SCG, Book I, Chapter 51–53

Chapters 51-52: ARGUMENTS INQUIRING HOW A MULTITUDE OF INTELLECTUAL OBJECTS IS IN THE DIVINE INTELLECT [RATIONES AD INQUIRENDUM QUALITER MULTITUDO INTELLECTORUM SIT IN INTELLECTU DIVINO]

[Too much Latin here of prime value not to inscribe.]

[1] [Although God knows other things beside Himself [quod Deus cognoscit alia a se, cf. I, 49–50],] the multitude of intellectual objects [multitudo intellectorum in intellectum divinum], however, [do not] introduce a composition into the divine intellect…. [2] Now, this multitude cannot be taken to mean that many intellectual objects have a distinct being in God. For either these objects would be the same as the divine essence, and thus a certain multitude would be posited in the essence of God…; or they would be added to the divine essence, and thus there would be some accident in God….

[3] Nor, again, can such intelligible forms be posited as existing in themselves. This is what Plato, avoiding the above difficulties, seems to have posited by introducing the Ideas. For the forms of natural things cannot exist without matter, since neither are they understood without matter.

[Roughly, tell me everything you can about a "horse" without adverting to its material nature. An eternal, hoofless, headless, organless, spatially undispersed thing is still somehow a "horse"? Right….]

[4] And, even if this position were held, it would not enable us to posit that God has understanding of a multitude. For, since the aforementioned forms are outside God’s essence, if God could not understand the multitude of things without them, … it would follow that His perfection in understanding depended on something else, and consequently so would His perfection in being, since His being is His understanding. …

[A thing is perfect––a thing perfectly "be's"––only insofar as it attains the end to which it tends. But since non-intellectual entities cannot tend to their ends without the guidance of a (superior) intellect (cf. I, 49–50 and the glosses and links therein), and since finite intellects can only attain their ends by a discursive ascent through diverse beings and syllogisms, only a perfect Being perfectly knows and, crucially, only a perfect Knower perfectly exists.]

[5] Furthermore, since whatever is outside His essence must be caused by Him, … if the aforementioned forms are to be found outside God, they must be caused by Him. … Therefore, so that these intelligibles may have existence, it is required according to the order of nature that God first understand them. Hence, God does not have knowledge of multitude by the fact that many intelligibles are found outside Him.

[6] Furthermore, the intelligible in act is the intellect in act [The demolition of critical idealism.], just as the sensible in act is the sense in act. According as the intelligible is distinguished from the intellect, both are in potency, as likewise appears in the case of the sense. … If, then, the intelligible objects of God are outside His intellect, it will follow that His intellect is in potency, as are also its intelligible objects. Thus, some cause reducing them to act would be needed, which is impossible, since there is nothing prior to God.

[7] Then, too, the understood must be in him who understands. Therefore, to posit the forms of things as existing in themselves … must be in the divine intellect itself. [8] [Chapter 52] …the multitude of the aforementioned intelligibles cannot reside in any intellect other than the divine intellect—for example, that of a soul or an angel or intelligence. If this were true, the divine intellect would depend on a lower intellect for some operation. …

[9] Then, too, … the divine understanding, by which God is a cause, is a prerequisite for the being of the aforementioned intelligibles in some lower intellect. … [11] Furthermore, just as each thing has its own being, so it has its own operation. … each thing is through its own essence, not through the essence of another. Therefore, by the fact that there are many intelligible objects in some secondary intellect it could not come about that the first intellect knows a multitude.

[Hmmm?]

Chapter 53: THE SOLUTION OF THE ABOVE DIFFICULTY [SOLUTION PRAEMISSAE DUBITATIONES]

[1] We can solve the above difficulty with ease [Praemissa autem dubitatio faciliter solvi potest] if we examine diligently [si diligenter inspiciatur] how the things that are understood by the intellect exist within the intellect [qualiter res intellectae in intellectu existant].

[2] So far as it is possible, let us proceed from our intellect to the knowledge that the divine intellect has [Et ut ab intellectu nostro ad divini intellectus cognitionem, prout est possibile, procedamus]. Let us consider the fact that an external thing understood by us does not exist in our intellect according to its own nature; rather, it is necessary that its species be in our intellect, and through this species the intellect comes to be in act [oportet quod species eius sit in intellectu nostro, per quam fit intellectus in actu]. Once in act through this species [in actu per huiusmodi speciem] as through its own form, the intellect knows the thing itself. … Understanding remains in the one understanding, but it is related to the thing understood because the abovementioned species, which is a principle of intellectual operation as a form [quae est principium intellectualis operationis ut forma], is the likeness of the thing understood.

