Book 7
2
For to make an individual thing is to make it out of the substrate in the fullest sense. I mean that to make the bronze round is not to make the round or the sphere, but something else; i.e. to produce this form in another medium. For if we make the form, we must make it out of something else; for this has been assumed. E.g., we make a bronze sphere; we do this in the sense that from A, i.e. bronze, we make B, i.e. a sphere.
3
If, then, we make the spherical form itself, clearly we shall have to make it in the same way; and the processes of generation will continue to infinity.
3
It is therefore obvious that the form (or whatever we should call the shape in the sensible thing) is not generated—generation does not apply to it— nor is the essence generated; for this is that which is induced in something else either by art or by nature or by potency.
4
But we do cause a bronze sphere to be, for we produce it from bronze and a sphere; we induce the form into this particular matter, and the result is a bronze sphere. But if the essence of sphere in general is generated, something must be generated from something; for that which is generated will always have to be divisible, and be partly one thing and partly another; I mean partly matter and partly form.
