4. Whatever God knows, He knows most perfeftly: for there is in Him all perfection (Chap. XXVIII). Now what is known only in general is not known perfectly: the main points of the thing are not known, the finishing touches of its perfection, whereby its proper being is completely realised and brought out. Such mere general knowledge is rather a perfectible than a perfeCt knowledge of a thing. If therefore God in knowing His essence knows all things in their universality, He must also have a particular knowledge of things.
8. Whoever knows any nature, knows whether that nature be commu- nicable: for he would not know perfectly the nature of 'animal/ who did not know that it was communicable to many. But the divine nature is com- municable by likeness. God therefore knows in how many ways anything may exist like unto His essence. Hence arises the diversity of types, inas- much as they imitate in divers ways the divine essence. God therefore has a knowledge of things according to their several particular types, f This also we are taught by the authority of canonical Scripture. God saw all things that he had made, and they were J>ery good (Gen. i, 31). Nor is there any creature invisible in his sights but all things are na\ed and open to his eyes CHAPTER \ASome Discussion of the Question how there is in the Divine Understanding a Multitude of ObjeEls THIS multitude cannot be taken to mean that many objeCts of un- derstanding have a distinCt being in God. For these objeCts of under- standing would be either the same with the divine essence, and at that rate multitude would be posited in the essence of God, a doCtrine above rejected on many grounds (Chap. XXXI); or they would be additions made to the divine essence, and at that rate there would be in God some accident, which we have above shown to be an impossibility (Chap. XXXIII). Nor again can there be posited any separate existence of these intelligible forms, * St. Thomas docs not use the word collocatio. ever dwells only in the ideal order of possibilities, His repeated phrase is distinctio rerum, which I have rendered 'distinct arrangement and collocation,* first, because such is really the meaning, and, secondly, be- cause this argument has attracted attention, and been acknowledged to have weight, in respect of what is called the * primitive collocation ' of the materials of the universe, a collocation impossible to explain by any physical causation, and pointing evidently to some ordering and disposing Intelligence.
t This is an important principle, often laid down as follows: — God knows His own nature in all the various modes in which that nature can be copied outside Himself- In knowing this, He knows the ideal order, every detail and all inter-relations of details in any possible universe. This is called the knowledge of simple understanding, inasmuch as it is the knowledge of all creatable creatures and their on- goings, antecedent to and apart from the creation and actual existence of any: this knowledge howand may therefore be called general and universal, though not abstract, inasmuch as it deals with types of individual things, but not with particular exis- tences in return natura as actually existing, but only as potentialities. God further knows things outside Himself as they actually and individually exist, inas- much as all things are of His causation and creation, and exist and act under His will and power. He knows them by insight of Himself, not as He is a mere nature, but as He is a nature willing to create on these particular lines. This knowledge of the universe as the universe actually is for all time, is called the knowledge of vision. For these two know- ledges see Chap. LXVI. The knowledge of simple understanding is not abstract, inasmuch as God knows, not only types of species, but types of different indi- viduals possible in each species; and all these several types He knows, not by so many several ideas, but in the one act by which He knows Himself.
36 which seems to have been the position of Plato, who, by way of avoiding the above inconveniences, introduced the doctrine of Ideas. For the forms of physical things cannot exist without matter, as neither can they be under- stood without matter. And even supposing them so to exist, even this would not suffice to explain God understanding a multitude of objects. For, assum- ing the aforesaid forms to exist outside the essence of God, and that God could not understand the multitude of things without them, such under- standing being requisite to the perfection of His intelle6t, it would follow that God's perfection in understanding depended on another being than Himself, and consequently His perfection in being, seeing that His being is His understanding: the contrary of all which has been shown (Chap. XL). Moreover, assuming what shall be proved hereafter (Bk II, Chap. XV), that whatever is beyond the essence of God is caused by God, the above forms, if they are outside of God, must necessarily be caused by Him. But He is cause of things by His understanding, as shall be shown (Bk II, Chapp. XXIII, XXIV). Therefore God's understanding of these intelligible forms is a natural prerequisite for the existence of such forms. God's understanding then of the multitude of creatures is not to be explained by the existence of many intelligible abstradt forms outside of God.
