Moreover, a rational person continually comes to understand aspects of his own condition that were previously unclear to him, thereby gaining greater understanding, knowledge, and insight into himself. He experiences this within himself with immediate certainty, just as he experiences his self-evident knowledge. How, then, could his knowledge of himself add nothing to the mere self that existed before he knew it?

As for the assertion:

“An intellective subject, in apprehending its own essence, needs no form other than the form of its essence, by which it is what it is.”

The response is:

It is necessarily known that apprehending its essence is not identical with that essence. If its essence is conceived without apprehension of it, and then conceived together with apprehension of it, that apprehension constitutes something additional to its essence without such apprehension. This apprehension is distinct from the essence devoid of apprehension. This is known through direct experience and by necessity.

Now, whether the person making this assertion says:

“Apprehension consists in the form of the intelligible object becoming imprinted in the intellective subject,”

or says:

“Apprehension is that very form, or the apprehension of that form,”

or says:

“There is no form involved; rather, apprehension is knowledge of the object apprehended without a form,”

or says:

“It is a relation between the apprehending subject and the apprehended object, without a form,”

whichever of these positions he adopts, he must hold that apprehension is not identical with the object apprehended. Knowledge, then, is not the very object known, just as it