 | |
Ars Brevis | | |
 4. Man
11.4 Questions about the Fourth Subject, or Man
79. Can man learn more about God through affirmation than through negation? And the answer is that it
is through affirmation. Now God's existence is not due to
the things without which He exists, but rather to the things without which He cannot exist.
80. Question: why does man act through a specific form? Go to the second species of rule E, where the
solution is implied.
81. By increasing his acts, does man increase his essence? The answer is that no man is his own maker.
82. Question: when a man wants to remember something, and cannot remember it, which is more lacking:
memory or intellect? We say that it is memory, as it is
naturally quicker to restore an old species to the intellect than to the will.
83. Question: how do the soul and the body enter into the composition of man? The answer is that in
man, spiritual and corporeal goodness make up one
goodness, and so with the other principles.
84.Question: what is human life? We answer that it is the form which is composed of the vegetative,
sensitive, imaginative and rational powers.
86. Question: is man visible? The answer is no, because the sight can only see colors and shapes.
87. Question: are the intellect and the memory one and the same power in man? The answer is no, because
if they were one and the same power, the intellect
would not acquire species successively, nor would it let them be forgotten, nor could it ignore them.
Further, it would hold on to its objects so strongly as to defeat
free will. And this is enough said about man.
| 
