Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Fourth dialogue<br />
some ways divisible and differentiated – a division and a differentiation<br />
which are incomprehensible if there is not some underlying matter. And,<br />
although I claim that all this multiplicity comes together in a single indivisible<br />
being which is beyond any kind of dimension, I still assert that this<br />
being is the matter in which so many forms are united. Before it was conceived<br />
as being varied and multiform, it was conceived uniformly, and<br />
before being conceived as formed, it was conceived as unformed.<br />
DICSONO. You have briefly set out many strong arguments enabling<br />
you to conclude that there is a single matter, a single potency, by which<br />
everything that exists does so in act. You also show that this applies equally<br />
to both corporeal and incorporeal substances, since the former have their<br />
being through their capacity to be, in the same way that the latter, through<br />
their capacity to be, have their being: all of which you have demonstrated<br />
by other strong arguments to those who ponder them deeply and fully<br />
grasp them. Even so, I would like you to spell out (if not for the sake of perfecting<br />
the doctrine, then at least for clarification) how there can be anything<br />
unformed and indeterminate in those most excellent beings which<br />
are the incorporeal things. How can they share in the same matter, without<br />
the advent of form and act resulting in bodies? How, when there is no mutation,<br />
generation, or corruption, can you say there is matter, when matter<br />
has never been posited for any other ends? How can we say that the intelligible<br />
nature is simple, and yet claim that matter and act are in it? I do not<br />
ask these questions on my own behalf, for whom the truth is clear; I ask,<br />
perhaps, for others who may be reluctant and difficult, like masters<br />
Poliinnio and Gervasio, for example.<br />
POLIINNIO. Cedo [I concur].<br />
GERVASIO. I approve, and thank you, Dicsono, for considering the<br />
needs of those who dare not ask, in keeping with the etiquette of transalpine<br />
meals, which forbids those who occupy the lesser seats at table to stick a finger<br />
outside the range of their own plates. There you must wait until a<br />
morsel is handed to you, and you cannot take a single bite without first<br />
having to pay for it with a ‘thank you’.<br />
TEOFILO. To resolve the whole question: just as a man, according to his<br />
specific human nature, is different from a lion, according to his particular<br />
nature, but both are indistinct and identical in their common animal<br />
nature, corporeal substance and other similar determinations, just so,<br />
according to its proper essence, the matter of corporeal things is different<br />
from that of incorporeal things. All that you say, then, concerning the fact<br />
77