If metaphysical knowledge, of being as able to be without matter, is the natural object of

our minds, then it would seem that the natural desire for the beatific vision in the strict
sense of DeLubac is possible. We should then have a natural desire for direct or
immediate knowledge of immaterial natures. All of our knowledge would presuppose the
direct or immediate knowledge of an immaterial nature that would then be the natural
and first object of the intellect. This seems to be a conflation or confusion of the natural
and supernatural orders.

“the whole science is said to concern what is separate from matter both in existence and
thought.” CM proem
Only one habit of principles???
New Notes
All the texts1 on the order of learning the sciences (CNE,2 CBC proem, . . . ) and
explaining the name metaphysics (CM proem., CBT 2X?3, . . . ). They go together
because the name metaphysics is taken from the order of learning the sciences. Use
Thomas’s analysis of the name metaphysics to understand what he says about the order
of learning the sciences.

Summary of overall argument (for Kevin)

If being as being, the subject of metaphysics, which Thomas suggests (CBT) is the
product of “separation”, or a negative judgment, abstracting form from matter, a
“concept” of immaterial being (CM proem.), were first known by the mind (CNE), and
1
Tabula Aurea: metaphysics. These three texts (Metahysics 6.1, Physics 2.2, Anima 1.1) which divide
speculative science into three branches and realate the three parts by their relation to matter seem to
belong together, along with certain subsidiary texts (Meta 2.3 on intellectual custom and method, 273
on the science universal being and of how man is towards truth, Boethius Q.V.1 etc.) which determine
the methods, especially the mode of definition, of the particular sciences. In fact, they are usually
placed together. Also the texts which explain the meaning of the word metaphysics (meta proem and
the two in BDT 5 and 6) also text on being as being as farthest from the senses
The texts which speak directly to the order of learning also belong together: the proemia of the
comm.'s on the Book of causes, Boethius, metaphysics (“more unviersal after the less”), ethics 6.7,
metahysics 4.2 (563), Q.V.1ad9!!!, Q.3.1.c, p. 66., comm. on anima n.7 (disputed) What are
they!!!!!!!???????????? Q.3.1c
CM proem.: “It is called divine science or theology inasmuch as it treats of the substances referred to
above. It is called metaphysics because it considers being and its attendant properties; for these objects that
go beyond physics are discovered by the process of analysis as the more universal is discovered after the
less universal.” “[I]t is called metaphysics, because it ought to be learned by us after physics; for we have
to proceed from sensible things to those that are non-sensible” (CBT 5.1.c. 3). “It also follows that divine
science gives principles ot all the other sciences, because intellectual thinking is the starting point of
rational thinking; and for this reason it is called first philosophy. Nevertheless it is learned after physics
and the other sciences, because intellectual thinking is the terminus of rational thinking. For this reason it
is called metpahysics, as if to say beyond physics, for in the process of analysis it comes after physics.”
(CBT VI.1)
2
In VI Eth. n.7: the order of learning the sciences
[Aristotle] raises the question why a boy can become a mathematician but cannot become wise, that is to
say a metaphysician or physicist, in other words a natural philosopher. His reply to this, as far as the
philosophy of nature is concerned, is that mathematical entities are known by abstraction from sensible
things, which are the objects of experience, and as a result a great length of time is not needed to grasp
them. The principles of natural natural things, however, which are not separated from sensible things, are
known through experience, for which much time is needed.
As far as wisdom is concerned, he adds that the young do not believe, that is, do not
understand with their mind, things pertaining to wisdom or metaphysics, though they may speak
them with their lips. But the nature of mathematical entities is not obscure to them, because their
definitions concern things that can be imagined, whereas the objects of metaphysics are purely
intelligible. Now the young can easily grasp what falls under the imagination, but they cannot
understand with their mind whatever goes beyond sense and imagination, for their minds are not yet
vigorous and trained in such reflections because of the shortness of their lives (ie lack of
experience???) and the many physical changes they are undergoing (ie passions!!!!!!! inability to
apply themselves, to focus, and think clearly).
So the proper order of learning will be the following. First, boys should be instructed in logical
matters, because logic teaches the method of the whole of philosophy. Second, they are to be instructed
in mathematics, which does not require expericnce and does not transcend the imagination. Third,
they should be trained in the natural sciences which, though not transcending sense and imagination,
nevertheless require experience. Fourth, they are to be instructed in the moral sciences, which require
experience and a soul free from passion, as is said in the first book. Firth, they should be taught matters
hence the science of metaphysicsics would be easiest for us to know. Thomas, however
distinguishes the subject of metaphysics from the subject of mathematics a sbeing more
diificult for us and farther from the origin of our knowledge in the senses (CBT). And
Thomas argues that what is farther from the senses, is known later (CM Pre-S’s, 4?) and
of course what is first known is easier to know (CM?). Thomas also understood how act
is first known not in an abstract metaphysical sense but, as Aristotle relates (Meta. 9) as
in motion, a sense which is largely irrelavent to metaphysics (ibid.). Thomas says that
bodies are what are best known to us (ST ?). We name things as we know them (?) and
the concrete, bodily senses of terms are those which we first give names to. Only by
abstracting from the concreteness, bodiliness, of what we frist know do we arrive at a
concept of the immaterial. Thus, “immaterial” itself is a negation of matter and
knowledge of negations are posterioror to the that of what they negate (ST?). So Thomas
says that Metaphysics relies on natural science for an understanding of generation and
corruption (CBT) from which our understanding of substantial form and matter derives
(!). In fact, the Pre-S’s never arrived at a notion of substantial form because it is only
accidentally sensible and hence farther from the senses than direcly sensible accidental
forms which we first know (CM4). Far from being a given, a distinct knowledge of
substantial form, which the Pre-S’s never had, only comes at the beginning of natural
philosophy (Phys. 1).

Because our first concepts are not explicitly separated or abstracted from matter the
propostition that “being is immaterial” or that “being is more universal than mobile

concerning wisdom and divine science, which go beyond the imagination and require a vigorous mind
(ie require all of the above??? abstraction from senses, experience, soul free of passion. Experience
and detachment are necessary for vigor?).
Proemium : Liber de Causis : the order of learning the sciences
Since an effect is known through its cause, it is clear that a cause is more intelligible in its nature than
an effect; although sometimes, as far as we are concerned, effects are better known than causes,
because we take our knowledge of universal and intelligible causes from the particular things that fall
under the senses.
Absolutely speaking therefore, the first causes of things must be in themselves the greatest and
best of intelligible objects, because they are the greatest beings and the truest things, since they are the
cause of the essence and truth of other beings, as the Philosopher explains in the Metaphysics. But these
primary causes are less well known and later known as far as we are concerned. For our intellect is
related to them as the owl's eye is to the light of the sun, which it cannot see perfectly owing to its
extreme brightness. Consequently, the ultimate happiness that man can have in this life must consist in
the contemplation of the first causes; for the little that can be known about them is more lovable and
excellent than everything that can be known about lesser things, as is clear from the Philosopher in the De
Partibus Animalium. And it is through the completion of this knowledge in us after this present life that
man is made perfectly happy, according to the words of the Gospel: This is eternal life, that they may know
thee, the only true God.
So the principal aim of the philosophers was that, through all their investigations of things, they
might come to know the first causes. That is why they placed the science concerned with first causes last,
and allotted the final period of their lives to its consideration. They began first of all with logic, which
teaches the method of the sciences. Second, they went on to mathematics, which even boys are capable of
learning. Third, they advanced to the philosophy of nature, which requires time because of the needed
experience. Fourth, they proceeded to moral philosophy, of which a young person cannot be a suitable
student. And finally they applied themselves to divine science, whose object is the first causes of things.”
3
being” must be justified (PA must know that before what????, DeK dissertation). It is
not self-evident. Thus, Thomas says that there is no science of being as being, or
immaterial being, with out a proof for the existence of God (SCG I.12). If there were no
immaterial being, the science of mobile being would be the highest science (CM 4,6). So
Thomas also says that metaphysics presupposes the proofs from natural philosophy of the
frist causes (CBT). The knowledge of “what” something is presupposes a knowledge
“that” it is (PA 1?).

However ifthe metaphysical subject, being as being, were the first thing we knew, the
concrete bodily would not be prior in our knowledge. Metaphysical concepts like act and
substance would not be more difficult and farther from the senses.

Cajetan on the first knowledge of the mind

Quia parvus error in pincipio nag in fine, secundum Philosophum, pimo Coeli et Mundi
(1): ens autem et essentia sunt quae primo in intellectu concipiuntu, ut dicit Avicenna in
Metaphysica (2) . . . (Aquinas, De Ente, Proem.)

In commenting on this passage, Cajetan first makes a distinction between kinds of

universal wholes: universale, quod intellectu directe cognosci supponimus, duplicem
habet totalitatem. There is the universal as definable and simply as universal: est enim
totum definibile et est totum universale. These two universal wholes differ in three ways,
he says. The definable whole is based on the actuality of the thing (rei). The universal
whole is based on the virtue or potency of the thing. Second, the definable whole is
ordered to its superiors, if it has them. The universal is ordered to its inferiors. Third,
the definable whole is naturally prior to the mere universal whole (???). (This may be
because the definition is a statement of the nature of the thing, while the universal, in this
sense, is a consideration of what follows upon the nature as present to the mind.)

Then, just as there are two kinds of universal wholes, there are two kinds of confused and
distinct knowledge: Et sicut habet duplicem totalitatem ipsum universale, ita habet
duplicem cognitionem confusam et duplicem distinctam. Thus, the first knowledge we
have is of the definable whole.

Prima cognitio confuse est, qua cognoscitur ut totum difinibile, non resolvendo in partes
diffinitivas. Secunda cognitio confuse est, qua cognoscitur ut totum universale, non
componendo ipsum cum partibus subjectivis. Prima distincta est, qua cognoscitur totum
difinibile, resolvendo ipsum in singulas partes diffintionis: et haec respondet primae
confusae. Secunda distincta est, qua cognoscitum totum universale, componendo ipsum
cum suis partibus sujectivis partibus: et haec respondet secundae confusae.

So our first knowledge is of the confused definable whole, second is of the universal
whole, then the distinct knowledge of the definable and universal wholes.
The two confused knowledges differ in that the confused knowledge of the definable
whole contains no distinct knowledge whatever while the confused knowledge of the
universal whole contains the note that it is not opposed (oppositam) to the definable
whole.

Similiter enim ignoro animal in suis speciebus et novi quid sit animal. ???

And the confused knowledge of the definable whole is prior. So Cajetan calls the first
confused actual knowledge and the second confused virtual knowledge. The first gives
knowledge of what is actually in the thing while the second gives knowledge of what is
potentially in the thing, like species in a genus.

He says the distinct knowledge of the definable whole is simultaneous with a confused
knowledge of the universal whole (utpote sibi non oppositam), but the distinct knowledge
of the universal whole does not bear with it any confused knowledge: nullam confusam
secum compatitur cum notitia enim animalis cum suis speciebus non stat ignorantia
animalis in se. So the second distinct knowledge infers the first, but not vice versa.

Distinct knowledge of the definable whole is constituted by penetrating what is actually

in the thing. Confused knowledge of the same is knowing what is actually in the thing
without penetration. Distinct knowledge of the universal whole is constituted by
penetrating what is virtually (potentially?) in the thing. Confused knowledge of the same
is had by knowing imperfectly what is virtually in it.

So, first, confused actual knowledge knows the generic and specific as such without
breaking it down to genus and difference: id est, absque hoc quod hebeatur ratio formalis
clara et resolute. Second, confused virtual knowledge understands the thing as a
universal but without grasping the species: non componendo cum inferioribus suis.
Third, the distinct knowledge of the actual brings us to the definition, genus and
difference: qua . . . quidatative cognoscuntur. Fourth, the universal whole is known with
its subjective parts: cum suis inferioribus perfecta cognitione componitur totum
universale. Therefore, our first knowledge is confused knowledge of the definable
whole: Cum . . . ordo cognitionum confusarum actualium sit via orgininis prior caeteris,
primum cognitum in ordine cognitionis confusae actualis erit primum cognitum
simpliciter.

Scotus says the first thing known with confused actual knowledge is the lowest species,
Thomas that it is ens.

Scotus’s first argument is that the lowest species is more able to move the senses, and
therefore first known.

Scotus’s second argument is that metaphysics is the last science to be learned, therefore
being, which is a metaphysical term, is last known by us.
Termini metaphysicales vel universalissimi sunt ultimo actualiter noti via doctrinae.
Patet ista ex Avicenna (I Meta. 3) dicente quod metaphysica est ultima ordine doctrinae,
sed termini illi sunt universalissimi: ergo universaliora non sunt prius nota actualiter. Et
confirmatur, ait Antonius Trombeta, quia ordo scientiarum quoad nos attenditur penes
ordinem cognoscibilium quoad nos; si ergo metaphysica est ultima quoad nos: ergo
termini sui erunt etiam ultimo noti quoad nos.

In responding to the objections of the Scotists, Cajetan first gives his description of the
thing first known by us: Ens concretum quiditati sensibili est primum cognitum
cognitione confuse actuali. To explain this, he says that the mind can arrive at ens in
three ways: by total, formal, or simple abstraction.

Prima ut habet conditionem istam, quae est abstratio totalis non dico a singularibus sed a
speciebus et a generibus. Secundo modo ut habet conditionem istam quae est abstractio
formalis similiter a speciebus et generibus. Tertio modo ut neutram istarum conditionum
habens, abstractum tamen singularibus. Primo modo ens non est pertinens ad hanc
questionem, quia ipsum ut sic est totum universale, nos autem loquimur de cognitione
confuse actuali non virtuali. Secondo modo ens est terminus metaphysicalis: et forte
adhuc viris doctissimis non innotuit. Tertia modo ens est primum cognitum, et
nuncupatum est ens concretum quiditati sensibili: quia non est separatum aliqua dictarum
abstractionum a quiditate specifica vel generica.

In the first way (total abstraction), the genus is abstracted from the species: animal
abstrahitur a bove et a leone. In the second (formal abstraction), form is separated from
matter, like in mathematics. Cajetan says that when the form of being is separated from
matter in this way, we arrive at the metaphysical terms. Being (ens), metaphysically
understood, is not, then, the first thing that we know, even the very learned can be
ignorant of being metaphysically understood, i.e. separated from matter. Being as first
known is only abstracted in the way (Cajetan’s third) that all universals are abstracted,
i.e. abstracted from the individuals that have that nature.

Formal abstraction has as its term something more intelligible. Total abstraction arrives
at something less intelligible, distinct, and actual. Per abstractionem foralem oritur in eo
quod abstrahitur actualitas, distinction, et intelligibilitas. In abstractione vero totali oritur
in eo quod abstrahitur potentialitatis, confusione et minor intelligibilitas.

Total abstraction arrives at something more known to us. Formal abstraction arrives at
something more known by nature. The reason for this, Cajetan says, is that formal
abstraction separates what is material to isolate what is formal. Total abstraction
arrives at what is more generic and genera are as matter. Since act is the principle of
intelligibility and more known than ability, the formal is more knowable in itself than the
material.

Formal abstraction is the basis, he says, of the division of the sciences. He cites
Metaphysics 6, which divides the sciences based on their degree of abstraction from
matter. Metaphysics, he says, is not related to natural science as the universal to the
more particular (total abstraction), but as the formal to the material, as is mathematics
(formal abstraction).

Licet enim gradus metaphysicales sint universaliores aliis, et comparari possint ad alia ut
ad partes subjectivas, eo quod eidem potest utraque abstractio convenire: tamen in
quantum stant sub consideratione metaphysicali, non sunt universalia respectu
naturalium, sed formae, et naturalia sunt earum material: et hoc valde notandum.

The formal abstraction of being takes place in precision from the other generic and
specific accounts of things. Total abstraction takes place when being is considered as a
universal whole containing in potency the other genera and species. The concrete being
of the sensible whatness then, which is first known by us, is understood apart from either
of these abstractions: neutra illarum abstractionum fulcitur, sed in quidtate sensibili
abstracta a singularibus absque aliqua separatione inspicitur . . .

Scotus, however, claims that ens cannot be known with a confused knowledge but only
with a distinct knowledge. Against this, Cajetan argues that being can be known in such
a way that it is not yet separated from the less universal things that it contains:
quandoque intellectus fertur in ens, actualiter ipsum concipiendo et nesciendo separare
ens a substantia et accidente, habet de ente cognitionem confusam actualem. The proof
of this is that many studious minds, after years of study, do not yet distinguish being from
substance and accident:

Videmus enim multos per plures annos exercitatos in studiis adhuc nescire distinguere
rationem propriam entis a substantia et accidente: quos nescire habere conceptum
actualem entis, fatuum est dicere, et contra sensum, considerant enim ens secundum id
quod actualiter in se habet, et totum attingunt sed quia non totaliter comprehendunt, ideo
nesciunt ipsum ab aliis separare . . .

There are many who never separate being from the things that are contained in it. Much
less do they arrive at a metaphysical understanding of it, which presupposes this
separation: Secondo modo, ens est terminus metaphysicalis: et forte adhuc viris
doctissimis non innotuit. According to Cajetan, the formal abstraction of being which
constitutes metaphysics presupposes its confused, simple apprehension: a singularibus
absque aliqua separatione inspicitur.

Thus, our first knowledge is of being and is the least clear and perfect.

Conceptus imprefectissimus omnium est primus via originis sed conceptus actualis
confusus entis est conceptus imperfectissimus omnium: ergo est primus via originis. . . .
patet quia imperfectiora sunt prior via generationis (IX Meta. com. XV). . . . est de se
evidens quia omnis alius conceptus, cum addat ad entis conceptum, est perfectior illo,
sicut totum sua parte.

Since the concept of being contains everything else in potency, it is the most confused of
all our notions. Because it contains the others in potency and not in act, it contains them
without order, for act is the principle of order: actus est qui distinguit (VII Meta). And,
since it does not actually include the notions of any other thing, it is the farthest removed
from the knowledge of other things while other concepts include being: coneceptus entis
ita se habet ad alios, quod ipse alios non includit, alii vero actualiter ipsum includunt:
ergo intellectus habens conceptum entis magis distat ab aliorum cognitione, quam habens
quemcunque alium conceptum.

While Cajetan holds that being is first for the mind, it naturally first falls into the mind
just as the natural is presupposed to the artificial, he does not think that the concepts of
substance and accident follow from it in any necessary order: potest enim post
conceptum entis quodcunque aliud concipi, sive substantia, sive accidens, sive species,
sive genus.

Cajetan outlines four or five points that the Scotist, Trombeta, denies: the intellect first
knows the more universal before the less; it proceeds from potency to act; universal
knowledge of things, as opposed to specific, is imperfect; universal knowledge is
secundum quid and in potency; and the senses, going from potency to act, also know the
more common before the less common.

Cajetan responds to the first two that the imperfect is before the perfect in the order of
generation, the genus is as matter relative to the species, therefore. . .

To the third, cognoscere hominem in animali est cognocoscere hominem imperfectius,

quam cognoscere hominem in seipso: et hanc vocamus cognitionem in universali.

In regard to the fifth, Cajetan specifies the sense in which the senses first know the
common, ie. according to place and time.

Then, returning to Scotus’s argument that the being is not first known since metaphysics
which considers being is last in the order of learning, Cajetan denies that metaphysical
terms are first known by us.

Termini metaphysicales, ut sic, non ponuntur a nobis, primo cognosci: sunt enim termini
metaphysicales abstracti abstractione formali, sed dicimus quod signicatum huius termini
ens concretum quiditatis sensibilis est primo cognitum.

What is first known prescinds from the formal and total abstractions, the product of
simple apprehension alone.

Although the lowest species is more intelligible in itself, everything that we experience is
a being, so the cumulative effect of that experience with beings makes being more
intelligible to us.

Although we know a particular thing before we resolve it into its genus, simply speaking
we know the genus before the less universal.
Having answered Scotistic objections to Thomas, Cajetan explains Thomas’s order of
exposition. Since ens is composed of essence, he first treats of ens. Ex compositis ad
simplicia procedendum est; sed ens est velut compositum, et essential velut simplex: ergo
ab ente ad essentiam procedendum est. Moreover, we ought to begin with what is easier,
but what is later in the order of nature and composed is easier for us. Finally, Cajetan
reminds us of the nature order in our knowledge: quando dicimus ex posterioribuss
procedendum est, intelligitur ex posterioribus secundum naturam prioribus quoad nos:
innata enim est nobis via ex notoribus nobis in ignorantia naturae, ut dicitur I Physic.

Duane’s Thesis

“Either there is a determinate way of proceeding for the philosopher or there is not. But,
the philosopher cannot achieve his end by chance. . . . to the extent that something is
subject to reason, it is not a result of chance.” 1
Mathematics has a clearly detemined order and so does art. Thomas says that
Metaphysics has the same kind of order that mathematics has (CM the order among
substances??). Similar modern science is often equated with a method. If art has an
order to it, it seems much more likely that science does. If all of the parts of philosophy
have an order, it seems likely that philosophy as a whole does.

“Aristotle and St. Thomas distinguish many ways of proceeding in regard to the
individual sciences: each science has its own proper way or mode of proceeding. But,
before all of these proper modes, they lay down a common mode or way of proceeding in
all the sciences which is called logic. And, before logic, they place a third mode which is
the way of proceeding of the human intellect.” 2

“Descartes is famous for proposing another universal mode or method. He attempted to

extend the proper mode of geometry (or arithmetic) to all the sciences.” 2

“the proper mode of proceeding in a particular science is a universal principle of that

science. Logic is a universal principle of all the sciences. Logic is a universal principle
of all the sciences. They way or mode of proceeding of the human intellect is a universal
principle of the entire speculative life of man.” 3

“a little error about the proper mode of proceeding in a science will have a bad effect all
through that science. And error about logic will be even more serious since it will be
multiplied without limit through all the sciences that are, or will be discovered. And an
error about the mode of proceeding of the human intellect will be the most serious since it
will have a bad effect on the whole of man’s speculative life.” 4

“Man often makes errors about the main tools for helping him avoid errors.”5

“Since the way or mode of proceeding of the human intellect is presupposed to the other
modes and must be in conformity with the nature of the human intellect, it would seem
that we must first investigate the human intellect.” 5
“the great division of thinkers today on the following alternatives: either there is a natural
way of proceeding in philosophy or there is not. It seems, on the one hand, that there is
no natural way of proceeding in philosophy since most philosophers have proceeded in
diverse ways. . . . On the other hand, if there were no natural way of proceeding, we
would fall into the position that it makes no difference how we proceed in philosophy.” 6

It is interesting that Aristotle begins the first three books of his metaphysics by reminding
us what the natural order in our knowledge is. In 1.1, he says we go from sense
knowledge and memory to experience and understanding. Moreover, he ends his logical
treatises (PA 2.19) and begins his natural treatises (Phys. 1.1) with the same thing.
Within our understanding, we proceed from the particular sciences to the most universal.
In 2.1, he points out the ways in which coming to know is easy and the ways in which it is
hard. It is easy to know the confused whole, the front door which can’t be missed, the
first principles. But to proceed to know all the parts is difficult: “like the proverbial door
. . .” He then reminds us that wat is more known for us is not what is more knowable
absolutely. “For as the bats eyes are to the sun . . .” And since we do not start with
certain knowledge but must make reasonable guesses before we find the truth, he reminds
us of the importance of studying the thought of our predecessors and using them to form
the dialectical knot. “We should be grateful . . .” And because metaphysics is most true
it falls to it to consider all these ways in which man is towards knowing the truth:
“Philosophy (i.e. Meta.) should be called . . .” In recalling how we proceed from the
confused whole, which is more known to us, to the distinct parts (whole to part), which
are more knowable in themselves, Aristotle is returning to the theme of Physics 1.1 in
which he gives the famous account of the natural road in our knowing. And just as he
follows his account here with a reminder of the need for dialectical consideration of
previouus thought, he follows Physics 1.1 with a dialectical account of the opinions of
others on the principles of motion. In Meta. 3.1, Aristotle gives a full account of the need
for the art of making reasonable quesses about something before we can come to know it:
“it is advantageous to discuss. . . . people who inquire without . . . . he who has heard
all.” Looking back to 2.3, we see that one benefit of dialectically examining all previous
opinions is that it helps to free us from slavery to intellectual custom. The mathematician
who will only except something if it is presented mathematically, is incapableof knowing
most things. If he took seriously the opinions of others, he might not fall into this trap.
Post. 2.19, Physics 1.1, Topics 1.1???

Descartes: “in our search for the direct road towards truth we should busy ourselves with
no object about which we cannot attain a certititude equal to that of the demonstrations of
Arithmetic and Geometry.” 7

D “the Method which teaches us to follow the true order and enumerate exactly every
term in the matter under investigation contains everything which gives certainty to the
rules of Aritmetic.” 8

D “ we must begin with the investigation . . . with the Principles. It is . . . necessary that
these Principles should have two conditions attached to them; first of all thay should be
so clear and evident that the mind of man cannot doubt their truth when it attentively
applies itself to consider them . . .” 9

D. “Method consists entirely in the order and the disposition of the objects towards which
our mental vision must be directed if we would find out any truth. . . . starting with the
intuitive apprehension of all those that are absolutely simple, attempt to ascend to the
knowledge of all others by precisely similar steps.”

D. “to carry on my reflection in due order, commencing with objects that were the most
simple and easy to understand, in order to rise little by little, or by degrees, to knowledge
of the most complex, assuming an order, even a fictitious one, among those which do not
follow a natural sequence relatively to one another.” 9

Universal method, D. “seeking the true method of arriving at a knowledge of all the
things of which his mind was capable.”

“road is to seek out the first causes and the true principles from which reasons may be
deduced for all that which we are capable of knowing.”

“if we desire to philosophize seriously, and apply ourselves to the research of all the
truths ble of knowing, we must, in the first place, rid ourselves of our prejudices, and
must take great care sedulously to set aside all the opinions which we formerly accepted,
until, on applying to them further examination, we discover them to be true. We should
afterwards hold an orderly review o fthe conceptions which we have within us, and
accept as true those and o present themselves to our apprehension as clear and distinct.
In this way we shall know, first of all that we exist, inasmuch as our nature is to think,
and at the same time that there is a God on whom we depend; and after having considered
His attributes, we shall be in a position inquire into the truth of all other things since God
is their cause.” 10

“For Descartes, the whole of philosophy is one science—something like Theology.”

D “ . . . .all the sciences are so inter-connected, that it is much easier to study them all
together than to isolate one frorm all the others. If, therefore, anyone wishes to search
out the truth earnest, he ought not to select one special science; for all the sciences are
conjoined with each other and interdependent . . .”

