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xxxvi PREFACE beyond the natures as the Platonists are accustomed to con- tend. Matter is the principle of the many in the order of natures or primary substances, seeing that it is the principle according to which the proper specific act is multiplied into a multiplicity of individuals after the kind of the species. Genus, then, is the first qualification of substance as a something potential to differentiation, whereas species issue from the first actuality of difference by means of the proper operation. The similitude of the differentiating act in a certain multiplicity of natures is the ground of genus, while the differentiating operation itself as actualized is the ground of the specific individual. Multiple units are the natural sum of individuated natures, and thus the statement that universals are univocal signs of many is to be understood as a cross reference of signs in the universal mode, since the universal expresses unity and community. The soul abstracts the intention from many particulars and apprehends that they bear a ratio of similitude to one another in respect of act, but it apprehends in addition that they are one and discrete because the specific act of the being of each renders each a one numerically distinct from the others. It should be observed, however, that the universal is not based on an enumeration since one instance suffices for the apprehension of the proper act by which the nature is necessarily what it is. "It appears that it is universal according to act properly speaking, since an intention is abstracted from many, considered as one and the same in principle by means of judgment according as it is abstracted from many, yet plurified according to the being which it has in them.'* 5 What the metaphysician discusses in terms of the potentiality and actuality of the thing the logician formulates as an intention. An accidental accident as opposed to a proper accident is an 5 DC Univertalibus, attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas.