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Objection 1: It would seem that the intellect can actually
understand through the intelligible species of which it is possessed,
without turning to the phantasms. For the intellect is made actual by
the intelligible species by which it is informed. But if the intellect
is in act, it understands. Therefore the intelligible species
suffices for the intellect to understand actually, without turning to
the phantasms.
Objection 2: Further, the imagination is more dependent on the
senses than the intellect on the imagination. But the imagination can
actually imagine in the absence of the sensible. Therefore much more
can the intellect understand without turning to the phantasms.
Objection 3: There are no phantasms of incorporeal things: for the
imagination does not transcend time and space. If, therefore, our
intellect cannot understand anything actually without turning to the
phantasms, it follows that it cannot understand anything incorporeal.
Which is clearly false: for we understand truth, and God, and the
angels.
On the contrary, The Philosopher says (De Anima iii, 7) that
"the soul understands nothing without a phantasm."
I answer that, In the present state of life in which the soul is
united to a passible body, it is impossible for our intellect to
understand anything actually, except by turning to the phantasms.
First of all because the intellect, being a power that does not make
use of a corporeal organ, would in no way be hindered in its act
through the lesion of a corporeal organ, if for its act there were not
required the act of some power that does make use of a corporeal organ.
Now sense, imagination and the other powers belonging to the sensitive
part, make use of a corporeal organ. Wherefore it is clear that for
the intellect to understand actually, not only when it acquires fresh
knowledge, but also when it applies knowledge already acquired, there
is need for the act of the imagination and of the other powers. For
when the act of the imagination is hindered by a lesion of the corporeal
organ, for instance in a case of frenzy; or when the act of the memory
is hindered, as in the case of lethargy, we see that a man is hindered
from actually understanding things of which he had a previous
knowledge. Secondly, anyone can experience this of himself, that
when he tries to understand something, he forms certain phantasms to
serve him by way of examples, in which as it were he examines what he
is desirous of understanding. For this reason it is that when we wish
to help someone to understand something, we lay examples before him,
from which he forms phantasms for the purpose of understanding.
Now the reason of this is that the power of knowledge is proportioned
to the thing known. Wherefore the proper object of the angelic
intellect, which is entirely separate from a body, is an intelligible
substance separate from a body. Whereas the proper object of the human
intellect, which is united to a body, is a quiddity or nature existing
in corporeal matter; and through such natures of visible things it
rises to a certain knowledge of things invisible. Now it belongs to
such a nature to exist in an individual, and this cannot be apart from
corporeal matter: for instance, it belongs to the nature of a stone to
be in an individual stone, and to the nature of a horse to be in an
individual horse, and so forth. Wherefore the nature of a stone or
any material thing cannot be known completely and truly, except in as
much as it is known as existing in the individual. Now we apprehend
the individual through the senses and the imagination. And,
therefore, for the intellect to understand actually its proper object,
it must of necessity turn to the phantasms in order to perceive the
universal nature existing in the individual. But if the proper object
of our intellect were a separate form; or if, as the Platonists say,
the natures of sensible things subsisted apart from the individual;
there would be no need for the intellect to turn to the phantasms
whenever it understands.
Reply to Objection 1: The species preserved in the passive
intellect exist there habitually when it does not understand them
actually, as we have said above (Question 79, Article 6).
Wherefore for us to understand actually, the fact that the species are
preserved does not suffice; we need further to make use of them in a
manner befitting the things of which they are the species, which things
are natures existing in individuals.
Reply to Objection 2: Even the phantasm is the likeness of an
individual thing; wherefore the imagination does not need any further
likeness of the individual, whereas the intellect does.
Reply to Objection 3: Incorporeal things, of which there are no
phantasms, are known to us by comparison with sensible bodies of which
there are phantasms. Thus we understand truth by considering a thing
of which we possess the truth; and God, as Dionysius says (Div.
Nom. i), we know as cause, by way of excess and by way of
remotion. Other incorporeal substances we know, in the present state
of life, only by way of remotion or by some comparison to corporeal
things. And, therefore, when we understand something about these
things, we need to turn to phantasms of bodies, although there are no
phantasms of the things themselves.
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