Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
TEOFILO. Do you, yourself, understand how this can be?
DICSONO. I believe so, for I understand that, in order to be all things,
the act cannot be any one thing.
POLIINNIO. Non potest esse idem totum et aliquid; ego quoque illud capio
[The same thing cannot be, at the same time, the whole and some part of
it. I, too, understand this].
TEOFILO. Then, you will be able to see how it follows that, if we wanted
to posit having dimensions as the nature of matter, such a nature would not
be incompatible with any kind of matter. But the only difference between
the two matters is that one is freed from dimensions and the other is contracted
to them. Being independent of dimensions, matter is above them
all and comprehends them all; being contracted, it is comprehended by
some dimensions and is under some of them.
DICSONO. You are right to say that matter, in itself, has no definite
dimensions, and, therefore, must be understood as indivisible, receiving
dimensions according to the nature of the form it receives. Its dimensions
differ according to whether it is found under human form, under equine
form, under that of the olive or under that of the myrtle tree. So, just as it
has the faculty of receiving all those forms, before it exists under any of
these forms, it has all of their dimensions in potency.
POLIINNIO. Dicunt tamen propterea quod nullas habet dimensiones [But
that, they say, is because it possesses no dimensions].
DICSONO. And we say that ideo habet nullas, ut omnes habeat [it has no
dimensions, so that it may have all of them].
GERVASIO. Why do you maintain that it includes, rather than excludes,
all of them?
DICSONO. Because it does not receive dimensions as from without, but
sends them out and brings them forth as from its womb.
TEOFILO. Well put. I might add that that is the way in which the
Peripatetics habitually express themselves also, saying that the dimensional
act and all natural forms emerge and derive from the potency of matter.
Averroes understood this in part. Although an Arab, and not knowing
Greek, he grasped more of the Peripatetic doctrine than any Greek we have
read and he would have understood still more, had he not been so devoted
to his idol, Aristotle. He says that matter, in its essence, comprises indeterminate
dimensions. By this, he wishes to convey that they come to be
determined – taking on now this figure and dimension, now others –
according to the modification of natural forms. In this sense, we see that
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