3. The whiteness that I see in you is not a quality, but an
actualization of the potentiality of whitening. In the intelligible
world all the things that we call qualities are actualizations.
They are called qualities because they are properties, because they
differentiate the beings from each other, because in respect to
themselves they bear a particular character. But since quality in
the sense-world is also an actualization, in what does it differ
from the intelligible quality? The sense-quality does not show the
essential quality of every being, nor the difference or character of
substances, but simply the thing that we properly call quality, and
which is an actualization in the intelligible world. When the property
of something is to be a being, this thing is not a quality. But when
reason separates beings from their properties, when it removes nothing
from them, when it limits itself to conceiving and begetting different
from these beings, it begets quality, which it conceives of as the
superficial part of being. In this case, nothing hinders the heat of
the fire, so far as it is natural to it, from constituting a form, an
actualization, and not a quality of the fire; it is a quality when it
exists in a substance where it no longer constitutes the form of being,
but only a trace, an adumbration, an image of being, because it finds
itself separated from the being whose actualization it is.