Friday, August 30, 2024

St. Thomas Aquinas

"...intellect and will: these are not acts of any parts of the body."

"...in the brain... animal forces culminate..."

"...four interior powers of the sensitive [soul] - namely, the common sense, the imagination, and the estimative and memorative powers."

"All things are said to be seen in God and all things are judged in Him, because by the participation of His light, we know and judge all things; for the light of natural reason itself is a participation of the divine light..."

"The meritorious knowledge and love of God can be in us only by grace."

"...understanding is an intellectual principle higher than our intellect - namely, God..."

"...reason... whereby it apprehends the truth about something. This act is not in our power: because it happens in virtue of a natural or supernatural light."

"...will is a power of the rational soul, which is caused by God..."

"...passion is properly to be found where there is corporeal transmutation. This corporeal transmutation is found in the act of the sensitive appetite, and is not only spiritual, as in the sensitive apprehension, but also natural. Now there is no need for corporeal transmutation in the act of the intellectual appetite: because this appetite is not exercised by means of a corporeal organ."

"The intellect is above... time..."

"...the soul moves the body..."

"...the soul by its very essence is an act."

"...God alone is pure act..."

"...in God alone His action of understanding is His very Being. Wherefore in God alone is His Intellect His essence: while in other intellectual creatures, the intellect is power."

"...the Word of God is born of God by the knowledge of Himself; and Love proceeds from God according as He loves Himself."

"...the intellect... is the form of the human body."

"...the soul is the primary principle of our nourishment, sensation, and local movement; and likewise of our understanding."

"...the soul in its essence is the form of the body, and the faculties, too, are all rooted in the essence of the soul."

"...the corporeal creature is governed by the angels."

"...angels propose the intelligible truth to men under the similitudes of sensible things... the human intellect... is strengthened by the action of the angelic intellect."

"...Augustine does not take the above three for three powers; but by memory he understands the soul's habit of retention; by intelligence, the act of the intellect; and by will, the act of the will."

"...powers that are principles of the soul's operations, are united in the essence of the soul."

"Intelligence arises from memory..."

"...the higher part of the reason is the province of wisdom, while the lower part is the domain of knowledge... [St. Augustine] ...directs human acts according to Divine rules."

"...by like acts habits are formed..." [Aristotle]

"...the intellect knows itself not by its essence, but by its act."

"...habits, like the powers, are known by their acts."

"...the first thing understood of the intellect is its own act of understanding."

"...the human intellect, which neither is its own act of understanding, nor is its own essence the first object of its act of understanding, for this object is the nature of a material thing... that which is first known by the human intellect is an object of this kind, and that which is known secondarily is the act by which that object is known; and through the act the intellect itself is known, the perfection of which is this act of understanding."

"...the intellect in act is the object actually understood." (Matter, potency; Form, act)

"The necessity of prayer is based on the necessity of actual grace." [Adolphe Tanquerey]

"The will is the name of the rational appetite; and consequently it cannot be in things devoid of reason."

"...the intellectual light itself which is in us, is nothing else than a participated likeness of  the uncreated light in which are contained the eternal types."

"The knowledge which we have by natural reason contains two things: images derived from the sensible objects; and the natural intelligible light, enabling us to abstract from them intelligible conceptions."

"Our intellect both abstracts the intelligible species from the phantasms, inasmuch as it considers the natures of things in universal, and, nevertheless, understands these natures in the phantasms since it cannot understand even the things of which it abstracts the species, without turning to the phantasms..."

"...the image of the Trinity is to be found in the acts of the soul, that is, inasmuch as from the knowledge which we possess, by actual thought we form an internal word; and thence break forth into love. But, since the principles of acts are the habits and powers, and everything exists virtually in its principle, therefore, secondarily and consequently, the image of the Trinity may be considered as existing in the powers, and still more in the habits, forasmuch as the acts virtually exist therein."

"...human knowledge is assisted by the revelation of grace. For the intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light; and sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed."

"...the love of God is better than the knowledge of God; but, on the contrary, the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the love thereof."

"...the intellect understands that the will wills, and the will wills the intellect to understand."

"...man's natural light, which is what makes him intellectual, is from God."

"...God is the author of the intellect power, and... he can be seen by the intellect."

"God infuses into man, over and above the natural faculty of reason, the light of grace whereby he is internally perfected for the exercise of virtue... man's mind is elevated by this light to the knowledge of truths surpassing reason... man's affective power is raised by this light above all created things to the love of God..."

"...the end of the spiritual life is that man be united to God, and this union is effected by charity..."

"Charity is not any kind of love of God, but that love of God, by which He is loved as the object of bliss, to which object we are directed by faith and hope."

"...charity, unlike faith and hope, is inseparable from the state of grace and from the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in us..." [Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange]

"Just as God's understanding is His existence, so likewise is His love."

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St. Catherine of Siena

"...memory in order to receive Your benefits, by which he participates in the power of the Eternal Father; and intellect that he might know, seeing Your goodness, and so might participate in the wisdom of Your only-begotten Son; and will, that he might love that which his intellect has seen and known of Your truth, thus participating in the clemency of Your Holy Spirit."

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Allan N. Schore

"...Winnicott proclaimed 'an instinct repressed along abnormal paths is liable to be shoved down deep into the subconscious and there act as a foreign body: this 'foreign body' may remain in the subconscious for a whole lifetime and completely control the life of the individual who has not control over this curious tendency since it is not known to him even exist'..."

"...Winnicott differentiated a 'true self' and a 'false' or 'caretaker self' designed to protect it. This caretaker self usually becomes identified with the conscious mind, leaving the true self languishing in the body, potentially causing psychosomatic illness. In modern neuropsychoanalytic terms, early developmental trauma generates an underlying weakness of the bodily-based right brain 'true self' that is masked by a left brain pseudo-adult 'false self.'"
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Saturday, August 10, 2024