Chapter Eight of the Second Decade
On the power of angels with respect to local distance, concerning which five little questions will be resolved
Question One of Chapter Eight of the Second Decade
Whether one angel understands another
It is asked how one angel understands another.
To this it is answered as follows. As Augustine says upon Genesis, those things which existed from eternity in the Word of God flowed from him in two ways.
In one way, into the angelic intellect.
In another way, so that they might subsist in themselves and in their proper natures.
And the reasons of things proceeded into the angelic intellect through the fact that God impressed upon the angelic mind likenesses of things, both spiritual and corporeal, which he afterwards produced in natural being.
Since, therefore, every cognition is according to likenesses of the things cognized in the knower, and every angel has impressed likenesses of all spiritual and corporeal things, one angel is then said to understand another when he turns himself toward the likeness of that other which he has impressed upon him.
Similarly, angels are also then said to understand other things when they cognize them in their proper nature through species of the things innate in them. And this is called evening cognition in them, in distinction from morning cognition in them.
These things are from theological writings.
Addition
See Thomas Aquinas, First Part, question 56, article 1; Richard, Book II, distinction 9, question 3.