| THE reason why our understanding cannot understand many things together in one act is because in the act of understanding the mind becomes one with the object understood; whence it follows that, were the mind to understand many things together in one act, it would be many things together, all of one genus, which is impossible. Intellectual impressions are all of one genus: they are of one type of being in the existence which they have in the mind, although the things of which they are impressions do not agree in one type of being: hence the contrariety of things outside the mind does not render the impressions of those things in the mind contrary to one another. And hence it is that when many things are taken together, being anyhow united, they are understood together. Thus a continuous whole is understood at once, not part by part; and a proposition is understood at once, not first the subject and then the predicate: because all the parts are known by one mental impression of the whole. Hence we gather that whatever several objects are known by one mental presentation, can be understood together: but God knows all things by that one presentation of them, which is His essence; therefore He can understand all together and at once. | |