The agent intellect endows the quiddity with intelligibility: through its act of abstraction it makes universal and immaterial the material and particular quiddity in the sensory representation (In De an.: q.12 and q.16). Simon, however, wavers between different descriptions of the act of abstraction. On one hand, he describes it as similar to the act of illumination, so that just as light enables the eye to see and the visible object to be seen, so the agent intellect enables the possible intel