Ordinatio

In this question there is an opinion [Peter Olivi, Sent. II q.58] which attributes to the soul all activity in respect of intellection, and it is imputed to Augustine, who says in Literal Commentary On Genesis 12.16 n.32-33, because the image of the body is in the spirit, which is more outstanding than the body, therefore “is the image of the body more outstanding in the spirit than the body itself is in its own substance;” and there follows [ch.29], “Nor should one think that the body does something in the spirit, as if the spirit be subject, in place of matter, to the acting body. For in every way is the thing that acts more outstanding than the thing about which it acts, and in no way is the body more outstanding than the spirit; rather the spirit is more outstanding than the body. So although the image begin to be in the spirit, yet it is not the body that makes the same image in the spirit, but the spirit makes it in itself with marvelous quickness;” and there follows, “for the image, as soon as it is seen by the eyes, is formed in the spirit of the seer without interpolation.”

Again, On the Trinity 10.5 n.7, “The soul turns round and seizes images of bodies made in itself and of itself; for it gives for forming them something of its own substance; and it keeps in itself something free, whereby it may judge of such species; and this is the mind, that is, rational intelligence, which is preserved so that it may judge; for the parts of the soul that are informed with the likenesses of the body we feel we have in common even with the beasts.” Therefore, the soul itself forms in itself images of things known, as this cited authority says even more expressly.

Argument on behalf of this opinion is made by reasons as follows: An effect does not exceed its cause in perfection; “every living thing is better than a non-living thing,” according to Augustine City of God [9.6, 11.16, 7.3 n.1]; therefore a living operation can only come from a living or live principle of action. These operations of knowing are living operations; therefore, they are by the soul itself as by the reason of acting.

Again the more perfect a form is the more actual it is and consequently the more active, because to be active belongs to something insofar as it is in act; but the intellective soul is, among all forms, the most actual; therefore it is maximally active; therefore it has power by itself alone for its own operation, since more imperfect forms have power for this, as is plain of the forms of the elements and of certain mixed bodies.¹

Again, third, the Philosopher in Ethics 1 [1.1.1094a3-6] and Metaphysics 9 [9.8.1050a21-b1] and Physics 3 [3.3.202a22-24], distinguishes between acting and making, and he maintains that action properly speaking abides in the agent, as he illustrates about speculation there [Metaphysics 9]. Intellection, therefore, is properly an operation that abides in the agent; but it abides in the intellective part, therefore it will be from that part as from the agent.

Fourth, and it is the same, because action properly speaking, and as it is distinguished from making, denominates an agent; but ‘to understand’ denominates man as to his intellective part, therefore etc.

Against this opinion: That it is not the opinion of Augustine appears from the last chapter of On the Trinity 9.12 n.18, and chapter 30 ‘about small things’: “It must be clearly held that everything we know co-generates in us knowledge of itself; for knowledge is born of both, namely of the knower and the known etc.”¹ Again, ibid. 11.2 n.3, “Vision is generated from the seeable and the seer etc.” Again, ibid. 15.10 n.9 (as was said before [n.393]), “The knowledge formed by the thing that we know is the word.” Therefore, he intends to attribute some causality to the object.

There is an argument by reason in favor of this, because² when two causes prior to the thing itself, namely the efficient cause and the matter, are perfect in themselves and proximate and not impeded, the effect follows or can follow. Therefore if the soul is the active total cause of generated knowledge, and if it is disposed matter, or receptive subject, with respect to the same knowledge, and if it is always actually present to itself, then, since it is a natural cause, there will always be in it every actual intellection of which it is itself the cause – of which, moreover, it is by itself the cause; or at least there will be an intellection that it most strongly has the power for.³

By this are disproved the diverse ways that those, who posit this opinion [n.407], have of maintaining it. For if there be posited an object necessary in idea of sine qua non cause, or in idea of term or in idea of stimulant [e.g. Olivi, ibid. q.58, 72] – if there not be given it some per se causality (since the soul is always perfect in itself and proximate to what it acts on) nor any impediment newly removed – how will the fact be preserved that it [the object] is necessarily required, save by positing five kinds of causes?

