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x PREFACE is in itself a study in the 'superposition' of concepts or iso- morphic relationships. Modern formal logic makes the excessive claim that it has accomplished the first real advance in logic since Aristotle. If indeed it has measurably multiplied the modes of predication and relational order which can be grasped by voluntary synthetic acts of thought, still it most certainly has not clarified the modes of signification (symbolic reference) handled so astutely by the scholastics. The reader, if he is accustomed to the inorganic and loose discursiveness of modern philosophy, nay, at times its almost total lack of order and discipline, may find that it requires a special act of the will to master the concepts of St. Thomas. But if he does master even the brief content of this little work he will find himself possessed of what may be called a prolegomena to every past and future system of philosophy. Nor does the last sentence claim too much. St. Thomas was not a mere transitive conductor, namely, a compiler, translator, commentator and encyclopedist, an exalted eclectic, careless in his sums of addition. He was possessed of a bold and original mind capable of effecting a monumental synthesis of principles gathered from widely diverse sources. In his works Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the patristics, Proclus, Porphyry, Boethius, St. Augustine, Averroes, Avicenna, and a host of Latin doctors, to mention a few, are sifted and cleansed. As a matter of course it is true that running through all of his post-Athenian sources there is a principle of traditional unity, namely, the "logos tradition," however diffused it may become at times, derived from Plato and Aristotle. It is also very significant that St. Thomas refers to Aristotle as the Philosopher and to Averroes as the Commentator. The Summa Theologica then, his crown- ing work, is more than a sum of theology. It is the cumulative apex of some seventeen centuries of continuous tradition, both pagan and Christian, in the service of theological science.