Kitap 8
3
There is also a difficulty as to why wine is not the matter of vinegar, nor potentially vinegar (though vinegar comes from it), and why the living man is not potentially dead. In point of fact they are not; their degeneration is accidental, and the actual matter of the living body becomes by degeneration the potentiality and matter of the dead body, and water the matter of vinegar; for the one becomes the other just as day becomes night.
4
All things which change reciprocally in this way must return into the matter; e.g., if a living thing is generated from a dead one, it must first become the matter, and then a living thing; and vinegar must first become water, and then wine.
1
With regard to the difficulty which we have describedAristot. Met. 7.12, Aristot. Met. 8.3.10, 11. in connection with definitions and numbers, what is the cause of the unification? In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause ; inasmuch as even in bodies sometimes contact is the cause of their unity, and sometimes viscosity or some other such quality.
2
But a definition is one account, not by connection, like the Iliad , but because it is a definition of one thing.
2
What is it, then, that makes man one thing, and why does it make him one thing and not many, e.g. animal and two-footed, especially if, as some say, there is an Idea of animal and an Idea of two-footed?
3
Why are not these Ideas man, and why should not man exist by participation, not in any man, but in two Ideas, those of animal and two-footed? And in general man will be not one, but two things—animal and two-footed. Evidently if we proceed in this way, as it is usual to define and explain, it will be impossible to answer and solve the difficulty.
