Agent, to pass to the Patient in its deeper parts. But that the Patient is affected part by part, and the Species are these parts effected. And in the following manner.
The Agent must be taken to act as a whole, and not part by part; there is therefore no question as to how the depths of the Agent can be and are as effective as the surface in their action upon the Patient. But the Patient is affected[1] part by part; the first part which is affected being that minimal part, and hence having depth in a real sense, in immediate contact with the Agent. This part is effected immediately and without the intervention of any intermediary between the Agent and the Patient. As yet therefore we have no intermediation. But the first part effected is eo ipso the Species of the Agent; and as Species it is the first and univocal effect of the virtue of the Agent and with full powers to do the work of the Agent were it in its place. This Species, or first part effected, then acts upon the next part of the Patient with which it is in immediate contact; and this is thereby effected as the first part was effected by the immediate contact of the Agent. There is still then no intermediation; the action as such is always immediate. To be sure, it is no longer the Agent itself which is performing the change in each of the parts succeeding the first part; but for this very reason it is unfair to speak of mediacy—the Species is acting for the Agent just because it and not the Agent is in immediate contact with the respective parts. Each part successively is therefore changed by that effected part, or Species, which precedes it. And when they have all been effected we have the complete Effect, as similar to the Agent which produced it, as were the Species similar to their Agent.
It is plain then that the sort of mediation which seems here to appear is to be distinguished from inter-mediation. For, the Species in the foregoing is not conceived as something which acts between the Agent and the Patient; it is rather that which acts as the Agent. It is not something which is given off from the Agent to pass over to the Patient and there do its work. It is already in the Patient and called out by immediate contact of the Agent with the Patient, and when it is called out it is already the effect of the Agent. If the action were cut off sharply at that moment, to give us a cross-section as it were, there would be no longer Agent set over against Patient, but Agent set over against Effect. For the Species is the effect of the Agent, and incomplete only in the sense that it is but a part of the total Effect. But this is for those cases in which the Species is carried to a complete effect; in most cases it remains incomplete. A somewhat different conception of the Species is
- ↑ I use "affected" to refer to the general process of assimilation, and "effected" for the finished action, as to the part involved.
