Whether an Angel Can Understand Many Things at the Same Time?
Objection 1: It would seem that an angel cannot understand many things
at the same time. For the Philosopher says (Topic. ii, 4) that "it may
happen that we know many things, but understand only one."
Obj. 2: Further, nothing is understood unless the intellect be
informed by an intelligible species; just at the body is formed by
shape. But one body cannot be formed into many shapes. Therefore
neither can one intellect simultaneously understand various
intelligible things.
Obj. 3: Further, to understand is a kind of movement. But no movement
terminates in various terms. Therefore many things cannot be
understood altogether.
_On the contrary,_ Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iv, 32): "The
spiritual faculty of the angelic mind comprehends most easily at
the same time all things that it wills."
_I answer that,_ As unity of term is requisite for unity of movement,
so is unity of object required for unity of operation. Now it happens
that several things may be taken as several or as one; like the parts
of a continuous whole. For if each of the parts be considered
severally they are many: consequently neither by sense nor by
intellect are they grasped by one operation, nor all at once. In
another way they are taken as forming one in the whole; and so they
are grasped both by sense and intellect all at once and by one
operation; as long as the entire continuous whole is considered, as
is stated in _De Anima_ iii, text. 23. In this way our intellect
understands together both the subject and the predicate, as forming
parts of one proposition; and also two things compared together,
according as they agree in one point of comparison. From this it is
evident that many things, in so far as they are distinct, cannot be
understood at once; but in so far as they are comprised under one
intelligible concept, they can be understood together. Now everything
is actually intelligible according as its image is in the intellect.
All things, then, which can be known by one intelligible species, are
known as one intelligible object, and therefore are understood
simultaneously. But things known by various intelligible species, are
apprehended as different intelligible objects.
Consequently, by such knowledge as the angels have of things through
the Word, they know all things under one intelligible species, which
is the Divine essence. Therefore, as regards such knowledge, they know
all things at once: just as in heaven "our thoughts will not be
fleeting, going and returning from one thing to another, but we shall
survey all our knowledge at the same time by one glance," as Augustine
says (De Trin. xv, 16). But by that knowledge wherewith the angels
know things by innate species, they can at one time know all things
which can be comprised under one species; but not such as are under
various species.
Reply Obj. 1: To understand many things as one, is, so to
speak, to understand one thing.
Reply Obj. 2: The intellect is informed by the intelligible
species which it has within it. So it can behold at the same time many
intelligible objects under one species; as one body can by one shape
be likened to many bodies.
To the third objection the answer is the same as the first.
_______________________