Question One. Whether a Created Word is Actual Intellection

1. About the twenty seventh distinction I ask about the word, and first about the word of a created intellect, whether a created word is actual intellection.

That it is not:

Augustine On the Trinity VIII ch.6 n.9: “the image of Carthage, in my memory, this is its word;” the image there is taken for the species, not for actual imagination; therefore in the same way the intellectual word is an intelligible species and not actual intellection.

2. Again, Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.11 n.20: “the word that sounds exteriorly is a sign of the word that shines interiorly;” but the external word is a sign of a thing not of an intellection, - otherwise any affirmative proposition in which the same thing is not predicated of itself would be false, because the intellection of the subject is not the intellection of the predicate, although the thing is the thing; therefore the word is object and not actual intellection.

3. Further, Augustine On the Trinity IX ch.12 n.18: “the word is offspring and thing born from memory;” but action is not born, but is that in which something else is born; therefore the word is something formed by an act of understanding and is not the act itself.

4. On the contrary:

In the same place Augustine calls the word knowledge: “the knowledge of it, which is the offspring of it;” and On the Trinity XV ch.12 n.22, ch.21 n.40: “It is vision from vision and knowledge from knowledge.”