  But what about words signifying fictions, such as ‘chimera’, or privations, such as ‘blindness’? These do not correspond to any mode of being, active or passive, since they signify nothing (i.e., no thing). According to Thomas, the active modes of signifying chimeras “are taken from the parts from which we imagine a chimera to be composed, which [fiction] we imagine from the head of a lion, the tail of a dragon, etc” (DMS 2.5; Bursill-Hall: 4). Names of privations, on the other hand, “designate the modes of understanding of privations, which are their modes of being, through their own active modes of signifying about privations”. The idea here is that ‘blindness’ corresponds to our positive concept of sight qua absent, which enjoys a positive modus essendi in our intellects. Thus, “although privations are not positive beings outside the soul, they are nevertheless positive beings in the soul … and since the understanding of them is their being, therefore, their mode of understanding would be their mode of being” (DMS 2.6; Bursill-Hall: 4). Blindness outside the soul cannot cause any conception of itself per se, since blindness per se does not exist, and what does not exist cannot be the cause of anything. Accordingly, when we say, ‘Homer was a blind man,’ the word ‘blind’ actively signifies the passive mode of understanding something as being without sight, and owes its semantic function to the way its corresponding concept is understood. In the case of concepts that are neither fictions nor privations, these modes of understanding are further determined by their corresponding modes of being, i.e., by actual substances and properties outside the soul.