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who are gifted with a strong imagination. If the evaporation be very slight, not only does the imagination retain its freedom, but also the common sense is partly freed; so that sometimes while asleep a man may judge that what he sees is a dream, discerning, as it were, between things, and their images. Nevertheless, the common sense remains partly suspended; and therefore, although it discriminates some images from the reality, yet is it always deceived in some particular. Therefore, while man is asleep, according as sense and imagination are free, so is the judgment of his intellect unfettered, though not entirely. Consequently, if a man syllogizes while asleep, when he wakes up he invariably recognizes a flaw in some respect.
QUESTION 85
OF THE MODE AND ORDER OF UNDERSTANDING (In Eight Articles)
We come now to consider the mode and order of understanding. Under this head there are eight points of inquiry:
(1) Whether our intellect understands by abstracting the species from the phantasms?
(2) Whether the intelligible species abstracted from the phantasms are what our intellect understands, or that whereby it understands?
(3) Whether our intellect naturally first understands the more universal?
(4) Whether our intellect can know many things at the same time?
(5) Whether our intellect understands by the process of composition and division?
(6) Whether the intellect can err?
(7) Whether one intellect can understand better than another?
(8) Whether our intellect understands the indivisible before the divisible?