What is the moving cause which extinguished the light? The
earth. The final cause perhaps does not exist. The formal principle is
the definitory formula, but this is obscure if it does not include the
cause. E.g. what is eclipse? Deprivation of light. But if we add 'by
the earth's coming in between', this is the formula which includes the
cause. In the case of sleep it is not clear what it is that
proximately has this affection. Shall we say that it is the animal?
Yes, but the animal in virtue of what, i.e. what is the proximate
subject? The heart or some other part. Next, by what is it produced?
Next, what is the affection-that of the proximate subject, not of
the whole animal? Shall we say that it is immobility of such and
such a kind? Yes, but to what process in the proximate subject is this
due?
5
Since some things are and are not, without coming to be and
ceasing to be, e.g. points, if they can be said to be, and in
general forms (for it is not 'white' comes to be, but the wood comes
to be white, if everything that comes to be comes from something and
comes to be something), not all contraries can come from one
another, but it is in different senses that a pale man comes from a
dark man, and pale comes from dark. Nor has everything matter, but
only those things which come to be and change into one another.
Those things which, without ever being in course of changing, are or
are not, have no matter.
There is difficulty in the question how the matter of each thing
is related to its contrary states.
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