The word _term_ in the popular use means the extremity of anything, or that where anything ends. The spot of ground where a stone is allowed to fall is the term of the falling; the drop of rain acted on by gravity is the term of the action by which it is attracted; the tree at which I am looking is the term of my vision; the concept which I form of anything is the term of my thought. But all these terms correspond to accidental acts, whereas the term which we ultimately reach in the analysis of substance, is always substantial, as being intrinsic to the substantial act of which it is the term. Hence, when we say that the matter is the term of the form, or in general that the potency is the term of its act, we mean not only that the act, or the form, reaches the potency or the matter, but that the potency or the matter acquires its first reality and actuality by the very position of the act or form which it terminates; in the same manner as the centre of a sphere acquires its first actuality through the simple position of a spherical form. Accordingly, the words _act_ and _term_ are correlative; the act _actuates_, the term _is actuated_, and the formal reason of their correlation is _actuation_. This actuation is not efficient, but formal; that is, the act, not by its action, but by itself, entails the immediate existence of its intrinsic term, just as the spherical form by itself, and not by any action, entails the immediate existence of a centre. As a sphere without a centre, so an act without a term is an utter impossibility. Hence the termination of the act to its term is nothing less than the very constitution of any essence that has a proper and complete existence. For this reason, I am of opinion that the phrase "the form is terminated to the matter, and the act to its potency," is the best we can adopt in speaking of created things, however new it may be to English ears.