(Now the forms themselves must certainly subsist actually before they subsist potentially. If, therefore, the soul in us, as Aristotle himself believed, contains potentially the forms of existing things, where shall we place the forms in that previous state of actuality? Shall it be in material things? No, for the forms that are in them are evidently the last and lowest. Therefore it only remains to search for immaterial causes which exist in actuality prior to and of a higher order than the causes that are embodied in matter. And our souls must subsist in dependence on these and come forth together with them, and so receive from them the concepts of the forms, as mirrors show the reflections of things; and then with the aid of nature it bestows them on matter and on these material bodies of our world. For we know that nature is the creator of bodies, universal nature in some sort of the All; while that the individual nature of each is the creator of particulars is plainly evident. But nature exists in us in actuality without a mental image, whereas the soul, which is superior to nature, possesses a mental image besides. If therefore we admit that nature contains in herself the cause of things of which she has however no mental image, why, in heaven’s name, are we not to assign to the soul these same forms, only in a still higher degree, and with priority over nature, seeing that it is in the soul that we recognise the forms by means of mental images, and comprehend them by means of the concept? Who then is so contentious as to admit on the one hand that the concepts embodied in matter exist in nature—even though not all and equally in actuality, yet all potentially—while on the other hand he refuses to recognise that the same is true of the soul? If therefore the forms exist in nature potentially, but not actually, and if also they exist potentially in the soul,(823) only in a still purer sense and more completely separated, so that they can be comprehended and recognised; but yet exist in actuality nowhere at all; to what, I ask, shall we hang the chain of perpetual generation, and on what shall we base our theories of the imperishability of the universe? For the cyclic substance(824) itself is composed of matter and form. It must therefore follow that, even though in actuality these two, matter and form, are never separate from one another, yet for our intelligence the forms must have prior existence and be regarded as of a higher order. Accordingly, since for the forms embodied in matter a wholly immaterial cause has been assigned, which leads these forms under the hand of the third creator(825)—who for us is the lord and father not only of these forms but also of the visible fifth substance—from that creator we distinguish Attis, the cause which descends even unto matter, and we believe that Attis or Gallus is a god of generative powers. Of him the myth relates that, after being exposed at