If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which
the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a
process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the
soul must therefore be, while impassible, capable of receiving the
form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character
with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what
is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.
Therefore, since everything is a possible object of thought, mind in
order, as Anaxagoras says, to dominate, that is, to know, must be pure
from all admixture; for the co-presence of what is alien to its nature
is a hindrance and a block: it follows that it too, like the sensitive
part, can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a
certain capacity. Thus that in the soul which is called mind (by
mind I mean that whereby the soul thinks and judges) is, before it
thinks, not actually any real thing. For this reason it cannot
reasonably be regarded as blended with the body: if so, it would
acquire some quality, e.g. warmth or cold, or even have an organ
like the sensitive faculty: as it is, it has none. It was a good
idea to call the soul 'the place of forms', though (1) this
description holds only of the intellective soul, and (2) even this
is the forms only potentially, not actually.
Observation of the sense-organs and their employment reveals a
distinction between the impassibility of the sensitive and that of the
intellective faculty.
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