Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
TEOFILO. So I will. I say, then, that the table is not animated as table,
nor are the clothes as clothes, nor leather as leather, nor the glass as glass,
but that, as natural things and composites, they have within them matter
and form. All things, no matter how small and minuscule, have in them part
of that spiritual substance which, if it finds a suitable subject, disposes itself
to be plant, or to be animal, and receives the members of such or such a
body, commonly qualified as animated, for in all things there is spirit, and
there is not the least corpuscle that does not contain within itself some
portion that may animate it.
POLIINNIO. Ergo, quidquid est, animal est. [Therefore, whatever is, is
animal.]
TEOFILO. Not all things that have a soul are called animate.
DICSONO. Then, at least, all things have life?
TEOFILO. All things that have a soul are animated, in terms of substance,
but their life is not recognizable to the Peripatetics, who define life
too strictly and grossly, using the extrinsic and sensible act and operation,
and not the substance.
DICSONO. You reveal a plausible way of supporting Anaxagoras’ opinion
that all things are in all things, for since the spirit, or soul, or the
universal form is in all things, everything can be produced from everything.
TEOFILO. That is not only plausible but true, for that spirit is found in
all things which, even if they are not living creatures, are animate. If not
according to the perceptible presence of life and animation, then according
to the principle, and a certain primary act of life and animation. I will
go no further, since I wish to look later at the properties of many stones and
gems which, broken, recut or set in irregular pieces, have certain virtues of
altering the spirit or of engendering affections and passions in the soul, not
only in the body. And we know that these effects do not, and could not, proceed
from purely material qualities, but must be attributed to a symbolic
principle of life and animation. Besides, we see the same phenomenon
sensibly working in withered plants and roots which, purging and concentrating
humours and altering their spirits, reveal unmistakable signs of life.
Not to mention that necromancers, not without reason, hope to accomplish
many things using the bones of the dead, believing that they retain, if not
the very activity of life, at least some sort of vitality, which can be used to
achieve extraordinary effects. Other occasions will give me the chance more
fully to discuss thought, the spirit, the soul, the life which penetrates all, is
in all, and moves all matter, fills its bosom, and dominates it rather than
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