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GLOSSARY 45 

Habit: Disposition to act in a fixed or ordained mode, or a 
fixed and determinate operation. An aptitude is a disposi- 
tion towards an order of operation, which has not become 
fixed and is therefore easily alterable. See above, Act and 
Potency and Disposition. 

Hierarchy: Aristotelian, a continuous order of differentiated 
beings having a beginning, a middle and an end. Those 
properties which remain unchanged in a scheme of sub- 
stances when the substances undergo alteration. Further, 
the relation of one grade of being or substances to others. 

Intelligence, Human: Last in the order of intelligences and 
first in the order of material forms. 

Intention: First Intention, the assimilated sensible in the sense; 
hence, a potential sign, or the potential sign as actual 
inasmuch as it signifies an individuated thing. Second 
Intention, Essence, or the formal equivalent by virtue of 
which that which is known is known in its necessary and 
primary being. 

Materia Signata: The lowest grade of matter endowed with 
merely an intrinsic aptitude for occupying certain relative 
dimensions of space. The basis of numerical multiplicity. 

Nature: The operation which anything is adapted or disposed 
to perform. Anything whatsoever possesses a constitutive 
principle by virtue of which it is that which it is and 
performs that which it performs its proper perfection 
or the aspect of its being which differentiates it. Nature is 
thought of as the opposite of essence in both the order 
of abstraction and the order of signation. Things must be 
apt to unite and possess unity in potency before they 
possess it in act. 

Objects (Things): Must be apt to unite and possess unity in 
potency before they possess it in act. In the natural order 
to be understood as natures known by means of essences. 

Operation, Order of: Action to Passion.