CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
[51] Now we should consider what the other peripatetics had to say about all this. We will first take up the words of Themistius in his Commentary On the Soul . When he says: “This intellect that we say is in potency is more connatural to the soul,”—he means, than the agent intellect—“I don’t mean to every soul, however, but only to the human. And just as light coming to potential seeing and to colors in potency makes them actual, so when this intellect is in act it not only makes intellect to be in act, but also constitutes potential intelligibles as actual intelligibles.” And a little later: “As art is to matter so is the factive intellect to that which is in potency. That is why we understand when we wish to. For it is not an art exterior to matter, but a power invested in the whole intellect which is making, just as, if the builder did not exist exterior to the wood or the brazier to the bronze, they would be able to penetrate through and through. Thus it is that the intellect in act supervenes on intellect in potency, becoming one with it.”
[52] And, a little later, he concludes, “Therefore we are either the intellect in potency or the intellect in act. And if in everything composed of what is in potency and what is in act, it is one thing and what it is for it to exist is another, then I too and what it is for me to exist differ. And I am an intellect composed of potency and act, but what it is for me to be comes from that which is in act. Wherefore what I think and write, an intellect composed of potency and act writes, but it writes not as in potency but as in act; from it derives its activity.” And a little further on yet more clearly: “Just as animal and what it is for animal to exist differ, the latter being due to the animal’s soul, so too I and what it is for me to exist differ. What it is for me to exist comes from soul but not from every part, not from the sensitive, which is matter to the imaginative, nor indeed from the imaginative, for it is matter to possible intellect, nor from that which is intellect potentially, for it is as matter to the agent intellect. From agent intellect alone, therefore, comes what it is for me to be.” And he adds a little later, “And having progressed to this nature stops, there being nothing more honorable which could serve as subject to it. We are therefore the agent intellect.”
[53] And after rejecting the opinion of some others, he says, “Since Aristotle said that in every nature there is that which is matter and that which moves and perfects matter, he says that these differences must also exist in soul, and that there must be an intellect that becomes all things and another that makes it all things. For he says there is in the soul such an intellect and it is the most noble part of the human intellect.” A bit afterward adding, “This same text confirms that he, Aristotle, thinks that either we are the agent intellect or it is a part of us.”
From the foregoing words of Themistius it is clear that he not only holds that the possible intellect is a part of the human soul, but the agent as well, and he says that Aristotle taught this; and further that man is what he is not because of the sensitive soul, as some falsely said, but from the principal part, the intellective.
[54] I have not seen the books of Theophrastus, but Themistius cites him in his commentary, writing, “However it is better to set forth the sayings of Theophrastus concerning the intellect that is in potency and that which is in act. Of that which is in potency he asks: How could intellect exist from outside and as imposed and yet be connatural? And what is its nature? For it is actually nothing yet everything potentially, just like sense. Nor should this be taken to mean that it itself is not, which is carping, but it is as a kind of potential subject as is found in material things. But this ought not to said to be from without, therefore, or something conjoined, but is included from the first coming into being.” (p. 242, II, 54-62)
[55] So Theophrastus asks two things: first, how is the possible intellect from an extrinsic principle yet connatural to us, and second, what is the nature of the possible intellect. He answers the second question first, saying that it is potentially all things, not indeed existing as nothing, but in the way sense is related to sensibles. His answer to the first question follows from this, that it ought not so to be understood to be from outside as if it were something accidentally conjoined or temporally prior, but is there in the first coming into being, as containing and comprehending human nature.
[56] That Alexander held the possible intellect to be the form of the body, Averroes himself admits, although, as I think, he perversely understands Alexander’s words just as he uses the words of Themistius beyond the meaning they bear. For he claims that Alexander said the possible intellect was precisely the preparation in human nature for agent intellect and intelligibles, he understands this preparation to be nothing other than the soul’s intellective potency to intelligible things. Therefore he said that it is not a power in body because such a power does not have a bodily organ. And not for the reason Averroes attributes to him, that no preparation is a power in body.
[57] To turn from the Greeks to the Arabs, it is clear first of all that Avicenna held intellect to be a power of soul which is the form of body. For he says in his book On the Soul, “The active, that is, practical intellect, needs the body and bodily powers for its own actions, but the contemplative intellect does not always and completely need the body and its powers: for it is sufficient unto itself. None of these is the human soul, but the soul is what has these powers and, as we shall maintain later, is a solitary substance, that is, is in itself, and has aptitude for activities some of which are perfected only through instruments and some use of them, while others do not need instruments in any way.”
Again, in the first part he says that “the human soul is the first perfection of a natural body with organs, insofar as the ability to performs acts of deliberate choice, to discover by inquiry. and to grasp universals are attributed to it.” But it is true that later he says and proves that the human soul, because of that which is proper to it, that is, according to its intellective power, “is not related to body as form nor require that an organ be supplied it.”
[58] Next these words of Algazel should be added: “When the mingling of the elements will have been of a most beautiful and perfect equality, than which nothing more subtle and beautiful can be found, then it became apt to receive from the giver of forms a form more beautiful than other form, which is the soul of man. There are two virtues of this human soul: one operative, the other knowing,” which, as is clear from what follows, means intellect. Afterwards he proves with many arguments that the operation of the intellect does not take place through a bodily organ.
[59] We have set forth these things, not wishing to refute the above mentioned error by the authority of philosophers, but in order to show that not only Latin writers, whose language some do not savor, but also Greeks and Arabs, thought that intellect is a part or power or faculty of the soul which is the form of body. So I wonder from what Peripatetics they boast to have derived this error, unless perhaps they have less desire to think correctly with other Peripatetics than to err with Averroes, who was not a Peripatetic but the perverter of Peripatetic philosophy.