Page - 1720 - in The Complete Aristotle

incidentally, but each Form must be shared in as something not predicated of a subject. (By ‘being shared in incidentally’ I mean that if a thing shares in ‘double itself’, it shares also in ‘eternal’, but incidentally; for ‘the double’ happens to be eternal.) Therefore the Forms will be substance. But the same names indicate substance in this and in the ideal world (or what will be the meaning of saying that there is something apart from the particulars-the one over many?). And if the Ideas and the things that share in them have the same form, there will be something common: for why should ‘2’ be one and the same in the perishable 2’s, or in the 2’s which are many but eternal, and not the same in the ‘2 itself’ as in the individual 2? But if they have not the same form, they will have only the name in common, and it is as if one were to call both Callias and a piece of wood a ‘man’, without observing any community between them. But if we are to suppose that in other respects the common definitions apply to the Forms, e.g. that ‘plane figure’ and the other parts of the definition apply to the circle itself, but ‘what really is’ has to be added, we must inquire whether this is not absolutely meaningless. For to what is this to be added? To ‘centre’ or to ‘plane’ or to all the parts of the definition? For all the elements in the essence are Ideas, e.g. ‘animal’ and ‘two-footed’. Further, there must be some Ideal answering to ‘plane’ above, some nature which will be present in all the Forms as their genus. < div id=“section145” class=“section” title=“5”> 5 Above all one might discuss the question what in the world the Forms contribute to sensible things, either to those that are eternal or to those that come into being and cease to be; for they cause neither movement nor any change in them. But again they help in no wise either towards the knowledge of other things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them), or towards their being, if they are not in the individuals which share in them; though if they were, they might be thought to be causes, as white causes whiteness in a white object by entering into its composition. But this argument, which was used first by Anaxagoras, and later by Eudoxus in his discussion of difficulties and by certain others, is very easily upset; for it is easy to collect many and insuperable objections to such a view. But, further, all other things cannot come from the Forms in any of the usual senses of ‘from’. And to say that they are patterns and the other things share in them is to use empty words and poetical metaphors. For what is it 1720