Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
TEOFILO. It is that which is lacking in those who deem that everything
is a body, simple like the ether, or composite like the stars and astral things
– and who do not look for the divinity outside of the infinite world and the
infinity of things, but inside that world and those things.
DICSONO. It is only on that point, it seems to me, that the faithful
theologian differs from the truthful philosopher.
TEOFILO. I agree. I think you have understood what I mean.
DICSONO. Very clearly, I believe. And so, I infer from your remarks
that, even if we do not let matter go beyond the level of natural things and
keep to the common definition that the more vulgar philosophy gives of it,
we will find that matter retains a greater excellence than is recognized in it
by that philosophy. For, in the end, it does not attribute any other status to
it except that of being a substratum of forms and a potency which is receptive
to natural forms – without name, definition or determination because
it is without any actuality. This point seemed difficult to certain monks 17
who, wishing to excuse rather than to accuse this doctrine, claimed that
matter possesses only entitative act – that is, different from that which is
simply without being and which has no reality in nature, as, for example,
some chimera or imaginary thing. For this matter, in the end, has being –
which is enough for it – similar to that which, without mode or dignity,
depends on actuality and is nothing. But you could insist on asking
Aristotle: Why do you claim, O prince of the Peripatetics, that matter is
nothing, from the fact of its having no act, rather than saying that it is all,
from the fact that it possesses all acts, or possesses them confusedly and
confoundedly, as you prefer? Is it not you who, always speaking of the new
being of the forms in matter, or of the generation of things, says that forms
proceed from and emerge from inside matter? You have never been heard
to say that forms proceeded – through the action of the efficient cause –
from outside matter, saying rather that the efficient cause makes them
emerge from within. I shall not mention that you also make an internal
principle of the efficient cause of those things, to which you give the common
name ‘nature’, and not an external principle as is the case with artificial
things. In that case, it seems to me we should say that when matter
receives a form from outside, it does not possess in itself any form or act. It
also seems to me that when one says it sends all forms forth from its womb,
we must declare that it possesses them all. Is it not you who, if not obliged
by reason, at least compelled by normal usage, defines matter by saying that
17 Followers of Duns Scotus.
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