 As we have already seen, in Nicoletti’s view the phantasm is a representation of the thing which started the process of knowing. Altough immaterial and free from any reference to the individualising properties (of the thing at issue), the phantasm is not completely intelligible, since the intentio singularis vaga still contains a sort of logical description of the generic matter which the singular thing is made of, and through it to the general conditions for individuation. For example, when we apprehend Socrates as a man, we know human essence just as instantiated by a singular item, and not in itself, as a specific type. In order to have the concept of man, there is need of a further and higher activity on the part of the soul, which has to abstract from the phantasm the universal or intelligible species, which applies to all men. This further activity is the proper action of the active intellect, which illumines both the phantasm and the possible intellect, so impressing on the latter the species intelligibilis abstracted from the former (In De an., III, t.c. 11, fol. 137rb).