Redeem the Time

. . . our intellect is related to the prime beings, which are most evident in their nature, as the eye of the owl to the sun.

—Aristotle, Metaphysics (993b) as quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Contra Gentiles Chapter 3, 6.

The Pegis translation I was using at home (I couldn’t find the Pegis online) has “owl” rather than the usual “bat” that one sees in most other translations I remember, hence the post.

See, for example, this version of the Summa Contra Gentiles:

. . . as the eyes of bats are to the light of the sun, so is the intelligence of our soul to the things most manifest by nature.

Or this translation of the Aristotle:

. . . just as it is with bats’ eyes in respect of daylight, so it is with our mental intelligence in respect of those things which are by nature most obvious.

Although, in one way, the difference is accidental to Aristotle’s famous analogy, and the reason for this disjunction in translation may be entirely trivial, it still allows for worthy meditation on the profound subtlety of the analogy.

Go here and translate the passage in question, as quoted by St. Thomas, yourself.

Go here for one way to start meditating on it.