Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
horseness, are individual substances. They have come up with all that in
order to provide a substantial form which merits the name of substance,
just as matter has the name of substance, and the being of substance. They
have never derived any gain from this, for if you ask them, point by point,
‘In what does the the substantial being of Socrates consist?’, they will
answer, ‘In Socrateity’; if you then ask, ‘What do you mean by Socrateity?’,
they will answer, ‘The substantial form and proper matter of Socrates.’ But
let us leave aside this substance which is matter, and ask, ‘What is the
substance as form?’ Some of them will reply, ‘It is its soul’. Ask them,
‘What is this soul?’ If they say it is the entelechy and perfection of a body
possessing potential life, remark that this is an accident. If they say it is a
principle of life, sense, vegetation and intellect, remark that, although that
principle is a substance if one considers it fundamentally, as we do, they
present it as only an accident. For the fact of being a principle of such and
such a thing does not express an absolute and substantial nature, but a
nature that is accidental and relative to that which is principled: just as
whoever says what I do or can do is not expressing my being and substance;
that would be expressed by who says what I am, insofar as I am myself, considered
absolutely. You see, then, how they consider this substantial form
which is the soul: even if they have chanced to recognize it as substance,
they have never, however, designated or considered it as such. You can
make this conclusion out more plainly if you ask them in what consists the
substantial form of an inanimate thing, for example, that of wood: the most
subtle will imagine that it consists in woodness. Now take away that material
common to iron, to wood, to stone, and ask, ‘What substantial form of
iron remains?’ They will never point out anything but accidents. And these
are among the principles of individuation, and provide particularity,
because the material cannot be contained within the particular except
through some form, and because this form is the constituent principle of
some substance, they hold that it is substantial, but then they cannot show
it physically except as something accidental. When they have finally done
all they can, they are left with a substantial form which exists only logically
and not in nature. Thus, a logical construction comes to be posited as the
principle of natural things.
DICSONO. Aristotle does not realize this?
TEOFILO. I believe he fully realized it but could do nothing about it.
This is why he says that the ultimate differences are unknown and cannot
be expressed.
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