That they are indeed _actual_ perfections of the nature is fairly obvious: it is an actual perfection of a nature to be _proximately_ and _immediately_, and without any further complement or addition to its reality, _capable of acting_; and this is true whether the action in question be immanent or transitive: if it be immanent, the perfection resulting from the action, the term of the latter, will be a perfection of the agent itself, and in this case the agent by virtue of its operative power will have had _the capacity of perfecting itself_; while if the action be transitive the agent will have had, in virtue of its operative power, _the capacity of producing perfections in other things_. In either case such capacity is undoubtedly an actual perfection of the agent that possesses it. Hence the truth of the scholastic formula: _Omne agens agit in quantum est in_ ACTU, _patiatur vero inquantum est in_ POTENTIA. Furthermore, all such operative powers are _really distinct from the actions_ which immediately proceed from them: this, too, is obvious, for while the operative power is a stable, abiding characteristic of the agent, the actions elicited by means of it are transient. But what is the nature of this operative power in relation to the nature itself of the agent? It is an actual perfection of this nature. It is, moreover, unlike acquired habits, native to this nature, born with it so to speak, naturally inseparable from it. Further still, operative powers would seem to be all _properties_ (69) of their respective natures: inasmuch as it is only in virtue of the operative power that the nature can act, and there can be no nature without connatural operations whereby it tends to realize the full and _final_ perfection of its being, the perfection which is the very _raison d’être_ of its presence in the actual order of things. The question therefore narrows itself down to this: Are operative powers, which perfect the nature of which they are properties, really distinct from this nature, or are they only virtually distinct aspects under which we view the nature itself? For example, when we speak of intellect and will as being faculties of the human soul, do we merely mean that intellect is the soul itself regarded as capable of reasoning, and will the soul itself regarded as capable of willing? Or do we mean that the soul is not _by itself_ and _in virtue of its own essence_ capable of reasoning and willing; that it can reason and will only through the instrumentality of two realities of the accidental order, really distinct from, though at the same time _necessarily_ rooted in and springing from, the substance of the soul itself: realities which we call _powers_ or _faculties_? Or again, when we speak of a man or an animal as having various _sense faculties_—internal and external, cognitive, appetitive, executive—do we merely mean that the living, sentient organism is itself directly capable of eliciting acts of various kinds: of