CHAPTER lAl-Reasons to show bow the Multitude of intelli- gible Ideal Forms has no Existence except in the Divine Under- standing IT is not to be supposed that the multitude of intelligible ideal forms is in any other understanding save the divine, say, the understanding of an angel. For in that case the divine understanding would depend, at least for some portion of its a6tivity, upon some secondary intelle6t, which is im- possible: for as substances are of God, so also all that is in substances: hence for the being of any of these forms in any secondary intellect there is pre- required an aft of the divine intelligence, whereby God is cause.
2. It is impossible for one intellect to perform an intelleftual operation by virtue of another intellect being disposed to that operation: that intelle6t itself must operate, which is disposed so to do. The fa6t then of many in- telligible forms being in some secondary intellect cannot account for the prime intelle6t knowing the multitude of such forms.
CHAPTER Ull-How there is in God a Multitude of ObjeBs of Understanding AN external object, coming to be an obje6t of our understanding, does not thereby exist in our understanding in its own proper nature: but the impression {species) of it must be in our understanding, and by that impression our understanding is a6tualised, or comes actually to understand. The understanding, aftualised and 'informed' by such an impression, understands the 'thing in itself.' The a6t of understanding is immanent in the mind, and at the same time in relation with the thing understood, inasmuch as the aforesaid 'impression,' which is the starting- point of the intelle6tual activity, is a likeness of the thing understood. Thus informed by the impression {species) of the thing, the understanding in a6t goes on to form in itself what we may call an 'intellectual expression' {intentio) of the thing. This expression is the idea {ratio, X0709) of the thing, 37 and so is denoted by the definition. So it must be, for the understanding understands alike the thing absent and the thing present; in which respedt imagination and understanding agree.* But the understanding has this ad- vantage over the imagination, that it understands the thing apart from the individualising conditions without which the thing exists not in rerum natura. This could not be except for the understanding forming to itself the afore- said 'expression.' This 'expression' {intentio) in the understanding, being, we may say, the term of the intelledtual a&ivity, is different from the 'intellec- tual impression' (species intelligibilis)y which a6tualises the understanding and which must be considered the starting-point of intelle6tual aftivity; and yet both the one and the other, both the 'impression' {species) and the 'expres- sion {intentio), are likenesses of the 'thing in itself,' which is the objedt of the understanding. From the fa£t of the intelleftual impression, which is the form of the intelle6t and the starting-point of intelleftual knowledge, being a likeness of the external thing, it follows that the expression, or idea, formed by the understanding, is also like the thing: for as an agent is, so are its activities. And again, from the fact of the expression, or idea, in the understanding being like to its object, it follows that the understanding in the a6t of forming such an idea understands the said object.
But the divine mind understands by virtue of no impression other than its own essence (Chap. XL VI). At the same time the divine essence is the like- ness of all things. It follows therefore that the concept of the divine under- standing itself, which is the Divine Word, is at once a likeness of God Him- self understood, and also a likeness of all things whereof the divine essence is a likeness. Thus then by one intelligible impression (species inte//igiAi/isJ yvrhich is the divine essence, and by one intelle&ual recognition (intentio inte//ectajy which is the Divine Word, many several objefts may be understood by God.f * The 'impression ' {species) can come only from maintained on behalf of Realistic Dualism is this, that the thing being present: but the expression (intentio, between the impression or idea in consciousness and ratio, Xoyo?, Verbum mentale) of the thing endures in the thing in itself there is a certain correlation or prothe understanding when the thing is away. So too portion, inasmuch as the thing in itself, striking our does the corresponding phantasma, or sense-picture senses and thereby our understanding, is apt to induce in the imagination, endure in the absence of the in us certain sensations and consequent ideas. These object. See Father Maher's Psychology, Stonyhurst aptitudes, or potentialities, relative to man, are the Series, Longmans, ed. 4, pp. 51-53, 310, objective properties, or accidents, of the thing in itt Few modern readers, I fear, will read this ex- self as cognisable by man. This doctrine is simply an planation with the same zest which St Thomas evi- extension to all substance of a conclusion generally dently felt in writing it. Kantian idealism on the one received in respect to those interesting substances hand, and physical science on the other, have averted whom we call our friends and acquaintances. We have the modern mind — is it for ever? — from species intelligi- impressions and ideas of them, gathered