Specifically, too, the point about ‘stimulating’ does not seem valid. For I ask what it is ‘to stimulate’? If it is to cause something in the intellective power, then the object causes something before the intellective power of itself acts. Therefore, the intellective power is not the total active first cause in respect of anything caused in it, but the object is as well. If ‘to stimulate’ not be to cause something in the intellective power, then the intellective power is not differently disposed in itself after the stimulation than it was before, and so it is not more stimulated now than it was before.

This argument [n.414] would, however, work in like manner, as it seems, against action of the will. Hence response can be given that when forms have an essential order as they are received in the same nature or power (and this whether by the same agent or by another), and given also that neither be the reason for receiving the other – never can the second be induced by the agent in the receptive subject of it unless the first has been induced already. An example about volition and delight: when positing that these are diverse really, never is the second received unless the first is received first; since however the second has a natural active cause [sc. the object] present to it before there is volition, in these sorts of ordered things is the major premise [n.414 init.] denied. The like holds of the intelligible species in relation to intellection, when positing the intelligible species not to be cause or receptive subject of intellection; the like holds of light in the medium [nn.471-473], if it does not act on or receive the species of color.

Note: it is said in another way [Olivi, ibid. qq.72, 58, 57, 23] that whenever the receiving of some form in its potential subject pre-requires of necessity the receiving of another form in its receptive subject, the major,⁴ that ‘a perfect agent proximate to its passive subject and not impeded is able to act’ [n.414], is false, understanding this of proximate power – and this whether the recipient of the prior form is the same power as the recipient of the later form (example: volition and delight in the will), or is the same nature (example: intellection and volition in the soul, when positing the will to be totally active with respect to willing), or both forms are received in the same supposit, not in a single nature or power (example: about phantasm and intellection, if an intelligible species be denied and the whole action be given to the intellect), or the prior and later form are received in different supposits (example: light from the sun in air and in water).

Nor is here preserved the proposition [n.418] that the prior form is active with respect to the later one, or is the reason for receiving it, as with light in the medium in respect of the species of color. For if this [example of light] be instanced in such cases [sc. the four listed in n.418], the instance is of no value, because there the proximate active or proximate passive principle would be lacking. In the four instances already set down [n.418] neither condition [sc. lack of active and of passive principle] is met, for neither is volition the active cause of delight but the object is, nor is it the receptive subject, but the will is. So in the other instances [n.418],⁵ according to those opinions.

Nor should it be said that the major [n.418] is true unless two effects are necessarily producible in an ordered way by the same agent; because this is also not true if there is necessarily an order between forms that can be introduced by diverse agents, as is plain in the instances set down [n.418].

Universally, then, any form that, for it to be received in its passive subject, requires another form to be first received in any subject and by any agent, never is the active principle of the second form in accidental potency for acting on the receptive subject of the second form, unless the prior form has already been induced. Therefore the later [second] form depends, as to its coming to be, essentially on something different from the per se causes of it in its own coming to be, which per se causes are agent and matter.⁶ This conclusion [sc. the previous sentence] can be conceded, because ‘first essentially’ does not belong only to the cause (the fact is plain in the treatise [by Scotus himself], On the First Principle ch. 1 nn.2-4), yet it⁷ is not with probability denied unless the priority of the other form be shown – either as it is active with respect to the second form, or as it is the reason for the receiving, or as it is the effect of a cause nearer to a common cause, or to a cause necessarily causings first.

