellect save because it is present in imagination.

And this is proved from the following deduction: for the sense receives a species other than the act, either because the organ is of the same idea as the medium, or because the species received is a disposition proximate to receiving the action of sensing. Neither of these occurs in the intellect; for the intellect is a non-organic power and is of itself supremely disposed to an act of understanding; therefore etc.

This is said to be Aristotle’s intention in On the Soul 3.4.429a27-28, where he commends the ancients who say that “the soul is the place of species, not the whole soul but the intellective soul.” Now this distinction does not seem true in the sense that other parts do not have species (for there are species in the sensitive part), but because the other parts do not have species as places but do as subjects have accidents; and the intellect does, as a place, have them, because it has them as an expressed form, not an impressed one.

This [n.340] is also taken from On the Soul 3.8.432a8-9, because, according to Aristotle, “we contemplate the ‘what it is’ in phantasms,” and “phantasms are disposed to the intellect as sensibles are to the senses,” and “we understand nothing without phantasms,” and many like things does he say. And from these is the conclusion drawn that he posits no intelligible species, because if an intelligible species were posited the intellect would not contemplate the ‘what it is’ in phantasms but in the intelligible species. Likewise it would not need to be turned toward phantasms, but the intelligible species would suffice, in which it would have present to it the object it would be turned toward.

If it be argued against this from the Philosopher there [n.343[,“it is necessary that either the things are in the soul or the species of things; the things are not there, so the species are,” he replies [Henry, ibid.] that on the part of the intellect, that is, in the intellect, there is an impressed species (which is the habit or the act), or an expressed species (which is the species in the phantasm), or a quiddity (which quiddity, shining forth [in the phantasm], is the species with respect to the singular – for ‘this stone’ is not in the soul but the quiddity, which is the species with respect to such stone).

This is also posited to be the intention of Augustine, who maintains that the word is not generated from the intelligible species but from the habit. For Augustine says, On the Trinity 15.10 n.19, that, “the word is born from the knowledge itself that we hold in memory,” and ibid. ch.11 n.20, “the word is generated from the knowledge that abides in the soul.”

[Second opinion]. Another doctor [Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodlibet 9 q.19, also 1.9] posits the same thing, denying an intelligible species; and he deals with the argument about the organ [n.341] that was touched on in this opinion [n.340].

He posits another argument as well, of this sort:¹ because any power that is in potency to some act is first perfected in such act by the presence of a proportionate agent; but the power of apprehension is a power first ordered to this act, namely to apprehension; therefore by a proportioned first agent is it perfected in this act, which is ‘to apprehend’.²