1. Exposition of the Opinion

39. Here the negative opinion is held, because of the second reason [n.36], virtually [cf. n.49].

40. For it argues [Aquinas, Sent IV d.50 q.1 a.1] that “there must be some agreement between receiver and received; now the species existent in the senses have agreement with the intellect insofar as they are without matter, and agreement with material things insofar as they exist with material conditions; and so it is agreeable that the senses receive from material things, and that the intellect receives from the senses -but not that the intellect receive immediately from material things,” because there is no such agreement in that case; and so, “in order for the intellect to understand after separation from the body, no forms received from things either then or before are required.”

41. How then will the intellect understand?

They say that it will understand “through influence from higher substances, namely from God or the angels” - and this when speaking of a natural influence and its natural knowledge.

42. The point is shown as follows:

“The intellect seems to be a mean between intellectual substances and corporeal things (hence the saying that ‘the soul is created on the horizon of eternity’ [Book of Causes prop.2 n.22]); and this for the reason that the soul attains intellectual substances through the intellect, but attains corporeal things insofar as it the act of a body; but the more any mean approaches one extreme the more it recedes from the other, and conversely.”

43. “Hence, since our soul comes closest to the body in this life, namely as being the act of the body, it does not have a relation to intellectual things, and therefore does not receive influence from higher substances so has to get knowledge, but it gets knowledge through species received from the senses. And so, even in this life, the more the soul is drawn away from the body so much the more does it receive the influx of knowledge from spiritual substances, and hence it is that it knows certain occult things when sleeping or in excess of mind. Wherefore, when it will be actually separated from the body, it will be most ready to receive the influence of higher substances, namely of God and angels, and thus, in accordance with this sort of influence, it will have a greater or lesser knowledge according to the mode of its own capacity.”

44. “And this is how the Commentator [Averroes] speaks in On the Soul 3 com.5, because he posits that the possible intellect [cf. Ord. I d.3 n.548] is a separate substance; and although he errs in this yet he does speak rightly to this extent, that from the fact the possible intellect is posited as a separate substance it does have a respect to higher intellectual substances, so as to understand them. But according to the respect in which it is compared to our intellect by receiving species from phantasms, it is not conjoined with the higher substances.”