Iacobi Acontii Tridentini de methodo, hoc est, de recta investigandarum, tradendarumque artium, ac scientiarum ratione

which has been grafted onto an alien trunk, and therefore not of its own species. For the form of those fruits cannot be said to come from nature alone, since it is doubtful to no one that, unless the art and labor of the farmer were added, nature alone would never produce such fruits. Nevertheless, we will also relegate forms of this kind to the artificial. A natural form is the principle of motion or action: therefore, it also holds the status of an efficient cause the agent producing an effect. And this is indeed either simple or composite. It is simple when it has a simple and imperfect nature, such as the forms of the elements, which first matter prime, unformed substance assumes. However, first matter lacks any form whatsoever, not because it can ever exist without any form, but because it is abstracted and understood by the mind only from composite things. A composite form is not one that consists of many forms (for that is one, not many), but one that is a principle of more numerous and more perfect motions than a simple one, such as the form of plants, which is endowed with a vegetative power whose motion is more perfect and distinct. For in vegetation are contained attraction, retention, and other motions of that kind of vegetative faculty, which we call natural actions. For the same reason, among multiform things, which