The subject of Mind involves certain difficulties. Mind is held to be of all phenomena the most supernatural; but the question of how we must regard it if it is to be of this nature involves certain difficulties. If Mind thinks nothing, where is its dignity? It is in just the same state as a man who is asleep. If it thinks, but something else determines its thinking, then since that which is its essence is not thinking but potentiality, Footnote 1i.e., if its thinking is determined by something else, Mind is only a potentiality, and not (as described in Aristot. Met. 12.7.1-9) the highest actuality. it cannot be the best reality; because it derives its excellence from the act of thinking.
Again, whether its essence is thought or thinking, what does it think? It must think either itself or something else; and if something else, then it must think either the same thing always, or different things at different times. Then does it make any difference, or not, whether it thinks that which is good or thinks at random?
Surely it would be absurd for it to think about some subjects. Clearly, then, it thinks that which is most divine and estimable, and does not change; for the change would be for the worse, and anything of this kind would immediately imply some sort of motion. Therefore if Mind is not thinking but a potentiality, (a) it is reasonable to suppose that the continuity of its thinking is laborious Footnote 2Cf. Aristot. Met. 9.8.18. ; (b) clearly there must be something else which is more excellent than Mind; i.e. the object of thought;
for both thought and the act of thinking will belong even to the thinker of the worst thoughts. Footnote 3If Mind is a potentiality, since a potentiality is of contraries, Mind may think that which is worst. Therefore if this is to be avoided (as it is, since it is better not to see some things than to see them), thinking cannot be the supreme good. Therefore Mind thinks itself, if it is that which is best; and its thinking is a thinking of thinking.
Yet it seems that knowledge and perception and opinion and understanding are always of something else, and only incidentally of themselves.
And further, if to think is not the same as to be thought, in respect of which does goodness belong to thought? for the act of thinking and the object of thought have not the same essence. The answer is that in some cases the knowledge is the object. In the productive sciences, if we disregard the matter, the substance, i.e. the essence, is the object; but in the speculative sciences the formula or the act of thinking is the object. Therefore since thought and the object of thought are not different in the case of things which contain no matter, they will be the same, and the act of thinking will be one with the object of thought.
There still remains the question whether the object of thought is composite; for if so, thought would change in passing from one part of the whole to another. The answer is that everything which contains no matter is indivisible. Just as the human mind, or rather the mind of composite beings, Footnote 4i.e., beings composed of matter as well as form. Such beings are contrasted with the divine Mind, which is pure form. is in a certain space of time Footnote 5The meaning of this sentence is shown by the definition of Happiness in Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1098a 16-20. It takes the human mind a lifetime of the highest intellectual activity of which it is capable to attain to happiness; but the divine Mind is always happy. Cf. Aristot. Met. 12.7.9. (for it does not possess the good at this or at that moment, but in the course of a certain whole period it attains to the supreme good, which is other than itself), so is absolute self-thought throughout all eternity.