  Proposition 146 makes it clear that at each stage of the hierarchy of being the effect is like the cause just as each creature is like God. Furthermore, just as there is a built-in bias, as if were, of an effect in relation to its cause in terms of a “turning” to its principle, so all creatures have a bias to return to the source or principle of their being. Proposition 147, along with its comment, assures Dietrich that his hierarchy is continuous and that this continuity is due solely to the likenesses that exist between the ranks of being. But in addition to assimilating the Proclean doctrine of similitude in order to secure continuity of being, Dietrich introduces his own astonishing principle of linkage in the De intellectu.  There he identifies the operation of a creature with its end. “This operation,” he tells us, “is the end of the thing, for the sake of which the thing exists.” Then he goes on to reveal how he conceives this operation to link one being with another: “By means of this operation a thing tends beyond itself. It is due to this operation that there is found in each thing not only being and truth, but also goodness. Thus each thing is interchangeably being, true, and good.  Consequently, it is a being with respect to itself, true as ordered to the intellect, and good insofar as it actively overflows into something beyond itself.” This is a remarkable view of operation and end. The operation of a creature always lies in moving beyond itself and this is its end or purpose. Nothing is static in Dietrich’s universe, everything is moving, attempting to return to its initial principle.  Creatures do not have their end in themselves; everything is for the sake of something else and that something else is ultimately God.  Insofar as a creature follows its proper operation it will be led out of itself and back to God.