Plotinus

“ When a potentiality has taken a definite form, does it retain its being? Is the potentiality, itself, in actualization? The alternative is that, when we speak of the "Actual Statue" and of the "Potential Statue," the Actuality is not predicated of the same subject as the "Potentiality." If we have really two different subjects, then the potential does not really become the actual: all that happens is that an actual entity takes the place of a potential. ”

“ Potentiality may be thought of as a Substratum to states and shapes- and forms which are to be received, which it welcomes by its nature and even strives for- sometimes in gain but sometimes, also, to loss, to the annulling of some distinctive manner of Being already actually achieved. ”

“ As Potentiality then, it is not any definite thing but the potentiality of everything: being nothing in itself- beyond what being Matter amounts to- it is not in actualization. For if it were actually something, that actualized something would not be Matter, or at least not Matter out and out, but merely Matter in the limited sense in which bronze is the matter of the statue. ”

“ No: for the Idea [to which it is Matter] is integral to the Soul and does not look to a future; the distinction between the Soul and its Idea is purely mental: the Idea and the Matter it includes are conceived as a conjunction but are essentially one Kind: remember that Aristotle makes his Fifth Body immaterial. ”

“ If it is to be present at all, it cannot be an Actualization, for then it would not be the stray from Authentic Being which it is, the thing having its Being in Non-Beingness: for, note, in the case of things whose Being is a falsity, to take away the falsity is to take away what Being they have, and if we introduce actualization into things whose Being and Essence is Potentiality, we destroy the foundation of their nature since their Being is Potentiality. ”

“ It is, further, by definition, formless and therefore not an Idea: it cannot then be classed among things of the Intellectual Realm, and so is, once more, a Non-Being. Falling, as regards both worlds, under Non-Being, it is all the more decidedly the Non-Being.
It has eluded the Nature of the Authentic Existences; it has even failed to come up with the things to which a spurious existence can be attributed- for it is not even a phantasm of Reason as these are- how is it possible to include it under any mode of Being? ”

“ No: it is that every constituent there is a Form-Idea and, thus, is perfect in its Being.
There is in the Intellectual Principle no progression from some power capable of intellection to the Actuality of intellection: such a progression would send us in search of a Prior Principle not progressing from Power to Act; there all stands ever realized. Potentiality requires an intervention from outside itself to bring it to the actualization which otherwise cannot be ”