The Intellect of the First Man

The first man in the state of innocence had a perfect human intellect. It was unclouded and unhampered by any disorder inthe lower faculties. Yet this perfect intellect did not enable thefirst man to see God in his essence. Had the first man seen God so,he would have instantly adhered changelessly to the divine will,and could never have sinned. The first man’s knowledge of God was vastly superior to our own, both because of his unimpairednatural faculties, and because of God’s gifts and graces. Yet this splendid knowledge was not the knowledge of vision.

Nor could the first man directly and perfectly understand the essence of angels. For man, even in the perfection of his sinless nature, was still man; his intellect operated by turning to phantasms (sense-images in imagination). But angels cannot be perceived by means of sense-images. Angels cannot be perfectly known, as they are in themselves, by the human intellecteven in its state of pristine perfection.

Man was created in the state of natural perfection; hewas supplied with all knowledge necessary for the proper conduct ofhis life,for the instructing and ruling of offspring. Thefirst man was supplied divinely with knowledge of all things that man has an aptitude to know. Further, since man is made for a supernatural end, the first man was endowed with supernatural faith, and with knowledge of supernatural truths necessary for the supernatural direction of his life and his efforts. But the first man was not given knowledge of things needless to know, which he could not know naturally, such as the secret thoughts of others, or knowledge of events to occur contingently in future time.

The good of the intellect is truth; its evil is falsity. The perfect human intellect of the first man had no tendency whatever to admit its evil. Hence the first man, so long as he retained thestate of innocence, could not be deceived. He might lack knowledge of particular truths that he had no need to know, but he could not possibly accept a false statement as true. When Eve was deceived bythe serpent, she must have already sinned inwardly by pride, and so lost the first innocence which is immune to deception.