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| (8) Et quia potentia ista per unum hominem seu per aliquam particularium comunitatum superius distinctarum tota simul in actum reduci non potest, necesse est multitudinem esse in humano genere, per quam quidem tota potentia hec actuetur; sicut necesse est multitudinem rerum generabilium ut potentia tota materie prime semper sub actu sit: aliter esset dare potentiam separatam, quod est inpossibile. | (8) And since that potentiality cannot be fully actualised all at once in any one individual or in any one of the particular social groupings enumerated above, there must needs be a vast number of individual people in the human race, through whom the whole of this potentiality can be actualised; just as there must be a great variety of things which can be generated so that the whole potentiality of prime matter can continuously be actualised; otherwise one would be postulating a potentiality existing separately from actualisation, which is impossible. | |
| (9) Et huic sententie concordat Averrois in commento super hiis que De anima. Potentia etiam intellectiva, de qua loquor, non solum est ad formas universales aut speties, sed etiam per quandam extensionem ad particulares: unde solet dici quod intellectus speculativus extensione fit practicus, cuius finis est agere atque facere. | (9) And Averroes is in agreement with this opinion in his commentary on the De anima. Now the intellectual potentiality of which I am speaking is not only concerned with universal ideas or classes, but also (by extension as it were) with particulars; and so it is often said that the theoretical intellect by extension becomes practical, its goal then being doing and making. | |