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xxx PREFACE which supervenes to him and is the operation of intellect. It is a basic principle that one nature possesses a greater perfection over another according to its greater simplicity of operation, that is, according to the measure in which it reduces manifold operations to a few unified operations. Simultaneously, this is its mode of being and good or measure of excellence (ex- celling) in the created order of substances. Man actualizes his perfections in the measure in which he actualizes his proper powers, but especially the operation of intellection. It is this operation which constitutes his proper difference and sets him apart in the genus animal. In the order of becoming human powers are compendent thus: vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, locomotive, and intel- lective. Man vegetates, desires (seeks or avoids), moves and understands. Sense depends on vegetation, intellect upon sense, and desire upon either sense or intellect. Man seeks or avoids images and ideas. But the proper act of intellect consists in seeking ideas, namely, universals. Motions follow as an ex- ploitation of what is desired. The powers of man as man issue from his substance as acci- dents of his nature. Sense is a passive power and that by which man is in potency to sensibles, since sensible things are the agents of this power and related to it as the efficient cause of its becoming actual. Sensible things, corporeal substances or natures outside of the body, are in act apart from the senses. Thus it is that sensible things in act possess an active agency with respect to the senses, seeing that they are potentially effi- cient causes of sensation. The passive potency or recipiency of the senses is brought into act by virtue of the operations of sensibles. The sensible in act is identical with the sense in act in the manner that b is a common term in the proportion a : b :: b : c. Since the passive matter of the sense organ can be differentiated