LECTIO SEVEN

             § 671. Having treated of the sensitive part of the soul, and shown that to sense and to understand are quite distinct operations, the Philosopher now turns to the intellectual part. His treatment falls into two main divisions. First, he comes to certain conclusions on the intellectual part in general; after which, from what has been concluded about sense and intellect he deduces, at 'And now recapitulating', some necessary consequences with regard to the soul as a whole. The former division falls into two sections: one on the intellect as such, and one comparing intellect with the senses. The latter begins at 'And it seems that the sense-object'. The intellect as such is first treated in itself, and then, at 'Intelligence etc.', in its activity. The former part then subdivides again into three parts: (a) on the potential intellect; (b) on the agent intellect; and (c) on intellect as in act. After defining the potential intellect, he determines its object, and then adduces an objection. The definition of potential intellect involves explanations (i) of its nature, and (ii) of the way it proceeds into act. And as to its nature, he first states the problems he is attempting to solve; after which, at 'For if understanding is like sensing', he propounds his own view.

             § 672. So he says that, having dealt with the sensitive part of the soul, and shown that judgement and understanding differ from sensation, it is now time to discuss that part of the soul 'by which it knows', i.e. understands, and 'is wise'. We have already distinguished between being wise and understanding; to be wise pertains to intellectual judgement, to understand pertains to intellectual apprehension.

             § 673. At this point an old problem emerges (which Aristotle for the time being sets aside), namely whether this part of the soul is a really separate being, distinct from the other parts, or is merely separable in thought. He refers to the former alternative when he speaks of being 'spatially' separable, and he uses this expression because Plato, who thought of the soul's parts as really distinct entities, associated the latter with different organs of the body. This problem Aristotle sets aside.

             § 674. And he keeps two ends in view. One is to examine how this part of the soul differs from the others, if it can be separated from them in thought. And, as potencies are known from their acts, his second aim is to examine the act of understanding itself, i.e. how intellectual activity is completed.

             § 675. Next, at 'For if understanding', he sets down his own view in three stages: (1) he suggests a similarity between intellect and sense; (2) whence he argues, at 'It is also necessary', to a conclusion touching the nature of the potential intellect; (3) whence in turn he deduces a difference between intellect and sense, at 'That the impassibility'.

             First of all then, as a preliminary to the statement of his own theory, he suggests that the acts of understanding and of sensing are similar, in that, just as sensing is a kind of knowing, and as it may be either potential or actual, so understanding is a kind of knowing which may be either potential or actual. Whence it follows that, as sensing is a certain state of being passive to a sensible object (something like a passion in the strict sense of the term) so understanding is either a being passive to an intelligible object, or something else that resembles passion, in the strict sense.

             § 676. Of these alternatives the second is the more likely to be true. For even sensing, as we have seen, is not strictly a being passive to anything--for this, strictly, involves an object of a nature contrary to the passive subject. Yet sensing resembles a passion inasmuch as the sense is potential with respect to its object; for it receives sensible impressions. So far then as understanding resembles sensation the intellect too will be impassible (taking passivity in the strict sense), yet will it show some likeness to what is passive, in its receptivity to intelligible ideas; for these it possesses only potentially, not actually. Thus, as sensitive life is to sensible objects, so is the intellect to intelligible objects, each being potential with respect to its object and able to receive that object.

             § 677. Then at 'It is also necessary' he proceeds to deduce the nature of the potential intellect. First he shows that this intellect is not a bodily thing nor compounded of bodily things; and then, at 'Hence it is a reasonable', that it has no bodily organ. As to the first point, we should note that there used to be two opinions about the intellect. Some--and this, as we have seen, was the view of Empedocles -thought that intellect was a composition of all the principles of things, and that this explained its universal knowledge. On the other hand Anaxagoras thought it was simple and pure and detached from all bodily things. And therefore, precisely because the intellect, as he has just said, is not in act of understanding, but in potency only, and in potency to know everything, Aristotle argues that it cannot be compounded of bodily things, as Empedocles thought, but must be separate from such things, as Anaxagoras thought.

