Read Concerning Being And Essence Online

44 GLOSSARY 

mode of being. Being, then, is the formal object of the 
intellect per se prime. 

Body and Soul, Union of: A substantial unity and not an ac- 
cidental unity. 

Composite: A concretion of matter and form or the advention 
of a form into a matter apt to receive it. 

Composition, Accidental: That which unites the accidents to 
the substance in which they inhere. 

Creature: A created thing. Each thing is and exists by its as- 
signed act and proper measure of perfection as such a 
mode of finite being in the infinite order derived from 
God. 

Disposition: Always imports an order of something which has 
parts. The arrangement of that which has parts as ordered 
in respect to place, to potency, or to quality; hence rela- 
tional order in one respect. See Act and Potency. 

Ens per se existent: A being existing by virtue of itself or its 
ordained nature. Since a being of this sort exists as a 
whole and in no wise as a part of another being it exists 
also in se. 

Essence: Is in relation to the act of existence a potentiality 
really distinct from existence, but actual in virtue of 
existence. It is that by virtue of which the intellect under- 
stands that which is necessarily and primarily the being of 
a nature or substance. Essence, then, is that by which a 
thing is necessarily and primarily as intelligible, or that 
by virtue of which a thing is constituted in a determinate 
degree of primarily intelligible being. By strict distinction 
an essence is a being of reason as distinguished from a 
being of nature, and hence an essence is the formal cause 
of knowing and is that in the active intellect by which a 
nature is known when it is known. In a realist or quasi- 
realist doctrine essence must express the real nature of 
being; consequently, it cannot be merely an arbitrary im- 
posed sign.