Cause Principle Unity

Fourth dialogue
permanent; later on, if we seek further in his doctrine for the place where
the perpetual seat of natural form which floats on the back of matter might
be, we will not find it either in the fixed stars – since the particular forms
which we see do not descend from on high – nor in the ideal signs, separate
from matter – for if these are not monsters, they are assuredly worse
than monsters, being chimeras and pointless fantasies. What then? Forms
are in the bosom of matter. And what then? Matter is the source of actuality.
Do you want me to carry on and make you see all the absurdities into
which Aristotle gets himself? He says that matter exists in potency, but ask
him: When will it be in act? Together with a great crowd he will respond:
When it possesses form. But insist and ask: When that occurs, what commences
to exist? They will answer, despite themselves: The composite, not
matter, since the latter is always identical to itself, never renews itself, never
changes. The same goes for artificial things: when one makes a statue of
wood, we do not say that the wood begins to exist, for it is no more nor less
wood than before. In fact, that which receives being and actuality is the new
product, the composite, I mean the statue. How can you grant potency,
then, to something that will never be in act nor possess act? For it follows
from this that matter is not that which is in potency of being or that can be,
for it is always identical and immutable, and is that upon which and in
which change takes place, rather than that which changes. What is altered,
augmented, diminished, moved in location, corrupted, is always (as you
Peripatetics, yourselves, say) the composite, never matter. Then, why do
you say that matter is now in potency, now in act? No one surely could
doubt that matter, whether it receives forms or sends them forth from
itself, does not receive a greater or lesser actuality in terms of its essence or
its substance; so that there is no reason to say that it exists in potency. For
potency concerns what is in continual movement in relation to matter, and
not matter itself, which is not only eternally at rest, but the very cause
of that state of eternal rest. For if form, in keeping with its fundamental,
specific being possesses, not only logically – in the concept and in reason –
but also physically in nature, a simple, invariable essence, then form must
exist in the perpetual potency of matter, which is a potency not distinct
from act, as I have several times explained in my various discussions
concerning potency.
POLIINNIO. Queso [I beg you], spare a word for the appetite of matter,
so that Gervasio and I can resolve a little dispute between us.
GERVASIO. Yes, please, Teofilo, for this person has given me a pain in
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