  In this evolution, particularly important is the partial rejection of the function of intelligible species (for example, in Quodl. III, q. 1 and Quodl. IV, q. 7), which anticipates the similar Nominalist solution by a couple of decades at least. More precisely, for Henry, the phantasm itself is made immaterial by the abstraction of the agent intellect and imprints itself on the possible intellect, without the mediation of the intelligible species. In other words, on the basis of the principle of economy, there is no need to have an intelligible species that is numerically distinct from the phantasm itself, as in Aquinas’ standard doctrine. The particular phantasm is made a universal phantasm by means of abstraction, and just as the universal cannot really be distinguished from particular things, so the universal phantasm cannot really be distinguished from the particular. The phantasm is therefore the efficient cause of intellectual knowledge, or better, of the first operation of the intellect (that of simple understanding).