Chapter 104 — That the ultimate end of the intellectual creature is to see God in his essence

A thing may be in potency in two ways: either naturally, that is, with respect to perfections that can be reduced to act by a connatural agent; or else with respect to perfections that cannot be reduced to act by a connatural agent but require some other agent. This is seen to take place even in bodily beings. That a boy should grow up to be a man or a spermatozoon develop into an animal is the realization of a natural potency. But that lumber should become a bench or a blind man receive sight is not from a natural potency.

The same is the case with our minds. Our intellect has a natural potency with regard to certain intelligible objects, namely, those that can be reduced to act by the agent intellect. We possess this faculty as an innate principle so that through it we may understand in actuality. However, we cannot attain our ultimate end by the actuation of our intellect through the agent intellect. For the agent intellect’s function is to render actually intelligible the phantasms that of themselves are only potentially intelligible. This was explained above. These phantasms are received through the senses. Consequently, the agent intellect actuates our intellect only with respect to those intelligible objects that we can come to know through sensible things.

However, man’s last end cannot consist in this kind of knowledge. For once the ultimate end has been reached, natural desire ceases. But no matter how much we may advance in this kind of understanding, whereby we derive knowledge from the senses, there still remains a natural desire to know other things. For there are many things beyond the reach of the senses. About such things we can gain only a slight knowledge through sensible things: we may come to know that they exist, but we cannot know what they are, for the essences of immaterial substances belong to a different genus than the essences of sensible things, and they excel them, so to speak, beyond all proportion.

Moreover, even as regards things that do fall under the senses, there are many whose nature we cannot know with any certainty. The nature of some we do not grasp in any way; of others, we know the nature only weakly. Hence our natural desire for more perfect knowledge ever remains. But a natural desire cannot be in vain.

Accordingly, we reach our last end when our intellect is actualized by some higher agent than an agent connatural to us, that makes our inborn desire for knowledge rest. Now, the desire for knowledge within us is such that, once we apprehend an effect, we wish to know its cause. Moreover, after we have gained some circumstantial knowledge of any given thing, our desire is not satisfied until we penetrate to its essence. Therefore, our natural desire for knowledge cannot come to rest within us until we know the first cause, and that not in just any way, but in its very essence. Now, the first cause is God, as is clear from what has been said above. Consequently, the ultimate end of an intellectual creature is the vision of God in his essence.