But evidently knowledge and perception and opinion and
understanding have always something else as their object, and
themselves only by the way. Further, if thinking and being thought
of are different, in respect of which does goodness belong to thought?
For to he an act of thinking and to he an object of thought are not
the same thing. We answer that in some cases the knowledge is the
object. In the productive sciences it is the substance or essence of
the object, matter omitted, and in the theoretical sciences the
definition or the act of thinking is the object. Since, then,
thought and the object of thought are not different in the case of
things that have not matter, the divine thought and its object will be
the same, i.e. the thinking will be one with the object of its
thought.
A further question is left-whether the object of the divine
thought is composite; for if it were, thought would change in
passing from part to part of the whole. We answer that everything
which has not matter is indivisible-as human thought, or rather the
thought of composite beings, is in a certain period of time (for it
does not possess the good at this moment or at that, but its best,
being something different from it, is attained only in a whole
period of time), so throughout eternity is the thought which has
itself for its object.
10
We must consider also in which of two ways the nature of the
universe contains the good, and the highest good, whether as something
separate and by itself, or as the order of the parts.
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