Page:Eight chapters of Maimonides on ethics.djvu/65

Rh attained a form but remains without intelligence, its existence is not a good one. M. considers matter and form in the Aristotelian sense. The principia of all existing, transient things are matter, form, and the absence of a particular form (Moreh, I, 17). Matter consists of the underlying, basic substance of a thing, which has a potential but not a real existence, its true nature consisting in the property of never being without a disposition to receive a form (ibid., III, 8). Every substance is endowed with a form, or incoporeal being (ibid., II, 12), by means of which that substance is what it is. That is, through form that which is potentially in existence comes into real existence (Aristotle, Physics, II, 3; Metaphysics, I, 3), and upon it the reality and essence of a thing depend. When the form is destroyed, the thing’s existence is terminated (Moreh, III, 69). As soon as a substance has received a certain form, the absence or privation of that form which it has just received has ceased, and it is replaced by the privation of another form, and so on with all possible forms (ibid., I, 17). Cf. Aristotle, Physics, I, 5-7; also, c. IX. Matter is constantly seeking to cast off the form it has in order to receive another, and so form does not remain permanently in a substance. M. aptly compares matter to a faithless wife, who, although not being without a husband, continually seeks another man in his place (Moreh, III, 8). The soul, according to Aristotle, is the form of the body which, as matter, has merely a potentiality for existence. See supra, p. 37, n. 2. He says, “It must follow, then, that soul is substance in the sense that it is the form of a natural body having in it the capacity of life.” (De Anima, II, 1, ed. Hicks, pp. 48 and 49). M. agrees with this, and says in Yesode ha-Torah, IV, 8. “The soul of all flesh is its form which God has given it.” The human soul, however, needs in turn a form in order that it may become a reality. The soul’s form is, as M. states here, reason, or more definitely the acquired reason (see Scheyer, Psychol. Syst. d. Maim., c. III; also p. 59, note E; p. 65 ff., especially p. 66), and it this that makes man what he is. Cf. Moreh, I, 7. “It is acknowledged that a man who does not possess this form, ....... is no man.” However, this is not the place for us to discuss such problems as that of form, matter, and the number of different kinds of intelligence, and their means of acquisition; nor is it necessary for what we have to say concerning the subject of ethics, but is more appropriately to be discussed in the Book on Prophecy, which we mention (elsewhere).

Now I conclude this chapter, and begin the next.