  The next question of the same article (q. 2) poses the same initial problem in a more round-about way: can man know anything without divine intervention? Along traditional Augustinian lines, the reply should be negative, since all true knowledge can only come from divine illumination. But a unilateral solution of this type represents for Henry a serious attack on the dignity of the rational soul. The essential operation of the soul is constituted by knowledge; therefore if knowledge were not already included, at least partially, in its natural possibilities, the soul would paradoxically find itself constituted for an aim that it could never achieve. Moreover, since the senses provide true material, the intellect is certainly able to search for truth: “absolute ergo concedere oportet quod homo per suam animam absque omni speciali divina illustratione potest aliqua cognoscere, et hoc ex puris naturalibus.” (“One must therefore concede, in an absolute sense, that through his soul man can know something without any special divine illumination, on the basis of what is purely natural”; Summa, art. 1, q. 2, ed. Wilson, p. 35, ll. 118-120).