Read Concerning Being And Essence Online

PREFACE xli 

existence, and the angelic essence is its existence, so that con- 
sequently there is not a material distinction of that which and 
that by virtue of which respecting their being. An angel is 
simultaneously all that it can be without any margin of mate- 
rial potentiality. Unlike man, an angel does not approach its 
essence discursively or by successive operations. 

The perfection of an angel follows immediately from its 
grade of being, which is its grade of knowing. An angel under- 
stands by a single intuition or immediate illumination. Its 
potency arises from the fact that its being is not a se, but de- 
rived from God as such a mode of perfection or measure of 
being in act in the order of creation. The Cartesian postulate 
for substance: res quae ita exsistit ut nulla alia re indigeat ad 
existendum* will not suffice to define substance clearly in the 
finite order since it omits the ordination of the finite to that 
which conditions it in its order. Accordingly, if an angel exists 
per se and in se it does so as a certain autonomy of completed 
act received from God, and it is a simultaneously actualized 
measure of act. But it is a finite measure, so that accordingly 
its potentiality may be understood since, though it is such a 
measure of act, the measure is apart from the pure act which 
is God. A partial measure is not equivalent to the whole. 

Since an angel is without any admixture of matter, standing 
as it does at a fixed distance or remotion from matter, its species 
cannot be multiplied into many according to the quantifying 
principle of matter. The specific act of the angel is one and the 
same with its existence and inseparable therefrom, so that it is 
a species one and distinct. There is then not a multiplication of 
individuals after the kind of a species, but it can be said that 
there is more than one angel, since a species is determined by 
the addition of a unit as indeed one number is differentiated 

6 "A thing which exists in such a way that it requires no other in order 
to exist." Descartes. Princioia Philosoohiae. i. .