From these same considerations it is clear also what consequence follows for those who maintain that the Forms are substances and separable, and who at the same time make the species consist of the genus and the differentiae. If there are Forms, and if animal
is present in the man and the horse, it is either numerically one and the same with them, or not.
(In formula they are clearly one; for in each case the speaker will enunciate the same formula.) If, then, there is in some sense an Absolute Man, who is an individual and exists separately, then the constituents, e.g. animal
and two-footed,
must have an individual meaning and be separable and substances. Hence there must be an Absolute Animal too.
(i) Then if the animal
which is in the horse and the man is one and the same, as you are one and the same with yourself, how can the one which in things that exist separately be one, and why should not this animal
also be separated from itself? Again, if it is to partake of two-footed
and of many-footed,
an impossibility follows; for contrary attributes will belong to it although it is one and individual.
But if it does not, in what sense is it that one calls an animal two-footed
or terrestrial
? Perhaps the terms are combined
and in contact
or mixed.
But all these expressions are absurd.
(2) But there is a different
Then there will be practically an infinity of things of which animal
in each species.animal
is the substance, since it is not in an accidental sense that man
is derived from animal.
Again, the Absolute Animal will be a plurality. For (a) the animal
in each species will be the substance of that species, since the species is called after it and no other thing. Otherwise man
would be derived from that other thing, which would be the genus of man.
(b) Further, all the constituents of man
will be Ideas. Then, since nothing can be the Idea of one thing and the substance of another (for this is impossible),
each and every animal
in the various species will be the Absolute Animal.
Further, from what will these Forms be derived, and how can they be derived from the Absolute Animal? Or how can the animal,
whose very essence is animal,
exist apart from the Absolute Animal? And further, in the case of sensible things both these and still more absurd consequences follow. If, then, these consequences are impossible, clearly there are not Forms of sensible things in the sense in which some hold that there are.