a) What is caused in the Intellect of the Hearing Angel

67. On the first point [n.66] I say that the speaking angel can then cause the act only (such that he does not cause the species), and can cause the act and the species together, and can cause the species only.

68. Proof of the first claim [n.67]: the speaking can be about something habitually known to the hearing angel, because just as we can speak imperfectly about what we would perfectly know by communicating our concepts to others (although we would know that others know those same concepts), so it seems possible in the case of angels that the speaking is about what is habitually known to both; but then no species is generated by the speaking angel other than the one that is had by the hearing angel (because then there would be two species in the same angel with respect to the same object) - nor even is the already possessed species intensified, because we may posit that the already possessed species is most perfect.

69. Likewise, the speakings - for the most part - are about propositions pertaining to the actual existence of things; now such propositions are not evident from the terms; therefore, although someone may have the species of the extremes, not for this reason is his intellect capable of some propositional intellection (or knowledge) about those extremes, namely one that is determinately to one side of the contradiction (as about the thing’s existence or non-existence). There can in that case be caused some act of knowing such a proposition without the causing of any species.

70. I prove the second [n.67] because if the hearing angel does not have the species of the singular about which the speaking angel is speaking, his intellect is receptive both of the species and of the act and lacks both - and the intellect of the speaking angel is in first act, sufficient for generating both; this is plain about the species, because an intelligible species can generate an intelligible species of the same nature, just as also the species of a sensible thing in the medium can generate a sensible species of the same nature; it is likewise plain about the act, because the species that in the speaker is the principle of knowing what it is the species can also be the reason for generating actual intellection of the same object in another intellect capable of it.

71. I prove the third [n.67] because a lesser active virtue cannot hinder a greater virtue from its action; therefore if the greater considers something in its proper genus, for instance a, the inferior - wanting to speak to him about b - will not be able to impede his actual intellection; so he will not then cause actual intellection of b, because there cannot be two in the superior angel. But the inferior angel will cause something, as far as he will be able, because he wants to communicate something to another as far as he can; therefore he will cause a species of b, if it is not already possessed in the superior angel’s intellect.

72. Also from the same major as before [sc. that a lesser virtue cannot hinder a greater virtue, n.71] and from this minor, namely that ‘a superior and an inferior can together speak to the same angel’, it follows that the superior will make that same angel understand what he himself is speaking about but the inferior will not, though he will make something compossible with that intellection, namely the species of what he himself wishes to speak about.

73. In these two cases [nn.71-72] the speaking angel can generate a species such that he cannot generate then an act; given too that there is nothing on the part of the hearer to prevent him being able to receive both (the species and the act), the speaker -from the fact he wants to cause (as will be said later [n.177]) - can cause one [the species] and not the other [the act] (namely causing the first but not the second), because the two need not always accompany each other.

74. And in this last member [n.67, 71-73] the speaker speaks and yet the hearer does not perfectly hear, because hearing is an intellection of the intelligible thing expressed by the speaker; it is just as if a man were to speak to a man distracted by study, whose ear would receive the species of sound and yet he would not hear (that is, he would not conceive it distinctly under the idea of sign), and he would not have an understanding of what was expressed; rather only the species of the sound would generate in his memory or imagination some residual species, and he would be able later - recovering from the distraction - to consider what it was a sign of; and so the preceding speech would be an occasion for him of understanding, although he had earlier heard nothing distinctly through it. However, in the other two members [nn.67-70], where actual intellection is expressed by the speaker when he says something, the hearer hears.

75. But what sort of understanding is this act called ‘hearing’?

I reply:

An angel can understand an object a in four ways (besides seeing it in the Word [2 d.3 nn.328-330]), namely intuitively in itself, intuitively in the intellect of another angel that knows it, abstractively through an habitual species (co-created or acquired), and none of these intellections is hearing, because none of them is per se expressed by someone understanding qua understanding - rather it is accidental to the first angel that the one understanding is understanding (for he would remain just the same if the one understanding were not understanding); and in these three ways, if some intellect causes something, it is the intellect of the one understanding (and not of someone else), and the object concurs there with the object as partial cause, as was said before [1 d.3 nn.486-94]. In the fourth way an angel can understand a such that the intellection is brought about in him through another ‘expressing’ intellect, and the first angel’s intellect has no causality with respect to this act but is passive only; this knowing alone is hearing, and it is expressed by the one understanding insofar as he is understanding.

