Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
the head with his comparison between matter and woman. He says that
women are no more content with males than matter is with forms, and so
forth.
TEOFILO. Seeing that matter does not receive anything from form, why
do you think it desires it? If (as we have said) it brings forms out of its
bosom and so possesses them in itself, how can you claim that it desires
them? It does not desire those forms which daily change on its back, for
every ordered thing desires that from which it receives perfection. And
what can a corruptible thing bring to an eternal one? What can an imperfect
thing, as is the form of sensible things, which is always in movement,
give to another so perfect that, if well pondered, is understood to be a divine
being in things, as perhaps David of Dinant meant, who was so poorly
understood by those who reported his opinion? 20 Matter does not desire
form in order to be preserved by it, because a corruptible thing does not
preserve an eternal one. Moreover, since matter clearly preserves form,
form must desire matter in order to perpetuate itself, and not the other way
around. For when form is separated from matter it ceases to exist, as is not
the case with matter, which has all it had before the coming of form and
which can have other forms as well. Not to mention that when we speak of
the cause of corruption, we do not say that the form flees from matter or
that it leaves matter, but that matter throws off one form to assume another.
There is as little reason to say that matter desires form as that it hates it (I
mean those forms that are generated and corrupted, because it cannot
desire the source of forms, which it has within itself, because nothing
desires what it possesses). By the same line of reasoning, according to
which it is said to desire what it sometimes receives or produces, it can also
be said to abhor whatever it throws off or rejects. In fact, it detests more
fervidly than it desires, for it eternally throws off that individual form after
retaining it a very short while. If you will remember this, that matter rejects
as many forms as it assumes, you must agree with me when I say that it
loathes form, just as I can allow your statements concerning desire.
GERVASIO. Here lie, then, in ruins not only Poliinnio’s castles, but also
others’.
POLIINNIO. Parcius ista viris [Do not boast too much].
DICSONO. We have learned enough for today. Until tomorrow.
20 David of Dinant, author of De tomis idest de divisionibus. ‘Thou who reported his opinion’ probably
refers to Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles (I, XVII), where David of Dinant is said to have identified
God with matter.
86