There is another opinion that is totally in the other extreme. It says, as is gathered from diverse places in him who so thinks [Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodlibet 8 q.2, 1 q.7, 14 q.5, 6 q.7], that the intellective soul, as it is intellective, has nothing of activity in respect of intellection. For it does not have the possible intellect’s sort of acting (whether informed with an intelligible species, which they deny [nn.346-347], or bare), because, according to them, the same thing cannot act on itself. They prove this because, since the agent is of the sort in act that the patient is in potency (from Physics 3.2.202a8-12, On Generation 1.5.321b35-2a8), it then follows that the same thing would be in potency and act, which seems, first, to be opposite to the first principle of metaphysics known through the idea of act and potency; then also the same thing would be efficient cause and matter, which seems to be against the Philosopher (Physics 2.7.198a22-27), ‘matter and efficient cause do not coincide’; then again the same thing would be referred to itself by a real relation, which seems impossible (Metaphysics 5.15.1021a26-b3), because of the opposition of such relations; then, finally, anything at all would be posited to act on itself and move itself (as that the air would illuminate itself in the presence of the sun and not the sun, and that wood would heat itself in the presence of fire and not the fire). For there would be no source whence anything might be proved that would be thus causative of anything new at all existing in itself, notwithstanding the fact that nothing would naturally be causative of anything new existing in itself. From these proofs they say that agent and patient are distinct in subject. And there is added, for confirmation, that whatever difficulties may arise in any matter, not on their account must these metaphysical principles be denied, for then all investigation of truth through such principles would be taken away. For a reason for denying in one matter is a reason for denying them in another.

On the same ground they say that the agent intellect cannot effectively cause anything in the possible intellect, because it is not distinguished from it in subject but, by as it were perfecting it formally with its own light, it causes this sort of illumining – just as [Godfrey, ibid. 6 q.15] “when some luminous body is produced (in which are these two perfections, namely transparency and light itself), it is said that this sort of light makes a transparent body luminous, not by changing it from a potency preceding the act toward such act, but the whole together is made, according to idea of efficient cause, by an extrinsic agent” producing such body in such existence. But for this reason is light said to make the body luminous, because it is formally perfecting that body. So is it in the issue at hand. The agent intellect, in idea of efficient cause, does nothing in the possible intellect, but “he who created the soul by way of efficient cause, has himself caused this illumination in it, creating or producing these powers at the same time in the same substance.”

Similarly they posit that the agent intellect has no operation with respect to intellection save insofar as it has action about the intelligible object, namely insofar as it acts for this, that that object possess the idea of mover and of object in the act. Therefore, as to intellection itself, the agent intellect will, for these two reasons, have no activity immediately.

What then will effectively cause intellection? They reply that the same object in reality effects intellection and volition, and this insofar as it shines forth in the phantasm, having been illumined by the agent intellect, not effectively but by concurring formally, as it were, in regard to the intelligible.

And as to how it may be possible for a phantasm to move the possible intellect, although however the imaginative power and the possible intellect are in the same substance of the soul (and the phantasm is not distinguished in subject from the possible intellect) – they say [Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodlibet 6 q.7] that the soul can be considered in two ways, either in essence or in powers. In the first way, it is whole in any part and is not principle of any second operation. In the second way, some power determines for itself some part of the body, as an organic power, some power does not, as the intellective power, because “it under the idea of such a power” is not “in this part of the body nor in that, for it is in no part,” because it is “per se neither in the whole nor in any part, just as neither are the operations that are exercised through it. Just as, therefore, a power that would be in a part of the body other than the phantasm is in could be changed by what is in imagination, so a power that is not determinate to a part in which there is a phantasm but that is outside it (in this way, that it is not there more than in a foot) will be able to be changed by what is in imagination. So is it in the issue at hand [n.425], because the powers [of intellect and will] are not tied to and immersed in matter as others are.”

Against this opinion. According to it, the agent intellect causes nothing that may be formally in a phantasm, but there only happens a removal of an obstacle through some spiritual contact of this sort of light with the phantasm and, when this removal has been carried out by virtue of the agent intellect, the informing of the possible intellect takes place [cf. supra n.361, Godfrey, ibid. 5 q.10].

