Book 12
3
There are three kinds of substance: (1.) matter, which exists individually in virtue of being apparentAristotle is contrasting proximate with primary matter. Fire, the primary matter of a man, is a simple undifferentiated element which cannot be perceived as such, and has no individuality. The head, and the other parts of the body, considered merely as in contact and not as forming an organic unity, are the proximate matter of a man; they are perceptible and individual. Flesh (in general) represents the matter in an intermediate stage.(for everything which is characterized by contact and so not by coalescence is matter and substrate; e.g. fire, flesh and head; these are all matter, and the last is the matter of a substance in the strictest sense); (2.) the naturei.e., form.(existing individually)—i.e. a kind of positive state which is the terminus of motion; and (3.) the particular combination of these, e.g. Socrates or Callias. In some cases the individuality does not exist apart from the composite substance (e.g., the form of a house does not exist separately, except as the art of building;
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nor are these forms liable to generation and destruction; there is a distinct sense in which house and health and every artificial product, considered in the abstract, do or do not existi.e., in the mind of the architect or doctor.); if it does so at all, it does so in the case of natural objects. Hence Plato was not far wrong in sayingSee Introduction. that there are as many Forms as there are kinds of natural objects; that is if there are Forms distinct from the things of our world.
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Moving causes are causes in the sense of pre-existent things, but formal causes coexist with their effects. For it is when the man becomes healthy that health exists, and the shape of the bronze sphere comes into being simultaneously with the bronze sphere.
