The Real Distinction between Essence and Existence

I've recently discovered that my views on prime matter as the universal individuated can provide new support for the real distinction between essence and existence. As I've explained in earlier posts, I believe that packets of prime matter are the ground for any numerical distinction among substances of the same species, whether those substances exist at the same time or at different times. Imagine, for example, a sempiternal world with an infinite past and infinite future. Let's suppose that Nietzsche's eternal recurrence is realized in this world, so that there are an infinite number of distinct but indiscernible Napoleon Bonapartes, one for each cycle. Each temporal stage one each Bonaparte has its own, unique packet of prime matter. It is the distinctness of these packets that ground the distinction between different Bonapartes, and it is the distinction between the Bonapartes that distinguishes the accidents of time during which they exist.
 
This individuating role of prime matter extends also to merely potential beings. Consider, for example, some merely potential pair of identical twin daughters of my wife and me (we did not in fact have any such twins). There are surely some potentially existing pairs of twins, and, within each pair, each twin must be numerically distinct from the other. This numerical distinction between potentially existing daughters must be grounded by the numerical distinctness of the potentially existing packets of prime matter associated with each daughter at each moment of her potential existence.
 
Now, each of these potentially existing daughters is potentially a human being. This modal fact about the twins must be grounded in the potential existence of two substantial forms of the human species. Thus, there must be potential substantial forms as well as actual ones. What is the difference between the two sorts of forms? The actual forms transmit actual existence to their substances, while merely potential forms do not. Hence, there must be acts of existence (actus essendi) which are present in the one case and absent in the other. Thus, we get a real distinction between essence (form + matter) and existence (acts of esse).
 
Those (like Averroës) who reject the real distinction must suppose that every form is an actual form, a source of actual existence. This means that they must deny that merely potential beings are in any sense real. In particular, they must deny that there are potentially existing twin daughters (as described above). They must say, instead, that there could have been such daughters. However, they cannot provide any ground or truthmaker for such a modal truth.