whatever is capable of actual existence. Whatever is opposed to absolute nothingness is real; and this manifestly includes not only the actual but whatever is intrinsically possible. Realities or essences which have not actual being have only ideal being; and ideal being means simply presence in some mind as an object of thought. Scholastic philosophers generally(94) hold that possible essences as such have no other being than this; that before and until such essences actually exist they have of themselves and in themselves no being except the ideal being which they have as objects of the Divine Intelligence and the virtual being they have in the Divine Omnipotence which may at any time give them actual existence. One convincing reason for this view is the consideration that if possible essences as such had from all eternity any proper and intrinsic being in themselves, God could neither create nor annihilate. For in that hypothesis essences, on becoming actual, would not be produced _ex nihilo_, inasmuch as before becoming actual they would in themselves and from all eternity have had their own proper real being; and after ceasing to be actual they would still retain this. But creation is the production of _the whole reality_ of actual being from nothingness; and is therefore impossible if the actual being is merely produced from an essence already real, _i.e._ having an eternal positive reality of its own. The same is true of annihilation. The theory of eternally existing uncreated _matter_ is no less incompatible with the doctrine of creation than this theory of eternally real and uncreated forms or essences. Again, what could this supposed positive and proper reality of the possible essence be? If it is anything distinct from the mere ideal being of such an essence, as it is assumed to be, it must after all be _actual_ being of some sort, which would apparently have to be actualized again in order to have actual existence! Finally, this supposed eternal reality, proper to possible essences, cannot be anything uncreated. For whatever is uncreated is God; and since it is these supposed proper realities of possible essences that are made actual, and constitute the existing created universe, the latter would be in this view an actualization of the Divine Essence itself,—which is pantheism pure and simple. And neither can this supposed eternal reality, proper to possible essences, be anything created. For such creation would be eternal and necessary; whereas God’s creative activity is admitted by all scholastics to be essentially free; and although they are not agreed as to whether “creation from all eternity” (“_creatio ab aeterno_”) is possible, they are agreed that it is not a fact.