Dist. 3, Part 2, Art. 2, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/2/d/3/q/bon-sent-II-d3-p2-a2-q1
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### Article II. *On the natural cognition of the angel.*

About the second principal [matter], also, concerning the natural cognition of the angel, two [things] are asked. The first is about the cognition of the creature itself. The second about the cognition of the creative essence.

### Question I. *Whether the angel knows all created things which it knows through innate species.*

It is asked therefore first, whether the angel knows all created things which it knows through *innate* species, or some through *acquired* species. And that it knows all created things through *innate* species:

1. Sacred Scripture seems to will [it], Ezekiel the twenty-eighth: *You [were] full of wisdom and perfect in beauty* — it is said to the devil — but he would not be from his origin *full of wisdom*, unless there were in him a fullness of species through which it happens to know things: therefore  since a fullness suffices for each [thing], it seems that innate species suffice for the angel for knowing all things.

2. Likewise, through Augustine, in the ninth [book] *On the Trinity*: « The mind therefore itself, just as it gathers the notice of corporeal things through the sense of the body, so [gathers the notice] of incorporeal [things] through itself ». And he assigns no other reason for this, except that the species of incorporeal [things] cannot come to be in sense, and a species is acquired by the mediation of sense; but the angel has no sense — let it be supposed so — therefore it acquires the notice of nothing by receiving a species or by acquiring a new species.

3. Likewise, this same [thing] seems [so] through the authority of the book *On Causes*: « Every intelligence is full of forms »; but if it received a species, it would not be full: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, such a *difference* has been customarily assigned between the angelic and the human intellect, that the human, on account of its conjunction with the body, is *possible* [potential], but the angelic is *actual*; if therefore to receive is only of a thing existing in potency, insofar as [it is] of this kind: it is plain etc.

5. Likewise, that *this difference* is fitting, seems [so]. For the divine intellect is in every-mode actuality, so that it can receive nothing at all; but the human intellect, when it is created, is like a *blank tablet*, and so in every-mode possibility: therefore if between these extremes it is possible to find a possible middle, namely [one] in which there is a possibility conjoined to act, and such [a one] is not to be given except the angelic, therefore etc.

6. Likewise, threefold is the being of things: for things have *being in the Word*, and *in the* angelic *intellect*, and *in the world*, according to which threefold *being* Augustine says that being [is] said: *Let it be made, and He made [it], and it was made.* But the *being* of things in the angelic intellect more closely approaches the *being* of things in the Word than the *being* of things in the world: therefore since in the Word they are most fully, in greater fullness they are in the angel than in the world, or in equally great [fullness]. But God from the beginning of the world implanted in things causal grounds, according to which the rest would come to be, and nothing would be said [to be] new, because *God rested on the seventh day*: therefore much more strongly it seems that He impressed on the angel the likenesses and grounds according to which it could know the rest of the things to be made: therefore without a new reception.

**But on the contrary:** 1. To the Ephesians the third: *That the manifold wisdom of God may be made known to the Principalities and Powers*; the Gloss says there, « that the angels learned many [things] from the Church »: therefore they received and acquired the species of many [things].

2. Likewise, if it knows all [things] through innate species, then from its nature it knows all [things], therefore present and future, necessary and contingent, natural and voluntary: which is manifestly false and against the Scriptures.

3. Likewise, if it knows all [things] through innate species, it has within itself the ground of knowing all [things]: therefore it knows absent [things] as well as present, far [things] as well as near: therefore the devil existing in hell knows whatever is done in the world, and the angel which is here [knows] whatever is done in England; which is manifestly false and against Scripture, which speaks of the manifold sending of the angels.

