Therefore, since the true regards cognition, and the good regards desire, the true is prior to the good secundum rationem."
This argument, whatever validity it may have, is significant of its author's predominantly intellectual temperament, and consistent with his conception of man's supreme beatitude as the intellectual vision of God. Obviously, moreover, the setting of the true above the good is another way of stating the primacy of knowledge over will, which is also maintained: "Will and understanding (intellectus) mutually include each other: for the understanding knows the will; and the will wills that the understanding should know."[1] Evidently all rational beings have will as well as understanding; God wills, the Angels will, man wills. Indeed, how could knowledge progress but for the will to know? Yet of the two, considered in themselves, understanding is higher than will –
"for its object is the ratio, the very essential nature, of the desired good, while the object of will is the desired good whose ratio is in the understanding. ... Yet will may be the higher, if it is set upon something higher than the understanding. ... When the thing in which is the good is nobler than the soul itself, in which is the rational cognizance (ratio intellecta), the will, through relation to that thing, is higher than the understanding. But when the thing in which is the good, is lower than the soul, then in relation to that thing, the understanding is higher than the will. Wherefore the love of God is better than the cognizance (cognitio); but the cognizance of corporeal things is better than the love. Yet taken absolutely, the understanding is higher than the will."[2]
These positions of the Angelic Doctor were sharply opposed in his lifetime and afterwards. Without entering the lists, let us rather follow him on his evidently Aristotelian path, which quickly brings him to his next conclusion: "That beatitude consists in the action of the speculative rather than the practical intellect, as is evident from three arguments:
"First, if man's beatitude is action, it ought to be the man's best (optima) action. But man's best action is that of his best faculty in respect to the best object. The best faculty is intelligence, whose best object is the divine good, which is not an object of the practical,
