n God other
than the plurality of Persons: and this is against the teaching of
Damascene (De Fide Orth. i, 10), who says, in God all things are one,
except "ingenerability, generation, and procession." Ideas therefore
are not many.

_On the contrary,_ Augustine says (Octog. Tri. Quaest. qu. xlvi),
"Ideas are certain principal forms, or permanent and immutable types
of things, they themselves not being formed. Thus they are eternal,
and existing always in the same manner, as being contained in the
divine intelligence. Whilst, however, they themselves neither come
into being nor decay, yet we say that in accordance with them
everything is formed that can rise or decay, and all that actually
does so."

_I answer that,_ It must necessarily be held that ideas are many. In
proof of which it is to be considered that in every effect the
ultimate end is the proper intention of the principal agent, as the
order of an army (is the proper intention) of the general. Now the
highest good existing in things is the good of the order of the
universe, as the Philosopher clearly teaches in _Metaph._ xii.
Therefore the order of the universe is properly intended by God, and
is not the accidental result of a succession of agents, as has been
supposed by those who have taught that God created only the first
creature, and that this creature created the second creature, and so
on, until this great multitude of beings was produced. According to
this opinion God would have the idea of the first created thing
alone; whereas, if the order itself of the universe was created by
Him immediately, and intended by Him, He must have the idea of the
order of the universe. Now there cannot be an idea of any whole,
unless particular ideas are had of those parts of which the whole is
made; just as a builder cannot conceive the idea of a house unless he
has the idea of each of its parts. So, then, it must needs be that in
the divine mind there are the proper ideas of all things. Hence
Augustine says (Octog. Tri. Quaest. qu. xlvi), "that each thing was
created by God according to the idea proper to it," from which it
follows that in the divine mind ideas are many. Now it can easily be
seen how this is not repugnant to the simplicity of God, if we
consider that the idea of a work is in the mind of the operator as
that which is understood, and not as the image whereby he
understands, which is a form that makes the intellect in act. For the
form of the house i