IV. To the Arguments of the First Question

63. [To the initial arguments] To the arguments for this question [nn.1-4]. As to the first [n.1], I say that the comparison must be understood with respect to the first activation of the intellect by the object; for the phantasm there has, along with the agent intellect, the office of being the activating first object. But it must not be understood as to every act that follows on the first activation; for the intellect can abstract any object that is included in the activating first object, and can consider what is abstracted without considering that from which it abstracts. And, when considering what it has abstracted, it in this way considers what is common to the sensible and to the non-sensible, because what is non-sensible is, just like what is sensible, considered in the universal. And the intellect can consider this abstraction and that other abstraction in respect of what is proper to that other one, namely to the non-sensible. But the senses do not abstract, and therefore in any act, both first and second, they require some proper object to move them, and the phantasm is not related to the intellect in this way.

64. To the second [n.2] I say that the Commentator [n.2, interpolated text] expounds the Philosopher’s simile of the difficult and not of the impossible. And his reason is that then it would be otiose for nature to make those abstract substances intelligible and impossible to understand by any intellect. But this reason of his is not valid: first because the goal of those substances, insofar as they are intelligible, is not that they be understood by our intellect (and so, if this did not belong to them, they would not for this reason be intelligible in vain); second because the inference ‘they are not intelligible by our intellect, therefore not by any intellect’ does not hold, for they could be understood by themselves. And so there is a fallacy of the consequent here. Hence, although the authority of the Philosopher could be expounded in many ways, I say that the eye of an owl has only intuitive and natural knowledge, and that, as to these two conditions, the Philosopher’s authority can be expounded as being about impossibility, because just as it is impossible for the eye to consider that object [=the sun] intuitively, so it is impossible for our intellect to know God naturally as well as intuitively.

65. To the third [n.3] I say that the potential infinite is unknown, because each thing is knowable insofar as it is actual. However, the infinite is not so unknown that it is repugnant for it to be understood by an infinite intellect; but the infinite cannot be known by any intellect knowing it according to the manner of its own infinity. For the manner of its own infinity is by taking one thing after another, and an intellect that would in this way know one thing after another would always know the finite and never the infinite. However, an infinite intellect can know the whole simultaneously, not part after part. -Also, when argument is drawn from Metaphysics 2.2.994b22-23 about infinites and the infinite, I say that the case is not alike, because knowledge of objects numerically infinite would prove the infinity of the knowing power (as was plain in the first question of the second distinction, article 2, relating to infinity [Ord. I d.2 n.127]), namely because an increase in number on the part of the object would prove an increase in size of virtue in the intellect. But the understanding of some infinite does not prove infinity, because it is not necessary for the act to have the sort of real mode that the object has; for an act under the idea of the finite can relate to an object under the idea of the infinite, unless the act were comprehensive of it; and I concede that we do not have such an act about an infinite object, nor can we have it.

66. As to Gregory [n.4], I say that he must not be taken to mean that contemplation stops at some creature under God (because this would be to enjoy things that should be used, which would be extreme perversity, according to Augustine 83 Questions q.30). But the concept of that essence [of God] under the idea of being is more imperfect than the concept of that essence as it is this essence; and because it is more imperfect therefore is it inferior in intelligibility. But contemplation, by general law, stops at such a common concept, and therefore it stops at some concept that is of lesser intelligibility than God is in himself as he is this essence. And therefore it must be understood with reference to something that is under God, that is, to something under the idea of intelligibility whose intelligibility is inferior to the intelligibility of God in himself, as this singular essence.

67. [To the other arguments]. To the arguments for the first opinion [of Henry, n.20]. When it is argued that God cannot be understood in any concept common univocally to him and creatures, because he is a certain singularity, the consequence is not valid. For Socrates is singular insofar as he is Socrates, and yet many predicates can be abstracted from Socrates. And so the singularity of a thing does not make it impossible for some common concept to be abstracted from that which is singular. And although whatever is there in the thing is, in existing, singular of itself, such that nothing contracts anything else to singularity, yet that same thing can be conceived as a this in reality, or indistinctly in some way, and thus as singular or common.

68. What Henry says about knowledge per accidens in favor of that opinion [n.20] does not need to be refuted, because [God] is known quasi per accidens, but not precisely, in an attribute, as was proved [n.25].