Whether the Intellect Can Actually Understand Through the
Intelligible Species of Which It Is Possessed, Without Turning to
the Phantasms?
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.
Obj. 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.
Obj. 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 Obj. 1: The species preserved in the passive intellect exist
there habitually when it does not understand them actually, as we
have said above (Q. 79, A. 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 Obj. 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 Obj. 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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