ectual knowledge. And therefore it is not strange that
intellectual knowledge should extend further than sensitive knowledge.
_______________________

SEVENTH ARTICLE [I, Q. 84, Art. 7]

Whether the Intellect Can Actually Understand Through the
Intelligible Species of Which It Is Possessed, Without Turning to
the Phantasms?

Objection 1: It would seem that the intellect can actually understand
through the intelligible species of which it is possessed, without
turning to the phantasms. For the intellect is made actual by the
intelligible species by which it is informed. But if the intellect is
in act, it understands. Therefore the intelligible species suffices
for the intellect to understand actually, without turning to the
phantasms.

Obj. 2: Further, the imagination is more dependent on the senses
than the intellect on the imagination. But the imagination can
actually imagine in the absence of the sensible. Therefore much more
can the intellect understand without turning to the phantasms.

Obj. 3: There are no phantasms of incorporeal things: for the
imagination does not transcend time and space. If, therefore, our
intellect cannot understand anything actually without turning to the
phantasms, it follows that it cannot understand anything incorporeal.
Which is clearly false: for we understand truth, and God, and the
angels.

_On the contrary,_ The Philosopher says (De Anima iii, 7) that "the
soul understands nothing without a phantasm."

_I answer that,_ In the present state of life in which the soul is
united to a passible body, it is impossible for our intellect to
understand anything actually, except by turning to the phantasms.
First of all because the intellect, being a power that does not make
use of a corporeal organ, would in no way be hindered in its act
through the lesion of a corporeal organ, if for its act there were
not required the act of some power that does make use of a corporeal
organ. Now sense, imagination and the other powers belonging to the
sensitive part, make use of a corporeal organ. Wherefore it is clear
that for the intellect to understand actually, not only when it
acquires fresh knowledge, but also when it applies knowledge already
acquired, there is need for the act of the imagination and of the
other powers. For when the act of the imagination is hindered by a
lesion of the corporeal organ, for instance in a case of frenzy; or
when the act of the memory is hindered, as in the c