a. Exposition of the Objection

129. As to the third article [n.17] it seems that this conversion could belong to some creature as to an agent acting instrumentally.

130. First, because an accident can be an agent instrumentally for the generation of substance; therefore by likeness also in the issue at hand.

131. The proof of the antecedent is first as follows: when things are essentially ordered, the third is more distant from the first than the second; but increatures essence, being, and power are essentially ordered; therefore power is more distant from essence than being. But being really differs from essence; therefore so does power; and consequently no substantial form can be the immediate principle of acting.

132. The same antecedent is proved in another way thus: whenever there are two acts neither of which includes the other, then they are not reduced to the same principle, as is plain in On the Soul 2.4.415a16-20 where the Philosopher holds that powers are distinguished by acts as acts are by objects; but ‘perfecting matter’ and ‘abstracting from matter’ are two acts in the soul that do not include each other. The proof is that each can be without the other: the first without the second (as in a child and someone asleep), and the second without the first (in the separated soul); but the prior act, namely ‘giving being to matter’, belongs to the essence as to proximate formal principle; therefore the other act [‘abstracting from matter’] does not belong to the essence; and then, by likeness, not to other substantial forms with respect to actions that seem to belong to them.

133. If it be objected against this that, first, anything absolute can be separated from anything absolute (for there seems to be no contradiction here), then, if the intellect is something absolute different from the soul, it can be separated from the soul and can, as so separate, understand and be beatified (which seems unacceptable); second that because substance or the quiddity of substance is the object that moves the intellect, therefore it is the immediate principle of operating on the intellect - to the first of these they reply by denying the first proposition, setting down an example about subject and property; to the second they say that the action is intentional, not real.