B. Second Opinion, which is that of Thomas Aquinas

364. Another opinion says [Aquinas ST Ia 1.55 a.3, De Veritate q.8 aa.10-11] that there is no need to posit proper reasons in an angel with respect to individual created quiddities, because although a lower angel knows many quiddities through many reasons for knowing, yet a higher angel can know them through some one reason, as is proved by Dionysius Celestial Hierarchy ch.12, “The superior angels have a more universal science than the inferior ones;” it is also proved by reason, because just as prior things are nearer to the first thing in entity so are they too in intellectuality. Since therefore the first intellect understands everything through one reason, a higher intellect will understand through fewer reasons what a lower intellect understands through more. There is a confirmation of this, that a sharper human intellect understands more things in one reason for knowing than another less sharp one does; therefore it thus seems that the angelic intellect, because of the greater perfection of its intellectuality, can distinctly understand more things through one reason.See footnote to interpolation after n.253 above. ⁷⁵

365. There is another argument to the same effect, that the more some reason for knowing is in something more immaterial or in something more actual, the more universal is the reason for representing; this major premise is plain of the species in the senses and of the phantasm in the intellect; and the reason is that ‘a received thing is in the receiver in the mode of the receiver’ [n.412]; therefore the reason that is in a higher, more actual angel will be a reason in a superior for knowing more things than in an inferior.