tic," bk. ii. ch. xi.]

[Footnote 720: "Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. iii.]

Causes are, therefore, the elements into which the mind resolves its
first rough conception of an object. That object is what it is, by
reason of the matter out of which it sprang, the moving cause which gave
it birth, the idea or form which it realizes, and the end or object
which it attains. The knowledge of a thing implies knowing it from these
four points of view--that is, knowing its four causes or principles.

These four determinations of being are, on a further and closer
analysis, resolved into the fundamental antithesis of MATTER and FORM.

"All things that are produced," says Aristotle,[721] "are produced from
something (that is, from _matter_), by something (that is, _form_), and
become something (the totality--to synolon);" as, for example, a statue,
a plant, a man. To every subject there belongs, therefore, first,
_matter_ (yle); secondly, _form_ (morphe). The synthesis of these two
produces and constitutes _substance_, or ousia. Matter and form are thus
the two grand causes or principles whence proceed all things. The
formative cause is, at the same time, the moving cause and the final
cause; for it is evidently the element of determination which impresses
movement upon matter whilst determining it; and it is also the end of
being, since being only really exists when it has passed from an
indeterminate to a determinate state.

[Footnote 721: "Metaphysics," bk. vi. ch. vii.]

In proof that the eidos or form is an _efficient_ principle operating in
every object, which makes it, to our conception, what it is, Aristotle
brings forward the subject of generation or production.[722] There are
three modes of production--natural, artificial, and automatic. In
natural production we discern at once a matter; indeed Nature, in the
largest sense, may be defined as "that out of which things are
produced." Now the result formed out of this matter or nature is a given
substance--a vegetable, a beast, or a man. But what is the _producing_
cause in each case? Clearly something akin to the result. A man
generates a man, a plant produces another plant like to itself. There
is, therefore, implied in the resulting thing a _productive force_
distinct from matter, upon which it works. And this is the eidos, or
form. Let us now consider artificial production. Here again the form is
the producing power. And this is in the soul. The art of the physician
is