Metaphysics

Of comings-to-be and movements, one is called thinking and the other production; that which starts from the principle and the form is thinking, and that which starts from the end of thinking is production. And in the same way each of the other intermediate things comes to be. I mean, for instance, that if the subject is to be healthy, it will need to be made even. What, then, is being made even? This; and this will be if it is heated. And what is this? This. And this belongs to it potentially; and this is already in his power. The producing agent, then, and that from which the movement of being healthy begins, if it is from art, is the form in the soul; but if it is from spontaneity, it is from that which at some time begins the producing for the producer from art, just as in healing the beginning is perhaps from heating (and this he produces by rubbing). Heat, then, in the body is either a part of health, or some such thing follows it which is a part of health, or it is through several steps; and this is the last thing, that which produces the part of health— and so too with a house (as, for instance, the stones) and other things. So, as is said, it is impossible for anything to come to be if nothing pre-exists. It is clear, then, that some part must of necessity pre-exist; for the matter is a part (for this is present in the thing and comes to be). But does any of the things in the formula also pre-exist? Indeed, we state in both ways what bronze circles are, both saying of the matter that it is bronze, and of the form that it is such-and-such a figure, and this is the genus in which it is first placed. So the bronze circle has its matter in its formula. —And some of the things that come to be from something as matter are called, when they have come to be, not “that” but “made of that”, e.g., the statue is not “stone” but “stony”; but the man who becomes healthy is not called that from which he comes to be. The cause is that they come to be both from the privation and from the subject, which we call matter (for both the man and the sick man become healthy), but they are rather said to come to be from the privation, e.g., healthy from a sick man rather than from a man; therefore the healthy man is not called “sick”, but “man”, and the man is healthy. But where the privation is obscure and nameless, e.g., in bronze the privation of any shape whatever, or in bricks and wood the privation of a house, they seem to come to be from these as in the other case from the sick man. Therefore, just as in that case that from which this comes to be is not called by the name of that from which it came, so here too the statue is not called “wood”, but paronymously “wooden”, and “bronzen” but not “bronze”, and “stony” but not “stone”, and the house “bricky” but not “bricks”, since if one looks at it very carefully, one would not even say without qualification that a statue comes to be from wood, or a house from bricks, because that from which it comes to be must be something that changes, and not something that persists. It is for this reason, then, that we speak in this way.