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. Further even if it acts,
this will not be enough, if its essence is potency; for there will not
be eternal movement, since that which is potentially may possibly
not be. There must, then, be such a principle, whose very essence is
actuality. Further, then, these substances must be without matter; for
they must be eternal, if anything is eternal. Therefore they must be
actuality.
Yet there is a difficulty; for it is thought that everything
that acts is able to act, but that not everything that is able to
act acts, so that the potency is prior. But if this is so, nothing
that is need be; for it is possible for all things to be capable of
existing but not yet to exist.
Yet if we follow the theologians who generate the world from
night, or the natural philosophers who say that 'all things were
together', the same impossible result ensues. For how will there be
movement, if there is no actually existing cause? Wood will surely not
move itself-the carpenter's art must act on it; nor will the menstrual
blood nor the earth set themselves in motion, but the seeds must act
on the earth and the semen on the menstrual blood.
This is why some suppose eternal actuality-e.g. Leucippus and
Plato; for they say there is always movement. But why and what this
movement is they do say, nor, if the world moves in this way or
that, do they tell us the cause of its doing so. Now nothing is
moved at random, but there must always be something present to move
it; e
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