Chapter Four:
'ST. THOMAS" AQUINAS
| an leads to the understanding of all inasmuch as they are men.
And because, it has such a relation to all individuals, the intellect discovers the ratio of species and attributes it to it (human nature). Whence the Commentator observes in the first book of the De Anima that intellect is what actuates universality in things. Avicenna also says this in his Metaphysics. Whence, although this intellectual nature has the ratio of universal according as it is compared to things which are outside of the soul because it is a single likeness of all, nevertheless according as it has existence in this intellect or that it is a certain particular intellected species. x Tobe predicated applies to genus by virtue of itself s since it is posited in its definition. For predication is a certain thing which is perfected by means of the action of the intellect composing and dividing, having in the very thing as its foundation the unity of those things of which one is asserted of the other. Whence the ratio of predicability can be included in the ratio of this mode of intention which is genus, which, similarly, is perfected by means of an act of the intellect. Yet, nevertheless, that to which the intellect attributes the intention of predication, composing the one with the other, is not the very intention of genus but rather that to which the intellect attributes the intention of genus, as for instance what is signified by the name animal. Thus, therefore, it is clear how essence or nature is disposed towards the ratio of species, because the ratio of species does not belong to those things which are appropriate to it according to its absolute consideration, nor likewise does it belong to the accidents which issue from it according to the existence which it has outside the soul, as whiteness or blackness. But it does belong to the accidents which issue from it according to the existence which it has in the intellect. And it is according to this mode that the ratio of genus and of difference also applies to it.
CHAPTER FOUR:
Now it remains to see through what mode essence exists in separate substances, namely, in the soul, in intelligences and in the first cause. ...
THE AGE OF BELIEF
All that belongs to anything is either caused from principles of its nature, as for instance risibility in man, or accrues to it through some extrinsic principle, as for instance light in air from the influence of the sun. But it cannot be that existence itself should be caused by the form or quiddity of the thing, caused, I say, as by means of an efficient cause, because thus something would be the cause of itself and would bring its very self into existence, which is impossible. Therefore it follows that everything such that its existence is other than its nature has existence from another. And because everything which exists by virtue of another is reduced to that which exists in virtue of itself, as to its first cause, it follows that there must be something which is the cause of the existence of all things, because it is very existence alone; otherwise the causes would proceed to infinity, since everything which is not existence alone would have a cause of its existence, as has been said. It is clear, therefore, that an intelligence is form and existence, and that it has its existence from the first being which is existence alone, and this is the first cause which is God.
But everything which receives something from something is in potency in respect to that, and what is received in it is its act. Therefore it follows that the very quiddity or form which is the intelligence is in potency in respect to the existence which it receives from God, and that existence is received according to the mode of act. And thus potency and act are found in intelligences, yet not form and matter, except equivocally. Whence, too, to suffer, to receive, to be a subject and all things of this kind which are seen to belong to things by reason of matter, belong equivocally to intellectual substances and to corporeal substances, as the Commentator says in the third book of the De Anima. ..
ST. THOMAS WAS ALSO CONCERNED WITH THE QUESTION
that had so preoccupied St. Augustine: what the memory is. and where? In his Truth* he discussed the problem in * St. aes Truth, trans. J. McGlynn (Henry Regnery Company). ee
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ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
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ARTICLE 11:
{ Secondly, We Ask: Is There Memory in the Mind?
Difficulties:
It seems that there is not, for 1. According to Augustine, that which we share with brute animals does not belong to the mind. But memory is common to us and to brute animals, as is also clear from Augustine. Therefore, memory is not in the mind.
2. The Philosopher says that memory does not belong to the intellective but to the primary sensitive faculty.
Therefore, since mind is the same as understanding, as is clear from what has been said above, memory does not seem to be part of the mind.
3. Understanding and all that belong to understanding abstract from space and time. Memory, however, does not so abstract, for it deals with a definite time, the past. For memory concerns things past, as Cicero says. Therefore, memory does not pertain to mind or understanding.
4. Since in memory we retain things that are not being actually apprehended, it follows that, wherever there is memory, there must be a difference between apprehension and retention. But it is in sense only, and not in understanding, that we find this difference. The two can differ in sense because sense makes use of a bodily organ. But not everything that is retained in the body is apprehended.
But understanding does not make use of a bodily organ, and so retains things only according to the mode of understanding. So, these things have to be actually understood.
Therefore, memory is not part of understanding or mind.
5. The soul does not remember until it has retained something. But before it receives from the senses, which are the source of all our knowledge, any species which it can retain, it already has the character of image (of the Trinity). Since memory is part of that image, it does not seem possible for memory to be in the mind.