D “distinguishing the sciences from one another according to their subject matter, they
have imagined that they ought to be studied separately.” 11

D. “It is certain that I no less find the idea of God, that is to say, the idea of a supremely
perfect Being, in me, than that of any figure or number whatever it is; and I do not know
any less clearly and distinctly that eternal existence pertains to this nature than I know
that all that which I am able to demonstrate of some figure or number, and therefore . . .
the existence of God would pass with me as at least as certain as I have ever held the
truths of mathematics (which concern only numbers of figures) to be.” 11 Contrast with
CBT 6.1.c.12

“Descartes did not attempt to prove the existence of God through sensible things since he
‘deemed the existence of God to be much more evident than that of any sensible things’.”
11

“Being certain of his thinking, but not that he had a body (if we can believe him),
Descartes wrote as follows:
‘From that I knew that I was a substance the whole essence or nature of which is to think,
and that at for its existence there is no need of place, nor does it depend on any mater; so
that this “me”, that is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from
body, and is even more easy to know than is the latter; and if body were not, the soul
would not cease to be what it is.’” 11
We might wonder how Descartes could hope to accomplish this since all natural things
involve matter and the indetermination and change inseparable from matter. The answer
is that for Descartes “the nature of matter or of body in its universal aspect, does not
consist in its being hard, or heavy, or colored, or one that affects our senses in some other
way, but solely in the fact that it is a substance extended in length, breadth and depth.”12

Matter for Descartes is a mathematical entity. He reduces it to its geometrical

dimensions.

“I do not accept or desire any other principle in Physics than in Geometry or abstract
Mathematics, because all the phenomena of nature may be explained by their means, and
sure deomonstration can be given of them.”12

“we shall without difficulty set aside all the prejudices of the senses and in this regard
rely upon our understanding alone, by reflecting carefully on the ideas implanted therein
by nature.” 12

Very Platonic!

“Thus natural science would be less certain than geometry, and moral science, than
natural science. This is also clear because these latter depend upon experience while the
mathematical sciences “need make no assumption which experience renders uncertain.”
These two criteria [pure and uncomplicated] both touch upon the incertitude deriving
from a number or multitude of things to be considered. Complication involves
multiplicity, and experience is always ex multis. Hence, the more a science depends on
experience, the less certain it is.” 14

“because the subject of natural science is with motion, Heraclitus thought that no science
could be had about it. And, since the subject of moral science is so contingent and
variable, many men think that morality exists merely by convention. And, because the
subject of metaphysics is so elevated above the intellect of man, many men think that it
can be known only by faith. But one does not hear these things said about
mathematics.”17

“The root of Descrtes difficulties will be found to be in his rejection of the mode of
proceeding which is in conformity with the human intellect.”19

“Ipsa autem principia non eodem modo manifestantur. Sed quedam consierantur
indictione, quae est ex particularibus imaginariis, ut puta quod omnis numerus est par
aut impar. Quaedam vero accipiuntur sensu, sicut in naturalibus; puta quod omne quod
vivet idiget nutrimento. Quaedam vero consuetudine, sicut in moralibus, utpote quod
concupiscentiae diminuuntur, si eis non obediamus. Et alia etiam principia aliter
manifestatur; sicut in artibus operativis accipiuntur principia per experientiam
quamdam.” 20

Are sciences diffentiated by their modes of abstraction???? In the ST text Thomas says
that they are. He places separation which distinguishes and is proper to metaphysics
among the species of abstraction. It’s important to note that the abstraction by which we
arrive at the subject of metaphysics, being, is a distinct abstraction from that by which
we arrive at the natures of natural things. In fact, this abstraction is a judgment, i.e.,
composition or division, while the abstraction which arrives at natural and mathematical
things is simple apprehension, the first act of the mind. The reason for this difference is
that metaphysical things are actually separate from matter in reality outside the mind,
but natural and mathematical things are not. So we can “separate” metaphysical things
from matter because they really are separate, but we can not “separate” natural things
or mathematicals because they are not separate from matter outside the mind. Moreover,
we are not able to have simple apprehension of immaterial things because the natural
objects of our intellect are the natures of material things: “our intellect undersands
material things by abstractin from the phantasms, and though material things thus
considered we acquire some knowledge of immaterial things . . .” (ST I.85.1.c).
Therefore, another form of abstraction, or separation, is necessary if we are to know
immaterial things, as Thomas immediately distinguishes in the first response:

“Abstraction may occur in two ways: First by way of composition and division, as when
we understand that one thing does not exist in some other or that it is separate from it.
Second by way of simple and absolute consideration, as when we understand onething
without considering the other. . . . The intellect therefore abstracts the species of natural
things from the individual sensible matter, but not from the common sensible matter . . . .
mathematical species, however, can be abstracted by the intellect from sensible matter,
not only from individual, but also from common matter, though not from common
intelligible matter . . . But some things can be abstracted even from common intelligible
matter, such as being, unity, potency, and act and the the like, which can be without
matter, as is plain regarding immaterial things.” ST I.85.1ad1-2

Thomas says there are three kinds of abstraction: abstraction from individual sensible
matter but not common (natural philosophy and science), from common sensible matter
but not from common intelligible matter (mathematics), and from common intelligible
matter (metaphysics).4 The first two he distinguishes in the CBT as total and formal
abstraction. The third he calls separation. So there are three kinds of abstraction, each
progressively more removed from matter, which distinguish the three speculative
sciences. The first two abstract from individual and common sensible matter,
respectively, but the third even abstracts from all intelligible matter, i.e., any matter
whatsoever.

“That the principles are known in diverse ways agrees with what is said about
distinguishing the sciences on the basis of their mode of defining and of the terms to
which their judgments resolve. For these three things—the mode of defining, the term of
the judgments and the mode of manifesting the principles—follow each other. For,
iudicium . . . . potissimum de unaquaque re fit secundum eius definitivam rationem”, and
the judgment of the intellect always resolves to the principle of its knowledge. For
example, natural science defines with sensible matter and its judgments must resolve to
sense and its principles are also manifested by sense.” 21

4
In responding to the objections of the Scotists, Cajetan first gives his description of the thing first known
by us: Ens concretum quiditati sensibili est primum cognitum cognitione confuse actuali. To explain this,
he says that the mind can arrive at ens in three ways: by total, formal, or simple abstraction.
Prima ut habet conditionem istam, quae est abstratio totalis non dico a singularibus sed a speciebus et a
generibus. Secundo modo ut habet conditionem istam quae est abstractio formalis similiter a speciebus et
generibus. Tertio modo ut neutram istarum conditionum habens, abstractum tamen singularibus. Primo
modo ens non est pertinens ad hanc questionem, quia ipsum ut sic est totum universale, nos autem loquimur
de cognitione confuse actuali non virtuali. Secondo modo ens est terminus metaphysicalis: et forte adhuc
viris doctissimis non innotuit. Tertia modo ens est primum cognitum, et nuncupatum est ens concretum
quiditati sensibili: quia non est separatum aliqua dictarum abstractionum a quiditate specifica vel generica.
In the first way (total abstraction), the genus is abstracted from the species: animal abstrahitur a bove et a
leone. In the second (formal abstraction), form is separated from matter, like in mathematics. Cajetan says
that when the form of being is separated from matter in this way, we arrive at the metaphysical terms.
Being (ens), metaphysically understood, is not, then, the first thing that we know, even the very learned can
be ignorant of being metaphysically understood, i.e. separated from matter. Being as first known is only
abstracted in the way (Cajetan’s third) that all universals are abstracted, i.e. abstracted from the
individuals that have that nature.
Formal abstraction has as its term something more intelligible. Total abstraction arrives at something less
intelligible, distinct, and actual. Per abstractionem foralem oritur in eo quod abstrahitur actualitas,
distinction, et intelligibilitas. In abstractione vero totali oritur in eo quod abstrahitur potentialitatis,
confusione et minor intelligibilitas.
Total abstraction arrives at something more known to us. Formal abstraction arrives at something more
known by nature. The reason for this, Cajetan says, is that formal abstraction separates what is material
to isolate what is formal. Total abstraction arrives at what is more generic and genera are as matter.
Since act is the principle of intelligibility and more known than ability, the formal is more knowable in
itself than the material.
Formal abstraction is the basis, he says, of the division of the sciences. He cites Metaphysics 6, which
divides the sciences based on their degree of abstraction from matter. Metaphysics, he says, is not related
to natural science as the universal to the more particular (total abstraction), but as the formal to the
material, as is mathematics (formal abstraction).
Licet enim gradus metaphysicales sint universaliores aliis, et comparari possint ad alia ut ad partes
subjectivas, eo quod eidem potest utraque abstractio convenire: tamen in quantum stant sub consideratione
metaphysicali, non sunt universalia respectu naturalium, sed formae, et naturalia sunt earum material: et
hoc valde notandum.
“The proper manifestation of proper principles is the first part of the Distinct knowledge
hod of them in science rather than something pertaining ot the confused knowledge had
of them by the habit of principles. We say “first part” because the distinct knowledge of
the principles in a science (where they are known with the conclusitons, not just in
themselves) begins whin we are able to see conclusions arising from then and is perfected
when we resolve the conclusions into the principles.” 21

Nec tamen intelligendam est quod sufficiat ad unitatem scientiae unitas principiorum
primorum simpliciter, sed univtas rincipiorum primorum simpliciter, sed unitas
princiiorum primorum in aliquot genere scibili. Distinguuntur autem genera scibilium
secundum diversum modum cognoscendi. Sicut alio modo cognoscantur ea quae
definuntur cum material, et ea quae definuntur sine generis, et per consequens diversae
scientiae. Et utrumque horum generum distinguitur in diversas species scibilium,
secundum diversos modos et rationes cognoscibilitatis. (CPA) 22

Science is an effect, however, of a demonstration that makes known a conlclusion

thorugh a middle term which is a definition. Hence, it is necessary to distinguish
sciences on the basis of a diverse mode of defining . . . Cum omnis scientia per
deomstrationem habeatur, deomnstrationis autem medium sit definitio; necesse est
secundum diversum definitionis modum scientias diversificari. CP 1.1

Sciendum est igitur quod quaedam sunt quorum esse dependet a material sensibili, in
eorum tamen defintione material sibsibilis non cadit. Et haec defferunt ad invicem sicut
curvum et simum. Nam simum est in material sensibili, et necesse est quod in eius
definitione cadat material sensibilis; est enim nasus curvus; et talia sunt omnia naturalia,
ut homo, lapis: curvum vero, licet esse non posit nisi in material sensibili, tamen in eius
definitione material sensibilis non cadit; et talia sunt omnia mathematica, ut numeri,
magnitudines et figurae. Quaedam vero sunt quae non dependet a material, nec
secundum esse nec secundum rationem; vel quia nunquam sunt in material, ut Deus et
aliae substantiae separatae; vel quia non universaliter sunt in materia, ut substantia,
potential et actus, et ipsum ens. De huiusmodi igitur est Metaphysica: de his vero quae
dependet a material non solum secundum esse sed etiam secundum rationem, est
Naturalis, quae Physica dicitur. CP 1.2

The definitions of logic differ from the above because they concern the “relations quae
attibuuntur ab intellectus rebus intellectis, prout sunt intellectae, sicut relation generis et
speciei.” They differ from the above and have a diverse relation to matter, not because
they are abstracted from matter in a diverse way, but because they have an existence only
in being understood by the intellect which is, of course, an immaterial power. 23

Eadem ration ars quaedam necessaria est, quae sit directive ipsius actus rationis, per
quam scilicet homo in ipso actu rationis ordinate, faciliter et sine errore procedat. Et haec
ars est logica, idest rationalis scientia. (CPA1.1) Reflection is quite a different way of
reaching a subject than the way of abstraction. 24
Sufficiens est accipere unumquodque istorum communium, quantum pertinet ad genus
subiectum, de quo est scientia. Idem enim faciet geometria, si non accipiat praemissum
principium commune in sua communitate, sed solum in magnitudinibus, et arithmetica in
solis numeris. Ita enim poeterit concludere geometria, si dicat: si ab aequalibus
magnitudinibus aequales auferas magnitudines, quae remnant sunt aequales .. . (CPA
1.18.156) 25

Communia principia accipiuntur in unaquaque scientia demonstrative secundum

analogiam, idest secundum quod sunt proportionate illi scientiae. Et hoc est quod subdit
exponens, quod utile est accipere huiusmodi principia in scientiis, quantum pertinet ad
genus subiectum, quod continetur sub illa scientia . . . (CPA 1.18.154) 61
Thus the conclusions of the diverse sciences do not preoceed from the common principle
in the way in which those principles are common to all the sciences, but only as they are
proportioned to the subject of each science. But in this latter way, they cannot unite all
the possible conclusions into one grand science.25

However not just any knowledge of the principles gives rise to conclusions, but only a
distinct one. But, as we saw above, a distinct knowledge of the principles requires that
they be known in diverse ways. The common principles, however, are further from the
conclusions than even a confused knowledge of the proper principles. 25

Althought the primary principles of a science are more universal than its secondary
principles, this greater universality does not destroy the unity of the science since the
universality remains within the same kind of intelligibility or immateriality. Animal is
more universal than dog, yet both are more knowable in the same way; i.e., through a
definition with common sensible matter, or through principles manifested by sensation, or
by resolving judgments about them to sense. 26

Since the common principles, taken in their generality, are not found within one genus
scibile, they cannot found one science. 26

Do they not found the science of Metaphysics?????

The proper mode of proceeding is diverse in different sciences. This mode is derived
from a consideration of that science and of the way in which that subject is related to our
intellect. If a man does not make a careful consideration of these two things, he will
probably adopt a method to which he is inclined by his natural aptitudes or by his
customary way of proceeding. 27

We can consider five elements in this diversity. First there is a diversity according to
end, for we do not proveed in the same way in a science ordered to action as in one
ordered to the thruth alone. Second, there is a diversity in the mode of demonstration
found in each science. This diversity can be considered according to the species of
deomonstration which are demonstration propter quid and quia. And in regard to propter
quid demonstrations in particular, we can consider that all sciences do not demonstrate
from the same causes. In this place, we can also consider, in general any other diversity
in those things from which the arguments proceed in different sciences, such as that some
proceed from what is true always and others from what is true for the most part, or that
one procees from fewr principles than another. One more thing might be considered
under the second element, and that is the diverse terms to which the judgments of the
various sciences resolve. We have chosen to consider the diversity in the mode of
defining as distinguishing the subjects of the sciences although it might also be
considered as a part of this element. The third thing we can consider is that the proper
principles of diverse sciences are not manifested in the same way. Fourth, there is a
diversity in the manuductio commanded by the subject of 4ach science and the relation
of that subject to our intellect. Firth, there is diversity in the order of determination in
each science. All of these five elements are required or determined by the subject of the
science and its relation to our intellect. One might add a sixth element, the certitude to
be expected in each science. This also, is known from the subject of the science and its
relation to our intellect, and it can be made even more precise when one has considered
the five elements above. Next, let us sketch briefly the diversity in each of these
elements in the proper modes of proceeding. 28

From these things, it can be seen that we not only proceed diversely in a practical science
and in a speculative scicience, but even in a contrary way. In the speculative sciences, we
know how to reduce effects to their causes while in the practical sciences, we produce
effects from their causes. Because a cause is simpler than its effects, these two diverse
modes of proceeding are called, respectively, resolutive and compositive. It should not
be thought that a treatise on practical scienc never proceeds in the resolutive mode, for
practical knowledge presupposes some speculative knowledge; as, for example, it is
useful to define virtue and to divide into its species before determining how we may
acquire each of the virtues. Yet, such speculative knowledge is not chiefly intedended in
a practical science which is concerned with ow its subject may be produced. Hence, the
resolutive mode is attributed to speculative science because its perfection consists only in
observing themode while practical science is perfected by proceeding in another way. If
a speculative science does compose at times, as does geometry, this is only for the sake of
knowing what has been composed and ultimately resolving. 29

This diversity in thet mode of demonstrating (cause to effect in mathematics and

effect to cause elsewhere) is derived, not just from the subject considered in itself,
but from the relation of the subject to our understanding. For the movements and
exterior accidents of natural things fall directly under our senses (whence our
intellectual knowledge is derived), while the natures of these things, which are also
the causes of their movements and proper accidents, do not directly come under our
senses. Similarly, human actions falll direcly under our experience while the habits from
which they proceed are not immediately manifest I our experience. Likewise, the long-
range effects of our actions are not known in their causes, but vice-versa. But quatities
and figures are directly sensible or imaginable while the relations they possess are not
direcly sensed or imagined. Thus the mode of demonstrating is diverse in these sciences.
This does not mean that natural science does not use propter quid demonstration, but that
it is not characterized by it as is geometry or arithmetic. Even after we have come to
know the existence of the cause through the effect, we can still use that cause to manifest
the why of the effect although not its existence. And, this suffices for having a propter
quid demonstration.

Metaphysics would seem to require demonstration quia even more than natural
science in one way, because even the existence of its subject must be shown though a
quia demonstration. 30

In regard to proper quid demonstration alone, we can find a diversity iin the various
sciences. This diversity is in the causes from which a science demonstrates, and this
diversity corresponds to the subject of a science. Thus, because the subjects of geometry
and arithmetic are abstracted frm matter and motion, bither of these sciences
demonstrates from the agent cause or the material cause (unless, perhaps, one wished to
say that the parts of the continuum were matter; but this would be matter in quite a
different sense). Likewise, geometry and arithmetic do not demonstrate from the end or
purpose since this is the term of motion or that for the sake of which there is an operation.
But, quantity and figures, which the mathematician considers, are not the source of any
motion or operation. Thus, geometry and arithmetic demonstrate only from the formal
cause which is clear from the defintions used in these sciences. But, in natural sciences,
all four causes can and should be used. Since the subject of natural science is mobile
beiiing, it is clear that the cause of moition—the agent—will play an important role. And
in the first book of the Physics, it is shown that matter and form are the per se principles
of mobile being. And in book two of the Physics, it becomes clear that nature acts for an
end, and, hence, that natural science should demonstrate from the end which is the causa
causarum.
In metaphysics, the end and formal cause, especially are used and, also, the agent.
The material cause is not proper to this science because its subject is neither defined with
matter nor does it depend for its existence upon matter. The end is especially important
because it is the cause of all the other causes, and this science considers the first causes.
The formal causes is important because this science has as its subject being of which
from is the principle, and also because it belong to this science in particular to consider
the quod quid erat esse. The agent cause is also used since the separated substances are
efficient causes of movement in the material world as well as of immaterial operations.31

Natural and moral science begin from principles that are true for the most part, while the
principles of logic, mathematics, and metaphysics are more invariable.

The subject of metaphysics is more abstract than that of arithmetic, and the subject of
arithmetic, than that of geometry. Ens quantum adds to ens so that the subject of
mathematics involves more principles than that of metaphysics. Similarly, the subject of
arithmetic is more abstract than that of geometry, as can be seen when comparing the unit
to the point. Next, they subject of natural science, mobile being, adds to the subject of
mathematics which is more abstract. But the practical sciences add to the speculative
ones, just as all practical knowledge involves some speculative knowledge, but not e
converse. Thus metaphysics proceeds form fewr and simpler principles than arithmetic;
arithmetic, than geometry; geometry, than natural science; and natural science than the
practical sciences whose principles are most of all multiplied as they approach the
multiplicity of circumstances around the singular.33

The diversity of the terms to which the judgments of the sciences resolve . . . Natural
things come under our senses, and hteir natures become known to us through the things
which appear to our senses about them. Hence, judgment about them in natural science
should resolve to what is sensed. . . . In the practical sciences, judgment is made in accord
with experience of life this is why it is said that a young man is not a suitable hearer of
political science for he lacks the experience of life required to judge these matters well. . .
. By reason of its subject, it is lclear that logic must cheirfly resolve to the understanding.
Metaphsyics would have to be similar to the mode of resoling in logic since it
(metaphysics) considers things whose natures do not involve matter or extension as do
the things wihhch are sensed or imagined. Yet, metaphysics would seem to be even
further from the senses and the imagination than logic. For the what-it-is of logical
things (such as genus, species, etc.) can be manifested perfectly form a knowledge of
sensible things even though such logical things are not found in sensation or imagination.
This however is not true of such metaphysical things as the separated substances.33

The principles of mathematics are manifested through the imagination, those of natural
science through the senses, those of logic through reflection on relations within the mind,
“and the principles of metaphysics through an experience of all the other sciences.”

Ducit atuem magister discipulum ex praecognitis in cognitionem ignotorum, dupliciter.

Primo quidem, proponendo ei aliqua auxilia vel instrumenta, quibus intellectus eius
utatur ad scientiam acquirendum: puta cum proponit ei aliquas propostiones minus
universals, quas tamenex precgnitis discupulus diiuficare potest; vel cum porponit ei
aliqua sensibilia exempla, vel similia, vel opposite, vel aliqua huiusmodi ex quibus
intellectus addiscentis manudicitur in cognitionem veritatis ignotae. ST 1.117.1.c

IN the practical sciences, it is necessary for the student to be led by the nad thorugh an
experience of the actions and things which take plac in human life, in the family and in
the state:
Oportet illum qui vult sifficens auditor esse moralis scientiae, quod sit manu ductus et
exercitatus in consuetudnibus humanae vitae, idest de bonis exterioribus et iustus, idest
de operibus virtutum, et universaliter de omnibus civilibus, sicut sunt leges et ordines
Politicorum et si qua alia sunu huiusmodi. CNE 1.4.53
One can also use sensibilia exmpla from literature which imiatates human action and
character, giving them a clarity not often found in life. One can draw similia from the
arts, as Aristotle does in showing that virtue consists in hittint the mean. Dialectical
opposite drawn from the opinions and ustoms fo mena are important because wjat is said
in moral science must be shown to be not in opposition ot the rihtly understood
experience of mankind.
Natural cience also requires a manuduction form many experiences of natural
things through sensation. SImilia drawn from are are invaluable because art imitates
nature, as is shown in the second book of the Physics. There is a reatneed for dialectic
drawn form the things appearing to our senses since this science has for its subject things
lacking in knowability, like matter, motion, time etc. whose nature is hard to arrive at
without the help of dialectic. 34
Logic is especially in need of manuductio on account of thte abstract quality of it
s subject, second intentions; and because the human intellect should learn this science
before trying to acquire the other sciences perfectly. Hence, there is a lack of proportion
between this science and the intellect of the young beginner, and consequently, there is
great need for manuductio. We can describe the manuductio suitable to the subject of this
science both in general and in particular. One can be led by the hand to second intentions
by thte analogy of a word which applies to something close ot the senses to beging with,
and which has been later applied to a second intention because of a certain likeness of it
to thte original sensible thing. Thus Porphyry leads us to the second intentions of genus
and species though the sensible impositions of these words. Sometimes one can be led to
the seond intention thorugh the act of reason which founds it. Thus one can be led to the
second intention of genus though the intellectual aat of graping what something is.
Finallyk kone can be led to an inderstanding of a speculative act of the reason through a
corresponding act in the practical reason, as when an analysis of counsel illuminates us
about dialectical reasoning.35

Of all the sciences acquired by the natural light of human reason, metaphysics would
seem to require manuductio most of all. This results from a comparison of the subject of
that sicne with our mind. The subjet of this science dpends neither for its existence nor
for its definition upon what falls under our senses. And the separated substances, towards
which this science tends, are the most difficult of all for our intellect to grasp, as is
showin in the second book of the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Hence, all the inferior
sciences serve as a manuductio for this science. We would have no thoughts in our
intellect to correspond to the whords used in this science unless we could extend words
used in the inferior sciences, as is done in the fifth book of the Metaphsyics. IN the
sencth and eigth books, we investigate substance from logical notions (Must be scientific
knowledge!!!) and from matter and form known in natural science (Thomas says that
metaphysics presupposes natural sciences understanding of generation and corruption).
From seeing act and potency in natural things and their movements, we can be led on to
more universal propositions on act and potency in the ninth book. In book ten, we go
from mathematical notions of one and measure to the full breadth of their analogy. The
proof of the existence of the separated substances in the later books obviously requires
the previous sciences, especially natural science. Their intellects are known by analogy
to, and negation of certain things found in our intellects studied in natural science. 35-6

To suggest that the only knowledge of natural things necessary for metaphysical
considerations is a vague prephilosophical knowledge belies all the places where
Thomas specifies that metaphysics presupposes the other sciences. Moreover, if our first
knowledge is metaphysical we would not need knowledge of natural things as such at all
to begin metaphysics. Things would be known as metaphysical objects before they were
known as natural objects. This belies all the places where Thomas says that what is best
known by us are bodies and bodily things, and that only later are they extended to
immaterial things. We have no direct knowledge of immaterial things and can only reach
through inferences made about material things.

The primary explanation/clarification comes in Meta book 5. And there we see that our
understanding starts from the understanding of the lesser sciences and is distinct insofar
as it reaches an understanding of immaterial beings. So those who claim that the
metaphysical account of the principles is independent of fa knowledge of immaterial
bengs don’t have a leg to stand on. It seems that if there were no knowledge of
immaterial beings the science of first principles would be identical with natural
philosophy, as Thomas and Aristotle both say. The account of the principles minus the
immaterial causes would be much impoverished. Knowledge of immaterial causes
allows us to extend the meaning of the principles beyond matter, as book 5 shows. It
seems obvious but if we didn’t know that immateriall things exist we wouldn’t know that
being extends beyond matter. We couldn’t order the senses of Act without the immaterial
senses last. We wouldn’t know any. Period. The study of the principles would lack its
most important part.

IS there a contradiction between T and A’s natural order in the mind and their order of
learning? It doesn’t seem to be just a matter of mental exercise. They say the most
universal falls into the mind. There is no effort involved.

This may be the dialectical knot: Thomas and Aristotle say that the natural road in our
knowledge begins with the most universal, but they also say that the most universal
science comes last. Why? This seems like a contradiction.

In geometry, most of the subjects about which we deomonstrate are given to us neither by
sensation nor by abstraction alone. Rather, we construct them in our imagination; e.g.,
we construct the equilateral triangle in Proposition 1, book 1 of Euclid’s Elements. 36

So we abstract the quid rei after we construct it from the quid nominis?

