Cause Principle Unity

Third dialogue
stone, wool and the like, but nature works, so to speak, from the centre
of its substratum, or matter, which is totally formless. Furthermore, the
substrata of art are many, and that of nature one, because the former,
formed by nature in different ways, are diverse and various, while the latter,
in no way formed, is undifferentiated throughout, since all difference
or diversity proceeds from form.
GERVASIO. So that the things formed by nature serve as art’s material,
while a single, formless thing serves as nature’s material.
TEOFILO. Yes.
GERVASIO. Can we know the substratum of nature, just as we can
clearly see and know the substrata of the arts?
TEOFILO. Doubtless, but with different cognitive principles, for just as
we do not know colours and sounds through the same senses, we cannot see
the substrata of the arts and of nature with the same eye.
GERVASIO. You mean we see the first with the eyes of sense and the
second with the eye of reason.
TEOFILO. Yes.
GERVASIO. Please elaborate.
TEOFILO. Gladly. The relation that the form of art has with its material
is the same (allowing for proportions) as that of nature with its material.
Just as in art, then, while the forms vary to infinity (if this were possible),
under those forms there always persists one and the same matter – the form
of the tree, for example, being followed by the form of the trunk, then of
a board, then of a table, a stool, a chest, a comb and so on, while the wood
remains the same – and it is no different in nature, where forms vary
infinitely, one after the other, and the matter always remains the same.
GERVASIO. How can this analogy be confirmed?
TEOFILO. Do you not see that what was seed becomes stalk, what was
stalk becomes an ear of wheat, what was an ear becomes bread, what was
bread turns to chyle, from chyle to blood, from blood to seed, from seed to
embryo, and then to man, corpse, earth, stone or something else, in succession,
involving all natural forms?
GERVASIO. I see this easily.
TEOFILO. Then, there must exist one same thing which, in itself, is neither
stone, nor earth, nor corpse, nor man, nor embryo, nor blood, nor anything
else, but which, after having been blood, turns to an embryo by
receiving the being of the embryo, and which, after having been an embryo,
receives the being of man to become human, just as the matter formed by
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