             § 678. Now the reason why Anaxagoras thought this was that he regarded intellect as the principle that dominated and initiated all movement; which it could not be if it were either a composition of bodily things or identified with any one of such things; for in these cases it would be restricted to one course of action only. Hence Aristotle's observation that, in Anaxagoras' view, the intellect was detached 'so that it might command' and, commanding, initiate all movement.

             § 679. But, since we are not concerned at present with the all-moving Mind, but with the mind by which the soul understands, we require a different middle term to prove that the intellect is unmixed with bodily things; and this we find in its universal knowledge. That is why Aristotle adds 'That it might know', as if to say: as Anaxagoras maintained that intellect was unmixed because it commands, so we have to maintain that it is unmixed because it knows.

             § 680. The following argument may make this point clear. Anything that is in potency with respect to an object, and able to receive it into itself, is, as such, without that object; thus the pupil of the eye, being potential to colours and able to receive them, is itself colourless. But our intellect is so related to the objects it understands that it is in potency with respect to them, and capable of being affected by them (as sense is related to sensible objects). Therefore it must itself lack all those things which of its nature it understands. Since then it naturally understands all sensible and bodily things, it must be lacking in every bodily nature; just as the sense of sight, being able to know colour, lacks all colour. If sight itself had any particular colour, this colour would prevent it from seeing other colours, just as the tongue of a feverish man, being coated with a bitter moisture, cannot taste anything sweet. In the same way then, if the intellect were restricted to any particular nature, this connatural restriction would prevent it from knowing other natures. Hence he says: 'What appeared inwardly would prevent and impede' (its knowledge of) 'what was without'; i.e. it would get in the way of the intellect, and veil it so to say, and prevent it from inspecting other things. He calls 'the inwardly appearing' whatever might be supposed to be intrinsic and co-natural to the intellect and which, so long as it 'appeared' therein would necessarily prevent the understanding of anything else; rather as we might say that the bitter moisture was an 'inwardly appearing' factor in a fevered tongue.

             § 681. From this he concludes, not that in fact the nature of the intellect is 'not one', i.e. that it has no definite nature at all; but that its nature is simply to be open to all things; and that it is so inasmuch as it is capable of knowing, not (like sight or hearing) merely one particular class of sensible objects, nor even all sensible accidents and qualities (whether these be common or proper sense-objects) but quite generally the whole of sensible nature. Therefore, just as the faculty of sight is by nature free from one class of sensible objects, so must the intellect be entirely free from all sensible natures.

             § 682. He concludes further that what we call our intellect is not in act with respect to real beings until it actually understands. This is contrary to the early philosophers' principle that intellect must be compounded of all things if it can know all things. But if it knew all things, as containing them all in itself already, it would be an ever-actual intellect, and never merely in potency. In the same way he has remarked already of the senses, that if they were intrinsically made up of the objects they perceive, their perceptions would not presuppose any exterior sensible objects.

             § 683. And lest anyone should suppose this to be true of any and every intellect, that it is in potency to its objects before it knows them, he adds that he is speaking here of the intellect by which the soul understands and forms opinions. Thus he excludes from this context the Mind of God, which, far from being potential, is a certain actual understanding of all things, and of which Anaxagoras said that it could command all because it was perfectly unmixed.

             § 684. Next, at 'Hence it is a reasonable', he shows that the intellect has no bodily organ; and then, at 'They spoke to the point', approves a saying of the early philosophers. First, then, he concludes from what has been said, that if the mind's universal capacity for knowledge implies its intrinsic distinction from all the corporeal natures that it knows, for the same reason it can be argued that the mind is not 'involved in the body', i.e. that it has no bodily organ, as the sensitive part of the soul has. For if the intellect had, like the sensitive part, a bodily organ, it would necessarily be just one particular sensible nature among many. Therefore he says 'some quality' etc., meaning that a nature of this kind would have some particular sensible quality such as actual heat or cold; for it is obvious that, if the soul acts through a bodily organ, the soul itself must correspond to that organ as being in potency to its act.

