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Is there, then, a sphere apart from the individual spheres or a
house apart from the bricks? Rather we may say that no 'this' would
ever have been coming to be, if this had been so, but that the
'form' means the 'such', and is not a 'this'-a definite thing; but the
artist makes, or the father begets, a 'such' out of a 'this'; and when
it has been begotten, it is a 'this such'. And the whole 'this',
Callias or Socrates, is analogous to 'this brazen sphere', but man and
animal to 'brazen sphere' in general. Obviously, then, the cause which
consists of the Forms (taken in the sense in which some maintain the
existence of the Forms, i.e. if they are something apart from the
individuals) is useless, at least with regard to comings-to-be and
to substances; and the Forms need not, for this reason at least, be
self-subsistent substances. In some cases indeed it is even obvious
that the begetter is of the same kind as the begotten (not, however,
the same nor one in number, but in form), i.e. in the case of
natural products (for man begets man), unless something happens
contrary to nature, e.g. the production of a mule by a horse. (And
even these cases are similar; for that which would be found to be
common to horse and ass, the genus next above them, has not received a
name, but it would doubtless be both in fact something like a mule.)
Obviously, therefore, it is quite unnecessary to set up a Form as a
pattern (for we should have looked for Forms in these cases if in any;
for these are substances if anything is so); the begetter is
adequate to the making of the product and to the causing of the form
in the matter
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