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PREFACE xxvii 

animate body is to be alive, and of an intelligence to be in- 
tellective so that one perfection is united to another. 

From what has been said an introduction is given to the 
meaning of the principle that anything is received into another 
according to the mode of the recipient. And by the continuous 
proportion of any two things to each other as limited by form, 
terminated by matter and actualized by an efficient cause, an 
operation as proper or contingent, it can be seen what act and 
potency are. Things which are in immediate ratio as continuous 
proportion are said to be connatural with each other, and this is 
the basis upon which a substance has one perfection and in 
addition another perfection. If the problem of duality is of 
moment it should be observed how it is present in one mode 
but not in another, because the duality of two terms is as act to 
potency as one middle term in a continuous proportion is to the 
other. Hence there is not a duality of two independent sub- 
stances in the Cartesian manner, as of mind and extension, 
but a duality of interdependent terms within the continuity of 
operation. The grade of a created being is measured by the 
simplicity or diversity of its powers of operation inasmuch as 
these are actualized. One created being is superior to another, 
and hence excels or is more noble, in the measure in which its 
powers of operation are simpler, that is, approach reduction 
to a power one and numerically the same. It appears, therefore, 
that according to man's finite vision classification cuts across 
the continuity of God's creative act according to the diversity 
or simplicity of powers by which a thing has its act. In Aristotle 
is contained the concept of autonomy which is notwithstanding 
in subordination, a principle so important to St. Thomas in 
refuting pantheistic influences in scholastic theology. The nature 
of a thing is the first principle of its operation for the per- 
formance of which the thing has come into being, or in general 
the operation which anything is adapted to perform. But