How did St. Thomas Aquinas distinguish sight and hearing from the other senses?

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aesthetics Edmund Burke, detail of an oil painting from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1771; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

In the context of aesthetics, St. Thomas Aquinas distinguished sight and hearing from the other senses by identifying them as the only senses capable of "contemplation."1

While Aquinas believed that human interest in beauty originates in the senses, he argued that beauty is that which pleases solely through the act of contemplating it. Because sight and hearing allow for this contemplative engagement, they hold a unique status in his aesthetic theory, which is detailed in his work, the Summa Theologiae.1