g perfect, that is, of one actually existing. In this
way understanding and feeling are termed movements, as stated in _De
Anima_ iii, text. 28.

Reply Obj. 2: Such desire on the part of the angels does not exclude
the object desired, but weariness thereof. Or they are said to desire
the vision of God with regard to fresh revelations, which they
receive from God to fit them for the tasks which they have to perform.

Reply Obj. 3: In the angel's substance there is no potentiality
divested of act. In the same way, the angel's intellect is never so
in potentiality as to be without act.
_______________________

SECOND ARTICLE [I, Q. 58, Art. 2]

Whether an Angel Can Understand Many Things at the Same Time?

Objection 1: It would seem that an angel cannot understand many things
at the same time. For the Philosopher says (Topic. ii, 4) that "it may
happen that we know many things, but understand only one."

Obj. 2: Further, nothing is understood unless the intellect be
informed by an intelligible species; just at the body is formed by
shape. But one body cannot be formed into many shapes. Therefore
neither can one intellect simultaneously understand various
intelligible things.

Obj. 3: Further, to understand is a kind of movement. But no movement
terminates in various terms. Therefore many things cannot be
understood altogether.

_On the contrary,_ Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iv, 32): "The
spiritual faculty of the angelic mind comprehends most easily at
the same time all things that it wills."

_I answer that,_ As unity of term is requisite for unity of movement,
so is unity of object required for unity of operation. Now it happens
that several things may be taken as several or as one; like the parts
of a continuous whole. For if each of the parts be considered
severally they are many: consequently neither by sense nor by
intellect are they grasped by one operation, nor all at once. In
another way they are taken as forming one in the whole; and so they
are grasped both by sense and intellect all at once and by one
operation; as long as the entire continuous whole is considered, as
is stated in _De Anima_ iii, text. 23. In this way our intellect
understands together both the subject and the predicate, as forming
parts of one proposition; and also two things compared together,
according as they agree in one point of comparison. From this it is
evident that many things, in so far as they are distinct, cannot be
un