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