  The distinction between forms being really/naturally or spiritually/intentionally present is central to Aquinas’s theory of cognition. A form may be present somewhere without literally making whatever substance it informs into something else. Colors in the air, for example, do not make the air really colored: we see colors in the objects around us but not in the intervening air, although they must be there spiritually if sensation is to be a causal process. This means, of course, that the air must somehow contain the color, which entails that intentionality is not a mark of the mental for Aquinas. The air is not in itself a mind (for discussion, see Pasnau 1997, Chap. 2).