             § 685. It makes no difference to the act of the potency whether it is the potency itself that has a particular sensible quality or the organ, since the act is not of the potency alone but of potency and organ together. In the same way sight would be impeded if it were the visual potency, not the pupil of the eye, that was coloured. So he says that it comes to the same to maintain that intellect has no bodily organ and that it has no particular bodily nature; and concludes that the intellectual part of the soul, unlike the sensitive, has no bodily organ.

             § 686. Next, where he says 'And they spoke to the point', he relates his view to an opinion of the early philosophers, saying that, granted intellect's lack of a bodily organ, we can see the point of the old saying that the soul is the 'place' of forms -meaning that it receives these into itself. Now this saying would be false if every part of the soul had its bodily organ, for then the forms would be received into the composition of soul and body, not into the soul alone; for it is not sight that receives visible forms, but the eye. It follows that the soul as a whole is not the 'place' of forms, but only that part of it which lacks a bodily organ, i.e. the intellect; and even this part does not, as such, possess them actually, but potentially only.

             § 687. Then, at 'That the impassibility', he shows how the intellect and the senses differ with respect to impassibility. He has already observed that neither sensation nor understanding is a passion in the precise sense of a state of being passively affected; whence he had inferred that the intellect was impassible. But, lest it be supposed that sense and intellect were impassible in the same degree, he now distinguishes them in this respect. Though the senses as such are not, strictly speaking, passively affected by their objects, they are indirectly so affected, inasmuch as the equilibrium of the sense-organ is disturbed by any excess in its object. But the same is not true of the intellect, since it has no organ; it is therefore neither directly nor indirectly passible.

             § 688. This is what he means when he proceeds to say that the dissimilarity between sense and intellect in point of passibility appears 'from the organs and from sensation'. For a very strong sense-object can stun the faculty of sense. One can be deafened by great sounds, blinded by strong colours, made powerless to smell anything by over-powering odours; and this because the organ in each case is injured. But since the intellect has no organ that could be injured by an excess of its appropriate object, its activity is not, in fact, weakened by a great intelligibility in its object; indeed it is rather strengthened thereby; and the same would be true of the senses, if they could exist without bodily organs. All the same, an injury to an organ of the body may indirectly weaken the intellect, in so far as the latter's activity presupposes sensation. The cause, then, of the difference is that sensitivity acts in the body, but the intellect acts on its own.

             § 689. All this goes to show the falsity of the opinion that intellect is the same as imagination, or as anything else in our nature that depends on the body's constitution. On the other hand, this same text has been, for some, an occasion of falling into the error of regarding the intellectual power as quite separated from the body, as a substance that exists on its own. Which is an utterly indefensible position.

             § 690. For it is clear that the actually intelligent being is this particular man. Whoever denies this implies that he himself understands nothing; and therefore that one need pay no attention to what he says. But if he does understand anything he must do so in virtue of some principle in him of this particular activity of understanding; which is the intellectual power (as potential) to which the Philosopher refers when he says: 'I mean that mind by which the soul understands and forms opinions'. The potential intellect then is precisely that by which this particular man understands. Now that in virtue of which, as a principle of activity, an agent acts may certainly exist in separation from the agent; as e.g. a king and his bailiff have separate existence, though the latter acts only as moved by the king. But it is quite impossible for the agent to exist separately from that by which, formally and immediately, he is an agent; and this because action only proceeds from an agent in so far as the latter is in a state of actuality. It follows that the agent and the proper and immediate principle of his activity must exist together in one act; which could not be if they were separate beings. Hence the impossibility of a separation in being of an agent from its formal principle of activity.

