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In the Beginning was the Word: A Translation of part of St Thomas’s commentary on the Gospel of St John
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
Extract
To understand this term ‘word’ we should note that, as Aristotle teaches, vocal sounds are signs of movements within the soul. In Scripture, of course, it is usual for things signified to be called by the names of the signs, as in 1 Cor. 11: ‘But the rock was Christ’. But it is necessary that what is within our soul and expressed by our spoken word, should itself be called word. Whether the term word belongs first to what is uttered by the voice, or to the concept within the soul, is not immediately relevant. It is none the less clear that what exists within the mind and is expressed by the sound is prior to the word uttered by the voice, since it is its cause. If therefore we wish to know what is the word within the soul, let us see what is meant by what is uttered by the exterior vocal sound.
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- Copyright © 1946 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Species is that intelligible form of a thing by which, or in and through which, the thing becomes an object of our knowledge. Scholastics distinguish between the species involved in sensitive and in intellectual knowledge. For fuller discussion see Maritain: Petite Logique, p. 28, and Lex Degrés du Savoir, ch. 3 section iii.