ARTICLE IV

In the Fourth Article We Ask: DOES THE MIND KNOW MATERIAL THINGS?

Difficulties:

It seems that it does not, for

1. The mind knows things only by intellectual cognition. But, according to the Gloss: "Intellectual sight is that which embraces those things which have no likenesses which are not identical with themselves." Since, then, material things cannot exist in the soul of themselves, but only through representations similar to them, yet really different from them, it seems that the mind does not know material things.

2. Augustine says: "Through the mind we know things which are neither bodies nor likenesses of bodies." But material things are bodies and have bodily likenesses. Therefore, they are not known by the mind.

3. The mind, or intellect, is capable of knowing the quiddity of things because the object of the intellect is what a thing is, as is said in The Soul. But the quiddity of material things is not corporeity; otherwise, it would be necessary for all things which have quiddities to be corporeal. Therefore, the mind does not know material things.

4. Mental cognition follows upon form which is the principle of knowing. But the intelligible forms in the mind are altogether immaterial. So, through them, the mind is not able to know material things.

5. All cognition takes place through assimilation. But there is no assimilation possible between the mind and material things, because likeness depends on sameness of quality. However, the qualities of material things are bodily accidents which cannot exist in the mind. Therefore, the mind cannot know material things.

6. The mind knows nothing except by abstracting from matter and the conditions of matter. But material things, as physical beings, cannot be separated from matter even in the mind, because matter is part of their definition. Therefore, the mind cannot know material things.

To the Contrary:

1'. Objects of natural science are known by the mind. But natural science is concerned with material things. Therefore, the mind knows material things.

2'. Each person is a good judge--in fact, as Aristotle says, the best judge--of those things of which he has knowledge. But, as Augustine notes, it is by the mind that these less perfect beings are judged. Therefore, these less perfect beings, which are material, are understood by the mind.

3'. Through sense we know only material beings. But mental cognition is derived from sense. Therefore, the mind also knows material things.

REPLY:

All cognition follows some form which is the principle of cognition in the knower. Such a form can be considered under two aspects: either with relation to the being it has in the knower, or in the reference it has to the thing it represents. Under the first aspect, it causes the knower actually to know. Under the second, it limits the cognition to some definite knowable object. Therefore, the manner of knowing a thing conforms to the state of the knower, which receives the form in its own way. It is not necessary that the thing known exist in the manner of the knower or in the manner in which the form which is the principle of knowing exists in the knower. From this it follows that nothing prevents us from knowing material things through forms which exist immaterially in our minds.

There is a difference on this point between the human mind, which derives forms from things, and the divine or angelic minds, which do not draw their cognition from things. In the mind which depends on things for knowledge, the forms exist because of a certain action of things on the soul. But, since all action is through form, the forms in our minds first and mainly refer to things which exist outside our soul according to their forms. These forms are of two kinds. Some forms involve no determined matter, as line, surface, and so forth. Others do involve a special matter, as all natural forms.

Therefore, knowledge of forms implying no matter does not give knowledge of matter, but the knowledge of natural forms gives some knowledge of matter, in so far as it is correlative to form. For this reason, the Philosopher says that first matter is knowable through analogy, and that the material thing itself is known through the likeness of its form, just as, by the very fact of knowing snubness, snub nose is known. But in the divine mind there are forms of things from which the existence of things flows.

And this existence is common to form and matter. So, those forms are directly related to matter and form without the mediation of one to the other. So, too, angelic intellect has forms similar to the forms of the divine mind, although in angels the forms are not the causes of things. Therefore, our mind has immaterial knowledge of material things, whereas the divine and angelic minds have knowledge of the same material things in a way at once more immaterial and yet more perfect.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. The text cited in the first objection can be explained in two ways. In the first place, it can be taken to refer to intellectual sight with reference to all that is included in its scope. Taken in this way, intellectual sight is taken to refer only to those things which have no likenesses which are not identical with themselves. This is not to be understood of the likenesses by which we see things in intellectual sight, for these are a kind of means of knowing. What is known by intellectual sight is the things themselves, not their representations. This differs from bodily (sensitive) vision and spiritual (imaginative) vision. For the objects of imagination and sense are certain accidents from which the shape or image of a thing is made up. But the object of the intellect is the very essence of the thing, although the intellect knows the essence of the thing through its likeness, as through a cognoscitive medium, and not through an object which is known first.

A second explanation would be that the text cited refers to intellectual sight in so far as it surpasses the imaginative and sensitive powers. Following this line of thought, Augustine, from whose words the comment in the Gloss is taken, wishes to differentiate three types of sight, designating the higher by that in which it surpasses the lower. Thus it is said that spiritual sight takes place when through certain likenesses we know things which are absent. Spiritual (imaginative) sight can nevertheless relate to things seen as present. But imagination outstrips sense, inasmuch as it can also see things absent. Hence, this is attributed to it as a sort of property. Similarly, intellectual sight surpasses imagination and sense because it can reach things that are essentially intelligible through their essence. So, Augustine makes this a sort of property of intellectual vision, although it can also know material things which are knowable by means of their likenesses. For this reason Augustine says: "Through the mind judgment is passed even upon those lower types of being, and those things which are not bodies and do not have forms of a bodily kind are known."

2. The answer to the second difficulty is clear from the first response.

3. If corporeity is taken of body in so far as it is in the category of quantity, it is not the quiddity of a physical thing, but an accident of it; namely, triple dimension. But, if it is taken of body in so far as it is in the category of substance, then corporeity designates the essence of a physical thing. Nevertheless, it will not follow from this that every quiddity is corporeity, unless one would say that quiddity, by its very nature as quiddity, has the same meaning as corporeity.

4. Although in the mind there are only immaterial forms, these can be likenesses of material things. For it is not necessary that the likeness and that of which it is the likeness have the same manner of existing, but only that they agree in intelligible character, just as the form of man in a golden statue need not have the same kind of existence as the form of man in bones and flesh.

5. Although bodily qualities cannot exist in the mind, their representations can, and through these the mind is made like bodily things.

6. Intellect knows by abstracting from particular matter and its conditions, as from this flesh and these bones. It does not have to abstract from common matter. Hence, it can study the physical form in flesh and bones, although not in this flesh and these bones.