Sanseverino, a very learned man, and one of the best modern scholastics, while arguing against the Scotists, who deny all real distinction between the soul and its faculties, says that if the soul and its faculties are really the same thing, then, "as the soul is always in act, the faculties also must be always in act and never in potency." Whence he infers that "the soul would have no potentiality, and would therefore be a _purus actus_ like God"; which is, of course, a pantheistic absurdity.[69] But evidently this inference has no other foundation than the confusion of the _potentia activa_ with the _potentia passiva_. The author, in fact, knows perfectly well that no being in which there is _potentia passiva_ can be styled _purus actus_: when, therefore, he draws the conclusion that the soul, in the Scotistic theory, would be _purus actus_, he must be understood to mean or imply that all _potentia passiva_ would be excluded from the soul. Yet his premises are concerned with the _potentia activa_ only; and it is quite evident, that from such premises he could not have passed to such a conclusion had he not confounded the two kinds of _potentia_ with one another. I would remark, also, that in his argument the expression, "The faculties must be always in act," cannot mean that the faculties must be always _acting_, but only that they are always _actual_, as the soul itself; and, therefore, the author cannot reasonably conclude that the faculties "would never be in potency" respecting their proper acts. The _potentia activa_ is already an "act," as it is known, since it is called _actus primus agendi_; and is not called _potentia_, except as contrasted with its accidental operations. Moreover, a faculty does not cease to be _potentia activa_, even when it actually performs its operations. When I actually make a syllogism, my faculty of reasoning is "in act," and yet it retains its _potentia activa_ with regard to any number of other syllogisms. It is not true, therefore, that a faculty which is in actual operation ceases to be _in potentia activa_. Lastly, the soul itself, which, as Sanseverino remarks, is always in act, is nevertheless always in potency also; for the actuality of all contingent being is always potential--that is, liable to modifications of different kinds. Hence, we not only deny the conclusion of the learned author as illegitimate, but affirm that the premises themselves, on which he relies, are untenable. It is the indiscriminate use of the word _potentia_ that vitiates the author's argumentation.