summa-contra-gentiles

CHAPTER LXXVIII 217
it must needs be the effect of the active intellect, to which it
belongs to make actually intelligible the phantasms that are
understood potentially. But habit is to be taken as contrasted
with privation and potentiality
: in which sense
every form and act may be called a habit. This is evident
since he asserts that the active intellect is a habit in the
same way as light is a habit.
After this he adds^that this, namely the active, intellect
substance. Now of these four conditions which he
is separate, unmixed, impassible, and an actually existing
ascribes to the active intellect, he had already^ explicitlv
ascribed two to the possible intellect, namely that it is unmixed
and separate. He had applied the third,^ namely
that it is impassible, with a distinction ;
for he proves in the
first place that it is not passible as the senses are, and afterwards
he shows that, taking passion broadly,
it is passive
in so far as it is in potentiality to intelligibles. But as to
the fourth he absolutely denies it of the possible intellect,
and says that it was in potentiality to intelligibles, and none
of these things was actual before the act of intelligence.^
Accordingly in the first two the possible intellect agrees
with the active; in the third it
agrees partly, and partly
differs ;
while in the fourth the active differs altogether from
the possible intellect. He proves these four conditions of
the active intellect
by one argument, when he goes on to
say :"* For the agent is always more noble than the patient,
and the active principle than matter. For he had said
above that the active intellect is like an efficient cause, and
the possible intellect like matter. Now by this middle
proposition the two first conditions are proved, thus " The
:
agent is more noble than the patient and matter. But the
possible intellect, which is as patient and matter, is separate
and untrammelled, as proved above. Much more therefore
is the agent." The others are proved by this middle
proposition thus: "The agent
is more noble than the
patient and matter, in that it is
compared thereto as agent
and actual being to patient and potential being. Now, the
1 iv. 3, 5.
* Ibid., 5, II.
* Ibid., ii. « v. 2.