From this it follows that nothing in the intellective part (and this as the intellective part embraces the agent and possible intellects) will have in any way the idea of something active, whether as agent or as idea of acting, with respect to any intellection at all or with respect to the object of intellection, and thus only a phantasm is disposed effectively to intellection. Or if there is another efficiency there, by which an irradiating or illumining of phantasms may take place, that efficiency will be precisely of God himself, who has created such light in the possible intellect. Nothing other than God, therefore, is actively disposed in regard to any intellection save only a phantasm.

This seems unacceptable, because it very much cheapens the nature of the soul. For a phantasm seems able to cause no perfection in the intellect that surpasses the nobility of it [sc. of the phantasm], because an effect does not exceed its cause but falls short of it, especially an equivocal effect. Therefore nothing is caused in the intellect precisely by a phantasm, the way this opinion posits. For every intellection is either more perfect than a phantasm or there be none in man.¹

Again, second, from this position it follows that an angel (in whom such distinction in subject cannot be posited), could have no new intellection, however much he have many objects habitually present to him. Indeed, an angel can have no intellection effectively save from God, because if the opposite is posited the intellect will be moved by itself, or agent and patient will not be distinct in subject.²

This does he seem himself to concede, because he posits that the claim ‘an angel can have a new intellection’ is merely a matter of belief.

But this is not a way out. For nothing believed is repugnant to a conclusion following from true principles. And from this principle, ‘agent and patient are necessarily distinct in subject’, it necessarily follows that an angel cannot have, from himself, any intellection actively. Therefore, if the opposite of this conclusion is believed, the principle from which the conclusion follows will be false. This is plainer about ‘willing’, for it is clear that an angel did not have his first ‘willing of bad’ from God; so the agent there was indistinct in subject from the thing acted on.

Third, it follows that one should not posit any habit in the intellect because, according to this opinion, it is required, and suffices, for ordered understanding that phantasms occur in an ordered way and that, as occurring, they move the intellect in ordered way. But that they occur in ordered way cannot be done by a habit in the intellect, because nothing in the thing acted on gives ordered moving to the mover. Or at any rate they can occur in ordered way through a habit in imagination without any habit in the intellect; therefore etc.

There is a confirmation, because, according to them, for this reason is a habit in the will denied, because it moves easily in conformity with the intellect. Therefore by similarity, since the intellect is moved, according to them, by phantasms in the way phantasms occur, a habit in imagination will suffice for the fact they move in ordered way. These three [nn.428-433] I weigh [sc. as objections against these thinkers].

But other arguments too are made against them. First as follows:³ if a phantasm causes effectively every intellection, and if a natural cause does nothing save according to the nature by which it is in act, a phantasm will never cause any action in the intellect save one that is conform to the phantasm; and so it will never cause a false composition repugnant to the ideas of the extreme terms of which there are phantasms in the imaginative power. Or if in some way it is possible, as they reply [Godfrey, Quodlibet 10 q.12, 5 q.12], that through one of the opposites being can its opposite be known, this is only because through one true composition can the intellect know that the opposite is false. But will that phantasm never cause as true some false intellection, or conversely? And if you say that a phantasm falsely represents objects, therefore it causes a false intellection in the intellect – there follows that, when the same phantasm remains, it can never cause an opposite assent, and so the intellect will not be able to apprehend the same complex now as true, now as false.

Again, second, intellection according to the Philosopher is an immanent action [Metaphysics 9.8.1050a14-b1].

They reply [Godfrey, Quodlibet 9 q.19] that ‘to understand’, according to the grammatical way of signifying, signifies action and ‘to be understood’ passion; yet in reality ‘to understand’ is undergoing and ‘what is understood’ is agent. But what may ‘to understand’ have of the idea of action? They say [ibid.] that ‘to understand’ does not signify anything as it has being in the subject in itself and absolutely, but as if something tending to a second thing as to an object, or as to a term; “and because it is a mark of action to proceed from an agent and to tend to a thing acted on, therefore such perfections” – which in reality are passions, that is, abiding in what is denominated by them by way of action – “are said to be immanent actions.”