76. The difference is plain, then, between hearing and the other three ways of knowing (which ways can generally be called ‘seeing’), because in the case of hearing the intellect of the hearer is as it were passive, and whatever is in it, as that it has an habitual species of what is heard - that species too does not act on the hearing; also, whatever is present there does nothing for the hearing, for if the same singular were intuitively present to the hearer as is present to the speaker, it would not - as present to the hearer - generate hearing but would only generate vision in him. Therefore only the intellect of the speaker or the things that are in it as it, or that are present to it as it, are active with respect to hearing; and they are so with respect to hearing as to a proximate effect, for they first cause, as present to the speaker, actual intellection in the speaker before they cause hearing in the hearer.

77. And from this is plain how the will of the speaker makes for this speaking, because as the will, after the first intellection, makes for the union of memory and intelligence for any second act that needs to be had in the angel whose will it is, so it can make for the later act to be had in the hearing angel; for if the prior effect, without which the posterior one is not caused, is in the power of someone, then if the prior is not, neither will the posterior be.

78. And from this something else is also apparent, namely how the actual intellection in the speaking angel is not the reason for him of his acting insofar as he speaks, but something pertaining to the speaker’s memory is - because in ordered effects of the same nature, as it were, one of which is of a nature to be generated by an equivocal cause, the prior effect need not be the cause of the posterior effect but each can be caused by the same equivocal cause; and this is specifically the case in the issue at hand, because actual intellection does not have the idea of being parent so much as the memory does (hence the Father in divine reality does not generate by intelligence [but by memory, I d.2 nn.221, 291]).

79. Evident also, third, is what the order is of hearing to the intellection that is ‘vision’ [n.76]. For although vision in Michael - whether of the object or of the intellection of the object - could be followed by Gabriel’s speaking about the same thing, yet Gabriel does not then cause knowledge of anything not already known [sc. by Michael]. Nor is speaking as necessary then as when Gabriel’s speaking precedes either vision [sc. of Michael]; for when Gabriel knows something in its proper genus or as revealed, which Michael does not know in particular, he can cause a concept in Michael’s intellect which may properly be called hearing - and when it has been caused, Michael can turn himself to see Gabriel’s intellect, and therein will be seen the intellection that Gabriel has, and in that intellection too will in some way be seen the object of Gabriel’s intellection; and if that object cannot be seen further (neither in itself nor in the Word), then it [sc. Gabriel’s intellection] is the ultimate perfection that Michael can have of the known object, namely to see it in Gabriel’s intellect. Thus, therefore, insofar as hearing is ordered to having knowledge of something unknown, it precedes all vision, both of the thing in itself in the intellect of the other who sees it, and of the thing through its habitual species - and this triple vision was said to be distinct from hearing [n.75].

80. Hearing is also said to differ from all vision as far as certitude is concerned -and this difference can perhaps be inferred from the idea of ordered effects, of which the posterior [sc. hearing] is more imperfect etc.The Vatican editors quote from Rep IIA d.9 q.1-2: “There is a difference in certitude, because certitude is greater when something is caused by itself than when it is caused by another, because certitude when something is heard from another is no greater than is the believability of the speaker; but proper vision is greater, just as I believe more when I see a man in church than if someone tells me this... For vision is caused in the seer before speaking in the speaker, such that hearing follows vision - not as an effect follows its cause but as two ordered effects do, one of which (as vision) is more immediate to the cause.” They also quote from Lectura 2 d.9 n.81: “But when one angel hears from another angel and gets from him knowledge of some proposition (because he does not speak about a simple concept but about some true proposition), he does not then have evident knowledge but believes the speaking angel who causes the knowledge, because the speaking angel precisely has the act and the conception about some proposition (as that the Son of God is incarnated); however he [sc. the hearing angel] has the certitude of believability, because he knows that he who is speaking is truthful - and this is only the knowledge of faith.” ¹⁵