[CHAPTER XII.]
IMMEDIATE INTELLIGIBILITY.
120. Neither active nor passive representation can be predicated of all things; we mean to say, that there are some beings which are not endowed with intellectual activity, and cannot be even passively the object of the acts of the intellect.
As regards the power of active representation, which is at bottom only the faculty of intelligence, it is evident that many beings are destitute of it. There may be greater difficulty with regard to passive representation, or the fitness to be the immediate object of the intellect.
121. An object cannot be known immediately, that is, without the mediation of an idea, if it do not itself perform the functions of this idea, and unite itself to the intellect which is to know it. This alone takes from all material objects the character of being immediately intelligible: so that if a mind be imagined having no idea of the corporeal universe, it could know nothing of it, although for all eternity in the midst of it.
Hence it follows that matter neither is, nor can be, intelligent or intelligible: the ideas which we have of it come from another source; without them we might be united to matter, and never know or even suspect its existence.
122. An opportunity is here presented of explaining an exceedingly curious doctrine of St. Thomas. This eminent metaphysician was of opinion that it required greater perfection to be immediately intelligible than to be intelligent; so that the human mind, although endowed with intelligence, does not possess intelligibility.