To the contrary. The philosopher, when distinguishing action from making, Ethics 1.1.1094a3-6, 6.4.1140a1-6, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a21-b1, assigns diverse principles and properties to action and making, which would not be necessary if his meaning were that what he assigns to be an action were a passion; for then it would not be necessary to assign it a proper active principle. For it would not be necessary for prudence to be active, in the way art is a habit of making, if action were nothing but a certain form received in something else (as in that which is called an agent).

Again, third, a habit is not posited precisely for undergoing something, and above all in a passive thing supremely disposed to form. For what is in itself supremely disposed for receiving has no need to be facilitated for receiving. But the intellect is supremely disposed for any intellection whatever, because it has nothing contrary. Therefore, it would not be necessary to posit any habit in the intellect if it were precisely passive with respect to intellection. Proof of the first proposition [sc. supra n.439, “a habit is not posited precisely for undergoing something”], because a habit is ‘what we use when we want’, and a habit “perfects the haver and renders his work good etc.,” Ethics 2.4.1105b25-26, 1106a15-17. All these attribute some activity to habit.

Again, fourth, how would the intellect engage in discursive reasoning, by syllogizing and arguing, if a phantasm cause every intellection? For it does not seem intelligible how phantasms, when occurring, are cause of all discourse.

Again, fifth, how will logical intentions, or relations of reason, be caused? For, if a phantasm causes every intellection, any intention caused by it will be real, because that is called a real intention which is immediately caused by the thing, or by a species representing the thing in itself. Therefore, no intellection will cause logical intentions or relations of reason, because the intellect will be able, by no act of itself, to compare one object with another, which comparing causes a relation of reason, or a second intention, in an object.

There is a confirmation, because when the intellect compares a to b according to the sort of relation that there is between them from the nature of the thing, it does not cause a relation of reason, for example when it compares them as different or as contrary, or as whole and part, or the like. Therefore, by the comparing alone is a relation of reason caused, which neither in its being nor in being known is consequent to the extremes from the nature of the extremes. Therefore, the extremes are not the cause of the act of comparing.

Again, sixth, how does the intellect reflect on its act,⁴ and how will this be in the power of the reflecting power? For if a phantasm, when causing some intellection, naturally has to cause a reflection on that intellection, by parity of reason [it naturally has to cause] a reflection on the reflection, and so ad infinitum, as Augustine says On the Trinity 15.12 n.21 [cf. n.227]. But if it does not have to cause a reflection but only an absolute act, and if afterwards another phantasm occur, no reason seems capable of being assigned as to how there could be any reflection on any act.⁵

Of these last six reasons, the first [n.435] is not compelling against them [Godfrey et al.], because it queries a difficulty common to every opinion. For whether a phantasm is posited to be an active cause of intellection, or an intelligible species is, or the intellect (since each of them is a principle of acting naturally, not freely), it can always equally be queried how opposites can be caused in the intellect, as for example now a true opinion or knowledge about something, and now a false opinion or error about the same.

The second reason [nn.436, 438] is not compelling, for prudence is posited to be an active principle on account of another act, which is ‘action’, to which its proper act is extended as rule is to thing ruled – just as the proper act of an art is extended to another act, which is ‘making’, although however neither habit is a principle properly active in respect of its act.

Hereby [n.445] to the third reason [n.439], because a habit inclines a thing acted on as a prior form to a fitting posterior one, as is said elsewhere about habit [Scotus, Ord. I d.17 p.1 qq.1-3]. For although a passive thing is of itself supremely disposed through removal of the opposite, yet not by apposition of something fitting. The remark from Ethics 2 [n.439], that [a habit] renders the work good etc., must be understood to mean that it does not render it so by effecting but by inclining [Scotus, ibid.].

The fourth [n.440] coincides with the third one considered [nn.433-434], namely how a habit disposes phantasms to occur in ordered way in discursive reasoning, unless the habit be placed in the imaginative power, not in the intellect – which perhaps he would concede.

