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xxvi PREFACE follows, therefore, that causes essentially ordered are causes hierarchically and necessarily ordered, so that if discontinuity of being is apparent there is nevertheless continuity of order. Ac- cordingly, elements, whether simple or complex, which can combine so as to constitute a substantial unity do so through a necessary disposition which they have to each other, namely, the determinable capacity of one to receive the determinate and hence determining act of the other. The act of anything to the potency of something can be understood, as indeed conceived by Aristotle and following him St. Thomas, as the order of a continuous proportion, the ratios of which are terminated in the correlatives of act and potency as in anything to something. Things which differ and yet are disposed as act to potency are mediated into one thing by the assimilation of the act to the potency. If one thing is con- tinuous with another the inner bounds have yet a term in com- mon, as for instance in this continuous proportion: 2:4:14:8 :: 8 : 16 :: etc. . . . The order of continuous proportion is the analogical prin- ciple according to which God distributes His justice, or merits and awards. But the essence or nature of each created thing, that is, the delimited and limiting mode of its production, is the proper act of creation assigned to the thing causing it to be what it is and differentiating it as a such from other modes. Accordingly, an immediately superior thing in the continuous order of creation has yet a term in common with its imme- diately inferior thing, and by this they stand to each other as a conatus of act and potency. It must be remembered, however, that if two such things have a term in common and are alike in a certain respect they yet are unlike in a certain other respect according to the proper act of each. Thus the proper act of a corporeal body qua corporeal is to be such a relative multiple of three dimensions, while the proper act of an