Whether There Is an Active and a Passive Intellect in an Angel?
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.
Obj. 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 objects intelligible in potentiality, but they are
actually such; for they first and principally understand immaterial
things, as will appear later (Q. 84, A. 7; Q. 85, A. 1). Therefore
there cannot be an active and a passive intellect in them, except
equivocally.
Reply Obj. 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
no need for admitting an active and a passive intellect in them.
Reply Obj. 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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