ble.
Therefore the soul cannot know bodies through the intellect.

_On the contrary,_ Science is in the intellect. If, therefore, the
intellect does not know bodies, it follows that there is no science of
bodies; and thus perishes natural science, which treats of mobile
bodies.

_I answer that,_ It should be said in order to elucidate this
question, that the early philosophers, who inquired into the natures
of things, thought there was nothing in the world save bodies. And
because they observed that all bodies are mobile, and considered them
to be ever in a state of flux, they were of opinion that we can have
no certain knowledge of the true nature of things. For what is in a
continual state of flux, cannot be grasped with any degree of
certitude, for it passes away ere the mind can form a judgment
thereon: according to the saying of Heraclitus, that "it is not
possible twice to touch a drop of water in a passing torrent," as
the Philosopher relates (Metaph. iv, Did. iii, 5).

After these came Plato, who, wishing to save the certitude of our
knowledge of truth through the intellect, maintained that, besides
these things corporeal, there is another genus of beings, separate
from matter and movement, which beings he called species or
"ideas," by participation of which each one of these singular and
sensible things is said to be either a man, or a horse, or the like.
Wherefore he said that sciences and definitions, and whatever
appertains to the act of the intellect, are not referred to these
sensible bodies, but to those beings immaterial and separate: so
that according to this the soul does not understand these corporeal
things, but the separate species thereof.

Now this may be shown to be false for two reasons. First, because,
since those species are immaterial and immovable, knowledge of
movement and matter would be excluded from science (which knowledge
is proper to natural science), and likewise all demonstration through
moving and material causes. Secondly, because it seems ridiculous,
when we seek for knowledge of things which are to us manifest, to
introduce other beings, which cannot be the substance of those
others, since they differ from them essentially: so that granted that
we have a knowledge of those separate substances, we cannot for that
reason claim to form a judgment concerning these sensible things.

Now it seems that Plato strayed from the truth because, having
observed that all knowledge take