The heat in the
movement caused heat in the body, and this is either health, or a part
of health, or is followed by a part of health or by health itself. And
so it is said to cause health, because it causes that to which
health attaches as a consequence.
Therefore, as in syllogisms, substance is the starting-point of
everything. It is from 'what a thing is' that syllogisms start; and
from it also we now find processes of production to start.
Things which are formed by nature are in the same case as these
products of art. For the seed is productive in the same way as the
things that work by art; for it has the form potentially, and that
from which the seed comes has in a sense the same name as the
offspring only in a sense, for we must not expect parent and offspring
always to have exactly the same name, as in the production of 'human
being' from 'human' for a 'woman' also can be produced by a
'man'-unless the offspring be an imperfect form; which is the reason
why the parent of a mule is not a mule. The natural things which (like
the artificial objects previously considered) can be produced
spontaneously are those whose matter can be moved even by itself in
the way in which the seed usually moves it; those things which have
not such matter cannot be produced except from the parent animals
themselves.
But not only regarding substance does our argument prove that
its form does not come to be, but the argument applies to all the
primary classes alike, i.e. quantity, quality, and the other
categories.
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