Of God and His Creatures
Reasons to show how the Multitude of intelligible Ideal
Forms has no Existence except in the Divine Understanding
IT is not to be supposed that the multitude of intelligible ideal forms
is in any other understanding save the divine, say, the understanding
of an angel. For in that case the divine understanding would depend, at
least for some portion of its activity, upon some secondary intellect,
which is impossible: for as substances are of God, so also all that is
in substances: hence for the being of any of these forms in any
secondary intellect there is prerequired an act of the divine
intelligence, whereby God is cause.
2. It is impossible for one intellect to perform an intellectual
operation by virtue of another intellect being disposed to that
operation: that intellect itself must operate, which is disposed so to
do. The fact then of many intelligible forms being in some secondary
intellect cannot account for the prime intellect knowing the multitude
of such forms.
1.51 : Some Discussion of the question how there is in the Divine Understanding a Multitude of Objects
1.53 : How there is in God a Multitude of Objects of Understanding