[As if Kant were the first to wed first primary metaphysics to the order of knowledge! His mistake was to leave the marriage for a masturbatory celebration of the latter per se.]

[3] …the intellect, having been informed by the species of the thing […intellectus, per speciem rei formatus], by an act of understanding [intelligendo] forms within itself a certain intention of the thing understood [quandam intentionem rei intellectae], that is to say, its notion [quae est ratio ipsius], which the definition signifies [quam significat definitio]. This is a necessary point [Et hoc quidem necessarium est], because the intellect understands a present and an absent thing indifferently [intellectus intelligit indifferenter rem absentem et praesentem; cue the ontology of fiction and a chaste Meinongism!]. In this the imagination agrees with the intellect [in quo cum intellectu imaginatio convenit]. But the intellect … understands a thing as separated from material conditions [sed intellectus … intelligit rem ut separatam a conditionibus materialibus], without which a thing does not exist in reality. But this could not take place unless the intellect formed the abovementioned intention for itself.

[Hmmm…]

[4] Now, since this understood intention is, as it were, a terminus of intelligible operation [Haec autem intentio intellecta, cum sit quasi terminus intelligibilis operationis], it is distinct from the intelligible species that actualizes the intellect [est aliud a specie intelligibili quae facit intellectum in actu]…. For, by the fact that the intelligible species … is the form of the intellect and the principle of understanding, [it] is the likeness of the external thing…, since such as a thing is, such are its works [Per hoc enim quod species intelligibilis quae est forma intellectus et intelligendi principium…: quia quale est unumquodque, talia operatur]. And because the understood intention is like some thing, it follows that the intellect, by forming such an intention) knows that thing.

[As the intellect partakes of the intelligible by a likeness of being, so the existent takes part of He Who Is by a related, analogous likeness likeness of being.]

[5] Now, the divine intellect understands by no species other than the divine essence…. Nevertheless, the divine essence is the likeness of all things. … [T]he conception of the divine intellect as understanding itself, which is its Word, is the likeness not only of God Himself understood, but also of all those things of which the divine essence is the likeness [Intellectus autem divinus nulla alia specie intelligit quam essentia sua…. Sed tamen essentia sua est similitudo omnium rerum. … conceptio intellectus divini, prout seipsum intelligit, quae est verbum ipsius, non solum sit similitudo ipsius Dei intellecti, sed etiam omnium quorum est divina essentia similitudo] [NB: A strong suggestion of the eternal decree of the Incarnation!]. In this way, therefore, through one intelligible species, which is the divine essence, and through one understood intention, which is the divine Word, God can understand many things.

[So much for Islam. A theology which posits a pure monad as the epitome of being, has no way to account for the diversity of being as we ourselves diversely manifest it, much less the love of Allah for things outside himself.]

SCG, Book I, Chapter 44

Chapter 44: THAT GOD IS INTELLIGENT [QUOD DEUS EST INTELLIGENS]

… [2] … among movers and things moved we cannot proceed to infinity, but must reduce all movable things, as is demonstrable, to one first self-moving being. The self-moving being moves itself only by appetite and knowledge…. The moving part in the first self-moving being must he appetitive and apprehending.

Now, in a motion that takes place through appetite and apprehension, he who has the appetite and the apprehension is a moved mover, while the appetible and apprehended is the unmoved mover. … [God] must be related to the mover that is a part of the self-moving being as the appetible is to the one who has the appetite. Not, however, as something appetible by sensible appetite, since sensible appetite is not of that which is good absolutely but of this particular good, since the apprehension of the sense is likewise particular; whereas that which is good and appetible absolutely is prior to that which is good and appetible here and now.

The first mover, then, must be appetible as an object of intellect, and thus the mover that desires it must be intelligent. All the more, therefore, will the first appetible be intelligent, since the one desiring it is intelligent in act by being joined to it as an intelligible. Therefore, making the supposition that the first mover moves himself, as the philosophers intended, we must say that God is intelligent.

[3] … since every mover moves through a form at which it aims in moving, the form through which the first mover moves must be a universal form and a universal good. But a form does not have a universal mode except in the intellect [cf. para. 8 below]. Consequently, the first mover, God, must be intelligent.

