the active intellect: that by its very essence it necessitates substantial forms and human souls, even though what it intrinsically necessitates depends on the existence of receptive matter.’”

He said: “Even if we concede that it must be contingent, we do not concede that a contingent thing is, by definition, that which depends on an efficient cause. Rather, a contingent thing is that which depends on something else. Dependence on something else is broader than dependence on an efficient cause, as is exemplified by dependence on a recipient essence.”

It may be said in reply: In this passage, he allowed that necessary existence could depend on quiddity. He stated that what is necessary in itself is that which does not depend on an efficient cause, not that which does not depend on anything else; and that its being contingent, in the sense of depending on something else rather than on an efficient cause, is the contingency attributed to necessary existence that depends on quiddity.

This very argument can be turned against what he states here when he says: “The whole depends on each of its parts, and whatever depends on something else cannot be necessary in itself, because it is contingent.”