e acts of the intellectual part
we shall treat now.

In treating of these acts we shall proceed in the following order:
First, we shall inquire how the soul understands when united to the
body; secondly, how it understands when separated therefrom.

The former of these inquiries will be threefold:

(1) How the soul understands bodies which are beneath it;

(2) How it understands itself and things contained in itself;

(3) How it understands immaterial substances, which are above it.

In treating of the knowledge of corporeal things there are three
points to be considered:

(1) Through what does the soul know them?

(2) How and in what order does it know them?

(3) What does it know in them?

Under the first head there are eight points of inquiry:

(1) Whether the soul knows bodies through the intellect?

(2) Whether it understands them through its essence, or through any
species?

(3) If through some species, whether the species of all things
intelligible are naturally innate in the soul?

(4) Whether these species are derived by the soul from certain
separate immaterial forms?

(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?
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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 changea