[Footnote 705: ][ (return) ] "Ethics," bk. i. ch. iv.; "Metaphysics," bk. ii. ch. i.; "Rhetoric," bk. i. ch. ii.; "Prior Analytic," bk. ii. ch. xxiii.
[Footnote 706: ][ (return) ] "Post. Analytic," bk. i. ch. ii.
The objects of sense-perception are external, individual, "nearest to sense," and occasionally or contingently present to sense. The objects of the intellect are inward, universal, and the essential property of the soul. They are "remote from sense," "prior by nature;" they are "forms" essentially inherent in the soul previous to experience; and it is the office of experience to bring them forward into the light of consciousness, or, in the language of Aristotle, "to evoke them from potentiality into actuality." And further, from the "prior" and immediate intuitions of sense and intellect, all our secondary, our scientific and practical knowledge is drawn by logical processes.
The Aristotelian distribution of the intellectual faculties corresponds fully to this division of the objects of knowledge. The human intellect is divided by Aristotle into,
1. The Passive or Receptive Intellect (νοῦς παφητικός).--Its office is the reception of sensible impressions or images (Φαντάσµατα) and their retention in the mind (µνήµη). These sensible forms or images are essentially immaterial. "Each sensoriurn (αἰσθητήρων) is receptive of the sensible quality without the matter, and hence when the sensibles themselves are absent, sensations and φαντασίκός remain." [707]
[Footnote 707: ][ (return) ] "De Anima," bk. iii. ch. ii.
2. The Active or Creative Intellect (νοῦς ποιητικός).--This is the power or faculty which, by its own inherent power, impresses "form" upon the material of thought supplied by sense-perception, exactly as the First Cause combines it, in the universe, with the recipient matter.
"It is necessary," says Aristotle, "that these two modes should be opposed to each other, as matter is opposed to form, and to all that gives form. The receptive reason, which is as matter, becomes all things by receiving their forms. The creative reason gives existence to all things, as light calls color into being. The creative reason transcends the body, being capable of separation from it, and from all things; it is an everlasting existence, incapable of being mingled with matter, or affected by it; prior, and subsequent to the individual mind. The receptive reason is necessary to individual thought, but it is perishable, and by its decay all memory, and therefore individuality, is lost to the higher and immortal reason." [708]
This "Active or Creative Intellect" is again further subdivided, by Aristotle--