Book 12
4
nor are these forms liable to generation and destruction; there is a distinct sense in which house and health and every artificial product, considered in the abstract, do or do not existi.e., in the mind of the architect or doctor.); if it does so at all, it does so in the case of natural objects. Hence Plato was not far wrong in sayingSee Introduction. that there are as many Forms as there are kinds of natural objects; that is if there are Forms distinct from the things of our world.
5
Moving causes are causes in the sense of pre-existent things, but formal causes coexist with their effects. For it is when the man becomes healthy that health exists, and the shape of the bronze sphere comes into being simultaneously with the bronze sphere.
6
Whether any form remains also afterwards is another question. In some cases there is nothing to prevent this, e.g. the soul may be of this nature (not all of it, but the intelligent part; for presumably all of it cannot be). Clearly then there is no need on these grounds for the Ideas to exist; for man begets man, the individual begetting the particular person. And the same is true of the arts, for the art of medicine is the formula of health.