from their bills and intentio intellecta, or yerbum mentale. Accidents, conversation and their dealings with us. We trust that scientifically considered, as colour, odour, shape, are our friends are at heart such as their conversation re* not to us what they were to the mediaeval schoolman, presents them. If they are not, they are false and de- We busy ourselves with the sensation of colour, the ceitful,or at least unknowable and unlovable persons; effect on retina and brain and inner consciousness, and there is an end of friendship. But assuming that and further with the vibrations from without that are our fellow-men, or some of them, as things in themapt to set up such a sensation in a creature organised selves, answer to our impressions and ideas of them, as man is. And at the back of colour we discern with what of horses and dogs, and the lower sentient creathe mind's eye, what the bodily eye is insensible to, tion generally? what again of plants, of minerals and a colourless, invisible molecular structure, and a com- gases? Are they not all so many potential energies, to plication of interacting forces all but infinite in multi- some extent impressing us, but in great measure betude,?all but infinitesimal in power. Whoever would yond us, and even when away from us still real? And rehabilitate Thomist philosophy to the requirements in the ascending scale, what of angels and of God?
of modern science, has before him work for a lifetime, These are interesting questions to all except the sono old man's labour. One thing however I will say lipsist. Abandon solipsism, and any extreme form of about the 'likeness' (simiRtudo) here said to obtain be- idealism becomes impossible; nay, it may be found netween the thing in itself and our impression or idea cessary to come to terms with Realistic Dualism. Does of the thing. There can be no question here of any not monism spell solipsism?
such likeness as obtains between a portrait, or photo- I have translated similitudo 'likeness,' but the ingraph, and the person who sits for it. What can be telligent reader will take it to mean no more than 38 CHAPTER LIV-Thatthe Divine Essence, being One, is the proper Likeness and Type of all things Intelligible* BUT again it may seem to some difficult or impossible that one and the same simple being, as the divine essence, should be the proper type [propria ratio) and likeness of different things. For as different things are distinguished by means of their proper forms, it needs must be that what is like one thing according to its proper form should be found unlike to an- other.
True indeed, different things may have one point of likeness in so far as they have one common feature, as man and ass, inasmuch as they are animals. If it were by mere discernment of common features that God knew things, it would follow that He had not a particular but only a general knowledge of things (contrary to Chap. L). To return then to a proper and particular know- ledge, of which there is here question.
The act of knowledge is according to the mode in which the likeness of the known obje6t is in the knowing mind: for the likeness of the known ob- je6t in the knowing mind is as the form by which that mind is set to aft. If therefore God has a proper and particular knowledge of many different things, He must be the proper and particular type of each. We have to enquire how that can be.f As the Philosopher says, the forms of things, and the definitions which mark such forms, are like numbers, in which the addition or subtraftion of unity varies the species of the number. So in definitions: one differentia sub- tradted or added varies the species: thus * sentient substance* varies in species by the addition of 'irrational* or 'rational* But in instances of 'the many in one* the condition of the understanding is not as the condition of concrete nature. The nature of a concrete being does not admit of the severance of elements, the union of which is requisite to the existence of that being: thus animal nature will not endure if the soul be removed from the body. But the under- standing can sometimes take separately elements that in aftual being are united, when one of them does not enter into the concept of the other; thus in 'three' it may consider 'two' only, and in 'rational animal' the 'sentient' element alone. Hence the understanding may take what is inclusive of many elements for a proper specimen of many, by apprehending some of them without others. It may take 'ten' as a proper specimen of nine by subtraction of one unit, and absolutely as a proper specimen of all the numbers included in 'ten.' So also in 'man' it might recognise a proper type of 'irrational animal' as such, and of all the species of 'irrational animal,' unless these species involved some posi- tive differentias.J Therefore a certain philosopher, named Clement, said that 'proportion,' or * correspondence/ of the impression knowledge. For a knowledge at once particular and or idea in the mind with the thing in itself. 