1. How the Angel who speaks knows Singulars

19. As to the first point, it is said that an angel knows the singular, not first and not through any proper idea, but through the universal that was co-created with his intellect.

20. The proof is fourfold:

First, thatThe Vatican editors put quotation marks round much of what follows because Scotus is following Henry’s words very closely. ¹³ “‘as each thing is disposed to being, so it is to knowledge’ (Metaphysics 2.1.993b30-31); but the form of a singular adds nothing to the universal save negation; therefore it adds nothing in knowledge either.”

21. Second, because “if an angel did not know the singular under the idea of its universal, then, since there is no other intrinsic reason by which he may know it (because neither the angel’s essence nor his habit is such a reason; for, to begin with, the habit is in respect of the universal), it would follow that the very singular would be presented to the angel’s intellect so as to move it as its first and per se object under the idea of singularity; but this is false, because things that are per se objects and not first do not move save through the idea of objects that are per se and first, in the way that size and figure do not move sight save with color at the same time.” But the singular is not the first object of the intellect, because “nothing is the first object of the intellect save the universal.”a

a. a[Interpolation] The first consequence is plain, because there is no other intrinsic idea whereby the singular may be known; because neither the essence of the angel is such an idea - nor the habit, because the habit is first with respect to the universal.

22. Third, thus: “Every cognitive power must, in apprehending, be determined proportionally to what it has to apprehend. Therefore the intellect, when understanding the singular, is determined proportionally to the determination of this singular - and as to this, either it is determined of its own nature or it is determinable by the species that it receives (namely by the species of the singular). And if in the first way, then the angel’s intellect would be more determined than our intellect is;” nay, in both ways a determination or determinability of the angelic intellect “greater than of our senses” follows, because our senses are not limited or determined of their nature, nor are they determinable by the species that they receive (“for the species of the singular is not received in the sense first but in the organ”). Further, the deduction is drawn that such determination to the singular object would be a certain limitation and impediment “to intellection of the universal, just as it is in the case of the senses,” - and much more in an angel than in the senses, because the sense does not receive the species of the singular [sc. since rather the organ does].

23. Fourth, because “just as through the apprehension of universals from without there is generated in our intellect the habit of science - so in the intellect of an angel, if it knew singulars first, there could be an acquired habit of science besides the science of his own universals, which is against the Philosopher in Metaphysics 7.10.1035b33-6a8 where he maintains that the scientific habit of universals is not other than that of singulars.”

24. As to this first article [n.18], the speaking angel’s mode of knowing the singular is set down thus:

“An angel’s intellect apprehends the form, by its own habit, according to the idea of a universal - but after the supposit has existence in fact or in revelation, the angel’s intellect at once apprehends the form in the supposit under the idea of a universal first and per se with the same apprehension as it apprehended it with before it was participated in by the supposit; and it is an accident of the angelic intellect that it apprehends the form in the supposit, just as it is an accident of the essence of a thing that something included under it is in the supposit. So first and per se the angel’s intellect knows the singular form under the idea of a universal (that is, under an indeterminate, confused, and undesignated idea), but because this very same form - as it is in the thing itself - is determinate and designated, the intellect secondarily understands this designation. And the knowledge of the universal is the same as the knowledge of the singular, save for the addition of a respect and a negation whereby the universal is understood as designated ‘in this’;” “for these [sc. knowledges] do not differ on the part of the thing known nor on the part of the act of knowing, but only in the manner of knowing without designation and knowing with designation, of which the latter adds to the former only the idea of negation, as has been said” [n.20].

25. From this it is plain how “the angelic intellect - as along an extended line -understands the singular.”

First, indeed, “the essence in the habit does not move under the idea of an object but under the idea of something inherent - but it terminates the act of understanding under the idea of something known and not of something inherent;” and so from the object to the habit “there is properly no circumflexion” but as it a were a line extended from point to point. “Next, from the object known in the universal, the intellect proceeds to the universal in the supposit, under the idea of universal, and finally from the object, known in the supposit under the idea of a universal, it proceeds to know the same object under the idea of a singular,” so that there is as it were a straight line from the object in the habit (as from a first point) to the singular (as to the last point) through two intermediate points.