Man's Knowledge of Himself

The more a thing is freed from the limitations of matter, the more knowable it is. And the more independent a knowing-power is, in its being and its operation, from thehamperings of matter, the more perfect a knowing-power it is. Therefore we say, “Nonmateriality is the root of knowledge and of knowing.” Since God is infinite spirit, he is whollynonmaterial; therefore God is supremely knowable, and supremelyknowing. God knows himself by his essence, by being God. The angels are spirits, unhampered by matter; they know themselves in their essence, for God gives them knowledge as he creates them and gives them their essence. Man’s intellect knows itself, not by or in its essence, but by its operation. The mind directly knows essences abstracted from phantasms (that is, it knows theessences of material things), and, by reflection, the mind can know that it knows; it can know itself by knowing. Of intellectual beings, God knows perfectly; angels less perfectly;man least perfectly.

Habits, in the intellectual order, are: (a) truths acquired, retained, and ready for use in our reasoning; and (b) the practiced facility to acquire knowledge by using these acquired and permanently retained truths as mental equipment. Our grasp of first principles (see above, 79, art. 12), whether intellectual or moral,is a habit; the intellectual first principles constitute a habit fundamental to our thinking; the moral first principles make a habit basic to all our responsible conduct. The mind or intellect is not directly aware of habits as such; it knows them by reflection.

The intellect, exercising its connatural operation of knowing the essences of material things, knows these essences inits own way, that is, in universal. And, as we have noted, the intellect can reflect, or turn its attention back upon itself; thus it can know things in singular, thus also it can know itself as operating, and can know its operation.

And the intellect can know the will. Knowing itself and its operations it knows the tendency of man to follow knowledge, to tend after what knowledge presents as desirable. Thus intellectknows will.