Read Concerning Being And Essence Online

xxviii PREFACE 

essence is that by virtue of which a thing is what it is neces- 
sarily and primarily as intelligible, or in general that in virtue 
of which it is constituted in a determinate degree of primarily 
intelligible being. The one stands to the other as the links of a 
chain. 

Now that man has been given a situs in the network of 
creation it is possible to examine him as a substance composited 
of matter and form and yet constituting a substantial unity. 
This can best be conducted by an analysis of the order of ab- 
straction in the process of coming to know. 

The soul is the actuality of an organic body possessing the 
power of life, wherein it is to be understood that the body is 
a corporeal substance as an organic unity or whole consisting 
of an organization of parts or functions. Life is the power of 
self-movement exercised by virtue of itself, yet only inasmuch as 
an organic body is such a grade of being in the divine order of 
creation. To be alive and to be an organization of functions 
by virtue of the act of living is the proper operation of an 
organic body. 

As the body alone is not a substance so also the soul alone is 
not a substance, for the animated body is not an accretion but 
a concretion, being a composite of matter and form unified by 
its proper operation. Because of this the separation of soul and 
body is to be understood in two modes: i. Literally, as the cor- 
ruption of a corporeal body to which the soul is; 2. Figuratively, 
as a mode of diction, in that by analysis the soul is distinguished 
from the body. 

An organic body possesses potentialities which are both active 
and passive. The actuality of an active power is an activity or 
an efficient cause per se operable, whereas the actuality of a 
passive power is the condition of change by an extrinsic agent. 
Active potency is a power to operate, but, on the contrary, 
passive potency is a power to receive; and potency is relative