Cause Principle Unity

A general account of bonding
lacks these qualities insofar as it desires them. Thus, to that degree it is
neither beautiful nor good. Hence, one of the Peripatetics was wrong in his
statement about matter when he concluded that matter is ugly and evil,
because the desire for the good and beautiful is itself evidence that matter
lacks these properties. Aristotle said more carefully that matter is not ‘ugly’
or ‘evil’ as such. 9 Rather, the actual truth is that that which, like matter,
tends and moves equally towards goodness and evil, ugliness and beauty, is
in itself neither ugly nor beautiful, neither evil nor good. If matter were
evil, it would be contrary to its nature to desire the good; the same would
be true if it were naturally ugly. And if it were evil by analogy, then it would
also analogously possess a contrary which does not desire, but, rather,
excludes and rejects, the other contary. The more profound philosophers
understand this as we have declared elsewhere. That is, matter itself, in its
bosom, is the beginning of all forms, such that all things originate and are
produced from it; it is not a pure negation, as if all things originated from
the outside as foreigners; indeed, outside of the bosom of matter there are
no forms; rather, all forms are both latent within it and are derived from it.
Consequently for anyone who considers bonds at the social level and in
their full meaning, it should be clear that in every material thing or part of
matter, in every individual or particular thing, all seeds are contained
within and lie hidden there, and, as a result, the inclinations of all bonds
can be actuated by a skilful effort. In one of our ‘Thirty Small Signs’, 10 we
have explained in general how such an inclination and its transformation
take place.
15. The generality or universality of a bond. From what has just been said, it
follows that the love by which we love, and the tendency by which all things
desire, are intermediaries between good and evil, between the ugly and the
beautiful (not themselves being ugly or beautiful). And so they are good
and beautiful because of a sort of sharing and participation, for the bond of
love has a nature which is both active and passive. And by this, things act,
or are acted upon, or both, as they desire to be ordered, joined, united and
completed, insofar as it is within the nature of each thing to be occupied
with order, joining, union and completion. Without this bond there is
nothing, just as without nature there is nothing. Because of this, therefore,
love is not a sign of imperfection when it is considered in matter and in the
9 See Physics, I, 9 (192.a.24).
10 See Part I, ‘On Bonding Agents in General’, Article 12, ‘No one particular thing can bind everything’.
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