If it is not to share in them, what is the relation implied
when one says the animal is two-footed or possessed of feet? But
perhaps the two things are 'put together' and are 'in contact', or are
'mixed'. Yet all these expressions are absurd.
But (2) suppose the Form to be different in each species. Then
there will be practically an infinite number of things whose substance
is animal'; for it is not by accident that 'man' has 'animal' for
one of its elements. Further, many things will be 'animal-itself'. For
(i) the 'animal' in each species will be the substance of the species;
for it is after nothing else that the species is called; if it were,
that other would be an element in 'man', i.e. would be the genus of
man. And further, (ii) all the elements of which 'man' is composed
will be Ideas. None of them, then, will be the Idea of one thing and
the substance of another; this is impossible. The 'animal', then,
present in each species of animals will be animal-itself. Further,
from what is this 'animal' in each species derived, and how will it be
derived from animal-itself? Or how can this 'animal', whose essence is
simply animality, exist apart from animal-itself?
Further, (3)in the case of sensible things both these
consequences and others still more absurd follow. If, then, these
consequences are impossible, clearly there are not Forms of sensible
things in the sense in which some maintain their existence.
15
Since substance is of two kinds, the concrete thing and the
formula (I mean that one kind of substance is the formula taken with
the matter, while another kind is the formula in its generality),
substances in the former sense are capable of destruction (for they
are capable also of generation), but there is no destruction of the
formula in the sense that it is ever in course of being destroyed (for
there is no generation of it either; the being of house is not
generated, but only the being of this house), but without generation
and destruction formulae are and are not; for it has been shown that
no one begets nor makes these.
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