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<strong>Cause</strong>, principle and unity<br />
(although it is not entirely clear what he intended, his words having been<br />
reported by a commentator who is not particularly reliable). 6<br />
You say that all the differences seen in bodies, from the point of view of<br />
formation, constitution, figures, colours and other individual or common<br />
characteristics, are nothing but the diverse aspects of the same substance:<br />
fleeting, mobile and corruptible aspects of an immobile, persistent and<br />
eternal being in which all forms, figures and members exist, though indistinctly<br />
and (so to speak) conglomerated – exactly as in the seed, where the<br />
arm is not distinct from the hand, nor the bust from the head, or the nerve<br />
from the bone, and where differentiation and separation do not produce<br />
another or a new substance, but bring into act and accomplish certain qualities,<br />
differences, accidents and dispositions related to that substance. And<br />
what is said of the relation between the seed and the members of animals<br />
may also be said of food in relation to chyle, to blood, to phlegm, to flesh<br />
and seed. This goes for any other thing which precedes the alimentary<br />
state, or other state. It also goes for all things, from the lowest level of nature<br />
to the highest, climbing from the physical totality philosophers know to the<br />
archetype in which theologians believe, if you like, until we reach a single<br />
original and universal substance, the same for all, which we call being, the<br />
basis of all species and all different forms. Similarly in the art of carpentry<br />
there is a single substance of wood which is subject to all dimensions and<br />
shapes, which are not themselves wood but are of wood, in the wood or<br />
involving the wood. That is why everything that makes for the diversity of<br />
genera, species, differences, properties, all that which consists in generation,<br />
corruption, alteration and change, is not being, is not essence, but<br />
condition and circumstance of being or essence, which is one, infinite,<br />
substratum, matter, life, soul, truth and goodness.<br />
You say, then, that, since being is indivisible and absolutely simple,<br />
because it is infinite, and is act in its fullness in the whole and in every part<br />
of it (in the same way we speak of parts in the infinite, but not of parts of<br />
the infinite), we cannot think in any way that the earth is a part of being,<br />
nor that the sun is part of substance, since the latter is indivisible. But it is<br />
quite reasonable to speak of the substance of the part, or better still, of the<br />
substance in the part; just as it is not reasonable to say that a part of the soul<br />
is found in the arm or another part in the head, but it is legitimate to say<br />
that the soul is in the part that is the head, and that the substance is substance<br />
of the part – or in the part – that is the arm. For to be portion, part,<br />
6 Aristotle. See the end of the third dialogue, where Aristotle’s opinion of Parmenides is mentioned.<br />
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