Whether our intellect understands by composition and division?

❌ Objection 1 : It would seem that our intellect does not understand by composition and division. For composition and division are only of many; whereas the intellect cannot understand many things at the same time. Therefore it cannot understand by composition and division.

❌ Objection 2 : Further, every composition and division implies past, present, or future time. But the intellect abstracts from time, as also from other individual conditions. Therefore the intellect does not understand by composition and division.

❌ Objection 3 : Further, the intellect understands things by a process of assimilation to them. But composition and division are not in things, for nothing is in things but what is signified by the predicate and the subject, and which is one and the same, provided that the composition be true, for "man" is truly what "animal" is. Therefore the intellect does not act by composition and division.