III. To the Authorities from the Philosopher for the Opposite

201. To the authority from Aristotle Metaphysics 5 [n.130] (“in number one” etc.), I reply and say that Aristotle is there taking matter for the individual entity that it constitutes in material, and not in formal, being (as far as quiddity is said to be form), because that individual entity is not quidditative. And this exposition is plain from what he subjoins, “Those things are one in species whose idea is one, etc.,” where indeed ‘idea’ is taken for quiddity, which is called form in respect of individual being.

202. Thereby is plain the answer to the remark in On the Heaven about heaven and this heaven [n.135] - and it confirms the conclusion proposed.

203. Thereby too is plain the answer to the remark in Metaphysics 12 [n.134]. For I concede that there cannot be several first movers because there is no matter in the first mover: that is, there is not in it anything that, as matter or as anything else, contracts it, but it is of itself a ‘this’ without anything else contracting it; for such contracting does not stand along with perfect simplicity; and therefore the quiddity of the first mover is of itself a ‘this’.

204. As to the remark in Metaphysics 7 [n.133], that ‘whatever there is of reality in things that are without matter is the same as what it is the reality of’, I say that the ‘what it is’ of a thing can be compared with what it belongs to per se and first and with what it belongs to per se and not first; and, universally, the way it belongs to something is the way it is the same as it, because, as the Philosopher argues in 7.6.1031a17-18, “The singular seems to be not other than its substance, and the ‘what it is’ is called the substance of the singular” (for if the ‘what it is’ is not being, it is nothing). But the ‘what’ is that which a thing first is, and so that to which the ‘what it is’ per se belongs is the same per se as the ‘what it is’, and that to which the ‘what it is’ per accidens belongs is the same per accidens as the ‘what it is’ and so is not simply the same as it (hence Aristotle too himself maintains there [6.1031a19-21] that, in the case of things said per accidens, the ‘what it is’ is not the same as what it belongs to - and no wonder, because he has earlier made it clear [4.1029b12-30a17] that nothing is the ‘what it is’ or definition of them).

205. Now that which has a ‘what it is’ can be understood either as the nature itself, which the ‘what it is’ first belongs to, or as the supposit of nature, which the ‘what it is’ per se but not first belongs to. The ‘what it is’ taken in the first way, in both material and immaterial things, is the same as what it belongs to - even first belongs to, because what it belongs to has the ‘what it is’ first. Taken in the second way, what has a ‘what it is’, when it includes some entity outside the idea of its whatness, is not the same as the ‘what it is’; for then it is not the same first as the ‘what it is’, because the ‘what it is’ does not belong to it first, in that what has the ‘what it is’ includes some entity outside the idea of what is first the ‘what’.

206. To the intended conclusion of the Philosopher, therefore, I say that in things not conceived along with matter (that is, not conceived along with an individual entity contracting the quiddity), the ‘what it is’ is the same as what it belongs to, because such a ‘what it belongs to’ has no nature outside the nature of that which is the ‘what it is’; but in things conceived along with matter (that is, conceived with an individual entity contracting the quiddity), the ‘what it is’ is not the same first as what it belongs to, because a first thus conceived would not have the ‘what it is’ of itself but only through a part, namely through the nature which is contracted by the individual entity.

207. So from this one does not get that the matter which is the other part of a composite is outside the idea per se of the quiddity - rather, matter truly belongs to the quiddity, and the species (and what has the form universally) has the ‘what it is’ first and is the same as it first; and so it does not follow that the matter that is the other part of a composite is what individuates it, but this only follows about the matter that is the entity contracting the quiddity, and I have conceded that [n.206]. But whether a lack of the matter that is the other part entails, according to the Philosopher, the lack of this sort of individual entity will be discussed in the following question [nn.238-239].

208. To the remark of the Philosopher that ‘the generator generates another because of matter’ [n.132] I say that the intention of the Philosopher there is that [Platonic] ideas are not necessary for generation, because both the distinction of the generator from the generated and the assimilation of the generated to the generator (which two are required for univocal generation) can be got without ideas. For the particular agent has from its form wherewith to assimilate the passive thing to itself, and the generator has from its form wherewith so to assimilate the generated - and from matter the generator has that it is distinct from the generated: not principally, although however it may follow that it is distinguished by matter from the generated, because, through the form that terminates generation, it perfects another matter and not its own matter (for its own matter is already perfected by the form); and, because it assimilates through the form, it perfects another matter than its own, and so its own matter is other than the matter which is deprived of such form. But whatever has a different matter is, from the fact that matter is an essential part of a thing, other than it.

209. I say then that the principal reason for assimilation (or of likeness) is the form itself between the generator and the generated, and this not according to individual unity and identity insofar as the form is a ‘this’, but according to a lesser unity and identity insofar as it is a form, and the reason for generating accords with this; the form too is a more principal reason for distinction than matter is, because just as form is more principally that by which a composite is than matter, so it is more principally that by which a composite is one and so that by which the composite is not in itself distinct but is distinct from another.

210. However (distinguishing ‘what assimilates’ from ‘what distinguishes’), the form is appropriately assimilative in a way that the matter properly is not, because matter is not a substantial or an accidental quality; but matter is a distinguishing thing (speaking appropriately), because - from the fact it lacks form - it necessarily distinguishes from the matter which already has the form, and so it distinguishes composite from composite.

211. The composite can also in another way be understood to be ‘other because of matter’, as being other because of a pre-existing cause of otherness: for the form of the generated thing is a more principal cause of otherness in the composite than the matter is; however it is not the pre-existing cause of this otherness, but matter is - and that because it pre-existed as deprived matter; and therefore it cannot be the same as informed matter.