Cause Principle Unity

A general account of bonding
third into nature, which it diversifies and sustains with its seeds; and fourth
into matter, which it supplies with forms. According to them this beam of
light is clearest in the mind, clear in the soul, obscure in nature and most
obscure in the material substrate of natural things. It is not a bodily mass,
and it has no bulk. Nor can it rotate around a mass and through the whole
of space, for not just large things, but also small ones, are seen to be beautiful.
In the same species, large things are deformed and small things are
beautiful, but the opposite also occurs, and it often happens that beauty is
lost when something remains the same in quantity, and is preserved when
that quantity is changed. The most beautiful baby or child is pleasing but
does not bind until he is an adolescent of a certain age. Then he has some
size, and this is true even if his form and figure and complexion have not
changed at all. From this we conclude that social types of bonding require
a degree of size on which the form and the power of the bond depends. It
refers, I think, to gestures, words, clothing, habits, sense of humour, and
the other signs of human feelings.
2. The origin of a bond. Some Platonists define a bond as arising from a certain
proportionality of parts accompanied by a certain pleasantness of
colouring. But to those who consider the matter more fully, it is at least as
clear that it is not just composite things and things consisting of parts that
bind, but that colour alone and sound alone also bind. Furthermore, nothing
slips away and ages faster than beauty, and nothing changes more slowly
than the form and figure which shine forth from the composition of parts.
Hence, it seems that the bond of beauty must be sought elsewhere than in
the figure and in the proportionality of parts. Indeed, sometimes love
passes away after the flowering of the object loved, but the same beauty and
figure still remain. As a result, the nature of a bond consists chiefly in a certain
mutual orientation between a captor and a captive. Indeed, it sometimes
happens that even though we have no grounds to complain reasonably
about a girl’s beauty, or in a social setting to criticize someone’s
conversation, speech, habits or actions in general, still they do not please
us. On the other hand, something, or even many things, may displease us
in someone, yet we still love that person. And, indeed, it would be rather
stupid to identify colour as a bond without distinguishing between colour
and the things associated with colour. For does colour in itself bind when
a brighter colour is displeasing and rejected by an old man, while a duller
colour binds and captures a young man? And also if, in a social setting, an
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