The sixth [n.443] only queries how it is in our power which intellection we have through another, and what the act is known by on which we reflect. The first, to be sure, is because of the will, and the second too is through the vestige left behind by the act; or otherwise through a phantasm, which first displays the object but secondly is caused by the object. Yet it is not necessary that it actually cause intellection of intellection, except when the will gives command. So after the vestige has been left behind, a reflex act is able to be had elicitively by it, the will giving command; and it is able not to be had, the will commanding another intellection.

The fifth [nn.441-442] seems to need pondering if ‘no comparison is a relation of reason that the extremes are of a nature to cause in the intellect’. For if this proposition is true, then although intellections of compared simples may be caused by the extremes, yet not the comparison that is in the comparing act by which a relation of reason is caused in the extreme term. It could be said that some relation follows the extremes in the thing, and that it follows in knowledge when the extremes are known – as in the case of contrariety and the like. And this relation is real. The other relation does not follow the extremes in the thing, and not necessarily in cognition either. Yet the extremes themselves can cause an act of comparison elicitively, when the will commands it. And when the act of comparing has been caused according to the sort of respect that does not follow the extremes in the thing, a relation of reason is caused.

[Third opinion] The third opinion [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 5.25] posits that the intelligible as simply present to the intellect (not through an intelligible species [n.340], but through a phantasm as it is illumined by the agent intellect), is thus simply present to the possible intellect as in memory. And, as it moves to an act of understanding, it is there as in the intelligence, whose knowledge has its term in the object itself. And as to these two the intellect is passive, namely both as it is memory having an object simply present, and as it is intelligence moved by the object thus present to the first act of understanding. But the intellect, brought to be in first act, can by natural insight dig down and run through in each one the ‘what it is’, by conjoining and dividing the appropriate differences with the thing divided, and by thus investigating the ‘what it is’ in respect of simple understanding, and the ‘because of what’ in respect of the complex as in respect of a knowable conclusion. And in this discursive reasoning the intellect, insofar as it reasons discursively, is active; insofar however as it conceives, it is passive.

[Fourth opinion] This same doctor as to this position (about passiveness with respect to the first simple and confused knowledge, and about activity with respect to investigated distinct knowledge) seems to retract it and to correct it in another place where, asking about the active principle of vital actions (namely of sensation and intellection), posits that that principle is something in the animate thing itself and not an object outside it. Thus too he posits in the senses that the species impressed on the organ inclines only and, by inclining, excites the power and, as it were, calls it forth to its operation, so the phantasm in the imaginative power inclines the intellect so that the inclined intellect is in ultimate disposition to eliciting intellection as its own proper operation – And on behalf of this position he adduces there one reason for these actions, that they are vital actions and no action transcends the perfection of the agent, and another reason about the action remaining in the agent, and these are actions proper and denominate the agent properly, the way ‘to shine’, not ‘to illumine’, is related to the thing shining. With this agrees the reason of Augustine [On Music 6.5 n.9], that the soul forms in itself images of things known. These three reasons were introduced before, for the first opinion [nn.409, 412, 408].

Neither of these opinions, neither retracted nor retracting, seems to be true. Not the retracted one [n.450], because the intellect, brought to be in act according to the first confused knowledge, is active by virtue of itself with respect to second intellection, or by virtue of confused first knowledge. If by virtue of itself, it does not seem reasonable that some cause could be active with respect to a more perfect cause in some species and could in no way be active with respect to a more imperfect cause of the same idea; now confused and distinct intellection of white seem to be intellections of the same idea, because of the same object; therefore it seems unacceptable that the intellect could be of itself causative with respect to the second intellection, which is the more perfect, and not with respect to the first. And if you say that in respect of the second it is active by virtue of the first act, on the contrary: a more imperfect act cannot be the formal idea of causing a more perfect act, because then there would be no way in which it could be proved that God is the most perfect being, if an effect could surpass its total cause in perfection; but distinct knowledge is nobler than confused knowledge; therefore the confused knowledge is not the formal reason for eliciting or causing the distinct knowledge.

