 Another text that has important implications for the reception of Aristotle’s treatment of the intellect is the paraphrase of the De anima that Themistius wrote around 350 CE. There, Themistius argues that the active intellect is the most accurate specification of the human form (In De anima 100.35–36). Put differently, our essence as human beings is the active intellect (In De anima 100.36–101.1). Although Themistius does not name names, he is clearly reacting against the reading advanced by Alexander of Aphrodisias. For Themistius the active intellect is not God or the supreme principle upon which everything depends for its existence. For him, the active intellect is an integral part of the human soul: “the active intellect is in the soul and it is like the most honourable part of the human soul” (In De anima 103.4–5). Although the active intellect so understood is a human intellect, it is emphatically not conceived of as a personal intellect. Themistius is adamantly clear that there is only one separate, unmixed, and unaffected active intellect. Likewise, there is only one separate, unmixed, and unaffected potential intellect, nous dunamei. According to Themistius, both the active and the potential intellects are not subject to generation and perishing. What is perishable is only the common or passive intellect, koinon or pathêtikos nous. This third intellect is mixed with the body and its fate is to perish along with the body (In De anima 105.28–29; 106.14–15).