ich are in them, are essential,
through the absence of matter in them." And Simplicius says the same
in his _Commentary on the Predicaments:_ "Wisdom which is in the soul
is its habit: but that which is in the intellect, is its substance.
For everything divine is sufficient of itself, and exists in itself."

Now this opinion contains some truth, and some error. For it is
manifest from what we have said (Q. 49, A. 4) that only a being in
potentiality is the subject of habit. So the above-mentioned
commentators considered that angels are immaterial substances, and
that there is no material potentiality in them, and on that account,
excluded from them habit and any kind of accident. Yet since though
there is no material potentiality in angels, there is still some
potentiality in them (for to be pure act belongs to God alone),
therefore, as far as potentiality is found to be in them, so far may
habits be found in them. But because the potentiality of matter and
the potentiality of intellectual substance are not of the same kind.
Whence, Simplicius says in his _Commentary on the Predicaments_ that:
"The habits of the intellectual substance are not like the habits
here below, but rather are they like simple and immaterial images
which it contains in itself."

However, the angelic intellect and the human intellect differ with
regard to this habit. For the human intellect, being the lowest in
the intellectual order, is in potentiality as regards all
intelligible things, just as primal matter is in respect of all
sensible forms; and therefore for the understanding of all things, it
needs some habit. But the angelic intellect is not as a pure
potentiality in the order of intelligible things, but as an act; not
indeed as pure act (for this belongs to God alone), but with an
admixture of some potentiality: and the higher it is, the less
potentiality it has. And therefore, as we said in the First Part (Q.
55, A. 1), so far as it is in potentiality, so far is it in need of
habitual perfection by means of intelligible species in regard to its
proper operation: but so far as it is in act, through its own essence
it can understand some things, at least itself, and other things
according to the mode of its substance, as stated in _De Causis:_ and
the more perfect it is, the more perfectly will it understand.

But since no angel attains to the perfection of God, but all are
infinitely distant therefrom; for this reason, in order to att