6. In so far as mind has the character of image of God, it is directed toward God. But memory is not directed toward God, since it deals with things that belong to time.
THE AGE OF BELIEF
But God is entirely beyond time. Therefore, memory is not in the mind.
7. If memory were part of the mind, the intelligible species would be maintained in the mind as they are in the angelic mind. But the angels can understand by turning their attention to the species which they have within them.
Therefore, the human mind should be able to understand by turning its attention to the species it retains, without referring to phantasms. But this is obviously false. For, no matter to what degree one has scientific knowledge as a habit, if the organ of the power of imagination or memory is injured, this knowledge cannot be made actual. This would not result if the mind could actually understand without referring to powers which use organs. So, memory is not part of the mind.
To the Contrary:
1. The Philosopher says that the intellective soul, not the whole soul, is the place of the species. But it belongs to place to preserve what is kept in it. Therefore, since the preservation of the species belongs to memory, memory seems to be part of understanding.
2. That which has a uniform relation to all time is not concerned with any particular time. But memory, even in its proper acceptation, has a uniform relation to all time, as Augustine says and proves with the words of Virgil, who used the names memory and forgetfulness in their proper sense. Therefore, memory is not concerned with any particular time, but with all time. So it belongs to understanding.
3. Strictly speaking, memory refers to things past. But understanding deals not only with what is present, but also with what is past. For the understanding judges about any time, understanding man to have existed, to exist in the future, and to exist now, as is clear from The Soul. Therefore, memory, properly speaking, can belong to understanding.
4. As memory concerns what is past, so foresight concerns what is in the future, according to Cicero. But fore-
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ST.. THOMAS AQUINAS
sight, properly speaking, belongs to the intellectual part.
For the same reason memory does, too.
Reply:
According to the common usage, memory means a knowledge of things past. But to know the past as past belongs to that which has the power of knowing the now as now. Sense is this power. For understanding does not know the singular as singular, but according to some common character, as it is man or white or even particular, but not in so far as it is this man or this particular thing.
In a similar way, understanding does not know a present and a past thing as this present and this past thing.
Since memory, taken strictly, looks to what is past with reference to the present, it is clear that memory, properly speaking, does not belong to the intellectual part, but only to the sensitive, as the Philosopher shows. But, since intellect not only understands the intelligible thing, but also understands that it understands such an intelligible thing, the term memory can be broadened to include the knowledge by which one knows the object previously known in so far as he knows he knew it earlier, although he does not know the object as in the past in the manner earlier explained. In this way all knowledge not received for the first time can be called memory.
This can take place in two ways, either when there is continuous study based on acquired knowledge without interruption, or when the study is interrupted. The latter has more of the character of past, and so it more properly participates in the nature of memory. We have an example of this when we say that we remember a thing which previously we knew habitually but not actually. Thus, memory belongs to the intellective part of our soul. It is in this sense that Augustine seems to understand memory, when he makes it part of the image of the Trinity. For he intends to assign to memory everything in the mind which is stored there habitually without passing into act.
There are various explanations of the manner in which this can take place. Avicenna holds that the fact that the soul has habitual knowledge of anything which it does not
THE AGE OF BELIEF
actually consider does not come from this, that certain species are retained in the intellectual part. Rather, he understands that it is impossible for the species not actually considered to be kept anywhere except in the sensitive part, either in the imagination, which is the storehouse of forms received by the senses, or in the memory, for particular apprehensions not received from the senses. The species stays in the understanding only when it is actually being considered. But, after the consideration, it ceases to be there. Thus, when one wants actually to consider something again, it is necessary for new intelligible species to flow from the agent intelligence into the possible intellect.
However, it does not follow, according to Avicenna, that the new consideration of what was known previously necessarily entails learning or discovering all over again, for one retains a certain aptitude through which he turns more easily to the agent intellect to receive the species flowing from it than he did before. In us, this aptitude is the habit of scientific knowledge. According to this opinion, memory is not part of the mind because it preserves certain species, but because it has an aptitude for receiving them anew.
But this does not seem to be a reasonable explanation.
In the first place, since the possible intellect has a more stable nature than sense, it must receive its species more securely. Thus, the species can be better preserved in it than in the sensitive part. In the second place, the agent intelligence is equally disposed to communicate species suitable for all the sciences. As a consequence, if some species were not conserved in the possible intellect, but there were in it only the aptitude of turning to the agent intellect, man would have an equal aptitude for any intelligible thing. Therefore, from the fact that a man had learned one science he would not know it better than other sciences. Besides, this seems openly opposed to the opinion of the Philosopher, who commends the ancients for holding that the intellective part of the soul is the place of the species.
