an agent that necessitates by virtue of its essence may depend on a receptive subject for its causal efficacy, whether what it necessitates by virtue of its essence is itself or something external to it. This resembles the philosopher’s assertion that the Active Intellect necessitates substantial forms and human souls by virtue of its essence, even though what it thus necessitates depends on the existence of receptive matter.”

It may be said that this supposition is weak for several reasons.

The first reason:

The discussion concerns what exists necessarily in itself, not what necessitates or produces something else. Even if an agent that necessitates an effect is assumed to depend on something else, it does not follow that what exists necessarily in itself depends on something else.

The second reason:

The necessitating agent itself does not depend on something else; only its causal efficacy does. Its causal efficacy’s dependence on something else does not entail that the agent itself depends on it. This applies to his example of the Active Intellect: no one says that the intellect itself depends on the other thing upon which its causal efficacy depends. If this holds for a necessitating cause, how much more so for what exists necessarily!

Indeed, they say that its very necessitation depends on something else; rather, the effect’s reaching its subject depends on that subject’s preparedness.