nds. Hence as the active power of
God extends not only to forms, which are the source of universality,
but also to matter, as we shall prove further on (Q. 44, A. 2), the
knowledge of God must extend to singular things, which are
individualized by matter. For since He knows things other than
Himself by His essence, as being the likeness of things, or as their
active principle, His essence must be the sufficing principle of
knowing all things made by Him, not only in the universal, but also in
the singular. The same would apply to the knowledge of the artificer,
if it were productive of the whole thing, and not only of the form.

Reply Obj. 1: Our intellect abstracts the intelligible species from
the individualizing principles; hence the intelligible species in our
intellect cannot be the likeness of the individual principles; and on
that account our intellect does not know the singular. But the
intelligible species in the divine intellect, which is the essence of
God, is immaterial not by abstraction, but of itself, being the
principle of all the principles which enter into the composition of
things, whether principles of the species or principles of the
individual; hence by it God knows not only universal, but also
singular things.

Reply Obj. 2: Although as regards the species in the divine intellect
its being has no material conditions like the images received in the
imagination and sense, yet its power extends to both immaterial and
material things.

Reply Obj. 3: Although matter as regards its potentiality recedes
from likeness to God, yet, even in so far as it has being in this
wise, it retains a certain likeness to the divine being.
_______________________

TWELFTH ARTICLE [I, Q. 14, Art. 12]

Whether God Can Know Infinite Things?

Objection 1: It seems that God cannot know infinite things. For the
infinite, as such, is unknown; since the infinite is that which, "to
those who measure it, leaves always something more to be measured,"
as the Philosopher says (Phys. iii). Moreover, Augustine says (De
Civ. Dei xii) that "whatever is comprehended by knowledge, is bounded
by the comprehension of the knower." Now infinite things have no
boundary. Therefore they cannot be comprehended by the knowledge of
God.

Obj. 2: Further, if we say that things infinite in themselves are
finite in God's knowledge, against this it may be urged that the
essence of the infinite is that it is untraversable, and the finite
that