And in our constructions, we proceed from the simpe to the complex and, not only in the
whole of geometry (when we go from plane to solid geometry), but also in its parts; e.g.,
in Book 1 of Euclid’s Elements, Proposition 1 enters into the construction of Proposition
2 and this latter into that of Proposition 3. The complex constructions necessarily
presuppose the simpler constructions which are their parts. Arithmetic would also seem
to proceed from the simple to the complex. 36

Metaphysics proceeds from those things which can exist in matter (such as being, act,
potency, one, etc.), although they are neither defined with matter nor dependent upon it
for their existence, towards the separated substances which cannot exist in matter and
which are, hence, even more remote from our experience.37

Est autem processus mathematicus certior quam processus divinae scientiae, quia ea de
quius est scientia divina, sunt magis a susnius remota, a quibus nostra cognition ortum
sumit, et quantum ad sunstantias separatas, in quarum cognitionem insufficienter
inducunt ea quae a sensibus accipiuntur, et quantum ad ea quae sunt communia
omnibus entibus, quae sunt maxime universalia, et sic maxime remota a
particularibus cadentibus sub sensu. (!!!!).
Mathematica autem ipsa sub sensu cadunt, et imaginationi subiacent, ut linea, figura,
numerus et huiusmodi. Et ideo intellectus humanus a phantasmatibus accipiens, facilius
eorum cognitionem accipit et certius quam intelligentiae alicuius vel etiam quam
quidditatem substantiae, potentiam et actum et huiusmodi.
Et sic patet quod mathematica consideration est facilior et certior quam naturalis et
theological, et multo plus quam aliae scientiae operativae, et ideo ipsa maxime dicitur
disciplinabiliter procedure. CBT 6.1

Thomas says (p.14 CBT 5.1) that metaphysics is called thus because it is learned after
physics. It is learned after physics, he says, b/c we begin from sensible things and
proceed to those that are non sensible: “[I]t is called metaphysics, because it ought to be
learned by us after physics; for we have to proceed from sensible things to those that are
non-sensible” (CBT 5.1.c. 3).5He clarifies later (p.68 inbid) that metaphysics is far
removed from our senses both by reason of the immaterial causes and being as being, its
subject matter (i.e. substance, act and potency, etc.) “which are most universal and
therefore furthest removed from the particular things falling under the senses.” But
mathematical entities do fall under the senses: “so the human intellect, which takes its
knowledge from images, knows these things with greater ease and certainty than it does a
separate intelligence or even the nature of substance, act, potency, and the like.” This is
further clarified by the proemium to the CM. Thomas says that we discover these things
which are far from our senses by analysis: “it is called metaphysics because it considers
being and its attendant properties; for these objects that go beyond physics are
discovered by the process of analysis as the more universal is discovered after the less
universal” (p.99, appendix). So in a text also explaining the name metaphysics Thomas
tells us why we learn metaphysics after physics. Being as being, which is far removed
from our senses, being most universal, and therefore more difficult and less certain for
us, is discovered by analysis as the more universal is discovered after the less.
But there are numerous questions that arise about his explanation. Isn’t being the first thing known by the mind? Don’t universal
things come before particular things in natural order of our knowledge? Is there an opposite process to analysis (a synthesis) in
which being as being comes first in our knowledge? These are serious questions but it is at least clear that

according to Thomas, metaphysics is learned after physics because being as being is

farther removed from our senses and discovered by a process of analysis as the more
universal is discovered after the particular.

And, if Thomas did not hold that immaterial being, the subject of metaphysics, is known
with our first idea, we are left to ask when he thought we did attain it. When you put the
5
“Quaedam vero speculabilia sunt, quae non dependent a materia secundum esse, quia sine materia esse
possunt, sive numquam sint in materia, sicut Deus et Angelus, sive in quibusdam sint in materia et in
quibusdam non, ut substantia, qualitas, ens, potentia, actus, unum et multa et huiusmodi. De quibus
omnibus est theologia, id est scientia divina, quia praecipuum in ea cognitorum est Deus, quae alio nomine
dicitur metaphysica, id est transphysicam, quia post physicam discenda occurrit nobis, quibus ex
sensibilibus oportet in insensibilia devenire.” Or, “quasi transphysica quia post physicam
resolvendo occurrit.” CM proem.
statements above together with Thomas’s assertion that the order of the sciences shows
that there must be a proof of the existence of an immaterial being or God (SCG 1.12),6
because if there were no proof, there would be no metaphysics,7 you must believe that for
Thomas the subject of metaphysics is not attained with our first idea and that the most
probable point at which that subject is attained is when the existence of an immaterial
being is proven. This is in keeping with his insistence that metaphysics recieves the
proofs of the existence of the first causes given by natural philosophy
[T]he sensible effects on which the demonstrations of natural science are based
are more evident to us in the beginning. But when we come to know the first
causes through them, these causes will reveal to us the reason for the effects, from
which they were proved by a demonstration quia. In this way natural science also
contributes something to divine science, and nevertheless it is divine science that
explains its principles. That is why Boethius places divine science last, because it
is the last relative to us. CBT 5???
Thus when Thomas says, explaining the order of learning the sciences, that metaphysics
is learned after physics because our minds must proceed from the sensible to the non-
sensible, he not merely referring to the fact that the metaphysician must begin with the
sensible phenomena around him to abstract the universal concepts of his science, he is
saying that the metaphysician begins from the conclusions of the prior sciences and
continues where they left off. The demonstrations of natural science constitute a
resolution in which effects are reduced to their more simpler causes, and this makes
possible a formal resolution of material being into universal being, the distinction of
which could not have been known prior to the knowledge of a being that was not
material. For, according to Thomas, what we know best are bodies and bodily things (ST
1.12). Act is first known as it is instantiated in matter; only later is it known as it exists
without matter, in intelligences, the mode which makes possible a “transphysical”
understanding (CM 9).

Mathematics is more certain because propter quid demonstrations excel quia

demonstrations in certitude . . . and because it resolves to the imagination (whose images
or phantasms are to our intellect as exterior colors are to the eye) rather than to the senses
(as in natural science), or to a long experience (as in the practical sciences), or to the
intellect (as in logic or metaphysics. 39

Because mathematics resolves to the imagination, it is also more knowable by us,

because the imagination contains the proper object of the intellect, more so than exterior
sensation or the intellect itself (?).
The order of the sciences in certitude would seem to be as follows: arithmetic, geometry,
logic, natural science, metaphysics, and the practical sciences of which ethics is the first,
then the science of the household or family, and last political science.40

6
And in his CM, when he points to the proof as establishing that there is a science of metaphysics.
7
I think this must be taken as establishing the subject of metaphysics, being as being, because if Thomas
were only referring to a part of metaphysics and not the whole subject his argument would not follow.
There would still be a science beyond the other two, it just would not be as much of a science. This is in
fact what Dewan holds to exist apart from the proof of an immaterial being, an ontology apart from
theology. If that were possible, Thomas’s argument here would be a non sequitur.
Logic would seem to fall short of arithmetic and geometry because its subject does not
fall under sense or imagination: yet, it excels metaphysics because we can arrive at a
complete knowledge of second intentions, like genus and species, through sensible things
while we cannot do this in the case of the separated substances. Natural science, at least
in its first part, would excel metaphysics in certitude because its subject falls under our
senses, but it falls short of logic on account of the variability of its subject.40

Descartes is in serious error when seeking to proceed in all the sciences according to the
mode which is suitable to arithmetic or geometry. Likewise, it is clear that there is more
than one science.40

Descartes implies that the acquisition of science is not helpe by referring to the opinions
of others or to our own probable conjectures. But dialectic proceeds from probable
opinions. Hence, Descartes is rejecting dialectic itself. 41

The modern break with the past implies a fhection of dialectic also. The idea of making a
aomplete break from the past based on new principles, not taking into consideration what
was previously said, is clearly not dialectical.

“For a long time Ii had remarked that it is sometimes necessary in common life to foolow
opinions which one knows to be most unvertain . . . But Because . . . I wished to give
myself entirely to the search after truth, I thought that it was necessary for me to take an
apparently opposite course, and to reject as absolutely false everything as to which I
could imagine the least ground of doubt, in order to see if afterwards there remained
anything in my belief that was entirely certain.” Discourse on Method, part 4

“for the purpose of investigating thte truths which are metaphysically certain, we should
pay no more credence to doubtful matters than to what is plainly false.”43

“I shall proceed by setting aside all that in which the least doubt could be supposed to
exist, just as if I had discovered that it was absolutely false . . .” 43

“we reject all such merely probable knowledge and make it a rule to trust only what is
completely known and incapable of being doubted.”44

“considering how many conflicting opinions there may be regarding the self-same matter,
all supported by learned people, while there can never be more than one which is true, I
esteemed as well-nigh false all that only went as far as being probable.” D

Why do we not intuit everything? There seems tobe something about our minds that
forces us to go from principles to conclusions the known to the unknown. There doesn’t
seem to be anything in things themselves to prohibit an immediate intuition of most of the
truthes we reaon to. The cause is in us. We have discursive intellects presicesely
because we are physical, sensing animals. We have intellects, which distincguishes us
from other animals, but like all animals we start with sense knowledge. Because the
generic is prior to the specific both in time and generation, we sense before we think.
And our thingking depends upon our sensing. Plato’s understanding of our knowing
doesn’t seem to give the same wight to th dependence of our thought on sensing. It is
accidental, a reminder. But Aristotle, on the contrary, argues that is essential and
necessary for us to proceed from our senses because of the substantial union between our
souls ad our bodies. We are incarnate in essence. The principles are not present in us
from birth, but must be taken from sensation of things ro experience of things. While
angels have immediate knowledge of other things through their self-knowledge, we know
things outside of us before we know ourselves. Through our knowledge of things outside
of us, we are bale to reflect ou our knowleing and thus know ourselves. Thence, it is only
from a knowledge of sensible things that we can reason, from effect to cause, to the
existence and nature of immaterial things.

The fourth use of dialectic (which can be considered a particular one under the third use)
is to be a way to the principles of a science. The latter cannot be discussed scientifically
since there is nothing prior to them in the science. 48

The knowledge we have of the unknown cannot, however, cannot be clear and distinct;
otherwise, we would know exactly what was unknown to us, as a teacher knows clrearly
what is unknown to the student. But, Descartes insists that we should begin with clear
and distinct ideas. Hence, he can never have a logic which will direct us to the
unknown.49

“Truly we shall learn how to employ our mental intuition from comparing it with the way
in which we employ our eyes. For he who attempts to view a multitude of objects with
one and the same glance, sees none of them distinctly; and similarly the man who is wont
to attend to many things at the same time by means of a single act of thought is confused
in mind.” Rules for the Direction of the Mind, 52

“the primary notions that are the presuppositions of geometrical proofs hamonize with the
use of our senses, and are readily granted by all. Hence, no difficulty is involved in this
case, except in the proper deduction of the consequences . . . On the contrary, nothing in
metaphysics causes more trouble than the making of its primary notions clear and
distinct. For, though in their own nature they are intelligible as, or even more intelligible
than those the geometricians study, yet being contradicted by the many perceptions of our
senses to which we have since our earliest years been accustomed, they cannot be
perfectly apprehended except by those who give strenuous attention and study to them,
and withdraw their minds as far as possible from matters corporeal. Hence if they alone
were brought forward, it would be easy for anyone with a zeal for contradiction to deny
them.” 53 (cf. CBT V.1)
In Meta. 3.1, first, the solution of doubts or difficulties generated by dialectic is the
disvoerey of truth. 53

Dialectic concentrates our mind upon where the difficulty lies since men dispute about
difficult points. 53
In Meta. 3.1, second, dialectic enables us to know where we are going; and the third use,
when we have arrived. 54

After dialectic, we know when we have arrived; scil., when we can solve all the
difficulties as well as sknow why people had difficulties. We also know where we are
going insofar as dialectic points out something difficult to see, and this latter is the end of
every investigation. 54

PA 2.1 “when we know the fact we ask the reason.”

“for some objects of inquiry we have a different kind of question to ask, such as, whether
there is or is not a centaur or a God. When we have ascertained the things existence, we
inquire as to its nature asking, for instance, what then is God? Or what is a man?”

PA 2.7 He who knows what human- or any other-nature is, must know also that man
exists; for no one knows the nature of what does not exist—one can know the meaning of
the phrase or name ‘goat-stag’ but not what the essential nature is.”
2.8
“to search for the thing’s essential nature when we are unaware that it exists is to search
for nothing.”
“Thus it follows that the degree of our knowledge of a thing’s essential nature is
determined by the sense in which we are aware that it exists.”
Topics 1.1
“Things are true and primary which are believed not on the strength of anything else but
of themselves; in regard to the frist principles of science it is improper to ask any further
for the wy and wherefore of them; each of the first principles should command belief in
and by itself.”
PA 2.7
“we hold that it is by demonstration that the being of everything must be proved—unless
indeed to be were of its essence; and since being is not a genus, it is not the essence of
anything. Hence the being of anything as fact is matter for demonstration; and this is the
actual procedure of the sciences, for the geometer assumes the meaning of the word
triangle, but that it is possessed of some attribute he proves. What is it then, that we shall
prove in defining essential nature? Triangle? In that case a man will know by definition
what a thing’s nature is without knowing whether it exists. But this is impossible.” Cf.
DeK

What is the status of the proof of the possible exsitance of something? Can something be
logically possible—i.e. not be a contradiction—and yet be physically/actually
impossible? It seems there is no logical contradiction in an adult man being the size of
the head of a pin, but ti is physically impossible. TO really know that immaterial being is
possible is to know that there is a cause capable of producing it. But that it is to know
the existence of God or some other immaterial being.

Dialectic enables us to construct probable arguments on both sides of a question precisely

because there is some truth hidden there, some truth difficult to see. The opposed
arguments “point out” to the mind where the difficulty lies . . . . The solution of the
difficulty is the discovery of some truth. 57
Dialectic has a special use in helping us to come to know the first principles of some
sciences. The principles of a science cannot be approached by that science because there
is nothing prior to them in that science. Thus, in natural science, we arrive at the
principles of its subject-matter, form, and privation—through a long dialectical process as
can be seen in Book One of Aristotle’s Physics. 57

A dialectical proposition seems to be inbetween the indetermination of the mind with

respect to both parts of a contradiction in a question and the determination of the mind to
one half in in the premise of a demonstration. 57-8

There is a “striving towards” rather than a resolution, because dialectic proceeds from
probable opinions which conflict with each other and which cannot resolve a question.
Resolution pertains to demonstration, just as judgment does. 59

ON the battlements of the ancient castle-monastery of Grottaferrata the thick breeze

pours doewn throught the bristling leaves of the stout branchesof the noble oaks of the
sacred grove upon the flanks of Mt. Albano and the first hearth fires of the winter
perfume the air. The buds are . . . .

If what is more diesired by us is less desirable in itself, then twhat is more known y us is
less knowble in itself. 61

The words of the teacher not only signify things the sudent knows already, but also an
order the student can put into his own knowledge. If the student could put that order into
the things he knows without having some one else point it out ot him, he would have no
need of the teacher. This is, in fact, that that man does who discovers, by himself,
something uknown to him. This is also why we said that learning imitates the process a
man would go through in coming to know something by himself. 64

In I Meta. n. 45, “Those things which are farthest removed from the senses are difficult
for man to know; for sensory perception is common to all men since all human
knowledge originates with this. But those things which are most universal are farthest
removed from sensible things, because the senses have to do with singular things. Hence
universals are the most difficult for men to know. [Thomas qualifies this in the following
but his qualification does not destroy the universality of this statement. He says in the
CBT that both universal causes and universal metaphysical concepts are farther from the
origin of our knowledge in the senses and therefore more difficult for us to know. A
distinction has to be made between mere universality of predication—the most universal
predicates are known from the start—and universal predicates whose concepts have been
separated from matter so as to include both bodily and immaterial subjects.]
But the statement which appears in Book One of the Physics seems to
contradict this [182a24]( but agrees with CBT 5.1!!!!!!!!!!! on the difficulty of
knowing being as being). For it is said there that more universal things are known first by
us; and those things which are known first are those which are easier. Yet it must be said
that those things which are more universal according to simple apprehension are known
first; for being is the first thing that comes into the intellect, as Avicenna says [???], and
animal comes into the intellect before man does. For just as in the order of nature, which
proceeds from potentiality to actuality [the universality of predicates is based on their
empty potentiality. The less they contain the more broadly they can be predicated.],
animal is prior to man, so too in the genesis of knowledge the intellect conceives animal
before it conceives man. [Knowledge of causes and predicates go in opposite directions.
However our understanding of merely universal predicates becomes enriched when we
can separate their concepts from matter. This requires that we proceed first in the
knowledge of causes, from the particular to the universal. So that a metaphysical
understanding of universal concepts, separated from matter, may be a very difficult thing
to attain although a simple apprehension of them is not.]. But with respect to the
investigations of natural properties and causes, less universal things are known first,
because we discover universal causes by means of the particular causes which belong to
one genus or species. Now these things which are universal in causing are known
subsequently by us (not withstanding that they are things which are primarily knowable
according to their nature), although things which are universal by predication are known
to us in some way before the less universal (notwithstanding that they are not known
prior to singular things). For in us sensory knowledge, which is cognitive of singular
things, precedes intellective knowledge, which is about universals. And some importance
must also be attached to the fact that he does not say that the most universal things are the
most difficult absolutely but “just about” [the qualification need not be an entire
dismissal of the statement as can be recognized by CBT 5.1]. For those things which are
entirely separate from matter in being, as immaterial substances, are more difficult for us
to know than universals [One might conclude from this that metaphysical universals are
easy and first known by us. But metaphysical universals are also far from sensation and
difficult to know, see CBT VI.1???.]. Therfore, even though this science which is called
wisdom is the first in dignity, it is still the last to be learned.”

[He is trying to explain why metaphysics comes last in the order of learning, why it is
MOST DIFFICULT. He answers that it is last and most difficult because it is most
universal and universals are far from the origin of our knowledge in the senses. But
there is an objection: Aristotle says in Physics 1.1 that universals are what we first know,
and what we first know is easiest to know. Being falls into the mind without effort. So
Thomas distinguishes between universal causes and universal predicates and says that
metaphysics is most difficult and last because of the difficulty of knowing universal
causes while we know universal predicates “in some way” before the less universal.
However, to this qualification, we can append what he says in the CBT, that
metaphysical, immaterial, universal concepts are also far from the origin of our
knowledge in the senses and therefore more difficult even than mathematical concepts. It
is for this reason, it would seem, that he and Aristotle say that children cannot
understand, not only the first causes, but the metaphysical concepts which they can only
mutter with their lips (CNE). If this were not true, it would seem that metaphysics would
have to be both the first science as well as the last. It would be first insofar as it
considers universal concepts and last insofar as it considers the first causes. But it is
clear that no one understands universal concepts in a metaphysical way until they have
progressed in the understanding of causes. Thomas’s many explanations of the term
metaphysics bears this out.8 Metaphysics comes after physics because metaphysical
concepts can only be discovered by resolving from material, sensible things to something
which is not material or sensible.]
Is it sufficient that the separated substances are most difficult for us to know to make
metaphysics the last to be learned? If being as being is most easily known it might also
be the first known.

8
“Maxime autem universalia sunt, quae sunt communia omnibus entibus. Et ideo terminus resolutionis in
hac via ultimus est consideratio entis et eorum quae sunt entis in quantum huiusmodi. [the
metaphysical consideration of being and its properties does not begin with our first thought. It is the final
terminus of our thought.] Haec autem sunt, de quibus scientia divina considerat, ut supra dictum est,
scilicet substantiae separatae et communia omnibus entibus. Unde patet quod sua consideratio est maxime
intellectualis. Et exinde etiam est quod ipsa largitur principia omnibus aliis scientiis, in quantum
intellectualis consideratio est principium rationalis, propter quod dicitur prima philosophia; et nihilominus
ipsa addiscitur post physicam et ceteras scientias, in quantum consideratio intellectualis est terminus
rationalis, propter quod dicitur metaphysica quasi trans physicam, quia post physicam resolvendo occurrit.”
The name first philosophy refers to the science’s dominion over first principles, judging them and defending
them from objections. Metaphysics refers to the order of learning, the order in which even the judgment of
principles must take place. The judgment and defence of the first principles can only take place after
physics. First philosophy is not begun before metaphysics because they are the same science.
“It is called metaphysics inasmuch as it considers being and the attributes which naturally accompany being
(for things which transcend the physical order are discovered in the process of analysis, as the more
common are discovered after the less common)” (CM proem.). “Metaphysica, inquantum considerat ens et
ea quae consequuntur ipsum. Haec enim transphysica inveniuntur in via resolutionis, sicut magis communia
post minus communia.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even universal concepts, in the sense
that they are arrived at last, are the final terminus, in the way of resolution, are harder for us to know.
this shows that the CM n.45 must be taken as only a partial qualification of the order in our knowledge
of universal predicates. The metaphysical concepts of being and its properties are come upon or
discovered in the via resolutionis just as the more common after the less. And it is in this sense that they
are far from the sensible origins of our knowledge, farther even than the subjects of the other sciences
(CBT 5.1). This distinction explains how Thomas can say that being as being is what is first known and
also that it is very difficult to know, the final terminus of resolution. What we first know is our most
universal concept, but the extent of that concept is not understood until we can separate it from the
material circumstances in which it is first known. These metaphysical concepts of being come to be
known only after physics because our minds begin, even in understanding, with what is sensible: “post
physicam discenda occurrit nobis, quibus ex sensibilibus oportet in insensibilia devenire” CBT 5.1.c.3.

“Quaedam vero speculabilia sunt, quae non dependent a materia secundum esse, quia sine materia esse
possunt, sive numquam sint in materia, sicut Deus et Angelus, sive in quibusdam sint in materia et in
quibusdam non, ut substantia, qualitas, ens, potentia, actus, unum et multa et huiusmodi. De quibus
omnibus est theologia, id est scientia divina, quia praecipuum in ea cognitorum est Deus, quae alio nomine
dicitur metaphysica, id est transphysicam, quia post physicam discenda occurrit nobis, quibus ex
sensibilibus oportet in insensibilia devenire” CBT 5.1.c.3 Metaphysics, since it considers things like
being, which can be without matter, is learned after physics because we arrive at a knowledge of non-
sensible, immaterial things through a knowledge of sensible things. Again, its not just a matter of
abstracting metaphysical concepts from material things directly and at the very beginning of life. The fact
that we know the non-sensible from the sensible requires that we come upon our metaphysical concepts by
means of our scientific investigation of physics. They are learned by us after physics, post physicam. It
could not be more simple. Metaphysical concepts of being, substance, act etc. are more difficult for us than
the concepts of the other sciences. It is not just universal causes that are difficult to know.
The subject of logic is some relation that the thing known can have to the thing unknown
in the state of being understood, which relation, however, presupposes a relation in reality
itself. 65

CBT v.1 p.14

“There are still other objects of speculative knowledge that do not depend on matter for
their being, because they can exist without matter; either they never exist in matter, as in
the case of God and the angels, or they exist in matter in some instances and not in others,
as in the case of substance, quality, being, potency, act, one and many, and the like. The
science that treats all of these is theology or divine science, which is so called because its
princple object is God.”
Metaphysics is ONE science. There is not one science that treats being as being and the
first princples and another that treats the first causes. When Thomas says that
metaphysics comes after the other sciences in our knowledge, he means all of it. Only
after the other sciences have been studied can metaphysics begin to judge the first
principles of science from the vantage point that it offers, being as encompassing more
than material reality. Until being is separated from matter in our understanding, a
universal explanation and defense of the principles cannot be given. Materialists think
they can do this, but the best that they can do is give a natural, material explanation.
Metaphysics is meta physics because it goes beyond the natural, explaining things from
the basis of all being.

CBT V.1“By another name it is called metaphysics;9 that is to say beyond physics,
because it ought to be learned by us after physics, for we proceed from sensible things to

9
“For instance, the name Metaphysics came to mean what it does in a very casual way. Because of the
place assigned to them—after the Physics—by an early compiler of Aristotle's works, certain treatises were
called Metaphysics: meta ta phusika. This provides us with the etymology of the name, I.e., 'that whence
the name was taken'; whereas the primary imposition of metaphysica as a single word refers to
treatises which, in the proper order of learning, are to be studied after those on nature. Eventually, by
a new imposition, going beyond yet embracing the previous one, as Boethius (cir. 480-524) employed this
term, referred to the science which Aristotle himself had called First Philosophy and Theology--'First' by
reason of its principles, 'Theology' because of its principal term, viz., knowledge of what is divine.” 151
those that are non-sensible.10 It is also called first philosophy, inasmuch as all the other
sciences, receiving their principles from it, come after it.”
So is it before and after the other sciences in the same sense? Is it literally preposterous?
Is the part of metaphysics that concerns first principles before the other sciences and the
part that concerns first causes after them? Or, is it before and after in different respects?
Is it first in the order of dignity, as that upon which others depend is more noble, and
after in the order of learning, as the knowledge of words comes after the knowledge of
letters and science of solids comes after science of plane figures (Cat. 15)? To answer
these questions we have to figure out how it is that the first principles of all science
belong to metaphysics and in what sense metaphysics give their principles to the other
sciences. Thomas says that simple apprehension of the principles is common to all
sciences, but that metaphysics is different in that it judges and defends them (???).11

The name first philosophy refers to the science’s dominion over first principles, judging
them and defending them from objections. Metaphysics refers to the order of learning,
the order in which even the judgment of principles must take place. The judgment and
defence of the first principles can only take place after physics.

Have to write a section on metaphysics treatment of first principles. In what sense do

the first principles belong to metaphysics?

10
Thomas begins the CBT (also the ST !!!!) with a reflection on the order of learning
Commentary on Boethius: proemium 3-4: order of learning the sciences, natural road
I will seek her out from the beginning of her birth,
and wil bring the knoeledge of her to light (Wisdom 6:24)
“The natural gaze of the human mind, burdened by the weight of a perishable body, cannot fix itself in the
first light of truth, by which everything can be easily known. As a consequence, human reason in the
development of its natural knowledge must advance from things that are posterior to those that are
prior, and from creatures to God.
Commentary on Boethius: Q.V.1ad 9
Although divine science is by nature the first of all the sciences, with respect to us the other sciences come
before it. For, as Avicenna says, the position of this science is that it be learned after the natural sciences,
which explain many things used by metaphysics, such as generation, corruption, motion, and the like. .. .
Moreover, the sensible effects on which the demonstrations of natural science are based are more evident to
us in the beginning. But when we come to know the first causes through them, these causes will reveal to
us the reason for the effects, from which they were proved by a demonstration quia. In this way natural
science also contributes something to divine science, and nevertheless it is divine science that explains
its principles. That is why Boethius places divine science last, because it is the last relative to us.
SCG 2.4 .4 order of learning the sciences
Thomas says that as divine science uses human philosophy as her handmaid, so too
the first philosophy utilizes the teachings of all the sciences in order to realize its objectives.
Proemium to Thomas's Commentary on the Meta: the order of learning the sciences
the whole science is said to concern what is separate from matter both in existence and thought.
It is called divine science or theology inasmuch as it treats of the substances referred to above. It is called
metaphysics because it considers being and its attendant properties; for these objects that go beyond
physics are discovered by the process of analysis as the more universal is discovered after the less
universal
11
“Beginning from principles that are more known to us, we proceed resolutively toward what is more
known in itself. But wisdom, judging and ordering all things, possessing what is more knowable in
itself, judges and orders compositively.” Dolan 45, n. 1
Commentary on the Boethius De Trinitate
Q.3.1.c, p. 66, order of learning the sciences, natural road
Owing to a deficiency on our part, divine and necessary realities, which are most
knowable by nature, are not apparent to us. We are not adapted to examine them form the
outset, because we have to arrive at what is more knowable and prior by nature
beginning with what is less knowable and posterior by nature. But what we first
know is known on the strength of what we eventually come to know; so from the very
beginning we must have some knowledge of those things which are more knowable
in themselves, and this is possible only by faith (=credendo, believing).