[4] … all movers in the world are to the first mover, God, as instruments are related to a principal agent. Since, then, there are in the world many movers endowed with intelligence, it is impossible that the first mover move without an intellect. Therefore, God must be intelligent.

This is also akin to the argument discussed by Prof. Feser in this post, which I cited in chapter 43 as well. The transcendental conditions of being require that, for intellect to emerge in nature, intellect must somehow ground or antecede nature, which a quasi-Darwinian point well made by Fr. Oakes (cf. this post infra). This is also similar to Schopenhauer's fundamental point about "Wille in Natur", i.e., that the reason all levels of being and all interactions show an interconnected striving (and strife!), is due to the fact that "absoluter Wille" is the ontic basis of reality. Schopenhauer's thought, then, is a kind of Thomism without light.

[5] Again, a thing is intelligent because it is without matter. A sign of this is the fact that forms are made understood in act by abstraction from matter. And hence the intellect deals with universals and not singulars, for matter is the principle of individuation. … But we have shown that God is absolutely immaterial. God is, therefore, intelligent.

[6] Then, too, as was shown above, no perfection found in any genus of things is lacking to God. … But among the perfections; of things the greatest is that something be intelligent, for thereby it is in a manner all things, having within itself the perfections of all things. …

As the annotated edition notes: "The vastness of the stellar universe is in a manner the reach and amplitude of my mind, when I come to form some slight idea of it." Or as Cdl. Newman put it (The Idea of a University, part 2, article 8):

"There is but one thought greater than that of the universe, and that is the thought of its Maker. … He, though One, is a sort of world of worlds in Himself, giving birth in our minds to an indefinite number of distinct truths, each ineffably more mysterious than any thing that is found in this universe of space and time. Any one of His attributes, considered by itself, is the object of an inexhaustible science…. We are able to apprehend and receive each divine attribute in its elementary form, but still we are not able to accept them in their infinity, either in themselves or in union with each other. Yet we do not deny the first because it cannot be perfectly reconciled with the second, nor the second because it is in apparent contrariety with the first and the third. The case is the same in its degree with His creation material and moral. It is the highest wisdom to accept truth of whatever kind, wherever it is clearly ascertained to be such, though there be difficulty in adjusting it with other known truth."

[7] Again, that which tends determinately to some end either has set itself that end or the end has been set for it by another. Otherwise, it would tend no more to this end than to that. Now, natural things tend to determinate ends. They do not fulfill their natural needs by chance, since they would not do so always or for the most part, but rarely, which is the domain of chance. Since, then, things do not set for themselves an end, because they have no notion of what an end is, the end must be set for them by another, who is the author of nature. … But God could not set an end for nature unless He had understanding. …

As the annotated edition notes, "This is the Argument from Design, so valuable to the theologian in dealing with evolution. See Chap. XIII."

[8] Furthermore, everything imperfect derives from something perfect; for the perfect is naturally prior to the imperfect, as is act to potency. But the forms found in particular things are imperfect because they are there in a particular way and not according to the community of their natures. They must therefore be derived from some forms that are perfect and not particular. But such forms cannot exist unless by being understood, since no form is [act-ually] found in its universality except in the intellect [cf. para. 3 above]. Consequently, these forms must be intelligent, if they be subsistent; for only thus do they have operation. God, then, Who is the first subsistent act, from whom all other things are derived, must be intelligent.

The annotated edition remarks:

"Evolutionism says just the opposite. Is not the whole notion of development a process from the imperfect to the perfect? But the eternal question abides -- What begot the first germ, containing in itself the promise and potency of the vast development which we see? St Thomas asserts a priority of nature of the perfect to the imperfect, not a priority of time. God, though prior in duration, is not prior in time to the creature, as He is not in time at all: there is no time antecedent to creation. In the series of created causes, the imperfect is doubtless prior in time to the perfect. The first verses of Genesis assure us of that, as well as all sound study of evolution."

… [10] The truth of this faith was so strong among men that they named God from the act of understanding. For theos [θεος], which among the Greeks signifies God, comes from theaste [θεασθαι], which means to consider or to see.

The annotated has a lengthy note about Thomas' mention of perfect forms in this chapter, of which I shall only cite the following: "All that is absolutely necessary is the existence of a Supreme Being, who virtually contains in Himself all perfections which are represented in our minds by various abstract forms; a Being who is the Actuality of all ideal perfection (Chap. XXVIII)."