Question Three
Whether the soul retains after death the sciences and virtues acquired here, and whether the damned use them with delight
It is asked whether separated souls retain after death the sciences and virtues acquired here, and whether the damned use them with delight.
To this it is answered that science can be taken in two ways.
In the first way it is taken materially for the phantasms from which the intelligible species and science are abstracted. These phantasms possess a determinate organ in the head, namely its middle cell, and thus acquired science does not remain after death.
For the soul does not possess any organs or phantasms toward which it may turn itself in order to understand, because this manner of understanding is proper to the conjoined soul, bent down and inclined toward the body.
In this manner the Apostle’s statement in 1 Corinthians 13, “Whether knowledge shall be destroyed,” is understood, as is the statement of the Philosopher in the Categories, who says that knowledge is corrupted through a vehement alteration.
In the second way, science is taken for a habit left in the soul or in the possible intellect, which is a certain power of the soul in which all intelligible species are spiritually received. In this manner science remains in the separated soul.
And when it is asked whether the damned in hell use it with delight, because the Philosopher says in Book IV of the Ethics that philosophy possesses great delights, and Lactantius says in Book I of the Divine Institutions, “No food is sweeter to the soul than the cognition of truth,” it is answered that, just as among the blessed there will be nothing which is not matter for joy toward their perfect beatitude, so among the damned there will be nothing which is not cause and matter of sadness; nor will anything be lacking which can pertain to sadness, so that their misery may thus be consummated.
Therefore the damned will consider the evils which they performed, from which they are damned, and the destroyed goods which they lost, and they will be tormented by both.
Likewise, they will also be tormented by this: they will consider that the science and knowledge which they possessed concerning objects of speculation was imperfect, and that they lost the highest perfection of it which they could have attained.
And thus, although, as the Philosopher says, the consideration of science is delightful in itself by reason of the conformity and perfection of the higher part of the human being, it can nevertheless be a cause of sadness through some accident.
These things are from Thomas in Book IV of the Sentences, distinction 50.