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xl PREFACE Where the proper accidents are unknown, and hence the essential form remains undetermined, the mode of assertion is by way of accidental accidents. In such cases the necessary mode of being is indeterminate in analysis due to the obscurity of natural processes. Under such circumstances the compos- sibility of essence to existence is not established, and the tran- scendental predicates cannot be conveniently measured in the adequation of the thing to the intellect. Such modes are rather like protocols of arbitrary aggregates or confused first inten- tions awaiting admission by some knack of theory and experi- ment to the certified status of an essence. The necessary acci- dents are those without which the subject cannot exist, whereas the contingent accidents may or may not be present without affecting the essential mode of substantial being. Contingent accidents therefore result in accidental units, the essential order of act to potency is unknown. In general, then, properties derived from the essence issue from the constitutive principle of the natural being, or the necessarily disposed order of act and potency, but the contingent aspects are derived from certain particular dispositions of the matter as a margin of potentiality beyond the essential form. Where the essence is known the contingent accidents may be considered as completions of in- dividuality extrinsically received, and where it is not known they are not univocal signs of many. And now a word about angels. Angels are beings not literally knowable to man as corporeal substances are knowable, and hence they must be understood by analogy. They are like material natures according as such natures have an essence, but they are unlike such natures in that corporeal natures are com- posited of matter and form. But it has been said that all cases of matter and form are instances of potency and act, and that this is not simply convertible. The angels have potency and act without having matter and form. They possess essence and