to, or taken from a definition, changes its species. Further, upon the
form follows an inclination to the end, or to an action, or something
of the sort; for everything, in so far as it is in act, acts and tends
towards that which is in accordance with its form; and this belongs to
weight and order. Hence the essence of goodness, so far as it consists
in perfection, consists also in mode, species and order.

Reply Obj. 1: These three only follow upon being, so far as it
is perfect, and according to this perfection is it good.

Reply Obj. 2: Mode, species and order are said to be good, and
to be beings, not as though they themselves were subsistences, but
because it is through them that other things are both beings and good.
Hence they have no need of other things whereby they are good: for
they are spoken of as good, not as though formally constituted so by
something else, but as formally constituting others good: thus
whiteness is not said to be a being as though it were by anything
else; but because, by it, something else has accidental being, as an
object that is white.

Reply Obj. 3: Every being is due to some form. Hence,
according to every being of a thing is its mode, species, order. Thus,
a man has a mode, species and order as he is white, virtuous, learned
and so on; according to everything predicated of him. But evil
deprives a thing of some sort of being, as blindness deprives us of
that being which is sight; yet it does not destroy every mode, species
and order, but only such as follow upon the being of sight.

Reply Obj. 4: Augustine says (De Nat. Boni. xxiii), "Every
mode, as mode, is good" (and the same can be said of species and