summa-contra-gentiles

176 THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES
is of all other forms raised highest above matter. Consequently
jt
can produce an operation jwit^hpujtJ,he_body,_ as
being independent of the body in :
operating since not
,e.Yen.in being^es it depend on the body.
In the same way it is clear thiat the reasons whereby
Averroes tries to confirm his opinion,^ do not prove that the
intellectual substance is not united to the body as its form.
For the expressions used by Aristotle in reference to the
possible intellect, when he says that it is impassible, unmixed,
and separate, do not oblige us to admit that the
intellective substance is not united to the body as the form
whence the latter has being. For they are also true if we
say that the intellective power, which Aristotle calls the
poTver of understanding,^ is not the act of an organ, as
though it exercised its operation thereby. This is in fact
shown bv his proof since he proves that : it is unshackled
and separate, from its
operation whereby it understands all
things and because operation belongs to a power as to its
;
principle.
It is consequently clear that neither does Aristotle's proof
show that the intellective substance is not united to the body
as its form. For if we suppose that the soul's substance is
thus united to the body in being, and that the intellect is
not the act of any organ, it will not follow that the intellect
has a particular nature,— I refer to the natures of sensibles :
since it is not admitted to be a harmony,^ nor the reason of
of sense that it
an organ,
— as Aristotle says (2 De Animay
is like the reason of an organ:
— for the intellect has not a
common operation with the body.
That Aristotle, by saying that the intellect is unshackled
or separate, does not mean to exclude its
being a part or
power of the soul which is the form of the whole body, is
clear from what he says at the end of the First Book of De
Anima,^ against those who said that different parts of the
soul are in different parts of the body : // the whole soul
contains the whole body it is meet that each of its parts
»
Ch. lix.
2
cf. ch. Ixi.
* xii. 2.
' V. 25.
»
C/
ch. Ixiv,