To the Question

4. Some say that, because the possible intellect is purely active,     therefore understanding is an act merely of life; so it comes from a principle of life, and consequently it is not from an object but from the power, etc     .

5. Again, the more perfect a form is the more actual it is; since therefore the intellect is a perfect form among other lower forms it is purely active.

6. Again, from On the Soul 3, intellection is an immanent action, so it is not the effect of an object, because then there would be an influence from outside the agent, for the act of understanding is in the possible intellect as in its subject.

7. Again, intellection is an action, and action is distinguished from passion; but action of this sort is in an agent and is its perfection (Physics 3, Ethics 2, Metaphysics 9);     therefore , since the possible intellect is perfected by itself, the perfection comes actively from itself; this is said to be Augustine’s meaning On the Trinity 4.5, On Genesis 28 etc     .

8. On the contrary, from On the Trinity 9 last chapter, where Augustine says that knowledge is from both, that is, both knower and known; and ibid. 2.2 & 5 where he says that vision is generated by seeing; and ibid. 15.10 & 24 where he says that the word comes from the thing we know;     therefore the object contributes some activity, etc     .

9. Again by argument thus: the efficient and material causes are sufficient for the effect when they are disposed and proximate to each other and not impeded - necessarily so if the efficient cause is a natural one, or, if it is a voluntary one, the effect can follow; for the effect essentially depends on the efficient and material causes; but the possible intellect is a sufficient continuing matter for intellection;     therefore , if it is sufficient matter in respect of some same intellection and is purely active, then intellection follows even when everything else is removed; and so there will be intellection without an object, which is impossible, etc     .

10. Others assert the opposite extreme [Averroes On the Soul com.17 & 18, Godfrey of Fontaines Quodlibet 7 q.7], namely that the possible intellect is purely passive. The reason is that it is susceptive of intellection as being the matter of it; so, if it were able to effect intellection, then material and efficient cause would coincide in numerically the same thing, which is contrary to Aristotle Physics 2 text 70 where he says they do not coincide.

11. Again, it would then follow that the same thing was active and passive with respect to the same thing, which is against the first principle [sc. the principle: ‘the same thing cannot both be and not be’], etc.

12. Again, it would follow that the extreme terms of a real completion, namely of producer and produced, would be in the same foundation, which seems impossible.

13. Hence these others say [n.10] that, since the agent intellect is the same really as the possible intellect, it does not do or cause anything in the possible intellect but only makes the object that is manifest in the phantasm to be actually intelligible and actually able to move the possible intellect to understand. But intellection and volition are, they say, caused precisely by the intellective object; namely intellection by the object manifest in the phantasm (when this is actually imagined and illumined by the agent intellect), and volition by the object made actually intellective,     etc .

14. On the contrary: The sensitive soul is the same really as the intellective soul, so the reason they give for the agent intellect’s being unable to cause or do anything in the possible intellect is a reason for its being unable to be in the sensitive soul. Therefore      either the agent intellect causes something positively in the phantasm (which is contrary to what they say); or it removes something from it, namely the material conditions and that sort of thing, and then the same problem arises, that by acting it removes something or it does nothing, and then the phantasm alone will cause intellection - which is false, however, because the effect would be nobler than its cause, and because a less noble thing would act on what is more noble, etc.

15. Again, acts of discursion and composing and denying could not be in the sensitive soul, as is plain, and likewise neither reflexive acts or relations of reason or logical intentions, and yet all these are intellections.

16. Again mental acts could not be in the sensitive soul etc.

17. Henry of Ghent [Quodlibet 5 q.14] holds a different view, that the possible intellect is not active or passive with respect to the impression of the species because, as he says, there is no impressed species. But with respect to simple knowledge the possible intellect, because there is no impressed species, is purely passive, for it is instead caused by the object manifest in the phantasm, and the same is expressive in the intellect. But with respect to the further knowledge, which is the word, the possible intellect is active by means of the simple knowledge that it is informed by first.

18. On the contrary: Although this opinion, which does not posit an impressed species, was argued against in another question above [d.3 q.4], yet to the extent it has regard to the present matter it is argued against here again as follows:

19. The first knowledge, which is called simple, is confused and imperfect with respect to second knowledge, according to Henry, and can be of the same species as the first, because it can be about the same object; but the formal principle of causing an effective object cannot be more imperfect than the effect that it causes of the same species;     therefore an intellect informed by simple knowledge cannot be made active by it for causing a second effect if, in the person, it was purely passive, etc     .

20. The Thomists and Giles of Rome say in a different way that the object in the memory (if it is per se there primarily), or the species of the object in the memory, causes another intellective species, and this second species is generated knowledge while the first is not (and here they differ from the second power that Henry posits), because nothing is impressed on the intellect absolutely before knowledge is; and here they agree with Henry. But he posits that, in respect of all knowledge, both first and second knowledge, the intellect is purely passive, and all knowledge is caused by the object; and here they differ from Henry. They posit instead that the intellect is indeed purely passive in respect of all knowledge but, when the object is not present per se, the first impression of the species in the memory is not intellect but second intelligence.

21. To the contrary: I say about discursive, vital, reflex acts, and the like what I said against the second opinion [nn.14-16], that intellection does not come precisely from the object or the species of the object, both because of the arguments made against this sort of opinion, and also because then the idea of image is not preserved in the mind when it is mind, for nothing of the mind would have the idea of parent by way of intellection.

22. I also say that intellection is not entirely from the power, both for the reasons made against the first opinion [nn.8-12] and for two other reasons:

23. First that intellection would not be a likeness of the object but of the power, because it would not be caused by the object save by the power; but this is unacceptable because understanding is about the object not about the power, for the object is what is understood.

24. Second because the power would have to have non-successively an active and infinite power - it can understand an infinity of intelligible things differing in species; but the intellect does not gain for itself any power from the fact it actually understands, but must have the power first so that it can understand; therefore it must pre-possess as much power as can understand infinities, though it understands this specifically diverse intelligible species through one power and that specifically diverse intelligible species through another power, but it can understand several things of the same species through the same power; therefore since two powers are more than one, powers infinite extensively would be infinite intensively. And if you say that fire can successively burn an infinity of combustible things and yet does not have infinite power, I say that the case is not the same, because all the combustibles are of the same species in idea of combusting, and therefore the fire burns all of them by the same power. But intelligibles are not so, because the intellect understands one intelligible as it is specifically distinct from another.

25. I say therefore that both the power and the object, or the species, are each per se partial causes, and both together integrally constitute one total cause. This is confirmed by Augustine On the Trinity 9 last chapter, as cited above [n.8].

26. But note that when several causes in the genus of efficient cause come together for causing the same effect, sometimes they come together as several men for dragging a weight, sometimes as subordinate but such that a lower receives power from a higher (as the cause in a creature receives power from the uncreated cause), sometimes as essentially ordered but such that one does not receive power from the other (though one is more excellent than the other, as in the case of father and mother in generating offspring, according to those who posit that a mother has active power in generating). The causes above listed [n.25] do not come together in the first way, because just as a stronger person could come along there who would by himself drag as much as two persons were dragging, so there could be a single more powerful intellect here which would cause intellection by itself without the object, which however is impossible. Nor do the causes above listed [n.25] come together in the second way [as is evident].

27. I raise the question about the comparison of the two partial causes [n.25] that cause generated knowledge.