'Things all-embracing, there must be in the mind a likeness in themselves' are knowable in point of their apti- of all and each of the things known. But God has such tudes in our regard, aptitudes which remain poten- a particular knowledge of all and each of His creatures, tial, and do not drop to zero, when not exercised. If as well actual as possible (Chap. L). There must then any one will venture on the fatal denial of poten tia- be in God a mental likeness of each and every such lity, and assume that, as in God, so also in the crea- creature. But whatever is in God is God's own estures of God, nothing is but what is actual ised, no sence, which is one and simple. How then can the logic can save him from the last excesses of pantheism, one, simple essence of God be a particular likeness of # The doctrine in this chapter should be compared each of the whole multitude of actual and possible with the Hegelian doctrine of the 'background,' which creatures? That is the question, lies beyond all differences— on which all distinctions X A positive differentia would be an attribute, which are* projected' — in which all contradictions are recon- by what it was, not by what it came short of being, ciled, all opposites meet in unity. could not possibly have place in man. Winged might t Knowledge is by likeness of the mental impres- be suggested as such a differentia. sion to the thing known. As the likeness, so the 39 GOD & HIS CREATURES BOOK I in the scale of beings the nobler are types and patterns of the less noble.* Now the divine essence contains in itself the noble qualities of all beings, not by way of a compound but by way of a perfect being (Chap. XXXI). Every form, as well particular as general, is a perfection in so far as it posits something; and involves imperfection only in so far as it falls short of true being. The divine understanding then can comprehend whatever is proper to each in its essence, by understanding wherein each thing imitates the divine essence, and wherein it falls short of the perfection proper to that essence. Thus, by understanding its own essence as imi table in the way of life without consciousness, it gathers the proper form of a plant, by understanding the same essence as imitable in the way of consciousness without intellect, the proper form of an animal; and so of the rest. Evidently then the divine essence, in- asmuch as it is absolutely perfect, may be taken as the proper type of each entity; and hence by it God may have a particular knowledge of all. But be- cause the proper type of one is distin6t from the proper type of another — and distinction is the principle of plurality — there must be observable in the divine intellect a distinction and plurality of recognised types, in so far as the content of the divine mind is the proper type of different things. And as it is in this way that God is cognisant of the special relation of likeness that each creature bears to Him, it follows that the types {rationes) of things on the divine mind are not several or distinct, except in so far as God knows things to be in several divers ways capable of assimilation to Himself.
And from this point of view Augustine says that God has made man in one plan and horse on another; and that the plans or types of things exist severally in the divine mind (Dedfo. quast., LXXXIII, 46). And herein also is defensible in some sort the opinion of Plato, who supposes Ideas, accord- ing to which all beings in the material world are formed.f CHAPTER LV-T hat God understands all things at once and together THE reason why our understanding cannot understand many things together in one aft, is because in the a<5t of understanding the mind becomes one with the objeft understood; | whence it follows that, were the mind to understand many things together in one a<5l, it would be many things together, all of one genus, which is impossible. Intellectual im- pressions are all of one genus: they are of one type of being in the existence which they have in the mind, although the things of which they are im- pressions do not agree in one type of being: hence the contrariety of things outside the mind does not render the impressions of those things in the mind contrary to one another. And hence it is that when many things are taken together, being anyhow united, they are understood together. Thus a con- tinuous whole is understood at once, not part by part; and a proposition is understood at once, not first the subject and then the predicate: because all * Quoted from the pseudo-Dionysius, De div. Norn, all moralities, minus their negations, in which, so for c. 5, a writer of the fifth or sixth century, who well as they are false, their falsehood lies, may be quoting Clement of Alexandria. J There is no idealism in this statement. See t This explains how God knows types, but not Aristotle, De Jnima, iii, 8. The act of understanding His knowledge of existing individuals, as John, this consists in forming in the mind an image of the thing tree, my violin. understood. The mind in understanding becomes an Incidentally, to take a favourite thought of New- image, and the object in being understood becomes that man's, as all possible creation exists typically in the same image. So St Thomas explains in the opening of divine essence, so the Catholic faith contains all the Chapter LIII. truths, speculative and practical, of all religions and 40 the parts are known by one mental impression of the whole.* Hence we gather that whatever several objects are known by one1 mental presentation, can be understood together: but God knows all things by that one presentation of them, which is His essence; therefore He can understand all together and at once.
