From this doctrine it is manifest that the matter is not the subject of the substantial form, and consequently that the form, or the principle of activity, is in no need of being supported by its matter. It is rather the matter itself that needs to be supported—that is, kept in existence—by its form; as it has no being except from it. The matter is potency, and the form is act; now, all act is nobler than its corresponding potency. It is not, therefore, the potency that determines the conditions of existence of its act, but the act itself determines the conditions of existence of its potency. And thus it is not the matter that determines the range of its form, but it is the form that determines the being of its own matter, in the same manner as the form of a body determines its centre of gravity. These considerations, which will hereafter receive a greater development, suffice to show that the range of the elementary power is not determined or circumscribed by its material term. And thus the objection is substantially destroyed. Those who make this objection suppose that the activity of a material element is entitatively enclosed, embedded, and merged in the matter as in a physical recipient by which it must be circumscribed. This supposition is a gross philosophical blunder. The matter of a primitive element is not a physical recipient of the substantial form; for it is nothing physically before it is actuated. The substantial form gives to the matter its first being; and therefore it cannot be related to it as the enclosed to the encloser or the supported to the supporter, but only as the determiner to the determinable. This is an obvious metaphysical truth that cannot be questioned. Moreover, the form can determine the existence of a material point in space without being itself confined to that point. This is very clearly inferred from the fact already established, viz., that a material point acts all around itself in accordance with the Newtonian law; for this fact compels the conception of a material element as a virtual sphere, of which the matter is the central point, while its virtual sphericity must be traced to the special character of the form. Now, although the centre of a sphere borrows all its centric reality from the sphericity of which it is the intrinsic term, yet the sphericity itself cannot be confined within its own centre; which shows that, although the matter of an element borrows all its reality from the substantial form of which it is the essential term, yet the substantial form itself, on account of its known spherical character, must virtually extend all around its matter, and constitute, so to say, an atmosphere of power expanding as far, at least, from the central point as is necessary for the production of the phenomena of universal gravitation.