The first principles which are the first things we come to know and are self-evident are
elucidated and defended from objections much later by metaphysics. Being, the first
thing that falls into the mind, is an effect of the First Being, and because the effect shares
a likeness with its cause, we can be said to have a knowledge of the First Being, at least
in potency, from the very dawn of our knowledge. It is clear that we have certain
knowledge of the first principles even from the start. If we know anything, we know the
first principles. If someone denies the first prinicples there is nothing they can know,
strictly speaking. If the law of non-contradiction is false, there is no such thing as a truth
to be known. So we have to know and acquiesce to the first principles before we can have
any science at all. But to know that two plus two equals four, you do not need the proofs
of metaphysics. You already know it with certitude. But metaphsyics clarifies the
principles (shows their full universality, for example in Meta. 5) and defends them
against objections.
Thomas makes the analogy here: as faith is to the beatific vision so is knowledge
of principles to the science of metaphysics. Knowledge of the first principles does not
constitute metaphysics as a science.12
back to 66
“The sequence of the sciences makes this clear, for the science that concerns the
highest causes, namely metaphysics, comes last in human knowledge, and yet the
sciences that precede it must presuppose certain truths that are more fully elucidated in
that science.”
Knowledge of metaphysics comes after that of the first princples, but the first principles
are more fully elucidated in metaphysics.
As faith is to theology, so is knowledge of the first principles to metaphysics. Just as it is
not necessary to be a theologian to have faith, faith does not constitute the science of
theology. One can have faith without being a theologian. Analogously, metaphysics is
not constituted by a knowledge of the first principles. The science which is last in
human knowledge more fully elucidates the principles which are used by the other
sciences.13 The clarification and defense of the first principles is only possible for the

12
P. 68 (CBT 3.1.c) “The light with which we are naturally endowed causes assent to
self-evident first principles, and the truth of the principles themselves moves us to assent
to the conclusions known through them . . . knowledge of the principles is taken from the
senses, and yet the light by which principles are known is inborn . . .”
13
1183 (CNE?) “wisdom, in declaring the truth about principles, is understanding; but in knowing
the things inferred from the principles, it is science.”
metaphysician, but one need not be a metaphysician to know the first principles. The
principles are analogous.14 Only the metaphysician has knowledge of all the different
senses of the principles and can order them (see Meta. 5).15 This presupposes a
knowledge of the other sciences.

Just as the person of faith does not have the direct knowledge of God until after this life,
the learner does not know, have or do metaphysics until he has had the requisite
experience, until then he is only a believer in things known by faith in another. Thus the
metaphysician can guide the learner in ways that the learner does not understand but
accepts with the natural faith due to wisdom. When Thomas proceeds proemilaiter (e.g.,
defining and dividing a work) he often says things which the student can only take on
faith. The metaphysician or wise man directs the learner to develop certain useful
opinions which he will only understand in a scientific way once he has completed his
studies. These interventions (for example, Aristotle in Physics 1.2) should not be taken
as interrupting the order of learning the sciences because they are not taken scientifically
but in the mode of belief.

Thomas doesnt say that the part of metaphysics that deals with highest causes comes last
but he says the science of metphysics comes last. However, because the principles that
are elucidated by metaphysics are first known outside of metaphysics some want to
conclude that metaphysics begins with the knowledge of those principles. This leads to
the conclusion that metahpysics is constituted in us from the moment that we have any
knowledge at all, as soon as we know something exists, or the principle of non-
contradiction. If this is not the case the question then becomes when we are able to
separate being from body, when do we ascertain that being encompasses more than
bodies or matter? Some suggest that knowledge of this broader notion of being is not
necessary but merely seeing it as a possibility is sufficient. But this is an odd basis for
14
Sufficiens est accipere unumquodque istorum communium, quantum pertinet ad genus subiectum, de quo
est scientia. Idem enim faciet geometria, si non accipiat praemissum principium commune in sua
communitate, sed solum in magnitudinibus, et arithmetica in solis numeris. Ita enim poeterit concludere
geometria, si dicat: si ab aequalibus magnitudinibus aequales auferas magnitudines, quae remnant sunt
aequales .. . (CPA 1.18.156) 25
Communia principia accipiuntur in unaquaque scientia demonstrative secundum analogiam, idest
secundum quod sunt proportionate illi scientiae. Et hoc est quod subdit exponens, quod utile est accipere
huiusmodi principia in scientiis, quantum pertinet ad genus subiectum, quod continetur sub illa scientia . . .
(CPA 1.18.154) 61
Thus the conclusions of the diverse sciences do not preoceed from the common principle in the way in
which those principles are common to all the sciences, but only as they are proportioned to the subject of
each science. But in this latter way, they cannot unite all the possible conclusions into one grand science.25

15
1181 (CNE?) “the wise man should not only know the things inferred in the matter that he is considering
but he should also declare the truth about first principles themselves not to prove them but to explain
common notions, e.g., whole and part, equal and unequal, and suchlike—a function proper to a philosopher.
When these common notions are known, the principles of demonstrations are clear. Hence the concern of
such a man is to argue against those denying principles, as is evident in the fourth book of the Metaphysics
(CH. 3)
science. How can metaphysics be based on the mere possibility of being being so broad,
not its actually being so? Then others want to say that the concept of being is never
constricted to material being. But if all you know is material being, and you have no
idea of there being anything else, it seems to follow.

See Kevin’s proposal for other texts on metaphysics and the first principles
We begin to know the first principles, the study of which belongs to metaphysics, in a
non-scientific, non-metaphysical way before we know them scientifically and
metaphysically, that is, before we can demonstrate things about them, like that their
negations are false. Thomas never seems to say that the simple apprehension of the first
principles belongs to metaphysics, only that what is known by our first, simple
apprehensions is clarified and defended by it. As the defender of the first principles of all
science, the metaphysician distinguishes and orders the other sciences. The
metaphysician defends the first principles of all the sciences, like the way in which in
Physics 1.2 the metaphysician steps in and defends natural science from the objections of
pantheism. It is in this way that the sciences take their principles from metaphysics, not
as if metaphysics were the source of our first knowledge of the principles, which are self-
evident, but as clarifying and defending them.

The knowledge of the first principles does not constitute the beginning of metaphysics.
The knowledge of the first principles are presupposed to any science, but they do not of
themselves constitute any science. Before one can begin metaphysics one has to be ready
to explain the first principles. It takes a lot more experience than just knowing the first
things that fall into the mind to be able to explain the first things that fall into the mind.
They are not simply univocal. Those principles are held analogously by the different
sciences.
It is sufficient to have the science of mathematics to know that there is quantity
and to demonstrate the properties of its species. The knowledge of mathematics is
perfected by the explanation of the higher sciences of the nature of its subject genus,
magnitude. But, again, mathematics does not fail to exist until that explanation is made.
Metaphysics’ consideration comes much later. Paradoxically, metaphysics does not
“give” geometry its subject genus until after the science of geometry is already
constituted. It happens later. So there is no contradiction in saying that geometry
receives its subject genus from metaphysics, and saying that a geometer may have no
knowledge of metaphysics, or of its explanation of magnitude. Metaphysics' explanation
of magnitude does not come before geometry in the order of learning. Metaphysics does
not come before geometry in the order of learning. A person can have no metaphysical
knowledge and do geometry. The explanation and defense of its subject genus is not
presupposed to doing the science. It is sufficient that the geometer know that there is
such a thing as magnitude and to prove the properties of the particular species (universal
mathematics???). It is a similar case with all of the first principles, metaphysics'
explanation of the first principles of science are not presupposed to knowing that they are
true and using them to have science.16 The explanation and defense of the first
16
Its not necessary for the particular sciences to consider the first principles in their universal extension:
Sufficiens est accipere unumquodque istorum communium, quantum pertinet ad genus subiectum, de quo
est scientia. Idem enim faciet geometria, si non accipiat praemissum principium commune in sua
communitate, sed solum in magnitudinibus, et arithmetica in solis numeris. Ita enim poeterit concludere
principles, the way in which the first principles belong to metaphysics, comes much later.
The metaphysical treatment of the first principles occurs much later. One can have the
first principles without understanding them with metaphysical clarity. Its not just any
knowledge of the first principles that is metaphysical. The self-evident knowledge that
the first principles are true are a result of nature not science (in what sense is
metaphysics understanding???only insofar is at clarifies and defends them???). Further,
this is contrary to the notion of metaphysics as the perfection of all our knowledge and
wisdom.
To say that you do not know the first principles without metaphysics, to say that not only
the principles but metaphysics itself, is presupposed to all science, is to confuse the sense
in which the principles belong to metaphysics (BdT).

CBT VI c. p.68 “The method of mathematics is also more certain than the method of
divine science because the objects of divine science are further removed from sensible
things, from which our knowledge takes its orgin. This is true both in the case of the
separate substances (to which our knowledge of the sense world gives us inadequate
access), and also in the case of the principles common to all things (which are most
universal and therefore furthest removed from the particular things falling under the
senses). But mathematical entities do fall under the senses and they are onhects of our
ingaination; for example, figures, lines, numbers, and the leike. So the human intellect
which takes itsknowledge from images, knows these things with greater ease and
certainty than it does a separate intelligence, or even the nature of substance, act, potency,
and the like. It is clear, then, that mathematical inquiry is easier and more certain than
physical and theological, and much more so than that of the other sciences that are
practical and for this reason it is said especially to proceed according to the mode of
learning.” Poi quote from Ptolemey

If metaphysics is presupposed in time to any other science we could not learn any other
science before we learned it and it would have to be the first science discovered. By in
time, I mean that either the learner or teacher has to have knowledge of metaphysics first
in time before it can learn or teach the other sciences.

In the second book of the PA, Aristotle makes it clear that we proceed from a knowledge
of the esitence of a thing to a knowledge of the nature. This is another example of going
from effect to cause (?). We first ask if something is and then why it is. But since ens
commune is not a genus (CPA 2.7, 2.8, 2.1, 2.2), universal being is not the essence of any
one thing. So the existence of things not known immediately by the senses, must be
demonstrated. Does this show that the “being” as a concept including more than
sensible being must be demonstrated?

Since ens commune is not a genus and therefore not in the definition of nay substance, it
cannot be true to say that we have sense experience of it. It is not present in the things

geometria, si dicat: si ab aequalibus magnitudinibus aequales auferas magnitudines, quae remnant sunt
aequales .. . (CPA 1.18.156) 25
we sense the way form and matter are. Similarly, all the most universal things, act and
potency and substance, etc., are present in the things we sense only in a contracted way.
Thomas says the most universal things are farthest from our senses, both the most
universal causes and being as being and its properties. This is because these are not
univocal terms, present equally in all the things of which they are predicated. Rather,
they are present in each kind of thing according to the being of each. Therefore, the most
universal properties of being as being and being as being itself are not known directly in
the things we sense, which only have being according to the mode of matter and form
composites.

The first principle, the whole is greater than the part, is analogous and doesn’t mean the
same thing when said of numbers, figures, substances, or universals. So, if I have not yet
fathomed what a number is but haven’t grasped the notion of substantial form or the
universal, my understanding of the principle will be different than someone who is able
to extend the principle to these other senses. This is true of all the first princples. We
first begin with the sense closest to our senses and then gradually extend it to more
abstract things. Thus in book 5 of the Meta., the senses of the most fundamental
(universal?) metaphysical terms begin with the sensible. We name things as we know
them so it seems we first know sensible things. It is in this way, by ordering the meanings
of the fundamental terms, that the metaphysician clarifies and defends the first
principles. “The philosopher does not establish the truth of these priniciples by way of
demonstration, but by considering the meaning of their terms. For example, he considers
what a whole is and what a part is; and the same applies to the rest. And when the
meaning of these terms becomes known, it follows that the truth of the above mentioned
principles becomes evident.” Meta. 5

The things they can sense are more known to men than the non-sensible or immaterial
things.70

Being is not one common nature in all things. It is analogous as Aristotle points out.
Since it is not a genus, one might think that there could be no science of it, but A. argues
that the unity of analogy suffices, like in medicine. Therefore, since it is analogous, the
being of a material being is not the being of an immaterial being.

When we examine the subjects of these other sciences (natural science and metaphysics),
we see that they are difficult for our intellect to understand for reasons that do not apply
to the subject of geometry. But the subjects of natural science and things studied in
natural science (like matter, motion, time, etc.) are difficult on account of their lack of
being, and, hence, lack of knowability, while the things studied in metaphysics (like the
separated substances [and being, substance, act, etc. see CBT VI.1] are difficult to know
on account of the weakness of our intellect—even though they are in themselves the most
knowable. But the things studied in geometry (like triangles and squares) do not lack
being, as mobile things, nor are they above the capacity of our intellect. We find
something similar to this in the case of our eyes. My eyes have no difficulty in seeing the
princted page before me know with the light there is. But it is difficult form y eyes to loo
at the sun, or to see something in the dark. The reason faor the difficulty in seeing is not
the same in each case. The sun is difficult to look at, not because it lacks visibility, but
because our eye is too weak, the sun being too bright for it. The difficulty in the other
case is due to the object which lacks visibility; i.e., lacks light whence things are visible.
Sciences like natural science have a difficulty analogous to the eye’s difficulty in seeieng
things in the dark. Things like motion and time are difficult to know because they barely
exist. When Shakespeare compares time to the waves, he is giving time an existence it
does not have. Our minutes, unlike the waves, do not exist together. Sciences like
metaphysics or theology have difficulty analogous to the eye’s difficulty in looking at an
object that is too bright for it. But the subject of geometry is analogous to something that
is not difficult for the eyes to see. 72
But in the non-mathematical sciences . . . Their principles are hidden to us because,
unlike quantity as quantity, they are not per se represented in our phantasms or images
which are to our intellect as exterior colors are to our eyes. 74

The being that makes me be cannot be without matter, and the first things we know are all
like that.

The first thing to be considered in the science of logic is the universal [if you cannot
understand what the subject of a science is you cannot understand anything else in it];
yet most men do not know distinctly what a universal is, since it transcends our senses
and imagination whence our intellectual knowledge is derived. This, then, is an example
of a principle which the human intellect does not easily grasp. 74

“But I should like to know wheterh you mean that there are certain ideas of which all
other things partake and from which they derive their names; that simiilars for example
become similar, because they partake of similarity, and great things become great because
they partake of greatness; and that just and beautiful things become just and beautiful,
because they partake of justice and beauty?”
“Yes, certainly,” said Socrates, “that is my meaning.”
“Then each individual partakes either of the hwole of the idea or else of a part of the
idea? Can there be any other mode of participation?”
“There cannot be,” he said.
“Then do you think that the whole idea is one, and yet, being one, is in each one of the
many?”
“Why not, Parmenides?” said Socrates.
“Because one and the same thing will exist as a whole at the same time in many separate
individuals, and will therefore be in a state of separation from itself.”
“Nay, but the idea may be like the day which is one and the same in many places at once,
and yet continuous with itself, in this way each idea may be one and the same in all at the
same time.”
“I like your way, Socrates of making one in many places at once. You mean to say, that if
I were to spread out a sail and cover a number of men, there would be one whole
including many—is not that your meaning?”
“I think so.”
“And would you say that the whole sail includes each man, or a part of it only, and
different parts different men?”
“The latter.”
“Then, Socrates, the ideas themselves will be divisible, and things which participate in
them will have a part of them only and not the whole idea existing in each of them.”
“That seems to follow.”

Socrates’ dilemma is die to his ignorance of something difficult to see or understand: the
universal whole. Such a whole does not fall directly under our senses and imagination
like the sensible integral whole. Hence, while the latter is easy to understand, the former
is not [If our first knowledge were of the immaterial being, the subject of metaphysics,
this would not be true!!!!!! Ask Brock why Socrates has a difficulty here in understanding
the universal whole and distinguishing it from the sensible whole.] . In speaking about
the universal whole, which is said to be a whole according to a later universal sense of the
word, Socrates, quite naturally, falls back upon the primary meaning of whole which is
the integral one coming under his senses and imagination. Hence, he falls into doubt, and
his doubt is a sign of there being something difficult to see in the matter. When our
intellect concentrates on this difficulty, it sees the necessity of extending the word whole,
with a new imposition, to the universal. When this has been done, a principle of logic has
been discovered. But that principle would never have been gotten out of the phantasms
or images (where only the prime analogue [in the order of our knowing??] of whole is
represented) [we can only have concepts of immaterial things in a secondary sense???]
unless we had gone through this dialectical process or one similar to it [is the
immateriality of immaterial things always known through demonstration????If so, the
same is true of being as being, the subject of metaphysics.].

Compare this passage with Thomas’s treatment of our knowledge of being in general in
ST I.87.3.
This is a good basis for an argument for the start of metaphysics being after the proofs
for an immaterial being. Immaterial concepts cannot be grasped by us immediately.
They have to be reasoned to in some way.

Difficulties similar to this are also found in metaphysics and theology where we must
also transcend our imagination [see the texts on the order of learning, especially the
reason for metaphysics coming last. We transcend the imagination by seeing that being
is immaterial.]. There seems to be a very close connection between the logical doctrine
of analogy [being/esse is not univocal] and the use of dialectic to bring the principles into
our intellect from the phantasms or images which are to our intellect something like
exterior colors to our eyes. We can also see this close connection in natural science
where the difficulty is due to the dimness of the object we are trying to know. In book
one of the Physics, we find the difficulties of Anaxagoras who came to the closest to
understanding prime matter. Anaxagoras cannot quite reach an understanding of the way
things are in prime matter. Like Socrates, he falls back upon a prior sense of the word.
He thinks of things as being in prime matter as they are in a box or as parts are in a
whole. Hence, like Socrates he falls into all kinds of difficulties as Aristotle shows there.
Our senses and imagination in some way attain directly to those first meanings of in, but
only in the intellect can we extend the word to in, with a new imposition, to being in the
potentiality of matter [we need to use reason to untie the dialectical knots before we can
extend the meanings]. The intellect would never do this, however, except in the face of
difficulties like those confronting Anaxagoras’s position. We do not have these
difficulties, however, in the case of the principles of geometry since these things fall
directly under the imagination whence our intellectual knowledge begins.76

p. 78: Eight elements in our knowing for understanding the proper mode of
proceeding:

1. The possible intellect, 2. the active, 3. the intelligible species, 4. the soul,5. proportion
between knower and known (corporeal intellects know corporeal natures), 6. reception
and 7. judgment, 8. will

1. possible, 2. active intellect, 4. Soul

Since potency is said in reference to act, the human soul (which is in potency to
existence) and the human intellect (which is in potency to understanding) cannot be the
same because their proper acts are not the same. From the fact that we are sometimes
understanding only in potency and, later, in act, it can be seen that our intellect is a
passive power. 79

3. the intelligible species

IN the Prima Pars (Ia.84), St. Thomas shows that the human soul understands, by its
intellect, corporeal things through similitudes or likenesses of them abstracted from the
phantasms or images derived from sensation, rather than through innate ideas. 79

What we first understand is the proper object of our mind. The proper object of our mind
is a natural being. Ergo . . .
Further, it is clear that what we naturally know are corporeal things. Like knows like
and we are corporeal things therefore we naturally and per se know only corporeal
things. If it were the case that immaterial being were the first thing we knew, that would
be the proper object of our minds. It would be natural to us to know immaterial being
per se. But we know from experience that all we know per se are corporeal things,
bodies and there properties. We can only infer the existence of immaterial things from
the sensible bodies we know. Text from ST on how to determine the natural object of
the intellect . . . elsewhere?

The agent intellect is not like other intellects

Lumen intellectuale . . . est purum . . . in angelis . . . in nobis autem lumen huiusmodi est
obumbratum per coniunctionem ad corpus et ad vires corporeas. CBT 1.1.ad 4

5. proportion between knower and known

Potentia cognoscitiva proprortionatur cognoscibili. Unde intellectus angelici, qui est
totaliter a corpore separatus, obiectum proprium est substantia intelligibilis a corpore
separata . . . Intellectus autem humani, qui est coniunctus corpori, proprium obiectum est
quidditas sive natura in materia corporali existens; et per huiusmodi naturas visibilium
rerum etiam in invisibilium rerum aliqualem cognitionem ascendit. De ratione
autem huius naturae est, quod in aliquo individuo existat, quod non est absque
materia corporali: sicut de ratione naturae lapidis est quod sit in hoc lapide, et de
ratione naturae equi quod sit in hoc equo, et sic de aliis. Unde natura lapidis, vel
cuiscumque materialis rei, cognosci non potest complete vere, nisi secundum quod
cognoscitur ut in particulari existens. Particulare autem apprehendimus per sensum et
imaginationem. Et ideo necesse est ad hoc intellectus actu intelligat suum obiectum
proprium, quod convertat se ad phasmata, ut speculetur naturam universalem in
particulari existentem. ST I.84.7
This is why mathematical sciences are so well proportioned to our intellect. For these
sciences study an object that is directly or per se represented in the phantasms. 80

6. Reception and judgment

Signs of their distinction:

1. reception stronger in sleep, judgment weaker 2. confused judgment more certain, while
distinct reception more perfect (?) 3. one thing to undersand what someone is saying,
another to judge the truth of it 4. by judgment the intellect is reflexive, not by reception 5.
judgment also requires resolving to the senses, not just reception (does it
really??????) 6. judgment not determined by reception, but by the light of the mind

2. The distinction of the senses bears out the distinction between judgment and reception

The sense of touch gives us a greater certitude (which is sought in judgment), than the
sense of sight, as appears in the doubting Apostle, Thomas. Yet the sense of sight
receives things more clearly and distinctly. 81
Compare DK’s article Sedeo Ergo Sum!!!! Need to make notes from it to augment section
on sensation, answer Brock’s questioning of the vagueness of touch….!!!!!!!

The intellect can reflect upon itself and its relation to thing known. Therefore, only the
intellect can know if it is true or false. The senses cannot reflect on the relation between
themselves and the thing they know.

5. Judgment requires resolving to the senses, not just reception

Sed quia primum principium nostrae cognitionis est sensus, oportet ad sensum
quodammodo reolverre omnia de quibus iudicamus . . . DV 12.3.ad2

The mode of proceeding proper to the human intellect

A. on the part of the intellect

1. all our knowledge begins in the senses.

2. our understanding goes from potency to act.
3. our knowledge goes from what is more known to us to what is more knowable.
4. our knowledge begins with the confused before the distinct.
5. imperfect to perfect: bit by bit
6. because of the particularity of our intellects, we need many different sciences to know
what we can know (cf. SGC on the universality of God’s knowleddge. He knows with one
idea what we seek to know through a multitude. Just as all perfections are unified in him
but distinct in his creatures, his knowledge takes in everything in one universal act while
creatures must seek through many acts to attain a universal knowledge. This is true of
all intellects, the more perfect grasp in a simple act what the less perfect need many acts
to attain (see Duane on this, like imagination and intellect. So the angels no with one
idea all that they are naturally capable of knowing. Their intellects are immediate while
ours are discursive and must proceed bit by bit from nothing to understand things, and
only at the end do we have some sense of the whole.).
7. difficulty by cause of the object or the subject
8. we need the help of others to progress in knowing
9. Custom affects the way we address objects to be known
10. we need to learn logic and the proper ways of proceeding in the particular sciences
11. we proceed from things (sciences) closer to the senses to those farther away
12. we need manuductio
13. What we know first depends upon what we know later

B. On the part of the will

The will effects our mode of proceeding in our knowledge. This can be seen from the way
in which the will orders the mind toward action or knowing, which distinguishes
practical and speculative sciences, and the fact that in our for us to pursue knowledge it
is the will which must first engage the inellect.
1. we have need of natural faith to proceed efficiently in knowing
2. our desire for certitude

1. knowledge begins in sensation (see Metaphysics 1.1-2)

Cum anima humana . . . secundum naturam est actus corporis, eius autem intellective
potentia non est actus organi corporalis, ita habet naturalem aptitudinem ad
congoscendum corporalium et sensibilium veritatem, quae sunt minus cognoscibilia
secundum suam naturam propter eorum materialitatem, sed tamen cognosci possunt per
abstractionem sensibilium a phantasmatibus. Et quia hic modus cognoscendi veritatem
convenit naturae humanae animae secundum quod est forma talis corporis; quae autem
sunt natualia semper manent; impossibile est, quod anima humana huiusmodi corpori
unita cognoscat de veritate rerum, nisi quantum potest elevari per ea quae abstrahendo a
phantasmatibus intelligit. CM 2 (really???)
Cursus Theol. Salmanticeses?????????????????????

Again it does not seem that Thomas holds that the first thing we know is immaterial. The
mind is the form of a body so it is naturally inclined only to the knowledge of bodily
things. What we naturally know is the “truth of bodily, sensible things”.

Our confused first notion of being doesn’t actually contain the idea of that which can
exist without matter, which is the sense in which it belongs to metaphysics. This
clarification must be made before the mind can enter the science of metaphysics.
Isnt metaphysics our most distinct knowledge? Since the truth of material, sensible
things is what we first know, it takes many distinctions to arrive at a knowledge of
immaterial things. Thomas defines the subject of metaphyiscs as being as able to be
without matter, but even specifying it as immaterial is a distinction which presupposes a
knowledge of the material as such. We name things as we know them and the name
immaterial presupposes a knowledge of the material since it is as such a negation of the
material.

Is the subject of metaphysics confused being? [ See the marks of Wisdom in the CM
proem.] He has a specific designation for it, and he never (?) equates the subject of
metaphysics with being as first known. It seems unlikely that our most refined science
has as its subject our most confused knowledge. It is also our least perfect knowledge.
That would not be fitting for our highest science, that it give us our least perfect
knowledge.

We first know being but not as capable of being outside of matter—this is where we grasp
the subject of metaphysics. When we understand being as capable of being outside of
matter.

2. Material things, the proper objects of our minds, are only potentially intelligible—must
be abstracted from matter in order to be actually understood—therefore our minds must
pass from potency to act (Meta. 1.1???)

