CHAPTER XCIV—That the Contemplative (Intellectual) Virtues are in God

IF Wisdom consists in the knowledge of the highest causes; and God chiefly knows Himself, and knows nothing except by knowing Himself, as the first cause of all (Chap. XLVI), it is evident that Wisdom ought to be attributed to God in the first place. Hence it is said: He is wise of heart (Job ix, 4.); and, All wisdom is of the Lord God, and hath been with him alway (Ecclus i, 1). The Philosopher also says at the beginning of his Metaphysics that Wisdom is a divine possession, not a human.

2. If Knowledge (Science) is an acquaintance with a thing through its proper cause, and God knows the order of all causes and effects, and thereby the several proper causes of individual things (Chapp. LXV, LXVII), it is manifest that Knowledge (Science) is properly in God; hence God is the Lord of sciences (1 Kings ii, 3)

3. If the immaterial cognition of things, attained without discussion, is 71Understanding (Intuition),¹⁸⁶¹⁸⁶Intellectus. This word in St Thomas means sometimes the faculty of ‘understanding’; sometimes, as here, the act, or habit of understanding, of which so much is made in modern philosophy under the name of ‘intuition.’ St Thomas too makes much of it. Thus his intellectus principiorum is ‘intuition of first principles.’ The corresponding Aristotelian and Platonic word is νοῦς as distinguished from διάνοια. Kant’s ‘Reason’ is his equivalent for νοῦς and intellectus. God has such a cognition of all things (Chap. L); and therefore there is in Him Understanding. Hence, He hath counsel and understanding (Job xii, 13).