The Concept of Verbum in the Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

rationes are considered and employed in two different manners. They may be considered in themselves and employed as objects of thought, and this is their first and principal use. But also, with the aid of sensitive potencies, they may be considered relatively, used as instrumental means of knowledge, and so applied with the aid of sense to particular things; this use is secondary and involves a measure of reflection. In this quite clear passage Aquinas settles a recurrent antinomy of Aristotelian thought: science is of the universal; all reality is particular; therefore science is not of reality. To this prob­ lem Aristotle adverted in his list of basic questions in Metaphysics B, and again in similar terms in books Κ and M. The last of these is his fullest treatment: it distinguishes between science in potency and science in act; it affirms that science in potency is indeterminate and so of the indeterminate and universal, but science in act is determinate and of the determinate and particular; it concludes that in one manner science is of the universal and in another manner it is of the particu­ lar. Aquinas specified what these two manners were: primarily science is concerned with universal objects of thought; secondarily, with the help of sense, intellect uses these universal objects as instru*Ubid. **Ibtd., and ad 4m « Mel., Z, 15, 1039b 27; K, 1, 1059b 26; De An., II. 5, 417b 22; cf. Post. Anal., I, 31, 87b 27 ff. °ilfe*.,Z,13,1038b35. 71 Ibid., Β, 6, 1003a 6-17, esp. 14-17. » Ibid., Κ, 2,1060b 20-23; M, 10,1087a 10-25. 78 Ibid. Cf. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Introd. cviii-cx.