3. The proper objects of our minds, the natures of material things, are the least intelligible
in themselves. Therefore we proceed from what’s more known to what’s more knowable.
(Meta. 2.1)

4. confused before distinct (Meta. 2.1)

Confusa . . . dicuntur quae continent in se aliqua in potential et indistincte. Et quia

cognoscere aliquid indistincte, medium est inter potentiam et actum perfectum, ideo dum
intellectus noster procedit de potential in actum primo occurit sibi confusam quam
distinctum. CP I.1.n.7

4.1 certitude goes with vagueness

Since what is more known to us is also more certain for us, there is an inverse ratio for us
between certitude and clarity or distinction. Our more certain knowledge is less distinct
(more confused) while our more distinct knowledge is less certain. Since the more
universal is more confused than the less universal, our intellect also proceeds from the
more universal to the less universal. 84

5. Bit by bit: unlike the angels, man proceeds bit by bit to assimilate the knowledge of
which he is capable (Meta. 2.1???)
Oportet quod aliquid prius figuraliter dicatur, id est secundum quondam similitudinarium
et extrinsecam quodammodo descriptionem; et deinde oportet ut manifestatis quibusdam
aliis resumatur illud quod fuit prius figuraliter determinatum, et sic iterato plenius
describatur . . . ad naturam cuiuslibet hominis pertinere videtur, ut ea quae bene continent
descriptionem alicuius rei perducat de imperfecto ad perfectum particulatim disponendo.
Primo scilicet unam partem, et postea aliam investigando. Ad hominis enim naturam
pertinet ratione uti ad veritatis cognitionem. Rationis autem proprium est non statim
apprehendere veritatem: et ideo ad hominem pertinet paulatim in cognitione veritatis
proficere. Substantiae vero separatae, quae intellectuals dicuntur, statim absque
inquistione notitiam veritatis habent. CNE I.11, nn.131-2

This gradual process takes time, not only as far as one individual is concerned, but also as
far as the human race is concerned.85

Non one ever suggests that the presocratics should have known there were immaterial
beings based merely on the confused notion of being that first fell into their minds.
Thomas says its understandable that they didn’t arrive at an understanding of immaterial
beings, like forms, because it is difficult to rise above the senses: we are so dependent on
them. They were only reasoned about what was directly sensible. Its because you can
prove the existence of immaterial things that they were wrong in thinking that their
considerations extended to all of being.

6. Mind needs many sciences to know what he can know (Metaphysics 1.2, 4.1, 6.1)
The necessity of many sciences for man is ultimately found in the lack of universality in
the similitudes drawn from the phantasms and in the dimness of our intellectual light:
Divisio autem in diversis rebus cognoscendis contingit in nobis ex hoc quod formae
intelligibiles in nobis sunt minime universales. Unde oportet quod diversas res per
diversas species cognoscamus. Et diversae species secundum genus faciunt diversos
habitus scientiarum . . . non omnis diversitas rerum facit diversas scientias, sed diversitas
quae requirit diversam rationem cognoscendi; sicut naturalia distinguuntur a
mathematicis . . . non quaelibet specierum diversitas facit diversum habitum—alias
oportet quod quot sunt res, tot sent scientiae—sed diversitas specierum quae non
reducuntur ad eumdem modum cognitionis secundum genus: quae quidem diversitas
contingit ex hoc quod lumen intellectus nostri est perturbatum (particulatim) et debile. III
Sent. 14..3.4
The reason lfor the weakness of our intellectual light was given above [it’s the power of a
corporeal organism]. The lack of universality in our similitudes or intelligible species is
seen by the fact that we require a separate thought for each thing we wish to know
distinctly. 85
If the intelligible forms known by our minds are not universal, how is it that we begin in
our knowledge with a most universal concept? In what sense is it most universal and
how is it different from the more universal forms of angels? If the natural object of our
minds was the subject of metaphysics, immaterial being, would we need many sciences?
Does it follow from this that our first thought is not the subject of our most universal
science?? Isn’t metaphysics distinct, perfect knowledge????
Metaphysics is the most difficult of the sciences which are possible for man. If its subject
were the first thing we knew, since what we first know is easiest known by us, it would be
easiest known by us.
Both knowing the first causes and clarifying and defending the first principles is most
difficult. It is more difficult than both mathematics and natural philosophy to clarify (by
explaining and ordering terms) of the first principles as well as defending them. The
universality of these fundamental terms is so great that they easily escape our ability to
grasp. Their universality, including both sensible and nonsensible creatures, is so far
from the particular, sensible things which we take our knowledge from that children are
incapable of grasping them, as Thomas comments.

The subject of metaphysics is what can be without matter. This is not implied by our first
confused notion of being. An angel?

7. Difficulty in knowing mostly by reason of weakness of intellect (Metaphysics 2.1)

difficulty in learning either by cause of the lack of intelligibility of the object or the lack
of intelligence of the subject
in omnibus, quae consistent in quaedam habitudine unius ad alteram, potest
impedimentum dupliciter vel ex uno vel ex alio accidere: sicut si lignum non comburatur,
hoc contingit vel quia ignis est debilis, vel quia lignum non est bene combustibilis; et
similiter oculus impeditur a visione alicuius visibilis aut quia est debilis aut guia visibile
est tenebrosum. Sic igitur potest contingere quod veritas sit difficilis ad cognoscendus,
vel propter defectum qui est in ipsis rebus, vel propter defectum qui est in intellectu
nostro. CM 2. 279

Since these latter, however, are most knowable [separate substances], it can be seen that
the chief difficulty in man’s intellectual knowledge is due to the weakness of his intellect.
This is in accord with what was seen above; to wit, that what is more known ot us is
really less knowable.

To know things less intelligible in themselves like matter, motion, and time is easier for us
than to know separate substances and the most universal things. Therefore, the weakness
of our intellects is what most inhibits us in proceeding in knowledge. Our intellects are
proportionate to the less intelligible objects.

8. we need the help of others to progress in knowing (Meta. 2.1)

Both the wise and the mistaken help us by their thought to discover the truth. We need to
use what others have accomplished if we are going to become wise ourselves because we
proceed bit by bit, starting from a blank slate.

Adjuvatur enim unus ab altero ad considerationem veritatis dupliciter. Uno modo directe.
Alio modo indirecte. Directe quidem juvatur ab his qui veritatem invenerunt; quia . . .
dum unusquisque praecedentium aliquid de veritate invenit, simul in unum collectum,
posteriors introducit ad magnam veritatis cognitionem. Indirecte vero, inquantum priores
errantes circa veritatem, posterioribus exercitii occasionem dederunt, ut diligenti
discussione habita, veritas limpidius appareret. CM 2.1. 279

9. We are formed in our thought by custom

The difficulty in our knowing illustrates well that knowledge requires some proportion of
the knower to the known. This is also why custom plays so great a role in the intellectual
life of man. . . . Custom generates a habit which gives us a proportion to one thing rather
than another. Hence, custom can make one thing seem more known than another.
Likewise, one’s individual innate dispositions (which are peculiar to one rather than
following upon human nature as such) give one a proportion to this rather than that so
that the same things do not seem more known to all men. These two things (innate
individual dispositions and acquired habits) are the causes why men can agree that we
should begin from the more known and, yet, begin in different places. 87

The Metaphysical Thomists say that the subject of metaphysics comes to us early on in
our intellectual lives if not immediately. This may be the effect of their habit of thinking
metaphysically. River Forest Thomists are habituated to thinking about natural things so
they are more inclined to see the necessity of natural philosophy for metaphysics, that
our first ideas are bound to matter. Which is right? Which is truer to human nature?

A difficulty might be raised here: if what seems more known to us according to our innate
individual dispositions or acquired habits is different from what is more known according
to human nature, which should be followed? (These things can be different as we see in
the case of Descartes. He acquired a habit of mind whereby he thought that intelligible
things were more known to his intellect than sensible things although the reverse is true
when we consider human nature.) If the former, each man would have his own oprivate
road to knowledge. This does not aree with the common opinion tha the road to
knowledge should be objective; i.e., the same for all. Experimental science, for example,
requires experiments that could be performed or verified by all scientists. On the other
hand, if men always begin with what is more known according to human nature, they
would seem to be hypocritical, not beginning with what seemed most known to them.
Since we should seek to acquire habits in accordance with our human nature, and
since human nature is formal with respect to what is individual in a man and matter is for
the sake of form, it is necessary for every man, as far as possible, to make what is more
known according to human nature also seem more known to him. If a man’s intellect is
not in this disposition, we may truly say that he has a diseased mind which must be cured
or restored to a disposition which is in agreement with human nature. The same is done
for a sense organ that is infected. 87

Human nature determines where we must begin in our knowledge. We sholdnt allow
custom or habit to warp our understanding of where to begin. We must return to the
natural starting point.

Since custom and individual inclinations are often a source of error when men
proceed according to them in the sciences, it is necessary that a man be first instructed in
logic (the common mode of proceeding in all the sciences) and, then, in the beginning of
each science, in the proper mode of proceeding in that science (Meta. 2.3). 87

10. Must begin with logic before all science and the proper mode of proceeding before
the particular sciences (Meta. 2.3)

Quia diversi secundum diversos modos veritatem inquirunt; ideo oprotet quod homo
instruatur per quem modum in singularis scientiis sint recipienda ea quae dicuntur. Et
quia non est facile quod homo simul duo capiat, sed dum ad duo attendit, neutrum capere
potest; absurdum est quod homo simul quareat scintiam et modum qui convenit scientiae.
Et propter hoc debet prius addiscere logicam quam alias scientias, quia logica tradit
communem modum procedendi in omnibus aliis scientiis. Modus autem proprius
singularum scientiarum, in scientiis singulis circa principium tradi debet. CM 2. 335

11. We go from things (ie. sciences) closer to the senses to those farther away

Since every order involves before and after, and these are said in reference to what is first
(the beginning or starting-point), it is necessary to know what is first in our intellectual
knowledge before knowing the natural order to be observed in that knowledge. The
starting point of our intellectual knowledge is sensation. We sense things before we
know anything else. Certain traces of the things we sense are left in our memory. From
these memories, we collect an experience. From our experience, we separate out the
common element. This common element or universal is the proximate starting point for
the rest of our intellectual knowledge although sense knowledge remains the foundation
of all. Hence, those sciences, which are closer to sensation, or which require lss
experience, come before others.17 This can be seen in the order which Aristotle and St.
Thomas assign:
Erit ergo congruous ordo addiscendi ut primo pueri logicalibus instuantur, quia logica
docet modum totius philosophiae. Secundo autem instruendi sunt in mathematicis quae
nec experientia indigent (Bobik), nec imaginationem transcendent. Tertio autem in
natrualibus, quoae etsi non excedunt sensum et imaginationem, requirunt tamen
experientiam. Quarto in moralibus quae requirunt (more) experientiam et animum a
passionibus liberum . . . Quinto autem in spaientialibus et divinis quae transcendent
imagiontionem (purely intellectual??) et requirunt validum intellectum. CNE 6.1211

It can be seen that, in this order, we go, in general, from the easier to the more difficult—
the easier being what is closer to our sense powers or what requires less experience. 88
17
CBT VI.1. ad3 “In learning we begin with what is easier, unless necessity dictates otherwise. For
sometimes in learning it is necessary to start, not with what is easier, but with that on which the knowledge
of subsequent matters depends. That is why in acquiring knowledge we must begin with logic; not because
it is easier than other sciences (for it involves the greatest difficulty, concerned as it with second intentions),
but because the other sciences depend on it inasmuch as it teaches the method of proceeding in all the
sciences. And, as the Metaphysics says, we must know the method of science before science itself.”

Ad 2 “Natural things come under the senses; but because of their instability when they begin to exist
in reality they do not have the great certitude of the objects of mathematics. These latter are not
subject to change; and yet they exist in sensible matter, and as such they can come under the senses
and imagination.”
Logic is not properly a speculative science but rather is a prerequisite like grammar.
And, since its subject is farther from the senses, more abstract, and more difficult, we
need to use manuductio to avoid doing violence to the intellect.

The placement of logic first in the order of learning does not contradict the fact that
distance from the senses determines the order of learning the speculative sciences. First,
logic is not a speculative science, and, besides, there are many other non speculative arts
and disciplines that have to be learned before the student is prepared to begin the
speculative sciences: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and music, for example. The rule refers
to the properly speculative sciences. Learning to read and write and do logic are all
prerequisites to beginning the speculative sciences and not speculative sciences
themselves.

It should not be thought that logic comes altogether first. Nothing prevents the young
from learning some mathematics before logic even though they cannot acquire
mathematics in a fully scientific way until they know logic.

Plato seems to say play comes before science. One first looks at a subject in a passing
way before in a disciplined way.

In fact, some knowledge of geometry and arithmetic would seem necessary as a

manuductio for the part of logic concerned with demonstration (as can be seen in
Aristotle’s use of mathematical examples in the Posterior Analytics). Moreover,
geometry and arithmetic and, especially, the middle sciences subordinated to them, have
an important role in first arousing the wonder of the young beginner, and this wonder is
the starting point of the speculative life.18 Again, geometry and arithmetic exercise the
imagination in an orderly way (?), making that imagination an apt tool to assist the
intellect in grasping things. Moreover, geometry and arithmetic purify the intellect so
that it develops some capacity to judge before beginning the other sciences, like logic,
where judgment is often most difficult.

This is Dewan’s point about the development of habits.

There are other disciplines which also come before logic and the speculative life as such:
grammar, the study of imitations (especially those using words and music) and rhetoric.
It is not hard to see that grammar should come before logic. A person who could not
speak or read or write correctly could not learn logic or any other science. Grammar,
also, makes us attentive to one kind of proper use of words which play so necessary and
important a role in our whole speculative life.19

18
“That it is not a science of production is clear even from the history of the earliest philosophers. For it is
owing to their wonder that men both now begin and then first began to philsosophize; they wondered
originally at the obvious difficulties then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the
greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and
about the genesis of the universe.” Meta. 1.2
 Likewise, it seems that some knowledge of imitations, especially music and those
having words as a means of imitation, and a knowledge of rhetorical speeches should
come before logic.

See where Plato says that the young Guardians should study music and gymnastic to give
them harmonious souls (??). See Neumayr’s dissertation in the Laval Theo. Poetry as
infima scientia.

The imitative arts and rhetoric, or rather their products, prepare us for the speculative life
in a remote way by disposing us towards the moral virtues which leave a man tranquil so
he can contemplate. The imitative arts do so by moving our emotions in accord with
reason and providing suitable representations of the differences between good and bad
actions and good and bad habits.

See the proem. to the CPA

Rhetoric can dispose us for moral virtue in that part of rhetoric which is concerned with
praise or blame; as in that magnificent speech of Daniel Webster praising George
Washington and holding him up as a model for all.
But, in a more proximate way, the poetic arts, and rhetoric prepare us for the
speculative life in five ways. First, they develop our wonder which is the beginning of
the speculative life; e.g., the plots and metaphors of a great poet strike us with wonder,
and the ability of a great speaker to hit upon the right words to stir his listeners and
arouse them to action fills us with wonder about how he succeeds in doing this.
Secondly, the poet develops our powers of imagination, or comparing things and seeing
the likenesses of things that are far apart [what does Aristotle say about metaphor in the
poetics??]. The rhetorician does this also with his invented examples, etc. This is an
introduction to the finding of likenesses in the speculative sciences which helps is to
grasp many things. Thirdly, the judgment we make about the plots, metaphors, choice of
words, etc. in the works of these arts dispose us for the most important act of the
speculative life—judgment. We are exercised in judgments according to the way which
is most connatural to us, that of resolving to sense, and in regard to objects which are
pleasant for us to consider from almost the beginning of our life. Fourthly, the works of
these arts provide us with many tools of manuductio—rhetoric especially with regard to
dialectic and the syllogism, and the poetic arts for moral science in particular although we
can draw things out of them for the other sciences too.

19
“such a science either God alone can have, or God above all others. All the sciences, indeed, are more
necessary than this, but none is better.
Yet the acquisition of it must in a sense end in something which is the opposite of our original
inquiries. For all men begin, as we said, by wondering that things are as they are, as they do about self-
moving marionettes, or about the solstices or the incommensurability of the diagonal of a square with the
side; for it seems wonderful to all who have not yet seen the reason, that there is a thing which cannot be
measured even by the smallest unit. But we must end in the contrary and, according to the proverb, the
better state, as is the case in these instances too when men learn the cause; for there is nothing which would
surprise a geometer so much as if the diagonal turned out to be commensurable.” Meta. 1.2
That which moves sooner catches the eye, Hamlet’s definition of reason, Plato’s allegory
of the cave, the whole dialogue presentation

Fifthly, they make us attentive to the power and importance of words which proper
use is so important for growth in the speculative life.
It is interesting that all of these arts (grammar, poetry, rhetoric, the mathematical
sciences) make a sensible or imaginable object. That is why they are so well
proportioned to us. For all our intellectual knowledge starts from the sensible or
imaginable, and what we make ourselves, we seem to know best. 90

Have to cross check with Berquist’s other stuff on the roads in our knowledge. The way
in which higher knowledge is more universal, unified . . .

12. we need manuductio

Whats the difference between manudcutio and dialectic?

The twelfth thing for us to consider in the mode of proceeding of the human intellect is
the need for manuductio. It is not enough for the teacher to lead the student from the
known to the unknown in a science by proposing the order of principles to conclusions,
by giving the demonstrations which are the substance of a science.

“ proponendo ei aliqua auxilia vel instrumenta, quibus intellectus eius utatur ad scientiam
acquirendam: puta cum proponit ei aliquas propositiones minus universales, qua
stamen ex praecognitis discipulus diiudicare potest; vel cum proponit ei aliqua
sensibilia exampla, vel similia, vel opposite, vel aliqua huiusmodi ex quibus intellectus
addiscentis manuducitur in cognitionem veritatis ignotae.” ST I.117.1.c

Thomas says the learner is more likely to know less universal propositions or sensible
examples. Which is to say that less universal propositions are more known to us. We
proceed from less universal propositions to more universal ones. If it were true that our
first idea was the subject of metaphysics this would not seem to be true. Cf. Plato’s
treatment of the principle that the whole is greater than the part. They examine the
principle through its less universal, physical instantiations to arrive at an understanding
of the most universal ones.

Superior enim angelus notitiam veritatis accipit in universali quadam conceptione, ad

quam capiendam inferioris angeli intellectus non est sufficiens, sed est ei connaturale ut
magis particulariter veritatem accipiat. Superior ergo angelus veritatem quam
unversaliter concipit, quodammodo distinguit, ut ab inferiori capi posit; et sic eam
cognoscendum illi proponit. Sicut etiam apud nos, doctores, quod in summa capiunt,
multipliciter distinguunt, providentes capacitate aliorum. ST I. 106.1.c.

The mind which only knows the confused first known thing knows nothing about
immaterial things. The natural philosopher, before proving the existence of them knows
nothing about them. To know what something is we have to know that it is.
For each separate thing he wants to know distinctly, man must have a separate thought.
Hence, man most of all needs to have universal truths divided up for him so that he can
grasp and, ultimately, judge them. This is why the teacher, in the words of St. Thomas
above, “propoonit ei aliquas propositiones minus universales, quoas tamen ex
praecognitis discipulus diiugicare potest.” This is also why the teacher uses “sensibilia
exampla” for these are more proportioned than universal thruths to the student’s mind
which starts from the sensible singular. Just as the human intellect (or reason) collects a
simple and universal truth from many particular ones [Really???]or from many sensible
examples; so too, it gathers one simple or universal truth from the likeness which it has to
many things that are known already, or it sees an abstract truth from the likeness which it
has to some truth that more falls under our senses or imagination. Or man’s reason is
gradually led in to grasp some simple, but profound thruth through trying to resolve the
many difficulties that surround it. A profound truth is not well seen by man to begin
with, but the various opposed positions and arguments contain some element or other of
that profound truth. Man is led in to that profound truth, that is not proportioned to him,
by those various opposed positions and arguments which stand out to him. 91

Maybe ask Berquist to lead me through this. Give me examples of each.

Although judgment is perfected in the sciences by proposing the order of principles to

conclusions, it presupposes that the intellect can grasp the principles, conclusions and
their connection. This latter cannot be done in the non-mathematical sciences without a
long and careful manuductio. 91
It is natural for man to proceed from one thing to another in his intellectual life because
he cannot know all things at once distinctly. He cannot know all things distinctly, at
once, because of the weakness of his intellect and its light, and the corresponding division
and lack of universalityin the likenesses separated from the phantasms. By lack of
universality, we here mean not representing many things distinctly by one likeness.Our
intellect must have a separate likeness for each ting we want to know distinctly. This is
one reason why the certitude proper to the human intellect is less than that found in any
other intellect. Just as the science which proceeds from fewer principles is more certain
than other sciences; so the intellect whose likenesses represent more universally has more
certitude. 91

Whats more certain for us is not more certain in itself. In order to be more certain in
itself, knowledge must be of necessary eternal causes.

13. What we know first depends upon what we know later

What comes before in our knowledge cannot depend upon what comes after in our
knowledge in the same way that the latter depends on the former. Diverse things cannot
be the cause of each other in the same way, but nothing prevents two things from ebing
the cause of each other in diverse ways. Walking, for example, is the cause of health in
one way, and health is the cause of walking in another way. Hence, nothing prevents
what comes before in our knowledge from depending in some way upon what comes
after in our knowledge. But, what is more, the human intellect cannot avoid having what
comes before in our knowledge depend in some way upon what comes after in our
knowledge.20 This is because our intellect derives its knowledge from sensible things and
proceeds from potency to act, from the more known to the more knowable, and from the
confused to the distinct.
Because our intellect derives its knowledge from sensible things, these latter are
known by it before anything else. But a perfect knowledge (insofar as this is possible) of
sensible things (studied in natural science) and of imaginable things (studied in
mathematics) can not be had until after we know how to direct our thinking by logic.
Logic is dependent upon some prior, but imperfect, knowledge of natural and
mathematical things, and a perect knowledge of thse latter depends upon logic. These
things do not dpend upon each other in the same way. Natural science and mathematics
depend on logic because logic shows us the common mode of proceeding in all the
sciences. Logic depends upon some knowledge (but not a scientific one) of natural
and mathematical things because one must understand some things before one can
discover the relations that belong to things understood in the state of being
understood (which relations are studied by logic). 92
The prpoper mode of proceeding in a science depends, not upon a scientific knowledge of
the subject (for this presupposes the mode), but upon an elementary or general
acquaintance with the subject (since the proper mode must be proportioned to the subject
of the science). 93

Is there anyting that doesn’t exist in any time or any place? Is there something that exists
in no place or time?

The principles in the particular sciences are less universal and serve as manuductio for
metaphysics

Logic, the common mode of proceeding in all the sciences, presupposes, or depends
upon, the mode of proceeding which is in conformity with the intellect. . . . The mode of
proceeding, which is in conformity with the human intellect, is not a proposition used to
prove the nature of the human intellect or a proposition entering into the demonstration of
the nature of the soul of which the intellect is a power. . . . . Once we know the nature of
our intllect and the nature of the ousl, we can begin to render the cause of this element in
the more of proceeding which is that our intellect should proceed with order from
sensible things. We can observe this element without knowing why it is true . . . 94

Isnt it also true that we can reason logically without knowing why it is logical?????

20
Q.3.1.c, p. 66, order of learning the sciences, natural road
Owing to a deficiency on our part, divine and necessary realities, which are most knowable by nature, are
not apparent to us. We are not adapted to examine them form the outset, because we have to arrive at
what is more knowable and prior by nature beginning with what is less knowable and posterior by
nature. But what we first know is known on the strength of what we eventually come to know; so from
the very beginning we must have some knowledge of those things which are more knowable in
themselves, and this is possible only by faith (=credendo, believing).
Since the human intellect proceeds from potency to act, from the more known to the more
knowable, from the confused to the distinct, it is necessary that what comes before in its
knowledge depends, in some way, upon what comes after. 94

We know the thing to be defined before we recognize its genus. But our distinct
knowledge of it (the definition) depends on a knowledge of its genus.

We know effects before causes, but effects depend on causes.

We know our thinking before our intellect, and our intellect before our soul, and our soul
before God although the latter is in each case a cause of the former. If our intellect could
begin with what was more knowable—the cause—there would not be the necessity of
what comes first in our knowledge depending in some way uon what comes after. 95

Until we have discovered the exisstence of immaterial being, we tend to think everything
is in place and time. We thing that which is, being, exists in place and time. It is
contained in place and time. This is because the proper object of our minds is sensible,
material, mobile things.

What comes before in our knowledge in some way depends upon what comes after. 95

This is huge for the order of learning. There is no way else to explain why metaphysics
comes last.

The man who desires to know accepts something on faith because he thinks that through
this he may arrive at what he wants to know. . . . . Faith is sometimes required to accept
both the truth of principle and that it is a principle. Somethimes faith is required only to
accept the principle as a principle. If the teacher leads the student from things the latter
knows to be true already, then the student need accept on faith only that these things are
that from which he will come to know what he desires to know. . . The student cannot
see perfectly the principle as a principle to begin with since this would mean tha the
already saw what followed from it and, hence, had no need of a teacher. 95

Faith is required even more for the student when he does not see the truth of the principle.
. . . . such principles (whose truth we accept on faith) are not used to prove the
propositions from which the truth of those principles will be ultimately established. Such
principles can be shown in another science whichc proceeds from propositions htat are
not proven by those principles.21 The geometer for example, assumes that one can draw a

21
Commentary on Boethius: Q.V.1ad 9
Although divine science is by nature the first of all the sciences, with respect to us the other sciences
come before it. For, as Avicenna says, the position of this science is that it be learned after the natural
sciences, which explain many things used by metaphysics . . . Nor is there necessarily a vicious circle
because metaphysics presupposes conclusions proved in the other sciences while it itself proves their
principles. For the principles that another science (such as natural philosophy) takes from first philosophy
(law of non-contradiction, where is it said that these principles are not premisses demonstrations;
Posterior???) do no prove the points which the first philosopher takes from the natural philosopher, but they
are proved through other self-evident principles. Similarly the first philosopher does not prove the
line between any two points or that two points cannot touch each other. This is shown in
the sixth book of the Physics from propositions that were not derived from that principle.
96

The first principle is defended by meta. but the defense does not use the principle as a
premises, only reductio’s etc. (??) What is the role of the first principle in
demonstrations???

The more a man’s natural ability, the more he will observe this most universal mode even
before considering explicitly that he is doing so. The teacher, who should know the truth
of the principles involved in this mode, and who should also see them as principles,22
proposes themode to quide the sudent more surely along the road that nature inclines us
to. When the student takes that road, he will eventually see that it is the road or must be
the road. . . . faith is required because what comes before in our knowledge in some way
depends upon what comes after.23 96

The natty road is presupposed to all our learning but is first accepted on faith. We don’t
knows its causes in the nature of the intellect until a long way from the beginning of our
intellectual lives.

A man can err, not only by desiring more certitude in a particular science than its subject
admits, but also b desiring more certitude than is possible for the human intellect. This is
the worst error. 97

The things of metaphysics, like first principles, are first held on faith.

