the highest degree of divinity, nobility, and intellect, and so it does not change.

Any change in it would be a transition to something less perfect, and this would be a kind of motion. This intellect would therefore be intellect not in actuality, but in potentiality.

If this were so, it would inevitably suffer weariness and fatigue in attaining objects of apprehension. Furthermore, it would derive its excellence from something else, as intellect does from its objects of apprehension. That intellect would thus be deficient in itself and perfected through what it apprehends.

If this is so, such a belief must be avoided. It is better not to perceive certain things than to perceive them. The perfection of that intellect, being the highest perfection, must therefore belong to it by virtue of its own essence, for that essence is the best and most perfect of existing things and the noblest object of apprehension.

This is always so, without recognition, goodness, opinion, or reflection.

This is perfectly clear: if the object apprehended by this intellect were other than itself, either it would always be one and the same thing, or the intellect would know the things it knows successively.

In material things, matter is distinct from form. In intellectual things, however, the nature of a thing and its being an object of apprehension are one and the same. In these, therefore, intellect is not something distinct from its object of apprehension.