 Auriol’s theory of human intellectual cognition of singulars also shows the influence of his rejection of intuitive intellectual cognition in this life. Auriol is explicit that universal concepts (formed through the Aristotelian process of abstraction) always appear to us as abstractive cognitions, since what is universal abstracts from any presentness and directness of the object of cognition (see e.g. Scriptum, Prologue, q. 2, ed. Buytaert, p. 206, n. 111, l. 87, Pasnau 2002, p. 207; cf. Friedman 1997, pp. 310–14). There were, however, a number of members of the Franciscan order, including John Duns Scotus, who was sometimes understood by contemporaries to have claimed that singulars could be cognized as singular by the intellect. (On this aspect of Scotus thought see, e.g., Boler 1982, esp. Pini 2008.) Auriol rejects this Franciscan tradition; because true intuitive intellectual cognition is barred to us in this lifetime, we can have no direct intellectual cognition of singulars at all. Auriol maintains in his theory of intellectual cognition of singulars that we only form concepts of singulars through the mediation of the senses and by means of a discursive process. (By recognizing that the senses are now sensing a singular, the intellect can reason that a singular must now exist and be present, but we have no direct intellectual knowledge or concept of any singular.) Auriol explicitly claims, however, that angels and the blessed, lacking bodies and bodily senses, would have direct intellectual cognition of singulars, just as God does by seeing his own essence. (On Auriol’s theory, see Friedman 2000.) A mild pessimism about human cognitive abilities is thus systemic in Auriol’s thought, and has its most clear expression in his claim that we do not experience intuitive intellectual cognition in this life.