tellect, when it understands anything very
intelligible, does not less understand inferior concerns, but even
understands them in a greater degree; for the sensitive power is not
without body, but intellect is separate from body.

When however it becomes particulars, in such a manner as he is said to
possess scientific knowledge who scientifically knows in energy (and
this happens when it is able to energize through itself), then also it
is similarly in a certain respect in capacity, yet not after the same
manner as before it learnt or discovered; and it is then itself able to
understand itself. By the sensitive power, therefore, it distinguishes
the hot and the cold, and those things of which flesh is a certain
reason; but by another power, either separate, or as an inflected line
subsists with reference to itself when it is extended, it distinguishes
the essence of flesh. Further still, in those things which consist in
ablation, the straight is as the flat nose; for it subsists with the
continued.

Some one, however, may question, if intellect is simple and impassive
and has nothing in common with anything, as Anaxagoras says, how it can
perceive intellectually, if to perceive intellectually is to suffer
something; for so far as something is common to both, the one appears to
act, but the other to suffer. Again, it may also be doubted whether
intellect is itself intelligible. For either intellect will also be
present with other things, if it is not intelligible according to
another thing, but the intelligible is one certain thing in species; or
it will have something mingled, which will make it to be intelligible in
the same manner as other things. Or shall we say that to suffer subsists
according to something common? On which account, it was before observed
that intellect is in capacity, in a certain respect, intelligibles, but
is no one of them in entelecheia, before it understands or perceives
intellectually. But it is necessary to conceive of it as of a table in
which nothing is written in entelecheia; which happens to be the case in
intellect. But in those things which have matter, each of the
intelligibles is in capacity only. Hence, intellect will not be present
with them; for the intellect of such things is capacity without matter.
But with intellect the intelligible will be present.

* * * * *

Since, however, in every nature there is something which is matter to
each genus