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22 CONCERNING BEING AND ESSENCE 

necessarily that matter would impede intelligibility by means 
of its corporeal form. And this cannot be, because the very 
corporeal form also is intelligible in act, just as other forms 
are, inasmuch as it is abstracted from matter. Wherefore in the 
soul or in an intelligence there is in no way a composition of 
matter and form so that essence might be taken in them in the 
mode in which it is taken in corporeal substances. But there 
is there (in them) a composition of form and existence; whence 
it is said in the comment on the ninth proposition of the book 
De Causis 23 that intelligence is having form and existence; 
and form is taken there for the very quiddity or simple nature. 
But it is easy to see how this is. For whatever things are 
disposed towards (se habent ad} one another in such wise that 
one is the cause of the existence of the other, that which has 
the ratio of cause can possess existence without the other, but 
not conversely. But such is found to be the habitude of matter 
and form, because form gives existence to matter, and therefore 
it is impossible for matter to be without some form, yet it is 
not impossible for any form to exist without matter, for form 
inasmuch as it is form does not depend on matter. But if any 
forms should be discovered which cannot exist save in matter, 
this happens to them inasmuch as they are distant from the 
first principle which is the first and pure act. Whence those 
forms which have the greatest propinquity to the first principle 
are forms subsisting by virtue of themselves (per se) without 
matter. For form does not require matter according to its entire 
genus, as has been said, and forms of this sort are intelligences. 
And therefore it is not necessary that the essences or quiddities 
of these substances be anything save the very form. Therefore 
the essence of a composite substance and the essence of a simple 

* 8 Cf. Bardenhewer, "Die pscudoaristotelische Schrift tJbcr das Reinc 
Cute" bckannt untcr dcm Namen "Liber de Causis", Fibourg-en-Bas, 
i&8a, No. 8, p. 173.