2. The faculty of knowledge does not know anything a&ually without some attention and advertence. Hence the phantasms, stored in the sensorium, are at times not a6tually in the imagination, because no attention is given to them. We do not discern together a multitude of things to which we do not attend together: but things that necessarily fall under one and the same ad- vertence and attention, are necessarily understood together. Thus whoever institutes a comparison of two things, diredts his attention to both and dis- cerns both together. But all things that are in the divine knowledge must necessarily fall under one advertence; for God is attentive to behold His essence perfectly, which is to see it to the whole reach of its virtual content, which includes all things. God therefore, in beholding His essence, discerns at once all things that are.
6. Every mind that understands one thing after another, is sometimes potentially intelligent, sometimes actually so; for while it understands the first thing actually, it understands the second potentially. But the divine mind is never potentially intelligent, but always a6tually: it does not, then, under- stand things in succession, but all at once.
Holy Scripture witnesses to this truth, saying that with God there is no change nor shadow of vicissitude (James i, 17).
CHAPTER INl-That there is no Habitual Knowledge in God N whatever minds there is habitual knowledge, not all things are known together: but some things arc known adtually, others habitually. But in God all things are known a&ually (Chap. LV).
2. He who has a habit of knowledge, and is not adverting to what he knows, is in a manner in potentiality, although otherwise than as he was be- fore he understood at all: but the divine mind is nowise in potentiality.
3. In every mind that knows anything habitually, the mind's essence is different from its intellectual aftivity, which is the a6t of attentive thought. To such a mind, in habitual knowledge, activity is lacking, though the essence of the mind itself cannot be lacking, f But in God His essence is His activity (Chap. XLV).
4. A mind that knows habitually only, is not in its ultimate perfeftion: hence that best of goods, happiness, is not taken to be in habit but in a£t. If then God is habitually knowing, He will not be all-perfeft (contrary to Chap. XXVIII).
5. As shown in chapter XLVI, God has understanding by His essence, not by any intelligible forms superadded to His essence. But every mind in habitual knowledge understands by some such forms: for a habit is either a predisposition of the mind to receive mental impressions, or forms, whereby it comes aftually to understand; or it is an orderly aggregation of such forms, • The argument is this. The mind cannot resolve a representation of them altogether, regarding them as itself into several distinct and independent things at one, lumping them together from one point of view, once: but unify those things somehow, subordinate t For the idealist, this distinction does not hold and make a whole of them, so doing the mind can between the essence and the activity of mind, or of 'be all those things,' that is to say, it makes to itself any other substantial being.
41 existing in the mind, not in complete actuality, but in some manner inter- mediate between potentiality and a6tuality.* 6. A habit is a quality: but in God there can be neither quality nor any other accident (Chap. XXIII): habitual knowledge therefore is not proper to God.
Because the mental state of thinking, or willing, or afting habitually only, is like the state of a sleeper, David says, by way of removing all habitual states from God: Lo9 he shall not slumber or sleep who keepeth Israel (Ps. cxx, 4). And again it is said: The eyes of the Lord are far brighter than the sun (Ecclus xxiii, 28), for the sun is always in the aft of shining.
CHAPTER INll-Thatthe Knowledge of Qod is not a Reasoned Knowledge OUR thought is then reasoned, when we pass from one objeft of thought to another, as in making syllogisms from principles to conclusions. Reasoning or arguing does not consist in seeing how a conclusion fol- lows from premises by inspection of both together. That is not argument, but judging of argument. f Now God does not think of one thing after another in any sort of succession, but of all things at once (Chap. LV). His know- ledge therefore is not reasoned or argumentative, although He knows the argument and reason of all things.
2. Every reasoner intues principles with one thought, and the conclu- sion with another. There would be no need to proceed to a conclusion from the consideration of premises, if the mere consideration of the premises at once laid the conclusion bare. But God knows all things by one a<5t which is His essence (Chap. LV). His knowledge therefore is not argumentative.
3. All argumentative knowledge has something of a£tuality and some- thing of potentiality, for conclusions are potentially in premises. But in the divine mind potentiality has no place.