"Aquinas furnishes several proofs for the thesis that each angel constitutes by itself a single species. First, since each separate substance is a subsistent form, it has a unique, incommunicable proper definition, and so must be a species in its own right: that is, species and individual wholly coincide. Secondly, since separate substances are utterly removed from matter, they lack the potentiality for the numerical diversification of their forms, because matter is the source of the individuating pluralization of a given species. As pure forms, angels admit only of specific differentiation. It follows that there cannot be two angels of identically the same species. Thirdly, the purpose for the multiplication of individuals within one species is to ensure the perpetuation of the specific nature, in any instance where such entities are corruptible. But separate substances are not subject to any decay whatsoever. Consequently, there is no need for a plurality of angelic individuals within the bounds of one species: each angel actually exhausts the full range of the possibilities inherent in its specific nature."
Furthermore, in the case of simple substances, the notion of genus is entirely attendant on the meaning of the specific nature, which both determines and is determined by itself alone. That is, the absence of any determinable matter in the separate substance precludes the potentiality required for a genus. The specific essence per se locates each finite spirit within a definite “grade of being,” yielding a natural linear inequality of entitative degree among the angels. Nonetheless, although the proximate genus of an angel cannot be logically and properly distinguished from its specific difference, the human mind can legitimately broadly categorize all finite, purely spiritual beings as members of one so called “genus” (taken in a loose sense).
Although the substance of each angel innately includes all the intelligible likenesses pertaining to the whole gamut of its natural knowledge, it does not make use of all these imprinted species at once in its actual understanding. Regarding its natural cognition, an angel can know simultaneously only the plurality of those things subsumable under a single intentional form –not the noetic contents comprised under distinct intelligible similitudes. In particular, it cannot contemplate the total spectrum of its native knowledge all at once. Thus, even though the angelic mind is never in a condition of absolute or essential passive potentiality with respect to its natural knowledge (as is the human possible intellect, which acquires knowledge from a privative state of primitive ignorance), yet, because it is not always exhaustively considering everything that it knows, it does undergo an accidental transition from relative potency to exercised act when it decides to advert to and reflect on some habitually possessed epistemic datum. As Aquinas declares, “[I]n the intellect of a separate substance there is a certain succession of understandings; there is not, however, movement properly speaking, since act does not succeed potentiality, but [rather] act succeeds act.” Still, this limiting feature does radically differentiate angels from the omniscient Deity, Who knows everything without successiveness in one eternal act of understanding identical with His Divine Essence.
Now a major distinction among them, a criterion disclosing their natural inequality, lies in the degree of universality of their innate ideas. Indeed, since God understands all things through one Idea identical with His Infinite Essence and since intellectual substances rise in dignity the nearer they approach His supreme Unity, it follows that an angel occupying a stratum of greater eminence knows larger tracts of reality covered by fewer intelligible species than an angel of lower ontological status (though even the latter succeeds in comprehending the cosmos via a mental map of it). For a weaker intellect always needs a more multifarious variety of detailed concepts to grasp what a stronger mind can encompass with fewer, but more universally embracing, cognitive principles.
Moreover, we note that, because angels do not abstract their ideas from sensible objects, their universal concepts are by nature prior (not posterior)to the material world. Furthermore, the angelic universals are not merely general notions about broad classes of things, but rather unified media by which the angel also knows singulars in an intensely distinctive fashion: within one universal idea there is contained a representative similitude of the properly rich density of manifold species and specimens.
An angel itself can be said to undergo local motion (again, by an analogical use of the term), in that it can successively apply its power to different places. Its so-called “movement,” though, does not betray any intrinsic potentiality on the part of the angel itself: the passive potency resides totally in the object receiving the action. Moreover, the angel’s “movement” is not necessarily continuous; indeed, its movement will be discontinuous if it instantaneously exchanges the focus of its causal efficacy from the whole of one arena to an utterly diverse locale. In the latter case of discrete motion, it bypasses the entire intermediate magnitude linking initial and terminal positions. Thus, an angel can violate the usual laws of space-traversal by effecting quantum leaps.
Although the substance of each angel innately includes all the intelligible likenesses pertaining to the whole gamut of its natural knowledge, it does not make use of all these imprinted species at once in its actual understanding. Regarding its natural cognition, an angel can know simultaneously only the plurality of those things subsumable under a single intentional form –not the noetic contents comprised under distinct intelligible similitudes. In particular, it cannot contemplate the total spectrum of its native knowledge all at once. Thus, even though the angelic mind is never in a condition of absolute or essential passive potentiality with respect to its natural knowledge (as is the human possible intellect, which acquires knowledge from a privative state of primitive ignorance), yet, because it is not always exhaustively considering everything that it knows, it does undergo an accidental transition from relative potency to exercised act when it decides to advert to and reflect on some habitually possessed epistemic datum. As Aquinas declares, “[I]n the intellect of a separate substance there is a certain succession of understandings; there is not, however, movement properly speaking, since act does not succeed potentiality, but [rather] act succeeds act.” Still, this limiting feature does radically differentiate angels from the omniscient Deity, Who knows everything without successiveness in one eternal act of understanding identical with His Divine Essence.
Now a major distinction among them, a criterion disclosing their natural inequality, lies in the degree of universality of their innate ideas. Indeed, since God understands all things through one Idea identical with His Infinite Essence and since intellectual substances rise in dignity the nearer they approach His supreme Unity, it follows that an angel occupying a stratum of greater eminence knows larger tracts of reality covered by fewer intelligible species than an angel of lower ontological status (though even the latter succeeds in comprehending the cosmos via a mental map of it). For a weaker intellect always needs a more multifarious variety of detailed concepts to grasp what a stronger mind can encompass with fewer, but more universally embracing, cognitive principles.
Moreover, we note that, because angels do not abstract their ideas from sensible objects, their universal concepts are by nature prior (not posterior)to the material world. Furthermore, the angelic universals are not merely general notions about broad classes of things, but rather unified media by which the angel also knows singulars in an intensely distinctive fashion: within one universal idea there is contained a representative similitude of the properly rich density of manifold species and specimens.
An angel itself can be said to undergo local motion (again, by an analogical use of the term), in that it can successively apply its power to different places. Its so-called “movement,” though, does not betray any intrinsic potentiality on the part of the angel itself: the passive potency resides totally in the object receiving the action. Moreover, the angel’s “movement” is not necessarily continuous; indeed, its movement will be discontinuous if it instantaneously exchanges the focus of its causal efficacy from the whole of one arena to an utterly diverse locale. In the latter case of discrete motion, it bypasses the entire intermediate magnitude linking initial and terminal positions. Thus, an angel can violate the usual laws of space-traversal by effecting quantum leaps.
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