Therefore, others say that the intelligible species remain in the possible intellect after actual consideration, and that
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
i g/T) the ordered arrangement of these is the habit of knowledge.
In this classification the power by which our minds retain these intelligible species after actual consideration will be called memory. This comes closer to the proper meaning of memory.
Answers to Difficulties:
1. The memory which we have in common with brute animals is that in which particular intentions are preserved.
This is not in the mind; only the memory in which intelligible species are kept is there.
2. The Philosopher is speaking of the memory which deals with the past as related to a particular present m so far as particular. This is not in the mind.
3. The answer to the third difficulty is clear from ey has just been said.
4. Actual apprehension and retention differ in the possible intellect, not because the species are there somehow in a bodily manner, but only in an intelligible way. However, it does not follow that one understands according to that species all the time, but only when the possible intellect becomes that species perfectly in act. Sometimes it has the act of this species incompletely, that is, in some way between pure potency and pure act. This is habitual knowledge. The reduction from this to complete act takes place through the will, which, according to Anselm, is the mover of all the powers.
5. Mind has the character of image (of the Trinity) especially in so far as it is directed to God and to itself.
It is present to itself and God is present to it before any species are received from sensible things. Furthermore, mind is not said to have the power of memory to preserve something.
6. The answer to the sixth difficulty is clear from what has been said.
7. No power can know anything without turning to its object, as sight knows nothing unless it turns to color.
Now, since phantasms are related to the possible intellect in the way that sensible things are related to sense, as the Philosopher points out, no matter to what extent an in-
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THE AGE OF BELIEF
telligible species is present to the understanding, understanding does not actually consider anything according to that species without referring to a phantasm. Therefore, just as our understanding in its present state needs phantasm actually to consider anything before it acquires a habit, so it needs them, too, after it has acquired a habit.
The situation is different with angels, for phantasms are not the object of their understanding.
Answers to Contrary Difficulties:
1. The authority cited can prove only that memory is in the mind in the way we have mentioned, not that it is there properly.
2. We must understand Augustine's statement to mean that memory can deal with present objects. However, it can never be called memory unless something past is considered, at least past with reference to cognition itself. It is in this way that we say someone, who is present to himself, forgets or remembers himself because he retains or does not retain the past knowledge about himself.
3. In so far as understanding knows temporal differences through common characters, it can thus make judgments according to any difference of time.
4. Foresight is in the understanding only according to general considerations about the future. It is applied to particular things through the mediation of particular reason which must act as the medium between general reason, which is the source of movement, and the movement which follows in particular things, as is clear from what the Philosopher says. }
THE DIVINE FORESIGHT NEVER CONSTRAINS US TO EVIL,
for God "creates our choice and the freedom of our choice" and no one is deprived of grace unless they place in themselves an obstacle to grace. Thus, when the sun is shining, if any one shuts his eyes and falls over a precipice, it is his own fault, even though the sunlight is necessary for him to see; and the first revealing truth is both that which is believed and that by which one believes, as light is that which is seen, and that by which one sees.
ANNE FREMANTLE
St. Thomas was not only an admirable disputant (even such opponents as Archbishop John Peckham admitted how calm and collected he remained in the midst of the fiercest argument), he was also a careful and accurate historian, and his use of history is remarkable. Because he always accepted things "just as they were" and never
"expected them to conform themselves to his own definitions of them—dquite the reverse" (Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, Scribner, 1938) he made possible the creation by Robert Grosseteste and "his thirteenth and fourteenth century successors" of "modern experimental science, by uniting the experimental habit of the practical arts with the rationalism of twelfth century philosophy" (A. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and -the Origins of Experimental Science, Oxford, 1953).
The distinguishing marks of St. Thomas' philosophy are its emphasis on contingent being (every real and complete being is distinct from every other: any being which becomes is necessarily limited); on the duality of potency and act; and on the distinction between the constituent reality and the actuality of every existent being except God, Who exists by His very essence. Only infinite Actuality is all existence.
St. Thomas' new theories have been summarized by Maurice de Wulf: "To the plurality of forms he opposed the unity of the substantial principle: to the hylomorphic composition of spiritual substances the doctrine of subsistent forms: to the Augustinian theory of the identity of the soul with its faculties, that of the real distinction between a limited substance and its operative powers: to the confusion of existence and essence, that of their real distinction: to the theory of a special illumination, that of the normal power of the intellect within its natural limits: to the theory of the light form, that of the accidental reality of every quality and action."* * Maurice de Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, Vol. Ul, trans. Ernest Messenger (Longmans, Green, 1926).