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(5) Whether our soul sees in the eternal ideas all that it understands?
(6) Whether it acquires intellectual knowledge from the senses?
(7) Whether the intellect can, through the species of which it is possessed, actually understand, without turning to the phantasms?
(8) Whether the judgment of the intellect is hindered by an obstacle in the sensitive powers?
FIRST ARTICLE [I, Q. 84, Art. 1]
Whether the Soul Knows Bodies Through the Intellect?
Objection 1: It would seem that the soul does not know bodies through the intellect. For Augustine says (Soliloq. ii, 4) that "bodies cannot be understood by the intellect; nor indeed anything corporeal unless it can be perceived by the senses." He says also (Gen. ad lit. xii, 24) that intellectual vision is of those things that are in the soul by their essence. But such are not bodies. Therefore the soul cannot know bodies through the intellect.
Obj. 2: Further, as sense is to the intelligible, so is the intellect to the sensible. But the soul can by no means, through the senses, understand spiritual things, which are intelligible. Therefore by no means can it, through the intellect, know bodies, which are sensible.
Obj. 3: Further, the intellect is concerned with things that are necessary and unchangeable. But all bodies are mobile and changeable. Therefore the soul cannot know bodies through the intellect.
_On the contrary,_ Science is in the intellect. If, therefore, the intellect does not know bodies, it follows that there is no science of bodies; and thus perishes natural science, which treats of mobile bodies.
_I answer that,_ It should be said in order to elucidate this question, that the early philosophers, who inquired into the natures of things, thought there was nothing in the world save bodies. And because they