imagining, desiring, seeing, hearing, etc.? Or do we mean that the organism can elicit these various acts only by means of several accidental realities, really distinct from, and inhering in, itself? If such operative powers or faculties are naturally inseparable from the substance in which they inhere, if they are so necessarily consequent on the nature of the latter that it cannot exist without them, are they anything more than virtually distinct aspects of the substance itself? On this question, as we have already seen (69), scholastics are not agreed. St. Thomas, and Thomists generally, maintain that intellect and will are really distinct from the substance of the soul, and likewise that the sense faculties are really distinct from the substance of the animated organism in which they inhere.(342) In this view the distinction is not merely a virtual distinction between different aspects of the soul (or the organism) itself, grounded in the variety and complexity of the acts which emanate from the latter: the faculties are real entities of the accidental order, mediating between the substance and its actions, and involving in the concrete being a plurality which, however, is not incompatible with the real unity of the latter (69). The following are some of the arguments urged in proof of a real distinction:— (_a_) Existence and action are two really distinct actualities; therefore the potentialities which they actualize must be really distinct: for such is the transcendental relation between the potential and the actual that any potential subject and the corresponding perfection which actualizes it must belong to the same _genus supremum_: the one cannot be a substance and the other an accident.(343) Now existence is the actuality of _essence_ and action is the actuality of _operative power_ or _faculty_. But action is certainly an accident; therefore the operative power which it actualizes must also be an accident, and must therefore be really distinct from the substance of which it is a power, and of which existence is the actuality. This line of argument applies with equal force to all created natures.(344) In the Infinite Being alone are operation and substance identical. No creature is operative in virtue of its substance. The actions of a creature cannot be actualizations _of its substance_: _existence_ is the actualization of its substance; therefore its actions must be actualizations of potentialities which are _accidents_ distinct from its substance; in other words, of operative powers which belong indeed necessarily to its substance but are really distinct from the latter.