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<strong>Cause</strong>, principle and unity<br />
in her, just as the blood of her parents has mingled to produce her<br />
beautiful body, the virtues of their heroic spirits have fused to forge her<br />
extraordinary spirit.<br />
POLIINNIO. Rara avis [Rare bird], that Marie de Bochetel. Rara avis,<br />
that Marie de Castelnau. 14<br />
GERVASIO. That rare you use for women can just as well be applied to<br />
men.<br />
POLIINNIO. To get back to the point, a woman is but matter. If you do<br />
not know what a woman is because you do not know what matter is, study<br />
the Peripatetics a little; they will teach you what a woman is by teaching<br />
you about matter.<br />
GERVASIO. I see that, with that Peripatetic brain of yours, you have<br />
learnt little or nothing from what Teofilo said yesterday about the essence<br />
and potency of matter.<br />
POLIINNIO. Be that as it may. I hold to the point that one must condemn<br />
the appetite of both woman and matter, which is the cause of all evil,<br />
all affliction, defect, ruin and corruption. Do you not think that, if matter<br />
were satisfied with its present form, no alteration or affliction would hold<br />
sway over us, we would not die, we would be incorruptible and eternal?<br />
GERVASIO. And what would you say if it were satisfied with the form it<br />
had fifty years ago? Would you be Poliinnio? If it had remained what it was<br />
forty years ago, would you be so adulterous (I mean, adult), so perfect and<br />
so learned? Thus, just as you are pleased that your other forms have given<br />
way to the current one, so it is nature’s will, which orders the universe, that<br />
all forms yield to all others. Not to mention that it is much more dignified<br />
for that substance, which is our substance, to become everything by receiving<br />
all forms, than to remain fragmentary by holding onto only one. In that<br />
way, it shares a likeness with that which is all, in all.<br />
POLIINNIO. It seems to be you are shedding your natural habits and<br />
beginning to be learned. Apply yourself, if you can, a simili [by similitude],<br />
to showing the dignity to be found in woman.<br />
GERVASIO. That I will do easily. But here is Teofilo.<br />
POLIINNIO. And Dicsono. Another time, then. De iis hactenus [Let us<br />
stop there].<br />
TEOFILO. Have we not seen that the Peripatetics, like the Platonists,<br />
divide substance by the specific difference of corporeal and incorporeal?<br />
Just as these specific differences are reduced to the potency of a single<br />
14 Refers to the same woman, Marie de Castelnau, née Bochetel.<br />
74