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Whereas the Medieval mind understood as common sense that "Being is potential existence" and that "existence actualizes being"; knew in its heart-of-hearts that "in the universe, actus precedes potentia; for out of potentiality a subject cannot be brought except by a being that is actual"; knew, too, that "the being of God is wholly actual, and is at the same time His existence; but for creatures it is only their existence which actualizes--actualizes not their own being, but the being of God, which they participate; knew that "everywhere around us we must see creatures in a state of potentia being raised to actus" by, paradoxically, an actus which, "behind the appearances," "is already there" (SA 88), we in the modern world know only a world governed by mechanical forces. The world of actus: potentia is the way the intellectual soul perceives the world.
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