             § 691. With this truth in mind, those who maintained the opinion to which I refer tried to think out some way of so linking up and uniting the separated substance, which for them was the intellectual potency, with ourselves, as to identify its act of understanding with our own. They said then that the form of the potential intellect, that by which it is brought into act, was the intelligible idea; and that the subject possessed of this idea was a kind of phantasm produced by ourselves. In this way, they said, the potential intellect is linked with us through its form.

             § 692. But this theory entirely fails to prove any continuity between the intellect and ourselves. For the intellectual power is only united with an intelligible object in the degree that it is in act; just as we have seen that the senses cannot unite with their appropriate objects so long as these remain in potency. Therefore the intelligible idea cannot be the form of the intellectual power until it is actually understood; and this cannot happen until it is disengaged from phantasms by abstraction. Hence, precisely in the degree that it is joined to the intellect it is removed from phantasms. Not in this way therefore could an intellectual power be united with us.

             § 693. And obviously the upholder of this view was led astray by a fallacia accidentis. For his argument comes to this: phantasms are somehow united to intelligible ideas, and these to the potential intellect; and therefore the latter is united to the phantasms. But, as I say, it is clear that, in the degree that the intelligible idea is one with the intellectual power, it is abstracted from phantasms.

             § 694. But even granted that between the intellectual power and ourselves there existed some such union as this view supposes, it would not in fact cause us to understand, but rather to be understood. If the eye contains a likeness of a coloured wall, this does not cause the colour to see, but, on the contrary, to be seen. Therefore if the intelligible idea in the intellect is a sort of likeness of our phantasms, it does not follow that we perceive anything intellectually, but rather that we--or more precisely our phantasms--are understood by that separated intellectual substance.

             § 695. Many other criticisms might be urged, such as I have set out in more detail elsewhere. Enough to note for the present that the theory in question is an implicit denial of the existence of thinking in the human individual.

             § 696. Furthermore, it is also clearly contrary to the teaching of Aristotle. First, because he has explicitly said (at the beginning of the treatise) that the subject matter of his enquiry is a part of the soul, not any separated substance.

             § 697. Moreover, he has set out to examine the intellect leaving aside the question whether it is a being distinct from the rest of the soul; so that even if it be not distinct in this way, that does not affect his argument.

             § 698. Again, Aristotle calls the intellect that by which the soul understands.

             All these indications show that he did not assert that the intellect was a separate substance.

             § 699. Indeed it is astonishing how easily some have let themselves be deceived by his calling the intellect separate'; for the text itself makes it perfectly clear what he means,--namely that, unlike the senses, the intellect has no bodily organ. For the nobility of the human soul transcends the scope and limits of bodily matter. Hence it enjoys a certain activity in which bodily matter has no share; the potentiality to which activity is without a bodily organ; and in this sense only is it a 'separate' intellect.

429b 5-429b 22

INTELLECTUAL ABSTRACTION

             BUT WHEN IT BECOMES PARTICULAR OBJECTS, AS in a man of science, the intellect is said to be in act. (This comes about as soon as such a one is able to operate of himself.) It is, then, in a way still in potency, but not in the way it was before it learned or discovered. And then, too, it is able to think itself.§§ 700-704

             Now, as dimension is one thing and the being of dimension another, and as water is one thing and the being water another, and so with many other things (but not all things, for in certain things 'flesh' is the same as 'being flesh') accordingly it discriminates either by some other [faculty] or by the same faculty differently disposed. For flesh is not separable from matter; it is like the snub of a nose, one [thing] existing in the other. There is discerned therefore by the sensitive faculty what is hot, what is cold, and anything else of which the flesh is a certain ratio. But either by another and separate faculty, or as if it were bent back upon itself (whereas it was previously straight), does it perceive the being of flesh.§§ 705-13

             Again, in the abstract sphere the straight line is as the snub-nose; for it goes with the continuum. But its essence, if being [straight] is other than a straight line, is different. Let it be, for instance, Duality. Then [the mind] discerns either by another faculty or by the same differently disposed. In general, then, as things are separable from matter, so are intellectual operations.§§ 714-19