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xxiv PREFACE knowing, since indeed this mode in the abstractive order is the analogue of the mode of recipiency in the natural order. The passage from matter and form to potency and act is by way of analogy, but it should be noted that although all cases of matter and form are cases of potency and act not all cases of potency and act are cases of matter and form. In addition it is by the mode of recipiency in the order of abstraction that the thing is continuous with the sensible species and the sensible species with the intelligible species. 4 But this remains to be explained in the following section. The Order of Abstraction and the Order of Signification To refer to man as a little higher than the brutes and a little lower than the angels is a familiar figure of literature, and implies that man has a relative position in the order of creation which is somehow measurable. Perhaps it is from this source that the term value in ethics originated, for values are cer- tainly assignable to functions of measurement. At any rate the figure of speech may be unequivocally traced to the scholastic scheme of anthropology wherein man's good is intimately asso- ciated with his created mode of being in the continuity of the divine order. It is a principle of scholasticism that each creature 4 "The 'originative sources', then, of the things which come-to-be are equal in number to, and identical in kind with, those in the sphere of the eternal and primary things. For there is one in the sense of 'matter', and a second in the sense of 'form': and, in addition, the third 'origina- tive source* must be present as well. For the two first are not sufficient to bring things into being, any more than they are adequate to account for the primary things/' "But the third 'originative source' must be present as well the cause vaguely dreamed of by all our predecessors, definitely stated by none of them." Aristotle, De Gen. et Corrup., 335 a 27 and 335 b 8. Oxford University Press Ed.