(_b_) A thing cannot be really identical with a variety of things that are really distinct from one another; but the faculties of the soul are really distinct from one another; therefore they must be really distinct from the substance of the soul. The minor premiss is supported by these considerations: The vegetative and sentient operations of the human individual are operations of the living _organism_, while the higher operations of rational thought and volition are operations of the _soul alone_, the spiritual or immaterial principle in the individual. But the immaterial principle cannot be really and adequately identical with the animated organism. Therefore the _powers_ or _immediate principles_ of these two classes of functions, belonging as they do to two really (though not adequately) distinct substantial principles, cannot be really identical with one of them, _viz._ with the soul itself, the spiritual principle. Again: The exercise of certain functions by the human individual is subordinate to, and dependent on the previous exercise of other functions. For example, actual volition is necessarily dependent and consequent on actual thought: we cannot will or desire any good without first knowing it as a good. But the immediate principle of any function or activity cannot be dependent on or subordinate to itself. Therefore the immediate principles of such controlling and controlled activities—intellect and will, for example—must be really distinct faculties.(346) (_c_) Suppose the substance or nature of an agent—the human individual, for instance—were really identical with all its powers or faculties, that these were merely the nature itself viewed under different aspects, so that there would be in reality only one operative power in the individual, then there would be no reason why the individual could not or should not at any instant elicit one single action or operation which would be simultaneously an act of thinking, willing, seeing, hearing, etc., _i.e._ which would have at once in itself the modalities of all human activities. But universal experience testifies, on the contrary, that the operations of the individual are each of some particular mode only, that he cannot elicit every mode of human activity simultaneously, that he never elicits one single act having a variety of modes. But why could he not, if his substance or nature itself were the one and only _proximate principle_ of all his modes of activity? Because the conditions for the _full and adequate_ exercise of this one single or proximate principle (at once substance and power) are never realized! But it is arbitrary to assume the existence of a power which could never pass fully into the act connatural to it. And moreover, even if these conditions are partially realized we should see as a consequence of this some human activity which would manifest _in some degree at least_ all the modalities of the various human actions of which we have experience.