Read Concerning Being And Essence Online

PREFACE xxv 

exists by its proper or differentiating act which is also its proper 
measure of perfection as derived from God, the First and 
Pure Act. There is then a continuous order of creation from 
God, the First Act and Origin, through the hierarchy of 
angels, through man, animals, and vegetables to things in- 
animate. 

The human soul which is last in the order of intelligences 
is first in the order of material forms. It is differentiated from 
corporeal bodies qua corporeal by its proper act, namely, the 
mode of knowing which results from its assigned measure of 
being or perfection. Inanimate things in their own order re- 
ceive their act from a principle exterior to them, whereas 
though the soul is in an order of being received from God it 
has yet an intrinsic principle of operation. It belongs to the 
order of the living or animate which moves itself by a proper 
economy of operations intrinsic to itself. On the other hand the 
forms of elements which are at the greatest distance from the 
divine act and in the greatest propinquity to matter have no 
operations which exceed active and passive capacities, such as 
rarefaction and condensation, etc. simple dispositions of 
matter. Quantity, or the relative expansiveness of a body, is a 
fundamental attribute, the first accident, of corporeal sub- 
stances. It is a function of primary matter, as the reduction of 
its multiple elements to substantial unity is a function of its 
limiting or finite form as actuated in its operation. 

Elements are ordered to each other according to act and 
potency, and indeed actuality and potentiality are present in all 
the categories, but not apart from the manner in which the 
categories are accidents of substance. A mere aggregate or col- 
lection of elements cannot be so compounded as to form a real 
unity unless the elements be so necessarily ordered to each other 
as to possess unity in potency before it is possessed in act. It