summa-contra-gentiles

CHAPTER LX 151
CHAPTER LX
THAT MAN DERIVES HIS SPECIES N'OT FROM THE PASSIVE,
BUT FROM THE POSSIBLE INTELLECT
To these arguments there is a reply on the lines of the
foregoing opinion.^ For the said Averroes^ maintains that
the intellect which
man differs in species from brutes by
Aristotle calls passive, which is the same as the cogitative
poirer that is
proper to man, in place of which other animals
have a certain natural estimative power. And it
belongs to
this cogitative power to distinguish individual intentions
and to compare them with one another : just as the
intellect which is separate and unmixed compares and distinguishes
universal intentions. And since by this power,
together with the imagination and memory, the phantasms
are prepared to receive the addition of the active intellect,
as certain
whereby they are made actually intelligible — just
arts prepare the matter for the master craftsman — therefore
the aforesaid power is called by the name of intellect or
reason, which physicians declare to be seated in the middle
cell of the head. And according to the disposition of this
power, one man differs from another in genius and other
points pertaining to intelligence. Also by the use and
practice thereof man acquires the habit of science : so that
the habits of science are in this passive intellect as their
subject. Moreover this passive intellect is in the child
from the beginning, and through
it the child receives its
human species before understanding actually.
But it is
easy to see that all this is untrue and an abuse of
terms. For vital operations are compared to the soul, as
second acts to the first, as Aristotle declares in 2 De Anima.^
Now in the one subject first act precedes the second in point
of time, just as knowledge precedes consideration. Hence
in whatever thing we find a vital operation, we must place
some part of the soul that will be compared to that operation
^
Ch. lii.
* Coifimenl. on 3 De Aninia v. 2.
' i.
5.