3. The purpose of the preceding considerations was to determine the
meaning of the statement that intelligibles are actual; to decide
whether every intelligible exist only actually, or whether it be only
an actuality; and third, how even up there in the intelligible, where
all things are actualities, there can also exist something potentially.
If, then, in the intelligible world, there be no matter which might
be called potential, if no being is to become something which it not
yet is, nor transform itself, nor, while remaining what it is, beget
something else, nor by altering, cause any substitution, then there
could not be anything potential in this World of eternal essence
outside of time. Let us now address the following question to those
who admit the existence of matter, even in intelligible things: "How
can we speak of matter in the intelligible world, if by virtue of this
matter nothing exists potentially? For even if in the intelligible
world matter existed otherwise than it does in the sense-world, still
in every being would be the matter, the form and the compound which
constitutes it." They would answer that in intelligible things, what
plays the part of matter is a form, and that the soul, by herself,
is form; but, in relation to something else, is matter. Is the soul
then potential in respect of this other thing? Hardly, for the soul
possesses the form, and possesses it at present, without regard to the
future, and she is divisible in form and matter only for reason; if she
contain matter, it is only because thought conceives of her as double
(by distinguishing form and matter in her). But these two things form
a single nature, as Aristotle also says that his "quintessence" is
immaterial.
THE SOUL IS THE PRODUCING POTENTIALITY; NOT THE POTENTIALITY OF
BECOMING.
What shall we say? Potentially, she is the animal, when it is unborn,
though to be born. Potentially she is the music, and all the things
that become, because they are transient. Thus in the intelligible world
there are things which exist, or do not exist potentially. But the soul
is the potentiality of these things.[22]