A. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent

17. As to these questions [n.6] there is need first to see about the speaking of the angels.

18. And, passing over a number of opinions, there is one opinion that needs reading out, and here four things need looking at:

Namely, first, how the speaking angel knows the thing he speaks about (which, according to this opinion, is posited as being an individual singular); second, how what is known by one angel escapes another; third, how the thing is plain to the angel when - by speaking it - he expresses it; and fourth about illumination.

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.

2. How Knowledge of a Singular escapes another Angel

26. From this the second point is clear [n.18], namely how the intellection by this angel about a singular can escape another angel:

For - according to this position - by the same old apprehension, by which he was previously apprehending a quiddity set before him in his habit absolutely, he will now comprehend it “in whatever way it was (existent or revealed [24]), for it cannot escape him in any respect save only because what was conceived before is conceived by him now under a new respect.” An example: “if there were a single intellect one in number in everyone, then, from whoever’s phantasm a universal were abstracted - after the intellect had once abstracted it, and had understood it in him from whom it abstracted it, then if (while that intellect remains in place) it begins to understand it in someone else, it would not perceive a new universal with a new intellect; rather the old universal (that it had first perceived under the old respect) it would now perceive under a new respect, namely in this phantasm.”

27. So it is with the angelic intellect, because, without making some new thing under the universal concept but by renewing the concept - conceiving the universal many times in diverse particulars - this singular and that singular are conceived. And, because this angel sees a singular (which he did not see before) without any newness of concept, therefore “although another angel sees universal forms in the first angel (which are the ideas for knowing particulars), yet this other angel does not see the particulars that the first angel sees, whether they are existent or revealed;” or at any rate, if the second angel could see existent singulars through his own habit and through the universals that shine within him, yet he cannot see revealed ones. Nor even can he see - as the first angel sees - those singulars, because the first angel sees them without any newness of concept.

28. Briefly then, as to this article:

For this reason a singular - understood by one angel - is posited as escaping another angel, that although the intellect of the first angel (and the universal, which is for him the idea of understanding) is plain to him, yet his concept, as it is about the singular, is not plain to the second angel, because the fact that the first angel is using the universal form to conceive the singular produces nothing new in the intellect of the second angel. And if the singular is not existent, the second angel cannot see it - not even the very thing known - through his own habit or the first angel’s habit; but if it is existent and he can see it through his own habit, yet the singular, known or unknown, does not enable him to see the intellectual acts of the first angel. And so there is need of speaking [sc. by the first angel to the second] either because of the singular the first angel knows that escapes the second angel (as when the singular is a non-existing revealed singular) - or because of the first angel’s very act of knowing which escapes the second angel, and this whether the act of knowing is about a revealed singular or a naturally known one.

3. How Knowledge of a Singular is made Clear to Another Angel

29. On the third point [n.18] it is said that “just as we cannot express to another in speech designated singulars known to us save by expressing vague singulars (whatever the properties and accidents they are designated by), so neither can an angel by speaking manifest something to another angel under the same designation under which it was revealed to the first angel; rather he forms for the second angel a new concept - really different - about a vague singular” (which new concept in fact the second angelic intellect sees in the intellect of the first angel as if he were reading in a book), and by this concept the intellect of the seeing or second angel is changed so as to perceive the singular, not only as it is something in itself, but also as it is something in the speaker, as in the case of our own speech. Hence the second angel too “forms in his intellect a like vague concept, under the idea of a universal, about the particular - and hereby he is said to ‘hear’, because ‘to see in another angel’ and ‘to hear’ are the same thing; and, because the second concept is ordered only to indicating a hidden concept of the mind, therefore it is not properly called ‘to understand’ but ‘to speak’, even though it is in itself a sort of understanding.”

4. How One Angel illumines Another

30. On the fourth point [n.18] it is said that a superior angel’s illuming an inferior angel can be understood in four ways, namely: either by pouring in light, or by presenting light, or by removing an obstacle, or by making something by which, when made, light is caused in the receiver. In the first way the sun illumines the medium; in the second way someone carrying a candle illumines a house at night; in the third way someone who opens a window during the day; in the fourth way someone who cures an eye - which sick eye had no capacity for light before and now does - is said to illumine the eye.

31. Now it is said that only God illumines in the first way, and this either by causing natural light, or by impressing supernatural light, whether created light (of grace or glory) or uncreated, either as the reason for seeing or as the object seen (and this whether temporarily as in the enraptured, or permanently as in the blessed). In the second way one angel illumines another about some truth perfective of the intellect by speaking to him in the way stated [n.29]. An angel also illumines in the third way, as is proved from Augustine On the Psalms, psalm 118 sermon 18 n.4, Psalm 118.34, ‘Give me understanding’, when he says, “An angel can do something in a man’s mind so that it has capacity for God, just as someone who makes open a window is said to illumine the house.” In the fourth way too an angel can illumine another, as is proved from Augustine ibid. when he says, “God has made the angel such as to be able to do something whereby the human mind is helped to grasp the light of God.”

32. This is also proved by reason, because “all things are ordered” and “connected with each other” (according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 12.10.1075a16 and Dionysius Divine Names ch.7); and this order is noted not only in essences but also in operations. From this the argument goes: “An inferior angel is, through the natural influence on him of a superior angel, able to be reduced to his natural state and his state of ultimate natural perfection; but his ultimate perfection is through his best work (or in his best work), and the ultimate and most perfect work of an angel is to understand something as a divine work in a way over and above the common course of understanding by light of the natural intellect; therefore by the influence of a superior angel the inferior one is reduced from potency to act, so that he may be illumined in respect of such knowledge.”