the analogy of the individual_. Those who hold that, absolutely speaking, the material principle as such, _materia prima_, could actually exist in isolation from any formative principle, should apparently admit that in such a case it would be _an individual reality_. 39. SOME QUESTIONABLE DISTINCTIONS. THE SCOTIST DISTINCTION.—The difficulty of discriminating between the virtual and the real distinction in an individual has given rise to the conception of distinctions which some maintain to be real, others to be less than real. The virtual distinction, as we have hitherto understood it, may be described as _extrinsic_ inasmuch as it arises in the individual only when we consider the latter under different aspects, or in different relations to things extrinsic to it. By regarding an individual under different aspects—_e.g._ a man under the aspects of animality and rationality—we can predicate contradictory attributes of the individual, _e.g._ of a man that “he is similar to a horse,” and that “he is not similar to a horse”. Now it is maintained by some that although independently of the consideration of the mind the grounds of these contradictory predications are not _actually_ distinct in the individual, nevertheless even before such consideration the individual has a real _intrinsic capacity_ to have these contradictory predicates affirmed of him: they can be affirmed of him not merely when he is regarded, and because he is regarded, under conceptually different aspects, but because these principles, “animality” and “rationality,” are already really in him not merely as aspects but as distinct capacities, as potentially distinct principles of contradictory predications. The virtual distinction, understood in this way, is described as _intrinsic_. It is rejected by some on the ground that, at least in its application to finite realities, it involves a violation of the principle of contradiction: it seems to imply that one and the same individual has in itself absolutely (and not merely as considered under different aspects and relations) the capacity to verify of itself contradictory predicates.