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III. To the Principal Arguments of the First Question
89. To the principal arguments.
To the first [n.2] I say that an angel can cause the hearing, that is, perfect vision in second existence. And when you say ‘therefore he will create’, it does not follow, as will be plain in the question on seminal reasons;17 for creation is an action with no concurrent cause of any genus but only with the first efficient and first final cause, and nothing such is an action of a creature.
90. To the second [n.3] I say that vision of the Word is the most perfect perfection, and therefore the intellect - when possessing it - is said to be perfectly luminous (or illumined), however much it may not have the knowledge which, with respect to vision of the Word, is said to be as darkness to light; and therefore neither is the lack of any other intellection said, in one who has the vision of the Word, to make his intellect dark. Yet it can be conceded that just as the blessed angels are in potency to something which is light, so they are in potency to something which is dark.
91. To the third, which is taken from corporeal light [n.4] - it is in a certain respect false; for the sun does not prevent the other stars from multiplying their rays to the surface of the earth; the point is plain because if someone were in a deep well he would see the stars at midday18 (for their rays would not reach his eyes if they did not first reach the surface of the illumined medium [sc. the air]). However the sun itself prevents the lesser lights from any action (namely from the action they would have on sight), because the lesser lights cannot be seen in the presence of the sun; and the reason is that the presence of an excelling visible acts excellingly on sight, so as to activate it in its total capacity (and perhaps it afflicts sight in some way with pain), as Alhazes says Optica 1.5 n.32. But as to this, “it is not the same with intellectual light in respect of the intelligible (as is plain from the Philosopher On the Soul 3.4.429a29-b4), for after excelling intelligibles we understand other ones not less but more, while after excelling sensibles we sense other ones less,” because the power or the organ is weakened.