e of glory, when we shall be
able to see the Essence of God Himself, but without being able to
comprehend Him.

Reply Obj. 2: The nature of our mind is to know species abstracted
from phantasms; therefore it cannot know actually or habitually
species of numbers or figures that are not in the imagination, except
in a general way and in their universal principles; and this is to
know them potentially and confusedly.

Reply Obj. 3: If two or more bodies were in the same place, there
would be no need for them to occupy the place successively, in order
for the things placed to be counted according to this succession of
occupation. On the other hand, the intelligible species enter into
our intellect successively; since many things cannot be actually
understood at the same time: and therefore there must be a definite
and not an infinite number of species in our intellect.

Reply Obj. 4: As our intellect is infinite in power, so does it know
the infinite. For its power is indeed infinite inasmuch as it is not
terminated by corporeal matter. Moreover it can know the universal,
which is abstracted from individual matter, and which consequently is
not limited to one individual, but, considered in itself, extends to
an infinite number of individuals.
_______________________

THIRD ARTICLE [I, Q. 86, Art. 3]

Whether Our Intellect Can Know Contingent Things?

Objection 1: It would seem that the intellect cannot know contingent
things: because, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 6), the objects
of understanding, wisdom and knowledge are not contingent, but
necessary things.

Obj. 2: Further, as stated in Phys. iv, 12, "what sometimes is and
sometimes is not, is measured by time." Now the intellect abstracts
from time, and from other material conditions. Therefore, as it is
proper to a contingent thing sometime to be and sometime not to be,
it seems that contingent things are not known by the intellect.

_On the contrary,_ All knowledge is in the intellect. But some
sciences are of the contingent things, as the moral sciences, the
objects of which are human actions subject to free-will; and again,
the natural sciences in as far as they relate to things generated
and corruptible. Therefore the intellect knows contingent things.

_I answer that,_ Contingent things can be considered in two ways;
either as contingent, or as containing some element of necessity,
since every contingent thing has in it something necessary: for