  Here Bonaventure peers into the notion of “a being” (ens) and finds it has two component principles: independent existence (existere), which gives the being the potential to have a certain essence; and being (esse), the actuality of such an essence. It is esse rather than existere which “denominates the pure actuality of a being.” Here “actuality” (actus) means ‘that which makes the being actually intelligible, by giving it the actual essence it has.’ This movement of conceptual analysis opens the mind to see that we can understand a creature as “a being” (ens) only by referring to the notion of an act of being which is pure from non-being (esse purum), indeed, which is pure from any non-being (esse purissimum). Implicit within the very notion of transcendental “being” and a presupposition of our understanding the notion of transcendental being, is the notion of being with no hint of non-being (esse purissimum). Even if only implicit, this notion must be present in the mind of anyone who understands being (ens), that is, everyone who understands anything at all.