Question 85 — The Mode and Order of Understanding

We come now to consider the mode and order of understanding. Under this head there are eight points of inquiry:

(1) Whether our intellect understands by abstracting the species from the phantasms?

• (2) Whether the intelligible species abstracted from the phantasms are what our intellect understands, or that whereby it understands?
• (3) Whether our intellect naturally first understands the more universal?
• (4) Whether our intellect can know many things at the same time?
• (5) Whether our intellect understands by the process of composition and division?
• (6) Whether the intellect can err?
• (7) Whether one intellect can understand better than another?
• (8) Whether our intellect understands the indivisible before the divisible?