4. Likewise, if it knows all [things] through innate species, either it does not know singulars, or it has the species of all singulars. The first is false and unfitting, that the angel should not know singulars, since it ministers to particular men and is directed to particular and singular ministries. But if it has the species of all singulars, then since they can be increased to infinity, it will have infinite species; or at some time some singular will come to be which it will not be able to know. *If you say* that the angel knows singulars through the species of universals; *on the contrary*: in the species of universals they are not distinguished: therefore it does not know distinctly. *Besides*, the universal species is not assimilated to each singular by a perfect assimilation: therefore man knows more perfectly than the angel. *If you say* that the angel appropriates those species by applying [them] to singulars; *on the contrary*: every non-fortuitous application is preceded by cognition: for if it does not know  the one to which it applies, how does it will to apply the species to it? *And again*, why will it apply the species of a man rather than of an ass to that singular? Therefore before the application it knows the singular. *Besides*, either it *knows* after the application, or *not.* If *not*, then the angel cannot keep in memory the cognition of any singular, which is manifestly false; if *so*: then there remains in memory some new species, when it knows something which before it did not know, and so it receives some species: therefore etc.

### Conclusion

> The angel can know all [things] through concreated universal species, through which it knows also singulars, but only by directing its gaze upon the knowable and composing the species with one another.

**I respond:** It must be said that all who understood anything posited this, that the angel knows created things *through species*, unless it be such [a thing] as is essentially in the angel. But to know a thing altogether through itself, this belongs to Him alone who is pure and most perfect act, and therefore the idea and cause of all and the efficient and exemplary [cause] by Himself, not by some other. But yet in the mode of positing the species they have differed.

For some posited that the angel knows *all* [things] which it knows through species by *innate* species; and of this position they hand down the *mode* and the *cause.* The *mode* is this. Although in the angel there are innate species in finite number, namely of the things which are of the first constitution of the world; yet, just as God in the first making implanted causal and seminal grounds in things for their multiplying, so He handed [them] over also to the species which He impressed on the angelic intellect; and so it can know all [things] without an extrinsic reception. — But the *cause* of this they assign [thus], because, since reception comes about through a certain abstraction and proportion, to which there concur as dispositive the organ and the medium and the lower powers, and this is not to be found in the angel; they say that it can receive nothing from without. — But the *mode* of this position is not easy to understand, because it is difficult to see by what reason the species could be multiplied. For the species of one thing does not generate the species of an altogether different thing, nor does the same species multiply itself in the soul according to number, since it is in one soul, just as of one object there is one species in one undivided mirror. — But the *cause* I believe to be false, because it is plain that the angel has a *possible* intellect, since it is not pure act. It is plain also that it has an *agent* [intellect] of greater power than if it were bound to a body. If therefore [the intellect] bound [to a body] can abstract [and] impress on the possible, how much more can the free and separate intellect [do] this?

Therefore there is another position, that the angel knows *some* [things] through innate species, namely necessary and natural [things], and those which were concreated with the angel; but *fortuitous* and *voluntary* and *future contingent* [things] it understands through acquired and received species. For the angelic intellect is *possible* with respect to species of this kind; yet it is not possible with so great a possibility as the human, because the human is possible altogether on account of its *nakedness*, and also possible on account of its *conjunction with phantasms*; but the angelic in neither mode, but it is possible with respect to the aforesaid knowables. For since they have no certain cause, God alone, who knows by Himself, is in act with respect to such cognition, and he who knows in God, or through a revelation made by God; but the angel, which needs the information of a species by nature, is with respect to such [things] in *potency*, not in *act.* — But this position seems to enclose in itself two opposites, namely that the angel has the species of *universals* and receives afterward the species of *singulars.* For the species of singulars of the same species do not differ except in number, and it is impossible that accidents of the same species, diverse in number, be in the same subject: therefore no intellect can have several species of a man; but if it has one innate [one], it cannot receive another of the same species, just as neither are two whitenesses in the same body. *And if you say* that the likenesses of two whitenesses are in the same air, and diverse lights of the same nature, as Dionysius says, and the faces of two men  in the same image; it is not alike, because the idola and the lights in the medium are distinguished by their origins, and diverse figures can in the genus of figure differ in species, otherwise the species of figure with number suffices, just as I can fashion three altogether similar species. And so the said position seems to imply the contrary. — *Further*, if « a species is the whole *formal being* of individuals », as Boethius says, nor is there individuation except from the conjunction of form with matter; if a species existing in the intellect altogether abstracts from matter, in no way is it [possible] to posit in the same intellect diverse species or forms differing by number alone. And so the same returns as before, namely that, if the angelic intellect has the innate species of all universals, it receives no further species, but sufficiently through them knows all [things].