The retracting opinion too [n.451] does not seem to be true, because I ask what is understood by ‘inclination’? Either that there be some form in the intellect by which it is inclined, or nothing. If nothing, it is not more inclined now than it was inclined before. If some form, either an act of understanding – and then the opposite of their opinion that the object will cause the act – or something prior to the act of understanding, as a species, which they deny [n.340].

Response: it is not a habit nor an act nor a species but some fourth thing. – On the contrary. Although this would at once seem to be unacceptable, yet it is argued as follows: Let that [fourth] thing be a; either without it in the intellect there is total active virtue with respect to intellection, or not. If there is, then without it the intellect is capable of this intellection, and so of any required determination (because ‘this’ as ‘this’ is most determinate), and so it will be necessary because of nothing. If there is not, then a gives active virtue, either total or partial, to the intellect itself, and so such action will not be from the intellect or from within as from a total active principle.

Again, in ordered causes an inferior does not incline a superior but conversely;¹ and with respect to intellection the intellective part is a cause superior to the species of any object, as will be plain in the following question [nn.559-562]; therefore the object does not incline the intellect.

[Fifth opinion] The fifth opinion [Giles of Rome, Quodlibet 1 q.3, 3 qq.13-14, 5 q.9; On Angelic Knowledge qq.1, 4-5; Thomas of Sutton, Quaestiones Ordinariae qq.2-3] posits that the species of the object in the intellect, or the object itself present in itself, is what generates, or is the formal idea of generating, actual knowledge in the intellect, and the intellect itself is only disposed as material there, informed by the species or possessing the object that supplies the place of the species.

The argument for this is as follows: Averroes On the Soul 3 com.5, the intellect is disposed to universal forms as first matter is to individual forms; and elsewhere [in com.5] the soul is lowest in the genus of intelligibles, as matter is in the genus of beings; and On the Soul 2.5.417a2-28, and Physics 8.4.255a30-255b31, the intellect before habit is in essential potency as matter is before form; and On the Soul 3.4.429a24, the intellect is nothing of the things that are before understanding. From all these is concluded that the power of the intellect with respect to the intelligible is purely potential; but what is purely potential cannot be the active principle of any act unless informed by some form; and then the form will be the formal principle.

Argument is also made that the very form that is the principle of acting is the likeness, because just as making is formally through the form by which the maker is assimilated to the thing made, so action seems to be through the form by which the agent is assimilated to the object – so similitude will be the formal reason for acting.

For this is also added that an indeterminate agent cannot perform a determinate action, or an action about a determinate object, unless it be determined; the intellect of itself is indeterminate to every intelligible and every intellection; therefore, in order for it to understand, some determination is required; that determination is only through some species; therefore the intelligible species is the determinative principle.

[Sixth opinion] The sixth opinion, which returns to the same as concerns the conclusion of this question, is that actual knowledge itself, generated whether in the senses or in the intellect, is the species; and then, just as the formal idea of generating an actual species that is called actual knowledge is the idea of the object or the species of the object in memory, so it follows, as concerns the issue at hand, that the formal idea of generating actual knowledge is the object itself or some species in virtue of the object; and this such that when the object is in itself present, a species is generated from it, which is intellection; but when it is not present in itself but through a species in memory, then by this species or by virtue of this species another will be generated, which will be intellection.

In favor of this opinion, insofar as it says that the intelligible species is actual knowledge, is adduced Augustine On the Trinity 11.2 n.3, where he maintains that “the informing which is called vision is generated by the body alone that is seen;” but what is generated by the body alone is the species; therefore, the species is vision, according to Augustine.

This same thing is proved, second, through the Philosopher On the Soul 3.2.425b25-28, who maintains that sounding and hearing are the same, because the act of the active and the passive thing is the same, through him in Physics 3.3.202a13-21; but sounding in act causes a species of sound in the ear; therefore this caused species is the same as hearing, and so the sensible species and the sounding are the same.