The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

into this particular
matter, and the result is a brazen sphere. But if the essence of
sphere in general is to be produced, something must be produced out
of something. For the product will always have to be divisible, and
one part must be this and another that; I mean the one must be
matter and the other form. If, then, a sphere is ‘the figure whose
circumference is at all points equidistant from the centre’, part
of this will be the medium in which the thing made will be, and
part will be in that medium, and the whole will be the thing
produced, which corresponds to the brazen sphere. It is obvious,
then, from what has been said, that that which is spoken of as form
or substance is not produced, but the concrete thing which gets its
name from this is produced, and that in everything which is
generated matter is present, and one part of the thing is matter
and the other form.
    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. And when we have the whole, such and such a form in this
flesh and in these bones, this is Callias or Socrates; and they are
different in virtue of their matter (for that is different), but
the same in form; for their form is indivisible.
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9
    The question might be raised, why some things are produced
spontaneously as well as by art, e.g. health, while others are not,
e.g. a house. The reason is that in some cases the matter which
governs the production in the making and producing of any work of
art, and in which a part of the product is present,-some matter is
such as to be set in motion by itself and some is not of this
nature, and of the former kind some can move itself in the
particular way required, while other matter is incapable of this;
for many things can be set in motion by themselves but not in some
particular way, e.g. that of dancing. The things, then, whose
matter is of this sort, e.g. stones, cannot be moved in the
particular way required, except by something else, but in another
way they can move themselves-and so it is with fire. Therefore some
things will not exist apart from some one who has the art of making
them, while others will; for motion will be started by these things
which have not the art but can themselves be moved by other things
which have not the art or with a motion starting from a part of the
product.
    And it is clear also from what has been said that in a sense
every product of art is produced from a thing which shares its name
(as natural products are produced), or from a part of itself which
shares its name (e.g. the house is produced from a house, qua
produced by reason; for the art of building is the form of the
house), or from something which contains a art of it,-if we exclude
things produced by accident; for the cause of the thing’s producing
the product directly per se is a part of the product. The heat