CHAPTER LXVII—Against those who maintain that the Potential Intellect is the Phantasy³⁶³³⁶³Averroes, and after him St Thomas (II Sent. d. 17, q. 2, a. 1), attributes this opinion to Avempace (Ibn-Bâdja), a Moorish philosopher at Seville and Granada in the early twelfth century. As making the potential intellect a corporeal faculty, the opinion is redolent of Alexander, and is rejected by Averroes.

PHANTASY is found in other animals besides man, the proof of which is that, as objects of sense recede from sense, these animals still shun or pursue them. But intellect is not in them, as no work of intelligence appears in their conduct.

2. Phantasy is only of things corporeal and singular; but intellect, of things universal and incorporeal.³⁶⁴³⁶⁴We may, nay, we always do, take a universal view of a corporeal thing, as ‘camel,’ ‘steam-engine.’ It is a capital error in philosophy to make all universals abstract ideas. All concrete things are universalised in the mind.

4. Intelligence is not the actualisation of any bodily organ. But phantasy has a fixed bodily organ.³⁶⁵³⁶⁵Namely, the very same bodily parts which were implicated in the original sensible impression, or impressions, which phantasy now reproduces. This is well brought out by Bain in his Senses and Intellect.

Hence it is said: Who teacheth us above the beasts of the earth, and above the fowls of the air instructeth us (Job xxxv, 11): whereby we are given to understand that there is in man a certain cognitive power, above the sense and fancy that are in other animals.