Note (return) — Chapter XII
Reading edition
"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--τὸ σύνολον);" as, for example, a statue, a plant, a man. To every subject there belongs, therefore, first, matter (ὕλη); secondly, form (µορφή). The synthesis of these two produces and constitutes substance, or οὐσία. 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.