summa-contra-gentiles

.
I90
THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES
)
ifrom them. Wherefore neither sense nor imagination will
J\ I
be necessary for understanding. And we shall come back
to Plato's opinion that we do not acquire knowledge from
\
j
I
the senses, but that we are awakened by them to the
:^ recollection of things we knew before.^
To this the said Commentator replies^ that the intelligible
species have a twofold subject, from one of which, namely
the possible intellect, they derive eternity, while from the
other, the phantasm to wit, they derive newness : even as
the subject of the visible species is twofold, namely the
object outside the soul, and the faculty of sight.
But this reply cannot stand. For it is impossible that the
action and perfection of an eternal thing should depend on
something temporal. Now phantasms are temporal, being
renewed daily by virtue of the senses. Consequently the
intelligible species by which the possible intellect is made
actual and operates cannot depend on the phantasms, as
the visible species depends on things that are outside the
soul.
Moreover. Nothing receives what it already has :
because the recipient must needs be void of the thing
received, according to Aristotle.^ Now the intelligible
species, before my sensation or yours, were in the possible
intellect, for those who were before us would not have
had been reduced
understood, unless the possible intellect
to act by the intelligible species. Nor can it be said that
these species already received into the possible intellect,
have ceased to exist : because the possible intellect not only
receives but also keeps what it receives ;
wherefore in the
3 De Anima'^ it is called the abode of species. Consequently
species are not received from our phantasms into the
possible intellect. Therefore it were useless for our
phantasms to be made actually intelligible by the active
intellect.
Again. The thing received is in the recipient according
to the mode of the recipient.^ But the intellect is in itself
^
Meno, passim.
* Cf. loc. cit. at the beginning of ch, and
; above, ch. lix,
' 3 D« Anivia iv. 3. * Ibid. 4.
* Cf. De Causis, § xi.