Which of these reflections on the proper mode of proceeding for the human intellect, the
mode that it is in accord with the nature of the mind, are useful in responding to and
understanding the positions of Dewan, Owens, and Wippel (Gilson)? The ones that refer
to our dependence on sensation and how the determines our first knowledge to be
particular, imperfect, and causes us to proceed from what is less knowable in itself. The
one that refers to faith is also pertinent, the one on certitude less so.

principles he gives the natural philosopher by principles he recieves from him, but by other self-evident
principles. So there is no vicious circle in the definitions. Moreover, the sensible effects on which the
demonstrations of natural science are based are more evident to us in the beginning. . . . natural science also
contributes something to divine science, and nevertheless it is divine science that explains its principles.
That is why Boethius places divine science last, because it is the last relative to us.

22
CM 5.1 “The order which is considered according to priority and posteriority in continuous quantity is
first known by us (and things are named by us insofar as they are known to us), for this reason the term
principle, properly considered, designates what is first in a continuous quantity over which motion passes.”

23
CM 5.1 order is first known in the before and after of continuous quantity: “In the disciplines one does
not always begin to learn from something that is a beginning in an absolute sense and by nature, but from
that from which one is able to learn most readily, i.e., from those tings which are better known to us, even
though they are sometimes more remote by their nature.”
p. 78: Eight elements in our knowing for understanding the proper mode of proceeding: 1. The
possible intellect, 2. the active, 3. the intelligible species, 4. the soul,5. proportion between knower and
known (corporeal intellects know corporeal natures), 6. reception and 7. judgment, 8. will
The mode of proceeding proper to the human intellect
A. on the part of the intellect
1. all our knowledge begins in the senses. 2. our understanding goes from potency to act. 3. our
knowledge goes from what is more known to us to what is more knowable. 4. our knowledge begins with
the confused before the distinct. 5. imperfect to perfect: bit by bit 6. because of the particularity of our
intellects, we need many different sciences to know what we can know (cf. SGC on the universality of
God’s knowleddge. He knows with one idea what we seek to know through a multitude. Just as all
perfections are unified in him but distinct in his creatures, his knowledge takes in everything in one
universal act while creatures must seek through many acts to attain a universal knowledge. This is true of
all intellects, the more perfect grasp in a simple act what the less perfect need many acts to attain (see
Duane on this, like imagination and intellect. So the angels no with one idea all that they are naturally
capable of knowing. Their intellects are immediate while ours are discursive and must proceed bit by bit
from nothing to understand things, and only at the end do we have some sense of the whole.). 7. difficulty
by cause of the object or the subject, mostly by the weakness of the subject
8. we need the help of others to progress in knowing 9. Custom affects the way we address objects to be
known 10. we need to learn logic and the proper ways of proceeding in the particular sciences at the
beginning of our studies 11. we proceed from things (sciences) closer to the senses to those farther away
12. we need manuductio 13. What we know first depends upon what we know later
Our knowledge of the first things are first in the mode of faith before they are explained by metaphysics.
B. On the part of the will
The will effects our mode of proceeding in our knowledge. This can be seen from the way in which the will
orders the mind toward action or knowing, which distinguishes practical and speculative sciences, and the
fact that in our for us to pursue knowledge it is the will which must first engage the inellect.
1. we have need of natural faith to proceed efficiently in knowing 2. our desire for certitude
Our desire for precision?????

God/Esse Ipsum
Man
Nature
Being

Knowledge of being does not constitute knowledge of anything beyond nature, just the
opposite. Being signifies less than nature (almost nothing) a kind of intellectual pure
potency, is as matter to our every thought.

Descartes saw the importance of understanding the proper mode of proceeding in

philosophy. One might say that all of modern philosophy is marked by a distinct
rejection of the classical order of proceeding in philosophy. Some call this the subjective
turn, and later the linguistic turn (see McInerney, Characters in Search of an Author).
Descartes who may be seen as the father of modern philosophy certainly emphasizes his
understanding of method, and it is not the classical one. He equates the method of
mathematics with the natural order of learning, the mode of proceeding that conforms to
the nature of the human intellect.24

98 “no more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the
nature and scope of human knowledge . . . This investigation should be undertaken once
24
????
at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the
true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry comes to light.” Rules,
VIII, Descartes

Descartes on the
Eight elements in our knowing for understanding the proper mode of proceeding: 1. The possible intellect,
2. the active, 3. the intelligible species, 4. the soul,5. proportion between knower and known (corporeal
intellects know corporeal natures), 6. reception and 7. judgment, 8. will

Descartes equates the soul with the mind (1,2,4), and says the mind is immaterial. Since
we can conceive of the body apart from the soul and the mind apart from the body, the
soul (=mind) must be substantially distinct from the body. Therfore, he is unable to
explain how the mind/soul and the body are unified. Because he is unable to explain the
unity of the soul and the body, he denies that the mind has material natures as its proper
object or needs the images of the imagination (5). The mind can function completely
apart from the imagination: “mind can act indempendently of the brain; for certainly the
brain can be of no use in prue thought; its only use is for imagining and perceiving”
(139, Reply V to Objections to Meditations). Descartes holds that we that there are ideas
inherent in the mind: “pure intellection . . . its intellectual activity in some manner turns
on itself, and comsiders some of the ideas which it possesses in itself . . .”(140,
Meditation VI on First Philosophy).25 Because the intellect is not understood to be united
to the body, the things which are farther from the senses are not more obscure to it: “we
must not fancy that one kind of knowledge is more obsure than another . . .” (Rule XII).
There is not difficulty either by reason of the weakness of the mind or the dimness of the
object. Because he does not distinguish judgment from reception well (6), he equates the
perfection of judgment, which is truth, with the perfection of reception, clarity: “all
things which I perceive very clearly and very distinctly are true.” (Meditation III on First
Philosophy). That Descartes confuses judgment and reception is seen by the fact that he
defines the false as a privation of truth instead of a contrary. Judgments (to which truth
properly belongs) are contraries but one reception is not contrary to another: there is
only one knowledge of opposites, so privation is the opposite of reception. It is only in
virtue of knowing the goodness of God that we can trust our judgments (147). We do not
resolve our judgments to sense knowledge.26 Descartes denies that we know the existence
outside the mind of anything but the objects of pure mathematics (149). For Descartes,
knowing occurs in the same way as physical reception, receiving the other NOT as other.
Since we can only receive what actually is in the intellect, reception does not err. Since
Descartes seems to equate judgment and reception, he says that the inellect cannot err, as
such. Only the intervention of the will can cause error.

25
“It is my habit to study nothing so much as the scrutiny of certain very [simple] truths, which being
innate in our minds, are such that, when they are laid before anyone else, he believes that he has never been
ignorant of them .” (Reply to VII Objections). “among these simle ideas, some appear to me to be innate,
some adventitious, and others to be formed by myself .” (Meditation III on First Phil.)
26
“Descartes is at the beginninig of a long line of modern philosophers who do not want to reolve man’s
intellectual knowledge ot sense. The senses are not, for Descartes, an ultimate term to which all our
judgments must in some way resolve.” 102
20 pages on modern science and the order of learning; 2o pages on Descartes and Kant; 20 pages on
contemporary philosophy: analytical, phemomenological (Heidegger) and post-modern.

Descartes on The mode of proceeding proper to the human intellect27

Descartes denies that all knowledge comes from the senses. He holds that our
understanding of immaterial things is innate because they are not sensible as such. He
also says that mathematical ideas are not derived from the senses.28 According to
Descartes, nothing we say about immaterial substances, like God, comes from what we
know about sensible things (161). He suggests that the intellect is always in act, always
thinking (163). Following from his denial of our knowledge beginning in the senses and
going from potency to act, is his ignorance of our going from what is more known to us
(sensible, natural things) to what is more knowable (God and mind)29 and the confused to
the distinct.30 The only thing that allows him to accept the Cogito as true is that it is
clear and distinct to him. He thinks that he can extend this to a universal rule: whatever
is clear and distinct is true (166). All ideas that are not clear and distinct must be
removed (167). Since he rejects the tenability of the confused ideas which we first have,
we can only arrive at distinct ideas immediately, rather than bit by bit, through our first

27
A. on the part of the intellect
1. all our knowledge begins in the senses. 2. our understanding goes from potency to act. 3. our
knowledge goes from what is more known to us to what is more knowable. 4. our knowledge begins with
the confused before the distinct. 5. imperfect to perfect: bit by bit 6. because of the particularity of our
intellects, we need many different sciences to know what we can know 7. difficulty by cause of the object
or the subject, mostly by the weakness of the subject 8. we need the help of others to progress in knowing
9. Custom affects the way we address objects to be known 10. we need to learn logic and the proper ways
of proceeding in the particular sciences at the beginning of our studies 11. we proceed from things
(sciences) closer to the senses to those farther away 12. we need manuductio 13. What we know first
depends upon what we know later
B. On the part of the will 1. we have need of natural faith to proceed efficiently in knowing 2. our desire
for certitude
28
“But is it true that God and the soul are not understood in reference to bodies? When the ideas of God or
the soul involve begations of something sneible or imaginable (as incorporeal, immobile etc.) or some
relation to sensible things (as a cause of them), then they are referred to bodies and their ideas could be
drevied from the senses.” 106
2o pages on why Dewan, Owens and Wippel are wrong about the order of learning, really arguing openly
against them
This is where Dewan’s understanding of the primum cognitum fails. If our first idea was of being as
immaterial, being as being, then we would not know immaterial things only in reference to material bodies
and their properties. On the contrary, we would know bodies only in reference to spirits. The only things
that we can say about immaterial beings are arrived at by effect to cause reasoning (remotion, negation,
eminence . . .). So we can say nothing about immaterial things that is not first known through and said of
material things. The notion of form first means the visible shape of a body (see Thomas’s explanation of
form through shape, as being something better known, also Porphyry, meta. presupposes natural
philosophy’s understanding of motion, generation and corruption, ie. accidental and substantial form).
29
“Descartes does not see at all that what is more known ot us and what is more knable are not the same,
and that we must proceed from the former ot the latter. This follows from is ignorance of the two
preositions. What is more knowable (more in act) is less known to us because our intellectual knowledge
starts from sensible things that are material and intelligible only in potency, and because our intellect
proceeds from potency to act.” 107
30
“it is certain that we shall never take the false as the true if we only give our assent to things that we
perceive clearly and distinctly . . .” (165)
confused ideas. Therefore, there is no need to proceed gradually from one science to
another: “all the sciences are so interconnected, that it is much easier to study them
altogether than to isolate one from the others” (168). Since the intellect is not in different
proportion to different objects, it does not know contingent natural things in a more
obscure way than the mathematical (for Descartes they are the same) nor is it
intrinsically hindered from knowing God and the highest things by the weakness of its
power (169). Whoever knows a thing, knows it as well as it can be known (170).
Therefore, there is no need for the assistance of others, or a tradition of learning (171).
While Descartes recognizes that custom can hinder understanding, he famously mistakes
hisown intellectual custom or forte for the natural mode of proceeding. This causes him
to confuse the method of the particular sciences with there common mode. Like in
mathematics, Descartes’s order of learning the sciences (or, for Descartes, the one
science) begins with what is most knowable, the soul and God, so that he inverts the
classical order, the science of immaterial being coming last. Descartes does not see the
need for manuductio, ordering premises being all that is called for. He minimizes the fact
that what comes first in our knowledge depends on what comes later. Therefore he
ignores the role of natural faith in human learning. His desire for certitude so compels
him to reject his reliance on the senses, because they may deceive, that he makes the
rejection of the senses the cornerstone of his work: “My statement that the entire
testimony of the senses must be considered to be uncertain, nay, even false, is quite
serious and so necessary for the comprehension of my meditations, that he who will not
or cannot admit that, is unfit to urge any objection to them that merits a reply.”(184).
Like Dewan, Descartes want to place something immaterial before material concepts:
“this notion of thought precedes that of all corporeal things and is most certain; since we
still doubt whether there are any other things in the world, while we already perceive that
we think” (185). This is like the angels, the primary object of whose intellect is their
intellect or substance. To say what Descartes says, is to make man like God and the
angels. But we have to proceed from a knowledge of material things to that of the
intellect, by reflection, and the other separate substances, through their effects, and
finally God. Descartes, since he is uncertain of anything until he knows that there is a
good creator, must know God with his first knowledge. He can be certain of nothing, he
says, until he knows that there is good God who does not deceive.

Aligquam cognitio quanto altior est, tanto est magis unita et ad plura se extendit: unde
intellectus Dei, qui est altissimus, per unum quod est ipse Deus, omnium rerum
cognitionem habet distincte. Ita et cum ista scientia sit altissima et per ipsum lumen
inspirationis divinae efficaciam habens, ipsa unita manens, non multiplicata, diversarum
rerum considerationem habet, nec tantum in communi, sicut metaphsyica, quae
considerat omnia inquantum sunt entia, non descendens ad propriam cognitionem
moralium vel naturalium. Ratio enim entis, cum sit diversificata in diversis, non est
sufficens ad specialem rerum cognitionem; ad quorum manifestationem divinum lumen
in se unum manens . . . efficaciam habet. Sent., Pro., 1.2.s

For God there IS only one science.

 Knowable was more known ot us so that God, the most knowable, was most known to us
by a kind of intuitive knowledge as Descartes held, then our intellect could have one
science in the natural order.118

The distinction of the sciences is more due to a diversity in their ways of judging than to
a diversity of the reception or representation involved in each. 118 Really? How so??
Hence, Descartes, seeing only reception or representation on the part of the intellect, does
not see the necessity of many habits to perfect the intellect in regard to judgment.

Etiam in hominis ratine contingit, quae, ex sensibilibus et per signa quaedam colligit
veritatem, viam habet ad utromque oppositorum. SCG, IV.55

Dialectic is an important part of manuductioleads us to the unknown by similia et

opposite. Hence, an ignorance of manuductio in general . . . 121

Our intellect is especially weak in the beginning because it proceeds from potency to act.
Hence, since perfection is based upon act, our intellect is most imperfect to begin with. It
is, in thet order of intellects, analogous to prime matter in sensible things which is most
imperfect. Hence, as it is impossible fr ththing more imperfect in sensible things than
prime matter; so also, it is impossible for thtere to be an intellect more imperfect
than our own. . . . Moreover, our intellect is so weak in thebginning that it is not capable
of dialectical exercise until it has spent much time with disciplines somewhat extraneous
to reason, as poetry and rhetoric. 122

The difficulty of bringing some principles out of the phantasms into the intellect . . . The
opinions of the wise sometimes differ from the opinions of most men because they go
farther from the senses than the latter do. When someone is led to contradict themselves
by using these probable opinons, this contradiction forces the intellect to make distinct its
passage from the senible to the intelligible. A good example of this is found in the
passage from the Parmenides . . . Socrates, a wise man, has penetrated, in a vague way, to
something intelligible that exceeds the senses and imagination—namely, the universal
whole. But, he knows the universal whole only in a very imperfect way, as is seen byt
the fat that he cannot avoid confusiong it witht the integral whole that falls under the
senses and imagination. The difficulty he is led into makes us realize that his notion of a
universal whole is, in some way, derived from that of the integral whole when trying to
answer questions about the universal whole; as if he had only imperfectly separated the
latter from the former. This imperfect separation is not sufficient to have the
universal as a starting-point for logic But this difficulty cannot be solved unless we
separate more precisely the universal whole from the integral whole. The solution then
of the knot created by the dialectical arguemtns does nothing other than to bring the
universal whole into the intellect so we can begin logic.125

This example has very many parallels with the dilemma about the being as first known
and as the subject of metaphysics. Being as first known is also imperfectly separated
from the material beings from which it is taken. To arrive at the distinctly separate
subject of metpahysics (see CP 1.1) there must be some reasoning done. Dialectic would
suffice if the concepts of immaterial substances were directly accessible to the mind.
Since they are not, effect to cause reasoning must be used.

The connection of dialectic and the analogy of words with the process of bringing
principles out of the phantasms shows that they are an important part of manuductio. 125

Descartes mistakes the certitude of the quid nominis for the distinction of quid rei:
“According to the laws of true logic, the question “does a thing exist?” must never be
asked unlesss we already understand what the thing is . . .”
Thus for example, Descartes thought it was absurd to try to define motion since
everybody already knows what motion is. 126
Is our first idea analogous to a quid nominis?

The first thing that Thomas does in the Summa Theologica is to note how students of
theology have been hindered by teaching that does not respect the proper mode of
proceeding: “We have considered that students in this doctrine have not seldom been
hampered . . . because those things that are necessary for them to know are not taught
according to the order of the subject-matter . . . Endeavoring to avoid these and other
like faults, we shall try, with confidence in the help of God, to set frother whatever is
included in sacred doctrine as briefly and clearly as the matter itself may allow.”

DeK: Abstraction From Matter, pt. 2

Maybe a section on abstraction, following DeK?

In the first case we abstract a universal, animal, from a less universal, man; in the second,
the particular is a singular. It is likewise called abstraction of the whole from the subjects
or ‘subjective parts’ of which it can be said. . . . The term ‘abstraction,’ then, is plainly an
analogical one. It has a further meaning still in the special case of mathematics. 54

But one might ask how mathematicals can be the subject of science if they don’t exist in
the world. This is a difficulty question to answer.

Ipsa conception intellectus tripliciter se habet ad rem quae est extra animam. Aliquando .
. . . conception intellectus habet fundamentum in re immediate, inquantum res ipsa, favit
quod intellectus sit verus . . . . Aliquando . . . fundamentum non sit in re, sed in
inetlellectu, tamen remotum fundamentum est res ipsa. Unde intellectus non est fasus,
qui has intentioes adinvenit. Et simile est de omnibus aliis qui consequuntur ex modo
intelligendi, sicut est abstraction methematicorum et huiusmodi. Aliquando . . . . non
habet fundamentum in re, neque proximum, neque remotum, sicut conceptio
chimerae . . .. et ideo conceptio est falsa. In Sent. 2.1.3.c.

The first was abstract in the sense that we left aside the individual sensible thing, like the
bones and flesh of Socrates . . . The second [see CBT 5.2] is abstract in the sense that the
definition disregards both individual sensible matter and common sensible matter. This
then is a very different way of abstracting from matter. 57

In the very act of predicationg the definition of the definitum, we see that the proposition
is true: that there is such a body, that sphere is in the sense that we may form true
propositions about it . . . Thus in the mathematical object we have an actual intelligibility
of another kind, free from the limitation of sensible matter. 58

ST 1.85.8.c
The object of our intellect in its present state is the quiddity of a material thing, which
it abstracts from the phantasms . . . since that which is known first and of itself by our
knowing power is its proper object, we must consider its relationship to that quiddity in
order to discover in what order the indivisible is known. . . . what is altogether
indivisible, as a point and unity [ipsum esse!!! Esse subsistens simpliciter]. . . this
indvisible has a certain opposition to corporeal reality, which is the quiddity
which the intellect seizes primarily and per se.

So whatever is opposed to corporeal reality is not what we first know. But the being
which is the subject of metaphysics is immaterial and, as such, opposed to the corporeal
or material reality. Thefefore, insofar as the being which is the subject of metaphsyics is
immaterial, it is not what we first and primarily know. Thomas says that bodies are what
we know best.31

CBT V.4.ad4 “Now even if angels were composed of matter and form they would not be
composed of sensible matter, from which both the objects of mathematics must be
abstracted and those of metaphysics must be separated.”

ST I.85.1 “the object proportionate to the power of knowledge . . . we must say that our
intellect understands material things by abstracting from phantasms, and thorugh material
things thus considered [with the common matter of the universal, abstracted from the
individual matter of sensation] we acquire some knowledge of immaterial things on the
contrary, angels know material things throught the immaterial.”

3. The formal distinction begween sciences Is not based on degrees of generality

Regarding the first mode of defining, we must observe that the sciences are not
distinguished according to each and every kind of abstraction. We noted that from the
universal ‘man’ we can go on to ‘animal’, which is more universal; and from here to
‘living being’, and hence to ‘being’, and then to ‘whatever can have the nature of object’
including even ‘that which cannot be an object in any sense.’ These are degress of sheer
generality,--specific, generic, or proportional—and the degrees lying within are
inexhaustible. iF this sort of abstraction could distinguish the sciences, there would
be as many sciences as there are degrees of generality. Besides, they who define
metaphyiscs by nothing more than gernality would find this gernality superseded by a far
greater one; for what could prevent us from saying ‘let A stand for the subject of every
31
“Words that signify local movement are emplyed to designate all other movements, because bodies which
are circumscribed by place, are best known to us.” ST I.II.7.1.c
such a science including that of metaphysics,’ or let B stand for what is impossible as
well as for its opposite.’ The art that does not name anything at all, viz. logistics
(logistike: the art of calculation), would be queen. But to the true nature of science
and its true mode of definitionl this kind of thinking is totally irrelavent. A degree of
generality is not more actually intelligible in the measure that it is more general, but
in proportion as it is removed from mater. No definitions contain individual sensible
matter; some contain common sensible matter; others, like those of mathematics, abstract
from common sensible matter too, even though the defined could have no being in nature
without it. And if there were definition without sensible matter of something that could
also be in reality without it, we should have a third mode of defining, and therefore a
third kind of principle of science, or degree of actual intelligibility. So soon as we
establish that there are objects like spheres or equilateral triangles, we have shown that
there is a peculiar mode of definition which deals with them. In the same way, if we
could demonstrate there exists a reality without sensible matter at all, we would know
that there was a third mode of definition and that it held good for what is in the way of
Socrates. 59-60

A degree of generality does not carry with it more intelligibility . . . The general is more
potential and confused, whereas the perfection of knowledge lies not in the direction of
the more general but direction of something less general which must include nonetheless
the more general, in the way that man includes animal. 60

The fact that metaphysics is about our most vague notions and the first things that all
into the mind is not immediately obvious. In fact, most people would tend to think that it
did not belong to “wisdom” to treat what everyone, no matter how young or unlettered,
knows already. The sense in which these things belong to metaphysics must be explained.
They don’t seem to belong to it simply, but only insofar as they express properties of
being understood in its most universal sense, as including immaterial substances for
instance.

The contention that somehow we know the nature of immaterial being from the start
suggests that when we prove that there actually are immaterial beings there is no
surprise. We already knew that there need be such things, at least in possibility. This is
not in keeping with Thomas’s thought that we proceed in our knowledge from what is
closer to the senses to what is farther away. It was reasonably that the Presocratics
denied the existence of immaterial being, Thomas says, because they had not proceeded
in their knowledge beyond what is directly sensible. They had not even gotten as far as
the indirectly sensible substantial forms. Moreover, it does not seem in keeping with
experience that the proofs for the existence of immaterial beings are just elaborations of
something known from the start. Aristotle’s (Meta. 4.1?) and Thomas’s (SCG 1.12) claim
that the proof for the actual existence of an immaterial being show that there really is a
science beyond physics would be superfluous.
We have to question Dewan’s contention that the possibility of immaterial being is
known from our first thought since our first thought is a grasp of an immaterial nature.
Besides the difficulty of making this contention mesh with Thomas’s claim that what we
first know is corporeal, that what we know best are bodies, that our first idea is the
nature of a material being, etc., it seems to contradict our experience. We do not look at
the proofs for the existence of immaterial beings and say, “Knew that already.” The fact
that there are things that exist in no place or time is a novelty. Its counter intuitive. We
have to adjust our thought in order to take into consideration things that are not
matter/form composites like ourselves. Our first inclination is to think all things are
material like ourselves, like the Presocratics did. Thomas says it is difficult to raise our
minds above sensation and therefore it was reasonable for them to think they were
dealing with all being when in fact they were only considering material beings. It is for
this reason too that he says children are incapable of understanding metaphysics. He
says this of metaphysics as a whole. He doesn’t exclude any part of it.

Hence, that there is a third mode of defining is a matter for demonstration. This is the
peculiar condition of the third mode, if there is one. 61

The mere fact that the possible expression ‘a wholly immaterial substance’ reveals no
contradiction does not entail that there can be such a substance.
Only then might we change the iposition of ‘living’, or of ‘living being’, and make them
analogical terms, as light is used analogically of both candle-light and the light of
mathematics.
n.1, n.2 61

Analogical words are created over time. We name things as we know them. As we
progress in knowledge words are extended from their original meaning to more abstract
ones. There is nothing unusual about this.

If we did attempt to define quality without sensible matter, we could not succeed until we
had also demonstrated that there must be quality of this knind. We actually do this when
we demonstrate that there is a trinagle whose three sides are equal, for the resulting figure
is a quality. But it is a quality in abstract quantity, not which is a common sensible. In
other words, it is considered as a figure without sensible matter at all. . . . But if we
detahed or thought we could detach, quality from sensible quality, we would at once lose
our sensible quality and sensible matter and what would be left? . . . . “Is there any
immaterial quality?” . . . The point is that, though the question may have meaning, it does
not answer itself. If the answer is to be that there does exist immaterial quality, such an
answer calls for positive proof.
Unless we can prove that there is quality apart from sensible quality, which would
then be defined without sensible matter, we cannot know whether or not such a mode of
defining is possible. 62

This discussion of the possible existence of separate quality is relevean to Wippel’s

position on our arrival at the subject of metaphysics. He denies that our first idea is
sufficient. He thinks we have to distinguish between two types of question before we
arrive at being as being. When Wippel distinguishes between the question what is it for a
thing to be this or that and what it is for it to be at all, he is forgetting that the answer to
these questions may be the same thing. All beings may be matter and form composites.
Matter might be in the explanation of all that is. We can’t assume that there is a
difference between being and material being. This is a matter for demonstration. There
is no a priori answer to these questions, only a posteriori.

That thet name ‘quality’could never be extended to something that is not sensible, or that
is not the quality of quantity [the geometrical triangle is a quality of quantity], is
certainly not self-evident. 63

The mind does not form the nature of equilateral triangle, although it forms a mental
construction in order to reveal it.. . . We merely show that there is such a definiable
subject in the sense of truth, and that whatever is demonstrated of it is true of it qua
abstracted from all sensible matter. 63

Evidence to show that we might at least consider such a quality would depend upon a
demonstration that there is a third mode of defining, which means provisuch a quality in
reality in the way that man is in reality. It would be evidence leading not merely to what
might be condiered in separation, but to to what is separate in reality. 63

The subject of a science cannot be posited as if by an a priori principle. It must be either

induced from sensation or reasoned to by the intellect. If it lacks both sensible and
intelligible matter it is neither sensible nor imaginable, therefore it can only be reasoned
to.

