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Objection 1: It would seem that there is both an active and a
passive intellect in an angel. The Philosopher says (De Anima
iii, text. 17) that, "in the soul, just as in every nature,
there is something whereby it can become all things, and there is
something whereby it can make all things." But an angel is a kind of
nature. Therefore there is an active and a passive intellect in an
angel.
Objection 2: Further, the proper function of the passive intellect
is to receive; whereas to enlighten is the proper function of the
active intellect, as is made clear in De Anima iii, text.
2,3,18. But an angel receives enlightenment from a higher
angel, and enlightens a lower one. Therefore there is in him an
active and a passive intellect.
On the contrary, The distinction of active and passive intellect in
us is in relation to the phantasms, which are compared to the passive
intellect as colors to the sight; but to the active intellect as colors
to the light, as is clear from De Anima iii, text. 18. But this
is not so in the angel. Therefore there is no active and passive
intellect in the angel.
I answer that, The necessity for admitting a passive intellect in us
is derived from the fact that we understand sometimes only in
potentiality, and not actually. Hence there must exist some power,
which, previous to the act of understanding, is in potentiality to
intelligible things, but which becomes actuated in their regard when it
apprehends them, and still more when it reflects upon them. This is
the power which is denominated the passive intellect. The necessity
for admitting an active intellect is due to this---that the natures
of the material things which we understand do not exist outside the
soul, as immaterial and actually intelligible, but are only
intelligible in potentiality so long as they are outside the soul.
Consequently it is necessary that there should be some power capable of
rendering such natures actually intelligible: and this power in us is
called the active intellect.
But each of these necessities is absent from the angels. They are
neither sometimes understanding only in potentiality, with regard to
such things as they naturally apprehend; nor, again, are their
intelligible in potentiality, but they are actually such; for they
first and principally understand immaterial things, as will appear
later (Question 84, Article 7; Question 85, Article 1).
Therefore there cannot be an active and a passive intellect in them,
except equivocally.
Reply to Objection 1: As the words themselves show, the
Philosopher understands those two things to be in every nature in which
there chances to be generation or making. Knowledge, however, is not
generated in the angels, but is present naturally. Hence there is not
need for admitting an active and a passive intellect in them.
Reply to Objection 2: It is the function of the active intellect to
enlighten, not another intellect, but things which are intelligible in
potentiality, in so far as by abstraction it makes them to be actually
intelligible. It belongs to the passive intellect to be in
potentiality with regard to things which are naturally capable of being
known, and sometimes to apprehend them actually. Hence for one angel
to enlighten another does not belong to the notion of an active
intellect: neither does it belong to the passive intellect for the
angel to be enlightened with regard to supernatural mysteries, to the
knowledge of which he is sometimes in potentiality. But if anyone
wishes to call these by the names of active and passive intellect, he
will then be speaking equivocally; and it is not about names that we
need trouble.
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