Whether Our Intellect Understands by Composition and Division?
Objection 1: It would seem that our intellect does not understand by
composition and division. For composition and division are only of
many; whereas the intellect cannot understand many things at the same
time. Therefore it cannot understand by composition and division.
Obj. 2: Further, every composition and division implies past,
present, or future time. But the intellect abstracts from time, as
also from other individual conditions. Therefore the intellect does
not understand by composition and division.
Obj. 3: Further, the intellect understands things by a process of
assimilation to them. But composition and division are not in things,
for nothing is in things but what is signified by the predicate and
the subject, and which is one and the same, provided that the
composition be true, for "man" is truly what "animal" is. Therefore
the intellect does not act by composition and division.
_On the contrary,_ Words signify the conceptions of the intellect, as
the Philosopher says (Peri Herm. i). But in words we find composition
and division, as appears in affirmative and negative propositions.
Therefore the intellect acts by composition and division.
_I answer that,_ The human intellect must of necessity understand by
composition and division. For since the intellect passes from
potentiality to act, it has a likeness to things which are generated,
which do not attain to perfection all at once but acquire it by
degrees: so likewise the human intellect does not acquire perfect
knowledge by the first act of apprehension; but it first apprehends
something about its object, such as its quiddity, and this is its
first and proper object; and then it understands the properties,
accidents, and the various relations of the essence. Thus it
necessarily compares one thing with another by composition or
division; and from one composition and division it proceeds to
another, which is the process of reasoning.
But the angelic and the Divine intellect, like all incorruptible
things, have their perfection at once from the beginning. Hence the
angelic and the Divine intellect have the entire knowledge of a thing
at once and perfectly; and hence also in knowing the quiddity of a
thing they know at once whatever we can know by composition, division,
and reasoning. Therefore the human intellect knows by composition,
division and reasoning. But the Divine intellect and the angelic
intellect know, indeed, composition, division, and reasoning, not by
the process itself, but by understanding the simple essence.
Reply Obj. 1: Composition and division of the intellect are made by
differentiating and comparing. Hence the intellect knows many things
by composition and division, as by knowing the difference and
comparison of things.
Reply Obj. 2: Although the intellect abstracts from the phantasms, it
does not understand actually without turning to the phantasms, as we
have said (A. 1; Q. 84, A. 7). And forasmuch as it turns to the
phantasms, composition and division of the intellect involve time.
Reply Obj. 3: The likeness of a thing is received into the intellect
according to the mode of the intellect, not according to the mode of
the thing. Wherefore something on the part of the thing corresponds
to the composition and division of the intellect; but it does not
exist in the same way in the intellect and in the thing. For the
proper object of the human intellect is the quiddity of a material
thing, which comes under the action of the senses and the
imagination. Now in a material thing there is a twofold composition.
First, there is the composition of form with matter; and to this
corresponds that composition of the intellect whereby the universal
whole is predicated of its part: for the genus is derived from common
matter, while the difference that completes the species is derived
from the form, and the particular from individual matter. The second
comparison is of accident with subject: and to this real composition
corresponds that composition of the intellect, whereby accident is
predicated of subject, as when we say "the man is white."
Nevertheless composition of the intellect differs from composition of
things; for in the latter the things are diverse, whereas composition
of the intellect is a sign of the identity of the components. For the
above composition of the intellect does not imply that "man" and
"whiteness" are identical, but the assertion, "the man is white,"
means that "the man is something having whiteness": and the subject,
which is a man, is identified with a subject having whiteness. It is
the same with the composition of form and matter: for animal
signifies that which has a sensitive nature; rational, that which has
an intellectual nature; man, that which has both; and Socrates that
which has all these things together with individual matter; and
according to this kind of identity our intellect predicates the
composition of one thing with another.
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