And therefore there is a third position, that the angel knows all [things] through innate species, not because it *cannot* receive species; for then, if God created something new in species, the angel would necessarily be ignorant [of it], which since it is false, it could receive [it]. And therefore this is not the reason, but this, that God filled the possible angelic intellect with so many species that through them it could know all [things] without any new reception. And therefore the angelic intellect is said to be in act with respect to things, not because it is in *act* by itself, or because it is *act*, but it is made in act through the species.

And the mode and understanding of this position is this. For God concreated in the angels the universal species of all things to come to be, and through them it is certain that it can know all *universals*; it can also [know] *singulars*, but only if it composes [them] with one another, as is plain: if I have within me the species of a figure, the species of a man, the species of a color and of time, and I compose [them] with one another; without a new reception of a species I shall know the individual in its proper nature. But because such a composition, unless it were according to certitude and correspondence to the thing itself, would be a fiction and a deception; therefore the angel does not know such individuals and singulars, unless it direct its gaze upon the knowable itself, and according to that which is in the *thing*, it itself compose the species *in itself*; and then it has a cognition of the thing as clear and certain as if it received the species at once. — And this position pleases more, because it is concordant with reason and philosophy and sacred Scripture. And the response to all the objections is plain, if it be well understood.

1. To that which is objected, that the angels learned etc.; it must be said that this position well posits that the angels learn many [things], but not on account of this that they receive new species. Nor is that incompossible. For I have the species of *man* and of *animal*, while I know one conclusion about them; but through manifold conversion and collation a new cognition can be generated about the same things through the same species according to diverse operations and relations, and so I shall learn something, but I shall not receive a new species. So also the angels learned many [things] both from their own industry, and from revelation, and from experience.

2. To that which is objected, that then it would know contingent and absent [things]; it must be said that, as was touched [on], for the cognition of these particular things, and most of all of contingent [things], it does not suffice to have innate species, unless the angelic gaze be converted; and the conversion requires the *existence* of the thing either in itself, or in [its] cause; it requires also *presence*, because the angelic power is finite, [and] therefore is in some proportional approximation, when it converts itself to a thing without. And so it is plain that not on account of this does it know future, or also contingent, [things].

3. To that which is objected, that either it does not know singulars, or it has infinite species; I say that it knows singulars through the species of universals by *applying* and *appropriating.* Whence through *appropriation* it knows properly and distinctly, nor is it necessary that new species be received, nor that they be infinite, because singulars are reduced to a finite number of universals; but finite species can be composed in infinite modes. And therefore the angel never knows so many singulars that it cannot still know more without the reception of a new species, yet not without the *direction of the gaze* upon the thing. From which direction it does not receive a species from the knowable, since it is in act through the species which it has; but by directing the gaze it appropriates the species, and by appropriating it composes [them], and knows and perceives the singular thing under its property, because the whole cognition is from form, and this form is « the species, which is the whole being of individuals ».

4. To that which is objected concerning application, that it presupposes cognition; it must be said that it is true that it *presupposes* cognition and *leaves* cognition, but yet it presupposes one [cognition], leaves another. For the angel without any conversion *has* the cognition of place, and when it converts itself upon a place, it knows  all the things which are in the place, by applying universal species to singulars and composing [them]; and those species, under such application and composition, remain in the angelic intellect, and so they *leave* a new cognition without the reception of a species. — Let it also be supposed that it had no *cognition*, but only the *species of a universal* in its intellect; still it will be able to apply and appropriate not by chance, but with certitude. Which is plain thus. For man, when he is born, does not have the cognition nor the species of singulars, neither common nor proper; yet by the mere direction of the gaze upon things he knows all visible [things] and receives at once a certain *cognition* and a *species*, because he was naked of the form of the received. But if he had species, he could much better, by directing his gaze to mundane things, know them, not by receiving species, since he already has [them], but from the direction, and apply and appropriate and compose and know distinctly.