Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
unfolds what it possesses enfolded must, therefore, be called a divine and
excellent parent, generator and mother of natural things – indeed, nature
entire in substance. Is that not what you mean, Teofilo?
TEOFILO. Certainly.
DICSONO. I am also very surprised that our Peripatetics have not
worked out their art analogy further. Among the many materials that it recognizes
and adopts, art considers that which is least subject to corruption
and most durable and most versatile as best and most valuable. So, it deems
gold more noble than wood, stone and iron, because it is less subject to corruption,
and because everything that can be made of wood or stone, and
many other things besides, can also be made of gold, producing things of
much greater value by reason of their beauty, resistance, suppleness and
nobility. What, then, must we say of the matter of which man, gold and
all natural things are made? Must it not be held more worthy than the
material of art, and must we not attribute a higher actuality to it? Why, O
Aristotle, will you not admit that what is the foundation and the basis of
actuality – I mean, of that which is in act – and which you declare to exist
forever and endure eternally, why will you not admit that it is more in act
than your forms and your entelechies, which come and go? So that if you
also wanted to seek the permanence of the formal principle …
POLIINNIO. Quia principia oportet semper manere [Because principles
should be permanent].
DICSONO. … without resorting to the fantastical ideas of Plato, since
you are so hostile to them, you will be forced and obliged to say, either that
the permanent actuality is found in the efficient cause – but this you cannot
do, since you say that this efficient cause is what draws out and extracts
the forms from the potency of matter – or that their permanent actuality is
found in the bosom of matter. And, in fact, that is what you will be forced
to say, because all the forms which appear as it were on the surface of matter
– those that were as much as those that are or will be – and which you
call individual forms in act, are not themselves the principle, but are
principled things. (I think, in fact, that the particular form is found on the
surface of matter, in the same way as the accident is at the surface of the
composite substance. Whence it follows that the actuality of the expressed
form must be recognized as inferior to that of matter, just as the actuality
of the accidental form is recognized as inferior to that of the composite.)
TEOFILO. Indeed, Aristotle concludes lamely by declaring, in concert
with all the ancient philosophers, that principles must always be
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