The existence of things that are not directly sensible needs to be proven or reasoned to
(see Socarates’s sail analogy). Thus in geometry we prove the existence of triangles and
the other shapes and solids (numbers?). The possibility or impossibility of immaterial
qualities is not self-evident at all. It needs to be proven whether or not there are such
things. A material thing can be considered without its matter, but a material

Ashley “Need for a Solidly Grounded Metaphysics”

Aquinas holds that no science proves the existence of its own subject. Hence for
metaphysics to a valid science, we msut first establish that it subject, namely, “being as
such” actually esists. In the twentieth century most Thomists have either assumed this,
without proving it, or have given unconvincing arguments. At least this is the case if we
also accept the view of Aquinasacked by Huns Scotus, that the “being” in question is
analogous and extend to immaterial as wellbeing. Too many Thomists hav e assumed
that thte proof of the existd or of any kind of immaterial being is a task of metpahyiscs
itself, thus producing a circular argument in which metaphysics proves the existence of
its own subject. Aquinas provides the way out of this vicious circle. He explicitly
maintains that the required proof of the existience of immaterial being is provided not by
metaphysics but by physics, that is, natural science, whose proper object is not “being as
such” but changeable being, ens mobile.
For natural science itself no such proof of the existence of its subject is required,
since it alone among the sciences has a proper subject whose existence is immediately
and directly evident to human knowledge. This is so because its formal subject is the
essence of material things that is also the proper object of human intelligence.
Now, repetition of the same gives rise to various new kinds without bringing in anything
from outside that which is the same like 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3 etc., unity obtained by adding a
unit, being different in kind. 63

Thus, we don’t need experience in mathematics because once we have induced the
principles, we need not return to experience. We merely construct the other froms
(addition is a form of construction, in similar fashion as Euclid 1.1 constructs a triangle.

When we have abstracted sphere from sensible matter of whatever kind, the mind still
retains somete nature of matter, the matter of the abstract sphere, viz. the three-
dimensional continuum of which sphericity is the form. No mathematical entity can be
considered apart from a subject like triangle apart from its lines, or the number three
apart from the three units. The continuity of the line is the matter of the circle, and the
figure of the line is its form. The three units are the matter of the number three, whereas
the oneness that is peculiar to three as distinguishing it from any other whole number, is
its form. 67

Matter no where treats of substance as such, on the contrary, it abstracts from it. There
is nowhere a sense that one need to understand sensible substance as such to do
mathematics. Is intelligible matter the “substance” of which Thoams speaks of as
presupposed to mathematics?

If the subject of metaphysics is attained with our first thought, then even if there were no
immaterial beings, or if immaterial being was impossible, there would still be a science
beyond physics, because there would still be a narture beyond mobile natures. The
immaterial nature of being itself would still be a subject of legitimate scientific inquiry.
However, how could it be that being itself is immaterial but its only causes are material?
This is absurd. If being as first known is immaterial, the immateriality of its causes
would be demonstrable from that fact. However, Thomas never claims that the
immateriality of the first causes follows from the nature of being as first known. Just the
opposite, he says it is understandable that those who have not raised their minds to
contemplate what is above the sensible do not recognize the existence of immaterial
things. This, however, would not be true if the immateriality of being was evident from
our first ideas. If our first ideas were of the immaterial we would know immaterial things
better than bodies. This is contrary to our experience. Unlike angels, what we know best
are bodies, sensible natures. What we first know with the intellect are the things that we
sense, and only later are we able to raise our intellects above the sensible to understand
the things that go beyond the senses. For example, the names which we first attach to
sensible things are only extended to immaterial things, like being as being and its
properties, at the end of the intellectual life.

If there were a thing which is ‘what it is’ irrespective of all matter, then the thing and
what it is would be quite identical; it would be individuated by its form. Let us repeat,
however, that whether there is such a thing existing as Socrates does, but in separation
from matter, would have to be proved. Only then could we know, in a positive way, that
there is a mode of defining without even intelleigible matter, because we would then
know that there is that kind of thing. 69

The last words of what is perhaps Charles DeKoninck’s most important published
philosophical essay claim that the existence of immaterial being must be proved before
we know that there is a third mode of defining corresponding to a third speculative
science. He died at the second Vatican Council before finishing the essay.

Are there any indications in his notes how he would have finished the article? Ask Berq,
Quackenbush, everybody!!!!!

If our first knowledge/concept is metaphysical, we would have to progress in our

knowledge from metaphysicals to natural things. The starting point in our knowledge
would forever be metaphysical.

Instead of having to abstract or separate metaphysical concepts from our knowledge of

nature we would have to concretize our metaphysical ones to arrive at a knowledge of
natural things. Natural being is not neutrally immaterial, like the subject of metaphysics,
it is positively material. It is not universal genus that can be applied univocally of all
things. Therefore, as Dewan says, we would have to discover matter and then adjust our
idea of being accordingly.

But it seems that our knowledge developes in the opposite way, starting with the concrete,
material realities only later do we abstract immaterial realities. For example, act and
ability develop this way (see Meta. 9). And Thomas says that act, substance, etc., are less
known to us tha numbers, lines etc., which are closer to the senses (CBT V.3.c). He also
says that Metaphysics depends on natural science for an understanding of generation
and corruption, from which we get our notion of substantial form (CBT?). Thomas says
that we know best bodily things (ST). He says we name things as we know them and we
first name bodily things.

Abstraction and Existence: CBT V.3

That the mind does not accomplish abstraction in a unique way Aristotle makes clear
in the Physics (2.2). When the mathematician and the naturalist consider the same
subjects they do not consider then in the same fashion. . . . That is to say the word
abstraction has more than one meaning.

Compositio quidem, quando intellectus comparat unum conceptum alteri, quasi

apphrehendens coniuntinem, aut indentitatem reurum, quarum sunt conceptiones; divio
autem, quando sic comparat unum conceptum alteri, ut apprehendat res deversas. Et per
hunc etiam modum in vocibus affirmatio divitur composition, in quantum coniunctionem
ex parte rei significant; negatio vero dicitur division, in quantum significant rerum
separationem. (in I Periherm. 3. n.5)
Ipsum esse is the way a thing actually is, which results, in the case of natural things, from
various kinds of composition, form and matter, substance and accident. It is the condition
of the whole composite embracing all that it has rather than simply something which is
had. To formulate the difference between this interpretation of ipsum esse rei and that of
‘act of existence,’ the former can be designated by ‘mode of existence’ or simply they
way things are, e.g., ‘man is a rational animal’ which would be just as true even if there
were no individual men. 22

The intellect must be proportioned to then in order that it have determinate knowledge of
each. . . . Of itself unable to be assimilated to the natures of all the things it knows it
relies on the reception of something from outside itself. Owing to the aspect of passivity
implied in this reception, the power in which it is accomplished is called the possible
intellect [not potential intellect, ie. cogitative power]. 26

One thing can be understood without another to which it is conjoined if it is doesn’t

depend on that other in its essence.
St. Thomas verifies this conclusion by applying it to the various ways according to which
things can be conjoined one to another. A nature can be joined tt something else as part
to whole, or as form to matter. The verification of the conclusion in regard to things
conjoined as part to whole is exemplified by what a foot is. 28

When thte two of which one is considered without the other, are actually united, the
operation which so distinguishes them is properly called abstraction. Thus abstraction
properly so called pertains to the first operation of the intellect. It supposes the union of
things, one of which is understood without the other. It likewise presupposes that the one
so understood is notionally independent from the other. Distinction in the second
operation, wherein things are considered not merely separately [as in abstraction] but
as actually separate, is rightly called separation. 30

The role of distinction [or abstraction] in science to to aid the intellect in attaining the
intelligible aspect of things. . . . But matter and its conditions are the causes or the roots
of unintelligibility. Hence the ‘something else’, the ‘other’ from which we abstract is
matter (individual sensible matter [ie. natural science]; both ind. and common matter
and individual intelligible matter [mathematics]; or both sensible matters and both
intelligible matters [i.e. all matter, in metaphysics]see ST I.85.1.ad2). 30

Since the subject of metaphysics is not a sensible nature, neither to the exterior senses or
the imagination, it is something far removed from what we first know. We first know and
define sensible things.

Thus we see that the sciences really are progressively more and more abstracted from
matter, though not according as they appear in the order of learning. Just as logic forms
an exception for a practical reason, mathematics, though more distant, in a way, from the
senses, comes first in the order of learning because its object is abstracted from
something more sensible and is more simple, not being involved in matter and motion,
which take sense experience to know well (see CNE, etc, which say that children don’t
have the experience to know physics).

Though both involve the first act of the mind, simple apprehension or understanding, the
abstractions in natural science and mathematics are not the same because the one
abstracts an essence that includes sensible matter and the other does not. Moreover, the
definitions formed by the first abstractions are said of the things from they are
abstracted, but mathematical definitons are not said of things from they are abstracted
(curve is not said of nose, but snub is).

Sic etiam et intellectus intelligit lineam in material sensibili existentem, absque materia
sensibili: licet et cum materia sensibili intelligere posit. Haec autem diversitas accidit
secundum diversitatem specierum intelligibilium in intellectu receptarum : quae
quandoque est similitude quantiatis tantum, quandoque vero substantiae sensibilis
quantae. SCG II.75

That there is question here of radically different abstractions is borne out by the fact
already noted that the definitions in natural science, which are of universals, are
applicable to the things from which they have been abstracted, whereas mathematical
definitions are not. Natural derfinitons are applicable to existent singulars known
through sense experience. 31

The absence of any such verification in experience seems to undermine the very
foundation of mathematics. One is prompted to ask: do mathematical objects exist? If
the question refers to the way natural things exist, the answer is negative. Are they pure
fictions? The answer again is negative. What then is the value of its alleged definitions:
Are its assertions true? When the natural scientist defines man as ‘rational animal’, with
all that this implies, he can point to an actual man to illustrate what he is talking about.
His definition is of something that has individual instances in nature, and what he
deomonstrates of man in virtue of his definition will true of every instance. And if we
started from centaur, i.e., half man, harlf horse, we would have to ascertain that there is or
is not, could be or not, such a thing in nature. But for the geometer defining circle as ‘a
closed plane curve such that its cricumference is at every point equidistant from the point
within called its center,’ there is no need to show, nor could there be, that there are
instances of that figure in nature.
Although the geometer cannot and need not enlist the aid of experience to verify
the kind of subject he is talking about, he does not improvise sicne he does guarantee,
though construction, that there are such things in abstraction: this he does, for
example when from some elements of his science given in abstraction, he
demonstrates that there is such a thing as an equilateral triangle. When this subject
and not merely the meaning of its name, is thus positively known, then and then
nonly, canhe proceed to demonstate its properties. [CPA 1.2. n.3] 32

Does mathematics prove the existence of its subject????? Isnt that against the laws of
logic and science????
Because of their intellectual habits or customs, the metaphysical Thomists tend to divorce
their considerations from what is concluded in non-metaphysical science. This causes a
weakness in their thought. It seems that they may have a tendency to deny things that are
in fact more known to us than the conclusions of their metaphysical speculation. It seems
that they are led into error by this lack of care. Attentiveness to what is more known,
seems to have been, at least in part, the intention of Aristotle in beginning his
Metaphysics with a review of the order of learning and its dependence on sensation. The
only way which we can arrive at the correct conclusions of profound metaphysical truth,
which is farthest from what is most known to us and therefore least easy and certain for
us (CBT), we have to be constantly attentive to what is more known and certain to us.

For example, analogy is first a logical problem. The hasty decision to consider it
metaphysically leads to confusion. Metaphysicians who deny that we need to study
natural philosophy first make ridiculous claims about created actus essendi being God
(Brock article).

True propositions that are [natural phil.] or that have at least a foundation [mathematics]
in nature. 33-4
In virtue of a deomonstation the geometer proves that there is an equilateral triangle. The
force of his proof lies in the fact that he actually constructs such a triangle. This
construction is a technique which derives from the natre of the human mind and the way
things are in the mind. The mathematician is not concerned with construction for the
sake of constructing but for the sake of pricducing a subject about which he can
doemnstrate properties. Granted that without such a construct the nature would not be
known, existence in the mind is not therefore part of the definition of triangle. [does
this distinguish it from a second intention] The mind does not form the nature of
equilateral triangle. “Speculativarum vero scientirarum materiam oportet esse res quae a
nostro opera non fiunt . . .” Starting from particulars, existing in individual and common
sensible matter, as from a remote principle [see CPA 1.30.n. 5], the intellect is able by
abstraction, to attain abstract quantity [it attains the subject genus by abstraction and
the particular subjects by construction????]from whence it effects its construction, as in
the example used here of triangle. Triangle thus revealed as a definable nature has
actuality, but actuality that follows upon the way it is known and which is impossible of
verification in sensible experience. 34

. . . Et simile est de omnibus aliis consequuntur ex modo intelligendi, sicut est abstractio
mathematicorum et huiusmodi. In I Sent. 2.1.3.c.

Since abstraction properly so called refers to things which are conjoined, the difference in
the two modes of abstraction corresponds to the two different modes of union mentioned
above, viz., the union of whole and part and the union of matter and form. 34

Accidents befall substance in a certain order (of nature not of time). Quantity inheres in
substance prior to quality, and after quality come action and passion, etc. Quantity can
then be grasped as a form in matter prior to understanding such matter as the subject of
the sensible qualities by reason of which it is called sensible matter. Quantity can be
grasped without sensible matter but not without substance. Substance, as necessary to
the understanding of quantity, is called intelligible matter.. Being the subject of quantity,
known as prior to the sensible qualities that attend it in reality, substance can only be
attained by the intellect. 35
This is clearly not substance in the sense of a matter form composite, but almost as a
logical category, like subject. And, there is no suggestion that it might not also imply
another subject. Sensible matter, however, is properly the matter of a natural substance.

Quantity, when understood as prior to sensible qualities, is likewise understood as prior to

the per accidens sensible subject of these qualities and is relatied to it as sccident to
subject only in the sense of that from which it is abstracted. Sensible matter is not part of
what mathematics abstracts; it is the subject hat is abstracted from. Such abstraction does
not leave aside the subject qua subject of quantity, but qua subject of sensible qualities.
Taken as sensible subject, i.e., sensible matter, it is subject of both sensible qualities and
quantities. But this is not the business of the mathematician. 36

Brock: My point is that the subject is not understood as final or ultimate in the sense that
it itself is understood as not having a subject. Quantity has a subject and is a subject for
other accidents, quality, etc. Infact, the abstract subject of quantity (intelligible matter)
does itself have a subject, the one from which it was abstracted, ie. sensible matter!!!

Non enim mateia sensibilis comparator ad lineam sicut pars, sed magis sicut subiectum,
in quo esse habet . . . CBT V.2.ad2

The fact that mathematics considers substance as subject to quantity does not mean that
it considers it as such!!!!!!!! Or understands that substance as a final subject.

Abstract quantity is comprehensible to the intellect in asmuch as the intellect is capable

of recognizing it s natural priority to other accidents. 36

In geometry, whose subject is magnitude, all definitions include the continuum as

intelligible matter. This may be seen in the particular subsjects as attained by way of
aconstruction, viz., the sides of the trinagle or the surefaces and dpth of the cube. . . . As
in natural philosophy, the definitons of mathematics contain maore than that which is in
the mode of form. 37

Et ita sunt duae abstractiones intellectus. Una quae respondet unioni formae et materiae
vel accidentis et sibiecti, et haec est abstractio fromae a materia sensibili. Alia quae
repondet unioni totius et partis, et huic respondet abstractio universalis a particulari, quae
est abstractio totius, in quo consideratur absolute natura aliqua secundum suam rationem
essentialem, ab omnibus partibus, quae non sunt partes speciei, sed sunt partes
accidentales. CBT V.3

Sensible matter however cannot be abstractedfrom quantity bcause as has been seen the
sensible qualities which render matter sensible inhere in material sunstance thorugh
quantity and hence cannot be understood without it. 41
Sensible qualities cannot be understood without quantity.

Sic ergo in operatione intellectus triplex distintio invenitur. a) Una secundum

operationem intellecus componentis et dividentis, quae separation dicitur proprie; et haec
competit scitiae divinae svie metpahyiscae. b) Alia secundum operationem, qua
fromantur quidditates rerum, quae est abstraction frome a material sensibili; et haec
cometit mathematicae. c) teria secundum eandem operationem quae est abstraction
universalis a particulari; et haec competit etiam physicae et est communis omnibus
scientiis, quia in scientia praetermittitur quod per accidens est et accipitur quod per se est.
CBT V.3

In science, distinction is always ordered to separating something from matter in mind

[see ST 1.85.1.ad2, separation abstracts even from common intelligible matter], and truth
requires that this operation report things the way they are, which implies [???] a
distinction meaning that some things are separate from all matter, individual and common
sensible matter and all intelligible matter as well.

“some things can be abstracted (understand separated: haec competit scitiae divinae sive
metpahyiscae) even from common intelligible matter, such as being, unity, potency, and
act, and htelike, which can be without matter, as is plain regarding immaterial things.”
I.85.1.ad 2; ad 1: “Abstraction may occur . . . by way of composition and division, as
when we understand that one thing does not exist in some other, or that it is separate from
it.”

We don’t know immaterial things directly. We cant abstract the nature of immaterial
things because they are actually intelligible in themselves not partaking of matter, while
we must turn to the images in the imagination in order to know anything.

Cursus Philosophicus, John of St. Thomas

Cognitio confusa est, qua atingitur aliquid non resolvendo nec discernendo eius partes
seu praedicata aut attibuta. Distincta est e converse, qua cognoscitur aliquid resolvendo
seu discernendo partes aut praedicata. 20

Thomas says that metaphysics is the product of resolution, that is why it is last for us.
John of St. Thomas suggests that our first confused knowledge is knowledge of something
when the parts or predicates have not be discerned or resolved to. Distinct knowledge
occurs when the parts have been discerned and resolved to.

He distinguishes, following Cajetan, between potential and actual knowledge. Potential

knowledge is of what is contained potentially in something (like species in a genus).
Actual knowledge is of what is actually present in something (like genus and difference in
a definition).
John of St. T says that the order of our knowledge from the more common to the less is
explained by Thomas with three distinctions and three propositions: 1. sensastion comes
before understanding. 2. knowledge either confused or distinct, of the actual or potential.
3. our minds go from potency to act, imperfect to perfect, more known to more knowable.
First proposition: Connaturalis modus poredendi est a naotioribus et cerioribus quoad
nos ad ea, quae sunt noitiora secundum se. Second: Magis confusa nobis sunt prius nota.
Third: Ab universalibus ad singualria oportet procedere.
Sunt autem notiora nobis, quae magis proportionata sunt nostro modo et virtuti
cognoscendi, quae cum sit imperfecta et procedat de potentia ad actum, non habet pro
obiecto proportionato ea, quae sunt perfectiora et nobiliora secundum se. 20

Post. An. “quod nobis notiora sunt, quae sunt propinquiora sensui, simpiciter vero
notiora, quae a sensu remotiora sunt, ea vero ess remotiora, quae univeraliora sunt.” 72a1

Quando vero dicit universaliora esse notiora suecundum naturam, quia sumt remotiora a
sensu loquitur de his, quae sunt univeraliora in virtute et causalitate sive in abstractione
formali. Sic enim quae formalius abstrahunt, id est magis excludunt materiam, et quae
sunt magis universalia in virtute et causatione, sunt notiora secundum se, quia magis
perfecta, sicut Deus et angeli. 21

Nec oportet hic distinguere ordinem naturae et ordinem in pocedendo. Utriusque enim
porcessus acquisitionis est ab imperfectioribus ad magis perfecta; doctrina enim imitatur
naturam et accommodate se modo procedendi ipsius naturae, in qua est. . . . Unde bene
stat, quod alia sint notiora natura, alia notiora nobis, non tamen sit alius ordo seu modus
porcedendi doctinae et naturae in via generationis et acquisitionis. 22

Ex confusiori predicato reperto in ipsa natura . . Hoc autem est ipsum ens sub conceptu
magis confuse . . . 22

Singulare sensibile solum potest cognosci a nostro intellectu reflexe . . . 22

Ex ipso formali obiecto nostri intellectus . . . obiectum eius est quidditas seu quod quid . .
23

Sensus solum attingit res sub sensibili apparentia accidentium; formale obiectum
cuiuscumque sensus est aliquod accidens in concreto, v.g. coloratum, sonorum, calidum
etc. Intellectus autem penetrat ad intima rei, quae est quidditas, nec limitatur ad
sola accidentia quae per se movent sensibiliter. Et in hoc elevatur supra sensum.
Proprie ergo id, quod est per se primo intelligibile, est quidditas, et ita ipsam
singularitatem et ipsa accidentia respicit intellectus per modum quidditatis cuiusdam. Sic
enim intelligibiliter respicit et supra modum sensibilem; intelligere enim est quasi intus
legere et ad intriora rei penetrare, non exteriora tantum attingere, quod facit sensus . . . 23

Potest attingi ab intellectu quidditas singularitatis quoad an est, et non quoad quid est, et
sic facilius cognoscetur ipsum an est singularitatis quam naturae [???]. Sed esto ita sit,
quod intellectus incipiat cognoscere quidditatem sui obiecti non quidditative, sed quoad
an est, ita quod neque de ipsa natura neque de ipsa singularitate attingat aliud predicatum
quam ipsum an est, tamen hoc ipso non cognoscitur singulare ut singulare est, sed sub
confusione et ratione quadam communissima ipsius esse, ita quod de ipsa singularitate
non cognoscit nisi quod sit ens. Hoc autem est cognoscere aliquid commune ipsi
singulari et ipsi naturae; de utroque enim datur[essence and existence] cognitio quoad an
est, et sic ipsum esse seu an est ut concretum seu applicatum alicui singulari sinsibili
erit primum cognitum intellectus. Quare (quod valde advertendum est) quando
intellectus cognoscit aliquid quoad an est, non praescindit a quod quid seu a quidditate,
hoc enim est impossibile, cum sit fomale eius obiectum et primo et per se intelligibile,
sed solum non cognoscit quidditative, id est penetrando constitutionem propriam
quidditatis et causas essendi, sed in ipsa quidditate solum attingit praedicatum quoddam
valde commune et confusum, quod est ipsum esse; et hoc est, quod tunc congoscit ut
quod quid. 23-24

Prima ratio cognoscibilis a nostro intellectu naturaliter et imperfecto modo procedente est
quidditas materialis sub aliquo praedicato maxime confuse, quod paedicatum est ens,
non gradus aliquis specificus vel genericus, et hoc est congocscere totum cognitione
actuali confuse . . . ipsi actu convenit non potentialiter et in ordine ad interiora [ST I.85.3,
88.3] 24

Quando dicimus ens esse primum cognitum ly ens non sumitur pro abstracto in statu
universalitatis et separationis ab omni inferiori [the different kinds of abstraction
according to Cajetan], sed sumitur ens ut concretum et imbibitum in aliqua re
determinata . . . in ipso obiecto sic occurrente non discernuntur determinatae rationes, sed
solum accipitur seu concipitur secundum quamdam indeterminationem, in qua quidquid
ad tale obiectum pertinet, confunditur et fere est idem quod cognoscere rem quod an est. .
. . . praecise cognoscatur id, in quo nulla est discretion nec segregation, scilicet ipsum
esse; hoc enim est maxime confusum, quia maxime indistinctum. 24

This first concept does not preclude materialism, like that of the presocratics. Thomas
says that it is difficult to lift the mind above the sensible. We first understand sensible
things, like those the presocratics used to explain the everything.

In hoc concreto et in hoc toto et in hac specie, quae occurit, primum quod offertur
intellctui tamquam ratio quae, est illa confusio entis et quasi cognitio quoad an est, non
quia attingatur actu suprema illa universalitas entis seundum statum universalitatis,
sed quia de ipso obiecto seu natura primum, quod attingitur est ratio maxime indiscreta et
confusa. . . . hoc vocamus ens concretum seu applicatum quiddaitati sensibili, id est
in natura aliqua sensibili inventum, non ut subset statui abstractionis et
uneversalitatis secundum habitudinem et respectum add inferiora . . . Dicitur tamen
incipere intellectus ab universaliori, quia incipit ab eo praedicato, quod maiori
universalitati substerni aptum est. 25

Fundamentum ergo conclusionis positae fere redcutiur ad hunc sullogismum: intellectus

noster connaturali modo procedens procedit de potentia ad actum et de imperfecto ad
perfectum. Ergo proportionatum eius obiectum in tali processus debet etiam esse aliquid
imperfectius et confusius. Semper enim id, quod distinctius est, est perfectius confuse.
Sed conceptus entis quatenus in unoquoque obiecto applicate invenitur, est ratio
confusior et omnia, quae in obiecto actu inveniuntur, magis confundens et indeterminans.
Ergo illa est prima ratio cognoscibilis seu primum cognitum formale [?] respectu nostri
intellectus. 25-6

The human intellect is, in the realm of intellects, like prime matter is in the realm of
bodily things (ST???). Since it begins as a blank slate, lacking all perfection, it must
pass through the less perfect before it can arrive at more perfect knowledge, in the same
way that prime matter takes on bodily nature before it takes on life or sensation. So man’s
first idea must be his least perfect.

When the phantasm is presented to the agent intellect it contains individual sensible
matter. If the first idea we had was of being as being, being as able to be without any
matter at all, we would have to abstract from that phantasm not only individual matter,
but we would have to abstract it from the common sensible matter of the definitions of
natural science, and the common intelligible matter of the definitions of mathematics, to
arrive at a concept free from any matter whatsoever.32 It is in this sense that Thomas says
(CBT) that metaphysical notions of being as being are farthest from the senses, more
difficult and less certain for us. In question 85, Thomas describes the abstraction from
common intelligible matter distinctive of metaphysics as something other than the simple
abstraction which happens in all sciences. He first divides abstraction into simple
abstraction and separation. He then divides the kinds of abstraction according to three
speculative sciences. Since we don’t have simple apprehension of being existing apart
from matter (“it is proper to it to know a from existing individually in corporeal matter”),
but only of the quiddities of material things, we must separate it from matter before we
can consider it metaphysically.
Moreover, it would seem difficult for us to arrive at a proper concept of an
immaterial quiddity at all. Thomas says that there is a special kind of abstraction proper
to the science of being as being which he calls separation and involves not merely simple
apprehension but a judgment that one thing is apart from another. This makes it seem
that the subject of metaphysics, being as being, is indeed a late arrival in our intellectual
lives and not something that would occur with our first idea. In the via resolutionis, the
most universal concepts come last. It is for this reason that metaphysics comes last in the
order of learning.33

When we arrive at our first idea, it is abstracted from sensible thing around us: a tree, a
chicken, a dog, a bicycle, an ice cream cone. These things are material things. They do
not exist without matter. They cannot exist without matter. How would it be possible to

32
“The intellect therefore abstracts the species of natural things from the individual sensible matter, but not
from the common sensible matter . . . . mathematical species, however, can be abstracted by the intellect
from sensible matter, not only from individual, but also from common matter, though not from common
intelligible matter . . . But some things can be abstracted even from common intelligible matter, such as
being, unity, potency, and act and the the like, which can be without matter, as is plain regarding immaterial
things.” ST I.85.1ad1-2
33
(CM proem.). “Metaphysica, inquantum considerat ens et ea quae consequuntur ipsum. Haec enim
transphysica inveniuntur in via resolutionis, sicut magis communia post minus communia.”
abstract from these things a concept of immaterial being or of being as able to be without
matter? These things which we are conceiving with our first idea are material things that
cannot exist without matter. We do not understand yet that being or things can be
without matter. The idea that somehow being itself tells us that it can be without matter
seems to make being a generic, univocal nature present in all things, but it is not. It is
analogous and in material things, being is proportionate to material things. The being of
a material thing is material existence which cannot be without or apart from matter.

