g. the act of seeing is in the seeing subject and
that of theorizing in the theorizing subject and the life is in the
soul (and therefore well-being also; for it is a certain kind of
life).
Obviously, therefore, the substance or form is actuality.
According to this argument, then, it is obvious that actuality is
prior in substantial being to potency; and as we have said, one
actuality always precedes another in time right back to the
actuality of the eternal prime mover.
But (b) actuality is prior in a stricter sense also; for eternal
things are prior in substance to perishable things, and no eternal
thing exists potentially. The reason is this. Every potency is at
one and the same time a potency of the opposite; for, while that which
is not capable of being present in a subject cannot be present,
everything that is capable of being may possibly not be actual.
That, then, which is capable of being may either be or not be; the
same thing, then, is capable both of being and of not being. And
that which is capable of not being may possibly not be; and that which
may possibly not be is perishable, either in the full sense, or in the
precise sense in which it is said that it possibly may not be, i.e. in
respect either of place or of quantity or quality; 'in the full sense'
means 'in respect of substance'. Nothing, then, which is in the full
sense imperishable is in the full sense potentially existent (though
there is nothing to prevent its being so in some respect, e.
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