And this is the 'One' of Anaxagoras;
for instead of 'all things were together'-and the 'Mixture' of
Empedocles and Anaximander and the account given by Democritus-it is
better to say 'all things were together potentially but not actually'.
Therefore these thinkers seem to have had some notion of matter. Now
all things that change have matter, but different matter; and of
eternal things those which are not generable but are movable in
space have matter-not matter for generation, however, but for motion
from one place to another.
One might raise the question from what sort of non-being
generation proceeds; for 'non-being' has three senses. If, then, one
form of non-being exists potentially, still it is not by virtue of a
potentiality for any and every thing, but different things come from
different things; nor is it satisfactory to say that 'all things
were together'; for they differ in their matter, since otherwise why
did an infinity of things come to be, and not one thing? For
'reason' is one, so that if matter also were one, that must have
come to be in actuality which the matter was in potency. The causes
and the principles, then, are three, two being the pair of
contraries of which one is definition and form and the other is
privation, and the third being the matter.
3
Note, next, that neither the matter nor the form comes to be-and I
mean the last matter and form. For everything that changes is
something and is changed by something and into something.
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