Kitap 7
9
Thus obviously there is no need to set up a form as a pattern (for we should have looked for Forms in these cases especially, since living things are in a special sense substances); the thing which generates is sufficient to produce, and to be the cause of the form in the matter. The completed whole, such-and-such a form induced in this flesh and these bones, is Callias or Socrates. And it is different from that which generated it, because the matter is different but identical in form, because the form is indivisible.
1
The question might be raised why some things are generated both artificially and spontaneously—e.g. health—and others not; e.g. a house. The reason is that in some cases the matter—which is the starting-point of the process in the production and generation of artificial things, and in which some part of the result is already existent—is such that it can initiate its own motion, and in other cases it is not; and of the former kind some can initiate motion in a particular way, and some cannot. For many things can move themselves, but not in a particular way, e.g. so as to dance.
2
It is impossible, then, for any things whose matter is of this kind (e.g. stones) to be moved in this particular way except by something else; but in that particular way it is possible. And it is so with fire.Stones can fall by themselves, but cannot by themselves build a house; fire can rise by itself, but cannot boil a kettle. For this reason some things cannot exist apart from the possessor of the art, and others can; because the motion can be initiated by those things which do not indeed possess the art, but can themselves be moved either by other things which do not possess the art, or by the motion from the part of the product which pre-exists in them.e.g., health can be produced as the result of the activity set up by heat in the body.
