Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 12.djvu/523

] of cutting which is an action and incorporeal, and, in the case of bodies, of being cut,—as in the case of the sword and what is cut [by it].

The cause of things is predicated in a threefold manner. One, What the cause is, as the statuary; a second, Of what it is the cause of becoming, a statue; and a third, To what it is the cause, as, for example, the material: for he is the cause to the brass of becoming a statue. The being produced, and the being cut, which are causes to what they belong, being actions, are incorporeal.

According to which principle, causes belong to the class of predicates, or, as others say, of dicta (for Cleanthes and Archedemus call predicates dicta); or rather, some causes will be assigned to the class of predicates, as that which is cut, wdiose case is to be cut; and some to that of axioms,—as, for example, that of a ship being made, whose case again is, that a ship is being made. Now Aristotle denominates the name of such things as a house, a ship, burning, cutting, an appellative. But the case is allowed to be incorporeal. Therefore that sophism is solved thus: What you say passes through your mouth. Which is true. You name a house. Therefore a house passes through your mouth. Which is false. For we do not speak the house, which is a body, but the case, in which the house is, which is incorporeal.

And we say that the house-builder builds the house, in reference to that which is to be produced. So we say that the cloak is woven; for that which makes is the indication of the operation. That which makes is not the attribute of one, and the cause that of another, but of the same, both in the case of the cloak and of the house. For, in as far as one is the cause of anything being produced, in so far is he also the maker of it. Consequently, the cause, and that which makes, and that through which, are the same. Now, if anything is "a cause" and "that which effects," it is certainly also "that through which." But if a thing is "that through which," it does not by any means follow that it is also "the cause." Many things, for instance, concur in one result, through