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<strong>Cause</strong>, principle and unity<br />
before the actuality, nor even after it. Furthermore, the power to be accompanies<br />
the being in act and does not come before it, for if what can exist<br />
made itself, it would exist before being made. Consider at present the prime<br />
and optimal principle, which is all it can be: if it could not be all, it would<br />
not be all; therefore, in it, act and potency are the same thing. This is not<br />
the case with other things, which, however much they are what they can<br />
be, could possibly not exist at all, or certainly could be something else, or<br />
be different from what they are, for nothing outside of the first principle is<br />
all that it can be. Man is what he can be, but not all that he can be. A stone<br />
is not all it can be, because it is not lime, nor dust, nor vase, nor grass. That<br />
which is all that it can be is a unity, which in its being comprises every<br />
being. Every other thing is not like that. That is why potency is not the<br />
same as act, since act is not absolute but limited. Moreover, the potency is<br />
always limited to a single act, because it never has more than one, specific<br />
and particular being. And even if it aspires to every form and every act, this<br />
is by means of certain dispositions, and following a certain succession of<br />
beings, one after another. Hence, every potency, every act which, in the<br />
principle, is (so to speak) enfolded, united and unique, is unfolded, dispersed<br />
and multiplied in other things. The universe, which is the great<br />
simulacrum, the great image and sole-begotten nature, is also all that it can<br />
be, through the very species and principal members, and by containing the<br />
totality of matter, to which nothing is added, nothing taken away, of complete<br />
and unified form. But it is also not all that it can be, because of its very<br />
differences, its particulars, its modes and its individuals. It is only a shadow<br />
of the first act and the first potency, and, in consequence, potency and<br />
act are not absolutely one and the same thing in it, since none of its parts is<br />
all that it can be. Furthermore, in the specific way that we have mentioned,<br />
the universe is all that it can be, in an unfolded, dispersed and distinct manner,<br />
while its first principle is all it can be in a unified and undifferentiated<br />
way, since all is there as a whole, an absolutely one and the same thing<br />
without difference or distinction.<br />
DICSONO. What do you say of death, corruption, vices, defects, monsters?<br />
Do you think they also have a place in that which is all it can be and<br />
which is in act all it is in potency?<br />
TEOFILO. These things are neither act nor potency, but defect and<br />
impotency found in unfolded things, because they are not all they can be<br />
and are compelled into becoming what they can be. Hence, unable to be<br />
many things at once, they lose one being in order to have another, and<br />
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