CHAPTER XVII—That Creation is not a Movement nor a Change

EVERY movement or change is the actualisation of something that was in potentiality, as such: but in this action of creation there is nothing pre-existent in potentiality to become the object of the action.

2. The extremes of movement or change fall under the same order,²¹⁷²¹⁷The “extremes” are the situation from which the movement or change starts, and the situation in which it ends. being either of the same kind, as contraries are, or sharing one common potentiality of matter. But nothing of this can be in creation, to which no previous condition of things is supposed.

3. In every change or movement there must be something coming to be otherwise than as it was before. But where the whole substance of a thing is brought into being, there cannot be any permanent residuum, now in this condition, now in that: because such a residuum would not be produced, but presupposed to production.