Saturday, April 04, 2009

Q85 A7: Whether one person can understand one and the same thing better than another can?

Yes. Experience shows that some understand more profoundly than do others because one who carries a conclusion to its first principles and ultimate causes understands it better than the one who reduces it only to its proximate causes.

Per experimentum inveniuntur aliqui aliis profundius intelligentes, sicut profundius intelligit qui conclusionem aliquam potest reducere in prima principia et causas primas, quam qui potest reducere solum in causas proximas.

Those in whom the imaginative, cogitative, and memorative powers are of better disposition, are better disposed to understand.

Illi enim in quibus virtus imaginativa et cogitativa et memorativa est melius disposita, sunt melius dispositi ad intelligendum.

The truth of the intellect consists in the intellect understanding a thing as it is.

Veritas enim intellectus in hoc consistit, quod intelligatur res esse sicuti est.