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There are diverse opinions about the ‘intelligible species’ by means of which the scholars tried to explain the relation between the cognitive act and the extramental object. The scholars in early and middle 13th century, including St. Thomas Aquinas in his commentaries on the sentences, did not clearly distinguish between the intelligible species and the intelligible form which the extramental things possess. Consequently, the intelligible species was regarded not only as the medium of the cognition but also as the object of cognition. According to this position, therefore, the intelligible species plays a role of the medium because it is just the known intelligible form of the things. But in I, 85, 2 of Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas considers that the intelligible species is the principle of the cognition. But this positive determination presupposes the negative one that the intelligible species is not the direct object of the cognition. In doing so, St. Thomas Aquinas not only criticizes the opinion of his contemporaries as well as the scholars before him but also corrects his own early view. According to him, from the presence of species in the intellect it may not be concluded that it is known by the intellect. For the intelligible species is only the form of the intellect by which it cognizes the reality. And the position that the species is the very object is opposed to the position that it is the medium of cognition, because any position which compromises the two given positions would result in the solipsism, scepticism or relativism. The arguments developed by Thomas Aquinas in I, 85, 2 are accepted widely in various forms in the late 13th century. It is interesting to notice that even those who refuse the intelligible species, make use of St. Thomas’ determination of species and his arguments in their polemics.