nce of the other Peripatetics, agrees not in many things
with Aristotle, and holds opinions altogether contrary to Plato,
concerning motion, the understanding, the soul, and generation. In fine,
he says that the world is not an animal, and that what is according to
Nature follows what is according to Fortune; for that Chance gave
the beginning, and so every one of the natural effects was afterwards
finished.

Now as to the ideas,--for which he quarrels with Plato,--Aristotle,
by moving this matter at every turn, and alleging all manner of doubts
concerning them, in his Ethics, in his Physics, and in his Exoterical
Dialogues seems to some rather obstinately than philosophically to have
disputed against these doctrines, as having proposed to himself the
debasing and undervaluing of Plato's philosophy; so far he was from
following it. What an impudent rashness then is this, that having
neither seen nor understood what these persons have written and what
were their opinions, he should go and devise such things as they never
imagined; and persuading himself that he reprehends and refutes others,
he should produce a proof, written with his own hand, arguing and
convincing himself of ignorance, licentiousness, and shameful impudence,
in saying that those who contradict Plato agree with him, and that those
who oppose him follow him.

Plato, says he, writes that horses are in vain by us considered horses,
and men men. And in which of Plato's commentaries has he found this
hidden? For as to us, we read in all his books, that horses are horses,
that men are men, and that fire is by him esteemed fire, because he
holds that every one of these things is sensible and subject to opinion.
But this Colotes, as if he were not a hair's breadth distance from
wisdom, takes it to be one and the same thing to say, "Man is not" and
"Man is a NON ENS."

Now to Plato there seems to be a wonderful great difference between
not being at all and being a NON ENS; because the first imports an
annihilation and abolishment of all substance, and the other shows the
diversity there is between that which is participated and that which
participates. Which diversity those who came after distinguished only
into the difference of genus and species, and certain common and proper
qualities or accidents, as they are called, but ascended no higher,
falling into more logical doubts and difficulties. Now there is the
same proportion between that which is participa