Some(111) hold that the intrinsic possibility of essences is _formally_ constituted by the act whereby the Divine Intellect, contemplating the Divine Essence, understands the latter to be indefinitely imitable _ad extra_; so that as the actuality of things results from the _Fiat_ of the Divine Will, and as their extrinsic possibility is grounded in the Divine Omnipotence, so their intrinsic possibility is grounded in the Divine Intellect. The latter, by understanding the Divine Essence, would not merely give an ideal being to the intrinsic possibility of essences, but would make those essences _formally_ possible, they being only _virtually_ possible in the Divine Essence considered antecedently to this act of the Divine Intellect. Or, rather, as some Scotists explain the matter,(112) this ideal being which possible essences have from the Divine Intellect is not as extrinsic to them as the ideal being they have from the human intellect, but is rather the very first being they can be said _formally_ to have, and is somehow intrinsic to them after the analogy of the being which mere logical entities, _entia rationis_, derive from the human mind: which being is intrinsic to these entities and is in fact the only being they have or can have. Others(113) hold that while, no doubt, possible essences have ideal being in the Divine Intellect from the fact that they are objects of the Divine Knowledge, yet we must not conceive these essences as deriving their intrinsic possibility from the Divine Intellect. For intellect as such presupposes its object. Just, therefore, as possible essences are not intrinsically possible because they are understood by, and have ideal being in, the human mind, so neither are they intrinsically possible because they are understood by, and have ideal being in, the Divine Mind. In order to be understood actually, in order to have ideal being, in order to be objects of thought, they must be intelligible; and in order to be intelligible they must be intrinsically possible. Therefore they are formally constituted as intrinsically possible essences, not by the fact that they are understood by the Divine Intellect, but by the fact that antecedently to this act (in our way of conceiving the matter: for there is _really_ no priority of acts or attributes in God) they are already possible imitations of the Divine Essence Itself. This view seems preferable as being more in accordance with the analogy of what takes place in the human mind. The speculative intellect in man does not constitute, but presupposes its object. Now, while _actual_ things are the objects of God’s _practical science_—the “_scientia visionis_,” which reaches what is freely decreed by the Divine Will,—_possible_ things are the objects of God’s _speculative_ science—the “_scientia simplicis intelligentiae_,” which is not, like the former, productive of its object, but rather contemplative of objects presented to it by and in the Divine Essence.