The theory that being as we first understand it is the subject of metaphysics has the
problem that being as we first understand it, though most intelligible to us, is the least
intelligible thing in itself. Since our minds go from potency to act, imperfect to perfect,
what we first know is least intelligible in itself. We know that something, some material
thing, exists. That is all. We know nothing except that something exists. Period. Thus, if
being as we first understand it is the subject of metaphysics, we would have to say that
the subject of metaphysics is least intelligible in itself, but this is not the case. Thomas
says that being as considered in metaphysics is abstracted not only from individual and
common sensible matter but also from common intelligible matter (ST I.85.1). Being
considered in this way is very intelligible in itself though it is difficult for us to
understand (CBT???). It is more difficult and less certain for us than understanding
something so simple as lines and numbers, for instance. Being as considered in
metaphysics is the term of the resolution of our thought and, as such, it comes after
natural philosophy. We cant bring our thought to rest until after we have understood the
things closest to us.34 We can only arrive at non-sensible, immaterial being through
material, sensible being.35 Once we have understood the principles underlying the
natural world we can grasp being universally and give it a complete treatment.36 We can
extend being to both the natural and spiritual and hence discover the causes of all being.
The confused being that we first know is the being of a material thing, which we
have sensed and formed an image of. Its not, as Plato thought, that sensation is merely
the occasion for understanding. But rather, sensation itslf presents the matter for our
understanding. Whatever we know with the mind must first be present in sensation. So
the being that we first understand is the being of a material substance. If we were to
conlude from the fact that we first know being, and this understanding of being is prior to
a distinct understanding of matter, that this is a concept of immaterial being, we would
be faced with the problem that this concept needs to be a predicated of the sensible being
from which we have taken it. This sensible being cannot be without matter, and therefore
the concept we have is not of being as able to be without matter. Our first concept is a
confused and vague understanding of the material beings that we sense and from which
we form our first images. Our concepts are taken from our sensible images and therefore
are concepts of those sensible substances. The subject of metaphysics extends beyond the
sensible things which we first know and which are the proper object of our intellects. We
can only know immaterial things indirectly. We have no direct concepts of immaterial

34
“dicitur metaphysica quasi trans physicam, quia post physicam resolvendo occurrit.” ???
35
“metaphysica, id est transphysicam, quia post physicam discenda occurrit nobis, quibus ex sensibilibus
oportet in insensibilia devenire” CBT 5.1.c.3
36
“Metaphysica, inquantum considerat ens et ea quae consequuntur ipsum. Haec enim transphysica
inveniuntur in via resolutionis, sicut magis communia post minus communia.” CM proem
things. Its only by negating material properties that we arrive at a knowledge of the im-
material. When we extend our concepts by analogy to include the immaterial, we negate
the material notes in the senses of those concepts which are first known to us (Meta. 9).
Plato thought that immaterial forms were the proper objects of our minds, like the
angels. If that were true, we would know immaterial being with our first thought.
Sensation would simply remind us of our innate ideas of the immaterial forms. There
wouldn’t need to be any proportion between our sensible images and our concepts.
Sensation is just the knock at the door that reminds us inside that there is something out
there. We would have a priori knowledge of the immaterial. In this account, however,
the union of body and soul seems to be a mistake, a hindrance to man’s proper functions.
Therefore, we take our concepts from sensation and they must be proportioned to this
matter from which we take them. They are themselves concepts of material substances.
It is only later that we are able to reason to the natures of immaterial things.

Quodsi denique nec discerni possit, in quo distinquatur substantia et accidens, erit
confusissima omnium cognitio . . . Illa autem ratio sic indeterminate et confuse non
potest esse nisi ens, quia solum in illo confunditur substantia cum accidenti. 26

Omnino indivisibile non habet partes, quas involvat confuse vel resolvat distincte. 27

The order of demonstration (from principles to conclusions) has to be distinguished from

the order of determination (from the universal to the particular). The first is to proceed
in distinct knowledge the latter in the order of confused knowledge.

Naecesse est priusmoveri intellectum ab aliquot obiecto praesenti quam ab absenti, cum
absens cognoscatur ad instar alicuius praesentis. 28

Cum autem in prima cognitione intellectus connaturali modo procedens habeat lumen
debilissimum, cum procedat a pura potentia intelligibili consequenter perfectissimus
effectus, quem tunc potest, est confussima cognitio. 28

Unde intellectus non habens illum statum purae potentialitatis, sed lumen perfectum, ut
angeli, statim etiam perfecte cognoscet. 28

Intellectus in sua prima cognitione id, quod ipsi proponitur, videt quasi a longe
intelligibili, licet praesens sit obiectum, et sic illa notitia intuitiva solum de obiecto
attingit ipsum esse seu quoad an est, quod est esse intuitivam imperfecte et cum
omnimoda confusione repsectu quidditatis et discreationis preadicatorum. 29
Cognoscitur ut contractum et concretum sum aliis praedicatis inferioribus . . . non
cognoscitur ens sub sconceptu kconfuso, sed magis sub contracto, wuod non est
cognoscere ens conceptu entis, sed sub conceptus alterius praedicati. 29

Illa scientia, quae agit de ente in abstracto et in communi, est omnium postrema, scilicet
Metaphysica. 30
Cum dicitur ens esse primo cognitum et praedicata universaliora esse notiora, non
sumitur ens, ut subset abstractione postivae, sivi formale sive totali [???how does
metaphysics treat of these abstractions???what about separation??], sicut de illo tractat
Metaphysica, sed ut concipitur secundum se et sub abstractione negative, qualis
etiam potest contingere in sensu, qui accipit unum omisso alio ,v.g. colorem in pomo
omisso sapore, et in ipso colore possumus videre a longe rationem colorati singularis,
discernendo propiam differentiam talis coloris. Sic in prima cognitione intellectus
accipit concretum quidditati sensibili, non quia abstractionem positivem eius fomet,
nec quia propriam et determinatam rationem praedicati inferioris accipiat, sed quia in ipsa
quidditate sensibili solum accipit rationem confusiorem vel communiorem secundum se,
quiae est magis imperfecta et potentialis. Et haec est facilioris abstractionis negativae,
licet positiva eius abstractio, quae est cum habitudine superioris ad inferiora, sit difficilior
et in specie infima facilior. 31

Vero dicitur intellectus intuitive videre obiectum, dicimus, quod id habet dependenter a
sensu et in quantum continuator cum illo. Clausis autem sinsibus, quantumcumque res
sint praesentes, intellectus non potest intuitive cognoscere . . . 32

Saint Thomas on the Division of Speculative Knowledge

Cornelius Kelly, Ph. L.
There was a time in the not tooo distant past when the wide scale acceptance of
subjectivism demanded, on the part o fTHomists, a rigorous defense of vital metaphysical
notions. Such an apologetic was required byt the intellectual atmosphere of the time.
Nor could the teaching of philosophy help but he affected, with the result that a
metaphysical justification of problems, methods, and concepts became a kind of
introduction to all of philosophy. 3

Thus we may say fo these thierists that they pursuted the difficulty utp to a point, but not
as far as they might have. This is a hanit which we all share, of relativing an inquiry ot to
the subject matter itself, but to our opponent in argument. A man will even pursue a
question in his own mind no farther than the point at which he finds nothing to say
against his own arguments. Therefore to be a good investigator a man must be alive to
the objections inherent in the genus of his subject, an a awareness which is the result of
having studied all its differentiae. De Caelo, II.13. 294b6 ff.

Monsignor van Steenberghen sees no need for recourse to the traditional teaching of
three degrees of abstraction . . . . The intent of the criticism is to assert that the proper
subject of metaphysics in the strict sense is attained by a uniqure intellectual activity, one
that does not pertain to any other discipline. 17

Von Melsen
St. thomas’ reference to a difference in terminus of cognition in order ot characterize the
three degrees of abstraction is undoubtedly correct. 23

Natural philosophy analyzes matter not with the physical but with metaphysical concepts
and can thus be properly called a special metaphysics. 24
If, as according to Dewan, act and potency in the definition of motion are metaphysical
notions, why isn’t being when used by the natural philosopher also a metaphysical
notion? If it is not, then neither are act and potency which are proportioned to it.

Natural philosophy is concerned exclusively with matter in so far as it is changeable,

quantitative, qualitative, with its species-individual structure, but always under the aspect
of being. Metaphysics, while it considers things which exist without matter, does so
under this same aspect. 24

In Dewan’s account the definition of motion is a metaphysical definition. Since this

definition underlies all of natural philosophy it would seem to follow that natural
philosophy is a branch of metaphysics.

L.M. Regis
Analogous to this anstraction is another formal sbstraction by which the intellect
distinguishes the essence of the quiddity as an abstract concept, from individuals. This is
done by soncsidering onlyt he essential formal aspects of the thing. 28

The separation, which Thomas attributes to metaphysics, is a formal abstraction

precisely because matter is being separated from what is formal to a concept. In
extending an analogous concept to what has the perfect, formal elements without the
matter, we abstract form from matter, not a universal whole from individuals as in simpe
apprehension. In this way, the abstraction proper to metaphysics can be classed with
that of mathematics rather than that proper to natural philosophy.

Geiger
To designate the ensemble of what is usually called htree degrees of abstraction he uses
the term ‘distinction’. This term is common to what is called abstraction properly
speaking and to separation. It can be applied indifferently to both simple apprehension
and to judgment. Abstraction relates onlyyt ht efirst operation while separation is
performed in the second operation. Abstraction corresponds to natural philosophy and
mathematics, separation to metaphysics. 31

The original proposal was a threefold abstraction, whose principle of division was to be
sought in ifferent relations existing between the constitutive elements of essences. The
way from here to the definitive text was neither direct nor unencumbered. It was
traversed only by a gradual realization of the role of the different operations of the
intellect and by the suppression of triplex abstraction [see ST. I.85!!!!]. In favor of duplex
distinction. . . . The immateriality of ‘being as being’ cannot be attained by asimple
abstraction. Because the immateriality of being is an immateriality that is real not
logical, it can be attained only by an intellectual operation that is in contact with the
real. This, as it turns out, is a negative judgment of separation. [the conclusion of a
demonstrative syllogism] 32

Operations are known by their objects. This argument is moot.

Father Geiger further manifests the nature of this negative judgment which establishes
the proper immateriality of metaphysics by showing that it depends for its objective
value upon the demonstration of the existence of immaterial being prior to the
beginning of the science. 33

It pertains to thte science of metaphysics in its spaiential function to defend the principles
of the other sciences and to show their ultimate divison.

Sapientia est quadam scientia, inquantum habet id quod est commune omnibus scientiis,
ut scilicet ex principiis concluusiones demonstret. Sed quia habet aliquid proprium supra
alias scitias, inquantum scilicet de omnibus judicat; et non solum quantum ad
conclusiones, sed etiam quantum ad prima principia: ideo habet rationem perfectioris
virtutis quam scientia. ST I.II. 57.2.ad1

It is in this sense in which the pirmum conitum belongs to metaphysics.

Science, according to its specific nature, does not consist in the intuition or the
apprehension of some truth, but in a demonstrative process which produces knowledge of
a truth having mediated intelligibility. . . . The definition, by providing the proper
intelligibility of the object of a science, proportions the object to the mind. Diverse
intelligibility, deriving from different definitons as from different, irreducible principles,
diversifies the habitus of science. . . . The objects are or become diversely intelligible to
us according as they are diversely immaterial. 38

St. Thomas’s thorough going analysis of abstraction leaves no doubt as to the inadequacies of “three
desgrees of abstraction” if this is taken to mean that the second degree would be the rofuct of the first
degree, considererd more universally, and the third degree a further continuation, in the direction of
generality, of the second. Nor is any mention made, theoughout the the entire detailed study, of total and
formal abstraction as introduced by the commentators and long since canonized by popular usage. 39

Habits, like powers, are distinguished according to per se differences of their objects in so far as they are
objects. To manifest the differentiae per se objectorum inquantum sunt objecta, St. Thomas appeals to
sense experience. That things be animals or plants is actually incidental to them in so far as they are
objects of sensation (although to the things themselves sensed, these differences are quite essential). The
distinction of the external senses is not based on such differences. “Accipiendo est ergo ratio numeri et
distinctionis exteriorum sensuum, secundum illud quod proprie at per se ad sensum pertinent.”
(ST.I.78.3.c.) . . . the particular formality according to which the cognitive power lays hold of the thing. 43

The difference between a knowing and a non-knowing being is the ability of the former to have the form of
another as other while retaining its own form. 45

The external senses, for example, require the physical presence of their objects in such manner that in the
absence of those objects external sensible knowledge ceases. . . . It is this original experiential
contact with the real as it is in itself that guarantees the validity of human knowing.
46

This sets us up for the dilemnas of the mathematical and metaphysical sciences. If we do not have orginal
experiential contact with their objects, how do we know them at all? Mathematics must prove the existence
of its objects, like triangles and thousand sided polygons, because it is not known from sensation even that
they exist. Beginning from a nominal definition, they are first constructed, proving that they have some
claim to existence and reality, and only then can their properties be demonstrated.
This has to be emphasized in the thesis. This requires a clear and complete treatment. First with regard
to mathematics and then its implications for metaphysics. Draw on Kelly article on Existence and
Mathematics. How does this dilemma arise in the text of the CBT? Use Thomas’s treatment.

Its not by knowing one analoge of an analogous term that the others are known. Its not as if in knowing
what healthy urine is, I know what a healthy man is. Or as if in knowing what material being is, I know
what immaterial, spiritual being is. Or in knowing what it means for a man to be wise, I know what God’s
or an angel’s wisdom is.

The soul is open to the infinite by nature. Fabro? De Lubac? Gilson? Clavell?

Ex hoc igitur quod pars sensitiva animae utitur organo in operando . . . Scilicet quod non potest ei attribui
aliqua potentia respiciens commune objectum omnibus entibus; sic enim iam transcenderet corporalia. DV
15.2.c.

“Illa vera pars animae quae non utitur organo corporeo in opere suo non remanet determinata, sed
quodammodo infinita, in quantum est immaterialis; et sic eius virtute se extendit ad obiectum commune
omibus entibus. Unde commune objectum intllectus dicitur esse quod quid est, quod in omibus generibus
entium invenitur. Unde Philosophus dicit quod intellectus est quo omnia facere, et quo est omnia fieri.”
Ibid.

Thomas does speak at times as if the mind’s proper object was being as common to all things, whether
material or not. But this perhaps refers to the fact that there are no direct concepts of the immaterialbut
that the mind first knowing the natures of material things takes that concept and applies it mutatis mutandis
to immaterial things.

Ratio autem objecti sumitur secundum proportionem rei circa quam est operatio habitus vel ptentiae, ad
actum animae in qua sunt habitus vel potentiae. 47, Sent. 3.27.2.4.4.sol.

Between sensation and science there are the habits of dialectic, opinion, belief. Science is necessary,
dialectic isn’t, although both in some way consider the universal.

Ask Duane: There is a lot of confusion about what exactly the scientific status of metaphyusics is and how
it proceeds. To what extent does metaphysics abide by the cannons of the PA and what role does dialectic
play for it?

Dewan and Brock are asking, “excepting that science is of conclusions, what status does our first idea
have and how is it related to the sciences?”

Ubi notandum est quod cum scientia proprie sit conclusionum, intellectus autem principiorum, proprie
scibilia dicuntur conclusiones demonstrationis, in quibus passiones praedicantur de propriis subiectis. In I
PA 10.n. 8
The object of science in the strict sense of the term is the conclusion of a demonstration in which a
universal and necessary property (propria passio) is predicated of its proper subject.

The unity of metaphysics as a science follows from this: assuming subject genus, proving properties, ie.
defending first principles (distinguishing being and one), resolving to causes

If science or demonstration are to have any meaning at all, there must be a difference between what is
known of the subject in the premises and what is said of it in the conclusion. Such is the difference
between the object of a science and its subject. The subject of a science is both that which is known and
about which further knowledge is sought. 53
The middle is that which provides the reason for the predicate’s inherence in the subject. In a strict
demonstration this reason is the definition of the subject, the knowledge of which is come by in a manner
entirely other than syllogistic demonstration. (PA 2). Once attained, the definition, containing the
principles of the subject, serves as middle term in a demonstration by revealing the subject as cause of the
property which is predicated of in the conclusion. A conclusion or object so understood is what is
scientifically known. 52

Is the first, distinct understanding of the subject genus of a science to a whole science in the same
relation that the middle term (ie. the definition of the subject of the conclusion/demonstration) of any
particular demonstration is to the particular science provided by that demonstration? That is, is the
grasping of a subject genus that through which all science within that genus comes to be? Is it a sine qua
non? Without it is vague knowledge possible, but no scientific, demonstrative knowledge? The definitions
which are immeditately presupposed to any strictly scientific knowledge, ie demonstrable, indicate that a
thoroughly distinct knowledge is necessary for science. And that distinct knowledge is precisely a distinct
knowledge of the subject of the science. Can we say that a definition of the subject, a distinct knowledge, is
presupposed to any science?

What do we say about resolution??? Reread Nolan??

“If science were of the thing that changes as changing science would not remain true except by changing
with with the thing as it changed so that what was true at one instant would be false at another.” CDK
“Abstraction” 169
To be the object of science, the speculabile must be utterly immaterial (if there were matter in the intellect
it couldn’t know those material things. Further, the universal is not material.) and unchangeable, i.e., a
speculative science regards its object as abstracting from matter and motion or change. . . . It is according to
the radically different ways in which matter and motion can be excluded that the sciences will be divided.
53

Quaedam ergo speculabilium sunt, quae dependent a material secundum esse, quia non nisi in material
essse possunt. Et haec distinguuntur, quia quadam depndent a materia secundum esse et intellectum, sicut
illa, in quorum diffinitione ponitur materia sensibilis; unde sine materia sensibili intelligi non possunt, ut in
diffinitione hominis oportet accipere carnem et ossa. Et de his est physica svie scientia naturalis. Quaedam
vero sunt, quae quamvis dempdeant a materia sucundum esse, non tamen secundum intellectum, quia in
aorum diffinitionibus non ponitur materia sneibilis, sicut linea et bumerus. Et de his est mathematica.
Quaedam vero speculabilia sunt, quae non depndent a materia secundum esse, quia sine materia esse
possunt, sive numquam sint in materia, sicut deus et angelus, sive in quibusdam sint in materia et in
quibusdam non, ut substantia, qualitas, ens, potentia, actus, unum, et multa et huiusmodi. CBT 5.1??

Cum enim primipium totius scientiae quam de aliqua re ratio percipit, sit intellectus substantiae ipsius, eo
quod, secundum doctrinam Philosophi demonstrationis principium est quod quid est; oprotet quod
secundum modum quo stubstantia rei intelligitur, sit modus eorum quae de re illa cognoscuntur. SCG
I.3.n.16

Ad cognoscendum differentiam scientiarum speulcativarum adinviciem, oportet non latere quidditatem rei,
et ‘rationem’ idest definitionem singicantem ipsam, quomodo est assignando in unaquoque scientia.
Quaerere enim diffentiam praedictam ‘sine hoc’, idest sine cognitione modi definiendi, nihil facere
est. Cum enim definitio sit medium demonstrationis, et per consequens principium sciendi, oportet quod
ad diversum modum definiendi, sequator diversitas in scientiis speculativis. CM 6.1.n.1156

Cum ita sit quod necessarium sit unicuique scientiarum cognoscere aliqualiter quod quid est, et uti eo
quasi principio ad demonstrandum, oportet quoad secundum diversum modum definitionis
diversifecentur scientiae. CM XI, 7, n. 2256
If we refer to defintions taken absolutely, then they are remote principles of science; if we take them as
components of propositions, they are proximate principles of scientific knowledge. 57
The mode of defining of this science is thus without sensible matter, It differs from that of mathematics
because it considers ea quae non dependent a material nec secundum intellectum nec secundum esse. Such
is for example the definition of substance. 58 However substance is not first known as existing without
matter, except perhaps in the vague way in which positive ignorance allows one to think of one thing
without another of which one is in fact ignorant. We can conceive of the first things we know without the
matter that is essential to them because we have not as of yet understood them well enough to see that they
are essentially material beings. Thus Thomas says that we first and best know bodily things.

Certitudo scientiae tota oritur ex certitudine primcipiorum: tunc enim conclusions per
certitudinem sciuntur quando resolvuntur in prinicipia. . . . Nos certitudinem scientiae
non acciperemus, nisi inesset nobis certitudo principiorum, in quae conclusiones
resolvuntur. DV 11.1.ad13

Science happens when we resolve conclusions into principles through middle terms. To
resolve means to take something and lead it back into something more simple or basic.
Etymology?? Therefore, resolution is an analogous process which can take place in
many different ways. A demonstration is a resolution. A definition is a resolution. In
what sense is Thomas using resolution when he speaks of the name metaphysics as in
some way signifying the way in which particular things are led back to more universal
things? On the face of it, it seems difficult to equate this with universality of predication
because the most universal things are first known by us, but Thomas wants to explain
how it is that metaphysics comes after physics in our learning. Following the order of
predication we would have to say that metaphysics comes first in our learning. The
scientific consideration of being, the most universal term, coming last among the
sciences must have another explanation than the simple order amongst universal
predicates.

Perhaps a clue to this mystery is given in the fact that demonstrations are also
resolutions. In the proof of the existence of an immaterial substance, we resolve material
creation to a simpler, immaterial cause. Further, to know any immaterial thing, we have
to resolve from material natures. Thus even the name “immaterial”. We seem to be
warranted in saying that all our knowledge of immaterial being must be resolved to from
our knowledge of material natures. This can be understood, at least in some cases, as a
resolution to the more universal because when we understand being as immaterial, as
opposed to mere ignorance of its materiality, we understand being as including more
than the material.

Principles are said to be immediate because their truth is known, bot my means of
amdium which funtions as a middle term, through a knowledge of their own composing
terms. As such, they are object, not of science, but of intellectus. 61
Principia vero deomnstrationis possunt seorsum considerari, absque hoc quod
consierentur conclusions. Possunt etiam considerari simul cum conclusionibus, prout
principia in conclusiones deducuntur. Considerare ergo hoc secundo modo principia,
pertinet ad scientiam, quae considerat etiam conclusiones: sed considerare principia
secundum seipsa, pertinet ad intellectum. ST I.II.57.2.ad2

Such an analysis of the subejct is nothing other than its definiton: “Resolutio autem
definiti in sua principia, quod definientes facere intendunt . . .” CM 7.15. n.1615
“Manifestum est enim quod principia, quae continet defintio subjecti, sunt principia
passionis. Non ergo demonstratio resolvet in primam causam, nisi accipiatur ut medium
demonstrationis definitio subjecti.” CPA I.1. n.9

Since causes are simpler than their effects, a demonstration, which leads effects back to
their causes, whether causes simply or only causes of our knowledge, is also a resolution.
37

37
“Maxime autem universalia sunt, quae sunt communia omnibus entibus. Et ideo terminus resolutionis in
hac via ultimus est consideratio entis et eorum quae sunt entis in quantum huiusmodi. [the
metaphysical consideration of being and its properties does not begin with our first thought. It is the final
terminus of our thought.] Haec autem sunt, de quibus scientia divina considerat, ut supra dictum est,
scilicet substantiae separatae et communia omnibus entibus. Unde patet quod sua consideratio est maxime
intellectualis. Et exinde etiam est quod ipsa largitur principia omnibus aliis scientiis, in quantum
intellectualis consideratio est principium rationalis, propter quod dicitur prima philosophia; et nihilominus
ipsa addiscitur post physicam et ceteras scientias, in quantum consideratio intellectualis est terminus
rationalis, propter quod dicitur metaphysica quasi trans physicam, quia post physicam resolvendo
occurrit.” The most common things Thomas also says are more difficult to know and less certainly known
for us (CBT). The name first philosophy refers to the science’s dominion over first principles, judging them
and defending them from objections. Metaphysics refers to the order of learning, the order in which even
the judgment of principles must take place. The judgment and defence of the first principles can only take
place after physics. First philosophy is not begun before metaphysics because they are the same science.
“It is called metaphysics inasmuch as it considers being and the attributes which naturally accompany being
(for things which transcend the physical order are discovered in the process of analysis, as the more
common are discovered after the less common)” (CM proem.). “Metaphysica, inquantum considerat ens et
ea quae consequuntur ipsum. Haec enim transphysica inveniuntur in via resolutionis, sicut magis
communia post minus communia.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even universal concepts, in
the sense that they are arrived at last, are the final terminus, in the way of resolution, are harder for us
to know. this shows that the CM n.45 must be taken as only a partial qualification of the order in our
knowledge of universal predicates. The metaphysical concepts of being and its properties are come
upon or discovered in the via resolutionis just as the more common after the less. And it is in this sense
that they are far from the sensible origins of our knowledge, farther even than the subjects of the other
sciences (CBT 5.1). This distinction explains how Thomas can say that being as being is what is first
known and also that it is very difficult to know, the final terminus of resolution. What we first know is
our most universal concept, but the extent of that concept is not understood until we can separate it from
the material circumstances in which it is first known. These metaphysical concepts of being come to be
known only after physics because our minds begin, even in understanding, with what is sensible: “post
physicam discenda occurrit nobis, quibus ex sensibilibus oportet in insensibilia devenire” CBT 5.1.c.3.

“Quaedam vero speculabilia sunt, quae non dependent a materia secundum esse, quia sine materia esse
possunt, sive numquam sint in materia, sicut Deus et Angelus, sive in quibusdam sint in materia et in
quibusdam non, ut substantia, qualitas, ens, potentia, actus, unum et multa et huiusmodi. De quibus
omnibus est theologia, id est scientia divina, quia praecipuum in ea cognitorum est Deus, quae alio nomine
dicitur metaphysica, id est transphysicam, quia post physicam discenda occurrit nobis, quibus ex
sensibilibus oportet in insensibilia devenire” CBT 5.1.c.3 Metaphysics, since it considers things like
being, which can be without matter, is learned after physics because we arrive at a knowledge of non-
sensible, immaterial things through a knowledge of sensible things. Again, its not just a matter of
abstracting metaphysical concepts from material things directly and at the very beginning of life. The fact
that we know the non-sensible from the sensible requires that we come upon our metaphysical concepts by
means of our scientific investigation of physics. They are learned by us after physics, post physicam. It
could not be more simple. Metaphysical concepts of being, substance, act etc. are more difficult for us than
the concepts of the other sciences. It is not just universal causes that are difficult to know.