S. Thomas believes that S. Augustine really excluded all forms from his unformed matter, and remarks that such an unformed matter could not possibly exist in such a state; for, if it existed, it was in act as a result of creation. For the term of creation is a being in act; and the act is a form.[28] Thus it is evident that to admit the existence of the matter without any form at all is a very gross blunder. But, for this very reason that the blunder is so great, we cannot believe that S. Augustine made himself guilty of it. We rather believe that he merely excluded from his unformed matter a visible shape, and what was afterward called “the form of corporeity” by which compound substances are constituted in their species and distinguished from one another. Let us hear him. “There was a time,” says he, “when I used to call _unformed_, not that which I thought to be altogether destitute of a form, but that which I imagined to be ill-formed, and to have such an odd and ugly form as would be shocking to see. But what I thus imagined was unformed, not absolutely, but only in comparison with other things endowed with better forms; whilst reason and truth demanded that I should discard entirely all thought of any remaining form, if I wished to conceive matter as truly unformed. But this I could not do; for it was easier to surmise that a thing altogether deprived of form had no existence, than to admit anything intermediate between a formed being and nothing, which would be neither a formed being nor nothing, but an unformed being and almost a mere nothing. At last I dropped from my mind all those images of formed bodies, which my imagination was used to multiply and vary at random, and began to consider the bodies themselves, and their mutability on account of which such bodies cease to be what they were, and begin to be what they were not. And I began to conjecture that their passage from one form to another was made through something unformed, not through absolute nothing. But this I desired to know, not to surmise. Now, were I to say all that thou, O God! hadst taught me about this subject, who among my readers would strive to grasp my thought? But I shall not cease to praise thee in my heart for those very things which I cannot expound. For the mutability of changeable things is susceptible of all the forms by which such things can be changed. But what is such a mutability? Is it a soul? Is it a body? Is it the feature of a soul or of a body? Were it allowable, I would call it a _nothing-something_, and a _being non-being_. And yet it was already in some manner before it received these visible and compounded forms.”[29]