  Dietrich’s account of the relationship of consciousness to the agent intellect in terms of causation raises another question for his theory of intellect, namely, what kind of causal relationship exists between the agent intellect and the soul? Dietrich gives a very precise answer to this question based no doubt on his acceptance of Proclus’ exposition of the principles of generation within the hierarchy of being. The agent intellect, according to this explanation, is the intrinsic efficient cause of the soul. That it cannot be the material cause Dietrich thinks is self-evident. It cannot be the final cause since a final cause perfects a thing, but does not establish it in being, which is what the agent intellect does for the soul. But it is more important to understand, Dietrich insists, that the agent intellect cannot be the formal cause of the soul—at least not in the natural order of things. He argues that if it was the formal cause of the soul, given that the soul by definition is the formal cause of the human person, then it would follow that there would be a form of a form in the same genus, man. But this is contrary to the natural order of things because whatever is the form of something in the genus of substance is by the whole of itself the act of its subject. Thus the same thing cannot be in potency to more than one form in its genus. Perhaps we can understand Dietrich’s remarks about the vision of St. Benedict mentioned above in terms of this analysis. Man is not “fully joined” to his intellect in the sense that the intellect is not his form. If it were his form, he, like Benedict, would understand the entire universe of beings in a single mental act. But such a vision belongs to the order of grace, not to the order of natural providence.