Book 7
3
(i) Then if the animal which is in the horse and the man is one and the same, as you are one and the same with yourself, how can the one which in things that exist separately be one, and why should not this animal also be separated from itself? Again, if it is to partake of two-footed and of many-footed, an impossibility follows; for contrary attributes will belong to it although it is one and individual.
4
But if it does not, in what sense is it that one calls an animal two-footed or terrestrial? Perhaps the terms are combined and in contact or mixed. But all these expressions are absurd.
4
(2) But there is a different animal in each species. Then there will be practically an infinity of things of which animal is the substance, since it is not in an accidental sense that man is derived from animal.
5
Again, the Absolute Animal will be a plurality. For (a) the animal in each species will be the substance of that species, since the species is called after it and no other thing. Otherwise man would be derived from that other thing, which would be the genus of man. (b) Further, all the constituents of man will be Ideas. Then, since nothing can be the Idea of one thing and the substance of another (for this is impossible),
6
each and every animal in the various species will be the Absolute Animal.
6
Further, from what will these Forms be derived, and how can they be derived from the Absolute Animal? Or how can the animal, whose very essence is animal, exist apart from the Absolute Animal? And further, in the case of sensible things both these and still more absurd consequences follow. If, then, these consequences are impossible, clearly there are not Forms of sensible things in the sense in which some hold that there are.
