  Similitude thus gives a dynamic structure to the entire hierarchy of being and at the same time acts as the essential link between the intellect and the rest of the hierarchy. It is thus at one and the same time a principle of being and a principle of knowing. But the similitude to the whole of being is not something that the intellect acquires by some effort on its own part; rather, such similitude is part of the very nature of intellect. “One should consider,” Dietrich remarks in the De intellectu, “that every intellect is a likeness of the whole of being, or of being as being, and it is such by reason of its essence.”