Question Six. Whether in intellectual nature taken properly there is memory properly, that is an intellect possessing an intelligible species naturally prior to the act of understanding

Scotus, Sent. 1 d.3 q.6
Thomas, ST Ia q.79 a.6

1. The question asked in fourth place‘Fourth’ because the fourth part of distinction 3, but the particular question is number 6 overall (see footnote 10 to q.5 n.1 above). ¹²⁷ is whether some species impressed on the possible intellect necessarily precedes all intellection by nature.

2. That it does not. A species is only posited because of the presence of the object; but the object present to the intellect is prior in nature to the impressed species; therefore positing a species is otiose. The proof of the major is that a species is only caused or impressed when the object is present; and here is confirmation, because the object that is in the phantasm, together with the agent intellect, can cause and impress a species on the possible intellect (according to you); thus the natural phantasm can cause simple intellection,The printed text has no nouns qualified by the adjectives ‘natural’ and ‘simple’, so what look to be the appropriate nouns are added in the translation (rightly or wrongly) from the context. ¹²⁸ so the species would be impressed to no purpose.

3. Again, because it would then follow that the possible intellect would not be moved immediately to understanding by the intelligible object but would first suffer from it some real effect, namely by receiving in impression the real species; so the impression would be impressed to no purpose.

4. On the contrary. The possible intellect is sometimes in essential potency for understanding and sometimes in actual potency     etc . But it only moves from essential potency to accidental potency by some real change in it, as is plain of all like cases. Now such real change is nothing but the impression of the species; therefore      etc.

To the Question

5. Reply. Henry of Ghent denies, for the reasons just given, there is any impressed species in the possible intellect, and he posits only an impressed species such that the object evident in the phantasm when illumined by the agent intellect is by impression in the imaginative power, and such that in the possible intellect there is by expression only act and habit of understanding.

6. On the contrary. The same thing cannot represent diverse things in diverse ways; but the phantasm, qua phantasm, represents the singular;     therefore it does not represent the universal; therefore the universal cannot be understood unless one posits an intelligible species that is impressed on the possible intellect; etc     .

7. I reply. The same thing can represent diverse things under different lights. So the phantasm represents the particular in the light of imagination and the universal in the light of the agent intellect. There is a confirmation, because, according to you, the separated soul understands the universal and the singular and everything else through the same species and in the same and not different light. So this objection does not seem cogent against Henry.

8. I therefore argue against Henry in a different way, and first as follows: The agent intellect is active and not receptive; but its action is real; therefore the term of its action is real; but such term cannot be intellection, because the object, as object, precedes intellection by natural order; now the object, as object, is a universal and it is only made a universal by the agent intellect; therefore the first and immediate term of the action of the agent intellect is the universal or universality; and universality is not intellection but a condition of the object on the part of the object; but this real term of the action of the agent intellect is not in the agent intellect itself (because the agent intellect is not receptive, as was said), nor is it in the imagination, because, first, it is not posited as being there, second because the agent intellect impresses nothing positive on the phantasm, and third because an agent does not extend to more things actively than the passive or possible thing extends to passively, and every active action received from an agent is received passively.     Therefore it is impossible for the universal, which is the first term of the action of the agent intellect, to be received by impression in the possible intellect in advance of all intellection [sc. in advance of the agent intellect making the universal]; and this is nothing other than that the intelligible species impressed on the possible intellect representatively is first and per se the universal, etc     .

9. There is a confirmation because, in everyone’s view, the first operation of the agent intellect is to make actually intelligible what is potentially intelligible - and this is everyone’s view as was said; the term of this action is only in the possible intellect, for as the agent intellect is that which makes everything so the possible intellect is that which becomes everything; but being actually intelligible is on the part the object and not on that of the act;     therefore etc     .

10. Again, the possible intellect, qua distinct from the sensitive part of the soul, is said to possess the object present to it under its idea as object; but the possible intellect will not have this if there be impressed on it no intelligible species that is representative of the object;     therefore etc     .

11. I say,     therefore , that because of these reasons (one on the part of the agent intellect [nn.8-9] and the other on the part of the possible intellect [n.10]) there is an intelligible species impressed on the possible intellect prior in order of nature to all intellection; and indeed the object, as present in the species of the object, is made manifest in this species and receives in it its being known, etc     .

To the Arguments

12. To the first argument at the beginning [n.2] I say that, as is plain from what has been said, the natural order requires that the first and immediate term of the action of the agent intellect is not intellection but the species that is naturally representative and that does represent the object as actually intelligible etc.

14. And hereby is plain the answer to the second argument [n.3]. For the natural order requires that the possible intellect be moved to an impression of the intelligible species before it is moved to intellection; it is of course, however, moved to understanding immediately by the intellect representing the species, but it is moved first to an impression of the species, as was said.