Whether Our Intellect Can Know Contingent Things?
Objection 1: It would seem that the intellect cannot know contingent
things: because, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 6), the objects
of understanding, wisdom and knowledge are not contingent, but
necessary things.
Obj. 2: Further, as stated in Phys. iv, 12, "what sometimes is and
sometimes is not, is measured by time." Now the intellect abstracts
from time, and from other material conditions. Therefore, as it is
proper to a contingent thing sometime to be and sometime not to be,
it seems that contingent things are not known by the intellect.
_On the contrary,_ All knowledge is in the intellect. But some
sciences are of the contingent things, as the moral sciences, the
objects of which are human actions subject to free-will; and again,
the natural sciences in as far as they relate to things generated
and corruptible. Therefore the intellect knows contingent things.
_I answer that,_ Contingent things can be considered in two ways;
either as contingent, or as containing some element of necessity,
since every contingent thing has in it something necessary: for
example, that Socrates runs, is in itself contingent; but the
relation of running to motion is necessary, for it is necessary that
Socrates move if he runs. Now contingency arises from matter, for
contingency is a potentiality to be or not to be, and potentiality
belongs to matter; whereas necessity results from form, because
whatever is consequent on form is of necessity in the subject. But
matter is the individualizing principle: whereas the universal comes
from the abstraction of the form from the particular matter. Moreover
it was laid down above (A. 1) that the intellect of itself and
directly has the universal for its object; while the object of sense
is the singular, which in a certain way is the indirect object of the
intellect, as we have said above (A. 1). Therefore the contingent,
considered as such, is known directly by sense and indirectly by the
intellect; while the universal and necessary principles of contingent
things are known only by the intellect. Hence if we consider the
objects of science in their universal principles, then all science is
of necessary things. But if we consider the things themselves, thus
some sciences are of necessary things, some of contingent things.
From which the replies to the objections are clear.
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