Moreover:

The existence of these acts in pre-eternity need not be an attribute of perfection. Rather, perfection lies in their existing when wisdom requires them to exist. Furthermore, if they were beginningless, they would not come into existence successively. Thus, to say of something whose nature requires it to come into existence successively that it ought to exist in pre-eternity is to combine two contradictions. There are many similar examples.

For this reason, we stipulated “a perfection whose existence is possible.” Whatever is intrinsically impossible has no reality, let alone being said to exist or to constitute a perfection of existence.

As for the other condition—namely, our statement, “a perfection that entails no deficiency,” to use the sound formulation; or, in the terminology of those who call something a deficiency when it is not one, “a perfection that entails no deficiency capable of being absent”—this excludes what is a perfection for some creatures but not for others, while being a deficiency in relation to the Creator because it necessarily entails deficiency, such as eating and drinking.

Among animals, a healthy creature that desires food and drink is more perfect than a sick one that has no desire for them, because its continued existence depends upon eating and drinking. If an animal were supposed to be incapable of them, it would be inferior to one capable of this perfection. Yet this entails that the one who eats and drinks needs something other than himself—namely, the food and drink that enter him—and it also necessarily entails that something, such as waste, leaves him. A being that needs nothing to enter it is more perfect than one that does, and one whose perfection depends upon another is less perfect than one that needs no other for its perfection. One who has no need of something is higher than one whose sufficiency depends upon it, and one who is self-sufficient in himself is more perfect than one whose sufficiency derives from another.

For this reason, some qualities are perfections in relation to a creature yet deficiencies in relation to the Creator. This includes every quality that would entail His susceptibility to nonexistence, which conflicts with His necessary existence and self-subsistence; or would entail temporal origination, which conflicts with His beginninglessness; or would entail dependence, which conflicts with His self-sufficiency.