Physics

20 Everything comes to be from both the subject and the form; for the musical man is composed, in a way, of man and musical; you would break down the accounts into their terms This refers to the analytical process of defining composite objects.. It is therefore clear that the things which come to be would arise from these. The subject is one in number, but two in form. For the man and the gold and, in general, the unformed matter are a "this" An individual, concrete thing. more so, and that which comes to be does not come from it coincidentally; but the sterēsis privation and the opposition are incidental. The form is one, such as the arrangement, music, or any of the other things predicated in this way. Therefore, there is a sense in which the principles should be called two, and a sense in which they are three; and there is a sense in which they are the opposites, for example, if one were to speak of the musical and the non-musical, or the hot and the cold, or the tuned and the untuned, and a sense in which they are not; for it is impossible for opposites to be affected by one another. This is solved by the fact that the subject is something else; for this is not an opposite. Thus, the principles are not, in a way, more than the opposites, but are two, so to speak, in number; nor again are they strictly two because their being is different, but three; for the being for a man and for the non-musical is different, as it is for the unformed and for bronze. How many and in what way the principles of natural things relating to generation are has been stated; and it is clear that something must underlie the opposites, and that the opposites are two. In another way, it is not necessary; for the presence and absence of one of the opposites will suffice to cause the change. The underlying nature is known by analogy. For as bronze is to a statue, or wood to a bed, or as matter and the unformed is to any other thing having form before it receives that form, so this underlies substance, the "this," and the being. One principle, then, is this; it is not one...