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PREFACE xxxi 

by the active agency of the sensible thing, the sense organ is 
the material cause of sensation, for that which can be differ- 
entiated is matter or like matter. Sensation is the actualization 
of this passive potency, consequently it follows that the sensible 
nature as actually sensed is one and the same with the sense 
actualized by assimilation. 

In general the senses are all things as sensed since they are 
in potentiality to all sensible things. But it should be observed 
that although the senses are assimilated to the sensible thing as 
actual, still the distinction must be made that the sensation, 
being the actualized sensible in the actualized sense, is some- 
thing other than the matter of the sensible nature. Sensations 
are entia sensus, beings of sense, or entia sensus et imagi- 
nationis, beings of sense and imagination. The sensory simili- 
tude (phantasm) is abstracted from the matter of the sensible 
thing, but it is still expressive of the material conditions of the 
sensible thing as individuated in this or that nature although 
it is received according to the mode of the recipient. Since the 
subject of sensitive knowledge is always a singular, an in- 
dividuated nature extra mentem, namely, a corporeal substance, 
corporeal substances belong to the literal order of independent 
existences so that sensitive knowledge gives the ground of the 
first intention. This is the first figure of remotion, when the 
order of signation is taken as the reverse of the order of ab- 
straction, and stands for the thing under its first abstraction 
and yet as it is immediately in its individuation. 

Sensations stand for natural things immediately as actualized 
in sense, that is to say, the bringing into act of the potency of 
the sense. The senses, however, are not reflexive and do not 
know themselves as powers or acts. In the reverse order of 
signation, the sensation is not that which is known but that by 
means of which the sensible is known. What is known of 
an individual corporeal thing is its individuated nature sepa-